It's Monday! What Are You Reading? September 28, 2020

 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It's an opportunity to visit other blogs and to comment on their reads. And ... you can add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome everyone. This meme started with J Kaye's Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date. And here we are!

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This is two week's worth of reading. I was on vacation in The Black Hills last week and didn't get a chance to get a post ready for last Monday. I didn't get in as much reading as I had hoped to but what I did read were books that have been on my TBR pile for quite awhile and ones that I've really been wanting to read. I threw them in my bag and ignored all those other books that I 'should have' been reading. Sometimes ya just gotta do that, right? 

I have to share a couple or pictures from our vaca. We drove through the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park and saw masses of buffalo. It took us about 2 hours to get past all of them but it was such a great experience, seeing them so close. They are such majestic, beautiful creatures. 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a good week. 

Happy reading!

Take care. Stay safe and healthy everyone. 

And remember to wash those hands!!

What I'm currently reading

Dear Child

by Romy Hausmann

Pub date 10/6

My thoughts will be posted on Friday.

The Unfinished Garden
by Barbara Claypole White
Narrated by Ana Clements and Paul Heitsch

What I recently finished

The Moonshiner's Daughter

by Donna Everhart

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

by Kim Michele Richardson

The Art of Remembering

by Alison Ragsdale

What I am going to read next

The Book of Two Ways

by Jodi Picoult

I really love my reading life!

What are you reading this week?

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Book Spotlight #Giveaway! One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus #OneThousandWhiteWomen

I have sooooo many books! The Book Spotlight Giveaway feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to clear my shelves, to share some of the many books I have, and to give someone else the opportunity to enjoy these treasures.

I read this book awhile back and was given a second copy by the publisher when the next book in the series came out last year. It's a very interesting read about a little known part of our history. 

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

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One Thousand White Women

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

One Thousand White Women #1

Paperback, 434 pages

Published February 15th 1999 by St. Martin's Griffin

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

About the author

Jim Fergus was born in Chicago on March 23, 1950. He attended high school in Massachusetts and graduated as an English major from Colorado College in 1971. He has traveled extensively and lived over the years in Colorado, Florida, the French West Indies, Idaho, France, and Arizona. For ten years he worked as a teaching tennis professional in Colorado and Florida, and in 1980 moved to the tiny town of Rand, Colorado (pop. 13), to begin his career as a full-time freelance writer. He was a contributing editor of Rocky Mountain Magazine, as well as a correspondent of Outside magazine. His articles, essays, interviews and profiles have appeared in a wide variety of national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, Newsday, The Denver Post, the Dallas-Times Herald, Harrowsmith Country Life, The Paris Review, MD Magazine, Savvy, Texas Monthly, Esquire, Fly Fisherman, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. His first book, a travel/sporting memoir titled, A Hunter's Road, was published by Henry Holt in 1992. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch called A Hunter's Road, "An absorbing, provocative, and even enchanting book."

Fergus' first novel, One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd was published by St. Martin's Press in 1998. The novel won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association, and has become a favorite selection of reading groups across the country. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States. An international bestseller, One Thousand White Women (Milles Femmes Blanches) was also on the French bestseller list for fifty-seven weeks and has sold well over 400,000 copies in that country.

In 1999, Jim Fergus published a collection of outdoor articles and essays, titled The Sporting Road. And in the spring of 2005, his second novel, The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles was published by Hyperion Press. An historical fiction set in the 1930's in Chicago, Arizona, and the Sierra Madre of Mexico, The Wild Girl has also been embraced by reading groups all across the United States. Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump called it, "an exhilarating and suspenseful tale that makes the heart soar."

In 2011, Fergus published a family historical fiction in France entitled, MARIE-BLANCHE. The novel spans the entire 20th century, and tells the devastating tale of the complicated and ultimately fatal relationship between the author’s French mother and grandmother. The American edition of MARIE-BLANCHE will be published in the United States in 2014.

In the spring of 2013, Fergus published another novel in France, CHRYSIS: Portrait d’Amour, a love story set in 1920′s Paris and based on the life of a actual woman painter, Chrysis Jungbluth. Reviewing CHRYSIS in French ELLE magazine, Olivia de Lamberterie,wrote: “This novel is an arrow through the heart.”

Chrysis has just been published in America with the title THE MEMORY OF LOVE.

Jim Fergus divides his time between southern Arizona, northern Colorado, and France.

Connect with Jim

Website | Goodreads

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Book Spotlight #Giveaway! Some Luck by Jane Smiley #SomeLuck

I have sooooo many books! The Book Spotlight Giveaway feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to clear my shelves, to share some of the many books I have, and to give someone else the opportunity to enjoy these treasures.

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

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Some Luck

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #1

Paperback, 396 pages

Published July 7th 2015 by Anchor

1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank, into their family farm. He will be the oldest of five.

       

Each chapter in this extraordinary novel covers a single year, encompassing the sweep of history as the Langdons abide by time-honored values and pass them on to their children. With the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change through the early 1950s, we watch as the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis. Later still, a girl we’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own.   

       

The first volume of an epic trilogy from a beloved writer at the height of her powers, Some Luck starts us on a literary adventure through cycles of birth and death, passion and betrayal that will span a century in America. 

About the author

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. 

Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.

In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Jane

Website | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads

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Book Blitz! The People We Meet Along the Way by Beth Rinyu ~ Excerpt and #Giveaway!

The People We Meet Along the Way

The People We Meet Along the Way by Beth Rinyu
Publication date: September 17th 2020
Genres: Romance, Women’s Fiction

Would you be able to grant the same forgiveness to someone else that you’re so desperately seeking yourself? 

Jillian O’Rourke’s marriage died long before her husband’s tragic accident. Years of battling with infertility and demanding careers melted their once solid relationship. Bearing the burden of guilt over his death, Jillian gets lost in despair and a series of what ifs. But one chance encounter with a stranger, changes everything. 

Now being faced with newfound knowledge and a painful decision, Jillian must push past her anger, learn to forgive and open her heart in ways she never could’ve imagined. As she comes to grips with the devastation of her past, she learns to embrace the possibility of a future she never thought possible. A bittersweet story of love, forgiveness, and the unexpected destiny that is sometimes handed to us in life from the people we meet along the way.

Goodreads | Amazon

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EXCERPT

“I just wish you didn’t hate me so much.” I concentrated on the coffee in my cup as I swirled the wooden stirrer round and round. 

“I don’t hate you,” I said, focusing my attention back to him. “I hate what we did. I hate that I let it define who I was for so long, and I hate that I hurt someone I cared about so much because of it. But I don’t hate you—you were just one of the many cracks in my life.” 

He creased his forehead. “I don’t understand.” 

I gazed at him long and hard, finally fearless of the shame the man staring back at me conjured up inside of me. He held no control over me, and he never had. I stood up and pushed my chair in as he sat there waiting for an explanation. “And I wouldn’t have expected you to. Goodbye, Jonathan.”

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About the author

Ever since I can remember, I have always enjoyed Creative Writing. There was always something about being able to travel to a different place or become a different person with just the stroke of a pen - or in today's world a touch of the keyboard. I love creating deep characters who you will love or love to hate. 

My life is not as interesting as my books or the characters in them, but then again whose life is? My happy place is a seat by the ocean with my feet in the sand or on the busy streets of New York City. You will more than likely find one of these places as the setting for most of my books.

Connect with Beth

Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Amazon | Bookbub

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Release Day! Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker ~ My Thoughts #DontLookForMe #NetGalley

 Happy Release Day!!

Congrats Wendy

on the release today of

Don't Look for Me!

Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker

Print and e-book, 352 pages

Published September 15th 2020 by St. Martin's Press

In Wendy Walker's thrilling novel Don't Look for Me, the greatest risk isn’t running away. It’s running out of time.

One night, Molly Clarke walked away from her life.

She doesn't want to be found.

Or at least, that's the story.

The car abandoned miles from home.

The note found at a nearby hotel.

The shattered family that couldn’t be put back together.

They called it a “walk away.”

It happens all the time.

Women disappear, desperate to leave their lives behind and start over.

But is that what really happened to Molly Clarke? 

My thoughts about Don't Look for Me ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First line—"Day one. The sky goes dark as I drive."

That first line 'The sky goes dark as I drive.' should have clued me in to the ominous and dark tone this book was going to take. Let me tell you, the dark sky ended up being the least of Molly's worries and was only the beginning of her terror. 

Don't Look for Me took me on a ride I couldn't have imagined when I started reading. I was not expecting the story that I unfold before me and I loved every minute of it! Twists, turns. lies, not knowing who to trust, nor who to believe. So much hurt and so many emotions. Molly had already been through so much and I wasn't sure she was going to survive what happened to her on the dark, rainy night. 

Don't Look for Me is the perfect read for those who love psychological thrillers. This one will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Loved, loved, loved it! 

I received a copy of Don't Look for Me from NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

About the author

Wendy Walker is the author of psychological suspense. Her novels have been translated into 23 foreign languages and have topped bestseller lists both nationally and abroad. They have been featured on The Today Show, The Reese Witherspoon Book Club, and The Book of the Month Club and have been optioned for television and film. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Wendy

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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Release Day! Love is a Battlefield by Whitney Dineen #LoveIsABattlefield

  Happy Release Day!!

Congrats Whitney

on the release today of

Love is a Battlefield!

Love is a Battlefield by Whitney Dineen

Series: Seven Brides for Seven Mothers #1

Print and e-book, 374 pages

Published September 15th 2020

Who doesn’t want their mom to play Cupid?

Addison Cooper had planned on an all-expense paid vacation to the Cayman Islands to celebrate her most recent business success. Instead, she’s trekking to the outback of Oregon to help a friend of her mother's.

Reclusive novelist Brogan Cavanaugh’s new thriller just hit the New York Times Best Seller list. To reward himself, he was planning to spend the summer at his family’s fishing cabin until his mom unexpectedly calls in a favor.

Even though moms Libby and Ruby have been best friends since they were college roommates, Addison and Brogan have barely spent time in each other’s company. And when they did, things didn’t go well.

How will they react when they start to suspect their interfering mothers are setting them up?

Find out in this deliciously funny rom-com about mothers who really do know best and the children who don’t know they need them. 

I love Whitney's stories! She has a wonderful sense of humor and her books are always so much fun to read. I'm excited for this new series of hers.

About the author

Whitney loves to laugh, play with her kids, bake, and eat french fries -- not always in that order.

Whitney is a multi-award-winning author of romcoms, non-fiction humor, and middle reader fiction. Basically, she writes whatever the voices in her head tell her to. 

She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jimmy, where they raise children, chickens, and organic vegetables.

Gold Medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2017.

Silver medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2015, 2016.

Finalist RONE Awards, 2016.

Finalist at the IRFA 2016, 2017.

Finalist at the Book Excellence Awards, 2017

Finalist Top Shelf Indie Book Awards, 2017

Connect with Whitney

Website | Goodreads | Facebook 

 Twitter | Instagram | Newsletter

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Release Day! When the Time Is Right by Kim Cano ~ My Thoughts and a #Giveaway! #WhenTheTimeIsRight

Happy Release Day!!

Congrats Kim

on the release today of

When the Time Is Right!

When the Time Is Right by Kim Cano

Print and e-book, 219 pages

Published September 14th 2020 by Kim Cano

A bond so strong that the gate to Rainbow Bridge can't hold it back.

As veterinarian Michelle Catalano helps other people's ailing animals earn their angel wings, she tries not to think about the empty cat perch in her own home. Or the empty side of her bed, grown cold since her boyfriend left town.

Then a pet psychic's uncannily accurate reading leaves Michelle with more questions than the answers she thought were set in stone. And warnings so dark, she wishes she still had her cat at her side to cuddle the fear away.

When a brutal murder devastates Michelle and her family, the detective working the case is her only anchor. And soon, she's turning to Bruce for the comfort that could heal her broken heart.

But there are too many unanswered questions about the killer, causing Michelle to secretly investigate on her own. Will Michelle's search for answers spell her doom, or deliver help from the animal afterlife above? 

My thoughts about When the Time Is Right ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First line—"The sound of rain gently tapping the window kept Dr. Michelle Catalano company as she wrote the eulogy for the Border Collie she had put to sleep earlier that day."

This story captured my heart from the first chapter. Dr. Michelle is a compassionate veterinarian who helps animals and their humans as the beloved pet transitions to Rainbow Bridge. That is always a hard thing to go through and this is a wonderful service to provide. She loves her animals.

And then the unthinkable happens. The drama and pain that Michelle had to endure drew me further into the story until I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Her life is a roller-coaster ride as the ups and downs of her search for answers keeps her motivated to move forward. 

Kim Cano is a new-to-me author but I loved the twists and turns of this story as well as the love and compassion shown to animals that is apparent throughout the whole book. This is a dramatic, emotional, engaging story while still be being beautiful and heart-warming. I'm definitely going to be checking out more of her stories! 

I received a copy of When the Time Is Right from the author and this is my honest opinion.

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Scroll down and enter the giveaway for a print copy of this touching, amazing book! 

About the author

Kim Cano is the author of five women's fiction novels: A Widow Redefined, On the Inside, Eighty and Out, His Secret Life, and When the Time Is Right. Kim has also written a short story collection called For Animal Lovers. 10% of the sale price of that book is donated to the ASPCA® to help homeless pets.

Kim's novelette, The Rescue, is available for free on her website. ~ Goodreads

Connect with Kim

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Kim has graciously offered a print copy of her book for a giveaway!

Thank you so much, Kim!!

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It's Monday! What Are You Reading? September 14, 2020

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It's an opportunity to visit other blogs and to comment on their reads. And ... you can add to that ever growing TBR pile! So welcome everyone. This meme started with J Kaye's Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date. And here we are!

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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a good week. 

Happy reading!

Take care. Stay safe and healthy everyone. 

And remember to wash those hands!!

What I'm currently reading

The Book of Two Ways
by Jodi Picoult
Pub date 9/22

The Unfinished Garden
by Barbara Claypole White
Narrated by Ana Clements and Paul Heitsch

What I recently finished

Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman

Don't Look for Me

by Wendy Walker
Pub date 9/15

What I am going to read next

I have no idea! We are leaving today for a week's vacation in The Black Hills. I'm taking a stack of print books and my loaded Kindle. I'm just going to read whatever grabs my fancy.

I really love my reading life!

What are you reading this week?

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Be sure to check the sidebar for all of my current giveaways!

Book Spotlight #Giveaway! Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen #LostLake

I have sooooo many books! The Book Spotlight Giveaway feature that I post every Saturday is a way for me to clear my shelves, to share some of the many books I have, and to give someone else the opportunity to enjoy these treasures.

I really love Sarah's stories and this is another great one. You can read my thoughts here.

Good luck and be sure to stop back next week!

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Lost Lake

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen 
Paperback, 352 pages
Published May 30th 2017 by St. Martin's Paperbacks

From the author of the beloved bestseller Garden Spells comes a beautiful, haunting story of old loves and new, and the power of the connections that bind us forever...

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby's past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that's left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.

It's a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

About the author

New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction -- a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature -- because, as she puts it, "I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate."

After graduation, Allen began writing seriously. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut "spellbindingly charming." The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.

Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.

Her published books to date are: Garden Spells (2007), The Sugar Queen (2008), The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010), The Peach Keeper (2011) and Lost Lake (2014) and First Frost (2015). ~ Goodreads

Connect with Sarah

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by Heather B. Moore ~ My Thoughts #ThePaperDaughtersOfChinatown

The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by Heather B. Moore

Print and e-book, 384 pages
Published September 1st 2020 by Shadow Mountain

Based on true events, The Paper Daughters of Chinatown in a powerful story about a largely unknown chapter in history and the women who emerged as heroes.

In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco is a booming city with a dark side, one in which a powerful underground organization—the criminal tong—buys and sells young Chinese women into prostitution and slavery. These “paper daughters,” so called because fake documents gain them entry to America but leave them without legal identity, generally have no recourse. But the Occidental Mission Home for Girls is one bright spot of hope and help.

Told in alternating chapters, this rich narrative follows the stories of young Donaldina Cameron who works in the mission home, and Mei Lien, a “paper daughter” who thinks she is coming to America for an arranged marriage but instead is sold into a life of shame and despair.

Donaldina, a real-life pioneering advocate for social justice, bravely stands up to corrupt officials and violent gangs, helping to win freedom for thousands of Chinese women. Mei Lien endures heartbreak and betrayal in her search for hope, belonging, and love. Their stories merge in this gripping account of the courage and determination that helped shape a new course of women’s history in America.

My thoughts about The Paper Daughters of Chinatown ~~

(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)

First line—"Donaldina Cameron leaned her head against the cool glass of the window as the train slowed to a stop, its whistle mimicking the call of a mournful dove—deep and melancholy—a fitting echo of her life over the past few years."

Although this book was tough to read in spots because of the cruelty some people forced on others, it was a very informative, insightful look at a very real part of our history. The author did an amazing job of giving the reader both the heartaches and the joys in the lives of the paperback daughters.

Based on the true life of Donaldina Cameron, The Paper Daughters of Chinatown is a must-read for anyone interested in the injustices done to Chinese women at that time or in the history of Chinatown in San Francisco in the late nineteenth century. Reading about the hard life that Mei Lien had to endure woven around the wonderful things that Donaldina did for so many women made this a very compelling story.

I received a copy of The Paper Daughters of Chinatown from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

About the author

Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty publications. Her historical novels and thrillers are written under pen name H.B. Moore. She writes women's fiction, romance and inspirational non-fiction under Heather B. Moore. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her Mom.

Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt, the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in Utah. Heather is represented by Dystel, Goderich, and Bourret. ~ Goodreads

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

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