A Mother & Daughter say Happy #MothersDay with a free #mystery & a 99-cent #romance

Chris and her mother, 1970s

By Kris Bock (Guest Blogger)

What do you have in common with your mother? Physical features, interests, ethics? I’m lucky to have a mother who is creative, a world traveler, and a bit of a rebel. It’s possible I inherited some or all of those traits from her.

We are also both writers. I came to writing early, with my parents’ support – I’ve been a professional working writer for twenty years. Mom wrote an occasional article, along with business documents and a PhD thesis, before turning to fiction after she retired. As a fan of mysteries, she decided to write her own. She set it in Juneau, Alaska, where we lived while I was in high school. (I’m not featured in the book, but our former dog Bandit is.)

Today we both live in the Southwest – she’s in Arizona and I’m in New Mexico. I write romantic suspense novels set in this region, including my Southwest Treasure Hunters books. These are action-packed adventures with a touch of humor, featuring quests for treasure – whether long-lost, recently hidden, or in human form.

To celebrate this Mother’s Day, I have a romantic suspense novel available for free, while Mom’s cozy mystery is on sale for $.99.

The Dead Man’s Treasure by Kris Bock is FREE May 10-14. 

 

“The Dead Man’s Treasure is fast-paced and a perfect read for the weekend. I highly recommend this one.”

Rebecca Westin is shocked to learn the grandfather she never knew has left her a bona fide buried treasure – but only if she can decipher a complex series of clues leading to it. The hunt would be challenging enough without interference from her half-siblings, who are determined to find the treasure first and keep it for themselves.

Good thing Rebecca has recruited some help. Sam is determined to show Rebecca that a desert adventure can be sexy and fun. But there’s a treacherous wildcard in the mix, a man willing to do anything to get that treasure – and revenge.

Action and romance combine in this lively Southwestern adventure, complete with riddles the reader is invited to solve to identify historical and cultural sites around New Mexico.

“I can’t say enough how much I loved this book! It has mystery, adventure, danger, romance, and above it all family remains a huge theme.”

The Dead Man’s Treasure is book 2 of the Southwest Treasure Hunters novels. Each book features a different hero and heroine, and stands alone with a happy ending. The first novel, The Mad Monk’s Treasure, is $.99 or free with Kindle Unlimited. The Mad Monk’s Treasure, “Smart romance with an ‘Indiana Jones’ feel,” has 4.7 out of 5 stars with 50 reviews

Murder on the West Glacier Trail by Sharon Eboch is on sale for 99 cents – a 67% discount! – from May 10-16!

“This is a fast-paced mystery that keeps you guessing. It has good locale and character descriptions.”

If Kate Foland had known how her bed and breakfast guest would change her life, she might have left her at the airport.

When Kate’s guest is shot to death while hiking in the Alaskan woods, Kate feels compelled to investigate. Sandra Allison seemed like a perfectly nice young woman. So who would want her dead?

Sandra’s archeology work often caused construction delays while Native artifacts were removed. Did a Juneau builder follow up a threat with a gunshot? Or was Kate the intended victim, since Sandra was wearing Kate’s coat and walking her dog? And why is the dog suddenly acting like a scaredy-cat?

“... a fun story with a great sense of local flavor.”

“...hard to put down!”

“Knowledge of the Juneau area was evident, and at least a couple of the recipes included appear as must tries.”

About the Authors

Kris and Mom, 2016

In case you’re wondering why we have similar but different last names, Kris Bock is my pen name for writing adult romantic adventures and mysteries. I write for children under the name Chris Eboch.

As Kris Bock, I write novels of adventure and romance involving outdoor adventures and Southwestern landscapes. Whispers in the Dark features archaeology and intrigue among ancient Southwest ruins. In Counterfeits, stolen Rembrandt paintings bring danger to a small New Mexico town. What We Found is a mystery with strong romantic elements about a young woman who finds a murder victim in the woods.

Each of the Southwest Treasure Hunters books stands alone in a series mixing action and adventure with romance. The Mad Monk’s Treasure follows the hunt for a long-lost treasure in the New Mexico desert. In The Dead Man’s Treasure, estranged relatives compete to reach a buried treasure by following a series of complex clues. In The Skeleton Canyon Treasure, sparks fly when reader favorites Camie and Tiger help a mysterious man track down his missing uncle.

Read excerpts at my Amazon page or website. Sign up for Kris Bock newsletter.

Sharon Eboch lives in Tempe, Arizona, where she enjoys reading, quilting, and occasional social activism. Murder on the West Glacier Trail was inspired by her love of cozy mysteries and her years living in Juneau, Alaska, with her family and a dog named Bandit (featured in the book). Originally from Nebraska, she has also lived in Saudi Arabia, San Francisco, and the Seattle area. She has a PhD in Human Development and the Family, which she now mostly uses to attempt to understand her two adult children.

Review Tuesday:Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (#romance #literature #reviewtuesday)

 
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

Harper Perennial, 1991

Have you ever encountered a book so beautifully written that you can’t bear to read more than half a dozen pages at a time? Of course you want to know what’s going to happen, but then you encounter paragraphs that just stop you in your tracks with their perfection. Sometimes the emotions portrayed overwhelm you with their intricacy and their truth. Other times it’s the aptness of some metaphor or the vibrancy of some description. It’s tough to make progress in a book like that. One doesn’t want to squander the experience, the sense of wonder that comes from such exquisitely fashioned prose.

Barbara Kingsolver’s books seem to have this effect on me. Her brief biography on the back of Animal Dreams says she’s “a writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry”. The poetry explains it all. In a poem, as in her books, every word counts. With a sort of splendid humility, in concise, direct sentences that somehow convey profound meaning, Ms. Kingsolver gradually exposes her vivid, flawed characters as they stumble through their lives.

About a year ago I read Ms. Kingsolver’s more recent novel, Flight Behavior. I found it so stunning I couldn’t bring myself to review it. Honestly, I felt I couldn’t do it justice. When I finished this earlier book of hers a few days ago, I vowed I’d write a review before I lost my nerve.

Cosima "Codi" Noline returns to her tiny, traditional hometown of Grace, Arizona after a self-exile of more than a decade, because she doesn’t know where else to go. Her beloved younger sister Hallie, with whom she shares the sort of closeness usually reserved for twins, has set off to civil-war-torn Nicaragua to offer her expertise as an agriculturist to the peasants trying to build a new society. Her father, the emotionally distant physician who has ministered to Grace’s ailments for forty years, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and Codi feels some sense of responsibility toward him, despite her conviction that he neither loves nor approves of her. She does not belong in Grace, though, or so she believes. The problem with Codi is that she doesn’t belong anywhere.

As she takes on a one year contract as a high school biology teacher and struggles to reconnect with people from her childhood, she tells herself she’s just passing through—that she can’t and won’t make a commitment to these strangers. Even when she falls in love with a high school flame, and lends her scientific expertise to a campaign to save Grace from ecological disaster, she holds on to the notion that her stay in Grace is temporary. She has lost too much in the course of her life—her mother, her unborn child, her father’s love, her sister’s company—to trust in any sort of enduring happiness. At the end of her contract, she heads for Colorado, running away from Grace one more time. You can’t run from your fears, though—or from your dreams.

The synopsis above doesn’t even begin to capture the emotional complexities in Animal Dreams. Codi is so deeply scarred she’s ready to throw away the love she’s always craved, to leave the home for which she hungers. She’s a bit of an extreme character, but Ms. Kingsolver makes her believable, partly by providing brief glimpses into the deteriorating mind of Codi’s father, Homero Noline. The doctor’s memory wanders through time, reliving events from his daughters’ childhood, confusing Codi the gangly, willful child with the young woman who has returned to care for him. These three or four page sections, scattered throughout the book, provide a sort of tragic insight into Codi’s history and show the reader how much Hector loves his daughters, and how blind the heart can be.

One of the joys of this book is the rich, affectionate portrait it paints of the American southwest. Codi’s lover Loyd is Native American. There are marvelous scenes among the ancient ruins of Canyon de Chelly and in a contemporary Pueblo community. The novel brings Grace to vivid life: the red-shingled houses clinging to the steep walls of a river gorge, surrounded by pecan and plum orchards and anchored by the formidable old women who are its heart. Its inhabitants people leap off the page, quirky, old-fashioned, distinctive, and nobody’s fools.

Here’s a paragraph from page 9—an example of the simple yet evocative prose that fills this marvelous book.

I was the only passenger getting off. The short, imperious bus driver opened the baggage door and made a show of dragging out luggage to get to mine, as if I were being difficult. A more accommodating woman, he implied, would be content with whatever bags happened to be right in front. Finally he slapped my two huge suitcases flat out in the dust. He slammed the doors and reclaimed his throne, causing the bus to bark like a dog, leaving a cloud of exhaust in the air, getting the last word, I suppose.

And here is the amazing first love scene:

He leaned over and I took his head in my hands and gave him the kiss I’d been thinking about for the last two hours. It lasted a good long while. He twisted his fingers gently through the hair at the back of my skull and held on tight, and my breath stopped while he laid down a track of small kisses from my earlobe to my collar bone. We lay back on the grass and I rolled against him, looking down into his eyes. They were dark brown, a color with depth to it, like stained glass. It was a little surprising to look at brown eyes after all the pale blues of Grace.

Just being held felt unbelievably good, the long drink I’d been dying for. For a second I hugged back as tightly as I could. Something inside his buttoned shirt pocket made a crackling cellophane sound. I raised up a little and poked it with my finger. “If you’ve got a condom in your pocket, Loyd Peregrina, this is my lucky day.”

He did. It was.

To be able to write like this, I’d be tempted to sell my soul.

Get yourself a copy of Animal Dreams. It might inspire you as much as it did me.