Edgar's Books

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Avocado Toast by Nancy Fraser - Book Blast and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Nancy Fraser will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The last place Andrew (Drew) Morgan wants to be is back on the family avocado farm in Plentiful. If he had his way, he’d still be active military and deployed someplace far, far away. Unfortunately, he rarely gets what he wants. And, being back in the orchard is just the latest in a long list of disappointments.

Single mother, Chloe Taylor has relocated from Fresno to the rural area of Plentiful, California to build her marketing business beginning with the local agriculture co-op. It’s her job to convince the local farms to invest in a major overhaul of the co-op’s publicity campaign. A mixture of modern operations, and older, family-owned farms, only adds to her frustration.

At the moment, her biggest challenge is bringing the owner of Plenty Good Farms in line with the others. The fact that the old curmudgeon of an owner, Samuel Morgan, has brought his nephew in to run things gives her hope. Surely, the younger Morgan will be more amenable to her progressive ideas.

When Chloe first presents her plan the Morgan men, it’s Drew who throws a monkey wrench into his uncle’s agreement to sign the necessary contract. What she doesn’t realize is that Drew’s reluctance has more to do with his uncle’s health issues, and the possibility that he won’t be able to talk the man who raised him into retiring.

When Drew is forced by the military medical team into choosing between a desk job or retirement, he shares his frustrations with Chloe and she helps him find a new purpose outside of being a full-time farmer. It also helps that their attraction is growing. Drew has definitely fallen for the independent woman, and her adorable daughter.

Will Chloe’s faith and determination help her lead Drew through his difficult decisions and bring them what they both need... a love that transcends their everyday challenges.

Read an Excerpt

“Are we going home now?” Jessi asked.

“Yes, sweetie, we are. Thank you for your help today.”

“It was fun. And, really nice of Mr. Morgan’s nephew to hang those big posters for us. He didn’t even need a ladder. He’s really tall.”

Tall, handsome, and built. Her heart still raced with the memory of Drew Morgan stretching up to tack the posters in place. The way his dress pants clung to his...

Chloe drew a breath and blew it out in an effort to calm herself.

Shame he’s only here for a few months.

A shame, yes. Yet, it was for the best. The last thing she needed was a distraction. Even one as drop-dead sexy as Andrew Morgan.

Building her career, and a life for herself and Jessi, were her first objectives. Her only objectives, at the moment. Moving her business from Fresno, where firms like hers were a dime a dozen, to the smaller rural area surrounding Plentiful was a risk, but one she was willing to take if it meant a stable home for her daughter. And a chance to escape the errors of her past.

“Can we stop for milkshakes at the diner?”

Jessi’s hopeful smile tugged on her maternal heartstrings. “We’ll see, sweetie.”

They were on the road home within a few minutes and Chloe had every intention of granting Jessi’s request. That was until she noticed Sam and Drew Morgan going up the stairs and into the diner. The last thing she wanted was for the two men to think she was following them.

“It looks pretty crowded in there,” she commented off-handedly. “How about instead of milkshakes, I make us some floats? We have vanilla bean ice cream, and I’m pretty sure there’s orange soda.”

“Burgers and floats. Hmm...” Jessi said with a wide grin. “And chocolate chip cookies for dessert?”

“Don’t press your luck,” Chloe teased. “We’ll make a fruit salad for dessert.”

“Fine,” Jessi responded with a sigh. “As long as there’s cheese on the burgers.”

Chloe’s laugh echoed through the car. “Always. A burger’s not a burger without cheese.”

About the Author:

Nancy Fraser is a best-selling and award-winning author who happily jumps across multiple romance genres with gleeful abandon.

She's also the granddaughter of a Methodist minister known for his fire-and-brimstone approach to his faith. Nancy has brought some of his spirit into her Christian romances. And, her own off-beat sense of humor to her clean & wholesome books.

When not writing (which is almost never), Nancy dotes on her five wonderful grandchildren and looks forward to traveling and reading when time permits. Nancy lives in Atlantic Canada where she enjoys the relaxed pace and colorful people.

Also available:

Treats From the Orchard: A Companion Cookbook to The Orchard Brides Series

Just 99 cents or Kindle Unlimited. All proceeds to benefit the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Click on the book to buy.

BUY LINKS FOR AVOCADO TOAST:

Amazon

BookBub

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Monday, April 4, 2022

The Fall of Jake Hennessey by P.J. MacLayne - Book Blast and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. P.J. MacLayne will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Jake Hennessey deals in selling fine jewelry of an illegal nature. The thrill of getting away with it is his addiction. When he hears a rumor about a rare old book in the personal collection of a small-town librarian, he gets the urge to try a new game.

After all, even jewel thieves get bored.

But the librarian, Harmony Duprie, isn't what he expected and the challenge becomes serious business.

In order to win, Jake's going to have to play by a new set of rules—and make them up as he goes along—because this time, he's playing for the rest of his life.

Read an Excerpt

Getting in had been easy. The owners had an overly-friendly dog and they'd left the doggy-door in the back entrance unfastened. Their weekly housekeeper, a heavy-set older woman who he'd spent several hours plying with alcohol and attention, had given him the basic details of the layout. He'd lured the cocker spaniel outside with bacon-flavored treats, then picked the lock on the back door.

The housekeeper hadn't mentioned the motion-detection system in the living room. It hadn't triggered when he went upstairs to the second floor but sounded as he came back down with the topaz and gold jewelry in a small bag tucked inside his shirt. He must have brushed through a stray beam.

Jake had covered his tracks by locking the back door on the way out. An expert could spot the scratch marks left behind by his tools, but first, they needed to look for them.

He made it outside before the cops arrived, and almost to the neighbor's yard. Now, covered by the darkness of night, he crouched behind a bush, hoping the spaniel didn't want his attention. Luckily, the pooch was busy trying to get the cop to play fetch with a rubber squeaky toy.

The cop's radio squawked. He held a quick conversation, then was joined by a second officer. With the dog at their heels, they rattled the knob on the back door. It held firm. But the dog dashed inside through the doggy door and emerged with a different toy in its jaws.

About the Author:

: Born and raised among the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, P.J. MacLayne still finds inspiration for her books in that landscape. She is a computer geek by day and a writer by night who currently lives in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. When she's not in front of a computer screen, she might be found exploring the back roads of the nearby national forests and parks. In addition to the Harmony Duprie Mysteries, she is also the author of the Free Wolves adventures.

P.J. MacLayne can be reached on:

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Monday, March 28, 2022

Find Your Way Back by Javacia Harris Bowser - Book Blast and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The Literary Lobbyist will be awarding one $25 and one $50 Amazon or B/N GC to randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Award-winning freelance journalist Javacia Harris Bowser is convinced that writing is a superpower. She sees her life as proof of it since writing has helped her navigate marriage, crisis of faith and body image issues. It also helped her to beat cancer.

As a Black woman from the South, Javacia has used the written word to explore issues of gender and race as well as religion. Find Your Way Back is a collection of essays that demonstrate how Javacia has used writing to achieve some of her wildest dreams such as being a public speaker, having her own column, and being her own boss. The book also explores how writing, self-love, and faith helped her overcome her worst nightmare: a cancer diagnosis in 2020. Javacia’s goal is to show readers how writing can transform their lives as well. The book includes prompts throughout to help readers start their own writing journey.

This book is for the woman who has wanted to write since she was a girl but struggles to find the time or the courage to put her words on paper. Find Your Way Back, shows that instead of putting writing on the back burner when life gets turned upside down, we should turn to it to help life make sense again.

Read an Excerpt

- from I’m Feeling Lucky – and Enraged

When it comes to health care, I’ve always been lucky. My lupus diagnosis in 2008 didn’t come after spending years visiting doctor after doctor, searching for answers to questions of chronic pain. I mentioned my fatigue, achy joints, vitiligo spots, and bouts of Raynaud’s disease to my primary care physician at the time as casually as someone rattling off a grocery list. She looked at me and said, “We need to test you for lupus.”

Years later, in a new state with a new doctor, I once again had a proactive primary care doc who urged me to get a mammogram, even though I was in my thirties. Breast cancer is often diagnosed in its later stages for women under forty, which means the survival rate is lower and the recurrence rate is higher. And while Black women and white women get breast cancer at about the same rate, Black women are more likely to be diagnosed before age 45 and, regardless of age, Black women die from breast cancer at a higher rate than white women.

Even when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age thirty-eight, I still felt lucky. I felt lucky that I had insurance that covered my treatment. I felt lucky that whenever I said I was in pain, my doctors and nurses believed me and scrambled to do something about it.

I felt lucky because in 2020, thirty million people were uninsured, and about half of those were people of color, according to The Brookings Institution, a research and public policy organization in Washington, DC. I felt lucky because both anecdotal evidence and published studies reveal that many medical professionals don’t take Black people’s pain seriously. According to a 2016 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, half the medical students surveyed had false beliefs such as “black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s.” And trainees who believed that Black people are not as sensitive to pain as white people were less likely to treat Black people’s pain appropriately.

The staggering Black maternal mortality rates show that this type of implicit bias can be deadly. According to the CDC, each year about seven hundred people in the United States die during pregnancy or the year after. Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. I feel lucky, and I feel angry because I shouldn’t feel lucky! Affordable health care and being listened to and taken seriously by your doctors should be the norm for everyone.

I will use my privilege and my platform to try to do something about this. I’ve written stories about the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, which seeks to use legislation to address every aspect of the maternal health crisis in America. And I’ve written about the CDC’s Hear Her campaign, which seeks to improve communication between patients and their doctors and help to make healthcare providers, patients, and their families more aware of the warning signs of potentially life-threatening complications. I’ve had the chance to be a voice for other breast cancer patients of color in sessions with healthcare providers thanks to the work of organizations like the Tigerlily Foundation, which provides breast cancer education, awareness, advocacy and support for women ages 15 to 45, with a focus on women of color.

Even though I’m a writer, sometimes words aren’t enough. So, I will keep writing, but I also will keep fighting.

About the Author

Javacia Harris Bowser is an award-winning essayist and journalist and the founder of See Jane Write. A proud graduate of the journalism programs at the University of Alabama and the University of California at Berkeley, Javacia has written for USA Today, HerMoney.com, and Good Grit magazine. Named one of Birmingham’s Top 40 Under 40, she believes we can all write our way to the life of our dreams.

Buy links:

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