Rainy Days With Amanda

  STORK BITE by L.K. Simonds Genre: Historical Fiction / Southern Fiction  Date of Publication: November 30, 2020  Number of Pages : 359 pages Scroll down for Giveaway! “Everything has to be reconciled eventually.”  Caddo Parish, 1913. On an October morning, a Klansman confronts seventeen-year-old David Walker at a hidden oxbow lake where he has gone to hunt. David accidentally kills the man and hides the crime. His determination to protect his family from reprisal drives him far from home and into manhood.  Shreveport, 1927.  Cargie (rhymes with Margie) Barre and Mae Compton are two vastly different young women, but both are defying convention to reach for their dreams. The men in Cargie’s and Mae’s lives help and hinder them in more ways than one. After years in hiding, David Walker finally resurfaces, and we discover the past is never as far from the present as it seems.   PRAISE FOR STORK BITE: "Sim...

  HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN by Richard Cox Category: Techno Thriller / Science Fiction / Adventure Publisher: Night Shade Books Date of Publication: July 27, 2020 Number of Pages: 408 pages Scroll down for Giveaway! Both a frightening apocalyptic story set in the southern United States and a character-focused, deeply moving literary thriller. What would happen if technology all over the world suddenly stopped working? When a strange new star appears in the sky, human life instantly grinds to a halt. Across the world, anything and everything electronic stops working completely. At first, the event seems like a bizarre miracle to Seth Black--it interrupts his suicide attempt and erases gambling debt that threatened to destroy his family. But when Seth and his wife, Natalie, realize the electricity isn't coming back on, that their food supplies won't last, they begin to wonder how they and their two sons will survive. Meanwhile, screenwriter Thoma...

 Hey everyone! It's already going to be 2021 and that is pretty crazy to me. I like to write these year in reviews like I'm writing in a diary, so I'm going to stick to that format, but try to have a format, you know? Maybe not. Anyways, let's start at the beginning... The Beginning The beginning of this year started off pretty amazing. I spent New Years with my family and was able to see one of my cousins, who has been in Japan the past few years, while we watched illegal fireworks pop all around us in frenzy for the new year. Then, I was able to be in a Mardi Gras parade, that was pretty fun. I was on top of my sales at work and I was rocking it. And my husband and I did a tour of Italy in February where we spent 9 days traveling through Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice and lived out my dream of partaking in Carnival in Venice and Fashion week. ( You can read my post about Italy here ).  But I was pretty happy at the beginning of the year and felt like I was on top of...

    RIVER, SING OUT  BY JAMES WADE Categories: Contemporary / Literary Fiction Rural Fiction / Crime Fiction / Coming-of-Age Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Date of Publication: June 8, 2021 Number of Pages: 315 pages        “And through these ages untold, the river did act as the lifeblood of all those things alongside it.”   Jonah Hargrove is celebrating his thirteenth birthday by avoiding his abusive father, when a girl named River stumbles into his yard, injured and alone. The teenager has stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of meth from her murderous, drug-dealing boyfriend, but lost it somewhere in the Neches River bottoms during her escape. Jonah agrees to help her find and sell the drugs so she can flee East Texas. Chasing after them is John Curtis, a local drug kingpin and dog fighter, as well as River’s boyfriend, the dangerous Dakota Cade. Each person is keeping secrets from the others—deadly secr...

Hey Everyone! It had been a while since I wrote a Rainy Thoughts. I have recently gotten into making videos on YouTube . If you haven't checked those out yet, I did a whole NaNoWriMo series, so you can check out my videos at Rainy Books With Amanda .  Anyways, NaNoWriMo 2020. It was different. From writing in the middle of a pandemic to writing in the middle of a very intriguing election that took longer than anticipated, it was a whirlwind of stuff. I felt that this NaNoWriMo in particular was the first time I actually had time to write and go through my whole process. If I was stuck, I was able to really think about things, come up with more content, look for advice with my region group and just really focus on my writing. Time is not a luxury that I have had in the past, juggling the challenge and work and even school at one point. This year, I the unfortunate luxury to not be working and having sole focus on my writing. Blessing in disguise as they might say.  This is the ...

  THE LOVE NOTE by Joanna Davidson Politano Genre: Christian / Historical Fiction / Romance Publisher: Revell Publication Date: October 20, 2020 Number of Pages: 400 Scroll down for the giveaway! Focused on a career in medicine and not on romance, Willa Duvall is thrown slightly off course during the summer of 1859 when she discovers a never-opened love letter in a crack of her old writing desk. Compelled to find the passionate soul who penned it and the person who never received it, she takes a job as a nurse at the seaside estate of Crestwicke Manor. Everyone at Crestwicke has feelings—mostly negative ones—about the man who wrote the letter, but he seems to have disappeared. With plenty of enticing clues but few answers, Willa's search becomes even more complicated when she misplaces the letter and it passes from person to person in the house, each finding a thrilling or disheartening message in its words. Laced with mysteri...