Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts

Thursday, March 23, 2017

The Pecan Man - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

If you enjoyed Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, or the Miss Julia series, then you'll definitely like The Pecan Man. Told in the voice of an 82-year-old woman, the author paints a vivid portrait of life in small-town Florida and the realities of race relations in parts of the South. The story is told with warmth and humor, and the author doesn't preach. 

The Pecan Man is beautifully written and free of grammatical and other errors, which I always appreciate. I'm delighted to feature Cassie Dandridge Selleck and other indie authors on my blog.

Book Beginning:
In the summer of 1976, the year of our Bicentennial, preparations for the Fourth of July were in full force. Flags hung from the eaves of every house along this stretch of Main Street. The neighborhood women were even busier than usual. I watched them come and go from a rocking chair on my own front porch.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
The inside walls were covered with wood paneling. A large brown gas heater burned noisily at one end of the room and a picture of The Last Supper hung wearily over a deep red couch at the other end.

Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Length: 146 Pages
Amazon Link: The Pecan Man 
Author Website/Blog:  Cassie Dandridge Selleck

Read Chapter One from Selleck's latest book What Matters in Mayhew HERE. 

Synopsis from Goodreads:
The Pecan Man is a work of Southern fiction whose first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category. In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief's son is found stabbed to death near his camp, the man Ora knows as Eddie is arrested and charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. In narrating her story, Ora discovers more truth about herself than she could ever have imagined. This novel has been described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Help.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
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Twitter: @SandyNachlinger
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Thursday, November 5, 2015

Hoot - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

     Several weeks ago I featured Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen on my Teaser Tuesday / First Paragraph post (here). It is definitely a book for adults. Today my excerpts are from HOOT by the same author, but this book is written for kids aged 10 to 15. It's a great story (Hiaasen's first children's book, written in 2002) and is fun reading for both kids and adults. As with all of Hiaasen's books, there's an environmental slant along with plenty of humor. In this story, the concern is for burrowing owls being displaced by construction of a pancake house.
     The sticker on the cover says: "Newberry Honor Book."  

Here's the Book Beginning:
     Roy would not have noticed the strange boy if it weren't for Dana Matherson, because Roy ordinarily didn't look out the window of the school bus. He preferred to read comics and mystery books on the morning ride to Trace Middle.
     But on this day, a Monday (Roy would never forget), Dana Matherson grabbed Roy's head from behind and pressed his thumbs into Roy's temple, as if he were squeezing a soccer ball. The older kids were supposed to stay in the back of the bus, but Dana had snuck up behind Roy's seat and ambushed him. When Roy tried to wriggle free, Dana mushed his face against the window.

The Friday 56 (from Page 156 in my trade paperback):
     "How would you and Mom like it," Roy pressed on, "if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was 'Don't worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it's no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.' How would you feel about that?"

Genre: Children's Book -- Environment/Humor/Mystery
Length: 292 Pages
Amazon Link: Hoot
Author's Website: Carl Hiaasen

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     Unfortunately, Roy’s first acquaintance in Florida is Dana Matherson, a well-known bully. Then again, if Dana hadn’t been sinking his thumbs into Roy’s temples and mashing his face against the school-bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is intriguing: he was running away from the school bus, carried no books, and–here’s the odd part–wore no shoes. Sensing a mystery, Roy sets himself on the boy’s trail. The chase introduces him to potty-trained alligators, a fake-fart champion, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes with unnaturally sparkling tails.
     Roy has most definitely arrived in Carl Hiaasen’s Florida.



                 


Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
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Twitter: @SandyNachlinger
Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Thursday, October 15, 2015

The Beach Walkers - Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

Friendship between women, relationships between mothers and daughters, and an ocean setting. Who could ask for more? In The Beach Walkers, author Barbara Bond goes deep into her characters, showing their fears and their strengths. Because the women are older and their children are grown, I could definitely relate to them. I would love to have Frannie as a friend and would treasure a walk along the shores of Amelia Island with the Walkie-Talkies. The Beach Walkers is a five-star story I won't soon forget. 
FYI: The Healing Island, Barbara Bond's second book, is a sequel to this one.


Book Beginning:
The Life of St. Francis
Come not between the dragon and his wrath. (King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1)
     Saturday, Thanksgiving weekend: Frannie stood, her small hands arched like ghost crabs, pressing down on Elspeth's dining room table to keep the trembling at bay. She wasn't afraid; it was barely controlled anger that threatened to surface. She had to keep it in check. Should she just walk away? After all, it had only been days since she'd met Elspeth Cleary.

The Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
[In this dialogue, the conversation is about Elspeth's daughters.]
     "When did duty become a dirty word?" Frannie paused. "When they were young, and you were attempting the impossible--a single mother, building the firm--weren't there days, maybe weeks, maybe months when you did your duty to them? When they were being willful, bratty, inconsiderate, was it love or devotion that saw you through it?"

Genre: Women's Fiction (not romance)
Length: 220 pages
Amazon Link: The Beach Walkers

Synopsis:
     The Beach Walkers: a story of mothers and daughters, of kinship lost and friendship found on an island in northeast Florida.
     Can walking the beach heal the heart?
     In her grand beachfront home on Amelia Island, Elspeth Cleary is devastated when Jess, a daughter she adores, refuses her inheritance. She sends her back to New York—to the delight of two older daughters summoned to the island on family business. A wealthy, weary, lonely widow, Elspeth hoped to spend months with each of them. She couldn't ask of course; they might say no. What was she thinking in trying to bribe them?
     Frannie had warned her not to expect gratitude for sharing her wealth, or to hope that her daughters would help fill her days. Frannie Dawson is the energetic woman Elspeth met on the beach. Frannie was right. The eldest daughters take their inheritance and flee, leaving her alone, even at Christmas. When grief and a diagnosis of breast cancer bring her to the edge, she tells only Frannie, her new beach friend and a retired teacher of Shakespeare. 
     Can Frannie help this modern Queen Lear? She’s determined to try. She draws Elspeth into a group of beach walkers; an eclectic group that includes women who tell her she's not alone in her woes with adult children. The gentle women of the walking group share their stories and their unique celebrations. They support her through cancer treatment. For the first time in years, she has a sense of belonging. 
     But does mending a heart take more than a walk on a beach?


                 

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
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Twitter: @SandyNachlinger
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Monday, October 12, 2015

Skinny Dip - Teaser Tuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter

     I lived in South Florida for many years, and during that time, I discovered Carl Hiaasen through his columns in The Miami Herald. It wasn't long before I became a fan and started collecting his novels. Hiaasen's stories involve bizarre characters, crazy plots, sex, murder, and corruption and have an environmental twist. (Warning: R-rated.) 
     Kirkus Reviews says Skinny Dip is "bitingly satirical, sublimely zany, and deeply satisfying." I agree!

First Paragraph(s): 
     At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perronne went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
     I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.
     The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse, panties, wristwatch and sandals, but Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nugget her husband obviously had forgotten.
     Bobbing in its fizzy wake, Joey watched the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour. Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened, and he wasn't telling anybody. 

Teaser from Page 204 (hardback copy):
     "All you wanted," the man said, "was a hot girl on your arm, Chazzie. A girl your buddies would notice and talk about--the female equivalent of a new Rolex. You weren't getting married, you were accessorizing."

Genre: Mystery / Satire
Book Length: 355 Pages (hardback)
Amazon Link: Skinny Dip
Author's Website: Carl Hiaasen

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall.
     Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself.
     As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a hilarious, full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart.


Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!




First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

What Matters Most - Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

What happens when a husband decides he wants to move from New Jersey to Florida to claim a house he inherited? In WHAT MATTERS MOST Bette Lee Crosby tackles the effects of this change on Clay and Louise Palmer and their long-time marriage. In their transition, Louise is desperately unhappy, but she slowly learns to deal with separation from her friends and works to overcome the effects of her unhappy, unstable childhood. She also discovers that many of the beliefs on which she has based her life are not set in stone!  

As someone who had a hard time moving from the place where I grew up, I could relate to the wife's dismay in this story. I enjoyed the author's exploration of both the wife's and the husband's thoughts and feelings. This is a heartwarming and delightful story, told with gentle humor and insight. More than once, I laughed out loud.

Genre: Women's Fiction
Length: 290 Pages
Amazon Link: WHAT MATTERS MOST
Other Books by Bette Lee Crosby: Amazon Author Page

BOOK BEGINNING (In husband Clay's point of view):
Uncle Charlie died a month ago today. He was nine years older than Pop, but he lived twenty years longer. Pop was a nose-to-the-grindstone man; Uncle Charlie wasn't. I suppose that's the difference.

FRIDAY 56 (From wife Louise's point of view at 56% on my Kindle):
At the blue farmhouse she made a right onto Route 411, but somewhere after that she went wrong. Last time the trip took about twenty minutes, but today Louise drove for nearly an hour and didn't see a single sign of Worthmore. Once she'd reached the point where nothing looked the least bit familiar, she began to worry she'd gotten lost.

                                                  *********
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