Slightly South of Simple - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I expected the characters in this book to have more of a Southern "voice" (it takes place in Georgia) but they didn't. That's okay. I still enjoyed the story. My big complaint was that it ended a little too abruptly for me. However, it's the first book in a series, so maybe that's why everything wasn't as neatly tied up as I wanted.

First Paragraph:
    I still have dreams about that yellow-and-white striped bikini, the one I was wearing the night I met Jack, my first bona fide summer love. I was fifteen going on sixteen, the perfect age, when your hair tints that summer blond that hairstylists become super-stars for emulating. You have filled out enough not to be gangly but not so much that you can imagine a one-piece being in your future.

Teaser at 83% on my Kindle (I stretched the excerpt to three sentences instead of just two):
    I knew already from having children and grandchildren that time moved quickly; the days were long, but the years were short. And I knew for certain that no matter how many fights they had or how many times I had to change sheets or clean up dirty dishes or babysit all day for one grandchild after I'd been up all night with another, I would look back on these months of having my children home with me, back where they belonged, with incredible joy and wistfulness. These were the good times, even when they were hard.

Genre: Women's Fiction
No. of Pages:  479 Pages
Amazon Link: Slightly South of Simple
Copyright: 2017

Synopsis:
     Caroline Murphy swore she’d never set foot back in the small Southern town of Peachtree Bluff; she was a New York girl born and bred and the worst day of her life was when, in the wake of her father’s death, her mother selfishly forced her to move—during her senior year of high school, no less—back to that hick-infested rat trap where she'd spent her childhood summers. But now that her marriage to a New York high society heir has fallen apart in a very public, very embarrassing fashion, a pregnant Caroline decides to escape the gossipmongers with her nine-year-old daughter and head home to her mother, Ansley.
     Ansley has always put her three daughters first, especially when she found out that her late husband, despite what he had always promised, left her with next to nothing. Now the proud owner of a charming waterfront design business and finally standing on her own two feet, Ansley welcomes Caroline and her brood back with open arms. But when her second daughter Sloane, whose military husband is overseas, and youngest daughter and successful actress Emerson join the fray, Ansley begins to feel like the piece of herself she had finally found might be slipping from her grasp. Even more discomfiting, when someone from her past reappears in Ansley's life, the secret she’s harbored from her daughters their entire lives might finally be forced into the open.
     Exploring the powerful bonds between sisters and mothers and daughters, this engaging novel is filled with Southern charm, emotional drama, and plenty of heart.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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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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Redneck P.I. - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

   I'm only partway into Redneck P.I. but I'm already loving the main character. Twila Taunton is an amber-haired, curvaceous redneck from Quisby, Alabama, currently trying to earn a living in Boston. So far, someone has shot at her at a company picnic, she's been fired from her job (gee, all she did was show a co-worker her boobs!) and she has talked her way into a new job as assistant to a good-lookin' private investigator. I can't imagine what the rest of the book will bring, but I know it will be fun! 

    Redneck P.I. is the first book in the Redneck P.I. mystery series:
Book 2 Link: Kiss Assitude
Book 3 Link: Backwoods Boogie

Genre: Mystery / Humor
Book Length: 314 Pages
Amazon Link: Redneck P.I.
Author Website: Trish Jackson

Opening:
   The words of a co-worker bitch started the whole thing.
   She hadn't done a very good job of tracking my whereabouts that morning, and obviously didn't know I was in one of the restroom stalls, with my pants on the ground.

Teaser (from 31% on my Kindle):
   Having any sort of gun pointed at you makes you feel pretty helpless, but somehow if you're butt naked when it happens, you feel even more helpless, as if clothes would protect you from a bullet in some way.
   "Holy crap, Velda," I had shouted, "What the fu... What are you doing?"

Synopsis from Amazon:
   Twila Taunton hates living in Yankee territory and has vowed never to allow a man into her life again. Everything is turned upside down when she invites hunky P.I. Harland O'Connor to the company picnic and she looks into his bedroomy eyes. Even worse, his equally as hunky twin brother makes her overlook her cop allergy. 
   Twila finds herself ducking bullets, and when Harland is wounded, she steps in to pinch-hit for him. Her lack of city-sophistication and disregard for political correctness help her solve some tough cases. And then someone tries to blow her up. She and Harland are soon caught in a dizzy, dangerous tangle that could cost them more than their lives.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

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.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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Beach Trip - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

     With all the cold, rainy weather we've been having here in the Pacific Northwest, I've turned to beach stories as an antidote to the dark days. Beach Trip by Cathy Holton did that job well. The story of four friends reuniting at a North Carolina beach house captivated me from the opening all the way to the satisfying ending. The story switches between the women's college days (1982) and their reunion (2005), and covers the years in between. The author's sense of humor kept me smiling.
     I'm picky about formatting and the craft of writing, and while I didn't see any grievous errors, I felt like the editors at big-time Ballantine could have done a better job for this author. But having said that, the things I noticed didn't prevent me from enjoying this engaging story.

First Paragraph:

Spring of 1982
Bedford University
Mount Clemmons, North Carolina

     Lola was engaged to Briggs Furman, so her roommates were stunned the evening she came home and told them she was in love with a boy named Lonnie. They sat around in various poses of disbelief and concern, watching Lola and Lonnie, who stood, arms entwined, in the middle of the living room. Lola had leaves in her hair. This was six weeks before they were all set to graduate from college and go their separate ways into the wide world, and no one had suspected Lola of a secret love affair. Least of all Briggs.

Teaser (from 36% on my Kindle):
Once he realized Annie was on the Pill and there'd be no repercussions, no squalling babies or homicidal parents to contend with, Mitchell took to sex like flies to roadkill. His words. There was nothing of the romantic poet about Mitchell Stiles.

Genre: Women's Contemporary Fiction
Book Length: 433 Pages
Amazon Link: Beach Trip

Synopsis:
     Mel, Sara, Annie, and Lola have traveled diverse paths since their years together at a small Southern liberal arts college during the early 1980s. Mel, a mystery writer living in New York, is grappling with the aftermath of two failed marriages and a stalled writing career. Sara, an Atlanta attorney, struggles with her own slowly unraveling marriage. Annie, a successful Nashville businesswoman married to her childhood sweetheart, can’t seem to leave behind the regrets of her youth. And sweet-tempered Lola whiles away her hours—and her husband’s money—on little pills that keep her happy.
     Now the friends, all in their forties, converge on Lola’s lavish North Carolina beach house in an attempt to relive the carefree days of their college years. But as the week wears on and each woman’s hidden story is gradually revealed, these four friends learn that they must inevitably confront their shared past, and a secret that threatens to change their bond, and their lives, forever.

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!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

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.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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Previously Loved Treasures - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

     Bette Lee Crosby's characters are so real! In Previously Loved Treasures, a widow struggles to survive after her husband's death, renting out rooms in her home. Her goal? To earn enough money to hire a private investigator to find her estranged son. But then she discovers she has a grown granddaughter too.
     If you enjoy stories with a Southern flair, quirky characters, and a tiny touch of paranormal, you'll like Previously Loved Treasures. This sweet, charming story shows how families can be made up of more than blood relatives... with a little bit of magic and a lot of love.

First Paragraph:
Ida Jean Sweetwater
1989
I fell in love with Big Jim when I was seventeen and never stopped loving him. He was the kind of man you can't stop loving. He was like his name says: big. As a baby he was born big, and as a boy he grew into a man with a fullness twice the size of life itself. When Jim laughed you'd swear it was a roll of thunder coming down from heaven, and once he'd made love to you, you knew there'd never be anybody else.

Teaser (from 5% on my Kindle):
I miss Big Jim more than I ever thought humanly possible. If I take a cup from the cupboard, I think about how he liked his coffee. If I put clothes in the washing machine, I start wishing I had one more pair of dirty overalls to wash.

Genre: Women's Fiction/Historical/Mystery
Length: 245 pages
Amazon Link: Previously Loved Treasures
Other Books by This Author: Bette Lee Crosby's Website

Synopsis from Goodreads:
     In Previously Loved Treasures recently widowed Ida Sweetwater and her granddaughter come together in a heartwarming mystery rich with imagination and magic. 
     Struggling to make ends meet, Ida turns her home into a boarding house and goes in search of used furniture. This quest leads to the Previously Loved Treasures shop and Peter Pennington, a delightfully strange proprietor who anticipates people’s needs. In addition to bargains, Peter hands out sage advice. When a pocket watch belonging to one of the residents goes missing for a second time he warns of danger—but will Ida’s granddaughter listen and will she heed his advice?
     This is a story that resonates with Crosby’s heartwarming albeit quirky characters and the joy of a pay-it-forward philosophy.

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!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

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.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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The Land of Mango Sunsets - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

     Charming, funny, delightful. Those are the best words I can find to describe The Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank. I enjoy stories where the main character changes and grows, and that's what happens to Miriam in this book. But now that I think about it, she actually goes back to being her authentic self, which is even better.  
     I enjoyed Frank's descriptions of Sullivans Island, South Carolina, and her Southern voice. The description in the prologue is luscious! I'll read more books by this author. (Many thanks to my friend Nan for offering her collection to me.)

Beginning (Prologue):
     We called it the Land of Mango Sunsets. None of the old islanders knew what we meant by that, as they had only ever heard of mangoes. Bottled chutney perhaps, but that was about the sum total of their experience with a food that was so foreign. But I knew all about the romance of them from my earliest memories of anything at all. My parents had honeymooned in the South Pacific, which in those days was considered a little reckless, certainly titillating, and above all, highly exotic. Every morning they left their beds, still half dreaming, to find a tray outside the door of their bungalow. They would bring it behind the curtains of the mosquito netting and into their bed. Still in their nightclothes, my mother's hair cascading in tendrils and my father's young beard stubble scratching her young complexion, they would burn away the sour paste of morning breath with a plate of sliced mangoes, dripping with fleshy sweetness, a pot of strong tea, and a rack of toast. From then on, mangoes were equated with love, tenderness, and hopeful beginnings, and we spent our lives looking everywhere for other examples of them.

Teaser (from Page 266) - How does Miriam know her mother's death is near? She explains it this way:
     No, this was something particular in her eyes, not a light that was fading but as though her eyes were trying to memorize me, freeze-frame the moment, and tuck it away in the pocket of the gown she intended to wear into eternity. She would show my ancestors these pictures of her time spent in my family's life just like photographs of events of which she was especially proud or those that had given her something sublime that she had stolen away with her passing to share.

Amazon link: The Land of Mango Sunsets
Pages: 334 (trade paperback)
Genre: Women's Fiction
Author Website: Dorothea Benton Frank

Synopsis:
      Dorothea Benton Frank writes highly addictive tales of life's conundrums with hilarity and heat. Meet Miriam Elizabeth Swanson, in a full-blown snit, buoyed by a fabulous cast that runs the gamut from insufferable to wonderful. First is the arrival of Liz Harper, Miriam's tenant from Birmingham, who sets a new cycle in motion. Her other tenant, Kevin, stalwart companion with more style than Cary Grant, shakes Miriam out of her fog to see which battles are worth the fight. Then there's Miriam's estranged son, who announces he's marrying a Jamaican woman. And what about her ex-husband, Charles, and that sordid lingerie model of his? Finally, you'll laugh and cry when Miriam meets a man named Harrison who changes her into a gal named Mellie.
      Miriam spins out from the revolving door of her postured life as a Manhattan quasi-socialite while she thirsts, no, starves for recognition. It takes a few spins, dips, and one spectacular fall until Miriam gets her head on straight. Then in a whoosh she's off to the enchanted and mysterious land of Sullivans Island, deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.
      Told straight from the heart in Frank's vivid, highly entertaining style,The Land of Mango Sunsets just might be her finest work to date. If you decide to read this book, don't make plans to do anything else for a while.

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!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

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.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

Every once in a while I'll open this collection of short stories and read a treasure from Eudora Welty. I hope you enjoy today's excerpts.

Book Beginning (from "Lily Daw and The Three Ladies"):
     Mrs. Watts and Mrs. Carson were both in the post office in Victory when the letter came from the Ellisville Institute for the Feeble-Minded of Mississippi. Aimee Slocum, with her hand still full of mail, ran out in front and handed it straight to Mrs. Watts, and they all three read it together. Mrs. Watts held it taut between her pink hands, and Mrs. Carson underscored each line slowly with her thimbled finger. Everybody else in the post office wondered what was up now.

Friday 56 (from "Why I Live at The P.O."):
     So then Uncle Rondo says, "I'll thank you from now on to stop reading all the orders I get on postcards and telling everybody in China Grove what you think is the matter with them," but I says, "I draw my own conclusions and will continue in the future to draw them." I says, "If people want to write their inmost secrets on penny postcards, there's nothing in the wide world you can do about it, Uncle Rondo."

Genre: Literature / Short Stories
Length: 622 Pages
Amazon Link: Eudora Welty Short Stories
Note: This collection was published in hardback by Barnes & Noble in 2001 

About the Author (from Wikipedia):
Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards including the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.

                 

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
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Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

 

     Miss Julia is a straight-laced Southern lady (in her 60s?) with a strong sense of what's proper and what isn't, a pillar of her small town's First Presbyterian Church, and a recent widow. But it isn't long before her late husband's mistress and illegitimate son show up on her front porch. Told with humor and a Southern voice, this book is the story of how Miss Julia copes with this situation, as well as deals with a hypocritical minister, crooked televangelist, kidnapping, and other surprises that surface.   
     Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind is the first book in a series of fifteen. I've read six or seven of them and although each book stands alone, they're more enjoyable if read in sequence.


Book Beginning:
I'd just caught my breath after the shock of my husband's sudden passing when his last legacy showed up on my front porch. We'd buried Wesley Lloyd Springer some few months before that hot, still morning in August, and I hoped I was through signing forms and meeting with lawyers and shuffling through various and sundry legal papers. I declare, this business of dying has more legal aspects to it than you would think. The deceased never knows what you have to go through to get his affairs in order, and Wesley Lloyd's were in as much order as they could get. I thought.

The Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
[Miss Julia is describing Pastor Ledbetter's secretary.]
She liked to make out like she was so professional, but she was the biggest gossip I knew. That's why she liked her job, since every Presbyterian in trouble sooner or later ended up talking to the preacher. I'd warned Pastor Ledbetter about her talkative tendencies, but he'd just patted my shoulder and told me he'd take care of it. Ever since then she'd flounced herself around anytime I was in her office, not that anybody with all that weight ought to do any flouncing.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Humor
Length: 273 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Amazon Link: Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind
Author's Website: Ann B. Ross

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
      Miss Julia, a recently bereaved and newly wealthy widow, is only slightly bemused when one Hazel Marie Puckett appears at her door with a youngster in tow and unceremoniously announces that the child is the bastard son of Miss Julia's late husband. Suddenly, this longtime church member and pillar of her small Southern community finds herself in the center of an unseemly scandal - and the guardian of a wan nine-year-old whose mere presence turns her life upside down.
      With razor-sharp wit and perfect "Steel Magnolia" poise, Miss Julia speaks her mind indeed - about a robbery, a kidnapping, and the other disgraceful events precipitated by her husband's death. Fast-paced and charming, with a sure sense of comic drama, a cast of crazy characters, and a strong Southern cadence, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind will delight readers from first page to last.

                                                        *********

                           

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reader)
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Beach House Memories - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

I'm halfway through Beach House Memories, and I'm enjoying it. The story takes place in 1974 on Isle of Palms in the Low Country of South Carolina. I'm completely immersed in the story of Lovie (married with two children) and the expectations placed on upper-class Southern women who grew up in the 1950s. And I'm also learning a lot about sea turtles! 

This book is the sequel to The Beach House (which is now on my to-read list). The book's beginning reads like a prologue.

Book Beginning:
Lovie Rutledge believed memories were like the tides. Sometimes they rushed in with a pounding roar to topple you over. At other times they gently washed over you, lulling you to complacency and then tugging you back to halcyon days that, with the passing of years, seemed ever sweeter.

Friday 56 (from Page 56 in my trade paperback):
Glancing at her watch, she realized it was not even ten o'clock and the children were asleep. Lowcountry summer days wore them plumb out. In one day's time their skin was as red as a lobster's from overcooking in the sun, and their lackluster expressions were replaced with the bright-eyed enthusiasm she always imagined Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn wore.

Genre: Literary Fiction / Women's Fiction / Environment
Length: 385 Pages
Amazon Link: Beach House Memories
More From This Author: Mary Alice Monroe's Website

Synopsis from Amazon:
      Autumn brings haunting beauty to the sun-soaked dunes on Isle of Palms, where Olivia “Lovie” Rutledge lives in her beloved Primrose Cottage. As the seasons change, Lovie remembers one special summer… 
      In 1974, America is changing, but Charleston remains eternally the same. When Lovie married aristocratic, well-connected businessman Stratton Rutledge, she turned over her fortune and fate to his control. But she refused to relinquish one thing: her family’s old seaside cottage. Precious summers with her children on the barrier island are Lovie’s refuge from social expectations and her overbearing husband’s philandering. Here, she is the “Turtle Lady,” tending the loggerhead turtles that lay their eggs in the warm night sand and then slip back into the sea. 
      Then, in the summer of ’74, biologist Russell Bennett visits to research the loggerheads. Their shared interest brings them together, and soon it blooms into a passionate, profound love—forcing Lovie to face an agonizing decision. Stratton’s influence is far-reaching, and if she dares to dream beyond a summer affair, she risks losing her reputation, her wealth, even her children. 
      This emotional tale of a strong woman torn between duty and desire, between tradition and change, is an empowering journey through the seasons of self-discovery. Until this autumn, this time of winds and tides, of holding on and letting go…

Join RoseCityReader.com every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Visit FredasVoice.com
Grab a book and turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader
Find any sentence (or a few, just no spoilers) and grab them.
Post them and add your URL to the Linky.

 

Raine Delight aims her Summer Sunday Spotlight

on BLUEBONNETS FOR ELLY today.

Stop by and say "hi."

Here's the link:

SPOTLIGHT ON BLUEBONNETS FOR ELLY

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Weekend Writing Warriors #2 - Derek

Another excerpt from BLUEBONNETS FOR ELLY. In this scene Elly is manning Granny's table at the Sunset Acres Retirement Village rummage sale. She's in for a nice surprise. 

     “Hi.” A deep voice shook Elly out of her musings. “You must be Mrs. Macauley’s granddaughter.”

Elly looked up from her chair—and up some more—to see a tall, brown-haired man approaching the table. His shoulders filled out a faded chambray shirt in a way that promised firm muscles underneath. He had his hand extended, and his even white teeth flashed a friendly smile.

The memory of his sweet-as-molasses voice and buff body made Elly stare.

Derek.

***

Writers hanging out with writers -- a good time with a great group of people. Check out excerpts from other Weekend Writing Warriors HERE. 

Spare Change - Teaser Tuesday

Today's Teaser is from Spare Change, Book #1 in The Wyattsville Series by Bette Lee Crosby. It's the story of Olivia, an independent woman who married later in life and never wanted children. Then 11-year-old Ethan Allan shows up at her door, looking for his grandfather (Olivia's late husband). Ethan witnessed his parents' murder, and the murderer is on his trail, but can Olivia help him?

Both Olivia and Ethan are unforgettable characters, and I came to care about them both. I purchased all three books in a boxed set, and I can't wait to delve into the other two "Heartwarming Southern Stories."

My Teaser is from approximately 56% on my Kindle:
By morning Olivia had come to a somewhat shaky decision. She would watch over the boy. Not forever but until she could find a place where he truly belonged. 

Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Suspense
Length: 280 Pages
Amazon Link: The Wyattsville Series

Synopsis from Goodreads:
      USA Today Best Selling Novel, Reviewer's Choice 2012 Award Winner! In a story that's been compared to John Grisham's The Client, eleven year-old Ethan Allen Doyle has witnessed a brutal murder and now the boy is running for his life. In the time-tested tradition of Southern Fiction, Crosby unveils the darkest side of human nature and then rewards her readers with a beautiful tale of love, loss and unexpected gifts.
     Olivia Westerly is the only person Ethan Allen can trust, and he's not too sure he can trust her. She's got no love of children and a truckload of superstitions--one of them is the belief that eleven is the unluckiest number on earth. Olivia avoided marriage for almost forty years. But when Charlie Doyle happened along, he was simply too wonderful to resist. Now she's a widow with an eleven-year-old boy claiming to be her grandson.
      With a foul mouth, dark secrets and heavily guarded emotions, Ethan Allen Doyle is not an easy child to like. He was counting on the grandpa he'd never met for a place to hide, but now that plan is shot to blazes because the grandpa's dead too. He's got seven dollars and twenty-six cents, his mama's will for staying alive, and Dog. But none of those things are gonna help if Scooter Cobb finds him.
      Winner of Five Literary Awards, BookBundlz Finalist, Voted Goodreads Best Unknown Fiction, FPA President's Book Award Gold Medal Finalist

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn't give too much away -- you don't want to ruin the book for others)
• Share the title and author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers
• Leave a comment on MizB's Teaser Tuesday post (HERE) and include your link so everyone can find your post.