Missing a deadline & YOUR favorite books?

I just realized that it's August 20, and that I haven't prepared a blog post. But outside, the sun is shining, and I really, really want to continue to write my next mystery, so I decided to write a quick post instead of presenting my book of the month. Besides, it's time to discuss YOUR favorite books!

For my next blog posts, what books do you think I should feature? You will know by now that I love a combination of cozy mystery and romance, but I also love anything that makes me laugh. Do you have any recommendations for me, so I can discuss them here come the next 20th?

I would also like to tell you about a free book: Next week, my first mystery Delayed Death (yep, you guessed right, a combination of cozy mystery and romance, set in Italy) will be free on iTunes. If any of you would like get a free copy now, let me know in the comment section with your e-mail address (or via Facebook, direct message!)

I'm looking forward to discovering your favorite books!
Beate

Romance & Mystery & Egypt

I think I've told you already that my favorite books combine both mystery and romance, so it's only natural that the fourth book which I'd like to present to you today is a perfect mix of both. I'm talking about Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters.

There's one other element I can't resist, and that's humor. If a book makes me chuckle, I'm a fan. With Amelia Peabody, Elizabeth Peters has created a heroine that is irresistibly funny.

Neither beautiful nor timid, Amelia does exactly as she pleases. Here's one statement that's absolutely hilarious, because she characterizes herself: "I have been accused of being somewhat abrupt in my actions and decisions, but I never act without thought; it is simply that I think more quickly and more intelligently than most people. I am an excellent judge of character." The entertaining part about this is that she acts most of the time without thinking twice, and that she's quite often taken in by the people around her who turn out to be the villains she's trying to overcome.

In Crocodile on the Sandbank, Amelia meets the love of her life, but little does she know it. In fact, her first words to him are as follows: "And you, sir, are the lordly British male at his loudest and most bad-mannered. If the English gentle woman is covering the earth, it is in the hope of counteracting some of the mischief her lord and master has perpetrated. Swaggering, loud, certain of his own superiority . . . "
As the book is set around 1890, this is quite a statement, and it'll take illnesses and several other assorted catastrophes until this explosive couple finds happiness.

Crocodile on the Sandbank is a pure delight to read, a romp in Egypt that made me immediately buy the other books in the series, but the first one remains my favorite! Do you have any favorite books set abroad?

Beate Boeker
USA Today bestselling author
http://www.happybooks.de
Mischief & Humor from Page 1

The sweetest and most encouraging romance I know

Today, I'd like to introduce you to the sweetest and most encouraging romance that I know. The author is L.M. Montgomery, who's best known for her Anne of Green Gables series. My favorite book of her, however, is called The Blue Castle.

This books starts on a dismal note: "Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man."

When Valancy learns that she's seriously ill, she decides to make a drastic change in her life, a change that will bring her the happiness she craves, and this is told in such a charming way that I have read this book so many times that I can't count it anymore. It all starts with one quote: "Despair is a free man -- hope is a slave." When Valancy realizes that, she decides to do exactly as she likes for the short time that still remains for her. I rooted for her as she finally stood up for herself and answered back to all her dreadful relations who were so unkind and thoughtless.


However, the thing I love most about Valancy is her craving for anything that's beautiful. She herself isn't, not in the eyes of society, but she wished she was - oh, how she wishes for beauty, not only for herself, but also in her surroundings. Ugliness around her makes her soul shrivel, and this is a feeling I understand so well that Valancy and I became one as she slowly unfolded her petals and became a strong and - indeed- beautiful woman.

If you feel the need for a little pick-up, the need for courage to be just as you are, then I can only recommend this book to you. Let me know if you also have feel-good books, books that you turn to when you're in need of comfort and a hug.

Beate Boeker
USA Today bestselling author
http://www.happybooks.de
Mischief & Humor from Page 1

Books that are hauntingly beautiful

I'm happy to present my second best-beloved book to you today. Mary Stewart is an author from the fifties who's not quite as well known as Georgette Heyer, but those who love mysteries and romance all rolled in one should know her. My favorite book is called Touch Not The Cat.

The first line already nailed me to the book, so I couldn't put it down until I'd reached The End. "My lover came to me on the last night in April, with a message and a warning that sent me home to him." Who could resist that line, that promise of excitement and danger and love to come?

Besides writing love stories full of suspense, Mary Stewart is a master at showing nature in such a way that you are right there, right in the book. Take this passage, for example "There were roses on the wall of the garden house, moonbursts of some white, loose-globed flower which showered half across my bedroom window. The breeze that blew the rain-clouds from time to time across the moonlight tossed the shadows of the roses over the wall and ceiling again and again, each time the same and yet each time different, as the roses moved and the petals loosened to the breeze." When I read that, I was right there in that bedroom with the heroine Bryony, looking at the shadows.

Mary Stewart then goes on to describe how her lover reaches Bryony in her thoughts, which is another amazing description: "It comes through neither in words nor in pictures, but -- I can't put it any better - in sudden blocks of intelligence that are thrust into one's mind and slotted and locked there, the way a printer locks the lines into place, and there is the page with all its meanings for you to read. With these thought-patterns the whole page comes through at once; I suppose it may be like block-reading, though I have never tried that."

I'm not a fan of fantasy, but this description had me completely hooked! Her lover then tells Bryony bad news, news that make her feel sad and lonely, but he also comforts her, and at that instant, Mary Stewart picks up the description of the roses again and entwines it with the action: "... comfort and love, as old-fashioned as pot-pourri and as sweet and same and haunting. It was as if the rose shadows on the ceiling were showering their scent down into the empty room. Then there was nothing left but the shadows. I was alone."

I call this writing hauntingly beautiful. These are words that stay with me long after I have closed the book and have returned to the real world again. Please let me know which authors have done the same for you, so I can check them out!

Beate Boeker
USA Today bestselling author
http://www.happybooks.de
Mischief & Humor from Page 1

Where romance and humor is deliciously combined

I've decided to start a new series of blog entries, sharing my most beloved books with you. It wasn't difficult to find a book for this first blog about my newly chosen topic: Frederica by Goergette Heyer wins hands down whenever I'm asked about the books I most enjoy!

Many of you will know Georgette Heyer for a writer of regency romances, and I'll readily admit that her romances are made of the usual elements that constitute a traditional romance – in general, some poor woman finds a rich man who's most suave and enigmatic. So what's special?

Goergette Heyer has a certain something that makes every book by her a pure delight to read: It's her humor, the underlying irony, and her masterful description of characters.

Take the first sentence of this book, for example. “Not more than five days after she had dispatched an urgent missive to her brother . . .” (he drives up to her house). That sentence already made me smile. It also shows in one masterly half-sentence that the sister is trying to push her brother around, and that he's having none of it. I'm intrigued and can't wait to read on.

Further down on the page, Georgette Heyer's skillful characterization continues with the hero's other sister: “Lady Jevington found herself unable to blame Alverstoke (their brother) for taking no interest in any of them (his nieces and nephews by the other sister). It was really impossible to be interested in such commonplace children. That he was equally uninterested in her own offspring did ,however, argue a selfish disposition.”

At this point, I was already hooked, chuckling to myself in delight. Heyer's sense of humor is wicked, and I often wonder how she looked at the people around her and how she must have seen through them and their antics to impress.

Frederica is a heart-warming and charming novel with amazing characters. Many people have reviewed the plot and the details over the years, so I won't go into that here. In fact, to me, it almost doesn't matter what Heyer writes about – it's the attention to detail, and the ironic notes in the sub-text that make me go back to her books time and again whenever I want something good and happy and fun to read – even if I already know most of what's happening.

I wish there were more authors like her. If you know of any that you've found just as delightful, do let me know! 

Beate Boeker
USA Today bestselling author
http://www.happybooks.de
Mischief & Humor from Page 1

Happy Springtime! by Roxanne Rustand

After a long, hard winter here in the Midwest, the arrival of spring has been eagerly anticipated.    The sense of new beginnings is upon us!
The snow and ice are finally gone, the grass is starting to turn green, the crocuses and tulips add a cheery, colorful note.  And Easter  is just a few days away.

In thinking about the glorious re-awakening in nature every spring, I found myself thinking about the elements of romance that draw me back, again and again.

I love to read about characters who must struggle through hard times, great challenges--and also overcome emotional damage from the  past that has kept them from enjoying a full and abundant life of love.

New beginnings--a re-awakening to the joy of life, when finding that one perfect person--is a story that never grows old for me.

What about you--what are the elements that you love most?

Do you have an all-time favorite novel on your keeper shelf, that you go back to re-read?

Roxanne Rustand is the author of thirty traditionally published novels with Harlequin, for the Superromance, Everlasting, Heartwarming, Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense lines, and now has two indie-published sweet romances available--Comeback Cowboy and Summer at Briar Lake.   www.roxannerustand.com

Here’s To Moody Readers…by Christine Bush

I admit it. I’m a moody reader. I guess I’m a moody writer as well. Often people ask me, “What is your favorite genre to read?” Or “Who is your favorite author?” It’s hard to answer that question. Like the weather, my mind changes all the time. And I like that.

Life is full of ups and downs. And my life (like so many women I know) is full of stages. Some are long, some are short. But all have an impact.

I love to write sweet romance stories. Much of the time, those are the words that flow from my brain and onto the page. But not always. Sometimes, in times of stress or grief (like the devastating months when someone dear to me was dying from cancer), no words of love, inspiration, or happy endings flow from me. But in a rough time, reading those delightful stories written by others gives me peace, and hope, entertainment and escape. I’m so grateful for that. But dealing with the many faces, feelings and moods of grief, I needed to write something else for a while. I wrote two books- of- my- heart middle grade fiction.


Over time, the happy ending romance stories began flowing again, and the joy returned.

Sometimes, in the midst of writing a story about love and family, I find myself scrolling through the Kindle for something new to read, and end up devouring a good mystery or suspense novel. What’s that all about? The diversity of genre seems to inspire, both in reading and writing.

Other days, when dealing with worry about an ailing grandchild, or a friend’s dilemma, I need the relief of a good laugh. There are a handful of favorite writers in several genres who have a way with words that simply make me giggle.

I’m aging. Sigh. There, I said it. While I’m generally content with the process, there are days when I am glad to grab a book that tells the story of a heroine with a few more years on her resume than the blushing young blossom in many books. When I find a writer whose stories fill that bill, I’m very glad of it on those certain days. But on the other hand, there are times when my mood is full of memories of those youthful years. In that mood I can be delighted reading the excitement and adventure of a heroine finding first time love.

That’s something that I love about books. Happy or dramatic, short or long, contemporary or historical, old or young, there is always something to fit my mood of the day, or stage of life. As a reader, as well as a writer, stories enhance my life. They inspire , entertain, and sometimes, just get me through a ‘moody’ time in my life. And I’m grateful for that!

How about you? How do your moods or stages affect what you read or write?

~*~

Christine Bush is the award winning author of many books and novellas of sweet romance and light mystery. She also writes Middle Grade Fiction. When she isn’t writing, she can be found working with clients as a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice, or teaching Psychology at a local college. She lives with her family and two crazy cats in northeastern Pennsylvania, and loves to hear from readers and aspiring writers. Her latest book is Cindy’s Prince. You can find Christine at www.ChristineBush.com and on Facebook.