Spotlight: Tasting the Apple by Sherilyn Decter


When you hear the word Prohibition, images of Flappers, gangsters and jazz. But there was also a lot of mystery in the Roaring 20s. Today we get a chance to see how the ghost of a policeman helps a widow deal with criminal elements.

Author Sherilyn Decter is visiting today to share her latest release, TASTING THE APPLE, the second installment in her Bootleggers’ Chronicles. She also has an exciting giveaway she’s hosting for the tour. Be sure to check it out at the end of the post.

A young widow on the edge. A policeman back from the dead. Together, can they take down the city’s most notorious bootlegger?

          Philadelphia, 1925. With a son to raise and boarders to feed, Maggie Barnes is at her wit’s end. But when a criminal element infiltrates the police force, the single mother puts her cares aside to help. As she tries to dig up dirt on bootlegger mastermind Mickey Duffey, Maggie realizes she can’t take on the case alone…
          Inspector Frank Geyer used to patrol the streets of Philadelphia before Maggie was born. As he attempts to clean up crime from beyond the grave, the spirit uses his Victorian sensibilities to fight back against lawbreakers. But with corruption throughout the police force, can the phantom informant save his city and Maggie’s livelihood?
          With the roof leaking and the lawlessness spiraling, Maggie and Frank have one chance to take down a criminal and prevent the unthinkable…

Check out TASTING THE APPLE on Amazon.

Those readers that aren’t familiar with the author, here’s some background information on her.

The Roaring Twenties and Prohibition were a fantasy land, coming right after the horrors and social upheaval of World War I. Even a century later, it all seems so exotic.

Women got the vote, started working outside the home, and (horrors!) smoked and drank in public places. They even went on unchaperoned dates (gasp)! Corsets were thrown into the back of the closets, and shoes were discovered to be an addictive fashion accessory after hemlines started to rise. And thanks to Prohibition, suddenly it was fashionable to break the law. The music was made in America- ragtime, delta blues, and of course jazz. Cocktails were created to hide the taste of the bathtub gin. Flappers were dancing, beads and fringes flying. Fedoras were tipped. And everyone was riding around in automobiles (aka struggle buggies and I leave it to your imagination why- wink.)

Bootleggers’ Chronicles grew out of that fascination. Writing as Sherilyn Decter, I will eventually have a series of historical crime fiction novels dealing with the bootleggers, gangsters, flappers, and general lawlessness that defined Prohibition. The Bootlegger blog rose out of all the research that I’ve been doing about this incredible era.

Growing up on the prairies and living next to the ocean, I am a creature of endless horizons. Writing allows me to discover what’s just over the next one. My husband and I have three amazing daughters, a spoiled grandson, and two bad dogs.

Sherilyn Decter is enthralled with the flashing flappers and dangerous bootleggers from the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition. Through meticulous research, that lawless era is brought to life. Living in a century-old house, maybe the creaking pipes whisper stories in her ear.

To get the inside skinny on the Bootlegger’s Chronicles, you can reach Sherilyn at the following links:

WEBSITE          FACEBOOK      PINTEREST

GIVEAWAY
Author Sherilyn Decter is giving away an autographed paperback copy of TASTING THE APPLE and INNOCENCE LOST. Click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instruction to enter. If you can’t see the widget, just click HERE.

Thanks for stopping by today. Be sure to comment on the post and enter to win your copy of this intriguing tale. What do you think of when you hear the word Prohibition?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cover Reveal: In Other Words by Jennifer Woodhull

In Other Words
Jennifer Woodhull
Publication date: April 30th 2019
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance

Dexter
We became close friends in college. When Sinclair returns home to Dallas after two years in New York, I introduce her to my best friend Cole. The good-looking playboy ballplayer is the perfect kind of guy for the woman I’m sure would never be interested in me…even if seeing them together breaks my heart.

Sinclair.
He was the nerdy PhD candidate. I was the cheerleader. We made unlikely friends. Moving back home after two years away, he looks hotter than ever. When I start dating his ballplayer best friend, things get complicated. He doesn’t see me as girlfriend material…but I can’t get him, or my feelings for him, out of my head.

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Author Bio:

Jennifer Woodhull is based in the Southern United States, spending time in her second home of England, and traveling as often as she can. Her love of travel permeates her work, and her characters often find themselves exploring new and foreign surroundings.

A keen observer of human behavior, Jennifer often draws inspiration from something as simple as a fleeting connection, or the glimpse of a unique trait or characteristic. Her favorite place to write is on airplanes.

"The drone of the engine, the scores of people, all traveling to something or from something, and being disconnected from digital distractions are a combination that provide the perfect place to write," she says. "If you see a woman in seat 9F who is balancing her Macbook on her lap because it's time to close your tray table, please have patience. I'm just trying to finish one more sentence."

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Spotlight: Dark Tribute: An Eve Duncan Novel by Iris Johansen

New York Times bestseller Iris Johansen is back with another high octane thriller that will leave your mind racing and your heart pounding.

Despite her tragic childhood, violin prodigy Cara Delaney has finally found peace in her career as a professional musician and stability in her relationship with her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn. If only Jock Gavin, Cara's lifelong friend and a man with his own twisted history, would come back into her life, everything would be perfect.

But the carefully constructed world Cara has built for herself is suddenly threatened when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man trying to settle a score against her family, setting off a violent chain of events that puts everyone Cara loves in danger. Now, Cara will have to use every instinct she has to stay one step ahead, or else she’ll pay the deadly tribute of her family’s dark past.

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About the Author

Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the NightBlood GameEve, and Eight Days to Live, among others. She began writing after her children left home for college, and first achieved success in the early 1980s writing category romances. In 1991, she began writing suspense historical romance novels, and in 1996 she turned to crime fiction, with which she has had great success. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

Spotlight: In the Blink of an Eye by Jesse Blackadder

In the Blink of an Eye is award-winning author Jesse Blackadder’s deeply emotional drama that explores a family’s path to forgiveness and redemption in the aftermath of a tragedy.

The Brennans—parents, Finn and Bridget, and their sons, Jarrah and Toby—have made a sea change, from chilly Hobart, Tasmania, to subtropical Murwillumbah, New South Wales. Feeling like foreigners in this land of sun and surf, they're still adjusting to work, school, and life in a sprawling purple clapboard house, when one morning, tragedy strikes.

In the devastating aftermath, the questions fly. What really happened? And who's to blame? Determined to protect his family, Finn finds himself under the police and media spotlight. Guilty and enraged, Bridget spends nights hunting answers in the last place imaginable. Jarrah—his innocence lost—faces a sudden and frightening adulthood where nothing is certain.

In the Blink of an Eye is a haunting, redemptive story about forgiveness and hope.

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About the Author

Jesse Blackadder is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, freelance journalist and a budding screenwriter. Her novel The Raven's Heart won the Benjamin Franklin award for historical fiction, and she was awarded an Antarctic Arts Fellowship for her novel Chasing the Light.

Spotlight: When All Is Said by Anne Griffin

"I'm here to remember–all that I have been and all that I will never be again."

If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be? If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say? And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said?

At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He’s alone, as usual ­- though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story.

Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him. Through these stories - of unspoken joy and regret, a secret tragedy kept hidden, a fierce love that never found its voice - the life of one man will be powerful and poignantly laid bare.

Beautifully heart-warming and powerfully felt, the voice of Maurice Hannigan will stay with you long after all is said and done.

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About the Author

ANNE GRIFFIN is the winner of the John McGahern Award for Literature. Shortlisted for the Hennessey New Irish Writing Award and The Sunday Business Post Short Story Competition, Anne’s work has been featured in, amongst others,The Irish Times and The Stinging Fly, and she had an eight year career at Waterstones. Anne lives in Ireland with her husband and son. When All Is Said is her debut novel.

Spotlight: The Liar's Child by Carla Buckley

In this intense and intimate family portrait that moves at a thriller’s pace, a troubled woman faces a gripping moral dilemma after rescuing two abandoned children from a hurricane.
 
On the outskirts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks sits the Paradise, an apartment complex where renters never stay long enough to call the place “home”—and neighbors are seldom neighborly. It’s ideal for Sara Lennox, who moved there to escape a complicated past—and even her name—and rebuild a new life for herself under the radar. But Sara cannot help but notice the family next door, especially twelve-year-old Cassie and five-year-old Boon. She hears rumors and whispers of a recent tragedy slowly tearing them apart.
 
When a raging storm threatens then slams the coastal community, Sara makes a quick, bold decision: Rescue Cassie and Boon from the storm and their broken home—without telling a soul. But this seemingly noble act is not without consequences. Some lethal.
 
Carla Buckley crafts a richly rewarding psychological portrait, combining a heart-wrenching family drama with high-stakes suspense, as the lives of three characters intertwine in an unforgettable story of fury, fate—and redemption.

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About the Author

Carla Buckley is the author of The Good GoodbyeThe Deepest SecretInvisible, and The Things That Keep Us Here, which was nominated for a Thriller Award as a best first novel and the Ohioana Book Award for fiction. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Wharton School of Business, and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and three children. She is currently at work on her next novel.