#BlogTour #Review : The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola. @Anna_Mazz @TinderPress #RandonThingsTours

Blurb:  Audrey Hart is on the Isle of Skye to collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities around her. It is 1857 and the Highland Clearances have left devastation and poverty, and a community riven by fear. The crofters are suspicious and hostile to a stranger, claiming they no longer know their fireside stories.

Then Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach and the crofters reveal that it is only a matter of weeks since another girl disappeared. They believe the girls are the victims of the restless dead: spirits who take the form of birds.

Initially, Audrey is sure the girls are being abducted, but as events accumulate she begins to wonder if something else is at work. Something which may be linked to the death of her own mother, many years before.

 

 

My Review:  I wasn’t sure how to review this book. I read it in two days, mostly snippets of 10 minutes or less in lulls at work and despite the very brief periods in which I could read I was completely transported in that time, so much so that when my attention was called back to work I was momentarily confused and had to remind myself where I was.

This is not going to be a story which appeals to everyone, not everyone will want to read, or will gel with a story about fairies and other tales of folklore. I would never have really said it was my thing either but this book appealed to me and I’m glad I took a chance on it. This is such a mystical and almost ethereal story which is ground in so much truth and history. I’ve visited Skye a few times myself, so was familiar with most of the places mentioned in the book and the descriptions were spot on.

I liked Audrey as a person, trying to find herself and her own way in a world that didn’t want to accommodate her doing something different from the norm. There were some scenes that had me shaking my head at the responses she got from some people, and other scenes which had me wanting to go there and tell some of the other characters that they were talking nonsense, clearly impossible because apart from anything else I can’t time-travel (unfortunately!).  This was what made this book as good as it is, it weaves a spell around you and draws you in, like the fairies taking people away from the human world. Everything gets drawn up like a cyclone, all twisting and turning and who do you trust and what’s going to happen next and then, like the sun coming out after a storm, it starts to clear and everything starts to fall into place.

This is a new author for me but one that I will definitely read again and I will go so far as to say this is one of the few books that I am likely to re-read. I would honestly recommend this book if you’re tempted.  Be open minded and see where it takes you, stories are meant to transport us, after all.

 

 

 

About the author:

 

Anna is a writer who, due to some fault of her parents, is drawn to peculiar and dark historical subjects. Her novels have been described as literary crime fiction or historical crime. Anna’s influences include Sarah Waters, Daphne Du Maurier, Shirley Jackson and Margaret Atwood.

Her debut novel, The Unseeing, is based on the life of a real woman called Sarah Gale who was convicted of aiding a murder in London in 1837. Her second novel, The Story Keeper, follows a folklorist’s assistant as she searches out dark fairytales and stolen girls on the Isle of Skye in 1857.

She studied English at Pembroke College, Oxford, before becoming a human rights and criminal justice solicitor. She now tries to combine law with writing and child wrangling, to varying degrees of success.

Anna loves to hear from readers, so do say hello on social media or via her website.

http://annamazzola.com

Tweets by Anna_Mazz

https://www.facebook.com/AnnaMazzolaWriter/
https://www.instagram.com/annamazzolawriter/

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#BlogTour #GuestPost : The Convalescent Corpse by Nicola Slade. @nicolasladeuk @rararesources #Giveaway

Today I’m on the blog tour for The Convalescent Corpse, such an unusual title and a quirky sounding book too. I’m trying to focus more on my existing to-read pile and therefore reviewing less on blog tours at the moment, therefore for my spot on the tour I have a guest post for you, on the background to the book.  And if that wasn’t enough there’s a giveaway as well!

Blurb: 

A story of Family, Rationing and Inconvenient Corpses.

Life in 1918 has brought loss and grief and hardship to the three Fyttleton sisters. Helped only by their grandmother (a failed society belle and expert poacher) and hindered by a difficult suffragette mother, as well as an unruly chicken-stealing dog and a house full of paying-guests, they now have to deal with the worrying news that their late – and unlamented – father may not be dead after all.  And on top of that, there’s a body in the ha-ha.

‘I love it. A delightfully unusual mystery with wonderful characterisation and historical detail.’ – LESLEY COOKMAN BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LIBBY SARJEANT MYSTERY SERIES

Purchase Links

https://amzn.to/2RrkDoz     https://amzn.to/2ODJeYR

 

Guest Post:

The Background to the book

Something that surprised me as the book began to develop was the age of my characters. They were so young! In previous books I’ve had a wide range of ages, including some feisty old ladies who have proved popular, and in my contemporary Harriet Quigley Mysteries I have a sleuth in her early sixties, as is her cousin and sidekick, the Rev Sam Hathaway. Discovering that I was dealing with young women still in their late teens came as a shock.

The eldest, Alix, is nineteen. She has a morning job as companion to a crochety old lady and in the afternoon, she volunteers at the nearby convalescent hospital for wounded officers. The middle sister, Christabel – the narrator is eighteen and spends her days typing her author mother’s books, writing her own ripping yarns for boys and young men, and helping her grandmother run the house. The youngest, Adelaide, is fifteen and still at school.

I didn’t set out to dream up characters that young, they just appeared and I gradually realised they fitted the time. When you think about the casualties of the First World War the thing that shocks us most, apart from the sheer scale of the dead and wounded, is how young they were, with tombstone after tombstone in the war cemeteries recording eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, early twenties; not to mention the graves that make us all want to weep – the fifteen-and sixteen-year-olds who lied about their ages. A young man’s war meant a young woman’s war too, the girls they left behind them, and there was the reason for my girls’ youth.

I grew up reading Victorian and Edwardian novels, particularly the books that began to appear during and following WW1, school stories where girls were encouraged to think beyond marriage and children as their future, and romances and mysteries where young women branched out and seized hitherto unheard of opportunities. I didn’t want to write a school story; what I wanted to write about was how a family of women managed life in wartime, dealing with rationing, grief and other hardships, so my heroines are officially ‘out’, although in their circumstances that doesn’t mean being presented at Court or going to grand balls. Instead they ‘put their hair up’ and – in the case of my girls – they find jobs.

This book is about how my characters how they cope with those jobs when murder starts to stalk them!

 

Giveaway – Win a paperback copy of The House of Ladywell (Open Internationally)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33c69494174/?

 

 

 

About the author:

 

Nicola Slade lives in Hampshire where she writes historical and contemporary mysteries and women’s fiction. While her three children were growing up she wrote stories for children and for women’s magazines before her first novel, Scuba Dancing, was published in 2005. Among other jobs, Nicola has been an antiques dealer and a Brown Owl! She loves travelling and at one time, lived in Egypt for a year. The Convalescent Corpse is Nicola’s 9th novel. Nicola is also a member of a crime writers’ panel, The Deadly Dames https://www.facebook.com/DeadlyDames/

Social Media Links – www.nicolaslade.wordpress.com   www.nicolaslade.com

Twitter: @nicolasladeuk

https://www.facebook.com/nicolasladeuk/  https://www.pinterest.co.uk/nicola8703 (I have a board for each book)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#BlogTour #GuestPost : My Name is Anna by Lizzy Barber @byLizzyBarber @arrowpublishing

Today I’m on the blog tour for this intriguing book, which I have a copy of on my January read list. As I’ve not been able to read it yet I have a guest post from the author so read on and enjoy!

Blurb:  ANNA has been taught that virtue is the path to God. But on her eighteenth birthday she defies her Mamma’s rules and visits Florida’s biggest theme park.

She has never been allowed to go – so why, when she arrives, does everything seem so familiar? And is there a connection to the mysterious letter she receives on the same day?

ROSIE has grown up in the shadow of the missing sister she barely remembers, her family fractured by years of searching without leads.Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, the media circus resumes in full flow, and Rosie vows to uncover the truth.

But will she find the answer before it tears her family apart?

 

Guest Post:

Lizzy Barber on Acting and Writing

My writing teacher once told me that there are two kinds of writers: character writers, and plot writers. I have always felt I fell within the former camp.

Writing, for me, has always begun with a character. A whisper of their voice in my head; a glimpse of what they look like; a burgeoning sense of how they think and act. All of this slowly takes root and grows stronger, until they are fully-formed, three-dimensional creatures. When my characters are wholly realised, I feel I can place them into a plot and know how they will behave in a given situation – for me, it’s when I don’t truly know my characters that the plot jars, a scene feels weak or untruthful, and I am tempted to give up.

I think I owe a lot of this approach to my training as an actress. As a small child, I spent a lot of timing playing vivid make-believe games. This playacting was quickly channelled into the drama classes which took up most of my spare time – Saturdays spent at Sylvia Young Theatre School, summer drama camps, school productions. I was lucky to have two incredible drama teachers at school who fuelled this love through theatre studies GCSE and A-level courses, sharing their admiration for Stanislavski, Artaud and Peter Brook, and introducing me to fantastic theatre companies such as Shared Experience and Cheek by Jowl. Theatre productions were rife when I was an undergrad at Cambridge, where I performed in at least three productions a term, and I channelled my English degree towards drama, studying everything from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare to modern American playwrights.

Throughout all of this training and performing, an understanding of the character was key. You may be given the lines a character is going to speak, but it is up to you, the actor, to get under their skin and know how they would say it – and this comes from knowing everything about them, from the inner workings of their minds, to something as simple as what they would eat for breakfast. Techniques such as improvisation can take you beyond the script, whereas exercises such as monologue writing, or selecting a prop as a stimulus to react to, can help you discover your character further. I remember a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream in which I played Snug the Joiner (one of the mechanicals) as a bedraggled school child, because of decisions we made in the rehearsal room about his meekness, and the irony of him then performing as the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe.  

There are myriad ways to translate these techniques into writing. I have always valued writing prompts – a short suggestion or sentence which serves as a stimulus for you to respond to, sometimes within a set amount of time. I can highly recommend these, particularly if you’re feeling stuck or uninspired. They may seem like a diversion, but they can really help free your mind, and you never know, you might even discover a gem of a side plot or secondary character in the process. Similarly, jotting down ideas about your characters’ physicality may guide you to a better understanding of them. For example, in My Name Is Anna, Rosie’s inner angst manifests itself her a constant need to pick at the skin around her nails or bite her lips, whereas Mamma, a religious woman who believes strongly in purity, constantly washes her hands and dislikes touching other people. What do they wear? What sort of music do they listen to? Are they a dog or a cat person? These questions may seem trivial, but they can all work together to give you a complete picture of the person you’re trying to create.

 

About the author:

 

Lizzy Barber studied English at Corpus Christ College, Cambridge University. After ‘previous lives’ acting and working in film development, she is now the Head of Brand and Marketing for a restaurant group, working with her brother, a restaurateur.

Her debut novel, MY NAME IS ANNA, was the winner of the Daily Mail crime writing competition, and will be published in hardbook in January 2019 by Century, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The North American edition, retitled ANNA IN THE DARK will be published in December 2019.

She is currently hard at work on her next thriller. Lizzy lives in London with her husband, George, food writer and strategy consultant. They are expecting their first child in January 2019.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#BlogTour #Review : Changeling by Matt Wesolowski. @ConcreteKraken @OrendaBooks #Changeling #SixStories

Today I’m on the blog tour for Changeling, my first of this year and what a tour to start the year on.  I’m thrilled to be reviewing this book today and have to give huge thanks to Anne Cater and Orenda books for having me on the tour.

 

Blurb:  On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the dark Wentshire Forest Pass, when his father, Sorrel, stopped the car to investigate a mysterious knocking sound. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995.

Elusive online journalist, Scott King, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, including Sorrel and his ex-partner, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night. Journeying through the trees of the Wentshire Forest – a place synonymous with
strange sightings, and tales of hidden folk who dwell there, he talks to a company that tried and failed to build a development in the forest, and a psychic who claims to know what happened to the little boy…

 

My Review: I read the second Six Stories book last year, you can find my review of Hydra here, and thought I loved that book I have to admit I thought this one was better. Having the joy of not working New Year’s Day, unlike last year, I decided that would be the perfect time to start this book, and as it turns out, finish it too as I read it in a day.  Although this is the third book in the Six Stories collection they do not have to be read in any particular order, there is enough background at the beginning of this book for you to be able to read it without having read the other two first.

I’m not a fanciful person as a rule but this book is seriously creepy, not helped at all by my neighbour who started knocking on the wall while I was reading. As Alfie Marsden went missing when his dad stopped his car because he heard a knocking noise you can perhaps understand a little of why my neighbours odd noises were not helpful at all.  As with Hydra this book is split into six podcasts with relevant information before and after each of them. This gives us snippets of the story of Alfie Marsden’s disappearance from the perspectives of those involved and those who knew him. It also gives us an insight into the failed development in the forest and why it failed.  The story and background of Alfie and his family build through these snippets and podcasts and the mystery surrounding his disappearance seems just as unsolvable as it did thirty years earlier when it happened.

This story grabbed me from the first pages and didn’t let up. It’s not that it’s fast paced or packed full of action but it gets under your skin and you want to know who is going to be on the podcast next, what other information are we going to get, is the mystery of Alfie’s disappearance ever going to be solved. And then you reach the later pages and it just blows you away, or at least it did for me. I thought the story was heading in one direction and it did the biggest u-turn you could ever imagine and just sent me in a completely different, but entirely fitting direction and I ended the book staring at it like it just smacked me over the head because, metaphorically, that’s exactly what it did!

This is a stunning and mesmerising read from an author who is just getting better and better.

 

 

About the author:

 

Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor for young people in care. Matt started his writing career in horror, and his short horror fiction has been published in numerous UK- and US-based anthologies such as Midnight Movie Creature, Selfies from the End of the World, Cold Iron and many more. His novella, The Black Land, a horror story set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013.

 

Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing
Festival in 2015. His debut thriller, Six Stories, was an Amazon bestseller in the
USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and a WH Smith Fresh Talent pick, and TV
rights were sold to a major Hollywood studio. A prequel, Hydra, was published
in 2018 and became an international bestseller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#Blog Tour #Review : Christmas at the Little Duck Pond Cafe by Rosie Green. @Rosie_Green1988 @rararesources

I am thrilled to be on the blog tour for this book, the latest in the Little Duck Pond Cafe series. I’ve read both previous books, though only reviewed one (you can find it here , so was delighted when I heard there was a blog tour happening for another in the series. Many thanks to the author and Rachel’s Random Resources for letting me be on the blog tour. You can follow the rest of the tour from the banner at the bottom of the post.

Blurb:  Fen has always hated being the centre of attention. 

She loves her new job, working behind the scenes at the Little Duck Pond Cafe and baking the scrumptious cakes that have helped its reputation soar. But frankly, she’d rather scrub the public toilet floor with a toothbrush than have to come out and talk to the customers. She’s always been happy to stay in the background as long as she has a good supply of books to escape into. That’s her kind of romance – the fictional sort where she can read about other people taking a chance on love, but she doesn’t have to risk her own heart. But that was before Ethan Fox arrived in the village and turned her world upside down. Ethan is a leading light in the local amateur dramatics theatre company and Fen knows he’s way out of her league.  

But when the popular village Christmas pantomime hits a crisis, Fen and Ethan find themselves thrown together. Can Fen overcome her shyness and find the courage to step on stage and save the day?

Purchase Links 

Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Christmas-Little-Duck-Pond-Cafe-ebook/dp/B07DN5B1NL

Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Little-Duck-Pond-Cafe-ebook/dp/B07DN5B1NL

My Review: Ok, so I’ve already mentioned that I’ve read the previous two books, and clearly enjoyed them otherwise I wouldn’t have been involved in this tour. I signed up for this because I was almost 100% certain I would enjoy this book too and I wasn’t wrong. Although all three stories are novellas, rather than longer length novels, a lot happens during the course of each one and this latest is no exception. 

The focus is mainly on Fen, the previous two books being mainly about Ellie and Jaz, and we start with Fen being her usual shy self and not wanting to be involved in anything that involves her getting attention, all the while though she is also dealing with a massive crush on Ethan Fox, who starts the story playing Mr Darcy in a telling of Pride and Prejudice. I don’t do spoilers but this information is about 2 pages in and gives anyone who hasn’t met Ethan Fox, a clearer idea of why Fen is smitten with him. 

Although Fen and the Christmas panto is part of the story there is so much more to it than that. Ellie and Jaz have their own issues to deal with, as do various other characters. There is so much depth in these stories; I’ve seen some full-length novels with less depth than is in these and that is one of the things that made me want to read this book. Real life situations are dealt with carefully but honestly and realistically and have you barely noticing you are turning the pages because you are so keen to find out what happens next. The characters develop during each story and the village and the people in it are so real and well-written that it makes you want to visit, until you unfortunately remember that it’s not real. I have such a vivid picture of the village and the people, in my mind, that when I started reading this book I fell right back in there as if I had never been away.

When I reviewed Summer at the Little Duck Pond Cafe I thought there was only one more book to come but I was wrong. I discovered at the weekend that there is a fourth out in November and I’ve already pre-ordered it! If you weren’t sure whether to try this series or not that last sentence should tell you all you need to know as it’s not often I pre-order books these days, given how many I already have at home to read.

About the author:

Rosie Green has been scribbling stories ever since she was little. Back then they were rip-roaring adventure tales with a young heroine in perilous danger of falling off a cliff or being tied up by ‘the baddies’. Thankfully, Rosie has moved on somewhat, and now much prefers to write romantic comedies that melt your heart and make you smile, with really not much perilous danger involved at all, unless you count the heroine losing her heart in love.

​Rosie’s brand new series of novellas is centred on life in a village café. The first two stories in the series are: Spring at The Little Duck Pond Cafe and Summer at The Little Duck Pond Café.

 Twitter – https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green1988 

#BlogTour #Extract : Stealth by Hugh Fraser. @Urbanebooks @realhughfraser #lovebooksgroupstours

I am over the moon to be involved in this blog tour. I would have read this book in an instant but, embarassingly, I still have the first book in the series on my shelves waiting to be read. However, I am still able to take part in the tour and have a brief extract for you today. Many thanks to the author, Urbane books and LoveBooksGroup for having me on this tour. (I will read and review book 1, promise!)

Blurb:  When a step out of line means a fight to the death…

London 1967. A working girl is brutally murdered in a Soho club. Rina Walker takes out the killer and attracts the attention of a sinister line-up of gangland enforcers with a great deal to prove.

When a member of British Military Intelligence becomes aware of her failure to fulfil a contract issued by an inmate of Broadmoor, he forces her into the deadly arena of the Cold War, with orders to kill an enemy agent.

Rina needs to call upon all her dark skills, not simply to survive but to protect the ones she loves.

Buy Link – https://amzn.to/2Qxzn53

Extract:

The cab pulls up outside the club. I get out, give the driver a ten bob note and tell him to keep the change. Max and a bloke I don’t know are on the door. ‘Evening, Rina,’ says Max, as I approach. He says something to the other man who flicks his fag into the gutter and opens the door to the foyer for me. I go inside, smile at Jane behind the counter and walk down the stairs as the house band go into the opening bars of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. Lizzie and I decided to hire some guys who could rock a bit for the house band instead of the usual boring lounge trio doing the Sinatra and Mel Tormé songbook, like most clubs have. The singer’s a good pianist with a fine voice and if I shut my eyes I could be listening to Gary Brooker. The guitarist is a young Mexican lad with black curly hair and a beautiful face who’s taught himself every lick that Alvin Lee, Peter Green and Hendrix ever played, and the drummer and bass player are good too. I made them wear suits instead of their hippy gear so they blend in with the punters a bit. They were a bit iffy about it until I told them they were on fifty notes a week and they shot off up Carnaby Street and got suited up.

About the author:

Hugh Fraser is best known for playing Captain Hastings in Agatha Christie’s ‘Poirot’ and the Duke of Wellington in ‘Sharpe’. His films include Patriot Games, 101 Dalmatians, The Draughtsman’s Contract and Clint Eastwood’s Firefox. In the theatre he has appeared in Teeth’n’Smiles at the Royal Court and Wyndhams and in several roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also composed the theme to Rainbow!

#BlogTour #Review : Chasing Petalouthes by Effie Kammenou. @EffieKammenou @LoveBooksGroup #Lovebooksgroupstours #WaitingforAegina

Today I’m taking part in the blog tour for Chasing Petalouthes, the third book in The Gift Saga. Many thanks to the author and LoveBooksGroup for having me on the tour. 

Blurb:  The Gift Saga concludes with the next generation coming into the forefront of the story during their tumultuous years between adolescence and adulthood.

Evvie has lived through more tragedy than a young girl should ever endure, having lost both her father and a most beloved grandmother at a young age. Her rebellious ways are her only defense to mask the ever-present pain in her heart. Closing herself off emotionally, Evvie vows to never let anyone into her heart. But will her determination to keep everyone out see her lose the only person who could heal her broken soul?

Over-achieving, focused, talented, determined to succeed. Those are the traits Stella envies in her siblings and cousins. Her insecurities and lack of confidence stunts her ability to realize her own worth. When an older, handsome young man claims her as his own, Stella believes she has finally found who she has been looking for—someone to love her enough to mold her into the best version of herself. But has she fallen in love too quickly for a man she barely knows anything about?

Chasing Petalouthes (Chasing Butterflies) is the coming of age story of two flawed, young women who push their way out from the confines of the cocoons they’d built around themselves and discover how to soar.

 Can be read as a standalone. For the full emotional impact on the character’s live and histories, read Evanthia’s Gift & Waiting For Aegina.

My Review: I don’t usually read coming of age stories or family sagas but something about this book made me want to read it. It can be read as a stand alone (as I did) but I think you’ll get more from it if you’ve read the first two books. 

This is a longer read than most of the books I usually read but it works well as the story covers quite a few years of Evvie and Stella’s lives. It was like moving in with a family for a few years and being able to see the decisions some of them made, but without the ability to do anything about them. The reader gets to see Evvie and Stella make mistakes, try new things, learn from mistakes and explore the opportunities that they have in their lives. You also get to experience Greece and being part of a large Greek family where everyone looks after everyone else and celebrations are large and enthusiastic. 

I can’t go into much detail in this review as it would lead to spoilers. However I can say I was very impressed with the way certain parts of Stella’s life were handled. It was done very well and with tact and knowledge that suggested a lot of research. There was also a lot of detail and discussion about wine, wine making and grape varieties which was interesting without being too much information. 

Having always avoided saga and family type stories for fear they would be dull and boring, reading this book has made me realise that perhaps I am being unfair and need to be a bit more open minded. I’m not about to start reviewing nothing but these types of books but I will give them more consideration in the future when I come across them.  

About the author:

Effie Kammenou is a believer that it is never too late to chase your dreams, follow your heart or change your career. She is proof of that. At one time, long ago, she’d thought that, by her age, she would have had an Oscar in her hand after a successful career as an actor. Instead, she worked in the optical field for 40 years and is the proud mother of two accomplished young women.

Her debut novel, Evanthia’s Gift, is a women’s fiction multigenerational love story and family saga, influenced by her Greek heritage, and the many real life accounts that have been passed down. She continues to pick her father’s brain for stories of his family’s life in Lesvos, Greece, and their journey to America. Her interview with him was published in a nationally circulated magazine.

Evanthia’s Gift: Book One in The Gift Saga was a 2016 award finalist in the Readers Favorite Awards in the Women’s Fiction category.  Waiting for Aegina is Book Two in The Gift Saga and Chasing Petalouthes is Kammenou’s latest release, completing the series.

Effie Kammenou is a first generation Greek-American who lives on Long Island with her husband and two daughters. When she’s not writing, or posting recipes on her food blog, cheffieskitchen.wordpress.com, you can find her entertaining family and friends or traveling for ‘research.’

As an avid cook and baker, a skill she learned from watching her Athenian mother, she incorporated traditional Greek family recipes throughout the books.  

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Theater Arts from Hofstra University.