Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2020

Mailbox Monday - Oct 19

 


Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

October is chugging along. It's hard to believe we are three weeks in. Before we know it, Halloween will be here. I'm not sure our town has made a decision about trick or treating. How is your community handling it?

This weekend was crazy busy. I staged and listed a new property, continued editing a large project, and did some baking and cooking. Check out this great looking chicken stock. I used a different recipe than the last time and it smelled divine. 


Travis and Dwight enjoy hanging out in the kitchen when I'm there.



My physical mailbox was empty with the exception of an order of some of my books. The publisher is going out of business and I wanted to make sure I had some copies to sell if I needed them.






I picked up these freebies for my Kindle.








I also downloaded a sample of this book.




That's it from the homestead. This week is going to be filled to the brim, so I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging. Hope you have a great week.

Monday, February 18, 2019

Mailbox Monday - Feb 18



Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

I will truly be glad when it is warm enough around here for me to change my photo to a spring mailbox. It's snowing again. Shouldn't be as bad as last week's storm, but I would love to wear something other than boots when I walk the dog. Theo hasn't been happy either. The snow has been crunchy and hard to walk on, so he doesn't stay out long.

Last week was hectic with work and home life. I can't say I'm seeing a lull in my workload like sometimes happens in the first quarter of the year. This will probably be one of my best first quarters since I started in real estate.

As far as my mailbox, it has been full lately.

This one arrived over the weekend. I'll be reviewing it in March.


I picked up these two Kindle freebies this past week.



Then I grabbed this group from the local library for research.


One of my friends gave me these that she accidentally bought when she already owned them. That cab be a problem with book lovers. 


That should keep me out of trouble for a while. 

What did your mailbox look like? Anything exciting you would like to share?

Friday, February 15, 2019

Heart in the Sand: A Valentine's Day Story by Cheryl C. Malandrinos



Heart in the Sand
by Cheryl C. Malandrinos

I tossed the ragged clam shell into the water and inspected my work. Satisfied, I slogged toward a bamboo mat a few yards away and plopped down. Leaning back on my hands, I tilted my head and breathed in the smell of the Atlantic.

The sun slunk to meet the horizon and cool ocean breezes caressed my cheeks. The Outer Banks of North Carolina always was our favorite spot. It didn’t matter where we stayed--Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head or Kittyhawk--this part of the Atlantic Seaboard begged for a visit at least once a year. 

It seemed fitting to return despite losing him. I fumbled through my beach bag for my journal and pen. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be here without him for the very first time.

August 15, 2010

The ocean is just as beautiful as we remembered. The undulating waves crash down into the sand and wipe away the footprints of young lovers walking hand in hand along the shore. During the day, the sun is a fiery inferno melting us. By eventide, the orange sun is dulled by the majestic purple sky with its slivers of clouds, and a slight fog comes off the water. The seagulls screech all day as if they hadn’t stuffed their bills with unsuspecting ocean creatures and crumbs of bread tossed by tourists.

Do you remember how many young families we saw last year? Was it fifty? Looks like it doubled. What a difference a year makes. Who am I kidding? Sometimes even a few months makes a difference. 

I wish I knew you were going to leave me that day. There are so many things I hoped to say before we parted. I love you would be the first. I feel lucky to be your wife might be next. Thank you for filling my life with joy and happiness. Thanks for sticking by me when times were rough. 

We raised three wonderful kids. They are a living testament to the love we share. They are adjusting to you being gone, but they worry about me too much. Did you know they actually forbade me to come this year? Who did they think they were talking to? As soon as they told me not to go, I jumped online and bought the plane ticket. Someone once told me that my head was so hard it could crack a diamond. I'm sure that wasn't you. They have called every day since I arrived to tell me how inconsiderate I am. Is it bad that I chuckle a bit inside? 

Maybe I should say it was so much fun seeing you as a Papou. The little ones loved their Yia-Yia, but they adored you. You always had a special way with kids. Remember when five-year-old Janie got sick all over the carpet in the wee hours of the morning? You changed her and rocked her until she drifted off to sleep. I wish they had more time with you. 

I could go on and on, but you know you were my world for forty years. I'll cherish our time together until we see one another again.  

When you told me you rented the big house in Nags Head with the wall of windows looking out over the ocean, I almost fainted. We never spent that much money on a rental before. It was the second best Valentine’s Day gift I ever got. Your love will always be the first. Each morning I step out the back door and our beautiful Atlantic is only fifty feet away. I wish you were here to share it with me. It isn’t the same without you, but I felt I owed it to you to come.

I never was much of an artist, and my sand castles still collapse, but I etched this heart in the sand to let you know I think of you every day. I hope you can see it as you look down from heaven. I miss you.

All my love,

Vivian

Copyright Cheryl C. Malandrinos - All Rights Reserved.


Monday, January 7, 2019

Mailbox Monday - Jan 7



Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

I swear it is impossible to be back to Monday again, but here we are. We had a great weekend in New York City. The girls love to go before Christmas, but we couldn't fit it in this year. Though it rained Saturday, the weather was warmer than usual, which made walking around more pleasant.


John's Pizzeria in Times Square


NYC Library


Grand Central Station

We ate our meals in some new places, though John's is always on our list, and visited a few spots we have never been before. 

As far as my mailbox at home, thanks to a gift card I received for Christmas, this little beauty that had been on my wish list for a long time showed up.


I also ordered a couple of Kindle books thanks to promotional credits I received over the holidays.



Then I picked up this Kindle freebie as well.


That's it for my mailbox this week. What did you find in your mailbox? Is there anything you're especially looking forward to? 

Enjoy your week. Happy reading!

Monday, October 15, 2018

Mailbox Monday - Oct 15



Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

We are back to Monday. I hope you all had a great weekend. I held an open house that brought in an offer and also had another offer accepted for a buyer. The family attended the annual Taste of Greece at St. Luke's. We also got our first taste of cold weather--actually had to put the frost cover up on the vegetables this weekend. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

It was a great book week too. I'm reviewing this first one for Chronicle Books. Isn't it cute?



The next book in The Daughters of the Mayflower series arrived.


I ordered this one for myself when it was recommended by someone in my writing group.


The founder of our writing group came back to the area this past weekend for a book reading and signing, so I visited the local Barnes and Noble to see her. This isn't her favorite cover, but I love it. 


While there, I visited one of the bargain tables and picked up this great book for less than $2 after my rewards. You can never have too many reference books. 




I decided to stay away from the Kindle freebies this week, so that was my entire mailbox. What did you find in your mailbox? Hope it's something you really wanted.


Monday, August 27, 2018

Mailbox Monday - Aug 27



Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

Happy Monday! My baby started high school today. Yikes! Where did the time go. It was a full weekend of back to school activities at Wilbraham & Monson Academy. We feel so blessed to be able to give her this opportunity. On Thursday, the Lil' Diva returns to our local high school for her final year. Gosh, I feel so old right now.



Not a lot of reading going on right now, but a couple of authors sent me their books. 



I look forward to cracking these open soon. 

What did your mailbox look like? Anything you want to share?

Monday, November 30, 2015

Mailbox Monday - November 30

Mailbox Monday is a meme started by Marcia of To Be Continued. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It now has a permanent home at the Mailbox Monday blog.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles, and humongous wish lists.


Lil' Diva, the cousin--Lil' Dickens--and the Lil' Princess


Hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful holiday surrounded by family followed by another successful annual bazaar at our church.

Because you know I can't resist bargain books or free books, I came home from the bazaar with several titles and picked up a few freebies this weekend.


Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, the Eighth Earl of Asherton, and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, encounter what seems to be a perfect crime as they investigate a fatal fire at an fifteenth-century cottage. 85,000 first printing. $85,000 ad/promo.


Over three successive nights, stranger Harry Johnson sits in the London Pub "The Old Wine Shades" and tells a story to Richard Jury about a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day in Surrey. They've been missing for nine months - no trace, no clue, no lead as to what happened. The dog came back - but how?


For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive.

Everyone tells him it's time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible- that somewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive.

Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope.

But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret- and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.


Dear Reader,
I love living in Cedar Cove, but things haven't been the same since a man died at our B and B. Turns out his name was Max Russell, and Bob had known him briefly in Vietnam.We still don't have any idea why he came here and—most important of all—who killed him. Because it now appears that he was poisoned. I sure hope somebody figures it out soon!

Not that we're providing the only news in Cedar Cove these days. I heard that Jon Bowman and Maryellen Sherman are getting married. And Maryellen's mom, Grace, has more than her share of interested men! The question is: Which one is she going to choose? Olivia—I guess it's Olivia Griffin now— is back from her honeymoon, and her mother, Charlotte (who's in her mid-seventies at least), seems to have a man in her life, too. I'm not sure Olivia's too pleased….

There's lots of other gossip I could tell you. Come by for a cup of tea and one of my blueberry muffins and we'll talk.

Peggy Beldon


The dating game is always the same. One disaster after another. Fortunately, Hallie McCarthy can compare notes with her neighbor, Steve Marris. He's divorced and in the same boat. Right--too bad Hallie and Steve are not interested in each other!



Death is business as usual

When Frank and Joe grab one of the Network's cases, the secret government agency tells them they're on their own. Then they hustle themselves a one-way ticket to France, expecting a little action. But after they penetrate the shady world of Reynard and Company, the largest organized crime ring on earth, the Hardys begin to expect something more - murder. Maybe their own.

Posing as gun dealers, Frank and Joe immediately run into trouble with the French police. Soon they're fugitives with no one to turn to but the criminals they've sworn to expose. Caught in a deadly web of enemies and betrayed by a beautiful girl, Frank and Joe must use every ounce of cunning they possess to defeat a foe whose icy fingers slowly tighten over the entire world.

I've requested from the library books two and three from Macomber's Cedar Cove series to get read to read 44 Cranberry Point. The next several books were free for Kindle this weekend. 





Gus LeGarde’s life essentially ended four years ago, when his beloved wife leapt to her death. Today, Gus lavishes love on his family, trying to bury the pain. But trouble arrives when his arrogant son-in-law’s business partner goes missing, and Gus’s innocent friend is set up to take the fall.


When Marcella Hollister’s prize parakeet gets zapped by a wayward power line in the same pool as her mother, the ensuing psychic link helps Marcella chase her mother’s kidnappers through the Adirondack Mountains, where she unearths a fifty-year-old secret about her dear father with shocking links to a hidden treasure.



After two years of brutal captivity, Portia Lamont has escaped and returned to her family’s Vermont horse farm—only to find her parents gone to New York to try an experimental treatment for her mother’s cancer, and her childhood friend Boone Hawke running the farm.

Like the rest of her family, Boone has never given up hope that Portia would return. But when she turns up battered, skinny as a twelve-year-old boy, afraid of everything and unable to talk about what happened, he does the only thing he can—try to help her heal. He summons the town doctor and Portia’s parents, and sets out to put this beautiful, broken woman back together again.

Through her family's love and Boone's gentle affection, Portia gradually comes back to herself, and starts to fall for her old friend in a whole new way. But one thing threatens her fragile hope for recovery: The man who took her promised that if she ever escaped, he'd kill her. Slowly. And someone is definitely watching her...waiting to make his next deadly move.


When Sam Moore discovers a peculiar green marble in his garden, it links him to his vanished little brother and thrusts him back in time, where he battles a faceless serial killer to untangle the maddening mystery and stop the murder of his beloved grandson.


They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Finn McGraw disagrees.

He was just seventeen when he had a torrid summer affair with the girl who stole his heart—and then inexplicably turned on him, just before being sent to boarding school. Finn may have moved on with his life, but he’s never forgotten her.

Now, ten years later, he’s got more than his lost love to worry about. A horrific accident turns his life upside down, resurrecting the ghosts of his long-dead family at the same time it takes the lives of the few people he has left.

Finn always believed his estranged brother was responsible for the fire that killed their family—but an unexpected inheritance with a mystery attached throws everything he knows into doubt.

And on top of that, the beguiling daughter of his wealthy employer has secrets of her own. But the closer he gets, the harder she pushes him away.

The Seacrest is a story of intrigue and betrayal, of secrets and second chances—and above all, of a love that never dies.



It is three days before Christmas and a bitter wind is blowing across Norfolk.

Until her daughter was born, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway didn’t do Christmas, but now that Kate is a year old, she wants it to be special.

She must get a tree, shop for food, clean the house, buy presents, including one for her new boyfriend—who she isn’t even sure is her boyfriend—and remember to get the turkey out of the freezer.

But time is rushing by and the best-laid plans don’t always work out …


Unlucky in love, Maddie LaRocque moves to Calgary at the urging of her former college roommate. Maddie's luck goes from bad to worse when she's laid off from her job two months before Christmas. Undeterred, she sets up a gift wrapping business in the lobby of the Drummond Building in downtown Calgary where she meets Annie, a ten-year-old who has recently lost her parents.

When Maddie falls into the arms of the building's maintenance man it looks as though her luck is changing, but she soon learns that Brent isn't who she thought he was.
Maddie's roommate Lily hasn't fared too well in the romance department either, having been used for her beauty and Asian heritage by a man in Calgary.

The moment Chase Drummond spots Lily, he's stunned by her beauty, but Lily resists his advances, unwilling to have her heart broken by the most eligible bachelor in town.

Will a young orphan girl be able to convince the two women that love is the best gift of all this Christmas?

As you can see, my mailbox this time is filled to overflowing. I am still hoping for a couple more books from Santa this year. 

Hope you will share what your mailbox held. Hope you have a great week.