Help our local clinic!

Help save our local animal clinic Catnip Acres!  They provide services to animals in our region!  The local area vets have filed complaints against them regardless of the help they are doing for our area furbabies!  Find out more information on Facebook.

All you have to do is sign the petition at: http://signon.org/sign/please-save-catnip-acres

Help Catnip Acres stay in Greene County!!

   A complaint was filed with Franklin Twp. Zoning Board, stating that Catnip Acres is in violation of zoning ordinances. November 27, 2012 at 5:30pm, a hearing will be held to determine if we can stay open. Catnip Acres has spayed and neutered over 10,000 cats in Greene County and there are many more that still need done. We are here to serve the pets of Greene County. We believe a show of concerned citizens showing up at the hearing will influence the decision. If anyone would like to speak on our behalf, please call Franklin Twp at 724-627-5473. If you are unable to attend the meeting please send a letter on our behalf to: Franklin Township, 569 Rolling Meadows Road, PO BOX 752, Waynesburg PA 15370. Thank you for all your support it means so much to all the cats we've helped and still need our help.

Sleeper's Run

 Synopsis: War on Terror veteran, Eric Caine, is found wandering the streets of Miami with no memory of the car accident that left him there. Alone and suffering from PTSD, Eric is on a one-way road to self-destruction. Then a chance meeting at a bar begins a series of events that helps Eric start anew. When his new job relocates him to Venezuela-the land of his childhood-things, however, take an ominous turn as a catastrophic event threatens the stability of the country. Now Eric must escape an elite team of CIA assassins as he tries to uncover an international conspiracy in which nothing is what it seems.

Eric Cane is like a book version of Burn Notice!  At first he is portrayed as a drunk who knows nothing.  After getting into a fight at a bar, another guy bails him out.  The unbeknownst friend Antonio ultimately had plans for Eric.  Eric was sent to Venezuela with a mission - kill the president. After setting down and doing a few things he realized he was being tracked by officials and maybe tricked.   The black-out he dealt with reminded me of Borne Identity, except Eric was a bit more trusting of people than Jason Borne was.  The author, Mosquera, used many descriptive details and painted the action scenes for the readers.  Using magnificent details like this allows us to fall into the story and see the 'movie' in our minds.  A great writer can always turn a book into a movie within the readers mind!  To top the excitement off, there is even a love story, well as much a love story as a man on the run from assassins can get. Would you find yourself falling for this guy?  Read and find out!

Reel Life

This book is free on Amazon right now for Prime members!

Synopsis: Sisters are meant to always be there for each other, or are they? In the glare of reality, clashing views and acts of betrayal can work to form unbridgeable gaps, and the fabric of sisterly love must be delicately rewoven from whole cloth. Reel Life charts the story of redheaded sisters Betty and Jamie, who must call upon the past to forge a new and meaningful connection for the future. With iconic moments of contemporary cinema driving the narrative thread, this absorbing work will cut straight to the heart and reveal the intricate, complex emotions that come together to form a family. Exploring themes of motherhood, body image, ambition and love, this tender, deeply affecting tale of two sisters offers a poignant close-up of this most intimate of relationships, which can both haunt and heal. Surging with drama that is interlaced with subtle irony, Reel Life illuminates how, sometimes, escaping reality can be the clearest path to emotional truth. 

Reel Life is about a set of sisters who come from the same dysfunctional family unit.  Lets be honest, if your family is not somewhat dysfunctional you do not have a real family! The sisters, Betty and Jamie, are and will continuously be butting heads.  The one thing that draws them together is the movies. While some sisters are similar, these two were total opposites.  Jamie is an architect who sadly is infertile.  Betty on the other hand  has many children and it seems at times rubs it in her sisters face.  As most family does, when one needs help it is undeniable to offer it.  Townsend captured what it was like for sisters, even ones who are literally across the world from one another.

Although this does not really go with the book, I love this song and it reminded me of the ups and downs Jamie and Betty faced!

Elected

Synopsis: Inaugurated after a bitter recount in Florida following the 2000 presidential race, President Hal Cord leads an angry and divided nation. ELECTED follows the Cord administration through political cat fights with Congress, the race to prevent al Qaeda attacks, and their success and mistakes on the international and domestic fronts.  White House Press secretary MJ Bennett battles daily with reporters and watches in horror as her country is brutally attacked, and careens into a Central Asian war that threatens the life of her new love, a legendary Special Forces commander.  After September 11, 2001, Cord calls for a creative “worldwide war.” Sending an overwhelming military force to Afghanistan badly damages Osama bin Laden’s force there; and Cord’s focus on eliminating the combustible engine forces al Qaeda to morph quicker than the group had planned, with dangerous results for Saudi Arabia … and the United States.

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 Elected is a definite "What If" book of our generation.  We have all seen many aspects and heard stories of what our leaders could have done or did not do during 9/11. This book would make an excellent nighttime TV show.  The characters, especially President Cord, have so much emotion the reader instantly is drawn into the story to see what happens.  As I read the book I remember thinking to myself when 9/11 happened - what is going on, why are we doing this, is there going to be even more terror in our  lives?  Like the characters in the book, we are filled with emotion and ideas on the topic, so diving into another world that could have mirrored our own was interesting. 

All throughout the book I kept the thought of when I first learned of 9/11 on the back of my mind.  I was sitting in my Geometry Math class at WCHS when we learned something happened. Our teacher turned on the TV and we instantly were drawn to it.  Being in HS you really do not know what is happening, so we just watched and were quiet.  I moved onto my next class, History, and teachers were told not to turn on the TVs and to keep teaching to their plans.  As a teacher myself now, I would have done the same thing my teacher did then - pull the door blind shut and put the TV on! We talked throughout it and he taught us what was happening, who the supposedly terrorists were, what this could mean to us personally, and what moves the government would make next.  I remember parents bombarding the school to take their kids home - I had a cell phone so my mom called and made sure we were all right and if we needed out of school.  We were completely shocked the entire day, leaving an eerie quiet during lunch time.

Dawn of Saudi

This poignant mystery is about three people whose lives intertwine in a tale that depicts the oppression of women and the human rights abuse under the pretext of religion. Dawn Parnell made the mistake of marrying a Saudi; Sahar Al-Hijazi is forced to marry a man she doesn't love; Jason Crawford has business ties to the Al-Hijazi family. As the lives of these three people cross paths, the story takes the reader on a dangerous journey from Saudi Arabia where women are considered the property of a man, to United States where women are independent. 

 The Dawn of Saudi is an intense book that every woman should read.  It tells of two women who are a part of the Muslim Saudi Arabian culture.  I only know a little about this culture and was beyond surprised at what they have to do, like forced marriages.  Can you even imagine what that would be like? As an American girl I think it was a benefit to date guys and see what qualities you definitely do not want in a future husband/father of your children.  When one is picked for you, based on importance of the man dealing with his society status and wealth, it could ultimately end in heartbreak and mistreatment.  Because this stuff actually happens in the real world, it is saddening and horrific at the same time.  The main character, Sahar, is a young girl in her twenties.  She had the privilege of going to another country for school, where she met and befriended an American girl named Dawn.  Sahar literally made men not want to marry her, which was a fantastic idea to me.  However one day a 68 yo who happened to be her cousin decided he would.  Does her family have a problem? Of course not because it was done so her Grandfather's ailing business can be helped! Sahar was a bright young girl who decided against it all on the night of her wedding.  Supposedly she "died of an aneurysm" but she despised him and the cultural norms so you can just imagine what happened.    Her friend Dawn from school thought she met the perfect man, who yet was older than she.  She thought love was mutual and he promised her so much, but promises are broken when she begins be be beat.  One night her husband went above and beyond beating her, so she protected herself and fought back.  He will no longer harm another women and offer broken promises.   The story becomes even more intense, with a romance that is formed on a rocky cliff for both parties.  Be sure to buy it on Amazon/B&N!

To find out more about the author, you can visit her website, HomaPourasgari.com.

The RX Factor!

"The RX Factor" by J. Thomas Shaw.

 

Synopsis: Dr. Ryan Matthews is a broken man. Five years after the death of his wife and children and the collapse of his career in medical research, Ryan is living alone in the Bahamas. One night, an attractive young woman named Jordan Carver catches his eye. Jordan is vacationing with her aunt and uncle aboard their luxury yacht anchored in Elizabeth Harbor. There is instant chemistry between the two, and, following a long night of merriment, Ryan offers to pilot the dinghy that will haul Jordan back to her aunt and uncles yacht. As they are trolling towards the vessel, the luxury liner is destroyed in a violent explosion, killing her aunt and uncle instantly. As Jordan collapses in grief, Ryan can sense that his life's course has once again been forever altered.

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When the main character, Ryan, realizes his wife has cancer, he personally gets her in a clinical trial for a cancer drug that he has created himself.  As the family struggled with this diagnosis and waited to hear the results, the story started throwing it's blanket of deception over me.  The results from the test say his wife, Cindy, is not cured at all and no progress was made in the clinical trial. As a family they wanted to spend as much time left that Cindy has and began the journey to the Bahamas.  A main plot of the story begins when the plane crashes and his entire family is gone in a blink of an eye.  Dr. Ryan literally began to swallow his grief and resentment in alcohol all day long in the Bahamas.  At this time a shining star walked into his life, Jordan.  They begin to talk and realize she is a researcher as well, which starts to pull him out of his grief stricken life. Although he does not really believe she will be successful in bypassing the FDA, he admires her courage.  As these two travel though movie style action sequences, we are left with many questions.  The author, Mr. Shaw, completely summed up one of the main questions people have into an action packed novel :  "Why can't Cancer be cured?" 

Buy this book on Amazon! 

John Thomas Shaw was born in Quincy, IL, attended college at Illinois State University in Normal, IL and relocated to Chicago after his graduation. Following a successful career with a national mortgage company, he co-founded Guaranteed Rate, Inc. which is one of the fastest growing independent mortgage banks in the United States. The author now lives in the San Diego area with his wife and two children. Prior to his relocation to California, Mr. Shaw lived six years in Durham, NC followed by two years living in the families rustic log cabin in Cotopaxi, Colorado and has traveled extensively throughout the Bahamas’, Caribbean and Mexico. The scenes throughout The RX Factor take place in the various locations that the author has lived or experienced in his travels. Throughout the process of writing The RX Factor, the author consulted with his good friend, Johnny Powers Ph.D.

 Read more about Thomas Shaw and Dr. Powers at The RX Factor website and follow on FB! 

Dark Mind

Title: Dark Mind - An Emily Stone Thriller

Author: Jennifer Chase

Genre: Thriller/Crime Fiction

Publisher: JEC Press

Pages: 315

 

Synopsis:

 

A Serial Killer Plagues an Island Paradise... Vigilante detective Emily Stone continues her covert pursuits to find serial killers and child abductors, all under the radar while shadowing police investigations. Emily searches for an abducted nine-year-old girl taken by ruthless and enterprising slave brokers. Following the clues from California to the garden island of Kauai, she begins to piece together the evidence and ventures deep into the jungle.  It doesn’t take long before Emily is thrown into the middle of murder, mayhem, and conspiracy. Locals aren’t talking as a serial killer now stalks the island, taking women in a brutal frenzy of ancient superstitions and folklore. Local cops are unprepared for what lies ahead. In a race against the clock, Emily and her team must identify the killer before time runs out. 

 

Emily and her team are after a killer, who is the prime example of a psychopath.  I obviously read this book out of order, for it is the 3rd on in the series - 1. Compulsion 2. Dead Game.  I'm not sure if it ruined the previous two for me, but I do know I absolutely hate doing that.  Emily is not only tracking a killer who knows how to blend in with society, but dealing with a love triangle of her own.  Who would not fall in love on a beautiful island as the author painted it so wonderfully with words? Well, I forgot to mention it is filled with horrible people so that takes the beauty back a step.  The story line itself went very fast, often leaving me thinking I skipped pages because there was no way I was ahead of that. This book is available in both Kindle and Paperback versions, so you can have your pick!

Visit the authors website!