BW41: Vampires, Werewolves, and Ghosts! Oh My!

 

Happy Sunday! Our spooktacular reading month continues and it isn't all about horror.  Oh no! Especially since I'm not into blood and guts violence.  I like the type of books that get your adrenaline going, keeps you guessing, finger nail biting, keep you up all night reading suspense.  There are a number of ways to go with psychological thrillers, gothic, paranormal reads that run the gamut from the supernatural to urban fantasies. Books full of bad guys, ghosts, and scary as well as delicious vampires, and werewolves.  

Authors whose books I've enjoyed:

Stephen King's World of the Dark Tower or his psychological thriller Duma Key.  

Dean Koontz's series: version of Frankenstein or take a trip with Odd Thomas who communicates with the dead. 

Christian writers that will scare the pants off you: Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. I've read all their books which are chilling and thrilling.

Take a tour through stories about haunted houses.

Psychological thrillers that will play with your head. 

The Best Gothic Horror Books Of All-Time.

30 Best Vampire Romances to sink your teeth into. 

17 Werewolf Romance Books That Will Have You Howling for More.

Need something a little lighter? Check out Cozy Mystery's Halloween Mystery Book list

This week's A to Z and back again letter and word of the week are L and Looming.

*****************

Please share your book thoughts reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week. 

In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field paste a link to your post, then check the privacy box and click enter.

Ask Frank (Peretti) Blog Tour and Giveaway

Hey Gang,

I have a special middle of the week guest and giveaway!

Back in the late 80's I happened to be perusing the shelves at my local christian book store and stumbled up a new novel -  This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. The premise of angels and demons battling over the possession of the inhabitants of a small town intrigued me. Have you ever read a novel that was so visually stunning, it creates a visceral reaction that sticks with you forever.  Frank Peretti knows how to verbally paint a picture and has continued to do so in all his novels from his very first This Present Darkness to Tilly to Visitation.  So when he released his latest book after a long seven years, I immediately ordered it and read it.  Illusions is one of those stories that makes you hold your breath wondering what's going to happen next. 

So imagine my surprise and delight when I received an email asking if I wanted to be part of the ASK FRANK Blog tour. I am the last stop on the tour of 9 bloggers made up of nine pastors, authors and book reviewers who had the pleasure of asking Frank all about Illusions, his writing process, his ideas behind the story and more.  Be sure to check out the other chats with Frank. 

 Can you tell us about the story behind Illusion?

As with all of my stories, there is no single source or spark of inspiration.  Every story comes together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spilled out on a table. Lots of little ideas float around looking for partners, and then they connect, and then they find other pieces, and ideas lead to other ideas, and before long I start to see a story appearing. 

I suppose the love story in Illusion reflects my own marriage, my own love story in how love can endure, deepen, and take on such a transcendent meaning over time. I guess the love that Barbara and I have for each other can only be expressed by writing a story.

 

Why did you choose to use magic and Illusion as a framework for this book?

I chose magic and illusion for two reasons:

Obviously, magic would be interesting and highly visual, and would also afford plenty of opportunity for mystery.

Secondly, Mandy’s sudden, unexplainable ability to create and perform such mysterious effects works right into the whole inter-dimensional, time bending element, the “sci-fi bad guy” intrigue of the story.

What is the main idea you want people to take home after they read Illusion?

I guess you’re asking me, what is the story’s central theme? I would call this story a celebration, a depiction of love, marriage, honor, and commitment such as God purposed them to be, and on a deeper level, a parable about Christ’s love for his bride and how his bride longs to be with Him in intimate relationship.

And guys, this is not a “chick” book.  It’s a story for everybody.  We could use a few more Mandy's with tenacious devotion to their man and a few more Danes who give themselves for their woman as Christ gave Himself for His church. 

Of all the characters you’ve created, which is your favorite and why? 

 As always, I’ll speak from my present day point of reference and say that Mandy (from Illusion) is my favorite character, and that is because she is, in the final view, a true hero and bearer of faith, hope, and love. 

What's next for you? 

That is the million dollar question right now. Barbara and I both feel that the Lord is bringing about a change in our lives, a new season, but He has so far withheld any details. I do anticipate writing some more novels since that seems to be what I do best, and I’m sure that these novels will arise from whatever it is the Lord is working in our lives right now.

Thank you, Mr. Peretti for joining us today and I for one look forward to reading your future novels.  I am giving away one copy of Illusions  and the giveaway is open to readers of both My Two Blessings and Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks through April 7th (U.S. residents only.)   Please leave a comment letting me know which Frank Peretti book is your favorite along with your email address.

Be sure to check out Frank's Facebook page tonight April 4th (9 p.m. eastern) and join in The Last Hurrah Party where he will be giving away more copies of Illusion. 

Thank you to Howard Books (imprint of Simon and Schuster) for providing me with a giveaway copy,  Mark of C. Grant and Company for organizing the tour, and Frank Peretti for writing such wonderful characters and stories.

BW14: Read a Russian Author Month

I declare April to be Read a Russian Author Month.  I am reading "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevysky (translation by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky.)   I've spent the past 4 days at the Left Coast Crime mystery conference mixing it up with mystery writers which means I will have a few more new to me authors to talk about. 

We are also honored this week to be one of the 9 bloggers to host Frank Peretti for his ASK FRANK blog tour.  He will be visiting on April 4th so be sure to stop by and give him a big welcome, say hi, ask him a question or two and check out his new book Illusion which I highlighted in week 9.   We will be doing a giveaway here and on my blog My Two Blessings in order to give all my readers a chance to participate. Woot! Woot! 

I'll leave you with an excerpt of the first chapter from The Brothers Karamazov:

Part I.
Book I: The History of a Family
Chapter 1: Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner" -- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate -- was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity -- the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough -- but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.


He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch's first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain.

I knew a young lady of the last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia.

Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom.

She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another.

To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to twenty five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her forever.

The little village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity.

 But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her husband's hands.

Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.

"One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation.

 Fyodor Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

My challenge to you is to read a Russian author this month. I've already read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and was absolutely blown away by how good it was.  If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out.

**************************************************************************

Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW9: Frank Peretti

One of my favorite authors is finally releasing another book after a long six year wait.  Frank Peretti who wrote This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, two ultra scary, chilling, spine tingling books about spiritual warfare has written Illusion which will be released March 6th.  

Synopsis:   Dane and Mandy, a popular magic act for forty years, are tragically separated by a car wreck that claims Mandy’s life—or so everyone thinks. Even as Dane mourns and tries to rebuild his life without her, Mandy, supposedly dead, awakes in the present as the nineteen-year-old she was in 1970. Distraught and disoriented in what to her is the future, she is confined to a mental ward until she discovers a magical ability to pass invisibly through time and space to escape. Alone in a strange world, she uses her mysterious powers to eke out a living, performing magic on the streets and in a quaint coffee shop.

Hoping to discover an exciting new talent, Dane ventures into the coffee shop and is transfixed by the magic he sees, illusions that even he, a seasoned professional, cannot explain. But more than anything, he is emotionally devastated by this teenager who has never met him, doesn’t know him, is certainly not in love with him, but is in every respect identical to the young beauty he first met and married some forty years earlier.

They begin a furtive relationship as mentor and protegee, but even as Dane tries to sort out who she really is and she tries to understand why she is drawn to him, they are watched by secretive interests who not only possess the answers to Mandy’s powers and misplacement in time but also the roguish ability to decide what will become of her. 

I discovered Frank Peretti back in the 1986 with the release of  "This Present Darkness" about evil trying to take over a small town and the battle not only with humans but angels and demons for their souls.  It's a gripping tale that will literally give you goosebumps as angels fighting amongst the humans with demons sitting on someone's shoulder whispering in their ears.  

Released 1986

"Ashton is just a typical small town. But when a skeptical reporter and a pastor begin to compare notes, they suddenly find themselves fighting a hideous plot to subjugate the townspeople—and eventually the entire human race. A riveting thriller, This Present Darkness offers a fascinating glimpse into the unseen world of spiritual warfare.When the fictional town of Ashton runs up against the sinister Omni Corporation, all hell breaks through - literally."

Released 1989

Peretti followed up in 1989 with the Piercing the Darkness: 

 "This sequel to Peretti's This Present Darkness is built upon fundamentalist Christian ideas. As it tells the story of Sally Roe, who goes from spiritualism to conversion, it also traces a battle to save a Christian school from demon-inspired litigation. The human activities are again overshadowed by the battle between angels and demons, whom the author takes quite literally, giving them names, personalities, and dialogue. They influence all human activities, just as human prayer helps angels and hampers demons."

released 1992

"A thriller that penetrates to the very heart of a vast struggle that threatens to tear our society apart. Successful news anchorman John Barrett is caught in a suspenseful moral and spiritual battle over the importance of Truth. Using all the elements of edge-of-your-seat fiction, master storyteller Frank Peretti weaves a prophetic tale of our times. John Barrett, top news anchor for Channel 6, knows something is wrong. The story doesn't add up. It couldn't have happened that way, and Barrett is determined to find the truth. Was his father's death really an accident? Or did he know too much? Another spine-tingling tale of deception, murder, and redemption."

Released 1995

"An ancient sin. A long forgotten oath. A town with a deadly secret.Something evil is at work in Hyde River, an isolated mining town in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Under the cover of darkness, a predator strikes without warning-taking life in the most chilling and savage fashion. The community of Hyde River watches in terror as residents suddenly vanish. Yet, the more locals are pressed for information, the more they close ranks, sworn to secrecy by their forefathers' hidden sins. 

Only when Hyde River's secrets are exposed is the true extent of the danger fully revealed. What the town discovers is something far more deadly than anything they'd imagined. Something that doesn't just stalk its victims, but has the power to turn hearts black with decay as it slowly fills their souls with darkness."

Released 1999

"The sleepy, eastern Washington wheat town of Antioch has become a gateway for the supernatural-from sightings of angels and a weeping crucifix to a self-proclaimed prophet with an astounding message.

The national media and the curious all flock to the little town-a great boon for local business but not for Travis Jordan. The burned-out former pastor has been trying to hide his past in Antioch. Now the whole world is headed to his backyard to find the Messiah, and in the process, every spiritual assumption he has ever held will be challenged. The startling secret behind this visitation ultimately pushes one man into a supernatural confrontation that has eternal consequences."

Released 2005

 "Some monsters are real. Miles away from the hectic city, Reed and Rebecca hike into the beautiful Northwester woods. They are surrounded by gorgeous mountains, waterfalls, and hundreds of acres of unspoiled wilderness.During their first night camping, an unearthly wail pierces the calm of the forest. Then something emerges from the dense woods. Everything that follows is a blur to Reed-except the unforgettable image of a huge creature carrying his wife into the darkness.  Enter into deep wilderness where the rules of civilization no longer apply. A world where strange shadows lurk. Where creatures long attributed to overactive imaginations and nightmares are the hunters . . .and people are the hunted."

Released 2006

"Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker-two of the most acclaimed writers of supernatural thrillers-have joined forces for the first time to craft a story unlike any you've ever read. Enter House-where you'll find yourself thrown into a killer's deadly game in which the only way to win is to lose . . . and the only way out is in. The stakes of the game become clear when a tin can is tossed into the house with rules scrawled on it. Rules that only a madman-or worse-could have written. Rules that make no sense yet must be followed.

One game. Seven players. Three rules. Game ends at dawn."

If you like supernatural, psychological, spine chilling thrillers, be sure to check out Frank Peretti.  Just don't read his books alone or in the dark. :)   I've already preordered my copy of Illusion.  

*************************************************

 

Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.