Memoir – True Crime 

ABOUT THE PALE-FACED LIE

125,000,000 copies sold! 

A violent ex-con forces his son to commit crimes in this riveting memoir about family and survival

Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his siblings idolized their dad. Tall, strong, smart, and brave, the self-taught Cherokee regaled his family with stories of his World War II feats. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder.

A shrewd con artist with a genius IQ, Thurston intimidated David with beatings to coerce him into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him. One day, making good on his threat to “get rid of their crazy mother,” Thurston packed up the house and took the kids, leaving her nothing. Soon he remarried, and David learned that his stepmother was just as vicious and abusive as his father.

Through sheer determination, and with the help of a few angels along the way, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to stop helping his father with his criminal activities, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a showdown with Thurston Crow.

With lives at stake, including his own, David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.

The Pale-Faced Lie is a searing, raw, palpable memoir that reminds us what an important role our parents play in our lives. Most of all, it’s an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the ability of the human spirit to rise above adversity, no matter the cost.

Amazon – https://amzn.to/3j4PENt

David Crow

David Crow spent his early years on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Through grit, resilience, and a thirst for learning, he managed to escape his abusive childhood, graduate from college, and build a successful lobbying firm in Washington, DC.

Today, David is a sought-after speaker, giving talks to various businesses and trade organizations around the world. Throughout the years, he has mentored over 200 college interns, performed pro bono service for the charitable organization Save the Children, and participated in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. An advocate for women, he will donate a percentage of his royalties from The Pale-Faced Lie to Barrett House, a homeless shelter for women in Albuquerque. David and his wife, Patty, live in the suburbs of DC.

Book #22 of my #100BooksChallenge and WOW, WOW, WOW. I bought all this author’s books from this one read. Originally published in 1925, this is not the original cover but I love it and she died in 1940. Florence Scovel Shinn is such an inspiration. I read the audio book with a fantastic narrator then had to add the books to my shelf. 5 outstanding stars! Another spot on recommendation via YouTube for me to listen to, so glad I did.

About The Book:

The classic self-help guide, full of timeless wisdom

Florence Scovel Shinn’s The Game of Life and How to Play It first appeared in bookstores in 1925 and is now considered a classic in the self-help genre. The author’s insights into achieving meaning, happiness and success are just as relevant and effective today as they were nearly a century ago, hence its reissue as part of the exciting Capstone Classics line.

This collectible, hard-back edition of The Game of Life and How to Play It includes an insightful introduction by series editor and self-help expert Tom Butler-Bowdon. Tom is an authority on classic self-help texts and adroitly connects the content of this book with the concerns of modern readers.

• Enjoy the colourful anecdotes of 1920s New York that have made Scovel Shinn’s book a cult classic
• Discover the original “life hacks” for advancing in every area of your life, from health to wealth to love
• Succeed by attuning yourself with the unchanging principles that govern the universe

With the release of this Capstone Classics edition, we finally have an authoritative, collectible version of The Game of Life and How to Play It. Find out why The Game of Life and How to Play It is one of the defining self-help guides of the 20th century.

Five plus stars from me, I found this to be engaging from the very first chapter. Keeping in mind that I read the original, not adapted version from Florence’s original wording and old style formal use of English. I still found it easy to digest, comforting, and so inspirational. The book covers some short ‘universal truths or laws’ that are helpful to help one manifest the life they wish, reduce what they don’t want, and be happy. Florence refers to life as 1. perfect health 2. perfect wealth 3. perfect expression 4. connection to the higher self. Like a square you could say to help one feel complete. I found as I read if you take the guidance or her thoughts and apply it to today’s context it could serve you really well! I was so inspired and felt so good after I read The Game of Life and How to Play it. In addition I found it so inspirational that she was the first female metaphysical, new-age, ‘woo woo’, spirituality whatever you want call it writer , I liked that. Overall I recommend this as a read to everyone male or female– you’ll gain so much from it, if you allow yourself to open up to the possibility of what the author proposes. Five plus outstanding stars from me!

Book #.21 of #100BooksChallenge So this is a free download and for that I am forever thankful for but it didn’t hit home with me when I read through, but for a freebie on Amazon I can’t complain.

About The Book

Journaling can be a great way to work through challenging situations, figure out what you truly want out of life, and discover how you got to where you are. But just staring at a blank page, unsure what to write about, won’t get you anywhere.

That’s where journaling prompts come in. This brief e-book contains 111 prompts to inspire you to put pen to paper and get started looking at your life and goals in new ways. It also includes a few quick ideas to help hold yourself accountable so you can take what you’ve discovered off the page and into your everyday life.

This book contains prompts about:

• Your past, present, and future
• Relationships
• Family
• Work
• Goals
• And more!

If you’re looking for an in-depth guide to journaling, this book isn’t for you. But if you’re ready to get started NOW and just need some prompts to encourage new insights and ways of looking at your situation, you’ve come to the right place.

I love journal writing, I always have and always will. As mentioned this was a free download but I wonder if that is the downfall? And why I failed to connect with this author’s work. I found the prompts lacked depth to them, and that they were rushed, I found the whole eighteen paged book to be rushed! The promise that the blurb showed personally I didn’t find in the pages. Self-reflection should be about pondering things that are under the surface, from the 111 options, I found about a handful that would really make me reflect and pick up a pen. Overall, it’s not bad and free so you can’t complain. But, if you’re looking for something that will really push you to think, and reflect deeply and maybe even learn something new, personally I could not find it here. Three stars.

Book #.20 of my #100BooksChallenge wow is all I can say, after Amazon recommended the last book this one popped up. I could not pass it up, it’s a quick read and the cases in here are so eye opening!!

About The Book

Reincarnation: Just another religious myth, or an actual, real phenomenon?

While such esoteric concepts are near impossible to prove under controlled conditions, there does actually exist compelling evidence which suggests that we do live more than once. “Exceptional Cases of Past Life Memories” gathers bits of information from a plethora of different sources, including: scientific papers and journals, old documentaries and news articles, as well as numerous radio and TV interviews — and distills it all into a number of coherent, easy-to-read stories of past life memory.

During the course of this book, we will explore 13 cases where people remembered moments from another time, another life, another them. Whatever your beliefs may or may not be, one thing is certain: At the end of it all, the idea of many lives will appear more real than ever before.

We will take a look at:

• An Indian boy who claims he got shot, and whose birthmarks match the bullet wounds of his previous body.
• An English boy who is haunted by the echoes of his 1940s German past.
• A woman whose sexual anxiety is explained through her past life memories.
• A little Finnish girl who swears she used to be a grown man, before she was ran over by a bus.
• A young girl from Myanmar who claims she’s actually her own grandmother.

Man, I could not put this down! I read it all in one go in a few hours. The stories of people and their experiences with loved ones who have ‘come back’– as an incarnation of another child, and the evidence that the child’s soul is the loved one that passed away is out of this world. No way it could be faked. The book is well written, informative, easy to digest, and really was just a pleasure to stumble across this author’s work. The next book I did download, as he left me really wanting to know more. Wow, just wow. I recommend this book as entertainment yes, but also for the element of seriousness on this issue. Reincarnation is much more widely accepted outside of the western world. I honestly feel that everyone should read this book just to open your mind to the possibility of it. Five stars!

#100BooksChallenge book #19! Wow what a book that was recommended to me by Amazon. I really enjoyed this. I’ll read anything on this subject matter, esoteric, metaphysical etc. It was the title that pulled me in so glad I read it.

About The Book

What happens when we die? This new edition of “Life After Death” adds to powerful evidence consciousness continues the author presented in his 2015 release. He spent two years gathering information that demonstrates this and along the way interviewed more than a hundred experts in a number of different fields. Among them were parapsychologists, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, quantum physicists, and researchers into the true nature of reality. Specific examples are presented that indicate what happens when we die, for example that memories can be formed and retained despite a subject’s brain having been shutdown and the blood drained from it. Questions such as whether or not you will be able to communicate with living loved ones after death are addressed, if it is possible to be reborn, and what might be missing from reproductive theory to explain the various phenomena indicated in the many case histories and scientific investigations presented.All of us will someday cross the border to what Shakespeare called “The undiscovered country.” As long as we must make that trip, wouldn’t it be smart to find out where we are going and what to expect when we get there?

This is such a well researched and powerfully written book, I am someone who actually does believe in life after death as a possibility. But, after reading this it was so hard to disregard the possibility. The author uses powerful case studies, real life accounts, and goes into a lot of detail about how the mind is separate from the brain, therefore that’s why it’s possible to still have a conscious presence once a person passes. The brain is the organ, the mind and thought are the spirit of a person, and this can live on. He has used scientific evidence as well as and real life accounts to back up all his reasons that make life after death very possible. What I really enjoyed about this book is that the author has used so many different angles to approach the possibility of life after death. It’s not all straight forward, the evidence will make even the most doubtful reconsider. Four wonderful stars, I would read more from this author, and feel that anyone who has an interest in this subject matter should check this out. Or anyone who is worried about a loved one who is near the end of life stage could find great comfort in this book.

Grab a free Amazon download today, a free by by my co-author Didi Oviatt!

Since Maylee was abducted from her high school the very month of graduation, her Aunt Autumn has never lost hope in finding her. It’s been three years. Autumn has finally reached inside herself and found the courage to track down an old lead, and travels across the country to find more clues about Maylee’s disappearance. But will she be able to pry Maylee’s case back open, and what will she uncover in the process of searching for Maylee? It’s a cold, dark world we live in, and Autumn is about to find out just how cruel it can be. But strength and determination are on her side, and she will do whatever it takes to deliver justice.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Search-Maylee-Didi-Oviatt-ebook/dp/B074TM3JVB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Search+for+Maylee+didi+oviatt&qid=1615285012&sr=8-1

Book #18 for my #100BooksChallenge. Thank you to Love Books Tours for my free review copy, all opinions are my own.

Blurb 

Gordon knows what Gabby wants but he hates to do what he’s told; Chrissy stalks the internet to find what her fiance wouldn’t give her; three friends reunite during a heatwave and their evening gets better and better, until it doesn’t.

In these relationship tales, many are burned by their pasts while scanning their horizons… A woman wonders if passing strangers have a better sex-face than her boyfriend; a birthday meal goes sour at the offer of no-strings dessert.

Navigating the on and offline worlds of pairing up, this spiky collection of short stories delves deep, with dark humour, into what it takes to strap on a smile through thirty-something failure and make human connections in the modern age.

Amazon – https://amzn.to/38Vkdle

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37658478-kissing-

Four Bold Stars!

From reading the blurb I was really keen to get stuck in, I didn’t really know what to expect. The author has a very distinct writing style, I had to get into it to connect with the characters and stories. Once I did it was a smooth, entertaining, and refreshingly different read. I also was convinced that she is a British writer, from the way the characters spoke and the banter, but the first story I felt was set in the USA from reference to things. Either way none of this mattered it was just nice to ‘get’ the sense of humour and banter, the first story was laugh out loud funny for me. It was a good start to the book! Each story is different in terms of the journey you go on with the characters, generally I enjoyed them all and would recommend these short stories to all those who love women’s fiction. In particular stories around falling in and out of love, and the rocky and sometimes amusing road of dating, from a female point of view. Four stars, I really enjoyed the refreshingly different themes and characters.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Tough is a fiction writer and visual poet.

Her novel, Keep Walking, Rhona Beech (Abacus, 2019) is available from all usual outlets. It’s the retitled second edition of, Head for the Edge, Keep Walking (Cargo) which has had five stars on Amazon since 2014. The book is a funny and moving account of how a thirty-something office worker in Glasgow, with a clumsy tendency to speak her mind, puts her life back together after it spectacularly falls apart.

Readers have noted that the novel reminds them of a book about someone called Eleanor Oliphant, although Kate’s novel appeared prior to that one, in 2014, when it got good attention in the Scottish media. It’s great that readers can enjoy both books and a bonus that people who like one character have an opportunity to discover the other one.

Kate’s poetry pamphlet, tilt-shift, was Runner Up in the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, 2017 and her piece, ‘People Made Glasgow’, was selected as a Best Scottish Poem 2016. Recently, her work was included in Makar/Unmakar: Twelve Contemporary Poets in Scotland and she’s an invited poet at STANZA in 2021. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow.

Last year Kate adopted a cat with very long tail who shares his name with the Prime Minister of Britain – the rescue centre gave him that name – but now that she knows him better (the cat, not the Prime Minister) she’d have chosen the name Rocket, because of the way he shoots from underneath furniture at unbelievable speeds.

Kate understands that life isn’t an easy ride and she lives in perpetual awe of her fellow humans; getting out of bed each day and getting involved. On a general basis, if she sees the sun rising and swims lengths in a tide pool, then its not a bad day.

For occasional updates from the author about new work, writing tips and audio clips, subscribe via the button on Kate’s website at www.katetough.com

Amazon – https://amzn.to/38Vkdle

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37658478-kissing-