99¢ BOOK OF THE WEEK

The BIRD WITCH - The Mattie Saunders Series Book 4

August 31 to Sept. 7th

at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU

Can you love someone whose worldview is different from yours? Who is committed to a cause that excludes you because of your race? Simon is an Indigenous person dedicated to the struggle for justice for First Nations people. Mattie loves him but is love enough?

Birds are dying. At the Saunders Bird Rescue and Sanctuary where rescued parrots abandoned by their owners are rehabilitated and re-homed, a deadly virus has them dying in Mattie's hands. In the midst of this outbreak, she's called to investigate a mortality event where dozens of starlings fly into the pavement as if committing suicide.

Mattie looks to Simon, her rock and refuge, for support, but after spending weeks at a remote protest site, as soon as he returns home he begins working with Wendy Walters, the attractive, ambitious Indigenous politician on her re-election campaign. Mattie's just about had enough.

When Simon proposes a vacation on the Mexican Riviera, Mattie sees it as an opportunity to recover from the death of her beloved birds. She's also hopeful it's an indication Simon's reconsidering his priorities. She didn't realize while on vacation he'd want to attend the Conference of Indigenous Peoples in Chiapas. Mattie's annoyed but decides to indulge her passion and do some tropical bird watching rather than attend a boring conference.

But Simon's conference turns out to be anything but boring when a deadly firefight erupts between the Mexican Army trying to arrest suspected terrorists and revolutionary Zapatista's.

Now Simon is missing, and Mattie is determined to find him, but to do so she must first escape being kidnapped by corrupt Mexican police and avoid abduction by vicious cartel members.

The fourth book in The Mattie Saunders Series, The Bird Witch combines romance and action with environmental themes for an exciting exploration of contemporary culture and issues.

"Fantastic voice! Great writing...great discovery!"
- Bryan Fagan, author of Dempsey’s Grill

"A great book. The characters are believable and relatable... makes me want to go back and read the other three!"
- Laurie Ingebritsen, author of Unexpected Healers

"Great book. Highly recommend."
" ...it is a joy to read a character that can make you feel so many different things but still enjoy her overall."
- Goodreads review by Industry

“If you’re tired of the same old romance “formula” books that all read identically then this book could be for you. “
- Clark Wilkins, author of Survive - Love and Murder in Alaska

"A very professionally written ecological thriller book."
- Tony Parsons

CLICK TO VIEW THE VIDEO TRAILER

https://animoto.com/play/1U0ONQVndep1jn2dBgdImQ
   

FREE E-BOOK. JUNE 23 -27

The Bird Witch

Book 4 in The Mattie Saunders Series 

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY AT

https://amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU

Can you love someone whose worldview is different from yours? Who is committed to a cause that excludes you because of your race? Simon is an Indigenous person dedicated to the struggle for justice for First Nations people. Mattie loves him but is love enough?

Birds are dying. At the Saunders Bird Rescue and Sanctuary where rescued parrots abandoned by their owners are rehabilitated and re-homed, a deadly virus has them dying in Mattie's hands. In the midst of this outbreak, she's called to investigate a mortality event where dozens of starlings fly into the pavement as if committing suicide.

Mattie looks to Simon, her rock and refuge, for support, but after spending weeks at a remote protest site, as soon as he returns home he begins working with Wendy Walters, the attractive, ambitious Indigenous politician on her re-election campaign. Mattie's just about had enough.

When Simon proposes a vacation on the Mexican Riviera, Mattie sees it as an opportunity to recover from the death of her beloved birds. She's also hopeful it's an indication Simon's reconsidering his priorities. She didn't realize while on vacation he'd want to attend the Conference of Indigenous Peoples in Chiapas. Mattie's annoyed, but decides to indulge her passion and do some tropical bird watching rather than attend a boring conference.

But Simon's conference turns out to be anything but boring when a deadly firefight erupts between the Mexican Army trying to arrest suspected terrorists and revolutionary Zapatista's. Now Simon is missing, and Mattie is determined to find him, but to do so she must first escape being kidnapped by corrupt Mexican police and avoid abduction by vicious cartel members.

The fourth book in The Mattie Saunders Series, The Bird Witch combines romance and action with environmental themes for an exciting exploration of contemporary culture and issues.

"Fantastic voice! I'm not typically a "series" reader but loved this author's voice. Simon is an Indigenous native who struggles for justice for First Nations people. His character study is VERY interesting writing. Great writing...great discovery!" FIVE STARS

"A very professionally written ecological thriller book." FIVE STARS "

"... a great book. The characters are believable and relatable and continue to evolve as the story progresses. ...I didn't have to read the other three books in order to step into the main character's journey. Although, having read it, it makes me want to go back and read the other three! "...a great job of weaving the complexities of relationship into the story, and I could really feel the push-pull Mattie and Simon experienced between their desire for relationship and a need to pursue their passions."

"Great book. Highly recommend."

"Mattie, despite being severely flawed (on purpose)... her faults do not make it harder to root for her although, at times, it's easy to find yourself annoyed with her. ...it is a joy to read a character that can make you feel so many different things but still enjoy her overall." "Simon, was my absolute favourite character ... sweet and kind and endearing and patient and so well written" "One of the subplots in this book was romance and it was honestly so well done...interesting and refreshing and sweet."

"The writing ...was so nice, witty, and refreshing. I thought it was lovely."- Goodreads review by Industry

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

https://animoto.com/play/1U0ONQVndep1jn2dBgdImQ

Activists Unite

To tackle the emergency facing people and planet- Education, Mindfulness, Power of Mind, Healthy Living

At Malta's National Animal Rights Day inspirational

Speech by Nataša Pantović

Last Sunday, Malta held its National Animal Rights' Day. In Mosta's most amazing garden with an amphitheater directly facing a sun-set + some most beautiful people from Malta, Macedonia, Japan, Greece, Libya, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, England, and many more countries gathered to celebrate this worldwide event.

The National Animals Rights Day Malta 2021 Main Banner

The Event was organized by the Maltese NGO Animal Liberation Malta.  

ALM's mission is to raise awareness and take action against all forms of animal abuse. 

Activists Unite in Conscious Living!

I picked this book up with the hope of learning about how serfdom actually worked in 18th century Russia and eastern Europe, and I did learn from it, though as with a lot of academic books it seems to have been written with the expectation that only about 12 people would ever read it, all of whom are other researchers in the same or related fields. The writing is unnecessarily dense and there are a lot of unexplained references to authors that this one is apparently refuting.

That said, the author’s thesis is an interesting one: essentially, that in the early modern era, Europe wasn’t so much divided between states where workers were free and states where they were serfs, as on a continuum. Workers in England and France weren’t nearly as “free” as you might believe, and labor laws were actually getting stricter at the time. Workers were often required to sign long labor contracts (a year was common, much longer was possible), and there were criminal penalties for leaving before a contract was completed, with the result that “runaway” workers could be jailed, fined, or even in some rare cases, whipped. Meanwhile, Russian serfs had more freedom of movement than some sources have given them credit for, with some going back and forth between town and the estates, and some areas of the country not sending back runaway serfs at all. Serfs could also initiate lawsuits against landowners, and some won their freedom this way (generally it seems because the landowners as non-nobles weren’t actually qualified to own populated estates), though as always the poor winning lawsuits against the rich was quite rare.

As someone unfamiliar with the literature the author is responding to, I found the arguments related to England and France (and the general descriptions of forced labor in Eurasia and in certain Indian Ocean colonies of the European powers) more coherent than the arguments about Russia. In some places it seemed like Stanziani was being overly technical, as when he points out that the laws establishing serfdom were all really about establishing who could own populated estates rather than delineating serfdom per se. I’m unclear on why this is important. He also seems to gloss over a lot of abuses described in other sources – granted, my other reading on this topic involves popular rather than academic sources, and this book is much too technical to engage with works of that sort at all. But while he states that Russian serfdom was nothing like American slavery, he doesn’t provide much basis for this conclusion.

At any rate, I’m clearly not the intended reader for this book, but I did get some interesting ideas from it. I’d love to see a book on this topic that’s a little more accessible for the general reader.

Book: Read a book featuring a strong female character (or characters), by an author from any minority group, a story about a minority overcoming their oppressors, or revolving around the rights of others either being defended or abused, a book set in New York City, or a book originally written in a language other than English and / or your mother tongue or by anyone not Anglo-Saxon.

Here is the book I am choosing for this though I do have another that would work as well for this. Which is Branches in Time (written Italian and translated in English) I have both books in e-book format.. but I believe I know what book I am going to use for this.

i have a  Hard Cover for this book to read.