Vivian, Midnight Call Girl by Danielle Norman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


For a little while she broke my heart, but along the way she restored my faith in love. Norman continues to march to the beat of her own emotions and empower people like me while doing so. Midnight Call Girl is more than a romance. Vivian and Aaron, take the long road to happiness, but it's a courageously uphill climb. Through the eyes of two broken people, we find strength, hope and words of wisdom. There's beauty within the tragedy.

 

 

 

 

Damsel in distress? No way! Norman continues to flip the switch and create a new type of heroine. Kat is bad to the bone with the heart to back it up. Kat finds herself thrown off her game when she meets her match in her total opposite. Jackson is business suits. She's bad *** and leather. Will falling in love change the fighter she was always meant to be? Kat: Knight Watch is a fearless walk on the wild side. From sexy and sassy to emotionally, unpredictable. Kat and Ty bring the heat and the sweet.

At first glance, Rare and Exotic Orchids: Their Nature and Cultural Significance seems yet another science book discussing the botany and natural history of orchids; but Joel L. Schiff's added focus on their cultural importance and why international communities around the world take special note of orchids adds an extra dimension to the subject.

 

Orchid aficionados will find Rare and Exotic Orchids's different approach eschews the more common attempt to classify and cover thousands of species in favor of a more concentrated profile of selected exotics which represent some of the rarest plants on Earth.

 

An opening history of orchids from ancient to modern times moves into botanical discussions of orchids, those who grew, studied, and wrote about them, and their place in a range of international societies.

 

From discoveries of new exotic orchids and how individual plants captured different hearts and minds to early explorers who ventured into unknown territory in search of new species, Joel L. Schiff brings to life not just the science surrounding orchids, but the human process of recognizing, cataloging, and appreciating them.

 

While science readers will appreciate the wealth of visual illustrations and technical discussions that reveal controversies as well as insights into orchid biology, technical details are juxtaposed with lively debates, discussions, history, and facts that even casual orchid fans or newcomers to the topic will find surprisingly easy to understand.

 

Schiff's high-quality images of exotic orchids (many of which are unique to his orchid book) nicely supplement facts that include the latest DNA research on orchids and their deceptive evolutionary behaviors, nicely complimenting the discussions of historical and scientific conundrums.

 

It's this approach, combined with lovely close-up color photos throughout, which makes Rare and Exotic Orchids a recommendation not just for professionals or botany libraries, but for general-interest readers who will enjoy a highly accessible study that invites an in-depth interest in orchids and their importance to human affairs.

Source:  FictFact's new release calendar

I'm not sure why I picked this one up. I'd read another book my Chase a while back, and thought it was pretty awful. Not so this one. It was actually fairly good, given the genre. It's not Raymond Chandler, or even Dashiell Hammett, but still decent hard-boiled, noir detective fiction. I had no problems staying engaged. I'd give it 3*s +, were that allowed.

So, we have a gang of second-rate punks who decide to lift the diamond necklace of one Miss Blandish. Somehow they get stuck with Miss Blandish as well. But not for long. A higher-class gang of thugs disposes of the second-raters and snag Miss Blandish for themselves. After all, the diamond necklace is small potatoes, Miss Blandish should be worth a cool million in ransom.

The cops are all befuddled. They think Miss Blandish has been kidnapped by the second-rate punks, Riley and his gang, so go looking in all the wrong places. Riley and cohorts are actually well hidden in shallow graves.

But a former crime reporter, turned private eye, Dave Fenner, starts looking into things and begins to piece the strings together. Of course, there is lots of shooting and bodies pile up and so forth. It's also extraordinarily dark in that the not-quite-all-there Slim Grisson, son of Ma Grisson, the head of the higher-class gang, takes a fancy to Miss Blandish. They keep her drugged so he can spend time with her...or something.

One weird thing is that Slim Grisson liked watching TV. He had a 21-inch TV. Well, this book was written in 1939. There was barely any commercial TV until after World War II, i.e. a decade later. I don't believe that 21-inch TVs became common until the 1960s. I certainly don't remember such huge TVs in the early-to-mid 1950s, and I don't believe I got a TV that large until the mid 80s (also my first color TV). So, I have no idea how this makes sense. It's like the story was a 1930s period piece written in the 1980s by someone who had a lapse in his background research. It didn't spoil the story in any way, but it did seem rather weird to me.