Do you like your books current and cutting edge? Tired of reading about long ago days that don’t seem that relevant to you, but still want a romantic suspense tale with contemporary nuances and a romantic twist? Then you will want to check out John Simpson’s new novel, Talons of Condor, the sequel to his Condor One novel where the first openly gay candidate, David Winslow, runs for office. In Talons of Condor, Winslow is President, but has a fleet of problems, from assassination attempts to felonious senators, to keeping his love life private.

David Winslow fought the hard fight to be President, despite his rival using David’s homosexuality as a rallying point to bring out every crackpot to the voting booth. The American People chose him to be their leader and he is going to get done what he promised even if it kills him and there is a possibility it will. David escapes one assassination attempt with the help of his devoted Secret Service guard, Shane. He is aware that there will be others. Not everyone is ready for change even if it is for the better of the whole.

Shane is an excellent member of the Secret Service staff. After all it has always been his dream. All he ever wanted to do was to serve and protect his country with honor. It is all he ever really wanted until the up and coming candidate for President David Winslow comes out of the closet. Seeing his chance, Shane confesses to the then Candidate Winslow that he too is gay and a friendship emerges that deepens into love over the past eighteen months. He should consider himself the luckiest man in the world to be the lover of the President, but he hates all the sneaking around, and how he has to act all cool and professional in public. He wants a real relationship even though it might damage his career and compromise the President’s credibility, especially with the more conservative countries. In the end, he needs to be on his toes because someone is trying to kill the President, again. It isn’t going to happen on his watch.

When I read the back cover blurb of Reclaim My Life and saw "Lexington," I automatically thought of Lexington, Kentucky, the town where I grew up. However, most people think, if they think of it at all, of Massachusetts. So when the book's description also mentioned the murder of a Kentucky Derby-winning jockey, I was thrilled. Cheryl Norman was writing about the right Lexington! I'm kind of geeky when it comes to books that take place in cities I've lived in. I get excited when they mention streets I know or restaurants I've eaten in. So despite the fact that the main character, Sofia Desalvo, is in the Witness Security Program, I jumped at the chance to read the book because I had visions of Lexington dancing in my head.

Sofia Desalvo, born in Louisville and living in Lexington, witnesses the murder of a jockey by a powerful and influential Lexington doctor. In order to keep her alive until trial, the Witness Security Program moves her to Drake Springs, Florida. While there, she must shed her life as a veterinarian and skinny, stylish woman. Sofia dons the name Elizabeth Stevens (the name we know her by through most of the book), gains a few pounds, and becomes an English professor...all to throw the contract killer off her trail.

When you hear of an amnesia case, you wonder what kind of trauma that person suffered. What could be so bad as to wipe out all memory of your life, your loved ones, the very essence of what and who you are?

Amber knows that she can't run forever. She needs some place where she can hide out. Somewhere she can try to make sense of the chaos that her life has become. Hopefully this job as a nanny to a rancher’s daughter will be the answer to her prayers. She needs answers, answers to so many questions.

Luke Ryan is in need of answers himself and he is willing to do what he has to do to find those answers. He needs a break from both the ranch and his older brother Matt. He is going to go back on the rodeo circuit. But for him to do that he desperately needs a nanny for his three-year-old daughter because he isn’t leaving her behind and the circuit is no place for an unattended child.

Even though Amber seems to fit in right away, both Luke and Matt have reservations about her. There are too many unanswered questions about her.

Amber has her own questions like--who is the dead man that she wakes up next to, is she the one who killed him, and if so, why? But there is no way these questions are going to be answered until she regains her memory. And in the mean time she is falling deeper and deeper in love with both Luke and his daughter Alicia.

I'm always up for a good suspense. When I came across Wicked Games by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush, the promise of a murder mystery from the grave proved too tempting to pass up.

When Jessie Brentwood disappeared from St. Elizabeth's school everyone, including her friend Becca, assumed that she simply ran away. Detective Sam McNally is the only person who believes she was murdered. Twenty years later, St. Elizabeth's school is being razed and a skeleton is found. McNally gets the chance to prove that he's not the nut job his department thinks he is. Old wounds are opened among high school friends. Just as they start turning up dead, and Becca gets a new chance at life, a mysterious force threatens to end it.

If the description sounds a little tangled, it's because the story has a lot going on. While it was fun guessing how it all came together, there were times that I felt too much was happening. In addition to the suspense plot lines, Wicked Games throws the paranormal and romance into the mix. I'll admit that it was the promise of this mixture that piqued my interest. The suspense is strong. The paranormal is strong. The romance is strong. It was as if they were so strong on their own that they didn't want to play as a team.

Everyone lies. It is human nature to tell a lie and it can roll off the tongue with a minimum of thought. What damage can a little lie do? Not a big deal, unless you happen to be secretly employed by a branch of the British government that shall remain nameless. Then a little lie can become most deadly. Alan Waring finds out the hard way what can happen to someone he cares about in Dangerous Lies by Anna Louise Lucia.

Alan likes being alone. He likes working in Morocco. He gets to spend half of his time there, the other half in London. His business in London runs mostly on autopilot and allows him the income and freedom to be where he is truly happy: Morocco. Life is perfect until he has a problem moving a package from Morocco back to HQ. The instruction came down the wire, "Get it here any way you can." Unintentionally, Alan found himself a "mule". Once the package was out of his hands, though, there was nothing he could do but follow it back to London.

Marianne Forster lived her life for her ailing father. She took care of him until he died. He lied to her about the severity of his illness all the way to the grave. Now, it was time to start living and doing something for herself. She searched out the dreamland of her Grandfather. On her first vacation abroad she found herself in the courtyard of his old home in Morocco. Sitting on the side of the fountain in the courtyard, she can't help but cry at her loneliness. She has no one left. Just then a strange man interrupts her solitude. His compassion could be the first steps of a new adventure for Marianne. This is exactly what she is looking for but it becomes an adventure she will never forget.

Is it a tragic suicide? Was it a horrible murder perpetrated by persons unknown? Or, is it someone carrying out a terrible hoax? These formidable questions plague Katherine after her husband's death in a fiery car crash. And for the distraught Katherine, finding the answers promises not only closure, but might just help free her from a terrible sense of guilt. Fires of Fury by Donna Dawson is the story of Katherine's mission to unravel the mysteries surrounding her estranged husband's apparent suicide. Moreover, as events soon prove, it turns out to be a dangerous mission, indeed.

In Donna Dawson's, Fires of Fury, Katherine Matheson finds going to her husband's funeral a trial, but also a revelation, and in more ways than one. Before she even leaves the house, she spies a sealed letter posted by her dead husband to himself. With no time to read it, because she is already late for the funeral, Katherine places the missive in a drawer. Later, at the reception, and to her surprise, she not only discovers some old enemies present, but a possible new friend as well: Police Officer Jason Wolfe.

He tells Katherine that her husband's fiery death in his car might not be a suicide after all. Officer Wolfe implies it might be murder. This news stuns poor Katherine, but also makes her oddly hopeful, for she now feels a dreadful guilt in being the possible cause of her husband's suicide. If it is no suicide, than she is not to blame. This would be a great personal relief to her. One more thing she discovers at the reception -- Katherine finds she likes Officer Wolfe a bit more than perhaps she should.

Relationships. Spouse. Friends. Parents. They all have an affect on your life. They make you the person you are. But what if your husband decides to leave with another woman? What if your best friend has some overbearing ways of running your life, without your permission? What if you don't really know who your parents are? These are the problems that drive C.D. Waddell to pray, asking God for help in Cheryl N. Warner's A Prayer for Distraction.

Have you ever heard the adage, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it?" C.D. finds out the hard way that it should apply to prayer. While she is trying to get over her obsessive attachment to her cheating ex-husband, she decides to take her mind off of him by finding her birth parents. She dearly loves the parents that raised her and never wants to hurt them but she finds the need to know where she came from and… what does "C.D." stand for anyway? What kind of name is that to give a three-year-old kid and then drop her off at a hospital, abandoning her? C.D. is driven to find out. Her adoptive father introduces her to a private detective, Mitch Everhart, a man who charges in and changes everything.

Mitch Everhart has had a bad marriage and can relate to C.D.'s pain. He is instantly attracted to the lady searching for her birth parents but he can't let her in on his own agenda for helping her out. What he's keeping from her could keep them apart if she finds out in the wrong way. He knows he'll have to come clean but not until all issues have been settled and it is safe to let C.D. know the truth.

When I started reading Winter's Journey I was interested the female view of long distance driving. Especially since I once knew a long haul driver and know how hard it is to maintain a relationship with people left behind. Being a long haul driver is not an easy job: long hours, loneliness, the temptation of drugs, and, if you are in a relationship, the temptation to cheat. Knowing what I know of Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s writing, I knew I was going to get a story that gave me a female perspective of a very male-dominated job.

Loretta Brennan is one of the few female independent truckers, but like most she is in desperate need of money. The last payment, the “balloon” payment is due on her big rig “Baby Blue”. Everything hinges on that last payment: her livelihood, her home, and the well-being of her child. So when she gets a call from a trucking contractor offering her a bonus to deliver oranges to Cheyenne, WY, she takes it. Due to the time constraints, the weather, and the road conditions on the mountain passes, this job could make or break her. But with the chance of getting on with a big trucking company, which would mean steady work, she takes on what she knows is a risky job.

Okay, I have to say that there were a couple of things that attracted me to this book. One: I love Kathryn Meyer Griffith and have every since I read Scraps of Paper. Two: I lived in the upper part of Illinois for many years and still have friends who live in Michigan so I know that region of the country. Three: I got hooked on that show about the truck drivers driving across the frozen lakes and rivers so the idea of an island cut off from the world during the winter with the only access being to cross a frozen body of water to the mainland was completely intriguing to me. Then, for it to be a little spooky romantic mystery on top of all that, I was hooked for sure.

I’m not a romance reader; I tend to get my dose of literary love as a secondary plot point. When I have read romances in the past, it’s been with mixed results. I’ve been swept off my feet and I’ve been left cold. Obviously the hero has to be hot (physically and emotionally), but the more involved the storyline, the more involved I tend to be. The mystery aspect of Final Words by Teri Thackston intrigued me, so I thought I’d give this modern-day romance a try.

We first meet Emma St. Clair, medical examiner, as she floats between life and death, caught between her body in the ER and the calming light just ahead. Detective Jason MacKenzie is assigned to the hit and run that’s put Emma in the hospital and killed their mutual friend. Emma pulls through but she’s brought part of her near-death experience with her; when she touches the dead, they can speak to her…and tell her how they died.