Two Shades of Vice by Dewey B. Reynolds

Description

The action is hot in Kansas City during the 1960s. Gordon Reynolds happens to be a vicious criminal who has served prison time in five different states over a period of twenty-five years. Gordon is determined to muscle his way into major rackets such as prostitution, bootlegging whiskey, robbery, hijacking and contraband cigarettes. He eventually meets up with Alla Mae Briggs. She knows the prostitution racket very well, since she worked the Kansas City streets for several years. She too has a lengthy rap sheet of twenty-five criminal convictions for the solicitation of prostitution. Gordon needs someone to help him operate his main bawdy house.

Alla Mae is the perfect recruit to help him forge stronger relations between his hookers and their customers. The collaboration of their experiences on the streets proves highly profitable. But unforeseen danger causes things to come crashing down all around them. Racist cops, ruthless gangsters, a white supremacist group, jealous pimps and rival hookers are the opposing forces that this interracial couple are destined to face. Crossing the racial line puts them at incredible odds with the law and fellow criminals alike.  Based on the true story of how a white man and a black woman fell in love and broke all the rules in order to make their living together illegally.

This book is not exactly what I was expecting when I picked it up in the "true crime" section. I should have paid more attention to the smaller print "Based on the true story" which is not at all the same as a factual account.
Personally I like my facts separate from my fiction. Are these names real? Did all of these people even exist? I don't know. I do know that this reads like a novel, not a true crime, and any facts seem to be heavily embellished.
As far as the story itself, the 60s were already a tumultuous time to be a part of an interracial couple. Even more so when you are a mom and want to muscle in on other criminals territory. It was fast paced, with lots of sex and violence. The ending was strangely abrupt. which left me wondering if there will be more to follow, and what the future held for Alla Mae's children.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

If The Creek Don't Rise by Leah Weiss

Description

A strikingly sincere portrait of a town and its buried secrets from an outstanding new voice in southern fiction.
In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She’s been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy’s wife.

As stark and magnificent as Appalachia itself, If the Creek Don’t Rise is a bold and beautifully layered debut about a dusty, desperate town finding the inner strength it needs to outrun its demons. The folks of Baines Creek will take you deep into the mountains with heart, honesty, and homegrown grit.

 

Set in the 1970s in a small settlement called Baines Creek, this is mainly the story of Sadie Blue, a 17 year old Appalachian girl in an abusive marriage. Told from multiple points of view including Sadie herself, the preacher and his spinster sister, her grandma who survived her own abusive marriage and the new school teacher Kate who befriends her. The town may be tiny but the kindness of some of it's inhabitants is huge as they try to bring a bit of comfort to those in need. Not to say that all is sweetness and light here because there are certainly some characters I loved to hate! Many characters also have their own back stories going on which add a lot of heart and drama to this mesmerizing story.

5 out of 5 stars from me

 

I received an advance copy for review

 

 

 

The Ushers by Edward Lee

THE USHERS is the author's long-awaited first collection of short fiction and features some of his most disturbing and provacative horror stories, including "Goddess of the New Dark Age", "The Seeker", The Wrong Guy", the 1994 Bram Stoker award nominee "Mr. Torso," plus more over-the-top classics, along with seven brand new stories appearing here for the first time.

If you're ready for horror fiction that takes you well past the edge, Edward Lee is happy to be your tour guide.

I have read and loved a few of Edward Lee's novels but these short stories were pretty hit or miss.
There were only a couple that I really liked a lot, one of which previously appeared in Cemetery Dance Magazine and had a more main stream horror feel to it.

The thing about Edward Lee is that he likes to write about vomit, urine and feces, and forcing people to swallow waste. He likes to write about rape, sexual deviants, and after a while though the titles of the stories change the subject never seems to.

In "Almost Never" a young girl is being stalked by would be kidnappers who mean to sell her but they don't know she is not as easy a target as they expect her to be.
In "Please Let Me Out" Joyce Lipnick is a woman scorned, who will make sure she gets and keeps her man. These two stories were the best of the bunch.

The rest of the stories? meh.
The have all blended together in my mind. I can't tell you which story had someone vomiting into someone else's mouth, or raping a corpse (oops that may have actually been the same story.) but it seemed to me that only the names of the characters changed and bled into the same acts in the same stories over and over.

3 out of 5 stars only because of the 2 stories that I enjoyed so much.

Mean Little People by Paige Dearth

Description
Seven year old Tony has two choices to live or to die.

Tony Bruno just wants to fit in, but the bullies at his school are cruel and relentless. At home, he leans on his mother Teresa for strength and comfort, but she’s no match for his father, Carmen. His father, a fighter and bully himself, hates Tony. He is embarrassed by the child for not fighting back and wishes that Tony was never born.

Then as a teen, in one act of blind courage, Tony fights back shifting the balance of power with his peers. Even after Tony sets things straight with the neighborhood boys, his father continues to terrorize him.

At school, Tony is now respected by his classmates. One day he stands up for a bullied kid named, Salvatore, and the boys become friends. One night, Salvatore commits a horrific crime and Tony suffers the consequences of his friends’ actions. Tony’s punishment changes the course of his life.

All alone and nowhere to call home, Tony sets out to find the life he longs for, one filled with love and acceptance. But nothing comes easily for him, and he is forced to draw upon strength from deep within to survive.

From the dark world he lives in, Tony does unimaginable things to leave his unwanted life behind.

Mean Little People is a haunting story of one bullied child deprived of love and taunted by corrupt individuals along his journey. Tony’s story will make you question the balance between good and evil.

 

This story begins when Tony Bruno is 7 years old and follows him through young adulthood. It is bleak, brutal, and at times shocking. Life for Tony is nothing but pain. He is taunted, beaten and bullied nearly to death by his classmates, belittled and beaten at home by his good for nothing father, friendless and alone in his misery. He is subjected to every abuse imaginable. Physical, emotional, and later sexually assaulted, which was quite difficult to read...I had to put this book down twice and walk away for a bit.
At 13 he is tossed out of his home with nowhere to turn. Tony ends up in a gang and later in the mob. There are few friendly faces amidst all this turmoil. He meets a kindly older woman and her grand daughter who become his surrogate family, and a girl he falls in love with, but his gangster lifestyle attracts danger to those closest to him. This was an emotional read, that at times had me enraged, disgusted, and sometimes in tears.

4 out of 5 stars.

I received a complimentary copy for review.