Let's Hear it for the Boys!

LATEST WINNER: Winner of the "Let's Hear It For The Boys" $10 Amazon Gift Card goes to Bridget T aka Iambtinrb... please email me at stephanieelliotATgmail.com with your full name and address!

First off, we have the winner of HEART LIKE MINE - Congrats to NOVA, aka sparkle40175. Please email me your full name and address at stephanieelliot(at)gmail.com so we can send you your book! Also, so many of you are fans of Mexican food! And second runner up: Olive Garden! Who knew! Thanks for sharing your fave restaurants with me. Now I'm hungry! Now, onto today's post, which is…

Let's Hear it for the Boys!

I don't highlight men authors enough on Booking with Manic so I thought I'd do a post showcasing three authors you have GOT to get your hands on. Check these authors out and the books they have written. You will be surprised and delighted. I love when I find a good man (author!) and am excited to share some of them with you here:

Many of you are familiar with Harlan Coben and I have heard of him for years but never read him. When this book was brought to my attention, I knew I wanted to check him out!

 

Fast-paced with short chapters for quick reading, which I LOVE, Six Years will have you racing through the pages to get to the final thrilling ending.

Jake watched the love of his life Natalie, marry another man, and for six years he's been miserable knowing he let the woman of his dreams get away. When he reads Natalie's husband's obituary in the newspaper, he decides to attend his funeral. Hoping beyond hope to reconnect with Natalie, imagine his shock when at the funeral, the grieving wife is not Natalie. This spurs Jake on an adventure to find Natalie and to discover what happened to her.

Debut author Jon Harrison is one to watch! His new book,The Banks of Certain Rivers has been called a "jewel-box of a novel", mixing humor and drama. James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, (love him or hate him -- he's a brilliant writer, and I personally love him!) says of The Banks of Certain Rivers that it is "Urgent, real, and often very funny."
 

Personally, I love any story where social media is weaved into the plot and as you'll read in this blurb, the secret gets out via YouTube in the "worst possible way."

Neil Kazenzakis is barely holding his life together: ever since an accident left his wife profoundly disabled, he's been doing his best as a single dad and popular high school teacher. He's also been dealing with Lauren Downey, his sort-of girlfriend of the past two years who's pushing for a commitment—and for Neil to finally tell his son Christopher about their secret relationship.

Neil's carefully balanced world begins to fall apart when some questionable footage of him is anonymously posted to YouTube...just as Chris learns about Lauren in the worst possible way. Doubting his own recollection of the events in the online video as he's threatened with the loss of his job and the ability to care for his wife, Neil must find a way to prove the truth to his family, his community, and himself as he struggles to regain the splintered trust of his son.

David Klein is an author I've had my eye on for a while and I'm really sorry I haven't highlighted him here sooner. There are two books of his that I really want you to check out!

Clean Break:

A riveting tale of psychological suspense about a woman who finds herself in an impossible situation.

Lured by the hope of a better life for herself and her son, Celeste Vanek must deal with the emotional and physical resistance of her compulsive gambler husband when she asks for a divorce. Though she hopes she is on the verge of making a clean break, her husband demands his family back, and things get violent. Jake Atwood, who witnesses the shocking scene between Celeste and her husband, struggles with his own emotional and ethical issues while attempting to help Celeste escape her marriage. At the same time, Jake is involved with Sara, a married and childless police detective who has a private agenda to pursue when a crime is committed that links all of these characters together and changes their lives forever. With heart-pounding suspense and brilliant psychological insight,
CLEAN BREAK will leave readers breathless.

Stash:

Gwen Raine is a woman readers will instantly recognize: an attractive, thirtyish stay-at-home mom who lives in the kind of tranquil suburban community where the wives spend their days ferrying the kids to and from school and music lessons and nature camps and where the husbands work long, grueling hours at stressful white-collar jobs in order to maintain the upscale standard of living to which the whole family has become all-too-accustomed. It’s a milieu in which everything seems to be right—yet so much can go wrong.
 

And it does—starting with a seemingly minor decision that turns Gwen’s perfect life upside down. It’s a typical Friday morning in late summer and Gwen is anticipating a long-awaited weekend away at the lake with her overworked husband, Brian, and their two small children. After dropping her daughter off at swim class, Gwen drives across town to purchase a small bag of marijuana from an old flame. She’s counting on the pot to help her unwind later that night in those precious private moments with Brian after the kids are asleep. Then, on the way home, Gwen gets into a car accident—an accident that leaves her bruised and somewhat battered but leaves the other driver (an elderly man who crossed over into her lane) dead. The local police know the accident isn’t her fault, but when they find the marijuana in Gwen’s car, they throw the book at her. There have been problems with drugs in the schools and they want to crack down on abusers, whoever and wherever they are. Before long, Gwen is in legal hot water—and the temperature keeps rising. Finally, under pressure from the police, her attorney, and her own husband, she reveals her source’s name.

Meanwhile, Brian is embroiled in a moral and legal dilemma of his own when the big pharmaceutical company he works for markets an anti-anxiety drug for "off-label" use as a weight-loss aid, only to discover that it can have deadly consequences. And Gwen’s former lover Jude, a local restaurateur and the supplier of the stash of the title, has gotten in way over his head with his little side business.

Told from multiple perspectives and revolving around a diverse set of vividly imagined characters, this rich, ambitious, and deeply satisfying novel takes a mordant look at our society’s ambivalent and often hypocritical attitude toward all manner of mood-altering substances, legal and illegal. Paced by psychological suspense and an ever-thickening plot, Stash ultimately is about the moral complications that arise when a modern woman’s fierce determination to do the right thing collides head-on with human fallibility and desire.

Share with me who is one of your favorite male authors and the winner will receive a $10 amazon gift card FROM me so you can purchase the book of your choice--hopefully you will choose one of these amazing books by one of these very talented authors I've highlighted here!! 

If you wanna play with Manic, you gotta read this:
If you're new to Booking with Manic, thank you for stopping by! We love new readers! Some notes - If you're entering to win a book, please leave a comment on this post and use an identifying name when commenting. It's usually a great idea to include an email, which I will never give out to anyone else. You can only enter once please. You'll need to check back here in a few days to see if you've won the book -- I will either list the winner in a new post OR highlight the winner's name at the top of this post, or tell you where you can find the winner's name at the top of this post. I do NOT personally contact the winners. It is YOUR responsibility to come back to see if you've won. Most books are supplied directly through publishers, publicists and the authors. Winners will receive books directly from the publisher or author within 3 weeks from the time you provide me with your address, unless I send you the book (sometimes I will). Sorry, but we can only ship to U.S. and Canada so if you're from another country, thank you for coming by to read and discover new authors, but we can't send you a book. Any questions on how I run the blog or suggestions on who you would like to see featured, please email me at stephanieelliot[at]gmail.com. Thank you for your support!