I received an offer not too long ago from St. Martin's Press for two free ebooks - the first two in the Claire Ferguson/Russ Van Alyne series by Julia Spencer-Fleming. They were giving them away to celebrate the sixth in the series coming out in hardcover.

I totally devoured the first two. And swapped for the third, using my PaperbookSwap account. Which I highly recommend if you're into trading books and looking for older titles.

Just purchased the fifth in the series with a Borders coupon which we get for being such excellent customers and having a Borders Card. Now looking for the fourth by hook or by crook, since it's been out for a bit and harder to find.

I CANNOT recommend this mystery series enough. It's from a first-time author who hit the ball right outta the park with her first novel (putting yet more nails in the naysayers who claim that no one gets published without contacts) and won a slew of awards right out of the gate. It's an excellent read involving a Priest and a Police Chief with a touch of romance and more than enough twists and turns to make the trip well worth it for every volume to date. If you're looking for a good series with a tough ex-army broad kicking butt while wearing a clerical collar and an ex-'Nam vet dealing with his own demons, go search this series out.

'nuff said.

p.s. Our computer has totally died, so we're going to have to go shopping tonight for a new one. Oh, joy.

p.p.s. D-Man - nothing here. At least I blogged about a good book, eh? And you can find it in stores!

:D

found this while surfing around the web:

Ten things to look for when submitting to small presses

it goes without saying that if you're considering submitting to a small press/micropress that this article should be your first and best set of guidelines to start asking questions.

sure, some small pubs/micropresses may fall short of some of the requirements but if you're only grabbing two or three out of the ten, well... let's just say that you may want to reconsider.