Cheryl's Book Nook

First, Arty finds a sweaty, bearded ax-swinging warrior Dwarf scaring his dogs. Soon enough, Emma, Cry, and other middle-school friends also find fairy creature—Elves, Spriggans, Pixies, and a hoped-for Dragon—crashing into their normal homework-doing, backpack-carrying, phone-charging schooldays. Why are these magical beings here? What should be done? Is that ax sharp? Can Pixies be given aspirin? Arty, with his friends—and spying jerks and questionable strangers with long names—follow the clues and try to find out, even as things turn dark and dangerous. The mythical beings take sides. The Gwyllion, that legendary Old Woman of the Mountains, has a sinister plan that will turn the neighborhood into a fantasy battleground. My Review This is a fun and entertaining book. Middle grade readers as well as adults can both enjoy this book together.  The grand adventure that Arty, Emma, and his other friends found themselves in the middle of was one for the story books. The c...

Ryan Francis has it all—great job, wonderful wife, beautiful child—and he loves posting photos of his perfect life on social media. Until the night his friend Blake asks him to break into a woman’s home to retrieve incriminating items that implicate Blake in an affair. Ryan refuses to help, but when Blake threatens to reveal Ryan’s darkest secret—which could jeopardize everything in Ryan’s life—Ryan has no choice but to honor Blake’s request. When he arrives at the woman's home, Ryan is shocked to find her dead—and just as shocked to realize he knows her. Then his phone chimes, revealing a Facebook friend request from the woman. With police sirens rapidly approaching, Ryan flees, wondering why his friend was setting him up for murder. Determined to keep his life intact and to clear his name, Ryan must find the real murderer—but solving the crime may lead him closer to home than he ever could have imagined. My Review I am a fan of this author but the last book was a bit o...

In the latest thriller from  New York Times  bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls? What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors . His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism. Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, ...

Blessed with a high emotional IQ, Phinn Reed enters the world with the promise of finding his soul mate. With heaven’s memories erased, his romantic quest teaches him that the heart often sees clearer than the eyes—and that not everyone has ordered the same items from The Menu . Evidence that love stories come in many different forms, The Menu is a spiritual journey involving more than just a man and a woman; it is a modern-day tale that reaches far beyond the boundaries of reason. My Review I have read several books by Mr. Manchester. One common theme throughout all of the books is what life Mr. Manchester infuses into his characters. So much that they transform from just characters in a story to people that you can relate to. Mr. Manchester is a prolific writer. The book starts out with God speaking to Phinneas Michael Reed aka Phinn. He let's him pick all of the different human traits like love, faith, etc. Although, God lets him know he will have to take the bad wit...

Bob Goff is on a mission to shake people into the version of their lives they dreamt about before someone told them it was impossible or incorrect. He wants people to reconnect with the seat of their passion and their person. He wants them to dream big. In this revelatory new book, Goff takes readers on a life-proven journey to rediscover their dreams and turn them into reality. Based on his popular Dream Big workshop, Bob draws on a lifetime of living and dreaming large to help guide readers to reaching their larger-than-life dreams. In  Dream Big  he shows us how to: learn to define clearly your dreams for yourself, identify the obstacles holding you back, come up with a specific plan for reaching goals, and develop the tools that will help you act on the plan. Dream Big  is the only book you need to uncover the wild and exciting dream for your life you’ve hidden from yourself–and help you take the steps necessary to achieve it. My Review I di...

Jane’s a very brave boy. And a very difficult girl. She’ll become a remarkable woman, an icon of her century, but that’s a long way off. Not my fault, she thinks, dropping a bloody crowbar in the irrigation ditch after Daddy. She steals Momma’s Ford and escapes to Depression-era San Francisco, where she fakes her way into work as a newspaper copy boy. Everything’s looking up. She’s climbing the ladder at the paper, winning validation, skill, and connections with the artists and thinkers of her day. But then Daddy reappears on the paper’s front page, his arm around a girl who’s just been beaten into a coma one block from Jane’s newspaper―hit in the head with a crowbar. Jane’s got to find Daddy before he finds her, and before everyone else finds her out. She’s got to protect her invented identity. This is what she thinks she wants. It’s definitely what her dead brother wants. My Review I liked this time period book. It does seem authentic in the way that back in this time pe...