From the back cover: What do Sunday afternoon court proceedings, cheerleader tryouts, and a book burning have in common? Katie McCabe is back in action.

After her nemesis Harvey is found guilty and sentenced to community service, Katie wants to believe her troubles are over, but Harvey won’t rest until he gets revenge. When blackmail rears its ugly head, she’s caught between friends and enemies putting her growing relationship with Tom at stake. Books go up in flames and Katie’s world rains down in tatters.

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There will definitely be more to come for this book, I will have a preview widget and all the rest. So, stay tuned….

Copyright © 2008
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$12.99 Paperback
$25.99 Hard Cover
$14.99 Pocketbook
$ 2.99 E-Book
262 pages

When I saw Minnie posted for review request, I knew I wanted to review it even before I read the preview. There was just something about it that appealed to me and drew me in. In fact, I put dibs on the book before I read the preview, and then realized I had better do my homework first and find out exactly what I was getting myself into. My instincts were spot on, because as I read the preview, I knew the protagonist for Minnie was my kind of character.

Sadey Leach has reached her senior year of high school, is barely scraping by in her classes, and her ability to graduate is in question because she has not completed the compulsory number of volunteer hours required during her high school career. Sadey is very Goth girl in her appearance, black hair, black clothes, heavy dark makeup, and has an irreverent and uncaring attitude she projects to the world. With an attitude as black as her appearance, and bouts of underage drinking and experimentation with pills, Sadey Leach appears to be on a self-destructive path with no redeeming features.

Minnie is a fluffy grandmotherly type of seventy-nine who resides at Forest Hills Convalescent Hospital and is confined to a wheelchair. Minnie is very lonely, as she does not frequently have visitors and has been praying that God will send her a friend to give her some company. On Sadey’s first volunteer day, she wheels Minnie, who says she feels like Queen Wilhelmina when someone pushes her chair, to the table for dinner.

     “This is Hell! This is Hell!” Sadey said behind clenched teeth as a resident’s fart entered her vicinity.
     “Please don’t say that.” Sadey glanced down at Queen Wilhelmina as she fought with a bib.
     “What?”
     Wilhelmina sat as straight as she could. “Young lady, God frowns upon swearing.”
     Sadey bent down close to the woman’s ear. “I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to work for twenty-four hours because I want to get out of this Hell-hole called Woodridge.” Sadey fastened her bib and moved on, rolling her eyes so hard she thought she damaged the nerves.
     Wilhelmina felt the intended sting by the girl’s words. Lord, when will You bless me with that friend? She knew that getting something as grand as a friend wouldn’t come easy and without complications like the girl with thick makeup masking her face like an oil change gone wrong.

As the character of Sadey develops, we find her public persona is simply a defense mechanism against the situations in her life. Saddled with an alcoholic mother who has an endless parade of men coming through the house, and the responsibility of caring for her three year old sister because her mother didn’t want the baby and refuses to care for her, Sadey is barely hanging on. All of her mother’s income goes to alcohol and cheap cigarettes, so Sadey finds odd jobs where she can to help provide food for herself and Cora. The closest thing to a mother-daughter relationship Sadey has experienced in her life, is when her mother left discarded magazines for Sadey to read. Relying on her neighbors, Mira and Darius Finn, to watch Cora while she volunteered at the nursing home alleviated one of the issues in Sadey’s complicated life.

After a few more visits at the Convalescent Center, Minnie invites Sadey to unburden herself to a willing listener when she’s ready, and shortly after Sadey takes her up on the offer. Through their growing relationship, Sadey learns that while Minnie looks the part of the archetypal grandmother, Minnie has had a hard past, yet has a sweet soul and a positive attitude toward life. Sadey becomes the friend Minnie had been praying for, and through Minnie’s influence, Sadey is changing not only her appearance, but her attitude and outlook on life.

Ashley Lane spins a tale which has all of the elements of a good story; love, loss, growth, relationships, hardship, drawing the reader in from page one. As I read Minnie I was reminded of the following quote:

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone’s written the story. He’s supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment. ~ Jack Vance

In a few broad strokes, Lane paints the picture of two souls who were meant to meet, and the impact they have on one another ripples out to their surroundings. Minnie espouses good Christian values without being preachy, and shows how overcoming bad circumstances is possible. It contains a message of hope and love which is uplifting. Even the cover, though simple, conveys a message to the reader. A sunny background, a wheelchair, and a butterfly, all add up to a message of hope and the circle of life. Ashley Lane delicately and deftly depicts characters at both ends of the spectrum, one entering adulthood, and one nearing the end. She captures the feelings of loneliness and invisibility which plague our aging population, and equally well portrays teenage angst at its height. The peripheral characters are also excellently portrayed and I feel like I know them; they could all live in my neighborhood. I laughed and cried, and the characters have stayed with me days after finishing the book, which is what we look for from a good read.

Preview Minnie by Ashley Lane

Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review

The Simplest of Acts: And Other Stories is a short collection of short stories. In only 102 pages, Melanie Haney manages to take us into the hearts and lives of eleven separate individuals. My hat is off to anyone who can write a short story, because as hard as I try, I am never able to limit myself to telling just a snippet of the story. Haney not only masters the short story format, but she also spins a tale rich with emotion which gives you a glimpse into another’s soul during those quiet moments in life. In The Simplest of Acts: And Other Stories, the story themes are primarily about loss and grief, however, there are moments of hope shining through. Life as seen through vignettes, Haney take you into the mind of her character, shows you what you need to see and feel, and then is off to the next story.

This is one of the few books that I have re-read before writing the review. I read it through the first time with complete enjoyment of the mastery of Melanie Haney’s craft, and then read it the second time through with an eye as to what to highlight for a review. Haney has a very strong voice which she uses in each of the pieces of first person, stream of consciousness style. She also picks those quiet moments in life, not the big parties or events, but the mother sitting at the side of her daughter’s hospital bed, waiting for the inevitable; the yearning to leave the small town life and see the world; the death of a cat; the loss of mind and more.

While I enjoyed every story in the book, I will only highlight a few of the stories which are my favorites. Haney opens the book with An Ordinary Evening, in which a mother is struggling to have an ordinary evening away from the hospital. Her daughter has been in a tragic accident and is a mere shell, and exceptionally unlikely to recover. We pick the story up at the point where the mother has maintained a vigil at the daughter’s bedside for months, only leaving to see a therapist at periodic intervals. The therapist is recommending Claire spend a normal evening at home, cook herself dinner, sleep in her own bed. In addition to this, Claire’s ex-husband wants her to consider pulling the plug because their daughter deserves to be put to rest.

I wake up alone in the bed we once shared, but didn’t last night. I muse for a moment how the conversation will go with Dr. Tanner. Will his calm and concerned expression hold steady, when I tell him our experiment in ordinary nearly ended with me sleeping with my ex-husband on the living room floor.

In Only in Bellington we meet Emmy, who is tired of working and living in a small town. She has been saving her money while working at Quality-Sure and once she reaches $10,000, she’s going to leave the dust of Bellington behind. Before her death, her mother always wanted to travel and see the world, and Emmy takes after her. While still $3,000 short of her goal, her father, who Emmy lives with, introduces a new girlfriend and Emmy considers that she has enough to move on. At the start of the story, Emmy is waiting for her break to be over, not joining those in the break room.

….. It smells and it’s loud with her coworker’s constant chatter. Who’s sleeping with who this week? Who did what in the storeroom? Where’re they going drinking this weekend? None of which matters to Emmy. She’s here for her paycheck, the weekly reminder that she’s one stop closer to leaving this town.
This town is Bellington. It is five thousand people living in five square miles of houses built practically on top of one another and a one-way Main Street that’s a quarter mile of Mom ‘n Pop stores and one Quality-Sure (purveyors of all your drugstore needs at low prices you can count on.) There’s only once chain restaurant, a McDonalds built in the sixties, whose owner panicked when rumors blew into town that a Burger King might franchise out their direction. It never came though, and to this day, Emmy asserts it as proof that you can’t have it your way in Bellington.

Only in Bellington and The Simplest of Acts are both award-winning stories. The Simplest of Acts centers around the death of a beloved mother and Eve, the oldest daughter, visiting the house prior to the funeral to gather inspiration for writing the eulogy. This story in particular hit home with me as it seems that I have been to too many funerals, and the preparation that comes along with them.

One of my favorite stories in the collection is Shoes, Falling because while having a realistic view of what can happen in life, it is also the story which has the most hope, and is a little more lighthearted than the rest. Daisy, a paycheck to paycheck waitress, has fallen into a construction hole at her apartment complex and broken her ankle. Daisy is an optimist, and definitely someone who practices making lemonade when life hands her lemons. She lives in the apartment complex with her daughter Theresa, who sometimes becomes a little exasperated with her mother’s optimistic view. Perhaps I enjoyed this story so much because Daisy reminds me very much of my own mother, and like Theresa, I am ever trying to get her to see the world in a realistic way and to protect her from being taken advantage of.

The only criticism I have with The Simplest of Acts: And Other Stories is the formatting of the book. The lines are double spaced and the paragraphs are not justified. This is not significant enough of an issue to keep anyone from reading it. Reformatting the book would reduce the page count even further, which would allow Ms. Haney room to include a few more stories. Which would be a good thing because what I wanted most after reading all of the stories was more. A fantastic job by Melanie Haney.

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Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review.

Nowhere Feels Like Home

Nowhere Feels Like Home picks up from the exciting conclusion of Misfit McCabe and continues the saga of Katie McCabe and the McCabe family. Katie McCabe finds herself facing the demons of the past as she convalesces with a broken ankle. Everyone keeps trying to make her talk about what happened when she broke her ankle and all Katie wants to do is forget the whole thing happened. She becomes even more frustrated when Uncle Charley tells her she can’t talk about her experiences with anyone at school.

Nowhere Feels Like Home unveils some of the McCabe family secrets and brings Katie to a better understanding of the past she has never known.

To preview Nowhere Feels Like Home, click the Read Free Sample button below.

To listen to the Author Spotlight show with Chris Treece as he interviews LK Gardner-Griffie about Nowhere Feels Like Home click the below:

About Nowhere Feels Like Home:

Stuck in bed with a broken ankle and reeling from the loss of her father, her home, and life as she knew it, Katie McCabe must deal with her anger toward the town bully and a world that’s fallen apart. Being cooped up in the house with Uncle Charley and three overprotective cousins isn’t helping. Despite her new family’s good intentions, Katie feels like a lonely outsider. Will she ever be happy again?

To purchase Nowhere Feels Like Home, go to the Bookstore menu at the top of the page.

As summer was coming to an end, accidentally burning down a shed became the least of 14 year old, Katie McCabe’s problems. Having lost her mother when she was just a baby, Katie was shattered to learn that her father was seriously ill. Hustled off to live with Uncle Charley while her father was hospitalized, Katie struggles with accepting her changing life. On her first day in town, she meets Harvey Jr., and they quickly become adversaries. As the warfare between Katie and Harvey escalates, involving trips to the vice principal’s office, cheating, lies, and vandalism, she battles homesickness and fear that her life could be changing forever.

And for the plug for Nowhere Feels Like Home?

What happens Next to Katie?

Nowhere Feels Like Home doesn’t miss a beat as it picks up from the exciting conclusion of Misfit McCabe. Stories from the past, old friends, and new threats all converge while Katie McCabe copes with a broken ankle and trying to fit in with her new family.

Misfit McCabe

The fire department quickly put out the flames and Katie was appalled by the destruction she had accidentally caused.

This had to be the worst day of her life.

Little did she know it was only the start.

To preview the first two chapters of Misfit McCabe, click the Read Free Sample button below.

To purchase Misfit McCabe, go to the Bookstore menu at the top of the page.