Get Ready for the Holidays...

Have you started your holiday shopping yet? I haven’t and I already feel some
panic coming on. I do know that books and gift certificates for bookstores will
be at the top of my list this year. I love giving books and I think in next
month’s column I’ll share some of my favorite reads from this past year. That
is if I can whittle them down to a few. I swear it was an AMAZING year for
books. And there are still more to come.

There are several November releases you should check out. Here’s a short list:

I'm a big fan of Alyson Noel and her latest in the Immortal series is Shadowland. In this one Damen and Ever travel to Summerland in search of an antidote to reverse a powerful poison. But instead of the cure they seek, they find something more sinister: the truth about their existence and the fate lying in wait of an immortal’s soul. Damen fights to save them from the Shadowland, and Ever turns to magick to break Damen’s curse. She also encounters the mysterious Jude, and is drawn to him in a way that tests her love for Damen like never before. "The Immortals series was inspired by the time, a few years back, when I lost three people I loved in five months, and then nearly lost my husband to leukemia (he’s in full remission now!)" Noel says. "Experiencing that sort of loss and grief got me thinking a lot about life and death, mortality and immortality, and how we can still feel a bond with our loved ones even after they’re gone. I knew I wanted to explore those themes in a book, and Ever and Damen’s story was born from there.

"The research for this series has been a blast! I read a ton of books on
psychics, mediums, near death experiences, and all sorts of metaphysical stuff,
took a three day psychic development seminar with world famous medium, James
Van Praagh, and even went under hypnosis for a few past life regressions with
Dr. Brian Weiss—all of which found its way into the book, and was fascinating,
eye opening, and fun!"

There’s a whole lot of under water lovin’ going on in Wild Blue Under, by Judi Fennell. "Rod Tritone, hero of my second Mer story, Wild Blue Under, didn’t exist when I started writing the first story, In Over Her Head," says Fennell. "It wasn’t until the heroine, Erica, met the hero, Reel, and laughed and said 'Oh? You have a friend Rod around here somewhere?' To which Reel replied, "Actually, he’s my twin brother. He’s in chare of the South Atlantic.' Who knew? I certainly didn’t. The challenge came in not doing the same story I'd done in the first one, which was a Human diving into the world under the sea. So I decided to make the Merman come onto land. And voila! 'Wild Blue Under' grew wings, which will make sense when you read the book." The husband and wife team who write under Anthea Lawson have a new book out called All He Desires. Far from home and her noble relatives, Miss Caroline Huntington has been injured in a fall from her horse. Called to her side, Alex Trentham knows he must assist her, though he has not practiced as a physician for a long while. Just to see so lovely a woman in a state of undress is a hard test of his self-control. Caroline is all that is warm and feminine, beautiful and pure. Brave to a fault, she does not flinch under his hands, and soon she is on the mend. Alex struggles to hide his feelings, knowing that his dark past shadows any hope of a future. "My mom is one of our beta readers," says the wife part of the writing team. "She keeps it very professional and copy-editor- like, so when she got completely eared up near the end of the book, we knew we’d done our job. We hope other readers enjoy this love story and the powerful emotional journey the hero must take." In Abby Gaines' Her Secret Rival all Megan Merritt wants to do is win a lucrative divorce case, and her dad will appoint her as head of the family law firm. There’s just one problem: Her opposing counsel, Travis Jamieson, is extremely distracting. It doesn’t help that he also has his eyes set on Megan's job. "I’m very interested in birth order – how our place in the family affects our personality and the challenges we face in life. I’m an oldest child myself, so it's easy for me to write characters who are the oldest in their family. In Her Secret Rival, Mega is the middle of three daughters. I had to put myself in my sister’s whose while I wrote this book. It was fascinating…not mention it gave me some insight into my own middle child’s sometimes impenetrable thought processes." PRIME EVIL, a new urban fantasy novel from author Heather Long, explores the charms and intrigues of hedge witch Chance Monroe. In her first full-length novel,Long takes readers to the farm rich countryside of Northern Virginia as hedge witch Chance Monroe fights for her way of life when serial killer Randall Oakes returns from the dead. Chance must confront a troubled past, a supernatural adversary and a sizzling passion that’s lain dormant for years.

Well, that's it for this month, see you next with more news...Candy

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Candy is a nationally syndicated entertainment columnist, who has interviewed just about every celebrity there is in Hollywood and written thousands of articles. She is the author of the Charmed & Dangerous series including Charmed & Ready Charmed & Dangerous, Charmed & Deadly, and Like A Charm. Her latest book The Demon King and I is available now!

Her non-fiction prose includes Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy, and essays in Alias Assumed: Sex, Lies and SD-6, and Five Seasons of Angel. She's also the entertainment critic providing the latest on TV, film and celebs for the radio station 96.3 KSCS. And she's the managing editor for FYI Television.

You can visit Candy daily at her blog or her website