EmpowerMoms

The Berenstain Bears Bless Our Gramps and Gran (Berenstain Bears/Living Lights) by Mike Berenstain

This book focuses on explaining “Grandparents Day” (which is in September) as Mama and Papa help the cubs decide how to honor them on a rainy day. I love the Living Lights series because it focuses on family, faith and values using scripture references and bible stories.

They also included great suggestions in the back of book to help celebrate Grandparents day. My 7 year old LOVES Berenstain Bear books and we look forward to getting the newest book!

I received a copy of this book complimentary for blog and social media review. All opinions are my own.

About the Book:
In The Berenstain Bears Bless Our Gramps and Gran, the newest title in The Berenstain Bears Living Lights series, Mama, Papa, and the cubs decide it’s high time they honor Grizzly Gramps and Gran.
It’s almost Grandparents Day and the Bear family has never celebrated this special day before. So working as a team, the cubs, with a little help from Mama and Papa, come up with a fun and creative way to show Gramps and Gran just how much they are loved and appreciated.

Age Range: 4 – 8 years
Grade Level: Preschool – 3
Series: Berenstain Bears/Living Lights
Paperback: 24 pages
Publisher: Zonderkidz (July 11, 2017)

Purchase your copy here:

About the Author:
Stan and Jan Berenstain introduced the first Berenstain Bears books in 1962. Mike Berenstain grew up watching his parents work together to write about and draw these lovable bears. Eventually he started drawing and writing about them too. Though Stan died in 2005 and Jan in 2012, Mike continues to create the delightful Bear adventures from his studio in Pennsylvania, in an area that looks much like the sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country.

“Mind Games” by Stephanie Black

This story was fast paced, thrilling but a little confusing at times. Natalie is a psychologist and is excited to open her own mental health clinic to help others but things aren’t going as she had planned. She tries to work with her friend Gideon to figure out why Heather is “haunting” her new clinic and why someone doesn’t want her to be successful.

“Mind Games” was well written and had a lot of twists and turns that I enjoyed. The story obviously dealt with serious concerns like mental health and mental illness. I would classify “Mind Games” as a thrilling suspense book.

I received a copy of this book complimentary for blog and social media review. All opinions are my own.

About the Book:
Psychologist Natalie Marsh’s dream is now reality: her mental health services clinic has opened and is housed in an elegant, newly renovated nineteenth-century building. Unfortunately, not everyone is happy with the clinic’s presence, including Heather Osbourne, a troubled young woman who wholly objects to the occupation of the building. Heather has spent years wandering the halls of the abandoned structure, convinced she’s communing with her ancestor’s ghost. When Natalie thwarts Heather’s attempt to leap from a window, the shaken psychologist soon realizes Heather’s failed jump is merely one piece of a disturbing puzzle. Greed and deceit are weaving a web around Natalie, and someone will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get what they want. Stretched to her breaking point, Natalie struggles to learn the truth, but only one thing is clear: nothing is as it seems.

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To Wager Her Heart (A Belle Meade Plantation Novel, Book 3 of 3) by Tamera Alexander

“To Wager Hear Heart” is book 3 in the Belle Meade Plantation series but each novel are “standalone novels” meaning that each book is a complete story and can be read independent of the others. But if you’re planning to read them all, the author encourages readers to read them in order.

I have not read the other books in this series, but I did enjoy this historical romance. I really liked Alexandra and her love for learning and wanting to teach others. After the death of her finance, she finds herself cast our of her house after choosing to teach at a university. She isn’t impressed with Sylas at first, especially because of his ties to the railroad, but they start to lean on each other and help each other through tough circumstances.

This book was rich with history and very accurate for the time period and events represented. I enjoyed reading it and it got me interested in reading other books by this author.

I received a copy of this book complimentary for blog and social media review. All opinions are my own.

About the Book:
Sylas Rutledge, the new owner of the Northeast Line Railroad, invests everything he has into this venture, partly for the sake of the challenge. But mostly to clear his father’s name. One man holds the key to Sy’s success–General William Giles Harding of Nashville’s Belle Meade Plantation. But Harding is champagne and thoroughbreds, and Sy Rutledge is beer and bullocks.

Seeking justice . . .

Sy needs someone to help him maneuver his way through Nashville’s society, and when he meets Alexandra Jamison, he quickly decides he’s found his tutor. Only, he soon discovers that the very train accident his father is blamed for causing is what killed Alexandra Jamison’s fiancé–and has shattered her world.

Struggling to restore honor . . .

Spurning an arranged marriage by her father, Alexandra instead pursues her passion for teaching at Fisk University, the first freedmen’s university in the United States. But family–and Nashville society–do not approve, and she soon finds herself cast out from both.

Through connections with the Harding family, Alexandra and Sy become unlikely allies. And despite her first impressions, Alexandra gradually finds herself coming to respect, and even care for this man. But how can she, when her heart is still spoken for? And when Sy’s roguish qualities and adventuresome spirit smack more of recklessness than responsibility and honor?

Sylas Rutledge will risk everything to win over the woman he loves. What he doesn’t count on is having to wager her heart to do it.

With fates bound by a shared tragedy, a reformed gambler from the Colorado Territory and a Southern Belle bent on breaking free from society’s expectations must work together to achieve their dreams – provided the truth doesn’t tear them apart first.

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Biography
Tamera Alexander is a USA Today bestselling author and one of today’s most popular writers in the historical fiction genre. She and her husband live in Nashville, Tennessee, not far from the Southern mansions that serve as the backdrop for six of her award-winning novels. For more about Tamera’s books, visit www.TameraAlexander.com

More about the book here:
http://tameraalexander.com/books/belle_meade_plantation_novels/to_wager_her_heart

About the Book:
Olivia Dalton has a reputation in the DA’s office—tough, thorough, and fierce when she’s closing a case. Those skills are essential in the courtroom, but not in the relationship department—until Mick Donovan crosses her path. Everyone thinks he’s a player, but when an unexpected situation arises, she glimpses an honorable man instead. Olivia is drawn to him, but he pushes her away, unable to shake the past that still haunts him. Can he ever let down his guard long enough to let her in and take a chance at love?

Keep watching Author Julie Bellon’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJulieCoulterBellon/ to find out the exact release date in October!