Reviews For WHISKEY SHOTS Volume 11 by Barri Bryan

"Whiskey Shots Volume 11 is an anthology of three short stories that touches on love in one form or another.

First is the story of Pandora Penholt. Pandora is pure and innocent and very superstitious. She sees the man of her dreams when she sees Chance Chastain the first time outside her store window. She runs to Sister Favors, the local charlatan and con woman psychic. Sister knows who Chance is, and the sexy bad boy doesn't know what hits him when Sister puts him in her crosshairs. She tries to milk Pandora for as much money as she can and at the same time win Chance any way she can. Throw these three in a mix and you have Pandora's Box.
When the plan is hatched and the dust settles the end result is a surprise to everyone.

Next is the haunting story of Clytie's Pond. The pond has a history that goes back to the early 1900's. History states that a man drowned in 1906, followed by a woman in 1927. It becomes clear in the 1970's that there might be something to local legend when Jason Redgraves drowns. Deidere St. Claire is thought to be insane when she is found many times running naked around the pond calling to her phantom lover Jason. She is kept in the local institution for five years until she escapes and is found drowned at Clytie's pond. Now, tall, dark, and handsome, Tom Sullivan is at Clytie's Pond. Is the pond cursed? Is the only way to escape the evil there is to capture another soul to replace the one waiting? Or is it really an Eden on Earth? Is it worth the cost to find out?

Then there is the last of the three stories: The Homecoming Dance. Susan Daniels is at her 20 year Homecoming Dance. She is there with her husband of eleven years, when the ex-husband she hasn't seen in more than fifteen years asks her to dance. Her ex, now a free man, lets her know he wants to spend time with her. Susan comes to face several hard truths. Which man will she choose? The man she does choose is the love of her life.

Whiskey Shots Volume 11 is a short anthology but it is a quick read and it throws three different stories together and makes for an interesting read.
There wasn't a lot of heat in the romance department, but I did like that it was an easy quick read.” Reviewed by Melisa, Euro-Reviews

Sample Chapter For WHISKEY SHOTS Volume 11 by Barri Bryan

THE HOMECOMING DANCE
It was a small-town, little-school homecoming dance, resembling all the small-town, little-school homecoming dances that had come before it, similar to all those that would follow after. A wide but worn WELCOME ALUMNI banner stretched across the entrance to the gymnasium. Red balloons clung to the high ceiling. Blue and white crepe paper festooned the rough walls. On the improvised stage at the north end of the building a five-piece band played a slow waltz.

The majority of the dancers who crowded the floor had reached the top of the hill of life. A few of them would even admit to having begun the swift descent down the other side. They had brought with them to this gathering, a mixture of delicate memories and dreamy recollections. They would come away feeling nostalgic, sentimental, and vaguely disappointed without knowing why.

Susan Daniels stopped at the gymnasium door, looked around the high domed structure, and sighed, as bittersweet memories stirred the sleeping past to life. In the space of a heartbeat, twenty years fell away, and Susan was seventeen again. In her mind’s eye she could see herself standing at the end of the gym with her friend, Leslie Norton, watching an occasional local dignitary make a late entrance. After two decades, the events of that evening were as vividly etched in her memory as if they had happened yesterday. That was the night Ross Ryan had roared into her life like a fast-moving tornado.

“Don’t look now,” Leslie had said as she grabbed Susan’s arm. “But Ross Ryan just came through the door.”

“I see him and he’s alone.” Susan could not imagine a third year college man who had been the captain of his high school football team and the president of his senior class, coming stag to a homecoming dance. Her heart skipped a beat as she stared in adoring wonder. “He’s so handsome.”

With an arrogant toss of his blond mane, Ross strode across the crowded floor, turning heads, eliciting sighs from females and collecting looks of envy and resentment from males. He seemed completely indifferent to the stir he was creating as he smiled and threaded his way through the dancing couples.

Leslie squealed with delight. “He’s coming our way.” She placed her hand over her heart and sighed. “He’s going to ask me to dance, I just know it.”

CLYTIE’S POND
Clytie’s Pond is a sylvan glade, a pastoral paradise hidden behind a thick growth of tangled undergrowth .By the time Tom Sullivan learns its dark secret, it’s too late…
The countryside was alive with the splendor of early spring. Lacy new green erupted along gnarled branches of scrubby mesquites. Stately oaks boasted burgeoning green sprouts. Grass punched through the barren ground. A long line of electrical poles running endlessly from east to west was the scene’s only concession to civilization. Birds perched on the wires, clinging tenaciously as they surveyed the world around them in somber silence. A chill lingered in the air, refusing to be seduced by the caressing breeze that blew from the south.

Deirdre St Claire stopped the car on the side of the road and let her gaze wander across the fence toward the tangled growth of underbrush on the other side. Five years had not altered the entrance to her remembered Eden. She set the emergency brake, unfastened her seat belt, and stepped onto the soft ground. Memories, as fresh and green as the grass beneath her feet, plagued the present with sharp insistence, sending a shiver down her backbone. The magic that others chose to call madness had begun here.

Looking over her shoulder, she stared down the road, all the way to the point where it became one with the horizon. No one had followed. “But they will come.” Her voice was harsh against the sighing breeze. “Just as they came before, to accuse and to blame, to judge what they don’t know and to censure what they can’t understand.”

She stepped across the ditch, stooped and squeezed between two strands of the barbed wire. Fire ants had taken up residence along the fence row. Her boot heel sank into a soft mound. Retaliation was swift and sure. In a second, one leg of her jeans was covered with angry, stinging ants. She stamped her foot and used her hand to brush the fierce attackers away. One persistent avenger clung to her sleeve and fastened itself to her bare wrist. She crushed him with her thumb and forefinger; a throbbing pain and a small clear blister remained as souvenirs.

Just beyond the tangle of underbrush lay Clytie’s Pond, her sylvan glade—her pastoral paradise. Ducking her head, she made her way through the tangled undergrowth. Thorns scraped her hands. A stubborn twig scratched across the softness of her cheek. Eagerness made her unmindful of the abuse. With a flutter of anticipation she stepped from the tangle of growth and into the clearing. The birds pitched their voices in sudden song. A warm stir of air settled over the chill. The fascination of Clytie’s Pond once more held sway.

PANDORA’S BOX
Pandora Penholt was a most prudent person. She was careful to knock wood when boasting of good fortune. Crossing her fingers when she told a lie, even a small one, was a reflexive gesture. Never would she have dreamed of spitting against the wind or whistling in the dark. She had been known to throw salt over her left shoulder. And she gave a wide berth to black cats and leaning ladders.

Pretty Pandora seldom left anything to the whirl of fortune’s giddy wheel. To ward off evil spirits she wore a crystal amulet suspended on a silver chain around her neck. For protection from chants and curses she twined a crimson ribbon through her long flaxen tresses. A topaz ring on the third finger of her right hand shielded her from diseases. As an extra precaution, a four-leaf clover, pressed in plastic, was partner to the rabbit’s foot that hung from her key chain.

To further protect herself from the many vicissitudes of life, Pandora had become a diligent student of the supernatural. She was familiar with the prophecies of seers and the predictions of physics. Daily she sought the sage advice of her newspaper’s horoscope. She had even struggled with the strange revelations of Nostrodamas—such deep and devious predictions. Pandora was confounded, but not defeated. She reasoned, with a shake of her long blond tresses, that sooner or later this terrific tome would be published in a condensed edition. Pandora also possessed the beggar’s virtue, patience.

Chance Chastain was a handsome young cowboy. Broad of shoulder and narrow of hips, he had the face of an Adonis and the mind of a budding Einstein. But sad am I to say, inside his manly, hirsute chest beat the heart of a modern-day Don Juan. Our hero’s clay feet were firmly mired in moral muck. He boldly burned the candle at both ends and insisted on sowing, with reckless abandon, wild and wicked oats.

It was inevitable that somewhere along the rocky road of life the winsome and the wayward would meet. The fist of fortune loves to deal such spiteful blows. The converging of the prudent Pandora and the charming Chance was further complicated by Fate.

I speak now, not of the clever catalyst that leaps in the dark, goes out on a limb and skates on thin ice. The Fate I refer to is Sister Fate Favors, a paranormal psychic with a passing ability to play hunches and a willingness to capitalize on the folly of her fellow human beings. Sister Favors had the face of a China doll, complete with blank stare, painted mouth and paperweight eyes that opened and closed with the moving of her head. That head, crammed with devious and dilatory designs, was fastened to a corpulent body of mammoth proportions that swelled and bulged in ever increasing folds from the last of her multiple chins all the way down to tiny size five feet.

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