text:
Allison has
60 books in
Title: Cold Feet At Christmas
Author: Debbie Johnson
Pages: 222 p
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
I wanted something light and romantic and I got what I wanted. Leah and Rob were an irresistable couple and I was cheering them on, even though their path to togetherness was drawn out. I enjoyed the Cavelli family members as secondary characters.
Running out on your wedding shouldn't be this much fun!
A remote Scottish castle on a snowy Christmas Eve. A handsome husband-to-be. A dress to die for. It should have been the happiest day of Leah Harvey's life – but the fairytale wedding turns sour when she finds her fiancé halfway up the bridesmaid's skirt just hours before the ceremony!
Fleeing the scene in a blizzard, Leah ends up stranded at the nearest cottage, where she collapses into the arms of its inhabitant – a man so handsome she thinks she must have died and gone to heaven!
And when Rob Cavelli suddenly finds himself with an armful of soaking wet, freezing cold, and absolutely gorgeous bride on the run, he's more than happy to welcome her into his snowbound cottage this Christmas…
Title: The Thirteenth Tale
Author: Diane Setterfield
This was a re-read for my book group. I don't remember when I originally read it. I remembered the ending but not the details. And I enjoyed it as an audio--read by Lynn Redgrave and Ruthie Henshall, both outstanding voice actors.
Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment above her father's antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain's most prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. The request takes Margaret by surprise — she doesn't know the author, nor has she read any of Miss Winter's dozens of novels.
Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter's personal story, Margaret begins to read her father's rare copy of Miss Winter's Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.
As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter's account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story.
Both women will have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets... and the ghosts that haunt them still.
Title: Here I Am
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
I don't know if I would have finished this if I eyeball read it instead of listening to it. And although there are a few minor complaints about the voice actor, I enjoyed his narration. I liked the humor, although this is not a comedy. I liked the secondary characters. What I didn't like is the frenetic feel--there's so much going on! I wasn't sure where to focus my attention.
God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, and Abraham replied obediently, 'Here I am'.
This is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. Over the course of three weeks in present-day Washington, DC, three sons watch their parents' marriage falter and their family home fall apart. Meanwhile, a larger catastrophe is engulfing another part of the world: a massive earthquake devastates the Middle East, sparking a pan-Arab invasion of Israel.
With global upheaval in the background and domestic collapse in the foreground, Jonathan Safran Foer asks us: what is the true meaning of home? Can one man ever reconcile the conflicting duties of his many roles - husband, father, son? And how much of life can a person bear?
Title: The Girls
Author: Emma Cline
I can't decide if I liked this book or not. It's a solid coming-of-age story set in turbulent 1969 and loosely based on the female followers of Charles Manson. I am not sure if the present day sections really needed to be there.
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl's life when everything can go horribly wrong.
Title: Jackaby
Author: William Ritter
I thought this was an interesting blend of Sherlock and Dr. Who. It's considered Young Adult--I enjoyed it. I will read more of the series.
"Miss Rook, I am not an occultist," Jackaby said. "I have a gift that allows me to see truth where others see the illusion--and there are many illusions. All the world's a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain."
Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary--including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby's assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police are convinced it's an ordinary villain, but Jackaby is certain it's a nonhuman creature, whose existence the police--with the exception of a handsome young detective named Charlie Cane--deny.
Title: Rebecca
Author: Daphne Du Maurier
I kept forgetting this novel was written in the 1930s. The story unfolds gradually but it creates tension. There's so much to it--it's a mystery, a gothic horror, a creep fest, a coming of age story, and a romance--it's a juicy story! I liked the atmosphere. I liked the twists! I liked how the main character developed through the story--really blossoming from a shrinking violet to a bold rose. I liked the interplay between the secondary characters. I didn't like the overwrought analysis of the main character--she would play out long imaginary scenarios and conversations. This classic has definitely influenced the genre!
Title: Before the Fall
Author: Noah Hawley
I liked how sensationalism and the current media climate (all news-all the time!) are part of the commentary of this novel. I liked the backstories and how they added to the tension of the story. I do have a couple of lingering questions, a big spoiler question, that I can't wait to talk to my book group about.
There's much for us to discuss, I can't wait!
On a foggy summer night, eleven people--ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter--depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs--the painter--and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members--including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot--the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers' intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.
Title: Dear Mr. Knightley
Author: Katherine Reay
I liked this book--it's told in a series of letters, which are like journal entries. I liked how the main character, Samantha "Sam" Moore, discovers herself and develops from a withdrawn, socially awkward girl to a thoughtful, confident young woman. Her transformation is not easy and it's also not cliche.
Samantha Moore survived years of darkness in the foster care system by hiding behind her favorite characters in literature, even adopting their very words. Her fictional friends give her an identity, albeit a borrowed one. But most importantly, they protect her from revealing her true self and encountering more pain.
After college, Samantha receives an extraordinary opportunity. The anonymous "Mr. Knightley" offers her a full scholarship to earn her graduate degree at the prestigious Medill School of Journalism. The sole condition is that Sam write to Mr. Knightley regularly to keep him apprised of her progress.
As Sam's true identity begins to reveal itself through her letters, her heart begins to soften to those around her—a damaged teenager and fellow inhabitant of Grace House, her classmates at Medill, and, most powerfully, successful novelist Alex Powell. But just as Sam finally begins to trust, she learns that Alex has secrets of his own—secrets that, for better or for worse, make it impossible for Sam to hide behind either her characters or her letters.
Title: Rivers of London
Author: Ben Aaronovitch
It's the first book of a series that is new to me and I can't wait to read more--or rather, listen to more. The narrator added a lot and the imperfect editing enhanced my enjoyment--it felt like the characters were sitting around my living room telling me the tale. This is outside my typical genre but it was funny and clever and kept me paying attention. It's not high literature but it is a fun escape.
My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly valuable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden... and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.
Title: Tell Me Three Things
Author: Julie Buxbaum
I can't decide if I'm going to fangirl or rave about this book--but I LOVED IT!
1) The characters are fleshed out and real teenagers
2) The parents aren't cliches
3) Grief is dealt with realistically
Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that's what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she's thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?
It's been barely two years since her mother's death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.
In a leap of faith—or an act of complete desperation—Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can't help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?
Title: The Underground Railroad
Author: Colson Whitehead
What a grim, gritty, uplifting journey this book is. I don't have the words to express the sadness, horror, and joy I sometimes felt. History at a raw, intense moment in time. Masterfully told. I couldn't stop, I had to know what was happening next. It unfolds in the style of a slave narrative--the action without internal dialogue and emotion.
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hellish for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned and, though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor - engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven - but the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. Even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Title: Fogged Inn
Author: Barbara Ross
It's #4 in the series and I think it's my favorite. The Maine flavor is spot-on. And I liked the twists, I didn't figure it out!
An autumn chill has settled over Busman's Harbor, Maine, but Julia Snowden is warming up the town by offering lobster stew at the local diner. When her landlord discovers a dead body in the walk-in refrigerator, Julia must figure out who ordered up a side of murder.
Nothing's colder than a corpse--especially one stashed inside a sub-zero fridge. The victim spent his last night on earth dining at the restaurant bar, so naturally Julia finds herself at the center of the ensuing investigation. Lost in the November fog, however, is who'd want to kill the unidentified stranger--and why. It might have something to do with a suspicious group of retirees and a decades-old tragedy to which they're all connected. One thing's for sure: Julia's going to make solving this mystery her early bird special…
Title: Iced Under
The 5th installment of the Maine Clambake Series and I think it's one of the best! It's set during the Clambake's off season, in a stormy February, and a lot of the action takes place in Boston--but the change of scenery helps develop Julia's character. I hope no one thinks the description of winter storms is an exaggeration!
The snow is deep in Maine's Busman's Harbor and the mighty rivers are covered in ice. Snowden Family Clambake Company proprietor Julia Snowden and her mother, Jacqueline, are hunkered down for the winter when a mysterious package arrives—heating up February with an unexpected case of murder.
Inside the mystery package is an enormous black diamond necklace that once belonged to Julia's great-grandmother and disappeared in the 1920s. Who could have sent it—and why? Julia's search for clues takes her on a perilous journey through her mother's troubled family history, from a squabble over the family fortune in "frozen water" to the recent unexplained death of Jacqueline's long-lost cousin Hugh—who'd been missing and presumed drowned for more than forty years. To protect her mother's inheritance, Julia must fend off a small army of feuding relatives, solve the mystery surrounding Hugh's demise, and get back home before the next blizzard buries them all.
Title: The Fireman
Author: Joe Hill
It's a pandemic, apocalyptic, dystopian novel that had me up at night! Author Joe Hill made a virus, Draco incendia trychophyton, also known as Dragonscale, and had infected people burst into flame--frequently infecting other people around them. The hero of the novel, Harper, an elementary school nurse, volunteers at the local hospital as the infection spreads; when the hospital burns down, she gets infected. She also discovers that she is pregnant--her husband, Jakob is not infected.
No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she's discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob's dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.
Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn't as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter's jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.
In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.
Title: In a Dark, Dark Wood
Author: Ruth Ware
I could not put this down. An eery thriller. A tense, odd assortment of people gathered together for a bachelorette party that erodes to chaos. Told mostly through flashback, the stage is set for a sinister event.
Nora hasn't seen Clare for ten years. Not since Nora walked out of school one day and never went back.
There was a dark, dark house
Until, out of the blue, an invitation to Clare's hen do arrives. Is this a chance for Nora to finally put her past behind her?
And in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room
But something goes wrong. Very wrong.
And in the dark, dark room....
Some things can't stay secret for ever.
Title: Every Exquisite Thing
Author: Matthew Quick
This isn't a typical YA novel. It's like splashing cold water on the face. Plus, it's a book about a book! It's kind of a roller coaster ride--I laughed, I cried!
Didn't you ever just simply want to…stop?
Star athlete and straight-A student Nanette O'Hare has played the role of dutiful daughter for as long as she can remember. But one day, a beloved teacher gives her his worn copy of The Bubblegum Reaper—a mysterious, out-of-print cult classic—and the rebel within Nanette awakens.
As the new and outspoken Nanette attempts to insert her true self into the world with wild abandon, she befriends the reclusive author and falls in love with a young, troubled poet. Forced to make some hard choices that bring devastating consequences, Nanette learns the hard way that rebellion can sometimes come at a high price.
Title: What I Loved
Author: Siri Hustvedt
I can't figure out my thoughts about this book. Did I like it? Well... not especially. But I did feel compelled to keep reading it. Art is a character as much as any of the people are. It bends genres. I'm interested to talk about it--hearing what my fellow book groupers think will help me sort out my thoughts.
A powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages
What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship.
Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the evolution of the growing involvement between his family and Bill's-an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men; their wives, Erica and Violet; and their children, Matthew and Mark. The families live in the same building in New York, share a house in Vermont during the summer, keep up a lively exchange of thoughts and ideas, and find themselves permanently altered by one another. Over the years, they not only enjoy love but endure loss-in one case sudden, incapacitating loss; in another, a different kind, one that is hidden and slow-growing, and which insidiously erodes the fabric of their lives.
Intimate in tone and seductive in its complexity, the novel moves seamlessly from inner worlds to outer worlds, from the deeply private to the public, from physical infirmity to cultural illness. Part family novel, part psychological thriller, What I Loved is a beautifully written exploration of love, loss, and betrayal-and of a man's attempt to make sense of the world and go on living.
Title: The Sherlockian
Author: Graham Moore
What I liked about the two narrative threads is how they captured the times. Although both storylines lagged in places, it was a fun mystery.
In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines, anticipating the detective's next adventure, only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning -- crowds sported black armbands in grief -- and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin.
Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained this sudden change of heart. After his death, one of his journals from the interim period was discovered to be missing, and in the decades since, has never been found.
Or has it?
When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold - using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories - who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer.
Title: Bellweather Rhapsody
Author: Kate Racculia
It's a mystery, a ghost story, a coming-of-age story, and a romance set at a state-wide high school music festival that is snowed in by a record-breaking blizzard at a shabby, run-down major hotel.
A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from a hotel room that was the site of a famous murder/suicide fifteen years earlier, in a whip-smart novel sparkling with the dark and giddy pop culture pleasures of "The Shining," Agatha Christie, and "Glee"
The playlist:
Title: The Promise Girls
Author: Marie Bostwick
I'm so excited about this book! I was drawn into the story by the end of the first chapter. Then the second chapter had me flipping pages at break-neck speed! It's a sister story.
Every child prodigy grows up eventually. For the Promise sisters, escaping their mother's narcissism and the notoriety that came with her bestselling book hasn't been easy. Minerva Promise claimed that her three "test tube" daughters--gifted pianist Joanie, artistic Meg, and storyteller Avery--were engineered and molded to be geniuses. In adulthood, their modest lives fall far short of her grand ambitions. But now, twenty years after the book's release, she hopes to redeem herself by taking part in a new documentary.
Meg, who hasn't picked up a paintbrush in years, adamantly refuses to participate, until a car accident leaves her with crushing medical bills. While she recuperates in Seattle, the three sisters reluctantly meet with filmmaker Hal Seeger, another former prodigy. Like them, he's familiar with the weight of failed potential. But as he digs deeper, he uncovers secrets they've hidden from each other--and a revelation that will challenge their beliefs, even as it spurs them to forge their own extraordinary lives at last.
Title: If I Was Your Girl
Author: Meredith Russo
I'm going to start with the author's afterward: she deliberately wrote Amanda to be fully physically and hormonally transitioned, very feminine, extremely pretty, and always attracted to men. She also writes that whatever the reader's gender identity is, that it's ok. Amanda's story is just a story, not a handbook for transition. The author created a character with universal appeal.
I really liked Amanda's voice. I liked Amanda's friends. And her parents. I will recommend it to my students.
Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school in Lambertville, Tennessee. Like any other girl, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret. There's a reason why she transferred schools for her senior year, and why she's determined not to get too close to anyone.
And then she meets Grant Everett. Grant is unlike anyone she's ever met—open, honest, kind—and Amanda can't help but start to let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she finds herself yearning to share with Grant everything about herself…including her past. But she's terrified that once she tells Grant the truth, he won't be able to see past it.
Because the secret that Amanda's been keeping? It's that she used to be Andrew.
Title: The Whole Town's Talking
Author: Fannie Flagg
I liked this book quite a bit--I think my book group will have a lot to talk about.
Elmwood Springs, Missouri, is a small town like any other, but something strange is happening at the cemetery. Still Meadows, as it's called, is anything but still. Original, profound, The Whole Town's Talking, a novel in the tradition of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and Flagg's own Can't Wait to Get to Heaven, tells the story of Lordor Nordstrom, his Swedish mail-order bride, Katrina, and their neighbors and descendants as they live, love, die, and carry on in mysterious and surprising ways.
Lordor Nordstrom created, in his wisdom, not only a lively town and a prosperous legacy for himself but also a beautiful final resting place for his family, friends, and neighbors yet to come. "Resting place" turns out to be a bit of a misnomer, however. Odd things begin to happen, and it starts the whole town talking.
With her wild imagination, great storytelling, and deep understanding of folly and the human heart, the beloved Fannie Flagg tells an unforgettable story of life, afterlife, and the remarkable goings-on of ordinary people. In The Whole Town's Talking, she reminds us that community is vital, life is a gift, and love never dies.
Title: Language Arts
Author: Stephanie Kallos
Charles Marlow teaches his high school English students that language will expand their worlds. But linguistic precision cannot help him connect with his autistic son, or with his ex-wife, who abandoned their shared life years before, or even with his college-bound daughter who has just flown the nest. He's at the end of a road he's traveled on autopilot for years when a series of events forces him to think back on the lifetime of decisions and indecisions that have brought him to this point. With the help of an ambitious art student, an Italian-speaking nun, and the memory of a boy in a white suit who inscribed his childhood with both solace and sorrow, Charles may finally be able to rewrite the script of his life.
This is a complex story. It's a study of family, friendship, art, and love. But it's more than that. The narrative shifts between present and past, with different points of view--it takes awhile for the threads of the story to weave together, but stick with it because it's a lovely, beautiful book.
Title: The Little Lady Agency
Author: Hester Browne
A rom-com romp of a book. Melissa is a bit too naive, and her family is quite stereotypically dysfunctional, but I had fun with this book and will definitely read more in the series!
When sweet, naive Melissa seeks a job with her old Home Economics teacher she is half way through the interview before it dawns on her that Mrs McKinnon isn't interested in her cookery skills, but is in fact running an escort agency. Melissa panics, but she needs the cash - and what harm can providing lonely men with stimulating conversation over dinner do? More exciting still, she'll get to wear a disguise...Enter her alter ego: Honey. As flirty and feminine as a Bond girl, as confident and sexy as Mary Poppins in silk stockings, Honey brings out a side to Melissa she never knew she had. A side that will get her into hot water, (and out of it) and that she'll never want to lose...
Title: Hillbilly Elegy
Author: J.D. Vance
I can't quite figure out my reaction to this book. I listened to the audio version and JD Vance narrates--and he's pretty good but he's not a professional voice actor. It is the June selection for my book group and I suspect there will be a lively discussion.
From a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.
Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love." They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family. But Vance cautions that is only the short version. The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life and they, and Vance himself, still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history.
Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region. This demographic of our country has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, and Vance provides a searching and clear-eyed attempt to understand when and how "hillbillies" lost faith in any hope of upward mobility, and in opportunities to come.
At times funny, disturbing, and deeply moving, this is a family history that is also a troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large portion of this country.
Title: My Name Is Lucy Barton
Author: Elizabeth Strout
I'm not quite sure what to say about this book. It's sparse and there are few answers. But in this case, the halting narration makes sense. I really liked it.
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy's life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
Title: The Railwayman's Wife
Author: Ashley Hay
"Such fascinating things, libraries. She closes her eyes. She could
walk inside and step into a murder, a love story, a complete account
of somebody else's life, or mutiny on the high seas. Such potential;
such adventure—there's a shimmer of malfeasance in trying other
ways of being."
― Ashley Hay, The Railwayman's Wife
I loved this book. It's a beautiful examination of life after a loss--the loss of a loved one, the loss of witnessing war, and how self-identity is forced to change because of the loss. The setting is a character, too, though, the small, coastal town on the edge of New South Wales, Australia. Ani, Mac, Roy, Isabel, Frank, Iris, and Mrs. May are characters that I felt for, genuinely felt for. It's lovely. A lovely book.
When Anikka Lachlan's husband, Mac, is killed in a railway accident, she is offered—and accepts—a job at the Railway Institute's library and searches there for some solace in her unexpectedly new life. But in Thirroul, in 1948, she's not the only person trying to chase dreams through books. There's Roy McKinnon, who found poetry in the mess of war, but who has now lost his words and his hope. There's Frank Draper, trapped by the guilt of those his medical treatment and care failed on their first day of freedom. All three struggle to find their own peace, and their own new story.
But along with the firming of this triangle of friendship and a sense of lives inching towards renewal come other extremities—and misunderstandings. In the end, love and freedom can have unexpected ways of expressing themselves.
The Railwayman's Wife explores the power of beginnings and endings, and how hard it can sometimes be to tell them apart. Most of all, it celebrates love in all its forms, and the beauty of discovering that loving someone can be as extraordinary as being loved yourself.
Title: The Hate U Give
Author: Angie Thomas
This book is wonderful. It's politically relevant, yet the tragedy doesn't destroy the characters--so there's hope, humanity, and even some humor.
"Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right."
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
"Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared."
"I can't change where I come from or what I've been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me?"
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Title: The House I Loved
Author: Tatiana de Rosnay
This work of historical fiction focuses on Parisian history I didn't know about. It was a fascinating look at how we identify ourselves with home and the family we choose. There are passages quite lovely to savor. I'm interested to see what my book group makes of it--this is one I liked but didn't love.
"The more I read, the hungrier I become. Each book seemed promising, each page I turned offered an escapade, the allure of another world, other destinies, other dreams."
― Tatiana de Rosnay, The House I Loved
Paris, France: 1860's. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a "modern city." The reforms will erase generations of history—but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand.
Rose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the old house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change that come closer and closer each day. Attempting to overcome the loneliness of her daily life, she begins to write letters to Armand, her beloved late husband. And as she delves into the ritual of remembering, Rose is forced to come to terms with a secret that has been buried deep in her heart for thirty years.
Title: Anything Is Possible
This is a companion book to My Name Is Lucy Barton; the author says that as she wrote Lucy Barton, she knew the characters that are mentioned had compelling stories that had to be told.
It's a series of linked short stories. And I loved it. Each of these stories is full of aching humanity. Each is full of real people. Strout is a master storyteller.
Written in tandem with My Name Is Lucy Barton and drawing on the small-town characters evoked there, these pages reverberate with the themes of love, loss, and hope that have drawn millions of readers to Strout s work.
"As I was writing My Name Is Lucy Barton," Strout says, "it came to me that all the characters Lucy and her mother talked about had their own stories—of course!—and so the unfolding of their lives became tremendously important to me."
Here, among others, are the "Pretty Nicely Girls," now adults: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband, the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. Tommy, the janitor at the local high school, has his faith tested in an encounter with an emotionally isolated man he has come to help; a Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD discovers unexpected solace in the company of a lonely innkeeper; and Lucy Barton's sister, Vicky, struggling with feelings of abandonment and jealousy, nonetheless comes to Lucy's aid, ratifying the deepest bonds of family.
Title: Dreamland Burning
Author: Jennifer Latham
Some bodies won't stay buried. Some stories need to be told.
When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past, the present, and herself.
One hundred years earlier, a single violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what's right the night Tulsa burns.
The two narrative threads in this story are equally compelling. And the cast of characters are diverse without being cliches. I was afraid this would be a book about whiny middle-class teenagers faced with racial injustice but it's a well-crafted historical mystery. Racial tensions from the Jim Crow 1920s are mirrored in contemporary racial tensions. And, in all honesty, I didn't know about the history of the Tulsa race riots. Both narrators' story arcs show resilience and growth.
It's timely without being preachy.
Title: The Dry
Author: Jane Harper
The author did a great job making the drought and heat claustrophobic. I was sucked in from the start. The narrative shifts from the present to twenty years ago, revealing more about the characters and leading to the ultimate answers. A great debut--I can't wait to read more from this author!
When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to Kiewarra for the funerals, he is loath to confront the people who rejected him twenty years earlier. But when his investigative skills are called on, the facts of the Hadler case start to make him doubt this murder-suicide charge.
And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, old wounds start bleeding into fresh ones. For Falk and his childhood friend Luke shared a secret... A secret Falk thought long-buried... A secret which Luke's death starts to bring to the surface...
Title: Into The Water
Author: Paula Hawkins
I won't compare this to the author's breakthrough debut novel The Girl On The Train. The narrative shifts from past to present, linking the characters through stories told about the women in the water. I'm not quite sure who the main character is--there are many different perspectives here (and sometimes I got a little confused as to who was talking): Danielle, known as Nel's death triggers her sister's (Julia, known as Jules) return to the small, gloomy town of Beckford. Other narrators include Sean Townsend (Detective Inspector), Nickie (local madwoman), Lena (Nel's daughter), Mark (Lena's teacher), Louise (Katie's mother), Erin (policewoman), Patrick (Sean's father), and Helen (Sean's wife). Although there is quite a cast of narrating characters, the story is really about the folklore of Beckford's river. A story with many, many layers.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Title: Opening Belle
Author: Maureen Sherry
I didn't care for this book. Much too whiny. I don't really know why I bothered to finish it.
A whip-smart and funny novel told by a former Wall Street insider who reveals what it's like for a working woman to balance love, ambition, and family in a world of glamorous excess, outrageous risk-taking, and jaw-dropping sexism.
In 2008, Isabelle—a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star—appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else. Her trading desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle's already full lap.
Enter Henry, the former college fiancé she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret "glass ceiling club" whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work. All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give—and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her world and her need to keep her colleagues' hands to themselves.
Title: Beartown
Author: JFredrik Backman
I liked how the author creates real characters-both young and old-within the town. That no one is all hero or all villain, that prejudice is multi-faceted and that there are quiet heroes among us. It's a thought-provoking, emotional novel. It's about family of blood and choice, it's about loyalty, it's about friendship, and all the positives and negatives these complex parts of our lives have.
I think it helps that I enjoy hockey, so I understood the passion the community has for the sport. It's not just a sport! It's a character in the novel.
The author is quite a story teller.
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.
Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.
Title: The Almost Sisters
Author: Joshilyn Jackson
I really enjoyed this book! The characters are relatable, real, and funny. It might seem like light contemporary lit, but it's actually got some deeper issues going on. I couldn't put it down!
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy--an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.
Title: Still Life
Author: Louise Penny
I loved this book--it's the first of a series. It's a traditional mystery, not quite a cozy, and the setting is literally close to home in Quebec Province, Canada. I love the unusual, eclectic characters--from the unhurried Chief Inspector Armand Gamache to his right-hand man, Jean Guy Beavior, to the arrogant young Yvette Nichol, all unraveling the threads of this web of deception. The townspeople are intertwined in interesting ways and they create quite a community, grieving for the loss of Jane Neal, whose death is being investigated.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
Title: Homegoing
Author: Yaa Gyasi
It's more like reading linked short stories instead of one narrative. However, it is so beautifully linked that it wasn't difficult to trace who was who. It's for my library reading group's August selection and I think we'll have a lot to discuss. It's wonderfully, almost painfully researched--no glossing over the history of Africans selling Africans into the white slave trade of the 1600s, to Jim Crow era US history.
Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Title: Superficial
Author: Andy Cohen
I just love Andy Cohen and all things Bravo. And the audio version is like sitting and gabbing with him.
Since the publication of his last book, Andy has toured the country with his sidekick Anderson Cooper, hit the radio waves with his own Sirius station, Radio Andy, appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher despite his mother's conviction he was not intellectually prepared, hosted NBC's Primetime New Year's Eve special, guest edited Entertainment Weekly, starred in Bravo's Then & Now with Andy Cohen, offended celebrities with his ongoing case of foot-in-mouth disease, and welcomed home Teresa "Namaste" Giudice, from a brief stint in jail. Hopping from the Hamptons to the Manhattan dating world, the dog park to the red carpet, Cardinals superfan and mama's boy Andy Cohen, with Wacha in tow, is the kind of star that fans are dying to be friends with. This book gives them that chance.
If The Andy Cohen Diaries was deemed "the literary equivalent of a Fresca and tequila" by Jimmy Fallon, Superficialis a double: dishier, juicier, and friskier. In this account of his escapades—personal, professional, and behind-the-scenes—Andy tells us not only what goes down, but exactly what he thinks of it.
Title: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
I was captivated by the premise of an aging starlet revealing the person behind the glamor. I loved that Evelyn owned all the parts of herself--her persona, her fight to build that persona, and the reality of who she was away from the cameras. This book was better than I expected. I was drawn into the two narrative threads and came to care for both. And I forgot it's fiction. To me, that's the sign of great storytelling.
Title: The Bookshop on the Corner
Author: Jenny Colgan
A book about books! It's a book about reinventing yourself. It's a book about taking chances. I want to read all of the books mentioned, it's a shame they don't exist. And now I want to go to Scotland! There are so many awkwardly funny characters, I loved it! It's a chick-lit rom-com and truly delightful.
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there's plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that's beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.
Title: This Is How It Always Is
Author: Laurie Frankel
I loved the range of emotions I felt with this book. I loved the quirky, fully developed characters. I loved the complex relationships. I loved the author's voice--quite like having a late-night, in depth conversation with a great friend. It's thought-provoking and eye-opening.
The story focuses on the Walsh-Adams family: parents Rosie and Penn and their five sons, including Claude and his struggle with gender dysphoria. It's the story of the impact of Claude's struggle on each sibling and both parents.
This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change…and then change the world.
This is Claude. He's five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They're just not sure they're ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude's secret. Until one day it explodes.
This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it's about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don't get to keep them forever.
Title: What To Say Next
I like how the story is told from the dual narratives of David Drucker and Kit Lowell. I like the cast of secondary characters--that the adults are not necessarily stupid or bad. I may like David a bit more than Kit. It's quite a good book--quirky, full of ups and downs, heartbreaks and laugh-out-loud moments.
Sometimes a new perspective is all that is needed to make sense of the world.
KIT: I don't know why I decide not to sit with Annie and Violet at lunch. It feels like no one here gets what I'm going through. How could they? I don't even understand.
DAVID: In the 622 days I've attended Mapleview High, Kit Lowell is the first person to sit at my lunch table. I mean, I've never once sat with someone until now. "So your dad is dead," I say to Kit, because this is a fact I've recently learned about her.
When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David. Kit appreciates David's blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit's attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad's tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they'll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?
Title: Emmy & Oliver
Author: Robin Benway
I liked the honesty of these teens--they were authentic to what I see as a teacher.
Emmy's best friend, Oliver, reappears after being kidnapped by his father ten years ago. Emmy hopes to pick up their relationship right where it left off. Are they destined to be together? Or has fate irreparably driven them apart?
Emmy just wants to be in charge of her own life.
She wants to stay out late, surf her favorite beach—go anywhere without her parents' relentless worrying. But Emmy's parents can't seem to let her grow up—not since the day Oliver disappeared.
Oliver needs a moment to figure out his heart.
He'd thought, all these years, that his dad was the good guy. He never knew that it was his father who kidnapped him and kept him on the run. Discovering it, and finding himself returned to his old hometown, all at once, has his heart racing and his thoughts swirling.
Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. In Emmy's soul, despite the space and time between them, their connection has never been severed. But is their story still written in the stars? Or are their hearts like the pieces of two different puzzles—impossible to fit together?
Title: The Book That Matters Most
Author: Ann Hood
This is the best kind of chick-lit! A book about books! The characters are real and flawed, even secondary characters. Ava, the main character seemed a bit naive and oblivious to the realities of her world, but that didn't distract. Although Ava is the main character, the stories of both her daughter and her mother and aunt fleshed out the action.
I especially enjoyed the book group's discussions. And I love the themes the group chooses yearly.
Ava's twenty-five-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group's goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood—one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava's story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man. Ava's mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.
Title: Truly Madly Guilty
Author: Liane Moriarty
As a fan of Liane Moriarty's writing, I will say this is not her best work. But, that doesn't mean it's not a good book; my author expectations prevent me from loving it. Meh. I'd recommend it to someone who doesn't want a heavy read.
I wasn't thrilled with the construction of the book, it flips from "present day" to the build up of and "THE EVENT" chapter by chapter. It was slow and drawn out. I couldn't relate to either of the main characters, either. Each is flawed and human, but neither is memorable, really. With all the build up to THE EVENT, it was actually predictable and a bit flat.
Despite their differences, Erika and Clementine have been best friends since they were children. So when Erika needs help, Clementine should be the obvious person to turn to. Or so you'd think.
For Clementine, as a mother of a two desperately trying to practise for the audition of a lifetime, the last thing she needs is Erika asking for something, again.
But the barbecue should be the perfect way to forget their problems for a while. Especially when their hosts, Vid and Tiffany, are only too happy to distract them.
Which is how it all spirals out of control...
Title: Gilead
Author: Marilynne Robinson
My Rating: Did Not Finish
I can't do it. I can't finish it. There aren't many books that I put down but I just can't do it. I don't care about the characters, the plot has no action, and I just don't care enough to wade through page-long descriptions.
Title: 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas
Author: Marie-Helene Bertino
I don't know why I put off reading this book--it was a charming surprise! The three central characters' stories blended together delightfully. It was funny, quirky, original, and musical.
Madeleine Altimari is a smart-mouthed, precocious nine-year-old and an aspiring jazz singer. As she mourns the recent death of her mother, she doesn't realize that on Christmas Eve Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day—and night—of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she's determined to make her on-stage debut. On the same day, her fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene, who's just moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush, afraid to hope that sparks might fly again. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever, unless someone can find a way to quickly raise the $30,000 that would save it.
Except the ending was weird.
Title: The Secret Place
Author: Tana French
The author does a remarkable job capturing the voices of teenage girls. The two main groups of girls are something I see in the halls at school daily: the flippant attitude, the struggle against stereotypical girl behaviors, the intense closeness of female bonding. The build up of tension in the dual narratives is well-pitched, too. The detectives' working relationship is carefully crafted and rings with authenticity. The question of class and privilege is interestingly throughout the novel and intricately woven into all of the characters' dealings.
The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says, I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.
Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. The Secret Place, a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.
But everything they discover leads them back to Holly's close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen's links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda's will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly's father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.
Title: The Queen of the Tearling
Author: Erika Johansen
I could not put this down. I don't even know how to describe it--it's both Young Adult and Adult, it's fantasy, it's political, it transported me.
An untested young princess must claim her throne, learn to become a queen, and combat a malevolent sorceress in an epic battle between light and darkness in this spectacular debut—the first novel in a trilogy.
Young Kelsea Raleigh was raised in hiding after the death of her mother, Queen Elyssa, far from the intrigues of the royal Keep and in the care of two devoted servants who pledged their lives to protect her. Growing up in a cottage deep in the woods, Kelsea knows little of her kingdom's haunted past . . . or that its fate will soon rest in her hands.
Long ago, Kelsea's forefathers sailed away from a decaying world to establish a new land free of modern technology. Three hundred years later, this feudal society has divided into three fearful nations who pay duties to a fourth: the powerful Mortmesne, ruled by the cunning Red Queen. Now, on Kelsea's nineteenth birthday, the tattered remnants of the Queen's Guard—loyal soldiers who protect the throne—have appeared to escort the princess on a perilous journey to the capital to ascend to her rightful place as the new Queen of the Tearling.
Though born of royal blood and in possession of the Tear sapphire, a jewel of immense power and magic, Kelsea has never felt more uncertain of her ability to rule. But the shocking evil she discovers in the heart of her realm will precipitate an act of immense daring, throwing the entire kingdom into turmoil—and unleashing the Red Queen's vengeance. A cabal of enemies with an array of deadly weapons, from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic, plots to destroy her. But Kelsea is growing in strength and stealth, her steely resolve earning her loyal allies, including the Queen's Guard, led by the enigmatic Lazarus, and the intriguing outlaw known simply as "the Fetch."
Kelsea's quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun. Riddled with mysteries, betrayals, and treacherous battles, Kelsea's journey is a trial by fire that will either forge a legend . . . or destroy her.
Title: The Invasion of the Tearling
The sequel did not disappoint! This book had more fantasy elements than the first book, but they were woven into the narrative well, it was a progression not an abrupt shift. This is a darker, more challenging read than the first. Although this book gives more insight into the dystopian 21st Century USA, I still have questions. Hopefully the third book will it up. I couldn't put it down!
Kelsea Glynn is the Queen of the Tearling. Despite her youth, she has quickly asserted herself as a fair, just and powerful ruler.
However, power is a double-edged sword, and small actions can have grave consequences. In trying to do what is right - stopping a vile trade in humankind - Kelsea has crossed the Red Queen, a ruthless monarch whose rule is bound with dark magic and the spilling of blood. The Red Queen's armies are poised to invade the Tearling, and it seems nothing can stop them.
Yet there was a time before the Crossing, and there Kelsea finds a strange and possibly dangerous ally, someone who might hold the key to the fate of the Tearling, and indeed to Kelsea's own soul. But time is running out...
Title: A Fool and His Monet
Author: Sandra Orchard
Lots of humor, action, and interesting characters. I'd even go as far as calling it campy. As a first in the series, there are lots of plotlines open--will Serena find love? Will her Aunt Martha get credit for assisting? And will Serena's cat, Harold, catch a mouse? And most importantly: will Serena ever solve her grandfather's murder? I can't wait to read more in the series!
Serena Jones has a passion for recovering lost and stolen art--one that's surpassed only by her zeal to uncover the truth about the art thief who murdered her grandfather. She's joined the FBI Art Crime Team with the secret hope that one of her cases will lead to his killer. Now, despite her mother's pleas to do something safer--like get married--Serena's learning how to go undercover to catch thieves and black market traders.
When a local museum discovers an irreplaceable Monet missing, Jones leaps into action. The clues point in different directions, and her boss orders her to cease investigating her most promising suspect. But determined to solve the case and perhaps discover another clue in her grandfather's murder, she pushes ahead, regardless of the danger.
Title: The Fate of the Tearling
The final installment of this trilogy--I couldn't put it down! It wrapped up a lot of the lingering questions I had from book two--The Invasion of the Tearling. I liked that the secondary characters were true to form. I didn't like that it was told in flashback as much as it was; I missed the action of Kelsea. Good storytelling!
In less than a year, Kelsea Glynn has grown from an awkward teenager into a powerful monarch and a visionary leader.
And as she has come into her own as the Queen of the Tearling, she has transformed her realm. But in her quest to end corruption and restore justice, she has made many enemies - chief among them the evil and feared Red Queen, who ordered the armies of Mortmesne to march against the Tear and crush them.
To protect her people from such a devastating invasion, Kelsea did the unthinkable - naming the Mace, the trusted head of her personal guards, Regent in her place, she surrendered herself and her magical sapphires to her enemy. But the Mace will not rest until he and his men rescue their sovereign from her prison in Mortmesne.
Title: Genuine Fraud
Author: E. Lockhart
I liked the set up of this book, once I realized there was nothing wrong with my audio--the narrative begins with Chapter 18 and unspools from there. That was cool. I didn't like the unreliable narrator, I didn't find anything to root for and she was kind of flat and predictable. Actually, I didn't like any of the characters. Sometimes there are some gray areas with characters and you can find something to identify with, but not in this case.
I didn't love the book. It was ok. I kept thinking about The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's a teen version with a female lead.
Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was.
Title: Hello, Sunshine
Author: Laura Dave
This was a perfect vacation book! Snappy dialogue, a major fall from grace, a redemption story of sorts, and a glamorous setting. I liked the social media aspect, it is making me reflect on my own use! I liked that the secondary characters are as flawed as the main character. I especially live the quirky child! I liked that the story isn't predictable. A quick read that made me think.
Sunshine Mackenzie has it all…until her secrets come to light.
Sunshine Mackenzie is living the dream—she's a culinary star with millions of fans, a line of #1 bestselling cookbooks, and a devoted husband happy to support her every endeavor.
And then she gets hacked.
When Sunshine's secrets are revealed, her fall from grace is catastrophic. She loses the husband, her show, the fans, and her apartment. She's forced to return to the childhood home—and the estranged sister—she's tried hard to forget. But what Sunshine does amid the ashes of her own destruction may well save her life.
Title: Oppression For The Heaven Of It
Author: Moore Bowen
My Rating: 2 out of 5 star
This is one I never would have picked up on my own--but read it for my book group. The author is a local person and might be an acquaintance of the book group member that selected it. It's a docu-fiction work, based on letters, conversations, medical and other records that captures how schizophrenia influences a mother and son. Quite a recounting of the mania and paranoia.
I don't quite know what to say about it. It's fascinating and heartbreaking.
Title: The Nix
Author: Nathan Hill
This is an ambitious novel. I think the author is trying to say too much. Social commentary on anti-war movements, the cultural obsession with social media, gaming culture, and plagiarism are a few of the threads of the story. And the cast of characters bumps into each other in amusing plot twists. It's epic.
It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paint Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she's facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel's help.
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye's losses but also his own lost love and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother and himself.
Title: News of the World
Author: Paulette Jiles
This is historical fiction done right! It's part adventure and the wild west is definitely a character. I loved the unlikely bond between grizzled 72-year-old war veteran Captain and the young orphan who'd been captured by Kiowa raiders. It's complex plot and I love the characters--I wish my friends would read it so I could talk about the wit and wisdom. The audio is amazing!
In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.
In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.
In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.
Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act "civilized." Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.
Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember - strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become - in the eyes of the law - a kidnapper himself
Title: Lincoln in the Bardo
Author: George Saunders
I'm glad I listened to this. It's a fascinating blending of 166 narrators. It's a blending of historical fact with a truly mind-bending fictional style. Because I listened to it, I don't know what it looks like on the page, I'll have to get my hands on a copy to see what it looks like.
The captivating first novel by the best-selling, National Book Award nominee George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son's body.
Set over the course of that one night and populated by ghosts of the recently passed and the long dead, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief, the powers of good and evil, a novel - in its form and voice - completely unlike anything you have read before. It is also, in the end, an exploration of the deeper meaning and possibilities of life, written as only George Saunders can: with humor, pathos, and grace.
Title: The Alice Network
Author: Kate Quinn
This is a fascinating dual narrative. One thread is the compelling story of female spies of WWI and the second thread is mid-1940s, the aftermath of war. I will say the WWI section captured me more than the 1940s section. It's part road-trip adventure, part redemption story, and all about friendship. I am excited to discuss this with my book group--it's rich and layered, with incredible detail.
Two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.
1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her "little problem" taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.
1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she's recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the "Queen of Spies", who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose.
Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth ...no matter where it leads.
Title: 84, Charing Cross Road
Author: Helene Hanff
What on earth took me so long to read this book??? This was a delight. A series of letters between an American writer and a British bookstore is any book-lover's fare. It's a book about friendship and books, wit and wisdom. I loved it!
Title: We Are Not Ourselves
Author: Matthew Thomas
This is an epic family saga. The writing is beautiful. At 640 pages (20 hours and 51 minutes), it's a bit long. There are gorgeously detailed snippets of everyday life.
Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed.
When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she's found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn't aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream.
Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.
Title: Uncommon Type: Some Stories
Author: Tom Hanks
This audiobook is narrated by Tom Hanks. I am a Tom Hanks fan because he seems like a genuinely nice guy. These seventeen short stories are just what you would expect from a nice guy. There were a couple I didn't enjoy, but overall this is a delightful collection. Quirky, thoughtful, and the overriding theme is the typewriter. I was truly charmed.
Title: A Redbird Christmas
It's a feel-good holiday read. Capturing life in a small town with close-knit neighbors. I'm not sure there's going to be much to discuss with my book group but it was a fun book.
Deep in the southernmost part of Alabama, along the banks of a lazy winding river, lies the sleepy little community known as Lost River, a place that time itself seems to have forgotten. After a startling diagnosis from his doctor, Oswald T. Campbell leaves behind the cold and damp of the oncoming Chicago winter to spend what he believes will be his last Christmas in the warm and welcoming town of Lost River.
There he meets the postman who delivers mail by boat, the store owner who nurses a broken heart, the ladies of the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots Secret Society, who do clandestine good works. And he meets a little redbird named Jack, who is at the center of this tale of a magical Christmas when something so amazing happened that those who witnessed it have never forgotten it.
Title: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant
Author: Drew Hayes
A weirdly fun story about para-humans. The book is set up as episodes, and each is a chance to learn more about Fred, the anxiety-riddled, socially awkward, non-violent vampire accountant and his crew of undead friends. I liked the cheeky tone of the book. I liked the quirky cast of characters.
Some fun quotes:
"Look, I'll tell you what I do, but you won't believe me." …
"Given that I just found you bound and gagged, my mind is somewhat more receptive than it might normally be."
"Well then, here's the deal," Krystal said as she sat down next to me. "Everything you think you know about monsters is a lie. Ghouls, ghosts, werewolves and more are real and hiding out behind the scenes in our world. Officially, they are known as parahumans."
"Albert died in an unfortunate accident sometime ago and was raised as a zombie by his amateur necromancer friend, Neil. Bubba was a new friend we had acquired in Vegas when helping him gain back the freedom he had previously gambled away. The fourth member of our group, a government agent and my girlfriend named Krystal, was out of town for work this week, thus I was conducting my first weekly scrabble tournament with just the three of us. Which leaves only me to be accounted for in the explanation. My name. which I hope you know by now. is Frederick Frankford Fletcher and I am a vampire, though still not the type that inspires swooning or terror."
Some people are born boring. Some live boring. Some even die boring. Fred managed to do all three, and when he woke up as a vampire, he did so as a boring one. Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort.
One fateful night – different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful – Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos that is the parahuman world, a world with chipper zombies, truck driver wereponies, maniacal necromancers, ancient dragons, and now one undead accountant trying his best to "survive." Because even after it's over, life can still be a downright bloody mess.
Title: The Map of True Places
Author: Brunonia Barry
The characters are real and flawed, but I don't know that I liked them. Setting is as much a character as any person is. There are a lot of plot threads that the author weaves together tightly.
A respected Boston psychotherapist, Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats. But the actions of a patient throw Zee into emotional chaos and take her back to places she though she'd left behind.
What starts as a brief visit home to Salem begins a larger journey. Suddenly having to care for her ailing father after his longtime companion moves out, Zee must come to terms with a strained and awkward relationship that has always been marked by half-truths and haunted by the untimely death of her mother. Overwhelmed by her new role, Zee must destroy the existing map of her life and chart a new course—one that will guide her not only into her future but into her past as well.
Title: Marlena
Author: Julie Buntin
I had to force myself to finish this. It is getting rave reviews, but I just don't understand the hype.
Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts—first drink, first cigarette, first kiss—while Marlena's habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try to forgive herself and move on, even as the memory of Marlena keeps her tangled in the past.
Title: St. Nick
Author: Alan Russell
This might become one of my go-to holiday reads.
It's not looking like a very merry Christmas for San Diego cop Nick Pappas. Suspended from his job, alienated from his family, and persecuted by the press, he's sorely tempted to turn his gun on himself. Except for his first name, he couldn't possibly have less in common with jolly old St. Nicholas. But when a local mall decides it needs a secret Santa to help collar some vicious muggers preying on its holiday shoppers, Nick's persuaded to red-suit up so as to take the naughty punks down and avert a ho-ho homicide. For a chance to bust bad guys, Nick's willing to deal with crying kids, pushy parents, and a chronically cheerful "elf" sidekick. But the biggest challenge for this cop-turned-Claus is one that would confound even the real Kris Kringle: making a pair of next-to-impossible Christmas wishes come true for two children in need…before it's too late.
Title: The Women in the Castle
Author: Jessica Shattuck
A World War II novel set just after the war focusing on the lives of three war widows--their husbands were part of the resistance movement. This was a book club selection and an audio (the narrator was fantastic!).
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined.
Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany's defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once grand castle of her husband's ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resistor murdered in the failed July, 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband's brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.
First, Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin's mother, the beautiful and naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resistor's wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.
As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband's resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.
Title: Gather 'Round the Sound
Pages: audio
An eclectic holiday assortment!
This mini-documentary centers around a peculiar holiday tradition at General Electric's headquarters in Schenectady, NY. For two decades, GE has been receiving thousands of letters from kids - children who think they're reaching Santa Claus. And every year, a handful of GE employees give up their December lunchbreaks to respond to each and every letter.
An Aussie Night Before Christmas, by Yvonne Morrison, performed by Magda Szubanksi
This rollicking rewrite of the famous old poem 'Twas The Night Before Christmas gives the original version a hilarious Aussie twist. Magda Szubanski, Australia's most trusted personality, caries this incredibly fun romp. Kangaroos pulling the sleigh, a beer for Santa, and all the over-the-top Australian lingo, it's everything you'd expect.
The Music Coming from the House, by Paulo Coehlo, performed by Daniel Frances-Berenson
In this magical story from the author of The Alchemist - the master of the modern parable - a disguised king visits a poor village, and what he sees through the window of a house changes his life, and those of the occupants.
The Signal-man, by Charles Dickens, performed by Simon Callow, Dan Starkey, and John Banks
For literature lovers, the holiday season needs a little Dickens. We dug up a story of his that you may not be familiar with, originally published in the Christmas edition of a Victorian short story periodical. Of course, ghosts are involved in this 19th century work told by Simon Callow (Outlander) and Dan Starkey (Dr. Who).
A Very Improvised Holiday Musical
What would the holidays be without some carols? Vern, a New York City-based improv troupe, performs a few improvised holiday songs.
Title: The Great Christmas Knit Off
Author: Alexandra Brown
A Christmas story that features knitting set in a cozy town. I loved the characters and want to know more about them. A very, very fun and festive read.
Heartbroken after being jilted at the altar, Sybil has been saved from despair by her knitting obsession and now her home is filled to bursting with tea cosies, bobble hats, and jumpers. But, after discovering that she may have perpetrated the cock-up of the century at work, Sybil decides to make a hasty exit and, just weeks before Christmas, runs away to the picturesque village of Tindledale.
There, Sybil discovers Hettie's House of Haberdashery, an emporium dedicated to the world of knitting and needle craft. But Hettie, the outspoken octogenarian owner, is struggling and now the shop is due for closure. And when Hettie decides that Sybil's wonderfully wacky Christmas jumpers are just the thing to add a bit of excitement to her window display, something miraculous starts to happen…
Title: A Very Merry Christmas
Author: Cathy Lamb
It was a holiday read with a bit of depth to it.
Some people careen through life trailing chaos in their wake. Others get to pick up the pieces. Meredith Ghirlandaio is generally in the latter category, especially when it comes to her irresponsible sister, Leia. Leia's latest move: abandoning her two children while she runs off to rediscover herself. Meredith immediately steps up, bringing rebellious Sarah and withdrawn Jacob back to her hometown of Telena, Montana, where she opens a B&B.
Despite the "Merry Meredith" nickname she earns from her guests, she's too wary—and too busy—to get involved with any man. Especially one like handsome, self-assured Logan Taylor. But Logan's not easy to shake, and makes it plain that he's drawn to everything about Meredith—her tough talk and her cowboy hats, her softness and her strength.
Roped into chairing the Telena Christmas concert, Meredith brings townsfolk of all ages together to share stories, talents, and rehearsal potluck dinners. Little by little she's opening up too. And in between navigating the lessons of the past and acknowledging her own hopes for holidays yet to come, she's learning that all the gifts she really needs are right there, waiting—if only she'll claim them.
Title: A Perfect Holiday Fling
Author: Farrah Rochon
Pages: 99 p
A fun holiday read. Kind of predictable, but still fun.
It's no mystery why veterinarian Callie Webber is having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit. When the residents of her small hometown aren't pitying her because of her ex-husband's very public departure, they're attempting to hook her up with a man…any man. Fed up with being everyone's favorite charity case, Callie considers closing her animal clinic and moving to the big city. But, before she goes, she decides to give herself a Christmas treat to remember: a romantic holiday fling. And who better to have a fling with than the gorgeous newcomer who is turning heads around Maplesville?
When injured Navy pilot Stefan Sutherland reluctantly rescues a gutter cat for the sake of his five-year-old nephew, he never imagined it would lead to him discovering Maplesville's most fascinating attraction…its smoking hot vet. Getting involved with a woman was the last thing Stefan anticipated when he agreed to care for his nephew during his Army nurse sister's deployment, but if he's going to spend the holidays in this sleepy Southern town, why not make the most of it with the perfect holiday fling.
Title: War Brides
Author: Helen Bryan
I liked this book. Didn't love it but liked it. It's the story of five women from various backgrounds. I'm glad I listened to it, as I understand there are quite a few editing errors in the print version, though I did notice some continuity errors.
As war moves ever closer, the sleepy English village of Crowmarsh Priors settles into a new sort of normal: Evacuees from London are billeted in local homes. The nightly German air raids become grimly mundane. Rationing curtails every comfort. Men leave to fight and die. And five women forge a bond of friendship that will change their lives forever in this engrossing novel of loyalty, loss, and love in the shadow of World War II.
With the hardships of war intensifying every day, the women band together to defeat formidable enemies and find remarkable strength within themselves to help one another. It is a war-forged loyalty certain to endure years and distance.
When four of the women return for a celebration fifty years later, their mission is not simply to commemorate or remember. They've returned to confront a traitor whose actions cost countless lives — and to avenge one of their own at last.


Fieldwork Education are creates and providers of what is proving to be, the fastest-growing, independent primary curriculum in the world. The International Primary Curriculum (IPC) is now used by schools in over 90 countries where more than 250,000 children experience great learning. The International Middle Years Curriculum (IMYC) represents the latest piece in our learning-focused support for schools.
Use APEX to check if the Lead unique Id already exists as ether a Lead or a Contact.
Automate the reminders send for invoices that have already been sent.


JSW - JSW Steel Surges on NIFTY 50 to improve your experience.
As soon as the Index Maintenance Sub-Committee (IMSC) announced the inclusion of JSW Steel in NIFTY50 at the end of August 2018, shares of the company surged by 8%. The stocks hit a 52-week high in early trade, despite the fact that the inclusion would only come into effect on the 28th of September, 2018. To further add to the celebration, the organisation's steel stock has risen by 10.46% in the last few days and has the potential to hold the throne in the coming months too.
JSW Steel replaces Lupin, a domestic transnational pharmaceutical company, in NIFTY50.
JSW Steel stock has gone up by 51.77% during the last one year and 39% since the beginning of this year.
JSW Steel stock rose nearly 3.50% to hit a fresh high of 378.70 on BSE.
Shareholder returns of JSW Steel have been highest among their domestic and global competitors in 2018.
National Stock Exchange's benchmark index NIFTY50 is all set to welcome JSW Steel to the elite club of companies that have a market capitalisation of Rs. 1 trillion.
After surpassing eight really successful and influential companies in India, JSW Steel now proudly stands at number 33 in the overall market-cap ranking.
JSW as a company is very focused on their operations. It is one the few companies that utilises its capacity to the maximum. We have spread our products globally as well as in India. We have given a lot of consideration on the niche market where we can have more and more value additions, which can prove to be fruitful for the company and the country as well.


Yesterday was an important day for me and I wanted to share it with the community!!! A whole year of unDraw so here's a brief post about it and the new plans!!!
*Fun fact, it started with a post that Graeme published a few days later on Prototypr, and here we are a year later, posting on its community!
@ninalimpi congrats, unDraw is the best!!
The plans look awesome, I'm interested in the integrations with prototyping tools as you might have guessed haha!
@Graeme That is strange!!! Thought you were not interested in such projects!! Haha!!! Soon my friend!!! Soon!!
@raxie Thank you so much!!!
@ninalimpi Thank you so much! Your illustrations helped us a lot!
@pavelgvay that's awesome!!! So happy I could help and be a part of your work, even in this small way!!! Thank you so much for letting me know!!!
@ninalimpi congratulations!!! Your progress with unDraw is super inspiring! Plus the full circle with Graeme and now the Prototypr community. Cheers to the next years of unDraw and all you do!!!
@kelechi Thank you so much!!! It means a lot!!!
To be honest, I had to think if I am up for a whole year of doing unDraw but the truth is, that it's one of the most rewarding projects I've ever worked on, even if it takes up a great deal of time, not to mention costs!!! Seeing your work help other creative people and being used in all sorts of crazy ways is so amazing!!!
So cheers to that, you, Graeme and the superb Prototypr community which is steadily growing and taking its form!!!
@ninalimpi whoop, whoop, whoop! Thanks on behalf of me, Graeme and everyone in this community! Can't wait till we have our first meetup whether online or at some fabulous location we all happen to be in!
2019 will be much more than we can imagine right now and I'm stoked about it. A year goes by so fast.
@kelechi That would be awesome!!! Would love to meet you all and chat in person!!! Looking forward to 2019 too and even though they go so fast, each year brings so many exciting moments and I'm right there with you, stoked about it!!!
@Graeme It's been amazing and I don't really regret it for a minute... Just had to count my strength to make sure I can take another year!!! And turns out, I can and I can't help it!!! Haha!!!
That's awesome!!! Just saw it, since I've been a bit offline the past few days!!! Thank you Graeme!!!