Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Monday, August 15, 2011

It's Monday! What are you reading? (August 15, 2011)




What are you reading on Mondays is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey - You can hook up with the Mr. Linky there with your own post - but be sure and let me know what you are reading too!  Hasn't been much change in this post from last week.  Still behind on reviews.  Hoping to catch up before the end of the month!  I am beginning to forget the details of some of the books - I can remember if I liked them or not, but not specifically why!

Currently Reading:
Summer in the South by Cathy Holton
Captivity by Deborah Noyes


Reading to become "Literary Genius":
Who am I kidding?  Not reading anything currently.

Next Up:
Route 66 by Krish Kandiah


E-Book:
Singular by David Porteous
The Five Love Languages of Teenagers by Gary Chapman
Reversible Skirt by Laura McHale Holland

Bathroom Book:
Pie Town by Lynne Hinton (This one sounded appropriate - lol)
 
Reviewed Since Last Post:
Graveminder by Melissa Marr

Children's Books Reviewed Since Last Post:



Waiting for Reviews: UGH!
The Arrivals: A Novel by Meg Mitchell Moore
 White Sleeper by David R. Fett and Stephen Langford
The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain
The Place of Belonging by Jayne Pearson Faulkner
The Blackberry Bush by David Housholder
The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman
Following Polly by Karen Bergreen
Book Thief by Markus Zusak

E-books waiting for review:
Sudden Moves by Kelli Sue Landon
This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Children's Books waiting for review:
Pearl's Wisdom by Auntie LuLu
Bug Meets His Friend (Bug's Adventure Series) by K.M. Groshek




READY - SET - READ!

First Wild Card Tour: Rivers of Living Water (CD Review)

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour CD review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books/cds. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the cd!



You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

My thoughts:  Suzanne wrote all but one of the songs on this CD and sings them with a very clear, beautiful voice.  The music was different from what you usually hear today and the harmonies reminded me of The Carpenters' songs. I liked her song lyrics and can see myself listening to this CD when I am feeling a little laid back and just want to relax.   Some of the songs were worship songs, while some had a very clear salvation message and still others were taken right from scripture. I liked the mix, as there is something for everyone.



Today's Wild Card artist is:



and the CD:

Lorente Publishing
***Special thanks to Suzanne Lorente for sending me a review cd.***



ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Suzanne Perry Lorente has been a child of the Lord since age 7. Her gift of music began at age two and has carried her through her life. She is an accomplished long time song writer, singer, guitarist and performer from the age of 13. At a young age, Suzanne chose a career of a professional entertainer as a single singer/guitarist in well known night clubs, dinner houses and special events, with a repertoire of more than 400 songs. During this same time frame, she achieved an Associate of Arts degree in Mass Media from Stephens College in Columbia, MO, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music from San Jose State University in California. As time marched along, she realized God's calling on her life to turn her heart toward Him as she could hear that "still, small voice" asking her to leave the relentless work of night clubs and secular entertainment. "It was a vow that took place in a day, and His promise took place over my lifetime. I am so blessed and God has kept His promise that He would give me the songs to sing for His children and for His glory." Suzanne has sung first of all for her family, then in choirs, started and sang in many small groups and trios, sang solo for so many audiences and congregations throughout the United States, and left behind a legacy of musical scenarios as she tells her stories of how each of her songs came about. She has recorded an ageless cassette that continues to be in demand, and a new CD, that has high-lighted the songs God has given to her. Suzanne has been teaching voice and guitar since she was 14 years old. She is presently singing in the little City of Dixon, CA for their Farmers Markets, weddings, and events, as well as with her trio, Suzanne Lorente and Friends, as they embark on recording a CD together. They are out doing concerts whenever possible and wherever the Lord leads. "It's wonderful to see God change the lives and hearts of people as we just sing our songs and allow Him to work through us. I love that!"


Visit the author's website.


SHORT CD DESCRIPTION:

This CD is a wonderful spiritual uplift and encouragement for any Christian who wants to grow, not only by hearing God's Word, but by doing what He's asking us to do. We have to take that first step and that's what this CD motivates believers and non-believers to do. The songs are original Christian Gospel scenarios that anyone can relate to, and that's what gives you the anointing strength to keep on going. You will love the beautiful orchestral and vocal backgrounds with each song as Suzanne Lorente and her trio envelope you with their angelic harmonies. God has put His Hand of blessing on Suzanne and given her songs throughout her lifetime of ministry. She and her gals are planning a tour and would love to include your church or event if it's possible. May God bless every listener and urge them to follow the Lord by listening to His "Still, Small Voice!"


Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Music CD
Publisher: Lorente Publishing
Language: English


AND NOW..A SAMPLE OF A SONG FROM THE CD:

(To hear more samples, please visit Suzanne's website)


Here is one of the songs, "Misunderstood." This song is an original of mine written on January 1st of 2010. I am the voice for those who have been aborted, abused and misunderstood. This is quite sad, but it's telling us that each one of these has identified with the misery, torture, and abuse that Jesus went through on the cross. Many 100's of thousands have died a martyr's death, and are with the Lord because He loves them. Please listen carefully! This could be such a blessing for the Christian pregnancy centers and homes of abused women and children.







Here are the lyrics:

Misunderstood – Matthew 18:1-7
Words and Music by Suzanne Lorente  
Arranged by Jeannine O’Neal




How can it be they don’t hear them, they don’t see
What can I say? Jesus loves them, they are free.
No-one will take time to listen as they cry
Knowing that I have the answer, I know why.

They’ve been misunderstood time after time
Their tiny voices still ring in our minds
No-one to love them, no-one to care
What they have to say doesn’t matter…anyway.


There is a hard part to living, not to be heard
Hate takes the joy out of giving, their vision blurred
Where is the love that could give them wings to fly?
Knowing that I have the answer, I know why.

They’ve been misunderstood time after time
Their little voices still ring in our mind
No-one to hear them, no-one to care
What they have to say doesn’t matter…anyway.


Could you be one who can’t hear them, you can’t see?
Are you aware they are people like you and me?
What would have come of the children who were slain?
There’d be a world of compassion…no more pain!

We have misunderstood time after time
Their tiny voices still ring in our mind
Someone will love them, someone will care
What they have to say really matters…anyway.


He’s (Jesus) been misunderstood, but not for long
Each tiny baby to Him will belong.
He really loves them, He really cares
What He has to say is what matters…anyway!
What He has to say is what matters....anyway!
Matt. 18:1-7




Additional high vocals Suzanne Lorente, Cecelia Dettle



Copyright 2010 BMI-0777 All rights reserved



See my website for further information



www.suzannelorente.com

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Mailbox Monday (August 15, 2011)


 Mailbox Monday's host for August is Staci at Life in the Thumb. In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week! 



Darkness, My Old Friend
by Lisa Unger

After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends.  He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past and finding a second act.  Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor.  Eloise Montgomery, the psychic who plays a key role in Fragile, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire.
Meanwhile, Michael Holt, a young man who grew up in The Hollows, has returned, looking for answers about his mother, who went missing many years earlier.  He has hired local PI Ray Muldune and psychic Eloise Montgomery to help him solve the mystery that has haunted him.  What he finds might be his undoing.
Fifteen-year-old Willow Graves is exiled to The Hollows from Manhattan when six months earlier she moved to the quiet town with her novelist mother after a bitter divorce.  Willow is acting out, spending time with kids that bring out the worst in her.  And when things get hard, she has a tendency to run away -- a predilection that might lead her to dark places.
Set in The Hollows, the backdrop for Fragile, this is the riveting story of lives set on a collision course with devastating consequences.  The result is Lisa Unger's most compelling fiction to date.


Good Graces
by Lesley Kagen

National bestselling novel Whistling in the Dark won over readers with the story of ten-year-old Sally O'Malley and her sister, Troo, during Milwaukee's summer of 1959.  Now, in the captivating sequel, Good Graces, it's one year later. . .
A heat wave has everyone in the close-knit Milwaukee neighborhood on edge.  None more so than Sally, who remains deeply traumatized by the sudden death of her father and her near escape from a murderer and molester the previous summer.  Although outwardly she and her sister, Troo, are more secure, Sally's confidence in her own judgment and much of her faith have been whittled away.  When a series of disquieting events unfold in the neighborhood -- a string of home burglaries, the escape from reform school of a nemesis, the mysterious disappearance of an orphan, and crimes that may involve the increasingly rebellious Troo -- Sally is called upon to rise above her inner demons.  She made a deathbed promise to her father to keep Troo safe, a promise she can't break, even if her life depends on it.  But when events reach a crisis point, will Sally have the courage and discernment to make the right choices?  Or will her false assumptions lead her and those she loves into danger once again?



Skeleton Letters
by Laura Childs

Is nothing sacred? When a fellow scrapbooker is bludgeoned with a religious statue in historic St. Tristan's Church, it's a clear case of murder in the cathedral.  But a stolen relic may hold the key to catching the culprit. . .
The last thing Carmela Bertrand and her friend Ava expected to bear witness to in St. Tristan's Church was a crime.  But now a beloved member of their scrapbooking circle is lying lifeless next to a smashed statue of St. Sebastian -- and a mysterious hooded figure has absconded with an antique silver-and-gold crucifix.  With the church open to the public and a popular tourist attraction, it looks like the police don't have a prayer of finding the killer.

But if anyone can get to the bottom of the crime, it's Carmela's main squeeze, Detective Edgar Babcock -- with a little assistance from some scrappy sleuths.  As Carmela and Ava are drawn deeper into New Orlean's French Quarter in search of the missing crucifix, they  may need the help of more than a few patron saints.  Because this is one killer they don't want to cross. . .


The Year Everything Changed
by Georgia Bockoven
As Jessie Patrick Reed's attorney, I'm writing to you on behalf of your father, Jessie Patrick Reed.  I regret to inform you that Mr. Reed is dying.  He has expressed a desire to see you. . .
Elizabeth, even though sustained by a loving family, has suffered the most from her father's seeming abandonment and for years has protected herself with a deep-seated anger that she hides from everyone.

Ginger, in love with a married man, will be forced to reevaluate every relationship she's ever had and will reach stunning conclusions that will change her life forever.

Rachel learns of her father's existence the same day she finds out that her husband of ten years has had an affair.  She will receive the understanding and support she needs to survive from an unlikely and surprising source.
Christine is a young filmmaker, barely out of college, who now must decide if her few precious memories of a man she believed to be long dead are enough to give him a second chance.
Four sisters who never knew the others existed will find strength, love, and answers in the most unexpected places in . . . The Year That Changed Everything.



Little Black Dress
by Susan McBride

Two sisters whose lives seemed forever intertwined are torn apart when a magical little black dress gives each one a glimpse of an unavoidable future.

Antonia Ashton has worked hard to build a thriving career and a committed relationship, but she realizes her life has gone off track.  Forced to return home to Blue Hills when her mother, Evie, suffers a massive stroke, Toni finds the old Victorian where she grew up as crammed full of secrets as it is with clutter.  Now she must put her mother's house in order -- and uncover long-buried truths about Evie and her aunt, Anna, who vanished fifty years earlier on the eve of her wedding.  By shedding light on the past, Toni illuminates her own mistakes and learns the most unexpected things about love, magic, and a little black dress with the power to break hearts. . . and mend them.


Retribution
by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Harm no human. . .
A hired gunslinger, William Jessup Brady lived his life with one foot in the grave.  He believed that every life had a price, until the day when he finally found a reason to live.  In one single act of brutal betrayal, he lost everything, including his life.  Brought back by a Greek goddess to be one of her Dark-Hunters, Brady gave his immortal soul for vengeance and swore he'd spend eternity protecting the humans he'd once considered prey.
Orphaned as a toddler, Abigail Yager was taken in by a family of vampires and raised on one belief: Dark-Hunters are the evil who prey on both their people and mankind, and they must all be destroyed.  While protecting her adoptive race, she has spent her life eliminating the Dark-Hunters and training for the day when she meets the man who killed her family:  Jess Brady.
A gun in the hand is worth two in the holster. . . .
Jess has been charged with finding and terminating the creature who's assassinating Dark-Hunters.  The last thing he expects to find is a human face behind the killings, but when that face bears a striking resemblance to that of the one who murdered him centuries ago, he knows something evil is going on.  He also knows he's not the one who killed her parents.  But Abigail refuses to believe the truth and is determined to see him dead once and for all.
Brought together by an angry god and chased by ancient enemies out to kill them both, they must find a way to overcome their mutual hatred or watch as one of the darkest of powers rises and kills both the races they've sworn to protect.


The Bad Always Die Twice
by Cheryl Crane


In the first of a wildly entertaining mystery series set amid the bright lights, big egos, and Botoxed brows of Hollywood, Cheryl Crane—daughter of legendary movie star Lana Turner—introduces a smart, hilarious, and utterly loveable heroine in realtor-turned-amateur sleuth, Nikki Harper.

For Nikki Harper, realtor to the stars and daughter of 1950s screen goddess Victoria Bordeaux, Hollywood is home. A completely dysfunctional home populated by a cast of crazies, true, but home nonetheless. While Nikki's no stranger to scandal, she's shocked to receive a hysterical phone call from her business partner, Jessica Martin, saying that TV has-been Rex March has been found dead in Jessica's bed.

More shocking than Rex's death is the fact that, as far as anyone knew, Rex was already dead. Six months ago, the star of the seventies sitcom Shipwrecked Vacation was supposedly killed when his plane crashed in the Mojave Desert. Nikki and Jessica recently sold his mansion on behalf of his widow, Edith. It's obvious to Nikki that Jessica is being framed, but by whom? And why? And how on earth can Rex be dead a second time?

In search of answers, Nikki turns to the one person she can always count on. From her pink boudoir in her Beverly Hills mansion, the ever-glamorous Victoria suggests Nikki focus her sleuthing on Rex's not-so-grieving widow. And there's a veritable casting couch full of other candidates, including Edith's boy-toy lover, Rex's scheming lawyer (like there's any other kind), and the diner waitress with whom Rex was having one of his numerous affairs. But with the killer readying for a repeat performance, Nikki will have to act fast—before her own screen fades to black. .



Love At Absolute Zero
by Christopher Meeks


Love at Absolute Zero is the story of Gunnar Gunderson, a 32-year-old star physicist at the University of Wisconsin.  The moment he's given tenure at the university, he can think of only one thing: finding a wife.  His research falters into what happens to matter near absolute zero (-459.67 F), but he has an instant new plan.  To meet his soul mate within three days -- that's what he wants  and all time he can carve out -- he will use the Scientific Method.  His research team will help.  Can Gunnar survive his quest?  What happens if and when he goes to Denmark?


Oskaloosa Moon
by Gary Sutton

It's a farming village in Iowa, just before TV.

The boy's got no known father.  Worse yet, he's deformed.  Town elders are embarrassed by his existence.

The village promotes Korn Kastle Days with two billboards on the paved road that passes near their town.  The Nazarene, Methodist, Congregational and Lutheran service times are also posted.

Catholic signs stand next to the billboards, listing five weekly Masses.

He survives bullies and makes friends.  Under pressure the youth leaves town, gets educated and struggles, finally scratching out a career and marries.

But his eventual return goes rough.



The Queen of Last Hopes
by Susan Higginbotham

A man other than my husband sits on England's throne today.

What would happen if this king suddenly went mad?
What would his queen do?  Would she make the same mistakes I did, or would she learn from mine?

Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, does not want immortality.  She does not need glory.  All she desires is what rightfully belongs to her family -- and that is the throne of England.  Her husband the king cannot rule, but the enemies who doubt her will and dispute her valor underestimate the force of a mother's love.  Her son is the House of Lancaster's heir and last hope, and her fight for him will shake the crown forever.


PURCHASED:


One Hundred Candles
by Mara Purnhagen

I've opened a door that cannot be closed.

It's taken a long time for me to feel like an normal teenager.  But now that I'm settled in a new school, where people know me as more than Charlotte Silver of the infamous Silver family paranormal investigators, it feels like everything is falling into place.  And what better way to be normal than to go on a date with a popular football star like Harris Abbott?  After all, it's not as if Noah is anything more than a friend. . .

But my new life takes a disturbing turn when Harris brings me to a party and we play a game called One Hundred Candles.  It seems like harmless, ghostly fun.  Until spirits unleashed by the game start showing up at school.  Now my friends and family are in very real danger, and the door that I've opened into another realm may yield deadly consequences.

I purchased the following at garage sales or our library used book store:

Marie, Dancing
The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead
The Devil's Labyrinth: A Novel
Bluegate Fields: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel (Book Six)
1st to Die: A Novel (Women's Murder Club, No 1)
3rd Degree (Patterson, James)
4th of July (Woman's Murder Club)
Deadly Night (The Flynn Brothers Trilogy)
Deadly Harvest (Flynn Brothers Trilogy)
Hornet's Nest (Andy Brazil)
Cruel and Unusual: A Kay Scarpetta Novel


What books came home to you last week?

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Theme Thursdays: Pathways (Aug 11, 2011)



Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event hosted by Reading Between Pages that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:
  • A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
  • Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
  • Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
  • It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
    Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”
This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

This week’s theme is

PATHWAYS (reference to roads, streets, passages)


"Everyone at work thought of the South as a place of hillbillies and moonshine, and Ava had to admit (although only to herself) that she felt the same way.  Perhaps this was why she had forced herself to get off the expressway just north of Louisville, and, buying a map, proceeded to drive bravely along curving picturesque county roads past small-frame farmhouses and tall-steepled churches and mobile homes with elaborately attached decks and discarded appliances rusting in the yards."

(Summer in the South by Cathy Holton, p14-15)

WINNER OF RETRIBUTION!




The lucky winner of Retribution is gcwhiskas!  Congratulations!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Graveminder by Melissa Marr (Book Review)


Title: Graveminder
Author: Melissa Marr
Publisher: Harper Collins

Maylene Barrow bears a special responsibility in the town of Claysville, a duty to the newly departed that keeps all she knows and loves safe.  Rebekkah Barrow, Maylene's granddaughter, left Claysville a decade ago, trying to put painful memories behind her. 


William Montgomery was Claysville's Undertaker and Maylene's best friend for a lifetime.  Byron Montgomery, following in his father's footsteps as the town's new Undertaker, is tied to the Barrow women -- first Rebekkah's dead sister, Ella, and now Rebekkah -- in ways he is only beginning to understand.


But evil has been let loose in Claysville, and now Maylene is dead.  It falls to Rebekkah to return to the town -- and the man -- she left behind to stop a monster and keep the dead in their place.

My thoughts:  I have had the opportunity to read one of Melissa Marr's YA books - the first in the Wicked Lovely series, aptly named Wicked Lovely.  I enjoyed it greatly and have every intention of reading the rest of the books in the series.  So when I saw that Melissa Marr had written an adult book, I knew that it was a must read for me - and I was not disappointed.

The world she creates in Graveminder has the feeling of a small town from years ago.  Everybody knows everybody else, but the difference is, they don't know everybody else's business.  So while you get the small town feeling, you also get a definite spooky, gothic undertone.  There is a town council in place, as well as the Graveminder and the Undertaker - but whenever anybody learns too much about someone else's "job", they are struck with a headache and eventually forget anything they aren't "supposed" to know. 

But, someone knows more than they should, and are determined to change things to how they think they should be.  Because of it, people are being killed by an evil that should not be up walking around. 

I was hooked on these characters and this world from the first chapter. I could picture them clearly in my mind, the small town, the trusting townspeople, the cemetary. Maybe it was because of this that I was drawn so quickly into their world.  But I never could have imagined what I found there.  If you are a fan of gothic novels - definitely check out Graveminder.

~I received a complimentary copy of Graveminder from Harper Collins in exchange for my review.~

About the author: Melissa Marr is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series of young adult novels:  Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange, Fragile Eternity, and Radiant Shadows.  She currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband and children.  Graveminder is her first adult novel.

You can find her at her website

Graveminder
Publisher/Publication Date: Harper Collings, May 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-182687-0
336 pages

Library Loot (Aug 10, 2011)


Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library.  If you'd like to participate, just write up your post - feel free to steal the button - and visit the above 2 blogs to see who has the Mr. Linky this week. Don't forget to check out what others are checking out!




Die For Me
by Amy Plum

My life had always been blissfully, wonderfully normal.  But it only took one moment to change everything.

Suddenly, my sister, Georgia, and I were orphans.  We put our lives into storage and moved to Paris to live with my grandparents.  And I knew my shattered heart, my shattered life, awould never feel normal again.  Then I met Vincent.

Mysterious, sexy, and unnervingly charming, Vincent Delacroix appeared out of nowhere and swept me off my feet.  Just like that, I was in danger of losing my hdeart all over again.  But I was ready to let it happen.

Of course, nothing is ever that easy.  Because Vincent is no normal human.  He has a terrifying destiny, one that puts his life at risk every day.  He also has enemies. . . immortal, murderous enemies who are determined to destroy him and all of his kind.

While I'm fighting to piece together the remnants of my life, can I risk putting my heart -- as well as my life and my family's -- in jeopardy for a chance at love?



Hereafter
by Tara Hudson

Can there truly be love after death?

Drifting in the dark waters of a mysterious river, the only thing Amelia knows for sure is that she's dead.  With no recollection of her past life -- or her actual death -- she's trapped alone in a nightmarish existence.  All of this changes when she tries to rescue a boy, Joshua, from drowning in her river.  As a ghost, she can do nothing but will him to live. Yet in an unforgettable moment of connection, she helps him survive.

Amelia and Joshua grow ever closer as they begin to uncover the strange circumstances of her death and the secrets of the dark river that held her captive for so long.  But even while they struggle to keep their bond hidden from the living world, a frightening spirit named Eli is doing everything in his power to destroy their newfound happiness and drag Amelia back into the ghost world. . . forever.



The Tiger's Wife
by Tea Obreht

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Tea Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker's twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphange by the sea.  By the time she and her lifelong friend Zora begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her.  Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her.  Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards.  Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own:  the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death.  After telling her grandmother he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone.  A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel.  Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.

Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather's final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child.  On their weekly trips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age.  But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself.  One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. "These stories," Natalia comes to understand, "run like secret rivers through all the other stories" of her grandfather's life.  And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.



Husband and Wife
by Leah Stewart

Sarah Price is thirty-five years old.  She doesn't feel as though she's getting older, but there are some noticeable changes:  a hangover after two beers, the stray gray hair, and most of all, she's called "Mom" by two small children.  Always responsible, Sarah traded her MFA for a steady job, which allows her husband Nathan, to write fiction.  But Sarah is happy and she believes Nathan is too, until a truth is revealed: Nathan's upcoming novel, Infidelity, is based in fact.

Suddenly Sarah's world is turned upside down.  Adding to her confusion, Nathan abdicates responsibility for the fate of their relationship and of his novel's publication -- a financial lifesaver they have been depending upon -- leaving both in Sarah's hands.  Reeling from his betrayal, she is plagued by dark questions.  How well does she really know Nathan?  And, more important, how well does she know herself?

For answers, Sarah looks back to her artistic twenty-something self to try to understand what happened to her dreams.  When did it all seem to change?  Pushed from her complacent plateau, Sarah begins to act -- for the first time not so responsibly -- on all the things she has let go of for so long: her blank computer screen; her best friend, Helen; the volumes of Proust on her bookshelf.  And then there is that e-mail in her inbox: a note from Rajiv, a beautiful man from her past who once tempted her to stray.  The struggle to find which version of herself is the esesntial one -- artist, wife, or mother -- takes Sarah hundreds of miles away from her marriage on a surprising journey.

Wise, funny, and sharply drawn, Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife probes our deepest relationships, the promises we make and break, and the consequences they hold for our lives, revealing that it's never too late to step back and start over.



Remedies
by Kate Ledger

Simon and Emily Bear look like a couple who have it all.  Simon is a respected doctor, while Emily shines professionally as a partner in a premier public relations firm.  They have a beautiful house in Baltimore and a healthy daughter. But their marriage is scarred by old, hidden wounds.  Even as Simon tends his patients' ills, and Emily spins away her clients' mistakes, they can't seem to do the same for themselves or their relationship.

Simon becomes convinced he's discovered a cure for chronic pain, a finding that could be a major medical breakthrough.  As he yearns to prove he's a good doctor and to make amends for a missed diagnosis years before, he is oblivious of the pain he's causing at home.  Emily, still struggling to move beyond the devastating loss that she and Simon suffered fifteen years ago, comes to realize she hasn't felt anything for a very long time -- that is, until a lover from her past resurfaces and forces her to examine her marriage anew.

In a debut novel on a par with today's top women writers, Remedies explores the extraordinarily complicated facets of pain, in the nerves of the body and the longings of the heart.

What would you endure in order to avoid feeling pain? And would you believe in a cure?  Depicting modern-day marriage with a razor-sharp eye, Remedies is about what it takes, as an individual and as a couple, to recover from profound loss.



















W.W.W. Wednesdays (Aug 10, 2011)


WWW Wednesdays is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.  To play along just answer the following three questions:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you'll read next?

Currently Reading:
















    Recently Finished:




















    Reading Next:

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