Category: Meme

I have been in a terrible reading slump. So it makes perfect sense that I picked up at 700+ page book at Target last week … right?

Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a wealthy Park Avenue family. He is bewildered by his strange new home and, tormented by his longing for his mother, clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that has come into his possession.

As an adult, Theo moves easily between the antiques store where he works, the drawing rooms of the rich, and the underworld of art. He is alienated, unmoored, and in love – and drawn inexorably by the power of that painting into a narrowing, dangerous circle.

And then I just joined Book of the Month (based on Beth Fish Reads’ recent recommendation) and received my first selection:

They meet in the final months of college, and by graduation, they have married. It’s 1991. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. There are lean, romantic years that follow: potluck parties in a Manhattan basement apartment; a wilting acting career that doesn’t pay the bills; a household that seems to run on good luck and good sex. A decade or so later, though, Lotto and Mathilde are on their way. He is a world-famous playwright, she is integral to his success. Their life and marriage are the envy of friends, the very definition of successful partnership.

It is with an electric thrill, then, that the reader realizes things are even more remarkable than they have seemed. In an emotionally complicated twist, the perspective shifts, and what began as a story about one extraordinary union becomes so much more. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, in prose vibrant and original, Fates and Furies is a profoundly moving, surprising, and provocative novel about the yoke joining love, art, and power, and about the influence of perception. Exquisitely imagined, it is a book that defies expectation, stirring both the mind and the heart.

Two books this past week. The first one I’m currently reading, I snagged it out of the cruise ship’s library (I was just glad I had a book to leave in its place….)!! You bet I picked it up the moment I saw it!!

The second book is one that I ordered off of Paperbackswap:

To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose “statue-like solidity” concealed volcanic energies and emotions.

Here is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. And here is the general who lost more battles than he won, and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet. His Excellency is a magnificent work, indispensable to an understanding not only of its subject but also of the nation he brought into being.

Only one book this past week … one that I had requested after seeing it mentioned in an email I received.

Brett has been in love with Charlie ever since he took her skiing on a lovely Colorado night fourteen years ago. And now, living in a seaside cottage on Cape Cod with their young daughter, it looks as if they have settled into the life they desired. However, Brett and Charlie’s marriage has been tenuous for quite some time. When Charlie’s unstable younger brother plans to move in with them, the tension simmering under the surface of their marriage boils over.

But what happened to Charlie next was unfathomable. Charlie was the golden boy so charismatic that he charmed everyone who crossed his path; who never shied away from a challenge; who saw life as one big adventure; who could always rescue his troubled brother, no matter how unpredictable the situation. So who is to blame for the tragic turn of events? And why does Brett feel responsible?

Set against the desolate autumn beauty of Cape Code, The Last September is a riveting emotional puzzle that takes readers inside the psyche of a woman facing the meaning of love and loyalty.

This encompasses the last two weeks. First, three new ones that I purchased (hey … two were ones that I’ve had my eye on for a while and I lucked out and found them in the bargain section!)

And then two review books:

They’re calling it the worst pileup in London history. Driving home, Margaret Holloway has her mind elsewhere – on a troubled student, her daughter’s acting class, the next day’s meeting – when she’s rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car just seconds before it’s engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears.

Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something’s wrong. She’s having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that were wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn’t merely forget – she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it’s got something to do with the man who saved her life.

As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, Everything She Forgot winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth – from yourself?

Cecilia made the hardest decision of her life moments before she stepped onto the plane that would bring her world crashing down around her. Her marriage was failing before even getting off the ground, and her desperate need to start over has driven her to abandon her family. Now, as her plane plummets toward the ground, she wishes she had given her son one last kiss good-bye. As tragedy meets mystery, Cecilia and three others in her community, each struggling with their own secrets, become connected on the fateful night when lives are lost in the sky and on the ground.

A slim mailbox this week (which is a good thing). For a blog tour at the end of August:

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is about to head to Miami for a vacation when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Then she learns there’s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school teacher was shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one heard or saw a thing.

Soon more victims surface. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect they cause death in an instant. There is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First it was New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast. There she comes face to face with shocking news that implicates her niece, Lucy – Scarpetta’s own flesh and blood.

Also, as part of this blog tour, I received a copy of Karin Slaughter’s Blindsighted. However, I read this one back in 2013 and would be happy to send this brand new copy to the first person to request it in the comments (leave your email).

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it’s only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer’s twisted work becomes clear.

Sara’s ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation – a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later. But he’s got more than a sadistic serial killer on his hands, for the country’s sole female detective, Lena Adams – the first victim’s sister – wants to serve her own justice.

Yet it is Sara who holds the key to finding the killer. A secret from her past could unmask the brilliantly malevolent psychopath … or mean her death.

And for review in September:

After the Iron Curtain’s collapse, Russia appears to be finished as a superpower. But KGB general Vasily Karpov is working behind the scenes to restore Russia’s status by forcing Americans into traitorous acts of espionage and sabotage, with the aid of a new secret weapon. Meanwhile, the biggest target is within Russia, where Karpov is plotting to capture the Kremlin for himself.

Former US soldier and spy Alex Ferris becomes the first to fathom Karpov’s grand plans. Racing from San Francisco to Siberia, Alex must elude ambushes, assassins, and death from exposure as he wages a one-man war against a growing global threat and the resurgence of the Soviets.

So I was having a really bad day and while browsing Target, I came across this one:

Two people are abducted, imprisoned, and left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.

It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Inspector Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.

Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case – with its seemingly random victims – has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense…

Another week down … another batch of books brought in. If only I read them as fast as I buy them…..

Two came from PBS while the other four were purchased at the Goodwill. I’m really digging the selection at my local Goodwill – they seem to keep it well stocked! Good for business …. bad for my shelves 🙂

Till next week…

I have gone kind of crazy lately and brought a sh*t ton of new (and new-to-me) books into this house. It’s out of hand, really. Since there are so many recent acquisitions, I’ve kind of lost track of them all. So I’ll only bore you with the ones that came in last week ….

As a practiced reporter until her newspaper went to that great pressroom in the sky, P.I. Tess Monaghan knows and loves every inch of her native Baltimore, even the parts being slobbered on by the sad-sack greyhound she’s minding for her uncle. It’s a quirky city where baseball reigns, but lately homicide seems to be the second most popular local sport. Business tycoon “Wink” Wynkowski is trying to change all that by bringing pro basketball back to town, and everybody’s rooting for him – until a devastating, muckraking expose of his lurid past appears on the front page of the Baltimore Beacon-Light. It’s a surprise even to the Blight’s editors, who thought they’d killed the piece. Instead, the piece killed Wink – who’s found in his garage with the car running.

Now the Blight wants to nail the unknown computer hacker who planted the lethal story, and the assignment is right up the alley of a former newshound like Tess. But it doesn’t take long for her to discover deeper, darker secrets, and to realize that this situation is really more about whacking than hacking. It’s just murder in Baltimore these days – and Tess Monaghan herself might be next on the list.

One year later, we remember the numbers: 20 children and 6 adults, murdered in a place of nurture and trust. We remember the names: teachers like Victoria Soto, who lost her life protecting her students. A shooter named Adam Lanza. And we remember the questions: outraged conjecture instantly monopolized the worldwide response to the tragedy – while the truth went missing.

One year later, here is the definitive journalistic account of Newtown, an essential examination of the facts – not only of that horrific day but the perfect storm of mental instability and obsession that preceded it and, in the aftermath of unspeakable heartbreak, the controversy that continues to play out on the national stage. Drawn from previously undisclosed emails, police reports, and in-depth interviews, Newtown: An American Tragedy breaks through a miasma of misinformation with its comprehensive and astonishing portrayal.

One ear late,r this is the vital story that must be told – today – if we are to prevent another American tragedy in the days to come.

She’s a savvy investigator with the cool toughness of Sam Spade – and a smile that could melt a block of ice. Once the star of the Anchorage D.A.’s office, she’s gone back to her roots in the far Alaska north. But Kate’s taken her talent for detection along … and trouble knows where to find her.

When a young National Park Ranger disappears during the long Alaskan winter, everyone assumes the cold got him. But when an investigator goes in after him, and never comes out, the weather may not be all that’s killing. Or so thinks Kate Shugak. With her Husky-breed Mutt as an ally, she’s hunting for answers among the pipelines, Aleuts, and hardy eccentrics of the rugged American north. But she’s heading for thin ice between lies and loyalties … between justice served and the cold face of murder.