It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The Its Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life…

It’s been another busy week here! We celebrated New Years Eve with friends watching the fireworks at Blackhead Beach, bought a new (second-hand) car on Wednesday,  had an unexpected reunion with a few school friends I hadn’t seen for 20+ years on Thursday, and yesterday we took my daughter and four of her friends (plus the boys) to Billabong Wildlife Park to celebrate her 10th birthday, which is tomorrow. It’s been 30C + every day last week and is expected to be even hotter this week so I am looking forward to staying home in the air conditioning and catching up – I am 6 reviews behind already!

Aleah petting a baby croc

What I Read Last Week

Vengeance by (ed.) Lee Child

Seduction by Kate Forster

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus

The Girl in the Hard Hat by Loretta Hill

Posts this week

(click the titles to read my reviews)

Review: Inheritance by Kate Loveday ★★★

Happy New Year!

Review & Giveaway: Behind the Sun by Deborah Challinor ★★★★

Review: Scent of Magic by Maria V Snyder ★★★★

Review: Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield ★★★★

Stuff on Sunday: Challenges for 2013

What I Am Reading Today

When modest Quaker Honor Bright sails from Bristol with her sister, she is fleeing heartache for a new life in America, far from home. But tragedy leaves her alone and vulnerable, torn between two worlds and dependent on the kindness of strangers. Life in 1850s Ohio is precarious and unsentimental. The sun is too hot, the thunderstorms too violent, the snow too deep. The roads are spattered with mud and spit. The woods are home to skunks and porcupines and raccoons. They also shelter slaves escaping north to freedom. Should Honor hide runaways from the ruthless men who hunt them down? The Quaker community she has joined may oppose slavery in principle, but does it have the courage to help her defy the law? As she struggles to find her place and her voice, Honor must decide what she is willing to risk for her beliefs. Set in the tangled forests and sunlit cornfields of Ohio, Tracy Chevalier′s vivid novel is the story of bad men and spirited women, surprising marriages and unlikely friendships, and the remarkable power of defiance

What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

Dinah Whitcomb seemingly has everything. A loving and successful husband, and a smart, precocious young son named Robbie. One day, their worlds are shattered when Dinah is attacked and Robbie is taken in a mall parking lot. Dinah, injured, attempts to follow, but is run over by the kidnapper’s van, mangling her body nearly beyond repair. The kidnapper, a part-time Preacher named Chester Cash, calls himself Daddy Love, as he has abducted, tortured, and raped several young boys into being his lover and as well as his ‘son’. He confines Robbie in a device called an Wooden Maiden, in essence a small coffin, and renamed him ‘Gideon’. Daddy Love slowly brainwashes ‘Gideon’ into believing that he is Daddy Love’s real son, and any time the boy resists or rebels it is met with punishment beyond his wildest nightmares. As Dinah recovers from her wounds, her world and her marriage struggle to exist every day. Though it seems hopeless, she keeps a flicker of hope alive that her son is still alive. As Robbie grows older, he becomes more aware of just how monstrous Daddy Love truly is. Though as a small boy he as terrified of what might happen if he disobeyed Daddy Love, Robbie begins to realize that the longer he stays in the home of this demon, the greater chance he’ll end up like Daddy Love’s other ‘sons’ who were never heard from again. Somewhere within this tortured young boy lies a spark of rebellion…and soon he sees just what lengths he must go to in order to have any chance at survival.

It is two years since the notorious Nanna Birk Larsen case. Two years since Detective Sarah Lund left Copenhagen in disgrace for a remote outpost in northern Denmark. When the body of a female lawyer is found in macabre circumstances in a military graveyard, there are elements of the crime scene that take Head of Homicide, Lennart Brix, back to an occupied wartime Denmark – a time its countrymen would wish to forget. Brix knows that Lund is the one person he can rely on to discover the truth. Reluctantly she returns to Copenhagen and becomes intrigued with the facts surrounding the case. As more bodies are found, Lund comes to see a pattern and she realises that the identity of the killer will be known once the truth behind a more recent wartime mission is finally revealed…

Meet Merlin. He’s Lucy’s bright, beautiful son — who just happens to be autistic. Since Merlin’s father left them in the lurch shortly after his diagnosis, Lucy has made Merlin the centre of her world. Struggling with the joys and tribulations of raising her eccentrically adorable yet challenging child, (if only Merlin came with operating instructions) Lucy doesn’t have room for any other man in her life. By the time Merlin turns ten, Lucy is seriously worried that the Pope might start ringing her up for tips on celibacy, so resolves to dip a poorly pedicured toe back into the world of dating. Thanks to Merlin’s candour and quirkiness, things don’t go quite to plan… Then, just when Lucy’s resigned to a life of singledom once more, Archie — the most imperfectly perfect man for her and her son — lands on her doorstep. But then, so does Merlin’s father, begging for forgiveness and a second chance. Does Lucy need a real father for Merlin — or a real partner for herself?

Presenting a powerful story of motherhood and loss, this novel explores the complexities of grief and disconnection—and what it takes to become connected again. Gaelle, a 30-year-old beauty editor for a fashion magazine, she is ambivalent about motherhood, and she sleeps around—not because she does not love her heart-surgeon husband Jason, but because the very fact of love is a terrifying thing. She finds it easier to keep moving, in the heart and the mind, than to stay still and own who she is. A multi-layered story of marriage, this novel employs delicate yet powerful prose that builds to a moving revelation.

While you are here…

Congratulations to:

Winners of  Sex, Lies and Bonsai by Lisa Walker

Kate  & Jen

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll be along to visit you shortly!

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