It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

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

Life…

On Wednesday I was thrilled to meet Australian author Nicole Alexander when she visited my local library to promote her newest book, Sunset Ridge. She was lovely to talk with and made some very flattering comments about Book’d Out. Her comments prompted a member of the audience to invite me to be a guest speaker at an upcoming function for their organisation to talk about Book’d Out, book blogging and well books in general.

Nicole Alexander at Taree Library

It is another busy week ahead for me, my oldest daughter’s graduation presentation assembly is mid week – bar her final exams in late October she will have graduated high school!   School holidays begin next Friday which will exacerbate my daily chaos and prompts another round of end of term activities.  I also have a new class to teach on Thursday and need to get the workshop materials finished pronto. Given all that, his weeks reading list might be a bit ambitious but I am going to try!

What I Read Last Week

Sunset Ridge by Nicole Alexander

Declan’s Cross by Carla Neggers

Confessions of an Undercover Cop by Ash Cameron

A Wicked Kind of Dark by Jonathan K Benton’

The Raven’s Eye by Barry Maitland

Underground Road by Sharon  Kernot

New Posts

(click the titles to read my reviews)

Review:  The Edge of Normal by Carla Norton ★★★

Review: The Storycatcher by Ann Hite ★★★★

Review: Zero at the Bone by David Whish-Wilson ★★★★1/2

Review: Confessions of An Undercover Cop by Ash Cameron ★★1/2

Review: Sunset Ridge by Nicole Alexander ★★★★★

Review: A Wicked Kind of Dark by Jonathan K Benton ★★

 What I Am Reading Today

There are secrets in the sleepy town of Majic, where the past trips over the present … and then looks the other way. The country town of Majic is about to celebrate a milestone. It’s been 150 years since the founding father, Petar Majic, rode into the bush after a liquid lunch, vowing to build a house at whatever spot he reached by sunset. However, what happened next isn’t quite what town legend would have you believe. A minor act of cemetery vandalism lands local columnist and amateur detective Nell Forrest right in the path of historical inevitability. An apparent murder-suicide leads to the unveiling of a century-old scandal and a trail left by a trio of long-dead women.  Nell’s investigations are hampered both by the arrival of the handsome district detective and by her family – whose dramas almost eclipse that of the town itself. With directionless daughters, unplanned pregnancies, a spot or two of adultery and an ex-husband who wants her house, Nell barely has time for the case, let alone the energy to keep her wits about her at the same time.  And Nell will need her wits about her as the mystery of Majic begins casting its shadow into the present day, putting Nell and her family in grave danger. In the end, Nell must decide whether it is a tale of epic fortitude, or treachery and ill-gotten gains, before the past catches up with her

What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

When the city of Horneville is destroyed by a flood on the eve of a huge gay mardis gras, Mikey Brown – the feisty, sexy and dynamic host of a Christian shopping channel – knows exactly what she needs to do. Taking her sons with her, she sets out on a grand mercy mission. The journey is more than a flood clean-up for Mikey – she wants to save the city and teach the godless inhabitants a lesson. Her husband was lost to her after attempting to ‘mission’ to this same festival and this is her chance to lay the past to rest. Mustard – an enthusiastic, ebullient, 8 year old – doesn’t believe his father is dead. In fact, he is determined to find him and knows that Horneville is the place to start looking. If anyone can bring him back, Mustard can. Down in the city, the floodwater surrounding the Horneville City Hospital is steadily rising, turning what has been a place of refuge into a disaster zone. Deep in the hospital chaos, Nurse Gina Donaldson is forced to make a life and death decision with shattering repercussions. The arrival of Mikey’s little troupe helps Gina find hope in the most unlikely places. Both Mikey and Gina must stare down their pasts in order to find salvation, but will they have the courage?

Set in humanitarian disaster zones around the world, Tsunami and the Single Girl is the story of Krissy Nicholson’s journey to become an aid worker and her (seemingly) never-ending search to find a soul mate. As a free-spirited traveller, Krissy–now almost thirty–needs her life to start taking shape. So how does a wild night on a dance floor in Vietnam land her a sought-after role in Oxfam working in emergency relief? And how does the excess of the expatriate scene, a string of Mr Wrongs and failed romances lead to self-discovery and ultimately self-fulfilment? Against the backdrop of adrenalin-fuelled disaster response, Krissy begins to understand the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Whether co-ordinating emergency relief work in-the-field, or trying to find love in all the wrong places, Krissy takes us on a heartfelt and surprising adventure.

When Audrey Kepler inherits an abandoned homestead in rural Queensland, she jumps at the chance to escape her loveless existence in the city and make a fresh start. In a dusty back room of the old house, she discovers the crumbling photo of a handsome World War Two medic – Samuel Riordan, the homestead’s former occupant – and soon finds herself becoming obsessed with him. But as Audrey digs deeper into Samuel’s story, she discovers he was accused of bashing to death a young woman on his return from the war in 1946. When she learns about other unexplained deaths in recent years – one of them a young woman with injuries echoing those of the first victim – she begins to suspect that the killer is still very much alive. And now Audrey, thanks to her need to uncover the past, has provided him with good reason to want to kill again.

Tabitha Darling has always had a dab hand for pastry and a knack for getting into trouble. Which was fine when she was a tearaway teen, but not so useful now she’s trying to run a hipster urban cafe, invent the perfect trendy dessert, and stop feeding the many (oh so unfashionable) policemen in her life. When a dead muso is found in the flat upstairs, Tabitha does her best (honestly) not to interfere with the investigation, despite the cute Scottish blogger who keeps angling for her help. Her superpower is gossip, not solving murder mysteries, and those are totally not the same thing, right? But as that strange death turns into a string of random crimes across the city of Hobart, Tabitha can’t shake the unsettling feeling that maybe, for once, it really is ALL ABOUT HER.And maybe she’s figured out the deadly truth a trifle late.

Here are turnings of all kinds – changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours – where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they’ve made for themselves. Beautifully crafted, and as tender as they are confronting, these elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through. ‘Each of these 17 stories is a self-contained whole – as all good short stories should be – yet the sequence reveals striking connections among seemingly disparate lives and experiences. The result is at times mysterious, moving and occasionally deeply unsettling

While you are here…

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