It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

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

 A chunkster that took longer to read than I was expecting, (because I wasn’t carried away by it like I hoped) and overdue notices on some library books distracted me from my schedule this week. February is too short LOL.

What I Read Last Week

Five Bells by Gail Jones

The Little Shadows by Marina Endicott

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

The Brotherhood by YA Erskine

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Reviews Posted

(click the titles to comment on my reviews)

This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman ★★★★

The Short History of A Tall Jew by Dennis Danziger ★★★1/2

The Radleys by Matt Haig ★★★★

Sharp Turn by Marianne Delacourt ★★★1/2

Silver Tongued Devil by Jaye Wells ★★★

What I Am Reading Today

In the summer of 1963, the year of the release of Cleopatra, the most sensational movie ever made, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of season party. Sonia Martyn and her four daughters are part of a group of first generation Ukrainian Canadians, newly minted middle-class families claiming their small part of the cottage-country dream. With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip, heightened by their obsession with the deliciously scandalous love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  Their tightly bound world is straining with its own dramas and secrets. Sonia, a former fashion model, mourns the death of her mother and fights with her difficult eldest daughter. Elusive Nadia, the wife of a millionaire, longs for a life she cannot have. Sharp-tongued, sophisticated Sasha plays a dangerous game in both challenging and shoring-up the traditional Ukrainian community and its defining values. And for adolescent Laura, her sisters and their friends, the rifts and fissures that appear in the once impregnable “world of the mothers” will unleash a startling series of betrayals and discoveries. For this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all.

What I Plan To Read This Week

{click the cover to view at Goodreads}

MISCONCEPTION is the story of suburban Atlanta stay-at-home mom Pace Kelly and what happens when an unplanned pregnancy three years after her husband’s vasectomy rocks her happy marriage. When her husband Jason turns up sterile, Pace tries to explain the unexplainable. Her patience wears thin while Jason struggles with his suspicions and her two young sons look at her as if she’s to blame for their problems. As rumors of trouble with their marriage begin to circulate through the neighborhood and Pace begins to feel the sting of isolation from people she thought were her friends, her once perfect world begins to crumble. To top it all off, her overbearing mother’s insistence on creating a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving during the biggest crisis of Pace’s life is making her crazy. Despite Pace’s insistence that she hasn’t cheated, Jason Kelly is left to wonder if his blueblood wife has finally grown tired of his humble background and their middle class lifestyle. When he finds Pace in a compromising position, he ignores the advice of his brother and the marriage therapist who have warned him about jumping to conclusions and makes arrangements to have Pace followed. But the truth he discovers is a heavier burden to carry than the innuendo that was eating him alive. Now the tables are turned and he’s left holding a smoking gun. An innocent wife. A desperate husband. A no-win situation. When the smoke clears, will their marriage survive?

When Paulina dies mid-dance, she leaves 12-year-old Zav and 7-year-old Sealie with their loving but unstable father, Hal. The grieving family decides to plant a tree in her memory – a magnolia which, growing along with the children, offers a special place where secrets are whispered and feelings can be confessed. But as the memory tree grows, Hal, bereft, and increasingly suspicious of the world, turns to his own brand of salvation to make sense of the voices that bewilder and torment him. Mrs Mac, housekeeper and second mother since Paulina’s death, cooks, cleans, loves and worries about her ‘family’. She is even more concerned when Hal brings a larger-than-life stranger to the house for a beer; but Pastor Moses B. Washbourne, founder of the Church of the Divine Conflagration, ex-sergeant of the US Army, soon becomes part of the family, with surprising and far-reaching consequences. As the seasons pass, Sealie blossoms into young woman, the apple of Hal’s eye while Zav, having spent his childhood quietly trying to win his father’s lost attention, is conscripted for duty in Vietnam. And all the while, the voices continue to murmur poisonous words to Hal who knows he must keep them hidden . . . until he is persuaded into the most tragic of acts.

A compelling new series about Dr Dody McCleland, the first female autopsy surgeon.  A woman. A doctor. A beastly science.  At the turn of the twentieth century, London’s political climate is in turmoil, as women fight for the right to vote. Dody McCleland has her own battles to fight. As England’s first female autopsy surgeon, she must prove herself as she also proves that murder treats everyone equally…  After a heated women’s rights rally turns violent, an innocent suffragette is found murdered. When she examines the body, Dody is shocked to realise that the victim was a friend of her sister – fuelling her determination to uncover the cause of the protester’s suspicious death.  For Dody, gathering clues from a body is often easier than handling the living – especially Chief Detective Inspector Matthew Pike. Pike is looking to get to the bottom of this case but has a hard time trusting anyone – including Dody. Determined to earn Pike’s trust and to find the killer, Dody will have to sort through real and imagined secrets. But if she’s not careful, she may end up on her own examination table.

No good deed goes unpunished.  A Kabbalah magician, Aaron Walker has devoted the last hundred years of his life to his Foundation, a charity that helps widows, orphans, and the stranger in the land. It doesn’t get much stranger than the Lost: male witches who don’t have parents to train them in the arts. Now, corporate wizards are trying to kill him, and he has no idea why.  With a handful of former students, he hops from one hidden enclave of cultural magic to another, hoping to survive long enough to contact the witches of New Salem. But the assassins don’t scare Aaron as much as the price the witch Rose demands for her aid–to father a child. To keep his magic and save the world, he must remain a virgin. Merodak, the demon, offers a way out but he’s a pathological liar with a twisted sense of humor.

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