It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

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

Life…

My highlights of the last week included my daughters basketball team, which I coach, winning the first game of the season by 2 points. It was a nailbiter!

The second was chatting with Hades author, Candice Fox, courtesy The Reading Room. You can view the hangout, which included a handful of other book bloggers HERE.

I was also honoured to be featured at Momentum Moonlight this week and answer a few questions in a discussion about author etiquette with  Lily Malone

I did find though I just didn’t have the time in front of the computer I expected so I am several reviews behind and I have a few things on this week so it may be difficult to catch up. Wish me luck!

What I Read Last Week

The Heart Radical by Boyd Anderson

Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement

Killer by Jonathan Kellerman

I’d Eat That! Simple Ways to be a Better Cook by Calum Hann

The Girl With a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

New Posts

(click the titles to read my reviews)

Review: Big Bad Wolf by Nele Neuhaus ★★★

Review: The Grass Castle by Karen Viggers ★★

Review: Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement ★★★★1/2

Review: Killer by Jonathon Kellerman ★★★★

Hello Neighbour!

Weekend Cooking: I’d Eat That! by Calum Hann

What I Am Reading Today

Falcon Lake wants vengeance. And so, it seems, does someone else . . . An intense, heart-rending psychological thriller to accompany the chilling and seductive Fracture When Decker drags his best friend Delaney’s lifeless body out of the frozen lake, he makes a deal: Anyone but her. Everyone but her. The lake releases her. It takes another . . . All their friends blame Delaney for Carson’s death. But Decker knows the truth: Delaney is drawn to those who are dying, and she would have tried to help Carson. Or so Decker believes until a body lies in front of him in a pool of water on his kitchen floor. Until he sees in Delaney’s eyes that she knew this would happen too – and she said nothing. Until he realises it isn’t the lake that is looking for revenge – Delaney is part of someone else’s plan.

 What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

What happens to love when life gets in the way? A funny and perceptive read about real relationships. Perfect for fans of Dawn French, Sue Townsend and Bridget Jones’ Diary. Meet Molly Bennett. Married to Max and mother to two warring teenagers, she’s just ‘celebrated’ a significant birthday. According to Bridget Jones Molly is a “smug married”. So why doesn’t she feel smug? Is it because everyone seems to be having a better time of it than her? Or is it that Max has started taking more of an interest in ‘business trips’ and less of an interest in their sex life? Molly is beginning to despair until an old school friend starts flirting with her through Facebook…

For fans of An Education and My Summer of Love — a powerful and biting social satire about a girl struggling to find freedom in 1970s suburbia When Amanda Baker was 14 she found a letter written by her runaway mother to her unborn child: ‘Dear Jeremy’ it began ‘or Amanda…’ Mrs Baker still sends Christmas presents – Meccano, a fishing rod, a Spare Rib subscription – but her daughter is now in the coolly capable hands of Mr Baker’s second wife, Pam, who trots home from work on her stacked heels to her formica ‘dream kitchen’, where she curls butter, grills grapefruit and swigs sherry from the bottle hidden under the sink. Meanwhile Amanda’s dad, soured by his experiences with free-spirited women, crossbreeds fuchsias and salivates over glossy prospectuses in search of a new school for his disappointing daughter. The happiest days of your life? Not for Baker, sixteen and sick of it as she moves miserably between lessons packed with palm fibre and the use of the dative. Baker’s only solace is her fifth form gang – the four Mandies – and a low-calorie diet of king-sized cigarettes, until she teams up with Julia Smith, games captain and consummate game player. And so begins a passionate friendship that will threaten her future, menace her sanity and risk the betrayal of everything and everyone she holds dear. The Following Girls weaves the minutiae of Seventies girlhood into an unsparing tragi-comedy of shrinking horizons, dangerous alliances and not-so-happy families.

DI Kate Simms is on the fast track to nowhere. Five years ago she helped a colleague when she shouldn’t have. She’s been clawing her way back from a demotion ever since. Professor Nick Fennimore is a failed genetics student, successful gambler, betting agent, crime scene officer, chemistry graduate, toxicology specialist and one-time scientific advisor to the National Crime Faculty. He is the best there is, but ever since his wife and daughter disappeared he’s been hiding away in Scotland, working as a forensics lecturer. In Manchester, drug addicts are turning up dead and Simms’ superior is only too pleased to hand the problem to her. Then a celebrity dies and the media gets interested. Another overdose victim shows up, but this time the woman has been systematically beaten and all identifying features removed. The evidence doesn’t add up; Simms’ superiors seem to be obstructing her investigation; and the one person she can’t afford to associate with is the one man who can help: Fennimore.

Promise

Top Homicide cop Darian Richards has been seeking out monsters for too long. He has promised one too many victim’s families he will find the answers they need and it’s taken its toll. Now retired, a series of disappearances see him return to the gun. On his terms. But he knows, every promise has a price to pay. After surviving a gunshot wound to the head, Darian calls it quits and retires to the Sunshine Coast in an attempt to leave the demons behind. But he should have realised, there are demons everywhere and no place is safe. A serial killer is prowling the Sunshine Coast area and Darian tries to ignore the fact his experience could make a difference hunting him down. All he wants is to sit at the end of his jetty on the Noosa River and ignore the fact that girls from the area have vanished over the past fourteen months. All blonde and pretty. Youngest: 13. Oldest: 16. He knows they are all dead but the cops were saying ‘missing’ or ‘vanished’. That’s what you have to say if you don’t have a body. Jenny Brown was the first. She vanished sometime after 4 in the afternoon, Saturday 15 October the previous year. Except for her parents and her friends and everybody who knew her, it was thought she was just a runaway. Especially by the cops who allowed a good two or three minutes before arriving at that conclusion. By the time they’d reached the gate to the front yard of her house, before they’d even walked across the road and climbed into their cruiser, they would’ve forgotten Jenny Brown even existed.
But then others disappeared and they couldn’t call them all runaways. Darian can’t sit idly by and he decides he is going to find the killer and deal with him… his way.

Dead Girl Sing

Darian Richards knew he should have let the phone keep ringing. But more than two decades as a cop leaves you with a certain outlook on life. No matter how much he tried to walk away, something, or someone, kept bringing him back to his gun. One phone call. Two dead girls in a shallow water grave. And a missing cop to deal with. Something bad is happening on the Gold Coast glitter strip. Amongst the thousands of schoolies and the usual suspects, someone is preying on beautiful young women. No one has noticed. No one knows why. Darian looked into the eyes of those two dead girls. The last person to do that was their killer. He can t walk away. He will find out why.

While you are here…

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