It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

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

Life…

Hmm,  I’m not sure I remember exactly what I did last week. I think it was, thankfully, rather non eventful. We seem to be finally finding our feet managing the various family schedules, though this coming week will likely be a test with the addition of the AFL season for the boys, my youngest daughter going on her first three day Scout hike and my ‘Uncle’s’ 70th birthday celebration – a three hour drive away. What I am looking forward to most is lunch with the girls this Thursday, watching Sherlock Season 1 & 2 and reading {of course}.

What are you looking forward to this week?

What I Read Last Week

Lingerie for Felons by Ros Baxter

Tiddas by Anita Heiss

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler

The Madhouse Cookbook by Jo Pratt

Werewolf Sings The Blues by Jennifer Harlow

Mountain Ash by Margareta Osborn

New Posts

(click the titles to read my reviews)

Review & Giveaway: Lingerie for Felons by Ros Baxter ★★★★

Review: Safe With Me by Amy Hatvany ★★★

AWW Feature & Giveaway: Q&A with Anita Heiss

Review & Giveaway: Tiddas by Anita Heiss ★★★1/2

Review:  Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler  ★★★★

Review: Werewolf Sings the Blues by Jennifer Harlow ★★★

Weekend Cooking: The Madhouse Cookbook by Jo Pratt ★★★

What I Am Reading Today

The Wardrobe Girl is a delightfully witty novel full of romance and family dramas, plus an irresistible behind-the-scenes peek at life on a soap. ‘It’s just string bikinis, thongs and boardies on Pretty Beach Rescue. You could do it drunk and standing on your head.’ After the humiliating end of her last relationship, this is just what TV costume designer, Tess Appleby, needs to hear. Sure, a wardrobe assistant on a soap is a step down from her gig at the BBC, but all Tess wants is an easy life . . . Unfortunately she’s barely arrived on set before she’s warding off the attentions of the show’s heartthrob, Sean Tyler – and, as a consequence, the hostility of its other star, Bree Brenner. And if the pressures and politics of working on a TV drama aren’t enough, she’s living with her high-maintenance mother, an ageing celebrity, and her infuriating sister Emma, an aspiring actress. Still, Tess is certain she can deal with everything they throw at her – until Jake Freeman, her ex-fiancé, the man she last saw eight years ago as he walked away and broke her heart, is named the show’s new director…

 What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

The panic began to set in when Annabelle Gurwitch turned 49. Suddenly, new and pernicious health problems began to plague her, solicitations from the AARP began flooding her mailbox, and a marriage proposal on Twitter was abruptly rescinded when the tweeter caught a glimpse of Gurwitch’s age.  A visit to her gynecologist ended not with one of his usual benign send-offs stay healthy, stay happy, stay hydrated, but instead with the slightly ominous: Stay funny.  In this new collection of essays, Gurwitch has taken her gynecologist’s advice to heart. Whether she’s lusting after the young man fixing her computer, navigating the extensive anti-aging offerings in the Barneys beauty department, or negotiating the ins and outs of acceptable behavior with her teenage son, Gurwitch bravely turns an unflinching eye towards the myriad of issues women can expect to encounter in their later years.

Forgive me, Dorothea, for I cannot forgive you. What you do, to this child, to this child’s mother, it is wrong… Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in the books that pass through her hands in the second-hand shop where she works. When her father gives her some of her grandmother’s belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew – dated after he supposedly died in the war. Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets a Polish Squadron Leader, Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later… Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase is a heartbreaking debut novel about family secrets, soulmates and missed opportunities.

Two strangers meet on a windswept car lot in West Texas. Marcus is fleeing the disastrous fallout of chasing a lifelong dream; Maria is returning to the hometown she fled years ago, to make amends. They begin to argue over the car that they both desperately want a low-slung sky-blue twenty-year-old Buick Electra. The car, too, has seen its share of mistakes and failures. Every dent and seam has witnessed pivotal moments in the lives of others, from the boy who assembled it at the Cleveland factory to all the owners who were to follow: a God-fearing man who sells it when he sees a sexy girl sprawled across it; a doctor who can t dissociate it from his son s fate; a girl with a hole in her heart; and a rancher’s wife who d much rather live without it for all the history it carries. Marcus and Maria, after knowing each other for less than an hour, decide to buy the old car together. And as this surprising novel follows the rocky paths of the Electra and its owners both past and present these two lost souls find solace in an unexpected alliance. “All I Have In This World” is a tender, compelling novel about our desire to reconcile the past with the present, and the ways we must learn to forgive others, and perhaps even ourselves, if we are ever to move on.

On an impulse, Trudi-Ann Tierney, Sydney producer and former actress, goes to Kabul to manage a bar. She quickly falls into the local TV industry, where she becomes responsible for producing a highly popular soapie. Trudi’s staff are hugely inexperienced. They include Habib, the Pashto poet who wants to insert allegorical scenes involving fighting ants into the scripts; Rashid, the Dari manager, who spends all day surreptitiously watching uncensored Hindi music videos; and the Pakistani actresses who cross the border to Jalalabad (‘Jallywood’) to perform roles that no Afghan actresses can take on without bringing shame to their families. Trudi lives among the expat community – the media, the burnt-out army types now working as security contractors, the ‘Do-Gooders’, the diplomats – in dubious guest houses like The Dirty Diana. This is ‘Ka-bubble’, where the reckless encounters with each other, with alcohol and of course with recreational drugs are as dangerous as the city’s streets. Here are crazy people living crazy lives, and locals trying to survive as best they can against the backdrop of war.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm’s most important client. After eighteen years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant, Golightly’s. She is locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, for custody of their ten-year-old daughter Jane—and she also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she’s never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can’t be put off. As she so disarmingly puts it: It’s her first divorce, too.

While you are here…

Congratulate the winner of The Lost Girls by Wendy James: Erin P!

Congratulate the winner of The Curl Up and Dye: Donna L!

Enter to WIN Lingerie for Felons by Ros Baxter { open worldwide }

Enter to WIN Tiddas by Anita Heiss {Australian readers only}

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