It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The It’s Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at BookDate

I’m also linking to The Sunday Post @ Caffeinated Reviewer

And the Sunday Salon @ ReaderBuzz

 

Life…

It’s been a quiet week on the home front. I finished binge watching Grace & Frankie, and Lucifer, caught up with a few other shows and have started Dead to Me.

Our federal elections were this weekend, and the results were disappointing.

I’ve knocked a few more books off that Netgalley backlog I accrued during my hiatus, I’m down to five, but I’ve added more (of course). However Netgalley seems to think close enough is good enough, my feedback rating is at 100%

This week my oldest daughter will turn 23, the same age I was when she was born! She still lives at home and has requested pizza and a funfetti cake to celebrate on Tuesday night, and invited a bunch of her friends over for pre drinks on Saturday night, as a precursor to heading out to a club.

Here she is, aged 1

 

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

 

The Land Girls by Victoria Purman

The Police Women’s Bureau by Edward Conlon

Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Named Helga by Todd Alexander

The Passengers by Eleanor Limprecht

Cake at Midnight by Jessie L Star

Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a **** by Gill Sims

 

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New Posts

 

Review: When It All Went to Custard by Danielle Hawkins

Review: The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Review: The Accusation by Wendy James

Review: Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Named Helga by Todd Alexander

Review: Four Respectable Ladies Seek the Meaning of Wife by Barbara Toner

Stuff on Sundays: Bookshelf Bounty

 

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What I’m Reading This Week

{Click on the cover to add the book to your shelf on Goodreads}

 

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, and the power of forgiveness.

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city. What goes on behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.

Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart. In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.

But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past. Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

++++++

You never know what life will throw at you. You just need to know who to turn to for help.

One morning in early summer, a man and woman wait to board a flight to Italy. 

Allie has lived a careful, focused existence. But now she has unexpectedly taken leave from her job as an academic research scientist to fly to a place she only recently heard about in a letter. Her father, Joe, doesn’t know the reason for her trip, and Allie can’t bring herself to tell him that she’s flying to Italy to unpick the truth about what her mother did all those years ago.

Beside her is her best friend since schooldays, Ed. He has just shocked everyone with a sudden separation from his wife, Julia. Allie hopes that a break will help him open up.

But the secrets that emerge as the sun beats down on Lake Garda and Liguria don’t merely concern her family’s tangled past. And the two friends are forced to confront questions about their own life-long relationship that are impossible to resolve.

++++++

A thoughtful, uplifting and magical story of childhood, family and finding ways to change the inevitable . . .
Meet Willa Waters, aged 8 . . . 33 . . . and 93.
On one impossible day in.
1965, eight-year-old Willa Waters receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction: ‘One ocean: plant in the backyard.’ So she does – and somehow creates an extraordinary time-slip that allows her to visit her future selves.
On one impossible day in .
1990, Willa is 33 and a mother-of-two when her childhood self magically appears in her backyard. But she’s also a woman haunted by memories of her dark past – and is on the brink of a decision that will have tragic repercussions . . .
On one impossible day in .
2050 Willa is a silver-haired, gumboot-loving 93-year-old whose memory is fading fast. Yet she knows there’s something she has to remember, a warning she must give her past selves about a terrible event in 1990 . . . If only she could recall what it was.
Can the three Willas come together, to heal their past and save their future . . . before it’s too late?

++++++

Every story one day comes to an end.

As roommates, they met for the first time in college. Two of the brightest minds ever to graduate from Stamford Psychology University.

As adversaries, they met again in Quantico, Virginia. Robert Hunter had become the head of the LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit. Lucien Folter had become the most prolific and dangerous serial killer the FBI had ever encountered.

Now, after spending three and a half years locked in solitary confinement, Lucien has finally managed to break free. And he’s angry.

For the past three and a half years, Lucien has thought of nothing else but vengeance.

The person responsible for locking him away has to pay, he has to suffer.

That person … is Robert Hunter.

And now it is finally time to execute the plan.

++++++

Lost letters have only one hope for survival…The Dead Letters Depot.

Inside the walls of a former tea factory, letter detectives work to solve mysteries: missing zip codes, illegible handwriting, rain-smudged ink, lost address labels, torn packages, forgotten street names—these are the twists of fate behind missed birthdays, broken hearts, unheard confessions, pointless accusations, unpaid bills and unanswered prayers.

But when letters arrive addressed simply to “My Great Love,” one longtime letter detective with face his greatest mystery yet, as his quest to follow the clues becomes a life-changing journey of love, hope and courage.

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Thanks for stopping by!