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…

Today is a public holiday for most of Australia (except in WA & QLD), celebrating the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. It’s celebrated on the second Monday in June here for several reasons, dating back to King George V’s rule, despite the fact that the Queen’s actual birthday is April 21st. Anyway, she turned 93 this year, happy birthday Queen Elizabeth II.

We didn’t make any plans for the long weekend because we weren’t sure if we would have the car back, and though we finally did pick it up on Friday afternoon, it’s not working as smoothly as it should, so it has to go back for some adjustments *sigh*

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

The Ex by Nicola Moriarty

Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Devil’s Lair by Sarah Barrie

The One by Kaneana May

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New Posts

Review: A Lifetime of Impossible Days by Tabitha Bird

Review: The Daughter’s Tale by Armando Lucas Correa

Review: The Ex by Nicola Moriarty

Review: The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka

Review: The Beekeeper’s Secret by Josephine Moon

Weekend Cooking: Cake at Midnight by Jessie L. Star

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What I’m Reading This Week

A breathtaking thriller about a wealthy housewife who successfully conceals her dark past until a true-crime podcast and a photo posted on social media send her running across Europe, with a faded rock star by her side and extremely dangerous enemies on her trail.

Anna McLean loves to revel in life’s unsavory details. When she’s keeping up appearances as an upper-class Edinburgh housewife, there’s no better escape than other people’s sordid stories retold in true-crime podcasts. Until the day it all falls apart.

A new podcast turns out to have a connection to Anna’s own dark past–the secret history she’s taken great pains to conceal. Hours later, her husband announces he’s leaving her–for her own best friend. And when the best friend’s husband–who happens to be former rock star Fin Cohen–shows up on Anna’s front stoop, a nosy neighbor plasters their photo all over the internet. Her cover well and truly blown, Anna’s only choice is to run–and take Fin along for his own protection.

Reigning queen of Scottish crime fiction Denise Mina deftly weaves the classic thriller elements of a woman with a secret past, an average citizen thrust into a high-stakes international chase, and a cheating spouse, with online life–internet sleuthing, true-crime podcasts, insta-celebrities, and Twitter–to craft a modern, propulsive page-turner like nothing you’ve read before.

++++++

When life delivers you gifts you don’t want.

Dave Martin is down on his luck: his wife has left him; his farm is a failure; his house is a mess; he has withdrawn from his community and friends; and tragedy has stolen his capacity to care. He passes the time drinking too much and buying cheap tools online, treating the delivered parcels as gifts from people who care about him.

And then boxes begin to arrive in the mail: boxes that he didn’t order, but ones that everyone around him seems to want desperately. As he tries to find out the secret of the boxes, Dave is drawn into a crazy world of red herrings and wrong turns, good guys and bad, false friends and true, violence, lust, fear, revenge, and a lot, lot more. It’s not a world he understands, but is it the only one Dave can live in?

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During the record-smashing hurricane season of 2005, a deadly game of cat and mouse unfolds and a stormy love affair is complicated by polarized politics, high-strung Southern families, a full-on media circus and the worst disaster management goat screw in US history.

As Hurricane Katrina howls toward the ill-prepared city of New Orleans, Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, a Gulf Coast climatologist and storm risk specialist, preaches the gospel of evacuation, weighed down by the fresh public memory of a spectacularly false alarm a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Shay Hoovestahl, a puff piece reporter for the local news, stumbles on the story of a con artist who uses storm-related chaos as cover for identity theft and murder. Laying a trap to expose the killer, Shay discovers that Corbin, her former lover, is unwittingly involved, and her plan goes horribly awry as the city’s infrastructure crumbles.

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The young detectives call Alan Auhl a retread, but that doesn’t faze him. He does things his own way—and gets results.

He still lives with his ex-wife, off and on, in a big house full of random boarders and hard-luck stories. And he’s still a cop, even though he retired from Homicide some years ago.

He works cold cases now. Like the death of John Elphick—his daughters still convinced he was murdered, the coroner not so sure. Or the skeleton that’s just been found under a concrete slab. Or the doctor who killed two wives and a girlfriend, and left no evidence at all.

Auhl will stick with these cases until justice is done. One way or another

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A year after a tragic accident changed her life forever, Tess Daley is in desperate need of a change. When she is offered a position with the Flying Doctor Service, she seizes the opportunity to make a fresh start. Yet once she arrives in remote Mica Ridge she feels like an outsider, unable to connect with her patients and unsure if she’ll ever fit in with this outback community.

Station owner Soretta Byrnes has grown to love the company and chaos that comes with living in a house filled with boarders. So with tenants moving out and bills piling up, it’s a welcome relief to have Tess and new pilot Charlie Fennes arriving in town and looking for somewhere to stay.

As they share life’s triumphs and challenges, it isn’t long before everyone at the station feels like family. But Charlie has yet to reveal his motive for coming to Mica Ridge and his secret will change the life of someone in the house forever .

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Thanks for stopping by!