It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #SundayPost #SundaySalon

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…

Thank you to those who have supported Australia during the past week, either with funds or good wishes, the fires are still burning but this week favourable weather conditions are expected to provide firefighters with a chance to get some control over the worst of the blazes. This image was displayed on the Sydney Opera House this weekend.

 

My week was a mix of good and not so good. The good – my youngest daughter turned 17 on Wednesday. The bad – our car required more expensive repairs after the shock absorbers gave out, and the air conditioner stopped working.

With my husband still on holidays from work, we signed up for a free month of Amazon Prime, and we are now binging Monk which my husband finds endlessly amusing.

 

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley

Chosen (Slayer #2) by Kiersten White

A Murder at Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

 

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New Posts…

#AuthorsForFireys Twitter Auction

Review: The Mothers by Genevieve Gannon

Review: Cedar Valley by Holly Throsby

Review: Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley

2020 Nonfiction Reader Challenge Recommendations Part 1

Reading: Recommended

 

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What I’m Reading This Week…

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

KENSINGTON AVE, PHILADELPHIA:

THE FIRST PLACE YOU GO FOR DRUGS OR SEX.

THE LAST PLACE YOU WANT TO LOOK FOR YOUR SISTER.

Mickey Fitzpatrick has been patrolling the 24th District for years. She knows most of the working women by name. She knows what desperation looks like and what people will do when they need a fix. She’s become used to finding overdose victims: their numbers are growing every year. But every time she sees someone sprawled out, slumped over, cold to the touch, she has to pray it’s not her sister, Kacey.

When the bodies of murdered sex workers start turning up on the Ave, the Chief of Police is keen to bury the news. They’re not the kind of victims that generate a whole lot of press anyway. But Mickey is obsessed, dangerously so, with finding the perpetrator – before Kacey becomes the next victim.

xxxxxx

 

Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson

You never forget the one that got away. But what if ‘what could have been’ is still to come?

Daniel was the first boy to make Alison a mix tape. But that was years ago and Ali hasn’t thought about him in a very long time. Even if she had, she might not have called him ‘the one that got away’; she’d been the one to run away, after all.

Then Dan’s name pops up on her phone, with a link to a song from their shared past.

For two blissful minutes, Alison is no longer an adult in Adelaide with temperamental daughters; she is sixteen in Sheffield, dancing in her too-tight jeans. She cannot help but respond in kind. And so begins a new mix tape.

Ali and Dan exchange songs – some new, some old – across oceans and time zones, across a lifetime of different experiences, until one of them breaks the rules and sends a message that will change everything…

Because what if ‘what could have been’ is still to come?

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The Daughter of Victory Lights by Kerri Turner

PART CABARET, PART BURLESQUE, AND LIKE NOTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE! GENTLEMEN, AND LADIES IF YOU’VE DARED TO COME, WELCOME TO …’

There was a pause, and Evelyn sensed those around her leaning forward in anticipation.

‘THE VICTORY!’

1945: After the thrill and danger of volunteering in an all-female searchlight regiment protecting Londoners from German bombers overhead, Evelyn Bell is secretly dismayed to be sent back her rigid domestic life when the war is over. But then she comes across a secret night-time show, hidden from the law on a boat in the middle of the Thames. Entranced by the risque and lively performance, she grabs the opportunity to join the misfit crew and escape her dreary future.

At first the Victory travels from port to port to raucous applause, but as the shows get bigger and bigger, so too does the risks the performers are driven to take, as well as the growing emotional complications among the crew. Until one desperate night …

1963: Lucy, an unloved and unwanted little girl, is rescued by a mysterious stranger who says he knows her mother. On the Isle of Wight, Lucy is welcomed into an eclectic family of ex-performers. She is showered with kindness and love, but gradually it becomes clear that there are secrets they refuse to share. Who is Evelyn Bell?

xxxxxx

 

Dear Life by Rachel Clarke

A brilliant combination of lyrical memoir and guide to living and dying, comparable to Kathryn Mannix’s WITH THE END IN MIND and Julia Samuel’s GRIEF WORKS, from the author of YOUR LIFE IN MY HANDS.

It takes courage to love the things of this world when all of them, without fail, are fleeting, fading, no more than a spark against the darkness of deep time. Yet when everything you have been and done and meant to the world is being prised from your grasp, human connections are the vital medicine. It is other people who make the difference.

Rachel Clarke grew up spellbound by her father’s stories of practising medicine. Then, as a doctor herself, one who specialised in palliative medicine, she found herself contemplating all her training had taught her in the face of her own beloved father’s mortality.

DEAR LIFE is the inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking and yet deeply uplifting story of the doctor we would all want to have by our side in a crisis. The hospice where Rachel works is, of course, a world haunted by loss and grief, but it is also teeming with life.

If there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world. In a hospice, therefore, there is more of what matters in life – more love, more strength, more kindness, more smiles, more dignity, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion – than you could ever imagine.

DEAR LIFE is a love letter – to a father, a profession, to life itself

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Thanks for stopping by!