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…

Been nowhere. Done nothing.

 

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

Red Dirt Country by Fiona McDonald

The Lost Jewels by Kirsty Manning

Return to Stringybark Creek by Karly Lane

Gulliver’s Wife by Lauren Chater

 

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New Posts…

Review: Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon

Review: Red Dirt Country by Fiona McDonald

Review: The Lost Jewels by Kirsty Manning

2020 Nonfiction Reader Challenge: Monthly Spotlight #3

Six Degrees of Separation: Stasiland to A Beautiful Place To Die

 

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What I’m Reading This Week…

Please note: Goodreads is being problematic right now, so I wasn’t able to link the book covers as I usual do.

 

It all began when I met you, Lily.

Beautiful, dangerous, precious you.

At first Katherine dismisses her early-twenties intern as a millennial ‘snowflake’: entitled, moralistic, soft. Yet as Lily’s youth and beauty increasingly remind Katherine of everything she once had, she begins to develop a dark fascination with her new colleague.

But is Lily as perfect as she seems, or does she have a sinister hidden agenda? As Katherine is drawn into an obsessive power struggle with the intern, a disturbing picture emerges of two women hiding dark secrets – and who are desperate enough to do anything to come out on top…

With shocking twists at every turn, Precious You is a powerfully gripping story of obsession, revenge and deceit.

xxxxxx

 

You are her mother at this moment. The future is another time.’

In a remote corner of Tanzania, Essie Lawrence lives with her husband in an archaeologist’s camp. One morning a chance encounter with two strangers sees her making a rash promise. When she returns home to the research base, she has a baby in her arms. Essie is to care for the little girl until the coming of the rains. And then hand her back.

The organised world of Magadi Research Camp is turned upside down. As her heart opens up to new life, Essie is drawn into the ancient wisdom of the Hadza, the last hunter-gatherer tribe in East Africa. And she is led back to memories of her own mother and her first home on the island of Tasmania, at the far end of the world. But there is a price to pay. Essie’s marriage, her career – everything she’s worked for – is put at risk.

On the shores of the flamingo lake, personal stories are played out alongside the Lawrences’ quest to find the origins of the human species. Nightmares and dreams go hand in hand as past and present merge. What is real and what will turn to dust? And after a season of being a mother, will Essie be able to survive the hardest challenge of all? To love, and then let go …

An exquisite and heart-piercing story of one woman’s bond with a baby, The Beautiful Mother will resonate with every parent, crossing time, place and culture. It is an unforgettable exploration of what it really means to be a member of the human family, revealing the deep need we all have to find our own tribe

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Fried Green Tomatoes and “Steel Magnolias” meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true-crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighborhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer. Patricia is initially attracted to him, but when some local children go missing, she starts to suspect the newcomer is involved. She begins her own investigation, assuming that he’s a Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. What she uncovers is far more terrifying, and soon she–and her book club–are the only people standing between the monster they’ve invited into their homes and their unsuspecting community.

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Brimming with anticipation, humour, desire and strangeness these stories will quicken your senses and make your spine tingle.

In Thrill Me, thirty-one award-winning and emerging Australian storytellers write to thrill and move you. Look away if you want cheap thrills. Read on if you dare. These stories will leave an imprint on you. Some will be unshakeable.

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Summer has come to Atlantic City but the boardwalk is empty of tourists, the casino lights have dimmed, and two Jane Does are laid out in the marshland behind the Sunset Motel, just west of town. Only one person even knows they’re there.

Meanwhile, Clara, a young boardwalk psychic, struggles to attract clients for the tarot readings that pay her rent. When she begins to experience very real and disturbing visions, she suspects they could be related to the recent cases of women gone missing in town. When Clara meets Lily, an ex-Soho art gallery girl who is working at a desolate casino spa and reeling from a personal tragedy, she thinks Lily may be able to help her. But Lily has her own demons to face. If they can put the pieces together in time, they may save another lost girl—so long as their efforts don’t attract perilous attention first. Can they break the ill-fated cycle, or will they join the other victims?

Evocative, eerie, and compelling, Please See Us is a fast-paced psychological thriller that explores the intersection of womanhood, power, and violence

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Thanks for stopping by!