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

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Life…

Does anyone else spend most of every Sunday afternoon in the kitchen? It takes a couple of hours to make enough lunches for five (I don’t need to make mine), plus muffins for breakfast for 3 for the week. I also reserve Sunday for making a double batch meal base for the week. Yesterday I made a chicken mixture that I used for chicken burger patties, which I then served for dinner, and chicken meatballs that I’ll serve later in the week after marinating them in teriyaki sauce, with veggies and noodles. The mix is time consuming because I include about a kilo of veggies I have to grate – a mix of carrot, zucchini, celery and onion. The burger patties also need at least a half hour in fridge before cooking, then there is prepping the salad and buttering all the buns.

The only upside is that I can generally use the time to listen to podcasts. This week I listened to The NSW State Police Crime Command Investigations – a brand new cast in which police detectives discuss cold cases, this first episode is about a teenager who went missing in 1983; a few episodes from Sarah’s Bookshelves podcast, and I streamed the Edinburgh International Book Festival Q&A with author Val McDermid.

If you haven’t yet you should check out the Edinburgh International Book Festival which is running online from the 15th – 31st August. Just register and it’s free to ‘attend’ any of the online events, if you can’t make the live broadcasts most of the sessions will be available to stream later.

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

 

State Highway One by Sam Coley

When She Was Good by Michael Robotham

Tiny White Lies by Fiona Palmer

Bush School by Peter O’Brien

The McCalister Legacy by Nicole Hurley-Moore

 

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New Posts…

Review: State Highway One by Sam Coley

Review: When She Was Good by Michael Robotham

Review: Tiny White Lies by Fiona Palmer

Review: Bush School by Peter O’Brien

Bookshelf Bounty

 

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What I’m Reading This Week…

 

Inventive, electrifying and daring, True Story is a novel like nothing you’ve ever read before.

After a college party, two boys drive a girl home: drunk and passed out in the back seat. Rumours spread about what they did to her, but later they’ll tell the police a different version of events. Alice will never remember what truly happened. Her fracture runs deep, hidden beneath cleverness and wry humour. Nick – a sensitive, misguided boy who stood by – will never forget.

That’s just the beginning of this extraordinary journey into memory, fear and self-portrayal. Through university applications, a terrifying abusive relationship, a fateful reckoning with addiction and a final mind-bending twist, Alice and Nick will take on different roles to each other – some real, some invented – until finally, brought face to face once again, the secret of that night is revealed.

Startlingly relevant and enthralling in its brilliance, True Story is by turns a campus novel, psychological thriller, horror story and crime noir, each narrative frame stripping away the fictions we tell about women, men and the very nature of truth. It introduces Kate Reed Petty as a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction.

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In the new, shockingly current thriller by Denise Mina, solving one mystery leads to another: Margot finally learns her birth mother’s identity, only to discover that the woman’s murderer is still at large — and sending threatening letters.

Margot is having a thirtysomething crisis: She’s burning out at work, a public-health practice; she’s just left her longtime boyfriend after discovering he was cheating; and her mother recently died. The only silver lining to her mother’s death is that Margot, who was adopted, can finally go looking for her birth mother.

What she finds is an imcomplete family–the only person left is Nikki, her mother’s older sister. Aunt Nikki brings upetting news: Margot’s mother is dead, murdered many years ago, one of a series of sex workers killed in Glasgow.

The killer–or killers?–has never been found, Aunt Nikki claims. They’re still at large… and sending her letters, gloating letters that the details of the crime. Now Margot must choose: take the side of the world against her dead mother, or investigate her murder and see that justice is done at last.

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The gripping and revealing inside story of Australia’s most notorious armed robbers.

In the Australia of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, armed robbers were the top of the criminal food chain. Their dash and violence were celebrated, and men like Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox and Ray Denning were household names long before Underbelly established Melbourne’s gangland thugs as celebrities.

Cox and Denning were once Australian Public Enemies Number One and Two. Both were handsome, charismatic bandits who refused to bow to authority. Both were classified as ‘intractable’ in prison, and both escaped. Cox was the only man to escape from Katingal, Australia’s only ‘escape-proof’ jail. Soon after he broke out, he tried to break in again and rescue his mates.

Their story is one of violence and crime, but it is also about the unimaginable horrors that young boys faced when condemned to ‘institutions’ in the 1960s, and the terrible conditions in Australian jails in the 70s and 80s. These were the hells where a whole generation of armed robbers was forged.

Mark Dapin brings his brilliant research skills and distinctive, powerful narrative style to a book that explores the life of these infamous yet respected public enemies and the criminal world they inhabited. From armed robberies, shootings and bashings to prison floggings and jail breaks, this is the gritty, page-turning reality behind the headlines.

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Two sisters, one baby and the best of intentions…

As a vibrant, young woman with a lifetime of possibilities ahead of her, Freya grants her sister, Pearl, the ultimate gift of motherhood. However, this comes at a hefty price – an unexpected rift in her family and the loss of the man she loves.

Decades later, Freya is divorced, childless and homeless, at rock bottom after losing everything she’s worked for. When her estranged niece, Billie, offers sanctuary, managing the family restaurant on beautiful Magnetic Island, Freya can hardly refuse.

Billie has never understood the tension between her mother and her aunt and now, with a newly broken heart, she is nursing a family secret of her own. All three women come together under the tropical Queensland skies, but can they let go of past regrets, or will old tensions tear them further apart?

By the bestselling author of Meet Me in Venice, this is a moving and inspiring novel in a stunning setting about choices and consequences and the redemptive power of love.

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Thanks for stopping by!