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

 

Linking to: It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at BookDate; Sunday Post @ Caffeinated Reviewer; and the Sunday Salon @ ReaderBuzz

Life…

Happy New Year!

Our celebration was subdued as befitting the times, we watched a few movies (The Croods 2 and Wonder Woman 1984) and then enjoyed watching the livestream of the Sydney Fireworks. (I posted it HERE for your viewing pleasure).

This week is my youngest daughter’s 18th birthday, we are having a family dinner at the restaurant where my youngest son works early in the week so she can then go out with her friends on Friday, when her birthday actually falls.

She is now officially enrolled at University, and campus accomodation has been confirmed, but she doesn’t actually start until March 1st, so I still have her with me for a little while longer. My husband still has another two weeks of holiday, so my routines are a bit all over the place, and probably will be for the rest of the month until the boys return to school.

I have some plans though, one which unfortunately includes a redesign of the blog. For some unfathomable reason the text colour, you may have noticed, has changed to grey from brown and there is no way to fix it, and my background no longer fits properly either. Since my original template is no longer supported, I have to choose a new one from those on offer, none of which I like. I’m particularly concerned about formatting screw-ups, especially with over 2,800 posts, and whatever else might go wrong.

 

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What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

 

We Thought We Knew You by M. William Phelps

When the Apricots Bloom by Gina Wilkinson

This Has Been Absolutely Lovely by Jessica Dettmann

 

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New Posts…

 

Review: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Review: Charlotte by Helen Moffett

Review: We Thought We Knew You by M. William Phelps

The End of the Year 2020 Wrap Up Post

Wishing You A Happy New Year!

Challenging Myself in 2021…

2020 Nonfiction Reader: End of Year Spotlight

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What I’m Reading This Week…

Paris, 1943: Lana Antanova is rushing to tell her husband she is pregnant when she witnesses him being executed by a Gestapo officer for hiding a Jewish girl in a piano. Overcome with grief, Lana loses the baby.
A few months later, a heartbroken Lana is approached to join the Resistance on the French Riviera. As the daughter of a Russian countess, Lana has the perfect background to infiltrate the émigré community of Russian aristocrats who socialise with Nazi officers, including the man who killed her husband.

Lana’s cover story makes her the mistress of a wealthy Swiss playboy, the darkly handsome and charismatic Guy Pascal, and her base his villa in Cap Ferrat. Together they make a ruthlessly effective team. Consumed by her mission, Lana doesn’t count on becoming attached to a young Jewish girl or falling helplessly in love with Guy.

As the Nazis close in, Lana’s desire to protect the ones she loves threatens to put them all at risk.

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Meg lives alone: a little place in the bush outside town. A perfect place to hide. That’s one of the reasons she offers to shelter Nerine, who’s escaping a violent ex. The other is that Meg knows what it’s like to live with an abusive partner.

Nerine is jumpy and her two little girls are frightened. It tells Meg all she needs to know where they’ve come from, and she’s not all that surprised when Nerine asks her to get hold of a gun. But she knows it’s unnecessary. They’re safe now.

Then she starts to wonder about some little things. A disturbed flyscreen. A tune playing on her windchimes. Has Nerine’s ex tracked them down? Has Meg’s husband turned up to torment her some more?

By the time she finds out, it’ll be too late to do anything but run for her life.

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The story of how two women, who should have been bitter foes, combined their courage and wisdom to wield extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony.

‘I’ve waited for this moment so long, dreamed of it, prepared for it, I can barely believe it’s finally here. But it is. And it is nothing like I expected.’

There was a short time in Australia’s European history when two women wielded extraordinary power and influence behind the scenes of the fledgling colony.

One was Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of the new governor Lachlan Macquarie, nudging him towards social reform and magnificent buildings and town planning. The other was Elizabeth Macarthur, credited with creating Australia’s wool industry and married to John Macarthur, a dangerous enemy of the establishment.

These women came from strikingly different backgrounds with husbands who held sharply conflicting views. They should have been bitter foes. Elizabeth & Elizabeth is about two courageous women thrown together in impossible times.

Borne out of an overriding admiration for the women of early colonial Australian history, Sue Williams has written a novel of enduring fascination.

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The shocking true story of a serial killer in 1930s Melbourne.

November, 1930. One sunny Saturday afternoon, 12-year-old Mena Griffiths was playing in the park w hen she w as lured away by an unknown man. Hours later, her strangled body w as found, mouth gagged and hands crossed over her chest, in an abandoned house. Only months later, another girl was murdered; the similarities between the cases undeniable. Crime in Melbourne had taken a shocking new turn: this was the work of a serial killer, a homicidal maniac.

Despite their best efforts, police had no experience dealing with this kind of criminal. W hat followed was years of bungled investigations, falsely accused men – and the tragic deaths of two more girls – before the murderer was finally caught and brought to justice.

With all the pace of a thriller, Katherine Kovacic recounts this extraordinary, chilling true story – of failed police enquiries, a killer with a Jekyll and Hyde personality, and the families shattered when four innocent lives were cruelly taken

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Thanks for stopping by!