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…

The past week was a black hole where reading, and the blog, was concerned. I barely managed to finish one book, and wrote not a single review, putting me badly behind.

I was completely distracted by the lead up to moving our youngest daughter into university. She’s now safely ensconced in her campus accomodation as of the weekend. I managed not to cry in front of her when we left. We won’t see her again until Easter when she can come home for a week.

The stress of the whole thing also had some health implications for my chronic condition so it’s been a tough week, physically and emotionally (and don’t even get me started on the havoc causing peri-menopause).

Additionally there is also the Facebook vs the Australian Government ‘media code’ stand off, which means my Book’d Out Facebook page is currently blocked, because apparently it counts as ‘media’ thanks to Murdoch’s nefarious influence on our legislation. I happen to support Facebook in this particular battle, and I imagine my page will be reinstated eventually, but it in the meantime if you were wondering what happened to it, now you know! Of course you can follow my posts a dozen other ways instead… subscribe to my blog via email or your preferred feed reader, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, LibraryThing or Pintrest.

It’s the last Monday of the month so time for a challenge update!

Nonfiction Reader Challenge 2/12

Australian Women Writers Challenge 14/50

Aussie Author Challenge 4/20

Historical Fiction Challenge 4/25

Books In Translation Challenge 0/4

What’s in a Name Challenge 3/6

Cloak and Dagger Challenge 6/25

*

——————————————-

*

What I’ve Read Since I last Posted…

*

The Silent Listener by Lyn Yeowart

*

———————————————

*

New Posts…

Review: Sargasso by Kathy George

Bookshelf Bounty

*
———————————————

*

What I’m Reading This Week…

*

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home.

Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams.

Esther only wants to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there’s Fannie’s risky pregnancy—not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac—and the fact that the handsome heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence.

When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth—at least until Fannie’s baby is born—and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal.

Based on a true story and told in the vein of J. Courtney Sullivan’s Saints for All Occasions and Anita Diamant’s The Boston Girl, Beanland’s family saga is a breathtaking portrait of just how far we will go to in order to protect our loved ones and an uplifting portrayal of how the human spirit can endure—and even thrive—after tragedy.

xxxxxx

She thinks love can kill you. It turns out she might be right.

Meet Harper Brown …

Occupation: Arts journalist

Dream job: Hard-hitting news reporter

Location: Paris

Loves: True crime podcasts, art galleries, coffee, whiskey

Does not love: fake people, toxic positivity, being told how to live her life by smug workmates who have no life (that’s you, Stan), her narcissistic ex

Favourite book: 1984

Favourite artist: Noah X. Sometimes.

Favourite painting: Klimt’s Schubert at the Piano

Special skills: breaking out of car boots, picking locks and escaping relationships.

Superpower: She can lose any guy in three minutes flat. Ask her how.

Secret: She’s hot on the trail of a murderer – and the scoop of a lifetime.

That’s if the killer doesn’t catch her first.

xxxxxxx

It is 1909 in Spokane, Washington. The Dolan brothers live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. When Rye finds himself drawn to suffragette Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, her passion sweeps him into the world of protest and dirty business. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all . . .

The Cold Millions is an intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early 20th century America. Jess Walter offers a stunning, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, dreams and reality, in a sensational tale that resonates powerfully with our own time.

xxxxxx

Sometimes it’s impossible to part with the things we love the most…

When Amy Ashton’s world came crashing down eleven years ago, she started a collection. Just a little collection, just a few keepsakes of happier times: some honeysuckle to remind herself of the boy she loved, a chipped china bird, an old terracotta pot . . . Things that others might throw away, but to Amy, represent a life that could have been.

Now her house is overflowing with the objects she loves – soon there’ll be no room for Amy at all. But when a family move in next door, a chance discovery unearths a mystery long buried, and Amy’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. If she can find the courage to face her past, might the future she thought she’d lost still be hers for the taking?

xxxxxx

Glamorous, beautiful Mummy has everything a woman could want… except for a daughter of her very own. So when she sees Kim – heavily pregnant, glued to her phone and ignoring her eldest child in a busy shop – she does what anyone would do. She takes her. But little foul-mouthed Tonya is not the daughter that Mummy was hoping for.

Meanwhile Kim is demonised by the media as a ‘scummy mummy’, who deserved to lose Tonya and ought to have her other children taken too. Haunted by memories of her own childhood and refusing to play by the media’s rules, she begins to spiral, turning on those who love her.

Though they are worlds apart, Mummy and Kim have more in common than they could possibly imagine. But it is five-year-old Tonya who is caught in the middle…

CALL ME MUMMY. IT’LL BE BETTER IF YOU DO.

———————————————

Thanks for stopping by!