The Sunday Salon and Anticipation...

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's that day of the week we sit back and talk about one of our favorite subjects… BOOKS! Yes, and this week there's some great books I want to share with you from some of our favorite authors!

Don't you just love it when an author you love reading is coming out with a new book?! I get excited… will it be as good as the last book? Will I love the characters? Will the writing take me away to places I can only dream of? It doesn't what genre you're favorite author write's in, it's all about the anticipation...


Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami...  From Publisher's Weekly: Living a simple, quotidian life as a train station engineer, Tsukuru is compelled to reexamine his past after a girlfriend suggests he reconnect with a group of friends from high school. A tight-knit fivesome for years, the group suddenly alienated Tsukuru under mysterious circumstances when he was in college. For months after the break, not knowing what had gone wrong, he became obsessed with death and slowly lost his sense of self: “I’ve always seen myself as an empty person, lacking color and identity. Maybe that was my role in the group. To be empty.” Feeling his life will only progress if he can tie up those emotional loose ends, Tsukuru journeys through Japan and into Europe to meet with the members of the group and unravel what really happened 16 years before. The result is a vintage Murakami struggle of coming to terms with buried emotions and missed opportunities, in which intentions and pent up desires can seemingly transcend time and space to bring both solace and desolation. 

If you are a fan of Haruki Murakami, you will be chomping at the bit for this one! It's been 2 years since we heard from this wonderful author, whose quiet, yet insightful writing makes us think and almost listen to each word he puts on the page. This is the English translation of the same book that has sold a millions the first week it came out in Japan. The book has gotten 5 star reviews all around, so I can't wait! If you are new to Murakami, you should be able to enjoy this book as well. Coming out August 12th...

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell… Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting on the war in Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder. 

David Mitchell, whose list of  popular books could fill a page plus, and who wrote Cloud Atlas, which was made into a movie (which does not make it a great book, but does show it's popularity) is coming out with what seems to be another great tale, where fantastic stories come together for an incredible wrap up.  His stories always appeal to me, but I have yet to crack the spine on any. One of those in the TBR pile that should make its way up. I'm putting this in my TBR pile and making sure I don't forget it because this sounds amazing. Coming Sept. 2, 2014

The Children Act by Ian McEwan… Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts. But Fiona's professional success belies domestic strife. Her husband, Jack, asks her to consider an open marriage and, after an argument, moves out of their house. His departure leaves her adrift, wondering whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability; whether it was not contempt and ostracism she really fears. She decides to throw herself into her work, especially a complex case involving a seventeen-year-old boy whose parents will not permit a lifesaving blood transfusion because it conflicts with their beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jack doesn't leave her thoughts, and the pressure to resolve the case—as well as her crumbling marriage—tests Fiona in ways that will keep readers thoroughly enthralled until the last stunning page.

Ian McEwan is such a wonderful storyteller and writer. His writing is not all about furiously turning the pages, but wrapping yourself around the words and characters. I read just a small sampling of this book courtesy of the publisher and want more! He has won the famed Booker Prize and other writing awards, so it's no wonder that lovers of great fiction should make a note of his latest offering here, coming Sept. 9, 2014. Definitely on my TBR list!

What author's do you long for a new book from? I got some some of my wish list taken care of here, but there are plenty of great authors coming out with books this fall. AND next Sunday Salon, I'll be back with some more amazing new books from new authors coming our way (you won't want to miss them!)

Happy Reading… Suzanne