The Sunday Salon...and some Library Love

 

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's that day of the week bloggers gather all over in a virtual library and chat about books! Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of Java and relax..

Here's my Library books this week. It's funny how it's feast or famine sometimes when you request books. When they're not available and you have to wait for them to come back to the library, and wait for your turn, sometimes they all come in at once! And that's what happened to me this week. I'm excited though! I picked up The Charm Bracelet while I waited for the new Jennifer McMahon book, The Children on The Hill, and then read some great reviews about The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh and requested that when it came back in. Wow, I have some great reading ahead of me...

The Children on The Hill by Jennifer McMahon...

1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love. Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl. Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere. 2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

I love the writing of Jennifer McMahon! I am never disappointed. She writes suspense stories, sprinkling in a bit of a ghost story here and there and always with some great twists and turns. The Children on The Hill was released in April by Scout Press. BTW, one of my favorite Jennifer McMahon book is Dismantled... check that one out too! 

The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh...

Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she’d do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real. When the very darkest moments of Emma’s past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was . . But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.

Rosie Walsh is a new author to me. I was reading reviews a few weeks ago and came across a starred review of The Love of My Life from Kirkus Reviews. Sounded great, lots more literary love for it on the internet, and I found it available to request at my local library! I can't wait to dive into this one too! Published by Pamela Dorman Books this past March, it's available now at your local bookstore OR your local library. Want to read an excerpt? Here's a link to Chapter One of The Love of My Life.

Libraries are a great source for reading material. In my little town in South Carolina, our library is part of the County and 3 other library towns. We can check books out of any of them, which helps if my local branch doesn't have the book I want, but one of the other branches do. And this included eBooks too!

Do you use your library? 

I'm about half way thru The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman and am enjoying it. It's a very light read, just what a summer afternoon almost requires. I believe these other books will have a bit more meat on their bones, but still qualify as summer reads, which tend to be more relaxing reads. 

I do have on my TBR list some much heavier books because I was reading about The International Booker Award for this year and everything (except for the winner) sounded so interesting. First, what is The Booker Award?

"The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland."

And the winner this year was Tomb of Sand written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell. When a majority of the reviews I read said it was work to get thru the novel, I pause before enthusiastically picking it up. And I wonder sometimes why certain novels win these awards. It may be that this book checks off some serious politically correct boxes? You can read about Tomb of Sand here. But quite a few of the other books really caught my eye... Let's talk about them later this week...

Let me know what the last library book you took out was! And do you follow book awards? Stop back later in the week and I'll talk about those International Booker Prize runners up...

Happy Reading... Suzanne

The Sunday Salon and Let's Talk Books... again!

Hello! Happy Mother's Day! It's been a while since I've checked in. You would think that retirement would be vast amounts of time that you need to think of things to fill it up with or else you'll go crazy, but let me tell you... it's not! Much to my surprise, retirement is busy! For me, there was time spent settling into a new home and a new town (Not to mention a new state 800 miles away from where I called home). Slowly meeting people and getting involved in the community was something else I started to do... and getting back to doing activities that I have time for now... such as crocheting & knitting. I actually did my first crafts show showcasing and selling my handmade ponchos and shawls, and also created my business, Shawl Y'all, to showcase those designs... But there will always be reading...

I still have my reading group, Chicks with Books, but now I Skype with then during our book club get togethers. I belong to my local friends of the library, which I have volunteered to help out when needed. And I frequent my library, which is a system of 4 libraries that are in located thru out the same county. I still read! And I still love to talk about what's coming out and that great book I picked up...
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So as I sit here with a cup of coffee in hand, I feel like I'm relaxing with an old friend that I haven't spent a lot of time with lately. But that's about to change... time to get back to sharing those great book recommendations every week here. I've missed that. So, let's talk books........

One book I picked up last week was The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. Released just last week, it sounded similar in some ways to The Rosie Project, with the main character falling in love, but having challenges with romance due to his autism and processing his emotions differently than most people. But after reading a little of The Bride Test, I enjoyed the writing and found that though Khai Diep had autism, the storyline really didn't focus on that alone. It seems this romcom is going to be a fun romp...


Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he's defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride. 

As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can't turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn't go as planned. Esme's lessons in love seem to be working...but only on herself. She's hopelessly smitten with a man who's convinced he can never return her affection.

With Esme's time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he's been wrong all along. And there's more than one way to love.

On my wishlist and another recently published novel, is Jennifer McMahon's The Invited. I really loved her book, Dismantled, way back in 2009 and would definitely put anything written by her on my TBR list. She has quite a long list of books too, of which I've read most. Dismantled was my favorite though. She writes these ghost like story stories with the past always coming out of the closet like a bad dream...

In a quest for a simpler life, Helen and Nate have abandoned the comforts of suburbia to take up residence on forty-four acres of rural land where they will begin the ultimate, aspirational do-it-yourself project: building the house of their dreams. When they discover that this beautiful property has a dark and violent past, Helen, a former history teacher, becomes consumed by the local legend of Hattie Breckenridge, a woman who lived and died there a century ago. With her passion for artifacts, Helen finds special materials to incorporate into the house--a beam from an old schoolroom, bricks from a mill, a mantel from a farmhouse--objects that draw her deeper into the story of Hattie and her descendants, three generations of Breckenridge women, each of whom died suspiciously. As the building project progresses, the house will become a place of menace and unfinished business: a new home, now haunted, that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.

A book I recently picked up, but had to put down, was Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken. The premise sounded so cute- a woman is found half frozen in a cemetery with only a bowling ball, candlestick pin, and some money. On the surface it seems she has no past and is content to stay put in this little town, but things change...

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

Maybe I just wasn't in the right "mood" for this book, but the beginning was so slow I just had to put it aside. I will give it another chance, but it won't be the first book I grab..

Oh, and a quick mention of our book club read this month... American Princess by Stephanie Marie Thornton... It's historical fiction and about Alice Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, who is suppose to be quite the girl... We'll talk more about that after I sink my teeth into it!

So, what are you reading?! Tell me what good books you've found in the comments! I would love to hear about them! And in the meantime... Next Sunday we'll look at some books to saddle up with in honor of that recent horse race, The Kentucky Derby!

Happy reading... Suzanne

TLC Book Tour & Review: Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon

Four College Students...

One Deadly Secret...

Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon is a thriller, a murder mystery and a ghost story all wrapped up in one. Four college art students, Henry, Tess, Winnie & Suz, form what they called the "Compassionate Dismantlers". Their manifesto included the first rule, which was,

"To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart"

What this basically means is vandalism, dangerous pranks, and other such things. But something goes wrong one night, and a dangerous prank turns deadly... Suz is dead, and the friends decide to cover it up...

Soon after we open the book, we meet Henry and a very pregnant Tess as they visit "the cabin". The cabin where 8 months before, they and two other college art students, Winnie & Suz, lived and breathed their "dismantler" philosophy. Where they plotted their pranks to prove their point that in order to "understand something, it must be taken apart". They were all idealistic, young, full of life. But when the pranks turned fatal and Suz died, it was last night they all spent in that cabin... But we're not quite sure how Suz died... We're not privy to that bit of information just yet...

The story then shifts to present day, 9 years later. Henry and Tess are leading their "normal" married lives with their 9 year old daughter Emma. We get to know their life as adults, as parents, and we get to know Emma who's a normal, sweet, curious girl, but who also has a secret- her imaginary friend Danner, who seems so much more than imaginary at times. She tells Emma things, things she shouldn't know... Or is Emma just hallucinating? Hmmm I wonder... We find things aren't that sweet between Henry & Tess anymore, as Henry is living out in the barn on his own. But Henry & Tess are held together by Emma and that terrible secret they've both buried in the back of their minds - what happened to Suz... In an attempt to get them back together Mel, Emma's best friend, says they need to investigate and find something they can use towards that purpose... The two find Suz's journal hidden away in the barn, with addresses for the other dismantlers, and decide to send postcards to each of them with only the phrase,

"Dismantlement = Freedom"

When the cryptic postcard arrives in the mail to 3 of the "dismantlers", things take a deadly turn. One of the recipients of the postcard commits suicide, and that leads to an investigation, and questions about what happened 10 years ago... Old wounds are opened up, strange things start to happen. Could Suz really come back from the dead? It sure seems so, and it's fantastic!

What Jennifer McMahon has done is amazing. The story shifts between the present to the past, giving us glimpses into the relationships (and secrets) & life between the four college students, and as Jennifer does this, the story slowly unfolds before our eyes. All the pieces magically fitting together. The characters are so dynamic. Their feelings shift between suspicion and desire and it's exactly how you'd expect people to deal with what is happening. The relationships between the characters are well written and you can feel the idealism they felt as young college students and you can understand the unique relationships that formed between them. Jennifer also did a great job developing Emma, Henry & Tess's little girl. The angst of a 9 year old trying to fit in, find herself, have people like her, and dealing with her best friend, was so well written it really brings her to life. The relationship between Emma and her imaginary friend Danner is downright eerie and wonderfully portrayed. And when strange things start to happen, the story takes on that ghost story kind of feel to it and I loved it!

I found the story quite an addictive page turner! I couldn't put it down, because I just had to know what was going to happen next! This was one of those books I stayed up WAY past my bedtime to keep reading! Filled with twists and turns to keep my attention, and the ending... let's just say I loved that too! I would definitely put it on your TBR list if you enjoy novels that are character driven with plenty of suspense, thrill and a twist of the supernatural!

About the Author:

Jennifer grew up in her grandmother’s house in suburban Connecticut, where she was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic. She wrote her first short story in third grade, graduated with a BA from Goddard College and then studied poetry for a year in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. A poem turned into a story, which turned into a novel, and she decided to take some time to think about whether she wanted to write poetry or fiction. She quit her last real job in 2000 to work on writing full time. You can learn more about the author and her books at Jennifer McMahon's website. *BTW, my reading group read Jennifer's book, Island of Lost Girls and everyone really enjoyed it.

I read Dismantled as part of TLC Book Tours. And I want to thank Trish of TLC Book Tours for sending along a copy of Dismantle to review and the opportunity to participate in Jennifer McMahon' s Book Tour!

Hey, I'm sharing this book review at Cym Lowell's Book Review Party! You get follow the link to Cym Lowell's Blog to read more great reviews!

The Sunday Salon... Week in review, Treats in the Mail, & Books with Buzz!

Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

It's that time of the week again where we sleep in late (wishful thinking), slow down a bit (hopefully), and chat about all the bookish things we enjoyed this past week and any bookish things coming up the week ahead. And there is plenty to talk about this week...

And the Winner is... Troubles by T.G. Farrell won the long overdue The Lost Man Booker Prize! In April I talked about The Lost Man Booker Prize, which is the prize created 40 years later to honor those Booker Prize nominees that fell through the cracks because in 1971 they changed the literary prize from a retrospective award to a best novel in the year of publication award, and moved the award given from April of that year to November. The longlist consisted of 22 books, the shortlist 6 and out of the six, Troubles has won! If you missed my blurb about it...

Troubles by J G Farrell... Major Brendan Archer returns from the Great War to claim his fiancee, whose family owns the Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough, Ireland. She is strangely altered, however, along with the hotel, which is in spectacular decline — cats roam its upper stories, the Palm Court is a jungle, and the last guests are little old ladies with nowhere else to go. Outside the formerly grand hotel, the British Empire also totters. There is unrest in the East, and Ireland itself senses the mounting violence of its "troubles."

If you'd like to read a sample, here's an excerpt of Troubles that Sophie from Orion Publishing was nice enough to send along AND last week I also received a copy of Troubles from Sophie! So, you can look forward to a review coming soon! Thanks Sophie!

For Sci-Fi & Fantasy readers, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalup won the 2009 Nebula Award for best novel, which is presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and which is awarded to the best sci-fi & fantasy. What's it About? The Windup Girl... Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct,hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. Paolo Bacigalup has a great website to learn more about the book and his other writing. PLUS, he shares a website that Kindle owners might be interested in... Webscription.net is a Kindle friendly ebook retailer. You can download The Windup Girl there for $6.00! There's a easy to understand primer for getting those books on your Kindle there too.

Two other great books I received in the mail this week were...

Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon... Henry, Tess, Winnie and Suz banded together in college to form the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto – “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart” – these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism, and plotting elaborate, sometimes dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz’s death and the others decide to cover it up. Jennifer McMahon is going on a virtual book tour in June to promote dismantled and I'll be reviewing it for TLC Book Tours. You might remember Jennifer McMahon from another great book she wrote, The Island of Lost Girls, which my reading group read together. Dismantled is available now, and it was just released in paperback.* P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone... Back of the Book, On a sunny day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight-year-old Becca Burke was struck by lightning. No one believed her—not her philandering father or her drunk, love-sick mother—not even when her watch kept losing time and a spooky halo of light appeared overhead in photographs. Becca was struck again when she was sixteen. She survived, but over time she would learn that outsmarting lightning was the least of her concerns... In rural Arkansas, Buckley R. Pitank’s world seemed plagued by disaster. Ashamed but protective of his obese mother, fearful of his scathing grandmother, and always running from bullies (including his pseudo-evangelical stepfather), he needed a miracle to set him free. At thirteen years old, Buckley witnessed a lightning strike that would change everything... Now an art student in New York City, Becca Burke is a gifted but tortured painter who strives to recapture the intensity of her lightning-strike memories on canvas. On the night of her first gallery opening, a stranger appears and is captivated by her art. Who is this odd young man with whom she shares a mysterious connection? I want to thank Read It Forward for sending this to me for review! And you can look forward to a review soon too!

This week I also received in the mail the Unbridled Books Fall 2010 catalogue! What a treat! And filled with books to put on your Wish List! Here are a few that caught my eye...

Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari... A disillusioned and raggedy American reporter and his drunken photojournalist partner are the last to see three Japanese schoolgirls who disappear into Taroko Gorge, Taiwan’s largest national park. The journalists—who are themselves suspects—investigate the disappearance along with the girls’ homeroom teacher, their bickering classmates, and a seasoned and wary Taiwanese detective. The conflicts between them—complicated by the outrageousness of the photographer and the raging hormones of the young—raise questions of personal responsibility, truthfulness, and guarded self-interest. The world and its dangers—both natural and interpersonal—are real, changing, and violently pressing. And the emotions that churn in dark rooms overnight as the players gather in the park visitors’ center are as intense as in any closet drama. There’s enough action and furor here to keep readers turning the pages, and the cultural revelations of the story suggest that the human need for mystery outweighs the desire for answers. This sounds like such a great story! The cover is striking too! This book is coming July...

Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld... In 1961, when Amazing Grace Jansen, a firecracker from Appalachia, meets Mary Elizabeth Cox, the daughter of a Black southern preacher, at Kentucky’s Berea College, they already carry the scars and traces of their mothers’ troubles. Poor and single, Maze’s mother has had to raise her daughter alone and fight to keep a roof over their heads. Mary Elizabeth’s mother has carried a shattering grief throughout her life, a loss so great that it has disabled her and isolated her stern husband and her brilliant, talented daughter. The caution this has scored into Mary Elizabeth has made her defensive and too private and limited her ambitions, despite her gifts as a musician. But Maze’s earthy fearlessness might be enough to carry them both forward toward lives lived bravely in an angry world that changes by the day. Both of them are drawn to the enigmatic Georginea Ward, an aging idealist who taught at Berea sixty years ago, fell in love with a black man, and suddenly found herself renamed as a sister in a tiny Shaker community. Sister Georgia believes in discipline and simplicity, yes. But, more important, her faith is rooted in fairness and the long reach of unconditional love. I love Joyce Hinnefeld's writing. I reviewed her last book, In Hovering Flight, last August and am thrilled that she's coming out with another book rooted in women's relationships. In Hovering flight we read about mothers & daughters, and now in Stranger Here Below we have 3 generations of women. We'll have to wait a little longer for this one, it's release date is Oct!

Blog Happenings?! Remember to enter GIVEAWAY's for The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith! And for Ravished by a Highlander by Paula Quinn! And the Reviews this week included Play Dead by Ryan Brown, zombies & football come together for an amazing first down! And the audiobook of The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, which was such a wonderful listen! Monday's Memoir highlighted the book Alone: Orphaned at Sea about the murders of Terry Duperault's family while sailing on a family vacation and how 11 year old Terry survived the ordeal 4 days on the open sea! I finally did get my copy and am almost finished reading. The review should be up this week!

What are you reading!? What have you spotted on the shelf? Are you going to BEA? Share it all here! Have a great week! Suzanne