New Book from Fredrik Backman!

 For the fans of Fredrik Backman there's a new book on the horizon! It's called My Friends, will be published by Atria Books and available to purchase on May 20th of this year. Nice and hefty, the page count is 448 according to the publisher... and I love fat books! 

If you're not familiar with Fredrik Backman, he wrote A Man Called Ove, which was a massive hit and made into a pretty good movie. He has written more than just that book, with a total of a dozen including this newest one. 

Here's the blurb from the publisher about My Friends...

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

AND... I just received an ARC of My Friends by Fredrik Backman for my Kindle and can't wait to start reading it! So as we settle down into the new year, stay tuned for my review of My Friends by Fredrik Backman... 

P.S. Here's my review of Fredrik Backman's novella, And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, a beautifully written story about the effects of Alzheimers in a loved one. 

First Book of the Year... 2025!

Happy New Year! AND Happy New Book! Every year for the past 11 years, Sheila at Book Journey has hosted First Book of the Year. It's where readers every year share the book they are going to start their year off with. My pick this year is Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller. 

 I love the premise of this book... Someone switches all the books in a little library of "wholesome" reading with banned books. But to cover up the switch, the person replaces the "wholesome" book with the banned book and leaves the "wholesome" book jacket, so that the book cover is not what the book actually is.... 

BUT, as I started to read this book, there was so much foul language that I had to put it down. I'm no prude - it just didn't seem it was really necessary. I'm hoping that the beginning of the book is just setting up the story and that we can leave that behind and get to the drama of the banned book switch. Here's the publisher's blurb...

Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

What Lula doesn’t know is that a local troublemaker has stolen her wholesome books, removed their dust jackets, and restocked Lula’s library with banned books: literary classics, gay romances, Black history, witchy spell books, Judy Blume novels, and more. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. That's when the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.

This book has gotten a lot of great buzz, which is the reason I picked it. So, I'm hoping for a good read. This is also my first library book of the year (or actually library ebook of the year). 

Do you have a book pick for First Book of the Year?

Have you read this one yet? It was published this past summer, June 2024, by William Morrow. Stay tuned for a review...

Happy Reading... Suzanne

The Sunday Salon... and What's Coming Your Way from Some Great Authors!

 

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's the place where Book Bloggers from around the world share their bookish finds with one another in a virtual place called The Sunday Salon. Thank you to Deb at ReaderBuzz for keeping us all together on Sundays and hosting The Sunday Salon now! I also visited with Kim at The Caffeinated Reader, another Sunday gathering place for us bookish people called The Sunday Post . 

It's been a rainy week in South Carolina and the best time to find a great new book! This week I've got some exciting new books from some favorite authors coming your way and some that found there way into my eReader! 

First, as I posted this week to let you know, one of my favorite authors, Paula Hawkins, is coming out with a new book named The Blue Hour! I have already the first 3 chapters and am hooked. A quick dive into the art world, a dead artist, a mysteriously missing (is he dead) estranged husband and all the stuff a great psychological thriller is made of... 

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins... A stylish and immersive new novel of ambition, legacy, and betrayal from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train.An isolated Scottish island, accessible to the mainland only twelve hours a day. An infamous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared after visiting her twenty years ago. A present-day discovery that intimately connects three people and threatens a carefully concealed secret. A masterful and propulsive novel that asks searing questions of ambition, power, gender and perception, The Blue Hour recalls the very best of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced, powerful and stylish storytellers.                                                                                                                

 Coming out October 29th, 2024 and published by Mariner Books, if you liked Girl on the Train, add this one to your TBR list. My review will be coming soon...

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Colleen Coble writes a lot of Romantic Suspense novels... and I've enjoyed every one that I've read! At first glance I wasn't interested in a story involving AI, but then Colleen Coble puts a little twist in there that caught me. "I think I was murdered" was what it took to make me take a second look and now I'm all in...

A grieving young widow. The AI program that allows her to continue to "talk" to him. And a message she never expected: "I think I was murdered."                                                                                                                                                                                                        Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted and, as the company's legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.                                                                                                                                                                Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for a new, ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason's email, social media backups, pictures, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has "talked" to him every day for the past six months. She has been amazed at how well it works. Even the syntax and words the bot uses sound like Jason. Sometimes, she imagines he isn't really dead and is right there beside her. She knows it's slowing her grief recovery, but she can't stop pretending.

On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don't know. The cursor blinks for several moments and seems frozen before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered.

Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy Norwegian-flavored hometown in the northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, local restaurateur and longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what really happened. They must navigate the complicated paths of grief, family dynamics, and second chances, as well as the complex questions of how much control technology has. And staying alive long enough to do that is far more difficult than either of them dreamed.

This is on my Wishlist. The release day for I Think I Was Murdered is November 12, 2024 and will be published by Thomas Nelson.

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Dead significant others must be a theme this summer, and Kate White is a great storyteller and never disappoints me! 

The Last Time She Saw Him by Kate White... A woman is left reeling when her former fiancé appears to take his own life, and she becomes desperate to prove it was actually murder—in the latest psychological thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kate White

As Kiki Reed heads out to a party at a friend’s house in the Connecticut countryside, she’s more than a little nervous. Her ex-fiancé Jamie, a great guy who just wasn’t “the one,” will be attending, and she hasn’t seen him since she broke his heart a few months earlier. But when they come face to face, their exchange is brief and pleasant, which is a huge relief.

Then, as the party is winding down, a noise pierces the night. The last few guests run outside to find Jamie inside his car, dead from a gunshot wound.

Shocked and grieving, Kiki learns that the police believe Jamie took his own life, but she knows he was moving on from the breakup and just doesn’t believe it. Determined to find the truth, she searches for any evidence that will get the police to take her seriously. But as she peels away the layers, she uncovers something far more sinister than she’d imagined—and it may be her life on the line next. . .

This book was just released on May 14th by Harper Paperbacks, so if you haven't read Kate White yet, you can pick this up at your local library or bookstore! 

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This book has gotten all the buzz! It is everywhere! If you like time traveling romances with a good helping of humor, this looks to be the answer...

The Ministry of Time by Kailiane Bradley... A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

I recently received a review copy of this and am looking forward to reading it! I love time travel stories and everyone is talking about this book. This was just released May 7th by Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and is available at your local bookstore or library.

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There are quite a few new books coming out that we need to talk about... can you say, Elin Hilderbrandt (a sad day for fans of Elin too!), Jodi Picoult, Tami Hoag, Ruth Ware, Debbie Macomber, Karin Slaughter, and Gill Paul? Stop by next Sunday and we'll talk more about these ladies! 

Hope you found something great to read today... 

Happy reading... Suzanne

Coming to a Bookstore Near You .... and we are EXCITED!

Hello Everyone! It's been a little while since I've posted. Sometimes life just demands your time.... BUT, there are so many great books coming out I just had to post! Some of my favorite authors have new books this Spring and I am excited! First, I just received an eGalley of Paula Hawkins newest book, The Blue Hour! You'll remember Paula from her smash hit, The Girl on The Train! Here's the blurb about The Blue Hour...

"An isolated Scottish island, accessible to the mainland only twelve hours a day. An infamous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared after visiting her twenty years ago. A present-day discovery that intimately connects three people and threatens a carefully concealed secret"

Doesn't that sound intriguing?!! You'll have to wait a bit for this one though... publication date is October 29th! I'll write more about this and some other great books coming your way , here,  this weekend...

Pillars of the Earth eBook on Sale!

In 2009, about 15 years 11 days ago, I started my blog with a review of Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It was and still remains one of my favorite books! Today, I saw that the eBook of Pillars of the Earth was $1.99 thru Amazon! So, if you haven't read this book, this is the perfect time to pick it up at the bargain price of $1.99.

Want to read my review first? Here's my Review!

 

Chick with Books is 15 years old today!

 

First Lines Friday...

 

"This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? The saddest kind of love story— about the end of love; the death of love.

So I guess I was right the first time."

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

Reese's February Book Club Pick...

Reese's February Book Club Pick just announced...

 Redwood Court by DéLana R. A. Dameron

“This book is filled with a sense of nostalgia as Mika takes us down memory lane, sharing stories of her Southern Black family through a collection of vivid vignettes. Read and discuss with us all month at #reesesbookclub as we explore community, love, and what it means to be seen in this exquisite debut.”—Reese’s Book Club

First Book of the Year 2024!

Happy New Year! New Year, New Books! And of course, if you have a TBR pile like I do, "old" books waiting to be read in the new year. 

This year I couldn't not pick These Precious Days by Ann Patchett as my first book of the year. The title drew me in... These Precious Days. Call me sentimental, but lately I've been wistfully thinking of days gone by. This past October, I turned 62. 62 is a pivotal age. I retired early and have been enjoying having the days to myself, but now I am actually collecting Social Security! OMG! What's also pretty funny is I'm collecting social security right along side my Mother! Think about that. When you're young, do you ever think that you will become a senior citizen, right along with your parent? But turning that number... 62... makes me think... reflect... wonder about the what if's... think how to enjoy these precious day...

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett is a book of essays. Here's what the publisher has to say...

Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. 

At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. 

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. 

So I'm starting my reading year with little snippets of Ann's life, but also hoping that I will relate to them as well. And who better to take the journey with then the phenomenal writer, Ann Patchett. 

First Book of the Year: These Precious Days by Ann Patchett