Can't-Wait Wednesday

 

Today I'm participating in Can't-Wait Wednesday, an ongoing mid-week event hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings. It's a chance to share a book that hasn't been published yet but is already on my TBR list.

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This week's selection is . . . 

Expected publication March 14, 2023

From GoodReads:   The only child of an iconic American novelist discovers a shocking tangle of family secrets that upends everything she thought she knew about her parents, her gilded childhood, and her own stalled writing career.

Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city’s intellectual It couple. Ward’s glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with magic and love.

Now an adult, all Isabelle wants is to be a successful writer like her father but after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown. Her anxiety only skyrockets when she uncovers some shocking truths about her parents and begins wondering if everything she knew about her family was all based on an elaborate lie.

Wry, wise, and propulsive, A Likely Story is punctuated with fragments of a compulsively readable book-within-a-book about a woman determined to steal back the spotlight from a man who has cheated his way to the top. The characters seem eerily familiar but is the plot based on fact? And more importantly, who is the author?

 

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I'm always intrigued by family secrets and how they can change the course of someone's life.

 

What book are you waiting for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This Can't-Wait Wednesday post was originally composed and/or compiled by Catherine for the Book Club Librarian blog.

 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring a current read, Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover edition borrowed from the library.

 

Beginning:  Prologue

Then -- Southern Oregon

The man in the dripping Army poncho paused to shove back his hood and stand, head cocked, trying to make out the half-heard sound. A minute later, a car came into view, half a mile or so down the hill--a big white Pontiac, struggling to keep on the road. The man leaned on his shovel, judging the contest between the treacherous surface--the way up to the commune was unpaved, rutted, steep, and slick with the endless rain--and the determined car, which obviously had good tires.

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Page 56:  "They have archives, I'm seeing what might be there."

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My thoughts: A commune? Archives? These settings piqued my interest enough to start reading and the author is appealing to me as well. I've enjoyed a few of her other stand-alone novels. So far, I'm enjoying the mystery unfolding in this story about a wealthy family, an inheritance, and the discovery of human remains on their property.

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From GoodReads:  A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life--with potentially fatal consequences--in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.

And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home's past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.

Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate's young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents--monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.

Could the skull belong to one of his victims?

To Raquel--a woman who knows all about colorful pasts--the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all of its own.

Everything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.

But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob's brother, Fort.

The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case--before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.

 

Can't-Wait Wednesday

 

Today I'm participating in Can't-Wait Wednesday, an ongoing mid-week event hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings. It's a chance to share a book that hasn't been published yet but is already on my TBR list.

* * * * * * * * *

This week's selection is . . . 

 

Expected publication March 7, 2023

 

From GoodReads:   The acclaimed author of The Light Over London weaves an epic saga of love, motherhood, and betrayal set against World War II.

Liverpool, 1935: Raised in a strict Catholic family, Viv Byrne knows what’s expected of her: marry a Catholic man from her working-class neighborhood and have his children. However, when she finds herself pregnant after a fling with Joshua Levinson, a Jewish man with dreams of becoming a famous Jazz musician, Viv knows that a swift wedding is the only answer. Her only solace is that marrying Joshua will mean escaping her strict mother’s scrutiny. But when Joshua makes a life-changing choice on their wedding day, Viv is forced once again into the arms of her disapproving family.

Five years later and on the eve of World War II, Viv is faced with the impossible choice to evacuate her young daughter, Maggie, to the countryside estate of the affluent Thompson family. In New York City, Joshua gives up his failing musical career to serve in the Royal Air Force, fight for his country, and try to piece together his feelings about the family, wife, and daughter he left behind at nineteen. However, tragedy strikes when Viv learns that the countryside safe haven she sent her daughter to wasn’t immune from the horrors of war. It is only years later, with Joshua’s help, that Viv learns the secrets of their shared past and what it will take to put a family back together again.

Telling the harrowing story of England’s many evacuated children, bestselling author Julia Kelly’s The Lost English Girl explores how one simple choice can change the course of a life, and what we are willing to forgive to find a way back to the ones we love and thought lost.

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Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, particularly books set in World War II England. 

What book are you waiting for?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This Can't-Wait Wednesday post was originally composed and/or compiled by Catherine for the Book Club Librarian blog.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph

 It's Tuesday . . . time for . . . 

. . . First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros . . . hosted by Yvonne at Socrates' Book Reviews, where bloggers share excerpts from a book they have read, are currently reading, or are planning to read.

 

Today I'm featuring a recent read, It's One of Us by J.T. Ellison. The excerpt shared is from an electronic advance reader copy I received from the publisher via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Note: The themes of infertility in this book may be distressing to some readers.

First Chapter:  The Wife

There is blood again.

Olivia forces away the threatening tears. She will not collapse. She will not cry. She will stand up, square her shoulders, and flush the toilet, whispering small words of benediction toward the life that was, that wasn't, that could have been.

 

What do you think?  Would you continue reading? 

High school sweethearts Olivia and Park Bender have all the material trappings of success, yet the one thing they are unable to do is start the family they both so desperately want. And when a murder investigation hits close to home, secrets each has been keeping from the other threaten to tear them apart.

It's One of Us is a skillfully plotted, suspenseful tale with the kinds of twists that keep readers off balance until its shocking conclusion. Bravo, J.T. Ellison.

 

This First Chapter~First Paragraph post was originally composed and/or compiled by Catherine for the Book Club Librarian blog.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings

 

 

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard. The excerpts shared are from a hardcover edition borrowed from the library.

 

 

Beginning:  Of all places, the East Village. Miles from the Upper East Side, and there she was, sauntering down Avenue A in a linen skirt and black blouse.

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Page 56:  "Let's say for every question I ask you, you get to ask me one."

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My thoughts:  The allure of Jackie Kennedy is eternal, and I, for one still enjoy glimpses into her life. This account from someone with personal insight into the relationship between Jackie and JFK promises to be a fascinating read.    

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From GoodReads:  Master storyteller Louis Bayard delivers a surprising portrait of a young Jackie Kennedy as we've never seen her before.
 
In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is “not to be a housewife,” but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. Soon the two are flirting over secret phone calls, cocktails, and dinner dates, and as Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean. For answers, she turns to his best friend and confidant, Lem Billings, a closeted gay man who has made the Kennedy family his own, and who has been instructed by them to seal the deal with Jack’s new girl. But as he gets to know her, a deep and touching friendship emerges, leaving him with painfully divided alliances and a troubling dilemma: Is this the marriage she deserves?
 
Narrated by an older Lem as he looks back at his own role in a complicated alliance, this is a courtship story full of longing and of suspense, of what-ifs and possible wrong turns. It is a surprising look at Jackie before she was that Jackie. And in best-selling author Louis Bayard’s witty and deeply empathetic telling, Jackie & Me is a page-turning story of friendship, love, sacrifice, and betrayal— and a fresh take on two iconic American figures.

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings

 

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley. The excerpts shared are from a trade paperback I purchased several years ago.

 

Beginning:  I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died.

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Page 56:  Never let your fear decided your destiny

I knew then that the seven words Pa Salt had left me could not have described me and who I was any more accurately.

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My thoughts: This book, the first in a series of eight novels, is a sweeping family saga that I have been wanting to start for a few years now. I even bought a copy several years ago, but it has languished on a shelf for far too long. Fortunately, it was my book club's January choice, so I finally dusted it off and immersed myself in the first installment of the enthralling story of the D'Apliese family. All members of my book group loved it too—and have since gone on to read other books in the series. 

I'm also committed to reading the entire series—in fact, the release of the last book is imminent. It will take me longer to move along in the series than the other book club members, but I am happy to have a new series to savor.

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From GoodReads: Maia D’Apliese and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, “Atlantis”—a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva—having been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as babies, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage—a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of her story and its beginnings.

Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle Epoque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela—passionate and longing to see the world—convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

In this sweeping, epic tale of love and loss—the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven novels—Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before.

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.

 

Friday Focus: Book Beginnings and The Friday 56

 

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring my current read, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. The excerpts shared are from a trade paperback edition borrowed from a friend.

 

Beginning:  Crouch End, London

A bottle of wine. A family-sized packet of Nacho Cheese Flavoured Tortilla Chips and a jar of hot salsa dip. A packet of cigarettes on the side (I know, I know). The rain hammering against the windows. And a book.

What could have been lovelier?

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Page 56:  "Afraid he'll come after you with a horsewhip? I wouldn't put it past him. But no, Jack. I didn't tell him about you."

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My thoughts:  We all have our favorite food and beverages to indulge in while we read. My favorite beverages are wine and tea, depending on my mood and time of day. For snacks, I choose from a wide array of tasty morsels that complement my beverage of choice. 

I watched and enjoyed the recent PBS adaptation of this book, which aroused my curiosity about the written version. To my delight, so far I'm finding that the media adaptation is close to the book. It's a pleasure to get lost in a well-plotted mystery with an eclectic cast of characters.

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From GoodReads: When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.

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This Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings post was originally composed and/or compiled and published by Catherine for the blog, bookclublibrarian.com.  It cannot be republished without attribution.