Great reads for adults and children!
The first time I met Brendan Slocumb, I was flabbergasted. It was late 2021. We’d both been selected for a Library Journal panel featuring debut …
Shop Talk: Brendan Slocumb Absolutely Does Not Listen to Music While He’s Writing
#TheWhiteLady #NetGalley
I am a huge fan of this author and have read every title in her Maisie Dobbs series. Here she has written a standalone about Elinor White, a character who has had a life of loss, service, action and contemplation.
Winspear’s authorial voice comes through and felt very familiar to me from having read her other works. That said, it took a little while for me to become fully immersed in this title. Once that happened, however, I loved the book and rate it most highly (as does Publishers Weekly which gave this one a starred review.)
The novel covers a wide time period; it starts before WWI and extends to the post WWII period. As the book opens, young Linni lives with her parents and sister in Belgium. The war brings enormous changes to the family. Linni and her sister become saboteurs and they and their mother must subsequently leave the country quickly.
The book then moves to England and follows Linni’s life there. She has many experiences before being recruited to the SOE in WWII. In the post war period, for complex reasons, our protagonist becomes involved in trying to extricate a couple and their daughter from the clutch of their criminal family. Throughout the book, the time moves back and forth as readers experience Linni’s actions and feelings about the things that she has done.
Readers will be interested to see how Linni fares in each of her tasks and time frames. They will also enjoy getting to know the many characters in this story, some of whom, they really should keep an eye on.
All in all, I highly recommend this novel. Bravo Ms. Winspear.
Many thanks to Allison & Busby for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 21 March 2023
#DavidHockney #NetGalley
I love the cover of this entry in the Little People, Big Dreams series. It drew (pun not fully intended) me right in to the story of the well-known artist whose works I very much like. I think that kids will also enjoy learning more about this original man.
David’s path to becoming an artist included one fun fact that kids will enjoy; it has to do with his taking tests at school. Hockney’s sexual orientation is noted in a simple and declarative way. Readers go on to watch as he attends art school in England and later moves to the U.S. where he was always trying new things.
This book offers a good introduction to Hockney. It is another welcome entry in this excellent series.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 04 April 2023
Does this cover for the fourth in a series make you want to get out your colored pencils? I always want to when I see this author’s books.
This Washington DC set cozy features a coloring book designer and bookstore worker, two jobs that appeal to me. Luckily her work doesn’t take up all of her time so she can solve the mysteries that come her way. This time, a romance author is attacked before her (re)wedding. She does live to see the day but still there are things that go wrong. A guest is found dead. Luckily our protagonist will figure things out!
This book offers an enjoyable and easy read. Fans of light mysteries will want to give this title (and series) a look. Note that I feel this can book can be enjoyed even if it is the first title in the series that the reader picks up.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 30 August 2022
THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY FREE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED
Many thanks to Algonquin Books and Pearl Cadigan for the invite to the blog tour for this intriguing fiction title.
“The Wonders is a poet’s novel, delicate but strong, impressing its images firmly on the imagination.” —Hilary Mantel
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensation, The Wonders follows Maria and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability in a precarious world and unknowingly trace each other’s footfalls across time.
Maria moved to the city in 1969, leaving her daughter with her family but hoping to save enough to take care of her one day. She worked as a housekeeper, then a caregiver, and later a cleaner, and somehow she was always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in Madrid’s Atocha train station when it overflowed with protestors and strikers. All women—and so many of them—protesting what? Alicia wasn’t entirely sure. She couldn’t have known that Maria was among them. Alicia didn’t have time for marches; she was just trying to hang on until the end of her shift, when she might meet someone to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget.
Readers will fall in love with Maria and Alicia, whose stories finally converge in the chaos of the protests, the weight of the years of silence hanging thickly in the air between them. The Wonders brings half a century of the feminist movement to life, and launches an inimitable new voice in fiction. Medel’s lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she’s a novelist ahead of her time.
“Medel’s poetic sensibility is evident in rhythmic, incantatory prose, yet she also looks at the world through a good novelist’s magnifying glass . . . Medel makes room for her characters to grow into their power as women, a power they discover does not in fact lie in money.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The Wonders is a poet’s novel, delicate but strong, impressing its images firmly on the imagination.”
—Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
“A poetic portrait of Spanish womanhood . . . The lives of two working-class women are interleaved in a bold debut novel with flashes of beauty.”
—The Guardian
“Medel captures the plight of working women who are limited by class and gender dynamics . . . Small acts of protest add up to each woman’s larger fight for freedom from the confines of men, money and everlasting grief . . . Though they have made mistakes and been lonely, they have survived. And that triumph they claim for themselves.”
—NPR
“The Wonders is the long-awaited novel debut by one of the best poets of the new Spanish generation. The Wonders is a novel about money—a novel about how the money we don’t have defines us. It is also a novel about care, responsibilities, and expectations; about the precariousness that does not respond to the crisis but to the class, and about who will tell the stories that define our origins and our past.”
—Conde Nast Traveler
“A captivating novel . . . Medel’s poetic voice shines.”
—Karla Strand, Ms. magazine
The author
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Katie Lumsden, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall (Dutton) “ captivating …
10 New Books Coming Out This Week
#Stuffed #NetGalley
Wow! What an idea for a cookbook. Who knew that so much could be done with sandwich cookies?
This book contains what are called 65 “mix and match” recipes. They are divided into delightful sections including Oldies but Goodies; For the Love of Chocolate; The Cool Cookies; Tart and Tangy, and more. There are recipes for Chocolate Chip Cookies, Hot Fudge Sundae Macarons, Spiced Chocolate Cookies with Dulce de Leche and so many more.
There are helpful beginning sections to get bakers set up. The recipes that follow are clear and the pictures will make you hungry.
This is a scrumptious title. It will surely find its audience!
Many thanks to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 04 April 2023
Those who have read The Scarlet Letter, no doubt remember Hester Prynne. I can’t help but feel that the book would make an interesting reread in this time of MeToo.
In this novel, author Albanese, offers a twist of the kaleidoscope variation on that book. Here readers meet a young woman with synesthesia who emigrates to the U.S. with her husband. Isobel meets Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter. They are brought together with intensity.
Readers will long remember Isobel. She is a risk taker, a woman of action who acts upon her strong beliefs.
Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this title. All opinions are my own.
Pub date: 04 October 2022
Named a Most Anticipated Book for Fall by Goodreads • Washington Post • New York Post • BuzzFeed • PopSugar • Business Insider • An October Indie Next List Pick • An October LibraryReads Pick
I have very much enjoyed this series.
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 