Book Haul~HUGE!!! Week of May 24th

This was a great week for books of every variety and I was so thrilled to have them!  The weather is heating up here in Naples, the Southwestern part of Florida...although we get the breezes from the Gulf Coast.  It's still beginning to be in the 80 degree category.  Life at the pool is looking very tempting every day.  So, I'm taking my books there to read on a regular basis.  Life couldn't be better!

I have been very blessed this week with books from publishers and authors, and I found one book in our little clubhouse giveaway shop.

Here are the books and summaries:

SUMMARY:

During the 1930s in a small town fighting for its survival, a conflicted new wife seeks to reconcile her artistic ambitions with the binding promises she has made

Fans of Richard Russo, Amor Towles, Sebastian Barry, and Paula McLain will devour this transporting novel about the eternal tug between our duties and our desires, set during in New York City and New England during the Depression and New Deal...

 

This was published by Penguin and received with much gratitude for a review coming this summer!

 

 

 

*SEE TOP IMAGE ABOVE~

 

                          "SURVIVAL LESSONS"

                                                        BY  Alice Hoffman

 

SUMMARY:

 

Fifteen years ago, Alice Hoffman received a diagnosis that changed everything about the life she’d been living. Most significant—aside from the grueling physical ordeal she underwent—was the way it changed how she felt inside and what she thought she ought to be doing with her days. But when she looked around for the book that would show her the way, she could not find it.

Now she’s written the book that she needed to read. In this honest, wise, and upbeat guidebook, Alice Hoffman provides a road map for making one’s life into the very best it can be. As she says, “In many ways I wrote this book to remind myself of the beauty of life, something that’s all too easy to overlook during the crisis of illness or loss. There were many times when I forgot about roses and starry nights. I forgot that our lives are made up of equal parts sorrow and joy, and that it is impossible to have one without the other . . . I wrote to remind myself that in the darkest hour the roses still bloom; the stars still come out at night. And to remind myself that, despite everything that was happening to me, there were still choices I could make.”

Alice Hoffman is one of my very favorite fiction authors of all time.  I've collected all her first edition books which I highly recommend to you.  Such as:

 

 

"Practical Magic" and a plethora of others over her vast career.

 

I'm so excited to have received "Survival Lessons" from Algonquin Press for a review this coming month.

 

 

 

 

This is the one I found at the clubhouse.  It was first published in 2011, but I didn't get around to reading it.  Sounds fantastic!  Published by:  Grove Press/Grove Atlantic

 

SUMMARY: 

 

My name is Dr. Jennifer White. I am sixty-four years old. I have dementia. My son, Mark, is twenty-nine. My daughter, Fiona, twenty-four. A caregiver, Magdalena, lives with me.

 

Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind is a spellbinding novel about the disintegration of a strong woman’s mind and the unhinging of her family. Dr. Jennifer White, recently widowed and a newly retired orthopedic surgeon, is entering the beginning stages of dementia — where the impossibility of recognizing reality can be both a blessing and a curse.

 

As the story opens, Jennifer’s life-long friend and neighbor, Amanda, has been killed, and four fingers surgically removed. Dr. White is the prime suspect in the murder and she herself doesn’t know if she did it or not. Narrated in her voice, fractured and eloquent, a picture emerges of the surprisingly intimate, complex alliance between this pair — two proud, forceful women who were at times each other’s most formidable adversaries.

 

 

 

SUMMARY:

 

Where Theodora went, trouble followed….

In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom, the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know.

 

Published by New American Library, I will be reviewing this one this summer, as well.  An interesting figure in history...  You can pre-order the book now.

 

 

 

 

SUMMARY:

 

A lush, exquisitely rendered meditation on war, The Gods of Heavenly Punishment tells the story of several families, American and Japanese, their loves and infidelities, their dreams and losses, and how they are all connected by one of the most devastating acts of war in human history.

 

In this evocative and thrilling epic novel, fifteen-year-old Yoshi Kobayashi, child of Japan’s New Empire, daughter of an ardent expansionist and a mother with a haunting past, is on her way home on a March night when American bombers shower her city with napalm—an attack that leaves one hundred thousand dead within hours and half the city in ashen ruins.

 

 

Published by WJ Norton & Company, this is a story that I've been dying to read.  I have had a fascination with this time period and subject matter since reading "Hiroshima" many years ago. Can't wait to read this one.

 

 

 

SUMMARY:

 

Skinner founded his career in "asset protection" on fear. To touch anyone under his protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner's CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community.

Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.

 

At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.

 

A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by the Washington Post as "the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction," SKINNER is Charlie Huston's masterpiece—a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.

 

 

Once in a while it's good to have a great CIA novel to chew on!!  This one sounds intriguing...

Sent to me by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Co.   My favorite publisher for thriller/suspense novels...

 

 

 

 

SUMMARY:

 

Matt Beaulieu was two years old the first time he held Elle McClure in his arms, seventeen when he first kissed her under a sky filled with shooting stars, and thirty-three when they wed. Now in their late thirties, the deeply devoted couple has everything—except the baby they've always wanted.

 

When a tragic accident leaves Elle brain-dead, Matt is devastated. Though he cannot bear losing her, he knows his wife, a thoughtful and adventurous scientist, feared only one thing—a slow death. Just before Matt agrees to remove Elle from life support, the doctors discover that she is pregnant. Now what was once a clear-cut decision becomes an impossible choice.

 

I found this one at Target and couldn't resist buying it.  I don't know how it got past me before this.

Absolutely amazing summary, don't you think?  I started it last night and should have a review up asap.

 

It's published by William Morrow, and you can buy it from Barnes & Noble or Amazon, as well as Target.

 

 

 

 

SUMMARY:

 

“A heroine every bit as provocative as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.” –The Dallas Morning News
Haunted by a life of violence and as proficient with languages as she is with knives, Vanessa Michael Munroe, chameleon and hunter, has built her life on a reputation for getting things done—dangerous and often not-quite-legal things. Born to missionary parents in lawless Africa, taken under the tutelage of gunrunners, and tortured by one of the jungle’s most brutal men, Munroe was forced to do whatever it took to stay alive.

   The ability to survive, fight, adapt, and blend has since taken her across the globe on behalf of corporations, heads of state, and the few private clients who can afford her unique brand of expertise, and these abilities have made her enemies.

   On a busy Dallas street, Munroe is kidnapped by an unseen opponent and thrust into an underground world where women and girls are merchandise and a shadowy figure known as The Doll Maker controls her every move. While trusted friends race to unravel where she is and why she was taken, everything pivots on one simple choice: Munroe must use her unique set of skills to deliver a high-profile young woman into the same nightmare that she once endured, or condemn to torture and certain death the one person she loves above all else.

   Driven by the violence that has made her what she is, cut off from help, and with attempts to escape predicted and prevented, Munroe will hunt for openings, for solutions, and a way to strike back at a man who holds all the cards. Because only one thing is certain: she cannot save everyone.
In this high-octane thriller for fans of Lee Child, Stieg Larsson, and Robert Ludlum's Bourne trilogy, Vanessa Michael Munroe will have to fight fast, smart and furiously to overcome a dangerous nemesis and deliver her trademark brand of justice.

 

  
Oh, I can hardly wait to open this one for reading!  I loved the "Girl With The Dragon Tatoo" series, and this one sounds like a close call to that type of book.  Love the books Mulholland chooses to publish.  Thanks, Mulholland for keeping me current!!

SUMMARY:

At the close of the Victorian Era, society still expected middle-class women to be "the angels of the house," even as a select few strived to become something more. In this time of change, Emeline Evans dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when her father dies unexpectedly, Emeline sacrifices her ambitions and rescues her family from destitution by marrying John Dorr, a reserved lawyer who can provide for her family.
 

John moves Emeline to the remote Missouri town of Labellum and into an unusual house where her sorrow and uneasiness edge toward madness. Furniture twists and turns before her eyes, people stare out at her from empty rooms, and the house itself conspires against her. The doctor diagnoses hysteria, but the treatment merely reinforces the house's grip on her mind.

I predict this will be a book on everyone's reading list this summer.  It's a beautiful cover, and its story is a modern-day take on Perkins-Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpaper!"  I'm chomping at the bit to start it next week for a review. 

SUMMARY:

I wake with a start from a bad dream. Anxiety clutches at my chest. Something’s gone . . . something’s missing . . . Beth . . . Always Beth . . .

When Geniver Loxley lost her daughter at birth eight years ago, her world stopped… and never fully started again. Mothers with strollers still make her flinch; her love of writing has turned into a half-hearted teaching career; and she and her husband, Art, have slipped into the kind of rut that seems inescapable. For Art, the solution is simple: Have another child to replace Beth. For Gen, the thought of replacing her first child feels cruel, nearly unbearable. A part of her will never let go of Beth, no matter how much she needs to move on.

But then a stranger shows up on their doorstep, telling Gen the very thing she’s always desperately longed to hear: that her daughter was not stillborn, but was taken away as a healthy infant. That Beth is still out there, somewhere, waiting to be found. A fissure suddenly opens up in Gen’s carefully reconstructed life, letting in a flood of unanswerable questions. How could this possibly be true? Where is Beth? And why is Art so reluctant to get involved?

Creepy and cruel...This one sounds perfect for a stormy night, to me.  Can't wait to read it.  Sent by my friends at St. Martin's Press, whom I thank tremendously.  I hope to review this one in August.



Now here are some of my Netgalley choices for the summer:

"Amity and Sorrow" by Peggy Riley

"Flora" by Gail Godwin

"I'll Be Seeing You" by Suzanne Hayes & Loretta Nyhan

"The Burgess Boys" by Elizabeth Strout

 

 SUMMARY:

 

A page-turning literary debut about a mother and her two teenage daughters escaping a cult and starting over.

Two sisters sit in the backseat of a car, bound at the wrists by a strip of white cloth. Their mother, Amaranth, drives for days without pause, desperate to get away from the husband she fears will follow them to the earth's end. Her daughters, Amity and Sorrow, cannot comprehend why they're fleeing or fathom what exists outside their father's polygamous compound...

THAT'S IT FOR ME!    TELL ME ONE OR TWO BOOKS YOU'RE READING THIS SUMMER...


DEBORAH/THEBOOKISHDAME