My August TBR list!

TBR Someone, could well be me!, has decided  she needs to be a little extra organised for the month of August as she has just looked at her schedule for Blog Tours, The 20 Books of Summer challenge and online Book Clubs,  alongside the books she has been sent to review and ones she’s bought herself, and she may have cried a little at the amount!! Trying to remain calm is NOT an option!  HELP ME!!! So  being organised it is then! I’ve just sorted out a small pile to begin with – as to not overwhelm myself! – so this is just a little taste of the books I have ahead of me in August! Bagpuss and Elmo helped put this collection together…so it’s their fault if it all goes wrong!!

AT MRS LIPPINCOTE’S by ELIZABETH TAYLOR

Invited by the lovely Karen to join her group on GoodReads – The Elizabeth Taylor Reading Project – and this is the first of 12 books by Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one!!) that we’re set to read over the course of a year! Can’t wait!

The debut novel from Elizabeth Taylor – shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Mrs Lippincote’s house, with its mahogany furniture and yellowing photographs, stands as a reminder of all the certainties that have vanished with the advent of war. Temporarily, this is home for Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF. Although she can accept the pomposities of service life, Julia’s honesty and sense of humour prevent her from taking her role as seriously as her husband, that leader of men, might wish; for Roddy, merely love cannot suffice – he needs homage as well as admiration. And Julia, while she may be a most unsatisfactory officer’s wife, is certainly no hypocrite.

The Lion Tamer who Lost by Louise Beech

Ahead of a Blog Tour this has really got me excited after so many wonderful reviews!

Long ago Andrew made a childhood wish. One he has always kept in a silver box with a too-big lid that falls off. When it finally comes true, he wishes it hadn’t…

Long ago Ben dreamed of going to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve. When he finally goes there, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined…

Ben and Andrew keep meeting where they least expect. Some collisions are by design, but are they for a reason? Ben’s father would disown him for his relationship with Andrew, so they must hide their love. Andrew is determined to make it work, but secrets from his past threaten to ruin everything.

Ben escapes to Zimbabwe to finally fulfil his lifelong ambition. But will he ever return to England? To Andrew? To the truth?

A dark and poignant drama, The Lion Tamer Who Lost is also a mesmerisingly beautiful love story, with a tragic heart.

The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers

This is the book club choice of The Ninja Book Box Book Club – a fab and fun little online club that chooses an indie book to read each month! Very excited to read this one!

An England divided. From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history.

They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is ‘clipping’ – the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death.

A charismatic leader, Hartley cares for the poor and uses violence and intimidation against his opponents. He is also prone to self-delusion and strange visions of mythical creatures.

When excise officer William Deighton vows to bring down the Coiners and one of their own becomes turncoat, Hartley’s empire begins to crumble. With the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, the fate of his empire is under threat.

Forensically assembled from historical accounts and legal documents, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance that combines poetry, landscape, crime and historical fiction, whose themes continue to resonate. Here is a rarely-told alternative history of the North.

The Summer House by Philip Teir

Won a copy of this from the publisher, Serpents Tail, and it seems the perfect month to read it!

The light greenery of the early summer is trembling around Erik and Julia as they shove their children into the car and start the drive towards the house by the sea on the west coast of Finland where they will spend the summer. From the outside they are a happy young family looking forward to a long holiday together.

But look under the surface, and their happiness shows signs of not lasting the summer. On the eve of the holiday, Erik lost his job, but hasn’t yet told the family. And the arrival of Julia’s childhood friend Marika – along with her charismatic husband Chris, the leader of a group of environmental activists that have given up hope for planet Earth and are returning to a primitive lifestyle – deepens the hairline cracks that had so far remained invisible.

Around these people, over the course of one summer, Philip Teir weaves a finely-tuned story about life choices and lies, about childhood and adulthood. How do we live if we know that the world is about to end?

The Librarian by Salley Vickers

A recent purchase after reading so many glowing reviews! 

A charmingly subversive novel about a library in 1950s England, by the acclaimed author of The Cleaner of Chartres

Sylvia Blackwell, a young woman in her twenties, moves to East Mole, a quaint market town in middle England, to start a new job as a children’s librarian. But the apparently pleasant town is not all it seems. Sylvia falls in love with an older man – but it’s her connection to his precocious young daughter and her neighbours’ son which will change her life and put them, the library and her job under threat.

How does the library alter the young children’s lives and how do the children fare as a result of the books Sylvia introduces them to?

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

Treated myself to a signed copy of this a couple of months’ ago and it is now on the Man Booker long list so that has bumped it up my TBR pile!

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia, and Sky kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them – three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

Hypnotic and compulsive, The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood, and transformation

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Add to that lot I need to fit in 9 more books to complete my #20booksofsummer challenge, which I had hoped would be made up from my overstocked NetGalley shelves – there may be some cheating going on and you might end up seeing some of these books added to my challenge!!

Do you set yourself TBR’s for the month ahead?! Does it help?! Would love to hear your thoughts – and if you’ve read any of these I’d love to know if they got your seal of approval!

HAPPY READING!!

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