Hello! Happy Saturday!! Almost at the mid point of the month, and it seems to be flying by again!! Nice bit of frost and fog about this week too, but the return of some sunshine as well and the Spring flowers are beginning to bloom in my garden! Happy times!!
On to books, and it’s been a pretty good week with 4 books finished, some nice bookpost and 2 new additions to the netgalley shelves!!
Here’s my look back!
BOOKS FINISHED
THE GARNETT GIRLS by GEORGINA MOORE – 5 STARS
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW by GABRIELLE ZEVIN – 3 STARS
THE ONLY SUSPECT by LOUISE CANDLISH – 4 STARS
A MARRIAGE OF FORTUNE by ANNE O’BRIEN – 4 STARS
BOOKHAUL
Kicking off over at Netgalley……
THE BIRDCAGE LIBRARY by FREYA BERRY
publication – June 2023
The answers to a puzzle lie hidden within an old book. Open The Birdcage Library and let the treasure hunt begin…
The year is 1882, and the most important thing, unknown reader, is this: The man I love is trying to kill me.
It’s 1932 and adventuress and plant-hunter Emily Blackwood accepts a commission from Heinrich Vogel, a former dealer of exotic animals in Manhattan, living now with his macabre collection in a remote Scottish castle.
Emily is tasked to find a long-lost treasure which Heinrich believes has been hidden within the castle walls. But instead she discovers the pages of a diary, written by Hester Vogel, who died after falling from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Hester’s diary leads Emily to an old book The Birdcage Library and into a treasure hunt of another kind, one that will take her down a dangerous path for clues, and force her to confront her own darkest secret…
With fiendish clues and clever twists, The Birdcage Library will delight and dazzle you to the final page.
CATFISH ROLLING by CLARA KUMAGAI
publication date – March 2023
Magic-realism blends with Japanese myth and legend in an original story about grief, memory, time and an earthquake that shook a nation.
There’s a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls.
Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones – the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces.
But it’s dangerous there – and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora’s father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself…
And in the post…..
CROSSING OVER by ANN MORGAN
publication date – April 2023
Edie finds the world around her increasingly difficult to comprehend. Words are no longer at her beck and call, old friends won’t mind their own business and workmen have appeared in the neighbouring fields, preparing to obliterate the landscape she has known all her life. Rattling around in an old farmhouse on the cliffs, she’s beginning to run out of excuses to stop do-gooders interfering when one day she finds an uninvited guest in the barn and is thrown back into the past.
Jonah has finally made it to England – where everything, he’s been told, will be better. But the journey was fraught with danger, and many of his fellow travellers didn’t make it. Sights firmly set on London, but unsure which way to turn, he is unprepared for what happens when he breaks into Edie’s barn.
Haunted by the prospect of being locked away and unable to trust anyone else, the elderly woman stubbornly battling dementia and the traumatised illegal immigrant find solace in an unlikely companionship that helps them make sense of their worlds even as they struggle to understand each other. Crossing Over is a delicately spun tale that celebrates compassion and considers the transcendent language of humanity.
A SECRET GARDEN AFFAIR by ERICA JAMES
publication – March 2023
Another heartbreaking but glorious tale of secrets and love from the Sunday Times bestselling author Erica James…July 1981. As the country prepares to celebrate Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Diana, Libby wants to be as far away from royal wedding fever as possible.
Having caught her own fianc� in bed with her best friend just weeks before they were due to marry, she’s fled London for the comfort of the Suffolk countryside.
At Larkspur House, with its magical garden created by renowned garden designer and one-time socialite Elfrida Ambrose, and its comfortingly familiar kitchen presided over by Libby’s great-aunt Bess, she hopes to find a way to put her life back together.
But for lifelong friends Bess and Elfrida, Libby’s arrival has stirred up the ghosts of the past. And before they can help her rebuild her shattered future, they must confront their own unspoken secrets, lost loves, and tragedies..
.
CURRENTLY READING
HAPPY READING!!
Books and Me! 