MY BOOKISH (AND NOT SO BOOKISH) THOUGHTS….

Welcome to another Bookish/Not So Bookish Thoughts post.  To participate, click on over to Christine’s Bookishly Boisterous site.

• How did the week fly by so fast?  Yes, each day had errands or appointments, so that was part of it.  Yesterday’s appointment for my annual physical took up most of the day, as I fiddled about getting ready, and then afterwards had lunch out to relax again.  However, I have been doing a little reading, having finished reading and reviewing two books so far.
• Earlier in the week I got an e-mail notification that Spring Bloggiesta is coming next week:  March 20-26.  I’ve been spending some time each day creating potential new blog headers.  This blog will be the focus of the event, but I tend to spend a little time on each site.
• Only two more weeks until the beach trip for my daughter’s “wedding.”  Yes, in quotes, because they actually tied the knot in November so she could be on his health plan, but had already arranged for the beach getaway.  We will get to dress up, she will be wearing “bride’s” clothes, and we will have dinner afterwards.  Then…back to the city the next day for the reception.
• I had trimmed down my list of NetGalley Review books...but then, unexpectedly, received two more!  Now I have four…but they are sort of spread out, with two in April, one in May, and another in July.  The newest one:

Bridges:  A Daphne White Novel (e-book), by Maria Murnane.  I loved this author’s Waverly Bryson series.

 

I also love the cover!

• Yesterday I received a new Amazon Vine review book in the mail:  Small Hours, by Jennifer Kitses, which I’ve been ogling.

 

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So….these are my meandering thoughts on this Thursday.  What are yours?

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CHASING AWAY THE BLUES WITH ANTICIPATION

Good morning!  Let’s wrap our minds around some bookish thoughts…and join Jen, at A Daily Rhythm.

Some topics to ponder:

• I’m currently reading…
• Up next I think I’ll read…
• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I can’t wait to get a copy of…
• I wish I could read ___, but…
• I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Last week, I came across someone’s idea to create waterproof books {see it here}. What do you think about this? Good idea, or bad?

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Today, I want to share my anticipation of a new Paula Daly book, The Mistake I Made, coming in September.  I read and loved two previous books (Keep Your Friends Close, and Just What Kind of Mother Are You?), by this author, so I am eager to go with this one.  At first, it wasn’t even available to pre-order here in the US…but now it is!  I also requested in on NetGalley....we’ll see.

 

 

 

The Mistake I Made is the latest page-turner from one of the England’s most captivating new thriller writers. In her provocative and riveting third novel, Paula Daly focuses her masterful eye for psychological suspense and family drama on an indecent proposal that has fatal repercussions.

Single mother Roz has reached breaking-point. After the dissolution of her marriage, Roz’s business has gone under, debts are racking up, the rent is late (again), and she’s struggling to provide for her nine-year-old son, who is starting to misbehave in school. Roz is in trouble. Real trouble.

When Roz returns home from work one day and finds an eviction notice, she knows that it’s time for action—she has two weeks to find a solution otherwise they will be kicked out of their home. Increasingly desperate, Roz doesn’t know where to turn. Then the perfect opportunity presents itself. At her sister’s fortieth birthday party, Roz meets Scott Elias—wealthy, powerful, and very married. But the impression Roz leaves on him is indelible. He tracks her down and makes Roz an offer to spend the night with him—for money. He wants no-strings-attached intimacy and can guarantee total discretion. Could it be as simple as it sounds? With that kind of cash, Roz could clear her debts and get her life back on track. But as the situation spirals out of her control, Roz is forced to do things she never thought herself capable of. Can she ever set things right again?

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I am definitely looking forward to this one!  What are you musing about today?

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BOOKISH SATURDAY: NEW BOOKS, OLD BOOKS, ETC.

 

Welcome to my Bookish Saturday!

Since today is the last day of February, I have wrapped up my reading month over at Curl up and Read.

 

 

 

Last night I started reading Crazy Love You, by Lisa Unger.  I fell asleep before I could really get into it, but I am looking forward to immersing myself in it today.

 

 

 

Love hurts. Sometimes it even kills.

Darkness has a way of creeping up when Ian is with Priss. Even when they were kids, playing in the woods of their small Upstate New York town, he could feel it. Still, Priss was his best friend, his salvation from the bullies who called him “loser” and “fatboy”…and from his family’s deadly secrets.

Now that they’ve both escaped to New York City, Ian no longer inhabits the tortured shell of his childhood. He is a talented and successful graphic novelist, and Priss…Priss is still trouble. The booze, the drugs, the sex–Ian is growing tired of late nights together trying to keep the past at bay. Especially now that he’s met sweet, beautiful Megan, whose love makes him want to change for the better. But Priss doesn’t like change. Change makes her angry. And when Priss is angry, terrible things begin to happen…

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I can see lots of scary things ahead!

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I skipped ahead in the queue again!  I have many, many books left over from 2014 that I haven’t yet read…but I can’t wait to read some of the newer ones.  So I slip them in, surreptitiously, and try not to feel too guilty.

I have only one review book waiting on my coffee table, Amherst, but I’ll get into that one on Monday…or maybe tomorrow.  A couple more came in the mailbox, but they can wait until week after next.

I downloaded another book this past week that I’ve been eagerly awaiting:  Hush Hush, by Laura Lippman.  I think I won’t be reading this one for a couple of weeks.  But who knows?  I might sneak that one in, too.

 

 

 

On a searing August day, Melisandre Harris Dawes committed the unthinkable: she left her two-month-old daughter locked in a car while she sat nearby on the shores of the Patapsco River. Melisandre was found not guilty by reason of criminal insanity, although there was much skepticism about her mental state. Freed, she left the country, her husband, and her two surviving children, determined to start over.

But now Melisandre has returned to Baltimore to meet with her estranged teenage daughters and film the reunion for a documentary. The problem is, she relinquished custody and her ex isn’t sure he approves.

Now that she’s a mother herself—short on time and patience—Tess Monaghan wants nothing to do with a woman crazy enough to have killed her own child. But her mentor and close friend Tyner Gray, Melisandre’s lawyer, has asked Tess and her new partner, retired Baltimore PD homicide detective Sandy Sanchez, to assess Melisandre’s security needs.

Tess has always felt that her curiosity about others is her greatest strength. Yet the imperious Melisandre is someone she cannot begin to understand, much less empathize with. A decade ago, a judge ruled that Melisandre was beyond rational thought. But was she? Tess tries to keep her distance from her mercurial yet confident client. This strategy gets tricky after Melisandre becomes a prime suspect in a murder.

And as her doubts about Melisandre grow, Tess realizes that she’s under scrutiny as well, followed by a judgmental stalker with an ax to grind . . .

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I love the Tess Monghan series, but I am way behind on them.  I have obviously read them “out of order,” but have the first in the series waiting for me to read…maybe this week:  Baltimore Blues.

 

 

 

Until her paper, the Baltimore Star, crashed and burned, Tess Monaghan was a damn good reporter who knew her hometown intimately — from historic Fort McHenry to the crumbling projects of Cherry Hill. Now gainfully unemployed at twenty-nine, she’s willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent — including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl “Rock” Paxton.

 

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What books are you reading today?  This week?  And what titles are you ogling?

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CHASING AWAY THE BLUES WITH MUSING MONDAYS

Let’s chase away those blues, and muse about bookish things with Should Be Reading.

Here are some topics:

 

• I’m currently reading…
• Up next I think I’ll read…
• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
• I can’t wait to get a copy of…
• I wish I could read ___, but…
• I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What do you think about re-purposing old books (eg. into art journals, etc)? Why?

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I just started reading Victims, by Jonathan Kellerman, an Alex Delaware book.  It is not his latest book, but I found it fairly recently on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble.  I hadn’t read any of the books in the series for a while, so I was ready.

 

 

I started reading it last night, and if I hadn’t been very tired, after finishing reading and reviewing Fangirl, (click for my review), I might have continued indefinitely.

The first chapters were very gruesome, but I know, from past experience, that most of the story will be about following clues and figuring things out, so that’s good.  Here’s a quick blurb:

Not since Jack the Ripper terrorized the London slums has there been such a gruesome crime scene. By all accounts, acid-tongued Vita Berlin hadn’t a friend in the world, but whom did she cross so badly as to end up arranged in such a grotesque tableau? One look at her apartment–turned–charnel house prompts hard-bitten LAPD detective Milo Sturgis to summon his go-to expert in hunting homicidal maniacs, Alex Delaware. But despite his finely honed skills, even Alex is stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion . . . yet with no apparent connection among the victims. And the only clue left behind—a blank page bearing a question mark—seems to be both a menacing taunt and a cry for help from a killer baffled by his own lethal urges.

 

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His newest book is Motive, coming on February 10, so I want to download it onto Sparky.

 

 

 

Even having hundreds of closed cases to his credit can’t keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonizing over the crimes that don’t get solved—and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end—one even Alex Delaware’s expert insight can’t explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case—because there’s always a next one.

This time the victim is Ursula Corey: a successful, attractive divorcée who’s been gunned down—not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of perp: the dead woman’s business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they’re zeroing in on the most likely suspect, a bizarre new clue stirs up eerie echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the specter of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness.

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I’ve been trying, fairly successfully, to cut down on my review requests…and since I only have one Vine review book left to read, and will be reading it this week….I gave in.  And requested this one:

 

You Can Trust Me, by Sophie McKenzie (I’ve never read her!)

 

 

 

On a quiet, gray, Saturday morning, Livy arrives at her best friend Julia’s flat for a lunch date only to find her dead. Though all the evidence supports it, Livy cannot accept the official ruling of suicide; the Julia she remembers was loud, inappropriate, joyful, outrageous and loving, not depressed. The suspicious circumstances cause Livy to dig further, and she is suddenly forced to confront a horrifying possibility: that Julia was murdered, by the same man who killed Livy’s sister, Kara, eighteen years ago.

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I am very excited about my bookish world.  Yes, I have been purging, etc., for a while, but what remains…well, there are still some fabulous books, and some good ones coming. 

As for the random question, I’ll have to ponder that one for a while!

What does your week look like?  What are you excited about?

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