Sunday Salon: Rainy Days

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer; Showcase Sunday at Books, Biscuits, and Tea; and  It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. And Mailbox Monday hosted this month by Gina at Book Dragon's Lair.

It got colder, rained almost all day today, and washed out a day of events planned by local businesses in one area of town. The late night music scene was still going on though as the skies cleared at 4 p.m. though I didn't see many people around even at 5 p.m. Maybe we were spoiled by previous warm days and aren't used to the sudden drop in temperatures.

I finished reading a Soho teen novel, Dancer Daughter Traitor Spy by Elizabeth Kiem, and found it just so-so as a mystery novel. I was interested in it most of the way through but didn't like how the plot took you through several thrilling possibilities but then let you down at the end. This was Kiem's first novel.

My current read is Killer Librarian, the first in the mystery series by Mary Lou Kirwin, and plan to read the follow-up, Death Overdue, both in paperback to be released in November. I like the bookish setting.

Last week I received two ARCs for review:
The Bird Skinner by Alice Greenway, fiction: "the story of Jim Carroway, a World War II Vietnam Vet once called Jungle Jim, who has moved to a tiny island in Maine to seclude himself from his former life.  Once Jim was a noted ornithologist collecting and skinning birds as specimens he sent back to the Museum of Natural History in New York where he worked. Since his amputation, his lifelong work has become impossible. Now hiding out on Fox Island, away from his adult son and grandchildren in Connecticut and his colleagues in New York, he is depressed and in pain.

Jim’s slowly deteriorating mind unravels memories that take him back to the war in Guadalcanal, where he was with Naval Intelligence, spying on the Japanese for Admiral Halsey on a remote Solomon Island. There he became friends with a young native, Tosca, who taught him about the islands. Now in Maine, Jim finds out that Tosca, whom he hasn’t heard from in thirty years, is sending his daughter Cadillac to stay with him for a month before she starts Yale on a scholarship. Cadillac arrives to Jim’s consternation, but she is utterly captivating, totally original. She will capture his heart and the heart of everyone she meets."

The Girl With a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson, mystery
and two finished review books:
The Unidentified Redhead by Alice Clayton, romance
Unthinkable by Richard Cibrano, historical novel

A couple of these I requested and a couple were unsolicited.
As for book tours, I have a few left this year and scheduled a children's book for January. I hope to keep the number down to a minimum in 2014, one of my blogging resolutions for the new year!

What are you reading and what books arrived last week?