Sunday Salon: Older Books and New

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer.
Also visit It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date.

I read Jamaica Inn years ago and am rereading a 2015 reprint of this mystery/romance about smugglers in 1820 Cornwall, England. It's just as intriguing as I remember though I did notice now that one of the characters seems much more modern than the others in his action and speech.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, republished September 1, 2015 by William Morrow Paperbacks.

Another book on my desk is

The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper, August 2, 2016, Henry Holt. This one I am reading slowly as it's a history book, very detailed history of the man, his empire, his rule, and his death, yet written in a way that is interesting and easy to read. I see it as a tragedy of sorts.

A galley of a new book, the first in a few weeks, arrived.

My Last Lament by James William Brown is described as "a poignant and evocative novel of one Greek woman's story of her own and her nation's epic struggle in the aftermath of World War II." It's written in the first person, which I don't normally like, but the story does look intriguing. It highlights the Greek folk art of lamenting, its history, and the people who serve as "lamenters" and is an "eulogy to a way of life." I am looking forward to it, thanks to Berkley Books. It is to be released March 2017.

How was your Thanksgiving holidays? I ate at a relative's house and avoided having political disagreements.
 

Romantic Mystery: JAMAICA INN by Daphne Du Maurier

The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice.
Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, a novel published September 1, 2015 by William Morrow Paperbacks.

It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing wind brought a granite sky and a mizzling rain with it, and although it was now only a little after two o'clock in the afternoon the pallour of a winter evening seemed to have closed upon the hills, cloaking them in mist. It would be dark by four. The air was clammy cold, and for all the tightly closed windows it penetrated the interior of the coach.The leather seats felt damp to the hands, and here must have been a small crack in the roof, because now and again little drips of rain fell softly through, smudging the leather and leaving a dark blue stain like a splodge of ink.The wind came in gusts, at times shaking the coast as it travelled round the bend of the road, and in the exposed places on the high ground it blew with such force that the whole body of the coach trembled and swayed, rocking between the high wheels like a drunken man.  (first chapter)

So atmospheric, this first paragraph. I love reading DuMaurier's prose and enjoy the plots and characters in all of her romantic mystery novels, including this one set in Cornwall, a 2015 reprint.

Page 56: 

Even the horses appeared to understand the need for silence, for they stood motionless.

Would you keep reading, if you have not already read this novel? 

Sunday Salon: Vive la France!

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also visit Mailbox Monday.

Devastated by the vivid news on CNN and other channels of the tragic events in Paris. Just a few days ago, I was thinking of that city, seeing very vividly the Seine at night, flanked by trees, calmly lit up by lights and barges on the water and thinking I'd love to have an apartment in Paris with that exact view. Thinking of the people in that beautiful city....

I am still reading The Bone Tree by Greg Iles, the second in the trilogy based on the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the murders of civil rights workers in the south, and theories linking a New Orleans Sicilian mobster and the death of President John F. Kennedy. 

I also have three nonfiction books that I''m slowly getting through. 

New books that arrived:

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, a novel published September 1, 2015 by William Morrow Paperbacks. 
I have read this one before but am eager to reread it. Du Maurier wrote such wonderful romantic suspense, such as this one set on the Cornish coast. 

The Witch's Market by Mingmei Yip, to be released November 24, 2015 by Kensington.
Set in the Canary Islands, the novel deals with a research project on witches by a San Francisco professor. It involves a journey of intrigue, romance, and self-discovery.
The book was sent by the author for review. I am looking forward to reading it.

What's on your reading desk this week?