Winners of The Last Camellia

Congrats to five winners:

JoAnn 
Mina
Mike, Melanie and Millie
Deb Nance 
Suko

for winning a copy of this paperback.

 I have sent you email and if you accept the win, please send me your mailing address by July 29. The publisher will mail the books. Congrats! A fabulous read!

Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also visit Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader and add your post to the Linky.

Title: Sweet Salt Air: A Novel by Barbara Delinsky
Published June 18, 2013; St.Martin's Press

Prologue: 

Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.  

Page 56:   

That's when they bumped into the publisher of the island weekly. He lit up when he saw them, though he quickly focused on Nicole. "I heard your good news. A book, huh?"

About the book: Charlotte and Nicole were once the best of friends, spending summers together on an island in Maine, but many years, and many secrets, have kept the women apart. A successful travel writer, single Charlotte lives on the road, while Nicole, a food blogger, keeps house in Philadelphia with her surgeon-husband, Julian. 

When Nicole is commissioned to write a book about island food, she invites Charlotte back to Quinnipeague, Maine for a final summer, to help. Charlotte agrees. What both women don't know is that they are each holding something back that may change their lives forever. For Nicole, what comes to light could destroy her marriage but save her husband. For Charlotte, the truth could cost her Nicole’s friendship but free her to love again. (publisher)

Based on the opening paragraph and the snippet from page 56, would you keep reading? Does the publisher's description of the book help you decide?

Bread and Butter, a Novel by Michelle Wildgen

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted weekly by Jill @ Breaking the Spine. Let us know what new releases you are eagerly waiting for. Link your post to Breaking the Spine.

Title: Bread and Butter: A Novel by Michelle Wildgen
To be published: February 11, 2014; Doubleday

Book description:
"Kitchen Confidential meets Three Junes in this mouthwatering novel about three brothers who run competing restaurants, and the culinary snobbery, staff stealing, and secret affairs that unfold in the back of the house.

Britt and Leo have spent ten years running Winesap, the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers; they don't sleep with the staff; and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant—a hip little joint serving an aggressive lamb neck dish—Britt and Leo find their own restaurant thrown off-kilter. Britt becomes fascinated by a customer who arrives night after night, each time with a different dinner companion. Their pastry chef, Hector, quits, only to reappear at Harry's restaurant. And Leo finds himself falling for his executive chef-tempted to break the cardinal rule of restaurant ownership.

Filled with hilarious insider detail—the one-upmanship of staff meals before the shift begins, the rivalry between bartender and hostess, the seedy bar where waitstaff and chefs go to drink off their workday—Bread and Butter is both an incisive novel of family and a gleeful romp through the inner workings of restaurant kitchens."

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio

"I promised Lady Anna," she said. "It only seemed right after...what happened to her."
"Mrs. Dilloway, what did happen to her?" ( ch. 15)

Title: The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio
Published May 28, 2013; Plume
Genre: fiction

My comments: Many women's fiction novels today are written as part historical novel and part contemporary, such as this one. The story begins in 1803, switches to 2000, and back to 1940. Most of the story of the lost camellia tree is told in the 1940s when a young woman, Flora, is sent as a spy into the Livingston household in England, to find the whereabouts of the unusual tree on the vast estate.

The story switches back and forth to 2000, when a young couple moves into the former Livingston estate, and the young wife Addison finds a scrapbook by Lady Livingston from the 1940s with notes on the camellia trees on the property. She becomes involved in the mysterious goings on in the household from the past, events that Addison "inherits" in the present.

A tempting historical mystery with an unusual theme. Highly recommended.

Publisher's description: In 1940, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes.

In the year 2000, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate?

For more reviews, visit the book's tour schedule at TLC Book Tours

Sarah Jio is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Blackberry Winter, The Violets of March, and The Bungalow. She has written articles for magazines such as Glamour, SELF, Health, Redbook, Cooking Light, O, The Oprah Magazine, Woman’s Day and many other publications. She lives in Seattle with her family.

Connect with Sarah at her website, Sarahjio.com, on Facebook and on Twitter.

GIVEAWAY:  Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher, I can offer five books for give away to U.S. and/or Canadian residents. Please leave a comment with a way to reach you if you should win. The contest will run through July 26, and the five winners will be notified on July 27, with a reply requested by July 29. Good luck and thanks in advance for entering the contest!

The contest has ended and the winners have been notified.

Sunday Salon: Ann Arbor Art Fair

 Welcome to the Sunday Salon.

At the Ann Arbor Art Fair today in Michigan, we were entertained by this non-aboriginal artist playing one of the didjeridoo musical instruments he makes. The wood's not decorated as a traditional Australian didjeridoo would be. But the music sounded pretty authentic.

There were blocks and blocks of booths in all art mediums - sculpture, glass art, pottery, jewelry, paintings, embroidery, photography, wooden musical instruments, etc., etc. A feast for the eyes. The day was sunny but much cooler than the past few days and so it was fairly pleasant to be outdoors though I did have to wear a straw hat.

Re books, I'm reading Sarah Jio's The Last Camellia for a book tour on Monday. Watch for a giveaway of two copies to U.S. or Canadian residents as part of the tour.

I'm also finishing up an ARC of Todd Borg's thriller, Tahoe Chase, which will be published August 1, 2013. The series is terrific and I'm enjoying this latest book.

Some great books and ARCs came in the mail from Vasilly at 1330V, including The Translator by Nina Schuyler, The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe by Mary Simses; Shorecliff by Ursula DeYoung, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge by Peter Orner, and Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano. How lucky can you get winning these books! Thanks, Vasilly!

How is your weekend going?

Friday 56/Book Beginnings: Buddy by Brian McGrory

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader

Title: Buddy: How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man by Brian McGrory
Published November 13, 2912; Crown
Genre: memoir

Book description: "Award-winning journalist Brian McGrory goes head to beak in a battle royale with another male for a top-spot in his home, vying for dominance with the family’s pet rooster."

Page 56:

(My aunt Mary McGrory) .... had broken into political reporting when her editor at the Washington Star (and) sent her to cover the Army-McCarthy hearings on Capitol Hill in the 1950s with the advice : "Write it like a letter to your aunt."

Book beginning:

Try as you might, you never forget that first time a rooster announces the dawn of a new day from your very own yard.
In my case, I jerked awake to find myself in a place I had never been, on a bed that wasn't mine, in a room I didn't know. There were windows where there had never been windows, and outside those windows, the first hint of morning light revealed the outline of tall trees I had never seen before.

Book description: Brian McGrory's life changed drastically after the death of his beloved dog, Harry: he fell in love with Pam, Harry's veterinarian. Pam, however, came with pets that included a snow white, red-crowned-and-wattled step-rooster named Buddy. Buddy takes Brian's presence as an affront, doing everything he can to drive out his rival. He stares menacingly, pecks threateningly, and is constantly poised to attack Brian, who eventually sees that Buddy shares the kind of relationship with Pam and her two girls that he wants for himself.

Buddy, Brian’s nemesis, becomes Buddy, Brian’s inspiration, in this human story of love, acceptance, and change. A tale of finding love in life’s second chapter - and how it means more when you have to fight for it."

Thanks to the author for a review galley of this book.

Book Review: Evil and the Mask by Fuminori Nakamura

Title: Evil and the Mask by Fuminori Nakamura
Published June 11, 2013; Soho Crime
Genre: literary thriller

My comments: I gave this 4.5/5. This is on the surface a story of a wealthy business family who has raised certain sons over generations to become "cancers,"  training them to become destructive to society.

The book uses this narrative to ponder what the action of killing does to individual people, whether they are soldiers, terrorists, or civilians.

Well worth reading for the topics it brings up that make us consider. Excellent book for discussion.

Publisher description:A follow-up to 2012's critically acclaimed The Thief ─another creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity─and the powerful human instinct to resist evil.

When Fumihiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly father calls him into his study for a meeting. "I created you to be a cancer on the world," his father tells him. It is a tradition in their wealthy family: a patriarch, when reaching the end of his life, will beget one last child to dedicate to causing misery in a world that cannot be controlled or saved. Fumihiro is to be specially educated to create destruction and unhappiness in the world around him. Every door is open to him, for he need obey no laws and may live out any fantasy he might have, no matter how many people are hurt in the process.

But as his education progresses, Fumihiro begins to question his father's mandate, and starts to resist.

Thanks to Soho Press for an ARC copy for review.

Submitted to the Japanese Literature Challenge 7 hosted by Dolce Bellezza.