Saturday Snapshot: A Butterfly in Japan

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda of West Metro Mommy.

A tiny butterfly lands on clover on a sidewalk in Japan. Caught last week on our morning walk to the coffee shop in Aichi, Japan.

Just found out from Cindy Mead, an expert on moths, that the butterfly is a Pale Grass Blue, native to Asia.

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Speak of the Devil by Allison Leotta

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.

A few pages later, Jack stopped flipping and drew in a sharp breath. There, among pictures of cheering people throwing rice at him and Nina, was a blank white spot. A ghost of a rectangle showed where the picture used to be.

Title: Speak of the Devil (Anna Curtis #3) by Allison Leotta
Published August 6, 2013; Touchstone
Source: publisher

Publisher description: "On the very night she gets engaged to the man she loves,  prosecutor Anna Curtis’s professional life takes a shocking turn that threatens everything she holds dear.While Anna is enjoying a romantic dinner, a few miles away a vicious killer known as Diablo—the Devil—leads a group that will clash with Anna’s own investigative team in a fight against human trafficking in D.C. Both groups are caught off guard, with deadly results.

Allison Leotta draws on her experience as a D.C. prosecutor to take readers into the back rooms of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the hidden world of the Witness Protection Program, and the secret rituals of one of America’s most dangerous gangs. Leotta weaves fact and fiction to create her third novel in the series."

What's your Friday 56 book teaser?

How To Be a Good Wife: A Novel by Emma Chapman

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.

How to Be a Good Wife: A Novel by Emma Chapman is due to be published October 15, 2013 in hardcover by St. Martin's Press. According to goodreads, the book is:" a haunting literary debut about a woman who begins having visions that make her question everything she knows.

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time, raised a son and sent him off to life after university. Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall.

Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something."

Wow, this women's fiction sounds as if it could be a thriller or a haunting story or both. Certainly sends chills down my spine to read the book description. Looking forward to it's publication, though.

What book are you waiting for to be published?

Sunday Salon: Hostas Galore

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!This post lists new books and links up to It's Monday; What Are You Reading? at Book Journey;  to Mailbox Monday hosted by
BermudaOnion's Weblog, and to Stacking the Shelves by Tynga's Reviews.

Last week we dislodged the long row of day lilies at the back fence, cut down a Russian olive tree that was growing too fast and too high, trimmed a tall bush near it, and planted a variety of young hosta plants. Less bushy back there now, but hopefully it will be colorful with the variegated leaves of green, white, yellow, and blue-green hostas, once they grow some more, that is  I am hoping they will be spectacular next year.

Last week also, a nice note came with an ARE of Adriana Trigiani's new novel, The Supreme Macaroni Company, a novel of romance and old world craftmanship that takes you from Greenwich Village to New Orleans and to Italy. The book is to be published November 5, 2013 by Harper.

I reviewed her previous book, The Shoemaker's Wife, an historical novel of young Italian emigrants to America.

Other books that arrived last week include
Murder of a Stacked Librarian by Denise Swanson, the 16th in the Scumble River Mystery Series.

Dragon's Child by M.K, Hume, the first in a King Arthur Trilogy



Tongwan City: A Novel by Gao Jianqun, an historical novel of  the ancient Chinese frontier 16 centuries ago. "Gao weaves into this tale seminal themes of Chinese history and culture: the connection between the warlike Xiongnu and their cousins the Huns, the Great Wall that was built to separate the Xiongnu from the Han Chinese, and the philosophy that ultimately united them."

Alternate Currents by Arleen Alleman, a suspense novel set in Seattle which explores "the world of domestic partners, alternative reproductive technology, and social bigotry."

Right now, I'm enjoying The Sound and the Furry, a Chet and Bernie mystery by Spencer Quinn, the sixth in the very successful series of a detective duo - Chet the big dog and his human crime fighting partner Bernie. Chet tells the story, by the way, and it is in parts, hilarious, as he tries to understand and interpret human behavior.

What are you up to this week?
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Book Review: Redemption by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Title: Redemption: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Published July 18, 2013; Penguin
Genre: Scandinavian thriller
Source: review copy from publisher

also published under a different name and cover by Dutton Adult, May 28, 2013 as

It was hard to put the book down until I had finished it. The personalities in the Copenhagen police's special Department Q are so realistic and quirky, you feel you know them. They keep you interested and entertained at the same time as you follow their procedures for finding the serial murderer who has been targeting large religious families with young children and teens.
Excellent plot and characterization, as his books always are. Chilling, but a good read.

Book description: Two boys, brothers, wake tied and bound in a boathouse by the sea.
Their kidnapper has gone, but soon he will return.
Their bonds are inescapable.
But there is a bottle and tar to seal it.
Paper and a splinter for writing; blood for ink.
A message begging for help... Her husband will not tell the truth: where he goes, what he does, how long he will be away. For days on end she waits and when he returns she must endure his wants, his moods, his threats. But enough is enough.She will find out the truth, no matter the cost to him - or to herself.
In Copenhagen's cold cases division Carl Morck has received a bottle. It holds an old and decayed message, written in blood. (publisher)

I've read Books 1 and 2 in the series and found them both excellent, if you like Scandinavian thrillers. Here's my review of the first in the series, Mercy aka The Keeper of Lost Causes. The second in the series is Disgrace aka (The Absent One), 

and they don't need to be read in order.

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Waiting on Wednesday: Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman

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: Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman
To be published October 1, 2013 by Harper
Genre: mystery

"Legendary tribal sleuths Leaphorn and Chee are back! The daughter of New York Times bestselling mystery author Tony Hillerman continues the popular series with this Navajo Country mystery - her debut novel.

It happened in an instant: Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manualito saw a truck squeal into the parking lot and heard a crack of gunfire. When the dust cleared, someone very close to her was lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood.

Every officer in the squad and the local FBI office are hellbent to catch the gunman. Bernie, too, wants in on the investigation, despite regulations  forbidding eyewitness involvement. Her husband, Sergeant Jim Chee, is put in charge of finding the shooter.

Pooling their skills, Bernie and Chee discover that a cold case involving his former boss and partner, retired Inspector Joe Leaphorn, may hold the key to the shooting. Digging into the old investigation with fresh eyes, husband and wife inch closer to the truth with every clue . . . and closer to a killer who will do anything to prevent justice from taking its course." (publisher)

What new release are you waiting for?

Book Review: Tahoe Chase by Todd Borg

First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea.
Teaser Tuesdays  is hosted by MizB

It was the softness of the metallic click that sounded dangerous.
Cynthia Rorvik was filling the bird feeder out on the deck when she heard a faint sound of metal on metal. Her heart thumped.
Maybe it was the latch on the deck fence gate, the whisper snick of spring-loaded bar as it was eased out of its cradle.
Cynthia inhaled a short, reflexive breath and held it, listening..... (opening paragraph)

Title: Tahoe Chase by Todd Borg
Published August 1, 2013; Thriller Press
Genre: mystery, thriller
Source: review copy from author

The story: The setting is the area around the ski resorts of Lake Tahoe, Ca. and Nevada in the towns and mountains that ring the lake. Cynthia's fall from her deck to the rocks below looks like an accident, but her husband, a former Olympic ski racer, hires detective Owen McKenna to look into her untimely death.

My comments: Reading this thriller is a bit like skiing, I think. There are twists and turns and surprises around each bend in the story. First you are sure that Cynthia's fatal fall has something to do with her activism to keep Tahoe pristine and free from further development, then you find other possible motives, and you face the environmental factor again, then head off in a different direction, and so on. Which is the real reason for her now presumed murder?

Then you follow a young woman fleeing from domestic abuse, as she heads into the remote wilderness in a challenge to ski mountains and valleys and regain her self confidence. The problem is, her abuser is also a good skiier.

Owen McKenna has his hands full again in another thrilling adventure. I enjoyed the scenes of Tahoe, the lake and its mountains, one of the added perks of reading Todd Borg's Tahoe thrillers. This is a good story with a dramatic subplot and enough twists and turns to keep you really interested. This is the 11th in the series.

My objective rating: 4.5/5