Sunday Salon: Too Cold for Comfort

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer, and It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. Also, Mailbox Monday at i totally paused.

I went out today only because I had to - a trip to the grocery store and pharmacy was included. It was bitterly cold - bitter in comparison to the past few weeks, that is. And Sunday this day, will be the coldest yet this year.  My DH is down with a bad cold and flu and I'm trying hard to stay healthy, aches and pains aside. We are looking at pictures of beaches and desert, where we'd probably be much happier right now!

My reading slowed down a bit the past few days. I am in the middle of Amy Tan's intriguing new historical novel about courtesans in the early 1900s in Shanghai - The Valley of Amazement.  Since I often read more than one book at a time, I started an ARC: Still Life With Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen, a love story.

This ARC has a solid red cover with titles in white and yellow; it doesn't have the more attractive cover with birds and blossoms that will appear on the hardcover release in February. But the story should basically be the same. A story of unexpected love - sounds like a book to curl up with in the cold of a winter day, doesn't it?

What are you reading/doing today?

The Sister Season: a Novel by Jennifer Scott

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: The Sister Season: A Novel by Jennifer Scott
Published November 5, 2013; NAL Trade
Genre: fiction, women's fiction

Book beginning:

Claire was the first to arrive.
Not really a surprise to Elise, as Claire was the most...unattached. No children, no home to button up for a few days, not even a goldfish to find a sitter for.
To Elise, her youngest daughter seemed to be hopelessly and perpetually fearful of making a commitment. The first sign of anything permanent, be it a kitten or a car loan, and the girl oozed Panic Attack and ran for the hills.

Page 56:

Oh, not that Tai didn't care. Of course he did. But Eli was Tai's stepson, not his real son. He couldn't claim Eli's brown eyes or the way he walked on the outer edges of his feet or his natural propensity for algebra.

Book description: 
"A women’s fiction debut featuring three sisters who discover that coming home for the holidays isn’t as easy as it seems… It’s December 21, and the Yancey sisters have been called home. As the years unfolded, the three sisters had scattered and settled into separate lives. Until now.

The Yancey sisters are coming to spend the holidays with their mother. They’re also coming to bury their father. Claire, the youngest, a free spirit who journeyed to California, returns first. Then comes Julia, the eldest, a college professor with a teenage son of her own. And finally there’s Maya, the middle child, who works so hard to be the perfect mother and wife.

 During the sisters’ week together, old conflicts surface, new secrets emerge, and the limits and definitions of family are tested. And as the longest night of the year slips by and brightening days beckon, the sisters will have to answer one question: When you’re a sister, aren’t you a sister forever?"

What's your choice for Friday 56 and Book Beginnings? 

Buttoned Up by Kylie Logan

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted weekly by Breaking the Spine. What new book(s) are you waiting for to be released?

Title: Buttoned Up: Button Box Mystery #4, a cozy mystery by Kylie Logan, is to be released December 3, 2013 by Berkley.

Publisher description:
"For Josie Giancola, owner of the Button Box shop, every button is a tiny work of art with its own story to tell—a story that just might end in murder….

Artist Forbis Parmenter has invited Josie to the opening of his latest exhibit of voodoo-inspired works. He plans to make a show of completing the centerpiece—a button- encrusted statue—when Josie arrives with the final button. But just as the big moment comes, Forbis bolts out of the gallery in panic. Is it another of his publicity stunts, or is something more sinister afoot?

Josie gets her answer when the eccentric artist is found dead—his lifeless body in the arms of a statue and his eyes and lips sealed with buttons. Now she’s using her expert eye to solve the mystery before a crafty killer slips through her fingers. Includes tips on antique-button collecting!"

I've read a few in this series! How about you? What book are you waiting for to be released?

Book Review: The Pieces We Keep by Kristina McMorris

Title: The Pieces We Keep: A Novel by Kristina McMorris (author of Bridge of Scarlet Leaves; and Letters from Home)
Publication: November 26, 2013; Kensington Books
Genre: historical fiction

About the book:
Two stories are told simultaneously - one set in contemporary U.S, and the other in London in the late 1930s and early 1940s before and during WWII.

In the U.S. a widow, Audra, tries to find the source and cause of her seven-year-old son Jake's vivid and disturbing nightmares. Jake is entranced by fighter planes and soldiers from the war. In London in the late 1930s, Vivian, the daughter of a U.S. diplomat, falls in love with Isaak, who wants to leave for Germany to take his family from there to safety in Switzerland before war breaks out. Vivian willingly but unwittingly begins gathering information from her father's diplomatic files to give to Isaak.

My comments: This is an historical novel/historical romance that deftly weaves the past and the present and fact with fiction - WWII German spies/saboteurs were arrested and executed in the U.S. during the war; and there is a true case of a young child with nighttime dreams of being a pilot during WWII that brings up questions about the truth or non-truth of reincarnation.

The present and past stories are told in alternate chapters. I would have liked though to see more markers/information at the beginning of each chapter to lead us smoothly back into each story. This was not a problem in the second half of the book, however, after I had become thoroughly familiar and involved with all the characters.

Recommendation: Excellent research and characterization, especially of Audra and her young son Jake in modern day Portland, Oregon who find themselves linked to Vivian, Isaak, and the characters in the WWII drama. I expected a traumatic ending but it turned out to be a satisfying one!

Objective rating: 4/5
Thanks to the author for sending an ARC for an early read/review.

Sunday Salon: Mixing the Past and the Present in Current Fiction

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer;  Stacking the Shelves at Tyngas Reviews; It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday at i totally paused.

I finished reading
The Pieces We Keep, historical fiction by Kristina McMorris
Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbøl, Agnete Friis, Danish crime fiction
and am currently reading
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty.

All three novels are set both in the present and during a time of war and conflict - WWII, Communism in the Ukraine in the 1930s, and the Cold War in Berlin.
I will be doing reviews very soon. Come back and visit during the week!

Some wonderful and welcome books in my mailbox last week:

1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think edited by Robert Arp, Atria Books
Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndib, ARC from Soho Press
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan, ARC from Ecco

Can't wait to start reading!
What are you up to this Sunday?

Lending a Paw by Laurie Cass

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: Lending a Paw: A Bookmobile Cat Mystery by Laurie Cass
To be published December 3, 2013; Signet
Genre: cozy mystery
Source: publisher

Page 56:

"Don't tell me there's something wrong with the bookmobile.He squinted at the vehicle. "Mechanical problems happen regularly, I understand."

Opening paragraph:

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of growing up to be the president. Failing that, an astronaut or a ballerina.

Publisher description:
With the help of her rescue cat, Eddie, librarian Minnie Hamilton is driving a bookmobile based in the resort town of Chilson, Michigan. 

Eddie followed Minnie home one day, and now she can’t seem to shake the furry little shadow. The tabby sneaks out and trails her all the way to the bookmobile on its maiden voyage. Before she knows it, her slinky stowaway becomes her cat co-pilot!

Minnie and Eddie’s first day visiting readers around the county seems to pass without trouble—until Eddie darts outside at the last stop and leads her to the body of a local man who’s reached his final chapter. Initially, Minnie is ready to let the police handle this case, but Eddie seems to smell a rat. Together, they’ll work to find the killer—because a good librarian always knows when justice is overdue.

I don't think this is a talking cat type of mystery, even though Eddie seems to be able to help solve the crime.

Book Review: A Cold and Lonely Place by Sara J. Henry

A Cold and Lonely Place by Sara J. Henry is a dark mystery read fit for a cold though not lonely winter.

Title: A Cold and Lonely Place  by Sara J. Henry
Paperback published November 5, 2013; Broadway Books
Genre: mystery, thriller

The novel is set in a small town in the Adirondack Mountains, upper New York State. It is cold in the winter and a lonely place for Tobin, an outsider who has made his home in this out of the way place, know for winter sports and its annual Winter Festival.

A freelance newspaper reporter, Troy Chance, is on scene at Saranac Lake to cover the ice cutting for an ice palace to be built for the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival. Works stops when a body is found in the frozen lake, encased in ice. Everyone recognizes it as Tobin, the popular outsider.

Troy works with Tobin's sister Win, who comes into town to find out the whys and hows of Tobin's death. Through her research and interviews for a series of stories for the local paper, Troy takes risks several times to find out more about Tobin's background, the death by drowning of his older brother Trey, and his life before and after he arrives in the Adirondacks. This extensive research helps solve the sad mystery of the young man's death.

I thought this mystery was about the tragic results in a family with "toxic" parents who ignored and actively worked against the best interests of their children. It was easy to like Troy, the young reporter turned sleuth, and I hope to read more about her in the next books in the Troy Chance series.

This is a reprint of an earlier post.
I received a review copy of the book from the publisher.