Desire Lines by Christina Baker Kline

Desire Lines

Christina Baker Kline is the author of the bestselling Orphan Train. The paperback of Desire Lines will be out August 12, 2014. It was first published in hardcover in 1998.

"Desire Lines is that best possible literary mystery: a complex, superbly subtle novel with a tight plot that keeps one guessing right up until the end." - Anita Shreve

Publisher description:
On the night of her high school graduation, Kathryn Campbell sits around a bonfire with her four closest friends, including the beautiful but erratic Jennifer. "I'll be fine," Jennifer says, as she walks away from the dying embers and towards the darkness of the woods. She never comes back.

Ten years later, Kathryn has tried to build a life for herself, with a marriage and a career as a journalist, but she still feels the conspicuous void of Jennifer's disappearance. When her divorce sends her reeling back to the Maine town where she grew up, she finds herself plunged into a sea of memories. With nothing left to lose, she is determined to answer one simple question: What happened to Jennifer Pelletier?

Sounds pretty suspenseful. What do you think?

Book Review: The Witchdoctor's Bones by Lisa de Nikolits

The Witchdoctor's Bones by Lisa de Nikolits
Published May 21, 2014 by Inanna Publications.
Genre: fiction
Objective rating: 4 out of 5 points.

The sangoma," Jono said,"or the witch-finder, is the one who sniffs out the witches. Sangoma is a Zulu word for the traditional healer and he or she will be invited to cleanse an entire village of witchcraft..." (p. 68)

Background: A group of tourists in South Africa travel by bus with a tour guide and a cook, setting out on a long trek, camping and sightseeing, starting from Cape Town in South Africa and heading north into the desert and jungles of Namibia. Jono the driver and Treasure the cook are in charge of the tour group made up of mainly Americans and Canadians from various backgrounds - some traveling as singles, others as couples.

About the group: The tourists are a mixed bunch of personalities. We learn right off which ones are average travelers and which are secretive, obsessive compulsive, and even mentally ill. The main character is a young Canadian woman Kate, who is on the African trip to get over a broken romance with a boyfriend back home. She teams up with Marika as her tent mate and quietly observes all the members of the group. They are such a varied group but they all try to put up with each other's foibles and quirky behavior.

The main action: One of the tour members dies, others are injured, some leave the tour on their own, and another tour member is killed in what seems like an accident. Kate decides to stick with the tour even as others leave. Jono the driver and tour guide swears this is the last time he will take tourists on this particular trip.

What I got from the book: I learned about the Bushmen tribe, about some African folk beliefs and mythologies. I found out more about local witchcraft and the local beliefs in the power of the supernatural. I saw vicariously a part of South Africa and some of the tourist sights and places to see wild animals in Namibia, and also learned about the dangers of the land - poisonous plants being one of them. I liked that the novel included a map of the places on the tour. 

This is a tense but interesting story of a group of people stuck together in an unusual situation, on an African tour in this case, some of them having pretty murderous intentions. This is not a beach read. A few of the characters and situations are truly frightening, but then all ends well (as well as can be expected in the situation) in the end. Well told and developed, this is a book for mystery lovers, adventure lovers, and those curious about Africa.


The author: Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits of Canada has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy and has lived in the U.S.A., Australia and Britain.

Her novels: The Hungry Mirror, won the 2011 IPPY Awards Gold Medal for Women's Issues Fiction. West of Wawa won the 2012 IPPY Silver Medal Winner for Popular Fiction. A Glittering Chaos tied to win the IPPY Silver Medal for Popular Fiction, 2014. 

For more reviews of the book, visit Partners in Crime Tours. Thanks to PIC Tours and the publisher for a review copy.

Sunday Salon: Books and Hydrangea

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Also visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday each week.

I missed the super moon last night.. Oak trees right across from us and lining the road always block views of the moon. I caught a glimpse of it through leaves, but would have had to walk or drive somewhere else to see all of it. Maybe next time, in August.

New books include

Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder, with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace. (publisher)

Cancel the Wedding follows one woman’s journey to her mother's rural hometown in Georgia  to discover the secrets of her mother’s hidden past—and confront her own uncertain future. (publisher)

Here is a picture of the Lace Top Hydrangea we recently added to the yard.

Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen

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.

Soy Sauce for Beginners

Book beginning:

These are some of my favorite smells: toasting bagel, freshly cut figs, the bergamot in good Earl Grey tea, a jar of whole soybeans slowly turning beneath a tropical sun.

You'd expect the latter to smell salty, meaty, flaccid - like what you'd smell if you unscrewed the red cap of the bottle on a table in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant and stuck your nose in as far as it would go. But real, fermenting soybeans smell nothing like earth, these soybeans smell of history, of life, of tiny, patient movements, unseen by the naked eye.  

Everything about soy sauce I learned from my father and my uncle and my late grandfather. 

page 56:

Singlish, Singapore's unofficial national tongue, combines a singular accent with an idiosyncratic syntax .... Frankie said it was as if the entire region conversed in opera libretti in place of regular speech.... 

Book description: 
Gretchen Lin, adrift at the age of thirty, leaves her floundering marriage in San Francisco to move back to her childhood home in Singapore and immediately finds herself face-to-face with the twin headaches she’s avoided her entire adult life: her mother’s drinking problem and the machinations of her father’s artisanal soy sauce business....Soy Sauce for Beginners reveals one woman’s search for a place to call home, and the art and tradition behind the brewing of an unsung condiment. This is a foodie love story, and (a book about) family loyalty and fresh starts. (goodreads)
Soy Sauce for Beginners, a novel by Kirstin Chen, published January 7, 2014; New Harvest

Based on the information and the excerpts above, is this a book you would add to your reading list?
Singapore has always intrigued me, so I'd be curious about this one.

Book Review: Tailing a Tabby by Laurie Cass

Tailing a Tabby

Tailing a Tabby  is the second in the Bookmobile Cat Mystery series by Laurie Cass, published July 1, 2014 by Signet. I have not yet read the first, Lending a Paw, but plan to soon.

What's not to love about a bookmobile, a bookmobile driver who lives on a houseboat on a lake, and a friendly cat?

Minnie Hamilton is the librarian in a small lake town in northwest lower Michigan, and Eddie is the cat who showed up one day at her bookmobile and didn't want to leave. Minnie took him in and now he's a vital part of the bookmobile, though Minnie's strict boss at the main library doesn't know about it. The bookmobile patrons love Eddie, however, so he stays.

In Tailing a Tabby, Minnie drives a famous artist, Russell McCade, in the bookmobile to the hospital after he had a sudden stroke. She becomes more involved when this artist she so admires is later discovered at the home of a murdered woman. With Eddie for company, Minnie plans to find the real murderer and save the artist from prosecution for the crime. Along the way, she also has to deal with her cantankerous library boss and a quirky aunt.

The librarian and her cat in the traveling bookmobile stick in your mind and make me eager to read future adventures featuring these two. Humor, a good plot, easy reading, likeable characters, great setting....

Thanks to the publisher for a review copy of this book for a book tour.   

Book Review: The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

The Sea Garden

The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson (published June 24, 2014; Harper) is an unusual historical novel and a novel of wartime romance.

The book deals with the French resistance in Provence in WWII and the people who died and who survived it, both those resisting or collaborating with the enemy. The novel is divided into three books - The Sea Garden, The Lavender Field, and A Shadow Life, with the stories linking in the third and final book.

Book I
is set on the island of Porquerolles in the southern French Riviera, present day, where garden designer Ellie Brook travels from England to restore the gardens of an estate owned by Lauren de Fayols and his mother. The gardens overlook a bay and lighthouse through a distinctive topiary arch made of plants and trees, as seen on the book cover. Porquerolles played an important part during the wars, an island of ten forts forming a defense for the southern coast of France.

In this story, Ellie is frightened by the rantings of the matriarch of the estate, Mme. de Fayols, rantings that make no sense to Ellie. The gloom of the house and estate is foreshadowed by the death of a young man on the sea crossing to the island, by Ellie's being clawed by rose thorns on the estate, and her sense of foreboding on seeing the butterfly and moth collection in the house, insects pinned for display.

"Go. Go as soon as you can," Jeanne whispered to Ellie as she passed.

Book II
The Lavender Field, gives us a story of the French resistance in Provence against the Germans and the collaborating Vichy government. The setting is April 1944 in a village where events unfold from the point of view of a blind perfume maker, 19-year-old Marthe Lincel. Marthe comes in contact with Allied soldiers hiding from the Germans and her life is changed by her love for one of them.

"Marthe...dear sweet Marthe, its better you don't know."  

Book III 
A Shadow Life, is set in London in 1943, where Iris Nightingale, an intelligence assistance with the government, helps to send enlisted or drafted secret agents into France in the middle of the war. The question is what happened to some of them who never returned to England. The missing include Xavier Descours, a pilot. This book ties the three books together to give us a fuller picture of how the characters are linked.

My comments:
As an historical novel based on much research, The Sea Garden is very informative about a specific location - Provence during WWII. The story of the French resistance there is compelling as are the efforts of the British to infiltrate wartime France with secret operatives, a dangerous and controversial mission that cost many young people their lives.

The three main characters in the books - Ellie, Marthe, and Iris - take us into the fictional world that buoys up the historical facts and brings them into focus. Very different, these young women are interesting characters in their own way. Ellie keeps you in suspense with her fears and forebodings; Marthe, the blind perfume maker, tugs at your heart strings; and Iris' love story is heart warming.

The descriptions in the novel are delightful to read. The author has a way with words that allows you to see the views as she wants you to. Lovers of France, history, romance, and the scents of lavender will love this book!

Deborah Lawrenson studied English at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist in London. She is married with a daughter and lives in Kent, England. She and her family spend as much time as possible at a crumbling hamlet in Provence, France, the setting for her novel The Lantern and inspiration for The Sea Garden.

See the TLC tour schedule, for other reviews

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a review copy of the book. 

Sunday Salon: Fireworks

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Also visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday each week. Also visit Tynga's Reviews at Stacking the Shelves.

Taking it easy on the last day of the holiday weekend. Gardening, swimming, cooking, and eating. And of course watched lots of unusual fireworks....on TV. This one reminds me of a giant jellyfish with long glowing tentacles....or hanging chandeliers.

One interesting book came in last week:

by Marie-Helene Bertino.

Madeleine Altimari is a smart-mouthed, precocious nine-year-old and an aspiring jazz singer. As she mourns the recent death of her mother, she doesn’t realize that on Christmas Eve Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day—and night—of her life. (publisher)

I enjoy books with precocious kids as the main characters. How about you?