It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

Visit It's Monday: What Are You Reading hosted by Book Journey, and Mailbox Monday each week to see what's new on readers' bookshelves.

My mailbox has been full these past two weeks, with books for tours and books and ARCs that I want to get to this summer!

Gutenberg's Apprentice

An enthralling literary debut that evokes one of the most momentous events in history, the birth of printing in medieval Germany—a story of invention, intrigue, and betrayal, rich in atmosphere and historical detail, told through the lives of the three men who made it possible. To be published September 23, 2014 by Harper.

Victus: The Fall of Barcelona

Historical epic, set in early eighteenth-century Spain, about a military mastermind whose betrayal ultimately leads to the conquest of Barcelona, from the globally popular Catalonian writer Albert Sánchez Piñol. A sweeping tale of heroism, treason, war, love, pride, and regret that culminates in the tragic fall of a legendary city, illustrated with battle diagrams, portraits of political figures, and priceless maps of the old city of Barcelona.

A Man Called Ove

A quirky debut novel from Sweden, a grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

The House We Grew Up In

Meet the Bird family. They live in a honey-colored house in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village, with rambling, unkempt gardens stretching beyond....Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

The Stone Wife

At a Bath auction house, a large slab of carved stone is up for sale, but  three masked robbers shoot and kill the highest bidder, a professor who has recognized the female figure carved in the stone as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The masked would-be thieves flee, leaving the stone behind.  Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond and his team are assigned to investigate, and the stone is moved into Diamond’s office so he can research its origins. The carving causes such difficulties that he starts to think it has jinxed him. 

The Butcher

Matt, a young up-and-coming chef and restaurateur in Seattle, stumbles upon a locked crate he’s never seen before. Curious, he picks the padlock and makes a discovery so gruesome it will forever haunt him… Faced with this deep dark family secret, Matt must decide whether to keep what he knows buried in the past, go to the police, or take matters into his own hands. A high-octane novel about lethal secrets that refuse to die. 

Lords of the Sky

Retired USAF F-16 legend Dan Hampton offers the first comprehensive popular history of combat aviation—an action-packed look at the aces of the air and their machines, from the Red Baron and his triplane in World War I to today’s technologically expert flying warriors in supersonic jets.

Get Carter

Set in the late 1960s amidst the smokestacks and hardcases of the industrial north of England, Get Carter redefined British crime fiction and cinema alike. Jack Carter returns home to the mill town of Scunthorpe to investigate his brother's death. Adapted into the film starring Michael Caine, Get Carter—originally published as Jack’s Return Home. Along with the other two novels in the Jack Carter Trilogy, it is one of the most important crime novels of all time. (goodreads)

Maisie Dobbs The 10th Anniversary Edition with a special Afterword by the author. Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, took her under her wing. Maisie trained as a nurse, then left for France to serve at the Front during WWI. Ten years after the Armistice, in 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive. Her very first case involves suspected infidelity but reveals something very different.

Which of these novels - historical, contemporary, mystery, or nonfiction would you start reading first?

Hello, I Love You: Adventures in Adoptive Fatherhood by Ted Kluck

Hello, I Love You

Published May 13, 2010; Moody Publishers
Genre: memoir

Publisher description:
There's nothing like adoption to make a grown man cry. Repeatedly. 

In this humorous and honest memoir, Ted Kluck-father, writer, and sports fan-details his adoption of his two sons from Ukraine. While not always self-flattering, his complaints and struggles will provoke laughter, some fear, and self-examination. In the first part of his memoir, Ted reveals the chaos the Kluck's first international adoption, the adoption of his son Tristan.

An Excerpt from the Book's Introduction:

            This book began as a journal-some spiral-bound notebooks that came with me to Ukraine the first time, and which contained letters that I wrote to Tristan during the experience. In the first half of the book, it reads like I'm addressing Tristan directly, while the second half is a more straightforward narrative of Dima's adoption. They're both love letters to my boys, and the whole thing is a love letter to Kristin, my wife.            You'll also notice lots of frank, often sarcastic prose about cultural differences-usually with the author as the punch line, as it was my inability to deal with these differences that provided a lot of humor (in retrospect) and anger (at the time).            There's also some tough content regarding infertility. If this is something you've struggled with in your marriage, I hope this chapter encourages you, and I hope you feel less alone in your struggle. If you've been blessed with biological children, please don't feel guilty for having them, or in any way judged or made fun of by the observations in that chapter (see also: It not being you, but me).            Finally, the book contains lots of stories of God's faithfulness-stories that we thought were too meaningful not to be told.  (from g0odreads)

I met Ted Kluck and his family for the first time today, when he visited as the guest speaker at our writing group meeting. This book is his story of the adoption of his two sons from the Ukraine.

Book Review: Claws of the Cat by Susan Spann

Claws of the Cat

An unlikely pair of collaborators in 16th century Kyoto risk their lives to solve the murder of a samurai who died from claw and stab wounds in a local tea house. The fatal wounds were made by neko-te or "cat's claws," a type of weapon used mostly be female fighters. But did a female murder the samurai?

Father Mateo, a Portuguese Jesuit priest who is protected and sponsored by the shogun, and his official protector, the ninja Hiro, must prove that Mateo's convert to Christianity, the tea house entertainer Sayuri, is innocent of the crime. The son of the dead samurai threatens to kill both Mateo and Sayuri unless another person is found responsible for the murder.

An engrossing mystery in an intriguing historical setting, with likable and well developed main characters, Claws of the Cat is also an entertaining and well researched novel about the samurai, their code of conduct, and their manner of fighting. I recommend the book for those who enjoy a good mystery and are curious about the old samurai culture of Japan.

Thanks to the author for a complimentary review copy of this book. The next in the series, Blade of the Samurai, was published July 15, 2014. Here is my review.

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.