Book Beginning: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

Title: Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Author: Madeleine Thien

Published October 11, 2016, W.W. Norton

Source: library

A novel about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s, and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. 

Book beginning:
In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. That year, 1989, my mother flew to Hong Kong and laid my father to rest in a cemetery near the Chinese border. Afterwards, distraught, she rushed home to Vancouver where I had been alone. I was ten years old.
Here is what I remember. 

Page 56:
Still, those pretty piano notes were mocking all the movements she made. They dripped from the kitchen to the bedroom to the parlour, seeping like rainwater over the persimmons on the table, the winter coats of her family, and the placid softness of Chairman Mao's face in the grey portrait framed on the wall. 

I like the descriptive writing, evocative and conveying a certain mood.  What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Sunday Salon: Literary Fiction and Cozies

The cold freeze has broken, at least for a while, and I can go about doing chores again without bundling up like a bear. Next week will be busy.

Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee is a new book I found while browsing with no thought of buying until I started reading and had to take it home.

It's a heartbreaking page turner that pulls you into the lives of two sisters, how the elder one, Miranda, handles her younger sister's severe bipolar disorder. I was left wondering, what if...? Could a different approach have made a difference? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

I recommend the novel for its insight into family dynamics, the immigrant experience, and the problem of mental illness in families. The book covers several timely topics.

Rating: 5/5

Three paperback cozies I received from Berkley Prime Crime have the expected teasing titles and eye catching covers.

Clairvoyant and Present Danger

Clairvoyant and Present Danger by Lena Gregory is #3 in the Bay Island Psychic Mystery.
After communications with a ghost land her in the middle of a murder investigation, Cass Donovan has to wonder if her gifts are really more a curse.

Pekoe Most Poison by Laura Childs is the 18th in the Tea Shop Mystery Series.  I love these books for their descriptions of the more genteel and traditional side of the south, in particular Charleston, and for the recipes for sandwiches, scones, and cookies always included at the end of each book. 

The setting is the Indigo Tea Shop with owner Theodosia Browning and her tea expert/sommelier Drayton, who manage to become embroiled in intrigues and murders that they have to help solve. In this book, Theodosia is invited to a "Rat Tea" by a prominent Charleston hostess. I can't wait to find out just what a rat tea is and why it has this off-putting name.

The Fast and the Furriest by Sofie Ryan is #5 in the Second Chance Cat Mystery series set in North Harbor, Maine. Sarah Grayson runs the Second Chance bookstore with the help of her right-hand man Mac and her rescue cat, Elvis. Mac gets into trouble when an old flame shows up in town and then get killed. He is the main suspect. 

What are you reading this week?

The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,  It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.

Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James

Twelve Angry Librarians is the eighth in the Cat in the Stacks series, by Miranda James
Published February 21, 2018, Berkley
Genre: cozy mystery
Charlie and Diesel must find a killer in a room full of librarians... 
Light-hearted librarian Charlie Harris is known around his hometown of Athena, Mississippi, for walking his cat, a rescued Maine Coon named Diesel. 

Book beginning:
"But I don't want to do it."
I glared at my administrative assistant and longtime friend, Melba Gilley. "You know how much I hate public speaking. Why can't Forrest Wyatt do it? College presidents do this kind of thing all the time."

Page 56:

"I grant you he's a colossal annoyance most of the time," I said. "But what has he done that would make someone see killing him as a solution?"

A room full of librarians would certainly prevent me from doing many things, not to mention commit a murder. Who would be so daring? The premise of the mystery is certainly an intriguing one. And having a Maine Coon cat as an assistant sleuth is an added intriguing entertainment in this cozy. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

It's Monday: As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner

As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner

Publication: February 6, 2018, Berkley Books

Genre: historical fiction

(A) new novel set in Philadelphia during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 tells the story of a family reborn through loss and love....But even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby orphaned by the disease who becomes their single source of hope. (publisher)
We don't have an epidemic today in winter 2018 although enough people are affected by this flu season. Am eager to see how they dealt with the epidemic in 1918.

I am also reading Arundhati Roy's book, The God of Small Things in French, a few dollars less than the English version, on kindle. With the French translation, I feel as if I'm doing two good things at once - learning more French and reading a good book. More of an incentive to read a Man Booker Prize winner (1997) too!



Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth also arrived a bit ago.
Publication: February 6, 2018 by Harper Collins
Genre: historical fiction
Two adolescent brothers are exposed to the brutal realities of life and the seductive cruelty of power after a tragedy shatters their family in this riveting debut novel—a story of savagery and race, injustice and honor set in the untamed frontier of 1880s Australia. (publisher)

What are you reading this week?
Memes: It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.

Book Review: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey, January 9, 2018, Soho Press
Genre: historical mystery

This is the first in a new mystery series featuring a female Parsi lawyer at Mystry Law, a law firm in Bombay, India during the 1920s.
Having liked Sujata Massey's unusual and suspenseful Rei Shimura Mysteries set in Japan, I was eager to read her new novel featuring a female lawyer/sleuth in Bombay in the 1920s when there were so few professional career women. Perveen Mistry works in her father's law firm and was entrusted with the legal papers regarding the inheritance of three widows of a Muslim mill owner. Since they are in purdah, screened from the view of the public, Perveen, as a woman, is the ideal lawyer to help the widows. Complications involving a male guardian of the women arise and threaten the women's future and livelihood. Perveen steps in to protect the women but events lead to tension and murder. 

I enjoyed the historical and cultural aspects of The Widows of Malabar Hill as well as the character of Perveen, a young woman trying to find her way in a patriarchal society.  Perveenis is modeled on India's first woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabji, a Parsi who practised in the 1920s . The plot is well structured and the book seems to be the start of a very promising historical mystery series.  

Book beginning:
A Stranger's Gaze
Bombay February 1921

On the morning Perveen saw the stranger, they'd almost collided. 
Parveen had come upon him half-hidden in the Portico entrance to Mistry House. The unshaven, middle-aged man appeared as if he had slept for several days and nights in his broadcloth shirt and the grimy cotton dhoti that hung in a thousand creases from his waist to his ankles. His small, squinting eyes were tired, and he exuded a rank odor of sweat mixed with betel nut. 
A visitor to Mistry Law this early was rare....

Page 57:
It felt almost treacherous to be in the car with such a man, because Perveen had been to gatherings with Indians seeking self-rule. In Oxford and London, she and Alice had attended a few such lectures together. 

Thanks to Soho Press for an advance edition for review.
Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: First Chapter

"At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red (2002) is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. 

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. 

Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power."(publisher)

First chapter:
I Am a Corpse

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Though I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what's happened to me.  As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then he kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below....

for nearly four days I've been missing. My wife and children must be searching for me: my daughter, spent from crying, must be staring fretfully at the courtyard gate. Yes, I know they are all at the window, hoping for my return. 

I am listening to this as an audiobook, which has a pretty good narrator. 

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

Sunday Salon: British Mysteries and Love in Mumbai

New books on my shelf:

The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey, October 1, 2001
Publisher: Soho Press
Genre: British mystery

The year is 1921. A passionate affair between voracious romance reader Alma Webster and her dentist, Walter Baranov, has led to his wife’s murder. The lovers take flight aboard the Mauretaniaand the dentist takes the name of Inspector Dew, the detective who arrested the notorious wife killer Dr. Crippen. But, in a disquieting twist, a murder occurs aboard ship and the captain invites “Inspector Dew” to investigate. (publisher)

The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai by Elizabeth Flock, 2018
Publication: Harper
Genre: travel, contemporary
In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different couples in today’s Mumbai. (publisher)

I have finished two good books since the beginning of this year:

Blue Monday (Frieda Klein #1) by Nicci French, 2011

Setting: London, England

Genre: mystery

Tuesday's Gone (Frieda Klein #2) by Nicci French, July 19, 2012, Penguin

Seting: London, England

Genre: mystery

The crimes and solutions of #1 are discussed and followed up in #2. I suggest reading the Frieda Klein mysteries in sequence.

Visit The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,  It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.