Happy New Year! Sunday Salon

 

Books carried over from 2021

Happy New Year to everyone, and may all your reading, blogging, dreams come true in 2022. 

My first resolution this new year is to finish the books I started in 2021, only the ones that I liked. Here are a few: 

Anne Gaëlle Huon : Le bonheur n'a pas de rides, published Septemer 13, 2017, City Editions. This is an amusing, pleasant read. 

An 85-year-old woman from Paris, determined to live out her last days in an exclusive home for the elderly, pretends to become senile so that her son can place her in her dream retirement home with its luxurious surroundings.

The plan backfires when Paulette's daughter-in-law persuades the son to place her instead in a very modest, small hostel in the French countryside. Paulette schemes to find her way to the exclusive retirement home of her dreams, but in the meantime finds herself becoming more and more involved in the life of the hostel, its owner, and its inhabitants. 

That's as far as I've gotten so far, but it's been enjoyable reading in my modest French, like teasing a story out of a puzzle. I confess my Kindle French-English dictionary helps me out a lot, especially when it comes to French idioms and more contemporary phrases. 

Another book started in 2021: 

I fully expected The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley to be another historical romance of an apartment found empty, unclaimed, and full of treasures or even a contemporary romance about women running off to the City of Light to find a new career, a new love, a new life. 

My surprise...the book started out right away to be a thriller. Jess does run away to Paris to find a new life. But she is in for a surprise and some suspense when she finds her half brother Ben's Paris apartment empty and Ben missing. 

The prologue to the book sets the stage: footsteps coming up the stairs stop at Ben's apartment door in Paris with an unwelcome surprise, just as Ben has emailed his sister Jess his apartment's address. 

I've just started this one, so I'm eager to find out where it leads. And this book is set in France, but is in English! Thanks to Netgalley for an advance read on the mystery, to be published February 22.

This book from Netgalley looks like a contemporary romance but turns out to be a thriller. My Summer Darlings by May Cobb will be released May 17, 2022 by Berkley.

Three lifelong friends are about to come up against a sexy new guy in town, who may turn out to be very dangerous! Looking forward to reading this one in English!

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Book Review: The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan

The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan is to be published March 29, 2022 by Century. 

This thriller/mystery/suspense novel has a setting that so many other mysteries have adopted. An isolated place where people go for a quick trip or vacation; their lives then upended and threatened, where they can't trust each other. In this book, the Dark Fell Barn in the wilds of northern England in the middle of a heavy rain storm, is the perfect setting for fear, paranoia, and the sense of danger.

Three women arrive at the Barn for a long weekend getaway, and wait for their husbands to arrive the next day. But the husbands are threatened in a mysterious letter that waits for the women at the Barn. They are told that one of the men would be killed before they can arrive.

The women panic, suspect each other of harboring secrets, and flail around in the barn and outdoors in the storm, without access to wifi or cell phone connection, or an easy way to leave in the storm. 

Makes for a perfect situation for a mystery.  

What makes the suspense: 

A writer can also throw in personal failings, such as health, physical or mental, to gum up the works and prevent smooth sailing for the characters in the book. 

In The Long Weekend, you can find creeping dementia, alcoholism, dyslexia, dissasociative mental disorder sprinkled among the main characters, and of course, psychosis in the killer.  Add all these together in a mix, and there is a pot of suspense boiling for the reader. 

Other thrillers: 

I am finding that mystery writers are becoming more adventurous and creative about throwing people into situations and creating personalities that are out of the norm, to foster suspense in their books. But you can ask, what is out of the norm these days? 

I gave the thriller five stars, just for doing all the above reasonably well. 

Sunday Salon: Au Soleil Redoute by Michel Bussi

 Reading books in French: 

I've cleared my ereader of tons of books borrowed, but am buying new ebooks to keep. One is by a favorite French author, Michel Bussi, whose series of thrillers take place in Normandy and all the exotic places overseas that are overseen by the French Republic. 

In Au Soleil Redoute we go to Hiva-Oa, the largest island in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, where French painter Paul Gaugain and singer-song writer Jacques Brel both lived and died. 

In the story, five would-be writers, all female, are chosen to attend a writer's retreat in Hiva-Oa, a small, isolated, but beautiful island. Each of the five women have their own cabins at the island hotel chosen for the event. However, a la Agatha Christie, the writers begin to be methodically picked off, by an unknown murderer or murderers. First, the leader of the retreat, a well known but controversial author, mysteriously disappears, and then the writers' begin to be killed. 

Young Maima, daughter of one of the writers, teams up with Yanna, a former policeman and husband of another of the writers, to investigate on their own, dangerous as that may be, and protect their family member. 

The unique culture, geography, and atmosphere of Hiva-Oa form the background of the novel, and Marqeusian traditional beliefs and religion form contribute much to the mystery and intrigue of the book.

 A well devised plot, original and diverse characters, and superb story telling made this one of the best in the author's series, in my opinion. It was published in 2020. 

Newly arrived book: 

Venice Beach by William Mark Habeeb, was released August 17, 2021, published by Rootstock Publishing. Courtesy of Wiley Sachek Publicity.

"Venice Beach" is a moving tale of the resilience of youth and the importance of reflecting on our stories (publisher). 

A 13-year-old boy without a name travels cross country to Los Angeles, and finds himself in Venice Beach, at a shelter for runaway and homeless youth. The story unfolds of his finding a life for himself. I'm on page 34 and eating it up so far. 

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Sunday Salon: Murders and a Saint

 Currently reading: 

Murder at the Porte de Versailles by Cara Black, March 1, 2022, Soho Crime, ARC. The 20th in the Aimee Leduc Investigations series set in Paris. 

A Saint from Texas by Edmund White, August 6, 2020, Bloomsbury. Acquired.

Identical twin sisters born in Texas: one becomes famous in Parisian society and the other approaches sainthood in the Catholic Church. 

Finished reading:

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny, August 24, 2021, Minotaur. The 14th in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series set in Quebec.

My comments: 

A police procedural and investigation par excellence.

 The time is contemporary, post-pandemic, and the plot revolves around a proposal by a well known statistician to force euthanasia on all of society's elderly, sick, and disabled. 

But is the violent murder of a woman in the small village of Three Pines a case of mistaken identity and was the controversial statistician the real target? 

The book has us guessing and being convinced of one or another of at least four different suspects before the reader is led away in another direction, in each case.

Well crafted plot and writing, this novel is filled with thought provoking questions on the value of family life and of human life in all its forms and stages.  I thought this to be one of the best, if not the best book in the series. 

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Sunday Salon: A Cozy Mystery Christmas

 Holiday and Christmas mysteries anyone? 

Mrs. Jeffries and the Three Wise Women by Emily Brightwell, October 17, 2017, courtesy of Berkley.

A man is shot under cover of fireworks at a Guy Fawkes party. With Christmas almost here, Inspector Witherspoon and everyone in his household is upset at the possibility of having to cancel their holiday plans—all to solve a case that seems impossible. (publisher)

Trimmed With Murder: A Seaside Knitters Mystery #10 by Sally Goldenbaum, published November 3, 2015 by NAL

Wreck the Halls: A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery by Sarah Graves, October 2002, Bantam 
Who can get anything done during the holidays, when there's a killer on the loose? And in someone's house!

What holiday books are you planning to read?

New arrival:

Murder at the Port de Versailles by Cara Black, March 1, 2022, Soho Crime, ARC

I've been following Aimee and her investigations in Paris since the start of the mystery series. This is her most recent. 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Mailbox Monday, and Sunday Salon   

Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction and Contemporary Books

 Now reading: 

The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel, December 1, 2021, was offered online as one of the First Reads. It's an historical fiction set in Shanghai in 1940, during the Japanese occupation.

 Aiyi, an heiress and owner of a nightclub, falls in love with Ernest, an impoverished Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis in Germany. The two people are devastated and separagted by war in Shanghai, a city divided into  European and local Chinese sections, all overshadowed by the occupying Japanese.  I'm learning more about this fascinating period in Shanghai's WWII history.

A book I rescued from my give-away pile is The Song Remains the Same by Allison Winn Scotch, a novel about a woman with dissociatie amnesia, having lost her memory after a plane crash and finding herself married to a man she does not remember. 

I am re-reading it and reposting a review I wrote in 2012!

Title:The Song Remains the Same: A Novel
Author: Allison Winn Scotch
Putnam Adult; April 2012
Objective rating: 4/5

Nell Slattery has lost her memory after a plane crash and is lied to by her relatives and her husband about details of her past. She doesn't recognize her husband, her mother, or her sister, and it seems she has become another person - a more outgoing and less stuffy and conservative person she hears she used to be.

Nell slowly discovers the truths about her marriage, her childhood, and the disappearance of her father, a well-known artist. She makes a decision to be a different person from the one she used to be. I thought the ending was a bit prolonged, however, and I was also a bit surprised by Nell's decision re her dad at the end of the book as this didn't seem totally in character. Overall, however, a very good read!

What are you reading this week? 

Linked to The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, Sunday Salon

Book Tour: the moon won't be dared by Anne Leigh Parrish

 

About the moon won’t be dared

Author: Anne Leigh Parrish

Publisher: Unsolicited Press (October 14, 2021)

Paperback: 152 pages

the moon won’t be dared is a poetry collection by award-winning author Anne Leigh Parrish that features artwork by Lydia Selk. In this momentous debut collection, the poet harnesses language to give readers a new vision of nature, the impossible plight of womanhood, love, aging, and beauty. Being a woman in a male-dominated society affords Anne Leigh Parrish the space to witness the world on an uneven keel. Parrish pays tribute to beauty, but also weaves the harsh truths of betrayal and brutality into the filaments holding the collection together.

My comments:

Poetry is subjective, so that any reader will get something different from reading a specific poem. These are some of the poems and lines that stood out for me from Anne Leigh Parrish's book of poetry.

I looked for, and found, skillful descriptions and use of imagery to set mood and tone, and to convey meanings. 

obsession:"the meager glow/of a cande/flickers away the hours  in a gentle/play/of shadows"

vacation: "palm trees sway in the breeze/hearts flatten again the gale of deceit/why expect truth?"

don't we always? "look me in the eye and smile/toss me a spark/from your heart's fire/take me home and hold me long enough...."

the river: "ride, then name the river that runs/through your life/carry no grief for the passing years...."

That the poet chose to write only in the lower case, using no capital letters in her titles or poems, signifies to me her wish to have her words flow in a stream, like a river, to captivate your interest and establish her moods. 

I will pick up this book of poems now and again to continue to enjoy the poet's view of life and her entwining of nature and feeling. 

About the author:

Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of nine previously published books: A Winter Night, a novel (Unsolicited Press, 2021); What Nell Dreams, a novella & stories (Unsolicited Press, 2020); Maggie’s Ruse, a novel, (Unsolicited Press, 2017); The Amendment, a novel (Unsolicited Press, 2017); Women Within, a novel (Black Rose Writing, 2017); By the Wayside, stories (Unsolicited Press, 2017); What Is Found, What Is Lost, a novel (She Writes Press, 2014); Our Love Could Light The World, stories (She Writes Press, 2013); and All The Roads That Lead 

Tour schedule here.  Organized by Lisa Munley  - TLC Book Tours

Linked to The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also, Sunday Salon