Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #95

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight, borrowed from the library.

 

  

Beginning:  Prologue

It isn't until afterward that I think about the bag or the bloody towels stuffed inside.  They're too big to bury, but I can't just leave them behind.  Maybe I should have been better prepared.  Thought more about the details.  But it's hard to be ready for something you never imagined you'd do.

 

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Page 56:  "'Or, you know, maybe they printed that because that's all they know.  Not everything is some conspiracy." 

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My thoughts:  After reading McCreight's first novel, Reconstructing Amelia, I was pleased to discover her new novel.  McCreight is a good storyteller, and a welcome addition to the psychological suspense genre.

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From Goodreads:  From the author of the New York Times bestseller and 2014 Edgar and Anthony nominee Reconstructing Amelia comes another harrowing, gripping novel that marries psychological suspense with an emotionally powerful story about a community struggling with the consequences of a devastating discovery.

At the end of a long winter, in bucolic Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of an infant is discovered in the woods near the town’s prestigious university campus. No one knows who the baby is, or how her body ended up out there. But there is no shortage of opinions.

When freelance journalist, and recent Ridgedale transplant, Molly Anderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the story for the Ridegdale Reader, it’s a risk, given the severe depression that followed the loss of her own baby. But the bigger threat comes when Molly unearths some of Ridgedale’s darkest secrets, including a string of unreported sexual assaults that goes back twenty years.

Meanwhile, Sandy, a high school dropout, searches for her volatile and now missing mother, and PTA president Barbara struggles to help her young son, who’s suddenly having disturbing outbursts.

Told from the perspectives of Molly, Barbara, and Sandy, Kimberly McCreight’s taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth about the baby’s death revealing that these three women have far more in common than they realized. And that their lives are more intertwined with what happened to the baby than they ever could have imagined.

 

 

 Which book are you reading now or about to start?

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #95 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged and appreciated

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #124

It's Tuesday . . . time for . . .

                                                      

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, where bloggers post the first paragraph(s) of a book they are currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring an upcoming read, Somebody I Used to Know by David Bell, borrowed from the library.

  

Goodreads Page 

CHAPTER ONE

When I saw the girl in the grocery store, my heart stopped.

I had turned the corner into the dairy aisle, carrying a basket with just a few items in it.  Cereal.  Crackers.  Spaghetti.  Beer.  I lived alone, worked a lot, and rarely cooked.  I was checking a price when I almost ran into the girl.  I stopped immediately and studied her in profile, her hand raised to her mouth while she examined products through the glass door of the dairy cooler.

I felt like I was seeing a ghost.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

I saw this book on several blogs over the summer, and since I enjoy psychological thrillers, I am looking forward to reading this new-to-me author.

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #124 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution. Retweeting and sharing on Google+ encouraged.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #94

It's Friday . . . time to share book excerpts with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Today I'm featuring Academy Street by Mary Costello, borrowed from the library.

Beginning:  It is evening and the window is open a little.  There are voices in the hall, footsteps running up and down the stairs, then along the back corridor towards the kitchen.  Now and then Tess hears the crunch of gravel outside, the sound of a bell as a bicycle is laid against the wall.  Earlier a car drove up the avenue, into the yard, and horses and traps too, the horses whinnying as they were pulled up.  She is sitting on the dining-room floor in her good dress and shoes.  The sun is streaming in through the tall windows, the light falling on the floor, the sofa, the marble hearth.  She holds her face up to feel its warmth.

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Page 56:  "'Their familiar accents pleased her.  A shy boy from Kerry got up and gave her his chair, moved away with his plate of eggs.  She looked around at their open happy faces and sat among them." 

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My thoughts:  This short novel (145 pages) caught my eye while I was browsing the library shelves.  After reading the book jacket and first few pages detailing a momentous family gathering during her childhood, I wanted to know more about the protagonist and her life in Ireland and America.

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From Goodreads:  A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer.

Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely — a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with.  

Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving re-encounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City.

Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right ... Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian).  

Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life.

  

Which book are you reading now or about to start?

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #94 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged and appreciated.

Waiting on Wednesday: New Novel by Elizabeth Strout

   

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.  Today I'm featuring My Name is Lucy Barton, the anticipated novel from Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys.

.

 Publisher:  Random House Publishing Group

Publication Date: January 5, 2016

From barnesandnoble.com: A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.

Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.  

Which book are you waiting for?

...Will you add this one to your list of must-reads?

Waiting on Wednesday: New Novel by Elizabeth Strout was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.  (Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged.)

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #123

It's Tuesday . . . time for . . .

                                                      

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, where bloggers post the first paragraph(s) of a book they are currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring an upcoming read, All the Summer Girls by Meg Donohue, borrowed from the library.

   

Goodreads Page 

1

Kate

In Philadelphia, Katherine Harrington stands in front of the bathroom mirror, waiting to see if her life is about to change.  It has been a while since she stopped and really looked at herself--not to smooth the frazzled antennae of find brown hair along her part or to brush away the taste of her morning coffee or to apply the mascara she swipes on each and every day before work, but to just stand completely still and look.  The parenthetical creases on either side of her mouth have deepened, and she worries they make everything she says seem inconsequential, unnecessary.  (Not ideal for a litigator), she mouths to herself.  (Must buy wrinkle cream.)  She is studying her own wry smile when the sound of the door buzzer cuts into the apartment.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

With the days getting shorter, but the weather still relatively mild, I am trying to extend my summer state of mind as long as possible.  The cover and title of this book certainly help.

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #123 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution. Retweeting and sharing on Google+ encouraged.

Waiting on Wednesday: New Novel by Helen Simonson

   

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.  Today I'm featuring The Summer Before the War, the anticipated novel from Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

  

Publisher:  Random House

Publication Date:  March 22, 2016

Frombarnesandnoble.com:  Helen Simonson’s beloved, New York Times bestselling debut, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, instantly established her reputation as an uncommonly gifted storyteller, with humor, wit, and a sharp eye for character. Now she returns with an equally compelling work of fiction, one that reaches far beyond the small English village in which it is set.
 
East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master.

When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking—and attractive—than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing.

But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.

Which book are you waiting for?

...Will you add this one to your list of must-reads?

Waiting on Wednesday: New Novel by Helen Simonson was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.  (Retweeting and sharing on Google+ are encouraged.)

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #122

It's Tuesday . . . time for . . .

                                                      

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, where bloggers post the first paragraph(s) of a book they are currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring an upcoming read, The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam, borrowed from the library.

 

Goodreads Page 

PART ONE

Marriage

CHAPTER ONE

There is a glorious part of England known as the Donheads.  The Donheads are a tangle of villages loosely interlinked by winding lanes and identified by the names of saints.  There is Donhead St. Mary, Donhead St. Andrew, Donhead St. James and, among yet others, Donhead St. Ague.

This communion of saints sometimes surprises newcomers if they are not religious and do not attach them to the names of village churches.  Some do, for the old families here have a strong Roman Catholic tinge.  It was Cavalier country.  Outsiders, however, call the Donheads "Thomas Hardy country" and it is so described by the estate agents who sell the old cottages of the poor to the rich.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

Earlier this year I read and enjoyed Old Filth, the first book in this series.  Gardam's writing style, interesting characters, and descriptions of life in service to the British crown are quite engaging.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #122 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution. Retweeting and sharing on Google+ encouraged.