Subscribe via RSS Feed

Category: Friday Cravings

Friday Cravings: The Lost Daughter by Lucy Ferriss

[ 3 ] March 30, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Lost Daughter by Lucy Ferriss

Publisher’s Description

Brooke O’Connor–elegant, self-possessed, and kind–has a happy marriage and a deeply loved young daughter. So her adamant refusal to have a second child confounds her husband, Sean. When Brooke’s high school boyfriend, Alex–now divorced and mourning the death of his young son–unexpectedly resurfaces, Sean begins to suspect an affair.

For fifteen years Brooke has kept a shameful secret from everyone she loves. Only Alex knows the truth that drove them apart. His reappearance now threatens the life she has so carefully constructed and fortified by denial. With her marriage–and her emotional equilibrium–at stake, Brooke must confront what she has been unwilling to face for so long.

But the truth is not what Brooke believes it to be.

View Post

Friday Cravings: Accidents of Providence by Stacia Brown

[ 4 ] March 8, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – Accidents of Providence by Stacia Brown

Found: On Oprah.com

Publisher’s Description

Rachel Lockyer is under investigation for murder.

It is 1649. King Charles has been beheaded for treason. Amid civil war, Cromwell’s army is running the country. The Levellers, a small faction of political agitators, are calling for rights to the people. And a new law targeting unwed mothers and “lewd women” presumes anyone who conceals the death of her illegitimate child is guilty of murder.

Rachel Lockyer, unmarried glove maker, and William Walwyn, Leveller hero, are locked in a secret affair. But while William is imprisoned in the Tower, a child is found buried in the woods and Rachel is arrested.

So comes an investigation, public trial, and a cast of extraordinary characters made up of ordinary Londoners: gouty investigator Thomas Bartwain, fiery Elizabeth Lilburne and her revolution-chasing husband, Huguenot glover Mary Du Gard, a lawyer for the prosecution hell-bent on making an example of Rachel, and others. Spinning within are Rachel and William, their remarkable love story, and the miracles that come to even the commonest lives.

Accidents of Providence is absorbing historical fiction for fans of Fingersmith and The Dress Lodger. And Rachel Lockyer, a woman wronged by her time, is a character neither history, nor we, will ever again forget.

View Post

Friday Cravings: The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley

[ 6 ] February 24, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley

Found: On Amazon, while looking for another book

Publisher’s Description

Spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from the Wharton Park estate in England to Thailand, this sweeping novel tells the tale of a concert pianist and the aristocratic Crawford family, whose shocking secrets are revealed, leading to devastating consequences.

As a child, concert pianist Julia Forrester spent many idyllic hours in the hothouse of Wharton Park, the grand estate where her grandfather tended exotic orchids. Years later, while struggling with overwhelming grief over the death of her husband and young child, she returns to this tranquil place. There she reunites with Kit Crawford, heir to the estate and her possible salvation.

When they discover an old diary, Julia seeks out her grandmother to learn the truth behind a love affair that almost destroyed the estate. Their search takes them back to the 1940s when Harry, a former heir to Wharton Park, married his young society bride, Olivia, on the eve of World War II. When the two lovers are cruelly separated, the impact will be felt for generations to come.

This atmospheric story alternates between the magical world of Wharton Park and Thailand during World War II. Filled with twists and turns, passions and lies, and ultimately redemption, The Orchid House is a beautiful, romantic, and poignant novel.

View Post

Friday Cravings: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

[ 5 ] February 10, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Found: Entertainment Weekly Must List App for iPhone

Publisher’s Description

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

Check out the official book website to learn more

View Post

Friday Cravings: The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

[ 8 ] February 3, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

Found: Hudson Booksellers at Washington Dulles Airport

Publisher’s Description

More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving Saudi Arabia, her life, and her family behind. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie’s consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world.

The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

View Post

Friday Cravings: The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman

[ 4 ] January 27, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman

Found: Don’t even remember, but need to have it!

Publisher’s Description

Style is a luxury, and luxury is simply what makes you happy.

Over the years, founding editor in chief of domino magazine Deborah Needleman has seen all kinds of rooms, with all kinds of furnishings. Her conclusion: It’s not hard to create a relaxed, stylish, and comfortable home. Just a few well-considered items can completely change the feel of your space, and The Perfectly Imperfect Home reveals them all.

Ranging from classics such as “A Really Good Sofa” and “Pretty Table Settings” to unusual surprises like “A Bit of Quirk” and “Cozifications,” the essential elements of style are treated in witty and wonderfully useful little essays. You’ll learn what to look for, whether you are at a flea market or a fancy boutique—or just mining what you already own.

According to Deborah, the point of decorating is to create the background for the best life you can have, with all its joys and imperfections.

This book will show you how.

View Post

Friday Cravings: Day After Night by Anita Diamant

[ 9 ] January 13, 2012

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Found: Through the Amazon.com “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature.

Publisher’s Description

Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Hebrew Bible in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters—young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe—in this intensely dramatic novel.

Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.

View Post

Friday Cravings: Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors

[ 12 ] January 6, 2012

When I first started this blog, I used to do a feature called Friday Cravings. I am a self-proclaimed book hoarder! Regardless of how many books I already have or how overflowing my bookshelves are, I am always on the look out for that next great read or that undiscovered gem of a book. That’s where Friday Cravings comes in: although I find new must-haves almost every day(!), I’ll limit sharing my picks to Friday and try (very hard) to pick just one book. I think this will also be a great way for us to discover some older and maybe overlooked books and not focus on just the shiny new releases.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

 

Pick of the Week – Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine DeLors

Found: I am fortunate to live in a city that has one of the best library systems in the country: Cuyahoga County Public Library. Recently, on their Facebook page, they asked folks to list the last three books they read. In exchange, they’d give you suggestions for similar books you might also enjoy. Mistress of the Revolution was one of the books they suggested for me…and I’m in love! (Psst…it’s also bargain priced on Amazon)

Publisher’s Description

Set in opulent, decadent, turbulent revolutionary France, Mistress of the Revolution is the story of Gabrielle de Montserrat. An impoverished noblewoman blessed with fiery red hair and a mischievous demeanor, Gabrielle is only fifteen when she meets her true love, a commoner named Pierre-André Coffinhal. But her brother forbids their union, choosing for her instead an aging, wealthy baron.

Widowed and a mother while still a teen, Gabrielle arrives at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in time to be swept up in the emerging cataclysm. As a new order rises, Gabrielle finds her own lovely neck on the chopping block—and who should be selected to sit on the Revolutionary Tribunal but her first love, Pierre-André. . . .

Related Posts with Thumbnails
View Post
Page 1 of 41234