The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer, Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea, Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews, The Sunday Salon is a new facebook group I've joined and Monday Mailbox is hosted by Marcia to be Continued.
Oh, what a week. We've started to foster a dog each week so my time has been very occupied by keeping an eagle eye on the newest addition. We keep the pup all week, then make sure it's at Petco on Saturday and Sunday for the adoption fairs. My daughter is an animal lover and giving a dog a loving home until adoption gives her great satisfaction. It gives me great anxiety. I love dogs, but the work of watching them every minute makes me feel the grandmother from Flowers in the Attic.
But this was a great week for me, bookwise. I got approvals from St. Martin's Press! I was so excited, as I've said before, I never get any book love from them and it bums me out because so many of my favorite writers are published by them.
So here's what came to me this week.......
From NetGalley
The Guest Cottage by Nancy Thayer....
Sensible thirty-six-year-old Sophie Anderson has always known what to do. She knows her role in life: the supportive wife of a successful architect and calm, capable mother of two. But on a warm summer night, as the house grows quiet around her and her children fall asleep, she wonders what's missing from her life. When her husband echoes that lonely question, announcing that he's leaving her for another woman, Sophie realizes she has no idea what's next. Impulsively renting a guest cottage on Nantucket from her friend Susie Swenson, Sophie rounds up her kids, Jonah and Lacey, and leaves Boston for a quiet family vacation, minus one.
Also minus one is single parent Trevor Black, a software entrepreneur who has recently lost his wife. Trevor is the last person he would think could raise a little boy like Leo by himself at any age, much less at thirty. Leo's a sweet, smart boy, but he grapples constantly with his mother's death, growing more and more closed off. Hoping a quiet summer on the Nantucket coast will help him reconnect with Leo, Trevor rents a guest house on the beautiful island from his friend Ivan Swenson.
But best-laid plans run awry when Sophie and Trevor realize they've accidentally rented the same house. Determined to make this a summer their kids will always remember, the two agree to share the Swensons' Nantucket house. But as the summer unfolds and the families grow close, Sophie and Trevor must ask themselves if the guest cottage is all they want to share.
Beach house in Nantucket? Single mom meets single dad? Count me in.
Blueprints by Barbara Delinsky.....Blueprints, the new novel from bestselling author Barbara Delinsky,
is the story of two strong women, Caroline MacAfee, a skilled carpenter, and her daughter Jamie, a talented architect. The day after her 56th birthday, Caroline is told the network wants Jamie to replace her as the host on Gut It!, their family-based home construction TV show. The resulting rift couldn’t come at a worse time.
For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Accustomed to organization and planning, she is now grappling with a toddler who misses his parents, a fiancé who doesn’t want the child, a staggering new attraction, and a work challenge that, if botched, could undermine the future of both MacAfee Homes and Gut It!
For Caroline, hosting Gut It! is part of her identity. Facing its loss, she feels betrayed by her daughter and old in the eyes of the world. When her ex-husband dies, she is thrust into the role of caregiver to his aging father. And then there’s Dean, a long-time friend, whose efforts to seduce her awaken desires that have been dormant for so long that she feels foreign to herself.
Who am I? Both women ask, as the blueprints they've built their lives around suddenly need revising. While loyalties shift, decisions hover, and new relationships tempt, their challenge comes not only in remaking themselves, but in rebuilding their relationship with each other.
Well, hello, Barbara Delinsky. One of my favorite authors and this looks like it's going to be a good one. Belinsky writes the angst of family life so well.
Summer Secrets by Jane Green....This is the one I'm most excited about. It doesn't even have a blurb yet, but it doesn't matter. It's Jane Green so it will be fabulous.
The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughan....There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to
impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved.
In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookbook writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes. Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs. Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now that her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her facade shouldn't slip.
As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest pastry seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn--as as Mrs. Eaden did before them--that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life.
This will be a new author to me, but we all know I'm a sucker for a great cover and orphaned kids.
The Beekeeper's Daughter by Santa Montefiore.....From the #1 internationally bestselling author, her
first book set in America, the story of a mother and daughter searching for love and happiness, unaware of the secrets that bind them. To find what they are longing for they must confront the past, and unravel the lies told long ago.
England, 1932: Grace Hamblin is growing up on the beautiful estate of the Marquess and Marchioness of Penselwood. The beekeeper’s daughter, she knows her place and what the future holds—that is until her father dies. Her childhood friend Freddie has recently become her lover, and she is thankful when they are able to marry and take over her father’s duties. But there is another man who she just can’t shake from her thoughts…
Massachusetts, 1973: Grace’s daughter Trixie Valentine is in love with an unsuitable young man. Jasper Duncliffe is wild and romantic, and in a band that might hit it big. But when his brother dies and he is called home to England, Jasper promises to come back for Trixie one day, if only she will wait for him. Grace thinks that Trixie is surely abandoned and tries to support her daughter, but Trixie brushes off her mother’s advice and comfort. She is confident that Jasper’s love for her was real…
Set on a fictional island off the coast of Massachusetts with charming architecture, beautiful landscape, and quirky islanders, The Beekeeper’s Daughter is “a multigenerational banquet of love…one of the most engrossing reads of my year” (Elin Hilderbrand).
Honestly, I don't even remember requesting this, but if it's good enough for Elin Hilderbrand, it's good enough for me.
Blogging for Books
What Are You Hungry For? by Deepak Chopra....After promoting this message worldwide for thirty years,
bestselling author Deepak Chopra focuses on the huge problem of weight control in America with exciting new concepts. What Are You Hungry For? is the breakthrough book that can bring weight under effortless control by linking it to personal fulfillment in every area of a reader's life.
What are you hungry for? Food? Love? Self-esteem? Peace? In this manual for "higher health," based on the latest findings in both mainstream and alternative medicine, Deepak Chopra creates a vision of weight loss based on a deeper awareness of why people overeat - because they are trying to find satisfaction and wind up using food as a substitute for real fulfillment. Repudiating the failed approaches of crash dieting and all forms of deprivation, Chopra's new book aims directly at the problem of finding fulfillment. When that problem is solved, he argues, normal eating falls into place automatically, and the entire system of mind and body achieves what it really desires.
“Everyone’s life story is complicated, and the best intentions go astray because people find it hard to change,” writes Chopra. “Bad habits, like bad memories, stick around stubbornly when we wish they’d go away. But you have a great motivation working for you, which is your desire for happiness. I define happiness as the state of fulfillment, and everyone wants to be fulfilled. If you keep your eye on this, your most basic motivation, then the choices you make come down to a single question: “What am I hungry for?” Your true desire will lead you in the right direction. False desires lead in the wrong direction.”
Wherever you are in life, this book will help point you in that right direction.