Sunday, August 2, 2015

Weekly Book Haul....August 2, 2015




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 ReviewsThe Sunday Salon is a new facebook group I've joined and Monday Mailbox is hosted by Marcia to be Continued.

I had a great week.  Lots accomplished at work, read a lot, and drum roll.......I actually went to the gym a few times!  Since I've moved, I'm now five minutes away from one of my best friends, so we can work out together.   This is great because I can talk myself into staying home every night of the week.


NetGalley

The Betrayal by Laura Elliot.....Nadine and Jake Saunders were married in
their teens. Tied to one another by a night of passion that resulted in a pregnancy neither could turn away from. 
Now, years later, their children have all flown the nest and the pact they made as teenagers – to give one another the freedom to pursue their own dreams – has resurfaced. 
But freedom comes at a price …
While Nadine and Jake begin to untangle their lives from one another, Jake embarks on a passionate affair with a beautiful woman, Karin Moyes. What he doesn’t know is the dark history Karin shares with Nadine.
As lust spirals into dangerous obsession, Jake must break free from Karin. But he must also ask himself how well he ever really knew Nadine. What secret is she hiding? The truth, when it is revealed, could destroy them all.

The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman.....A brilliant, deeply
dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches—perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents' death in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace's harrowing past returns with a vengeance.
 
Both Grace and her newest patient are stunned when they recognize each other from a recent encounter. Haunted by his bleak past, mild-mannered Andrew Toner is desperate for Grace's renowned therapeutic expertise and more than willing to ignore their connection. And while Grace is tempted to explore his case, which seems to eerily echo her grim early years, she refuses—a decision she regrets when a homicide detective appears on her doorstep.
 
An evil she thought she'd outrun has reared its head again, but Grace fears that a police inquiry will expose her double life. Launching her own personal investigation leads her to a murderously manipulative foe, one whose warped craving for power forces Grace back into the chaos and madness she'd long ago fled.

Rooville by Julie Long....Even after thirteen years in Southern California,
Owen Martin can feel the corners of his squareness still sharply evident. He’s a TV weatherman bored by the beautiful climate. He wants to coach basketball but all the kids play soccer. And he seems to be the only person who thinks a fruit smoothie is a poor substitute for a vanilla shake. When he’s fired from his job, Owen is relieved to head home to Iowa, to the town his ancestors founded and the simple life he knew before his father died. He can’t predict the atmospheric pressure he's about to encounter, which, as any meteorologist knows, is the key catalyst for change. . . .In his absence, Martinville has become the center of the Transcendental Meditation movement and host to all things alternative. There are golden domes for mass meditations, a vegan cafĂ© where the burger joint stood, and all the shop doors around Town Square now face east. But far worse than anything is the danger to the Martin family farm. In a town divided between “Regulars” and “Roos” (gurus), Owen is clear where he stands until he falls for a levitator instead of the down-to-earth girl he had in mind. With old customs and open-mindedness clashing like warm and cold fronts, Owen gets caught in a veritable tornado. Can he save the farm, get the girl, and reunite the town? Maybe . . . if he’s willing to embrace a change in the weather.


In the Mail

Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica....She sees the teenage girl on the train
platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.
 

The Witch of Lime Street by David Jaher....The 1920s are famous as the
golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics—and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. 


Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee.  Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified.  Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini.

David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other’s orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?


What I Wrote






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