New Arrivals!

The flood of books is starting to slow down, but some really GREAT books arrived in the last few days!

For review

 

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

I got this book for review from Harper. I’m a Kingsolver fan so I’ll be starting this book as soon as I can! I have a review of Kingsolver’s previous book, The Lacuna, HERE, if you’re interested.

From the publishers: “Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man.

As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.”

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The Ghost of Neil Diamond by David Milnes

For review from the author. I review Dave Egger’s Hologram for the King recently and the author of The Ghost of Neil Diamond contacted me, because he thought if I liked Egger’s book, I might like his book, too. It sounds like a fun story, so I accepted the review request. 

Very briefly in the author’s words: “Take a Neil Diamond impersonator with his back against the Great Wall of China: the struggle for fame and fortune is over, and the dark comedy of survival has begun.”

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Books I won

The First Book of Calamity Leek by Paula Lichtarowicz

Windmill Books, a UK publisher, are one of my favorite publishers. I seem to love all their books. Recently I discovered Hutchinson, an sister imprint that are bringing out some interesting new books. One of them, in ARC format, hence the odd cover (the official image isn’t available yet) is The First Book of Calamity Leek. The title is interesting but I’m also very curious to the story.

From the back of the book: “Books tell you what to believe. Books explain the world around you. What if a book had been written to explain a world constructed for you? What if that world suddenly fell apart?

Calamity Leek needs a new book, but she’s going to have to write it herself.”

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Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer

I won this lovely book from Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and I’ve started reading it already. It’s a fun and easy read about a man and a woman who meet via email, by accident.

From the publishers: “It begins by chance: Leo receives emails in error from an unknown woman called Emmi. Being polite he replies, and Emmi writes back. A few brief exchanges are all it takes to spark a mutual interest in each other, and soon Emmi and Leo are sharing their innermost secrets and longings. The erotic tension simmers, and it seems only a matter of time before they will meet in person. But they keep putting off the moment – the prospect both unsettles and excites them. And, after all, Emmi is happily married. Will their feelings for each other survive the test of a real-life encounter?”

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From the library

The Red House by Mark Haddon

Really there is no way I will have time to read this, but I saw it at the library in the New section and could not resist. I’ve read several books by Haddon and enjoyed them all.

From the publishers: “After his mother’s death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks.

But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela’s stillborn daughter.

The Red House is about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, weaving the words and thoughts of the eight characters together with those fainter, stranger voices – of books and letters and music, of the dead who once inhabited these rooms, of the ageing house itself and the landscape in which it sits.”

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Books for my dutch blog

I will review these on my Dutch blog, but since they are all translated from the English, I’d love to know if you read them and what you thought. I got all of these for review except the Peter James book. The covers in English below and the covers in Dutch (the actual books I received) further below.

Raak mij aan [Lies of the Heart] by Michelle Boyajian

Ben je gek [Mercy Close] by Marian Keyes

Infominderen [The Information Diet] by Clay A. Johnson

De laatste sterft [Last to Die] by Tess Gerritsen

Perfectie [Perfect People] byPeter James

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 Which of these books have you read?

Is there one that peaked your interest?

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