Books, Books & More Books

A Single Thread by Marie Bostwick When Evelyn Dixon’s life fall’s apart – her husband divorces her after 28 years and she is forced to leave her home – she decides in for a penny, in for a pound. She heads north to Connecticut, falls in love with a small town and decides to move and follow her dream of opening up a quilt shop. Evelyn’s Cobbled Court Quilts store turns out to not just be a quilt store, but a quilting community. When she decides to host a quilting event to benefit breast cancer research, Evelyn doesn’t yet know that she has breast cancer. When she finds out, she’s devastated. Margot Matthews, an unemployed marketing genius, Abigail Burgess Wynne, the town millionaire, and Liza, Abigail’s brooding, Goth niece step in to be the family Evelyn needs to help her through and keep her store afloat.

 

The Taker by Alma Katsu is the first in a trilogy, which I am looking forward to completing. Lanore McIlvrae – Lanny – is brought into the hospital where Dr. Luke Findley is on the midnight shift. She’s covered in blood. But there’s not a scratch on her. A mysterious woman with plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her even thought she’s a murder suspect with a police escort. She needs his help to escape so she tells him her story: a story of unrequited love that transcends time and mortality. Poor Luke. Besotted by her beauty he becomes intrigued by her impassioned account that begins at the turn of the nineteenth century. Part historical novel, part supernatural thriller, The Taker can be graphic in its descriptions of the pain and terror the sinister Adair wreaks on his household, including the beautiful Lanny.

 

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin is like a trip back in time. Set in the 1970s (when it was originally written), it tells the story of the people who live at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco, a boarding house fun by Anna Madrigal. The characters have left families and friends behind to build a new life in the utopian San Francisco during the days of free love and drugs. Longing to connect, they form new families – families of choice – spinning in and out of each other’s lives. All the characters are challenged by the new sexual freedom of the day. Funny in spots, poignant in others, the characters share their ambition, their sense of loss, and their loneliness as they search for love. Tales of the City first began as a series in a San Francisco weekly newspaper in 1974. It was the fictionalized account of a real-life phenomenon occurring at a local Safeway supermarket where, on Wednesday nights, swinging singles would gather in search of romance. Tales of the City ran in the San Francisco Chronicle until the early 90s. There are six books in the series.

 

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker is a wonderful and unusual story of a man who has such a past and such a deep love that he must follow his heart. When Tin Win, a successful lawyer in New York city disappears without a trace, neither his daughter nor his wife know where to begin to look When they find a love letter he wrote to a Burmese woman neither has heard of, his daughter, Julia, goes in search of her father. There she discovered a past so unusual it is almost magical. Julia meets U Ba who paints for her a picture of her father she could never have imagined. He helps her to unravel her father’s past, from poverty to blindness, from the his childhood sweetheart, Mi Mi, to a cruel uncle whom he escapes only by staying in America, and his final return to the heart he has always heard beating.

 

The Enchanted by Rene Denfield Could you imagine anyone would consider a prison an enchanted place? The setting for this story is an dark, sad place, and the story is told through the voice of a death row inmate. He watch everyone, listens carefully, and follows the intersecting lives of a fallen priest and The Lady, an investigator who looks for mitigating circumstances that may save the lives of condemned prisoners. It is a story of humanity and how we are all connect, even in the most nightmarish of places. Part mystery, part horror, the story made me stay until the very end. Ripe with symbolism, it’s an unusual tale that is both profound and elegant.