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Tuesday Teaser - tempt us with your current read!
Villains generally lived out on the edge of the ice-fields and often raided nearby towns for pantry and domestic servants. They traded in mammoths as beasts of burden and dabbled in the stock market, with moderate success. They had their own code of conduct based around ice and honour and good manners and afternoon tea, and would happily kill someone if they disagreed with them - but would often write an apologetic note to the next of kin afterwards. "Manners," they were known to say, "cost nothing."Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
QUEEN GERTRUDE: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.HAMLET: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
I email several Sydney hospitals, asking after Hazara doctors or others who fled Afghanistan before the conflict. It's already 8pm but Sean and I begin the DNA extractions, processing all the samples in one go. Yet without a control group, a group of untraumatized Hazara people, the results will be meaningless.From Matryoshka by Katherine Johnson
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"I'm sorry Nick is such an ass," Jasper told Barlow. "But he does have a point. We can't keep doing this. The answers are not going to change."
Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
Brenda wrote: "Thanks for the reminder Kylie! I don't know how Tuesday comes around so quickly ;)"I know, it'll be Christmas before we know it...
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my Day after Tuesday teaser from
Wyrd by Cate Whittle - YA fantasyJust before school started again, Pip did speak to her.
“if you breathe a word of this to anyone,” she said, standing at Emma’s bedroom door with her ever present book under her arm, “I will personally see your life is hell!”
And this would be different how? Emma wondered.
Just started
Redemption Road by John Hart. This is from Chapt 1:.... he fell and smeared skin from his face, then ran and reached and felt a rung in his hand as agony burst in his shoulder and his feet thumped across wooden ties before the car, at last, was a shell around him.
He'd made it. He was on the train that would carry him off to kill a man, and the truth of that pressed down in the dark. It wasn't talk anymore, or waiting or planning.
The sun would rise in four hours.
The bullets would be real bullets.
My teaser is from
Highland Dragon Warrior by Isabel Cooper...The western tower was sturdy, the sky blue and inviting, and his day's immediate duties were behind him. Cathal straightened his spine, gulped in clear, cold air, and leapt off the tower...
...the party had reached what modern explorers refer to as 'Drop Dead Day' or the 'PNR' point of no return... From
by Sarah Murgatroyd
He glanced at the phone in his hand, the line dead. One minute he'd been talking with George, seemingly making progress, and the next, he had been disconnected. He dialled again, and again, but there was no answer. His heart was racing, and not just because he'd lost contact with the hostage taker.From A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
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"Irrelevant," she answered. Mrs Grant's hair shimmered a deep red under the light. "The treaty says I must cooperate, so what is it that you want?"
Dead and Butter by A. Gardner
Life's a pitch, as the old woman said. She couldn't pronounce her 'b's. ~Karl Ove Knausgård - A Death in the Family (Norwegian Title Min kamp, book one of six)
Heather wrote: " "Death arrived with the sweet tinkling of bells." "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.
"...we kiss with the mouth because it is a part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling red tenderness, to the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went, and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its silliness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.”~Richard Llewellyn How Green Was My Valley
Louie’s final thought before he passed out was that this was indeed some crazy world, where the waiting period to get an abortion was longer than the waiting period to get a gun.A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
I have left my book and my phone at home today - eeeeek! The last few weeks I'm not sure some days if I'm Arthur or Martha!So I have grabbed a book
Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel from my office mate's desk and here is the introduction: Ceylon
February 1934
Inspector Shanti de Silva exhaled a deep sigh of relief as the train left the sweltering lowlands of Colombo and commenced the long climb to Kandy. From his seat in the polished teak and leather opulence of the First-Class carriage, he watched the forest become denser with every mile, plantations of banana, king coconut and rubber trees jostling for space in the rich, red earth...
I actually read a few pages of it and was really taken by it - but work colleague is being very selfish and wishes to finish reading it himself so I have downloaded the ebook version from Amazon - Was only $4.99
Trouble is - I have nothing to read at lunch time - so might have to walk up to the library during my break - I am having withdrawal twitches at the thought of being bookless until 4:30!!!
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A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult
WINTER SKYOut of the smoky air now are plucked down
Stars from the past week frozen in flight.
Head over heels reels the skaters' club
Clinking its rink with the glass of the night.
Slower, slower, skater step slow-er
Cutting the curve as you swerve by,
Every turn a constellation
Scraped by the skate into Norway's sky.
Fetters of frozen iron shackle the air.
Hey, skaters! There it's all the same
That night is on earth with its ivory eyes
Snake patterned like a domino game;
That the moon, like a numb retriever's tongue,
Is freezing to bars as tight as a vice;
That mouths, like forgers' mouths are filled,
Brim-full with lava of breathtaking ice.
1914-1916
Boris Pasternak, Pasternak: Selected Poems
Translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (29 January 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russian, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life (1917), is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
As a novelist, Pasternak is also known as the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War, but was refused publication in the USSR.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1958 was awarded to Boris Leonidovich Pasternak "for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition." Boris Pasternak first accepted the award, but was later caused by the authorities of his country to decline the prize, although his descendants accepted the prize posthumously in 1988.
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At the edge, as he made his way down, he noticed a few stray beams of wood, tangled in the earth. They were like oversized splinters, angled and bruised, delivered like that by the river - and he felt another change.
Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak
'Listen,' he says. 'Try to believe me: I'm doing you a favour. Inga Karlson. She's charming. The wonderful novel, the tragedy of her story. She has this seductive pull. She sucks you in.''Yes.' Caddie thinks: Jamie Ganivet understands.
But he continues. 'It's easy, when you're young and smart, to spend years falling into the life of another person, a dead person. You need to walk away now and live your own life. If you don't, Inga Karlson will take over and before you know it, years will be gone and you'll never get them back. Now excuse me.'
The Fragments by Toni Jordan
Growing up on a rural farm in the rainforest of what was Rhodesia during the civil war of the 1970s, two sisters are enchanted by a mixture of Bible stories and local African tradition. They often sneak out at night in hopes of sprouting fairy wings and flying away on the wind.As my fingers grope around the gnarly bark of the tree trunk, I wonder if we'll see any fairies tonight. I'm half-hoping we will, half-hoping we won't. Fairies are strange beings. They dine on the perfume of flowers; toadstools spring where fairy feet have gone and they cast a white shadow. There are fairies of the earth and of the air, and water fairies who dwell in lakes, rivers, pools, springs, wells, fountains and even in raindrops and tears. There are pixies and pooks and a little hobgoblin called Boon, who protects children from bad dreams, and a fairy dies every time someone says they don't believe in them.
~Lauren Liebenberg, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam
“It was the look in her eyes as she put the chain around my neck that filled me with the awful knowledge of what she was doing. She was giving me this charm, which felt so heavy on my chest, as a consolation for losing her. I didn’t want the silver cross, I wanted the warmth of her body, the comfort of her face, which was now so white that it seemed I could see through to the bones which pulled the skin taut. She had made me promise to be brave, and I resolved to keep that vow, to be as stalwart as the Spartan boy while the fox gnawed at his bowels, so that she would come back to me.”~Nicholas Gage, Eleni
Willa is taking Nick, her bigoted father-in-law, to the doctor:From their names she guessed both physicians in this practice were from India. She saw no way of preparing anyone for the bigoted outburst likely to greet the doctor's hello and extended hand. She considered writing 'Tourette's' on the intake form, but she knew it was wrong to associate Nick's odium with any real disease. At least these doctors were male. To Willa's relief, every female physician on her list had been too booked up to take him. Female practitioners in Nick's view were freakish women driven by perversion to touch male strangers' bodies. He would share this opinion freely.
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
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She nodded in his direction, appeared to have a sudden thought and spoke loudly enough that he could hear her.
'Actually Bryant, take him out to your car the back way. I don't want people seeing him here. He's a witness not a suspect and I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea'.
Fatal Promise by Angela Marsons
My teaser doesn’t come from a book I’ve read – although it is on my TBR pile now – instead it is a quote from a book my daughter read and shared with me - it is from
The Cottingley Secret by Hazel GaynorI think the books come alive at night. When the shop is closed and the lights are turned out, I think they open their covers and fan out their pages like wings and start to fly. Imagine it. Hundreds of books, flapping their pages, soaring and swooping because they’re so alive with stories they can’t possibly sit still on the shelf
'...Welcome to the Army, Sister Northey.'Warmth went through her and she smiled brilliantly at him. 'Doctor' was her eventual goal, and had been since she was a little girl, but 'Sister' was an honourable stop along the way..
'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you very much.'
The Desert Nurse by Pamela Hart
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Brenda wrote: "Great book Tien!"I am loving it, Brenda! I was um-ing & uh-ing this morning whether to return it unread to the library (due on Thurs) but decided that I really liked the blurb on the back plus that fact that I've been meaning to read this author. I only started this morning and gosh, if I didn't have to work, I'd have been finished reading the book by now lol
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Delany was turned at an angle and did not see me enter the room. I can't help but wonder if he would continue upon his quest to trap this flying pest if he knew I was watching; I am inclined to believe the answer to that question is yes. The image of determination on his face, the utter focus with which he acted, told me it was a bad day to be a fly on our mantle.Dracul by Dacre Stoker
On long summer days we walked to the park. Mrs Gaspar pretended to be anxious. She said "Lenora, you do not let this boy out of your sight, not even for one second." It would be difficult to lose sight of Davey; all four feet and nine inches of six-year-old him. I knew that no one, despite what Mrs Gaspar said, would want to steal him.From Lenny's Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee
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Unfolding the paper, he laid it flat on the desk and still sipping his coffee, began to read the article.
Besides the almost full-page photo, there was scant detail, only a reference to page six.
A Model Wife by Maggie Christensen
The whole concept-that someone on the show could deliberately trying to hurt people, and bring the show down--unsettles my world. Circus is about trust. You have to trust that the rigging will support you, that your fellow performers will look out for you, that management will take care of your wellbeing. Without trust, you can't put fear aside. Mastering fear is the only way some of us can do the things we do. You can't climb up on that trapeze platform and swing out over the abyss if you don't feel completely certain the net will catch you if you fall-that wouldn't just be foolhardy, it'd be suicidal.
All Fall Down (Circus Hearts #2) by Ellie Marney
My teaser today is from
Outspoken: Because Justice Is Always Social by Father Rod BowerI was standing in the laundry of the rectory doing my washing when I heard what sounded like an air force jet approaching. Mayfield is only minutes away from the Williamtown Air Force Base, so it wasn't out of the ordinary to hear jets. This one did seem unusually low, however. A huge explosion followed the roar and the house seemed to lift off its foundations by a meter.
What Father Rod is describing is the day Newcastle was hit by the earthquake - I was there at the time, had been down from Darwin visiting family for Christmas. We were not far from Mayfield dropping stuff off at a transport company to freight back to Darwin. Our experience was just like his - what seamed like a low flying jet the Whooomp a huge explosion that rocked the warehouse. We all ran outside to see where the plane had come down - only to have the warehouse collapse to one side.
So I really related to this passage.
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Lost Without You by Rachael Johns
There was no understanding people like this, Ian thought, as he took an adult woman from Thaddeus’s arms and carried her down the steps to where Edmund had lit a fire in the largest of the ground-floor rooms. She had so little flesh on her bones that she weighed as lightly as a child and only the grime on her face gave her skin some colour. He placed her carefully on the floor, afraid of breaking her, and her eyes filled with tears as she thanked him.The Turn of Midnight by Minette Walters
"This George Carnaby you mentioned-is he your great nephew?""Heavens, no. They share the same father but had different mothers. George Carnaby has nothing to do with the Armstrong inheritance; he is Helen's half-brother. I've a copy of my own brother's will, Detective-if you think it would help your investigation."
"Yes, thank you, it would be most helpful, but I'll pick it up another time," Lavender said.
From The Heiress of Linn Hagh by Karen Charlton
Yes I am well aware it's not Tuesday!Peggy recalled standing poolside, imagining she was Dawn Fraser. The next thing she remembered, Celia was hauling her up from the depths by her shoulder straps.
“Crikey,” said Celia, who was wearing black goggles around her neck and a metal nose-clip. “I’ve never seen anyone sink like that before.”
Peggy’s eyes smarted from the salt, and she couldn’t keep them open. Sopping tendrils of hair fell across her face, but between blinks, she could just make out the bathing cap floating away like a flaccid jellyfish. As her vision cleared, she saw Brian gliding towards her.
“I say, are you alright?” he said, his lovely face etched with concern. He handed her two triangles of black foam that turned out to be the bra-cup inserts from her bathing suit.
The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village by Joanna Nell
And another from the same book:“I’m sure we didn’t have all these allergies in our day,” said Brian, pulling out onto the main road. “I blame the disinfectants. The ones that kill 99.9% of all germs.”
“I couldn’t agree more. People these days are so careful. I never worried about having a few harmless orgasms on the kitchen worktop, even when the kids were still living at home. It certainly never did them any harm, being exposed from such an early age. In fact, it probably did them good.”
Brian veered into the next lane and had to swerve to avoid a cyclist. He gripped the steering wheel and cleared his throat.
Marianne wrote: "And another from the same book:“I’m sure we didn’t have all these allergies in our day,” said Brian, pulling out onto the main road. “I blame the disinfectants. The ones that kill 99.9% of all ger..."
Hmm - just as well there wasn't a person walking past on her daily walk taking pictures of the sea pool!!! LOL ;D
I have this book in my e-reader - I am really looking forwards to getting to it
My teaser is from
Starline by Imogene Nix:"...The pounding on the door pulled her from her thoughts as it echoed through the building. It interrupted her thinking, but given that it had continued for a while, she couldn't ignore it any longer. She rose from her chair, and making her way to the front of the store, she muttered under her breath, "It's Saturday people." Couldn't they see the shop was closed? Opening the blind on the door, she peered out to see a man on the step. "We're closed!" she called. He looked at her and made a move to open the door...
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'I do. The man in the grave was murdered.'
Kim gasped and clutched her hands to her chest. 'Really, how?'
Dave gave her a little pat on the shoulder. 'Settle down there. We in the police force don't usually get excited about murders.'
Where the River Runs by Fleur McDonald
Aussie Readers
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Peter Swanson (other topics)Daniel Defoe (other topics)
Sophie Hardcastle (other topics)
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And I know I will :) It's good when there are authors that you know you'll love their book and don't even need to read the blurb!