The Market by J.M. Steele

Title: The Market
Author: J.M. Steele
Publication: Hyperion, paperback, originally published in 2008
Genre: YA
Setting: New Jersey-ish

Description: High school senior Kate Winthrop has loving parents, two wonderful friends and got into Brown so life should be perfect.

Some Autumn Favorites

The weather is suddenly cooler, blankets are back on our beds, and I am thinking of books about Autumn:

Autumn Term by Antonia Forest (1948). Twins Nicola and Lawrie are heading to Kingscote School, determined to be as impressive as their elder sisters, but things start badly on the train when Nicola pulls the emergency cord and never seem to recover . . .

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

Title: The Dark is Rising
Author: Susan Cooper
Publication: Atheneum/Margaret K. McElderry, hardcover, 1973
Genre: Juvenile Fantasy
Setting: England

Description: Everything changes for Will Stanton, used to being the overlooked youngest in a bustling family, on Midwinter Day in December when he turns 11 and learns he is the last of the Old Ones, those responsible over the years for standing up to forces of Evil and Darkness.

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner

Title: Bloomsbury Girls
Author: Natalie Jenner
Publication: St. Martin’s, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: London, 1950

Description: In this companion novel to The Jane Austen Society, three women encroach on the male world of bookselling at a shop in the Bloomsbury section of London.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Title: The Woman in the Library
Author: Sulari Gentill
Publication: Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, paperback, 2022
Genre: Mystery
Setting: Boston

Description: Writer Hannah Tigone is sitting at a table in the Boston Public Library’s ornate Reading Room when a woman screams.  Soon the police find a dead body.

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

Title: Funny in Farsi
Author: Firoozeh Dumas
Publication: Villard, hardcover, 2003
Genre: Memoir
Setting: California

Description: This warm and witty memoir tells the story of an Iranian family and its enthusiastic misadventures with life in America, embracing Thanksgiving and game shows on television, learning English with bafflement, and the author’s eventual marriage to a Frenchman she met at Cal Berkeley, which resulted in even more of a melting pot experience.

We Didn't Mean to Start a School by Julia Blythe

Title: We Didn’t Mean to Start a School
Author: Julia Blythe
Publication: Gracewing, paperback, 1998
Genre: Children’s school story
Setting: Great Britain

Description: Just as Geraldine and Jeannie’s father gets a new job in Japan, their Aunt Win’s husband inherits a small, unoccupied hotel in the English countryside.

Spell the Month in Books – September

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on the second Saturday of each month or maybe a bit later! 

Here is my installment for September:

The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives by Peggy Bacon

Title: The Ghost of Opalina, or Nine Lives
Author and Illustrator: Peggy Bacon (1895-1987)
Publication: Graymalkin, paperback, originally published in 1967
Genre: Children’s fantasy
Setting: Presumably Connecticut

Description: Philip, Ellen, and five-year-old Jeb Finley are delighted to make the move so beloved in fiction from the city to a rambling and mysterious old house in the country.

WWW Wednesday – September 7, 2022

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Current reading

I am usually in the middle of several books. In the car, I am listening to The Fall by John Lescroart (2015), a legal thriller featuring attorney Dismas Hardy and his daughter, Rebecca. She is now grown up and an associate in Hardy’s law firm, defending a client accused of murder. I had forgotten how much I enjoy Lescroart’s characters and how they have developed over the years.

Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins, suspense fiction set in Oxford

Title: Magpie Lane
Author: Lucy Atkins
Publication: Quercus, hardcover, 2020
Genre: Suspense
Setting: Oxford, Great Britain

Description: Dee, now middle-aged, never made it to Oxford as a student despite her brilliance at mathematics, but she has worked there since her 20s as a nanny, mostly in short-term positions to avoid forming attachments. But Felicity, her current charge, is different.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Eloise at the Plaza to The Secret River

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is the final book from last month, which in my case is Eloise by Kay Thompson, the famous 1950s picture book about the girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.