No One You Know by Michelle Richmond

When Lila Enderlin, a brilliant Stanford math student, goes missing and is found murdered her family begins a slow disintegration. Her parents eventually divorce and her sister Ellie's life is changed forever. Ellie was also a college student at the time and she turned to a trusted teacher and friend, Andrew Thorpe. She met him frequently and confided in him all of the details about her sister's murder and how her family was coping.


When Andrew Thorpe publishes a true crime book about Lila's murder, the whole family is devastated. He had used Ellie's confidences and gone behind her back to write a book that would make him famous and establish him as a writer. He was unconcerned about the effect this would have on the Enderlin family, who knew nothing about it until it hit bookstores.


Twenty years later Ellie is still dealing with the repercussions of her sister's death. She is successful in her job as a coffee buyer. As she travels the world she is able to use her job as an excuse to escape. She has difficulty maintaining relationships.


In his book, Andrew Thorpe had "deduced" who the killer was, though the police never made an arrest. Lila had been having an affair with a fellow math whiz at Stanford, Peter McConnell, and this was the man who had been accused of her murder.

A chance meeting in a small South American town brings Ellie face to face with her sister's lover. Against her better judgement she agrees to listen to his side of the story. She can't help but be intrigued with what he has to say. This meeting will send Ellie back to the beginning, on a hunt to find the real murderer and uncover the truth behind that terrible night. If she can find an answer for herself and her family, maybe they can repair their damaged lives.

I really enjoyed this well written and fast paced novel!

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Aberrations by Penelope Przekop

Angel Duet has never been very good at relationships. Her mom died when she was a baby and she has never been able to really reach her father, Frank, through the wall of grief that he built up. Friendships were difficult to maintain. When you have Narcolepsy everything requires a huge effort and most days Angel is just not up to it. At twenty-one years old, Angel is attending college and living at home, trying to create a future for herself. Things become more difficult when her dad's girlfriend, Carla, moves in, upsetting the fragile balance that has existed for years between Angel and her dad.

When the novel opens it is spring and Angel is working two jobs. At the first job, a hospital, she is having an affair with a married doctor named Mac. He appeals to her because he understands her condition, accepts her as she is and fits into the fringes of her life. At the other job she meets Kimmy and Tim, who become the first real friends that she has ever had. They expose her to a seedy underground lifestyle that centers mostly on drugs and sex. But they stand by her in a way that she has never experienced before.

Angel's mother was a photographer. She took a whole series of pictures of clouds that resembled things from everyday life, a duck, a horse, a snake. Twenty two photos of clouds have hung on the wall for the last twenty years. When Carla arrives she takes them all down, meaning to re-frame them one by one. The loss of the photos jars Angel and leads her down a path of uncovering old secrets. Eventually she comes to realize how she has let the Narcolepsy control her life and finally learns that truth, in all of its forms, is the key to happiness.

You can read the first chapter of Aberrations here.

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This Year's Model by Carol Alt

In this fun new novel the reader gets to experience the outrageous world of professional modelling through the eyes of newly discovered model Melody Ann Croft.

Melody is just a normal kid from New Jersey, working as a waitress during her last summer before going away to college. Then one night a professional photographer happens to have dinner at the restaurant where she works. He thinks she has potential and gives her some contacts which turn out to be top modelling agencies in Manhattan.

After some indecision she decides that she has nothing to lose and calls some of the numbers on the card. The photographer's name is enough to get her interviews at several top agencies. The first one she visits immediately snaps her up, they think that she has "it", that elusive quality that means success. She is immediately thrust into the competitive and frantic world of professional modelling.

It's an eye opening experience. There are ugly sides to the new world that she finds herself in. She has to lose weight, of course, and it is difficult to maintain the waif like appearance that is demanded by most clients. The other models are fiercely competitive and some are downright mean. Then there is the ever present drug use. Melody is a strong girl with a solid middle class upbringing, so she is grounded and able to resist the temptations around her, but she still learns some difficult lessons.

Supermodel Carol Alt has written a fast-paced, fun novel that gives the regular person a peek into the inner workings of an industry that most of us will never experience. I know that I'll never look at a glossy fashion advertisement the same way again!

This Year's Model will be published by Avon in September, 2008.

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And The Winner Is.......

Congratulations to blueviolet, the winner of The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty!! Wow, that was fun, thanks to all of you who commented and blogged about the contest! Please check back at the beginning of August for a new giveaway!

Woman of a Thousand Secrets by Barbara Wood

The year is 1323 and this historical novel begins on a small island off of the coast of Cuba called Pearl Island. Tonina is twenty-one years old and lives with her Grandparents, but she is not related to them. When she was a baby she was found floating in a watertight basket by the islanders and has been raised among them. Unfortunately, as much as her foster Grandparents love her they cannot protect her from being ostracised from the rest of the group because of her differences. They are short and dark-skinned, she is tall with golden skin and light hair. She will never find a mate on the island where she is considered ugly. So, in order to encourage her to leave the island, her Grandmother makes up a quest and sends her in search of a mythical healing red flower.

Her journey will take her to mainland Central America and plunge her into the Mayan culture. She meets other travellers and forms friendships and bonds but always remembers her quest. Along with new friends and making some enemies, she travels in the ancient jungles and high mountains of Guatemala and Mexico. She survives many trials but along the way learns about her family and her heritage.

I found the descriptions of Mayan cities and people fascinating. The myths of the cultures of the time, as described in the book, bear a striking resemblance to Christianity. It was interesting to read that an early group of people, before the time of Columbus, had myths including a legendary bearded white man whom they belived would return at the time of their greatest need.

I really enjoyed this book, the first I have read by Barbara Wood. I look forward to reading more of her novels.

Woman of a Thousand Secrets will be published in September, 2008 by St. Martin's Griffin.

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The White Mary by Kira Salak

Marika Vecera is a journalist with no fear. From the time she was twenty years old she has thrown herself into the most dangerous places on earth for the sake of getting to the heart of whatever conflict, genocide or famine that she is researching. And she has succeeded brilliantly, becoming an award winning writer, though it has cost her dearly. More than she even realizes.

When she meets Seb Gilman and falls in love, she decides that it might be time to take a break. It was easy to place no value on her own life when she had no close family or loved ones. But now Seb, of course, wants to protect her and keep her away from danger. Marika realizes that she has avoided serious relationships up to this point for that very reason, but will try to change for his sake.

She decides to write a book. A biography of a legendary journalist named Robert Lewis, who has been like a mentor and father figure to Marika for most of her life, though she has never met him. Her meticulous research involves interviewing family and friends of Mr. Lewis, reading everything that he wrote and watching interviews that he did. She can't talk to him, though, he committed suicide the year before by drowning himself.

Or did he? A letter from an elderly missionary falls into Marika's hands. He says that he saw Robert Lewis in the jungle of Papua New Guinea after his reported suicide. No one believes him. But the seed has been planted and Marika feels the need to find out for herself. Never mind that no sane person would venture into the deep jungles of PNG. Without even realizing what she is doing, she instigates a break with Seb so that she will be free to do what she wants to do.

Her journey into the jungle will come close to killing her but will also be a revelation. Her guide is a native witch doctor, Tobo, who reluctantly leads this strange woman where she wants to go. He saves her life repeatedly and teaches her surprising things about the world and herself.

When reading the descriptive scenes in the book of war zones and cruelty you realize that the author has been there, there is the ring of truth about them, she has seen them for herself. The experiences of cutting through the jungle, the heat, the smells and sounds, are very clearly described. The author's personal experience shines through. I think that there is much of Kira Salak in Marika Vecera. It's a very interesting book about a woman trying to understand herself and unravel her motivations.

The White Mary by Kira Salak will be published by Henry Holt in August, 2008
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Fantastic Fourteen-Book Giveaways....Go Enter!

Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? (enter by July 12) and The Bookshipper (enter by July 31) are both giving away 14 books (to EACH winner!) as part of the Hachette Book Group USA Summer Reads Giveaway. What a fantastic opportunity! Go enter!

Guest Post: Phyllis Zimbler Miller, author of Mrs. Lieutenant

Phyllis Zimbler and Mitchell Miller at the Coronation Ball at Michigan State University on Saturday, November 18, 1967, sponsored by the Cadet Officers Club and the Arnold Air Society.

Because MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL evolved from my experiences as a new Mrs. Lieutenant in the spring of 1970, I’m often asked how much of the novel is true. This is a good question whose answer even I’m not so sure of any longer. That’s because some of the fiction I wrote in the novel and some of the truth have become intertwined in my mind.

And often other people also get confused. Recently a book blogger from my hometown of Elgin, Illinois, included a paragraph in her review of MRS. LIEUTENANT referring to something about growing up in Elgin. Yet I purposely made Sharon – who is the closest of the four women to me – from a northern suburb of Chicago. (Trust me, in the ‘50s and ‘60s those two worlds couldn’t have been further apart.)

Let’s put it this way – there is a great deal of truth in MRS. LIEUTENANT but this truth is often a mash-up (to use a term currently used in music I think). For example, the character of Wendy is a combination of two black new officers’ wives, an article in The Wall Street Journal, my own imagination, and bits of other people’s stories.

The following is absolutely true: When my husband and I were at Ft. Knox for him to attend Armor Officers Basic, I did volunteer to be the chair of the entertainment committee for the AOB officers’ wives’ graduation luncheon. And that committee did consist of me, a Southern white, a black, and two Puerto Ricans (one of whom didn’t speak English).

Yet the characters in the book and the incidents are often pieces patched together, including something (would be a spoiler to tell you which) that happened when we were stationed in Munich that I transposed to Ft. Knox.

FYI – The scene of Sharon feeling like an alien at the Jewish Wives’ Club meeting is as accurate as memory allows. My LA business partner and I were just talking about how that scene reflects how naïve I was living in a small town in the early ‘60s.

I did have a very strong objective in writing this novel so many years after I lived the experience of being a new Mrs. Lieutenant during an unpopular war. I wanted to preserve a small slice of women’s social history at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement. Within that decade of the 1970s I would go from being Mrs. Mitchell Miller to Ms. Phyllis Miller (I’m still married after 38 years) as the times changed for those of us living through that period.

The sequel to the first book will be MRS. LIEUTENANT IN EUROPE about when we were stationed in Germany as an occupying force 25 years after the end of WWII. And my planned third book is MS. LIEUTENANT IN CIVILIAN LIFE – what happens to Sharon when she returns to civilian life and has to re-adjust all over again just when the playing field for women is being leveled by the early feminists.

If after you’ve read MRS. LIEUTENANT you have specific questions, email me through the book’s website (www.mrslieutenant.com) and I’ll be happy to answer the questions – if I can.

Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

They had their whole lives to look forward to - if only their husbands could survive Vietnam.


This novel is about four young army officers wives who meet when their husbands are all assigned training at Ft. Knox, Kentucky in the summer of 1970. They are very different women from very different backgrounds but the circumstances they find themselves in help them to draw together and form unique friendships that they would not have dreamed of in their pre-army life.

Sharon Gold is a Jewish girl from Illinois with a journalism background. She is an anti-war protester but couldn't resist falling in love with an ROTC cadet while she was at Michigan State.

Kim Benton is an orphan from North Carolina who, with her younger sister, was raised in foster care. She has no self-confidence and is married to a controlling, jealous young man.

Wendy Johnson is an African American from South Carolina whose father is a physician. She has been sheltered by her parents her whole life and has little idea of the amount of prejudice in the world.

Donna Lautenberg is Puerto Rican but has lived all over the world because her father is enlisted in the army. She is having trouble adjusting from enlisted life to different social strata of an officer.

These women are only together for nine weeks but in that time they experience situations and deal with issues that break down the barriers of race, religion and class to allow them to form bonds of friendship and trust. In that short time they all grow, change and learn important lessons.

It's a compelling story that seems so real it made me wonder how much is based on actual experiences. I'm looking forward to reading the next Sharon Gold novel!

Visit the author's website here!

Order Mrs. Lieutenant from Amazon

Sunday Salon #6

This week I was very excited to post the first book giveaway that I have ever done on my blog! It is for a copy of The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty. If you have been waiting to read this one come on over to my blog and leave me a comment under that post!

I am right in the middle of The White Mary by Kira Salak. I'm on page 124. It's a little bit slow for me, but interesting. The main character is a journalist who bravely (recklessly?) journeys to dangerous areas of the world looking for a story. I'm looking forward to seeing how it ends.

This has been a good week for books at my house! I received:

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran. This is the sequel to her previous book Nefertiti. I am thrilled to have it and very grateful to her for sending it to me!

The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett. The debut novel from this author, it's about magick and magicians...reminding me of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" (which I loved).

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin. Lavinia was a character from Vergil's Aeneid, the king's daughter, this is her story.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

I just want to start out by saying that this book is going right to the top of my Favorite-Books-Of-All-Time list, I loved it!

It is 1946 London. The war is finally over and Juliet Ashton is in the midst of her first book tour. She is a journalist and during the war she wrote a cheery newspaper column under the pen name Izzy Bickerstaff. Those columns have been collected into a book and, though it's selling well, Juliet more than ready to say goodbye to Izzy and start on a new writing project.

While she is casting about for ideas she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a farmer on Guernsey Island in the English Channel. He has found her name and address written in a secondhand book that he owns and asks for her help. Since Guernsey was occupied by the Nazis during the war, they have no bookseller in residence and he is unable to expand his reading. Would she have the name and address of a London bookseller who might be able to help?

The resulting letters they exchange introduce her to other residents of Guernsey, mostly friends of Mr. Adams and fellow members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. One of the residents made up the Society on the spur of the moment one night when several of them were caught out by Nazi soldiers after curfew. And what a blessing it turned out to be, giving them something to think about and reasons to go on during the worst of the deprivation and starvation that the five years of occupation brought.

Eventually Juliet decides on the theme for her next book and goes to Guernsey to start writing and meet her new friends. What she finds when she gets there surprises her and changes her life.

I loved everything about this book. The post WWII England setting, the epistolary form, the realistic characters, the fact that much of it is about books, reading and love of literature. But most of all I loved the writer's wit and style that had me laughing out loud in places and broke my heart and brought me to tears in others. I read it very quickly and I kept telling myself to slow down because at the rate I was going it would be over far too soon. But I couldn't. So I'll just have to read it again and again, like going back to an old friend.

It is a shame that there won't be any more books by Mary Ann Shaffer, but what a gift she has given us. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will be published on August 5, 2008 by The Dial Press.

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Daphne: A Novel About the Author of Rebecca by Justine Picardie

In this interesting fact-based novel the author tells the story of how Daphne du Maurier came to write her biography of Branwell Bronte in the early 1960s, The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.

When the novel opens Daphne du Maurier is in her early fifties and is dealing with a host of personal problems. Her husband Tommy has had a breakdown and is temporarily hospitalized. Their relationship is rocky in any case because of Daphne has found out that he had a recent affair. She is portrayed as being rather unstable, she frequently hears the voice of her most famous character, Rebecca, and she can hardly ever bring herself to leave her isolated house, Menabilly.

As Daphne becomes enthralled with the Brontes and writing a biography on Branwell, she begins to write letters to J. Alexander Symington who had edited a Collected Works of the Brontes and been the librarian of a large collection. It becomes clear that he has a large collection of original Bronte manuscripts (questionably acquired!) and he offers to sell some of them to her. But since he has planned to write a book himself for many years he only sells her a few unimportant pages, keeping the best back for himself.

The story is told from alternating points of view: Daphne du Maurier, Mr. Symington and a young female narrator who is not named. She is a young student who is working on Daphne du Maurier's obsession with the Brontes for her PHD. She discovers the letters between Daphne and Mr. Symington by accident but they end up having quite an impact on her personal life.

This novel is packed with facts that make it a fascinating read for any lover of English Literature, Daphne du Maurier or the Brontes. For example, J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, adopted Daphne's five male cousins after they were orphaned in 1910. (That part of the story was made into a movie a few years ago, Finding Neverland). He was part of the family, Daphne called him "Uncle Jim." And Daphne du Maurier put her diaries of her early life in a bank vault in 1979 with orders that they not be released for fifty years!

It's an intriguing story, well written and carefully researched. I recommend it!

Daphne by Jutine Picardie will be released by Bloomsbury in August, 2008.

Order Daphne from Amazon

Tuesday Thingers

This week's question is about the Top 100 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing. The ones I own are in bold, the ones I have read are italicized, both are, well, both. Stars show how much they were enjoyed! Many of these I read in high school or college but I have a hard time letting go of books, so I still have my old copies. Here's the list:

1. Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone by J.K. Rowling (32,484)*****

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling (29,939)****

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J.K. Rowling (28,728)****

4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling (27,926)****

5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling (27,643)****

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J.K. Rowling (27,641)****

7. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (23,266)***

8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (21,325)*****

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J.K. Rowling (20,485)****

10. 1984 by George Orwell (19,735) ***

11. Pride and Prejudice (Bantam Classics) by Jane Austen (19,583) *****

12. The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger (19,082)****

13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (17,586) *****

14. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (16,210)***

15. The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (15,483)*****

16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (14,566)

17. Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Bronte (14,449)*****

18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (13,946)

19. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (13,272)

20. Animal Farm by George Orwell (13,091)***

21. Angels & demons by Dan Brown (13,089)***

22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (13,005)

23. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (12,777)*****

24. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (12,634)

25. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1) by J.R.R. Tolkien (12,276)*****

26. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (12,147)****

27. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (11,976)

28. The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Part 2) by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,512)*****

29. The Odyssey by Homer (11,483)

30. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (11,392)***

31. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (11,360)***

32. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (11,257)**

33. The return of the king : being the third part of The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (11,082)*****

34. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (10,979)***

35. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman (10,823)

36. The chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (10,603) *****

37. The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams (10,537)

38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10,435) **

39. The lovely bones : a novel by Alice Sebold (10,125)

40. Ender's Game (Ender, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card (10,092)

41. The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1) by Philip Pullman (9,827)***

42. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman (9,745) ****

43. Dune by Frank Herbert (9,671)

44. Emma by Jane Austen (9,610) *****

45. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (9,598) *****

46. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain (9,593) ****

47. Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club) by Leo Tolstoy (9,433)***

48. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (9,413)*****

49. Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (9,343)

50. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (9,336)

51. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (9,274)

52. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (9,246)*****

53. The Iliad by Homer (9,153)

54. The Stranger by Albert Camus (9,084)

55. Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (9,080)*****

56. Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (9,027)****

57. The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel by Margaret Atwood (8,960)

58. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (8,904)

59. Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (8,813)

60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery - (8,764)

61. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (8,421) *****

62. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (8,417)****

63. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (8,368)

64. The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck (8,255)****

65. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (8,214)*****

66. The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (8,191)

67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (8,169)

68. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (8,129)*

69. The complete works by William Shakespeare (8,096)

70. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (7,843)

71. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (7,834)

72. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Barbara Kingsolver (7,829)

73. Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare (7,808)**

74. Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by John Steinbeck (7,807)****

75. A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens (7,793)****

76. The Alchemist (Plus) by Paulo Coelho (7,710)

77. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (7,648)

78. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics) by Oscar Wilde (7,598)***

79. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk (7,569)

80. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (7,557)

81. The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman (7,534)****

82. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (7,530)

83. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (7,512)***

84. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (7,436)

85. Dracula by Bram Stoker (7,238)****

86. Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions) by Joseph Conrad (7,153)

87. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (7,055) none, negative two stars

88. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (7,052)***

89. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (7,043)****

90. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Penguin Classics) by James Joyce (6,933)

91. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) by Milan Kundera (6,901)

92. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (6,899)**

93. Neuromancer by William Gibson (6,890)

94. The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer (6,868) ***

95. Persuasion (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen (6,862) *****

96. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (6,841)

97. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (6,794)*****

98. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt (6,715)*****

99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (6,708)

100. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (6,697)