Waiting on Wednesday - The Secret Keeper

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title: The Secret Keeper
Author: Kate Morton
Publisher: Atria Books (October 16, 2012)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 496
Genre: Historical Fiction

Overview:

During a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy—her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother.

Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Realizing that this may be her last chance, Laurel searches for answers to the questions that still haunt her from that long-ago day, answers that can only be found in Dorothy’s past.

Dorothy’s story takes the reader from pre–WWII England through the blitz, to the ’60s and beyond. It is the secret history of three strangers from vastly different worlds—Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy—who meet by chance in wartime London and whose lives are forever entwined. The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams and the unexpected consequences they sometimes bring. It is an unforgettable story of lovers and friends, deception and passion that is told—in Morton’s signature style—against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

First Chapter First Paragraph - Discretion

Title: Discretion
Author: Allison Leotta
Publisher: Touchstone (July 3, 2012)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 336
Genre: Thriller
Source: Library




Hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea

Chapter 1

Even now, Caroline got nervous before every big job—and this was bigger than most. She knewhow to smile past smirking hotel concierges and apartment–building doormen who deliberately looked the other way. The key was looking confident. But committing a crime in the U.S. Capitol was a different experience altogether.

She tried to radiate authority as she strode up the marble steps to the Capitol's Senate carriage entrance. It helped that she was dolled up like a successful K Street lobbyist: ivory St. John suit, Manolo heels, hair painstakingly highlighted just the right shade of blond. Two men coming out of the portico murmured hello to her, and she smiled as if she greeted congressional staffers all the time. One staffer turned to watch her pass. His glance was appreciative but not shocked; she was young and beautiful, but she looked like she belonged in this world of high–octane political deal–making. Good.


Overview

When a beautiful young woman plummets to her death from the balcony of the U.S. Capitol, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Curtis is summoned to the scene. The evidence points to a sexual assault and murder. The victim is one of the city’s highest-paid escorts. And the balcony belongs to Washington D.C.’s lone Congressman, the most powerful figure in city politics.

The Congressman proclaims his innocence, but he’s in the middle of a tough primary fight, and the scandal could cost him the election. For Anna, the high-profile case is an opportunity. But as the political stakes rise, she realizes that a mistake could end her career.

At the same time, her budding romance with Jack Bailey, the chief homicide prosecutor, is at a crossroads. Determined to gain respect in the office, Anna wants to keep their relationship under wraps. But the mounting pressure and media attention that comes with the office’s most important case will inevitably expose their relationship — if it doesn’t destroy it first.

The investigation leads Anna to Discretion, a high-end escort service that caters to D.C.’s elite. With each break in the case, however, the mystery deepens. And the further Anna ventures into D.C.’s red-light underworld, the larger the target on her own back.

From the secret social clubs where Washington’s most powerful men escape from public view to the asphalt “track” where the city’s most vulnerable women work the streets, Discretion is a gripping exploration of sex, power, and the secrets we keep.

Mailbox Monday - Duty of Delight

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day
Author: Dorothy Day and Robert Ellsberg
Publisher: Marquette University Press (April 23, 2008)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 700
Genre: Diary
Source: Paperbackswap.com

Overview

For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, Dorothy Day offered an example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her struggles and concerns.

Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect her response to the vast changes in America, the Church, and the wider world. Day experienced most of the great social movements of her time but, as these diaries reveal, even while she labored for a transformed world, she simultaneously remained grounded in everyday human life: the demands of her extended Catholic worker family; her struggles to be more patient and charitable; the discipline of prayer and worship that structured her days; her efforts to find God in all the tasks and encounters of daily life.

A story of faithful striving for holiness and the radical transformation of the world, Day’s life challenges readers to imagine what it would be like to live as if the gospels were true.

Review - Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty

Title: Who Pushed Humpty Deumpty? And Other Notorious Nursery Tale Mysteries
Author: David Levinthal
Illustrator: John Nickle
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (September 25, 2012)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 40
Genre: Children's
Source: Library
Ages: 4 and up

Oh my gosh, what a great book. Unless your children know the stories of Goldilocks, Hansel and Gretel and Humpty Dumpty, plus a couple more, this book will be lost on them. For the adults, this book is priceless.

No longer is Goldilocks a poor innocent victim, she is being hunted down by Mr. Binky an Officer in Pinecone Forest and he going to track down this wanted criminal.

On to his next case, where we have to keep in mind that just because a woman is a witch does not necessary mean that she is a bad person, that is unless she lives in a house of candy – ok maybe she was but Officer Binky has discovered that Hansel and Gretel acted in self defense.

David Levinthal and John Nickle have splendid fractured old nursery rhymes. Reinventing characters with devilishly funny outcomes made this book one that I have reread a couple of times.

Imagine Harry Wolf was not someone that cried for help unless he really needed it or that Humpty was a good egg and played in a band called All the Kings Horses and All the King’s Men.

Called out to investigate, Officer Binky must now decide if Humpty was pushed or was it an accidental fall, there is little to go on since there was hardly any yolk at the scene. OK, that part made me laugh.

The book continues in this manner with Snow White and Jack in the Beanstalk. You will laugh you way through this book. I suggest that before you begin reading to your child, read though this on your own a couple of times so you can get all the giggling out and are ready to explain to your young ones what is so funny.