I've got some great books lined up that I've received from authors and publishers. It's strange, I'll go ages without an offer for a review copy of a forthcoming book, and then all of a sudden I get several at once. I only accept the books that really interest me, or that I feel like (hope anyway) I can get read in a timely manner. And occasionally I'll cross my fingers hoping for an ARE by an author I really like (mostly so I won't have to wait to read their new book). Here are the books I'll be reading in the near future, and hopefully you'll see a post on them very soon:
Star Gazing, by Linda Gillard - "Blind since birth, widowed in her twenties, now lonely in her forties, Marianne Fraser lives in Edinburgh in elegant, angry anonymity with her sister. Marianne's passionate nature finds solace in music, a love she finds she shares with Keir, the man she encounters on her doorstep one winter's night". I've already heard good things about this book from UK bloggers. I read Linda's first book Emotional Geology last year and greatly enjoyed it. I've been looking forward to her newest novel and was excited to see it arrive in yesterday's mail.
The Heretic Queen, by Michelle Moran - "The winds of change are blowing through Thebes. A devastating palace fire has killed the 18th dynasty’s royal family—all with the exception of Nefertari, niece of the reviled former queen Nefertiti. The girl’s deceased family has been branded as heretical, 
and no one in Egypt will speak their names. A relic of a previous reign, Nefertari is pushed aside, an unimportant princess left to run wild in the palace. But all of this changes when she is taken under the wing of pharaoh’s aunt, and brought to the Temple of Hathor where she is educated in a manner befitting a future queen". I recently finished reading her first novel Nefertiti. The Heretic Queen isn't due out until September, so I'm pleased to get a galley of her newest already.
What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn (Costa First Novel Award Winner) - "In the 1980s, Kate Meaney—“Top Secret” notebook and toy monkey in tow—is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing “suspects” and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press. Then, in 2003, Adrian’s sister Lisa—stuck in a dead-end relationship—is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behavior of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall’s surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself". When I read Dorothy's review of this, I added it to my wishlist and was then pleased to be offered a review copy. I'm looking forward to it.
Rules for Saying Goodbye, by Katherine Taylor - "In the world of Kate Taylor, heroine of Rules for Saying Goodbye, pleasure and melancholy are close neighbors--like the summer hats and lobster boilers squashed together in the tiny closet of her Manhattan apartment. In this hilarious, bittersweet story, we follow young Kate from her girlhood in Fresno California, through a career at a chilly New England prep school, and on to life in Manhattan, where she finds a sometimes dissipated, sometimes glamorous life of fourteen-dollar cocktails, empty cupboards, and extravagantly unsuitable men. In this witty and affecting debut, the real-life Katherine Taylor chronicles the moment when you stop waiting for things to happen, and go in search of them yourself". Doesn't this sound good, too? I couldn't pass it up.
The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter's Search for Home, by Bibi Gaston - " In 1927, at the age of twenty-three, Rosamond Pinchot was hailed as 'The 
Loveliest Woman in America'. At thirty-three, in a sudden, shocking, and highly public act, Rosamond took her own life, setting in motion generations of confusion in the family she left behind. Nearly seventy years after her demise, her granddaughter Bibi received a box of more than 1,500 pages of Rosamond's diaries and embarked on a seven-year journey to make sense of the silence that surrounded Rosamond's death and to discover the grandmother she never knew. An acclaimed beauty, actress, socialite, and outdoorswoman, Rosamond became the key to Bibi's understanding of her enigmatic and adventurous father, her glamorous but painfully divided family, and herself". I had already been in line for this title at the library. I'm still watching the mail for it. It will fit in perfect with my Summer reading plans!
Now if I just had an actual Summer vacation to look forward to filled with lots of laziness and reading time...