I've been both adding to my book wishlist and ordering new books lately. Not that this is new, but it has been on the frequent side of late. I shouldn't as I am really in the thick of reading a stack of books, slowly. Why does it always feel slow going when there are so many more waiting? It doesn't help to add to the piles, but it is my one weakness. Here are ten books I have either just recently ordered or am impatiently waiting to be released.
Lost in the Spanish Quarter by Heddi Goodrich -- "old with the intimacy and ferocity of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels and set in the passionate, intense, and crumbling neighborhood known as the Spanish Quarter of Naples, comes a tale of two students searching for love and belonging in the city they so desperately want to call home."
The Last Book Party by Karen Dukess -- How did I not know about this book before? Once I read the blurb I knew I had to have it, so it is winging its way to me even now. "In the summer of 1987, 25-year-old Eve Rosen is an aspiring writer languishing in a low-level assistant job, unable to shake the shadow of growing up with her brilliant brother. With her professional ambitions floundering, Eve jumps at the chance to attend an early summer gathering at the Cape Cod home of famed New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie. Dazzled by the guests and her burgeoning crush on the hosts’ artistic son, Eve lands a new job as Henry Grey’s research assistant and an invitation to Henry and Tillie’s exclusive and famed "Book Party"― where attendees dress as literary characters. But by the night of the party, Eve discovers uncomfortable truths about her summer entanglements and understands that the literary world she so desperately wanted to be a part of is not at all what it seems."
The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda -- "Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline; and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors. Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl—but that’s just what happens with visitor Sadie Loman and Littleport resident Avery Greer. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable—until Sadie is found dead. While the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother, Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name, before the facts get twisted against her."
Abigail by Magda Szabo -- "Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabó’s books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a general, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful daughter. Gina is devastated when the general tells her that he must go away on a mission and that he will be sending her to boarding school in the country. She is even more aghast at the grim religious institution to which she soon finds herself consigned. She fights with her fellow students, she rebels against her teachers, finds herself completely ostracized, and runs away. Caught and brought back, there is nothing for Gina to do except entrust her fate to the legendary Abigail, as the classical statue of a woman with an urn that stands on the school’s grounds has come to be called. If you’re in trouble, it’s said, leave a message with Abigail and help will be on the way. And for Gina, who is in much deeper trouble than she could possibly suspect, a life-changing adventure is only beginning."
The Burnt Country by Joy Rhoads -- I loved her novel The Woolgrower's Companion so can't wait for this newest. She is an Australian writer, so her books are not easy to come by here in the US, but I expect to splurge on this one in just under a month. "The stunning new novel from the author of The Woolgrower's Companion, whom the Australian Women's Weekly described as 'a wonderful new voice in literary rural fiction'. A scandalous secret. A deadly fire. An agonizing choice. Australia 1948. As a young woman running Amiens, a sizeable sheep station in New South Wales, Kate Dowd knows she's expected to fail. And her grazier neighbour is doing his best to ensure she does, attacking her method of burning off to repel a bushfire. But fire risk is just one of her problems. Kate cannot lose Amiens, or give in to her estranged husband Jack's demands to sell- the farm is her livelihood and the only protection she can offer her half-sister Pearl, as the Aborigines Welfare Board threatens to take her away. Ostracised by the local community for even acknowledging Pearl, Kate cannot risk another scandal. Which means turning her back on her wartime lover, Luca Canali ... Then Jack drops a bombshell. He wants a divorce. He'll protect what's left of Kate's reputation, and keep Luca out of it - but for an extortionate price. Soon Kate is putting out fires on all fronts to save her farm, keep her family together and protect the man she loves. Then a catastrophic real fire threatens everything . . ."
Fall of Angels by Barbara Cleverly -- For once I actually waited until the paperback was released. Another book soon to hit my mailbox and a first book in a new series. "Barbara Cleverly, bestselling author of the Joe Sandilands series, introduces an ingenious new sleuth who navigates 1920s Cambridge, a European intellectual capital on the cusp of dramatic change."
The Hiding Game by Naomi Wood -- "In 1922, Paul Beckermann arrives at the Bauhaus art school and is immediately seduced by both the charismatic teaching and his fellow students. Eccentric and alluring, the more time Paul spends with his new friends the closer they become, and the deeper he falls in love with the mesmerising Charlotte. But Paul is not the only one vying for her affections, and soon an insidious rivalry takes root. As political tensions escalate in Germany, the Bauhaus finds itself under threat, and the group begins to disintegrate under the pressure of its own betrayals and love affairs. Decades later, in the wake of an unthinkable tragedy, Paul is haunted by a secret. When an old friend from the Bauhaus resurfaces, he must finally break his silence."
Middle England by Jonathan Coe -- "Beginning eight years ago on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to Olympic fever, Middle England follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change. There are newlyweds Ian and Sophie, who disagree about the future of the country and, possibly, the future of their relationship; Doug, the political commentator who writes impassioned columns about austerity from his Chelsea townhouse, and his radical teenage daughter who will stop at nothing in her quest for social justice; Benjamin Trotter, who embarks on an apparently doomed new career in middle age, and his father Colin, whose last wish is to vote in the European referendum. And within all these lives is the story of modern England: a story of nostalgia and delusion; of bewilderment and barely-suppressed rage."
Free Day by Ines Cagnati -- "In the marshy, misty countryside of southwestern France, fourteen-year-old Galla rides her battered bicycle from the private Catholic high school she attends on scholarship to the rocky, barren farm where her family lives. It’s a journey she makes every two weeks, forty miles round trip, traveling between opposite poles of ambition and guilt, school and home. Galla’s loving, overwhelmed, incompetent mother doesn’t want her to go to school; she wants her to stay at home, where Galla can look after her neglected little sisters, defuse her father’s brutal rages, and help with the chores. What does this dutiful daughter owe her family, and what does she owe herself? In Inès Cagnati’s haunting, emotionally and visually powerful novel Free Day, which won France’s Prix Roger Nimier in 1973, Galla makes an extra journey on a frigid winter Saturday to surprise her mother. As she anticipates their reunion, stopping often to pry caked, gelid mud off her bicycle wheels, she mentally retraces the crooked path of her family’s past and the more recent map of her school life as a poor but proud student. Galla’s rich, dense interior monologue blends with the landscape around her, building a powerful portrait of a girl who yearns to liberate herself from the circumstances that confine her, without losing their ties to her heart."
The Secrets We Keep by Lara Prescott -- "The Secrets We Kept combines a legendary literary love story--the decades-long affair between Pasternak and his mistress and muse, Olga Ivinskaya, who was sent to the Gulag and inspired Zhivago's heroine, Lara--with a narrative about two women empowered to lead lives of extraordinary intrigue and risk. From Pasternak's country estate outside Moscow to the brutalities of the Gulag, from Washington, D.C. to Paris and Milan, The Secrets We Kept captures a watershed moment in the history of literature--told with soaring emotional intensity and captivating historical detail. And at the center of this unforgettable debut is the powerful belief that a piece of art can change the world."
I think I will be off hiding with my books this weekend. In search of a quiet (and cool) reading nook . . .