Happy Mail: Some pre-orders have arrived!

preorderSept22Oh wow! It never gets old I tell you. I love when new books arrive on my doorstep. It’s such a great feeling.

Well two of my pre-orders arrived yesterday.  I mentioned a description of both in yesterday’s post. I am really excited to jump right in and read them.  I started reading Never Never yesterday and will be sure to post my thoughts once I complete it.

The beauty of pre-orders is that they arrive on your doorstep the exact day they are released. The best part is if you pre-order new books, you pay literally a fraction of the price it will cost after it’s released in stores.

Happy reading!

Belinda

Belinda’s Book Nook: Book Haul at the Used Book Superstore

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I recently found some new authors at the used bookstore. I did know one of them and had on my TBR and that is Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling) but I never read any of the Harry Potter books (don’t hate).  So this haul was completely on the description and maybe a little cover love!

The first is The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall

About the author:

Tarquin Hall is the author of the Vish Puri mysteries, set in India. The first in the series, ‘The Case of the Missing Servant’, was named by the New York Times as a Notable Crime Book and given starred reviews by Kirkus, Library Journal and Booklist. Hall divides his times between London and Delhi with his wife, Indian-born journalist Anu Anand, and their young son.

The book:

Watch out Alexander McCall Smith! Here comes the first novel by the highly acclaimed writer Tarquin Hall in an entrancing new mystery series set in India.

The portly Vish Puri is India’s most accomplished detective, at least in his own estimation, and is also the hero of an irresistible new mystery series set in hot, dusty Delhi. Puri’s detective skills are old-fashioned in a Sherlock Holmesian way and a little out of sync with the tempo of the modern city, but Puri is clever and his methods work.

The second book is The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Now I know you know J. K. Rowling so I will skip a mini bio on her. But the book is about:

A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel’s suicide. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

The third book is titled: The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

About the author:

Born to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father in San Francisco, Gail Tsukiyama now lives in El Cerrito, California. Her novels include Women of the Silk (1991), The Samurai’s Garden (1995), Night of Many Dreams (1998), The Language of Threads (1999), Dreaming Water (2002), and The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2007).

About the book:

A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family’s summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu’s secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu’s generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu’s soul-mate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.

The final book is titled, The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl

About the author:

Matthew Pearl is the author of the novels The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, The Technologists, and The Last Bookaneer. His books have been New York Times bestsellers and international bestsellers translated into more than 30 languages. His nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Slate.com. He has been heard on shows including NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition Sunday,” and his books have been featured on Good Morning America and CBS Sunday Morning.

Matthew Pearl grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School. He has also taught literature and creative writing at Harvard University and Emerson College, and has been a Visiting Lecturer in law and literature at Harvard Law School. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About the book:

Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries in his most enthralling novel yet, a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.

Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await Dickens’s unfinished novel–The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.

Don’t count out used book stores. I have found many gems in them.

Happy reading my friend!

Belinda

 

Belinda’s Book Nook: Book Haul at the Used Book Superstore

april24_2015aI have been meaning to share this haul with you for a little while so today is the day. I went with the boys to The Used book Superstore to look for some bargains and found these three beauties. Only one (The White Tiger) was on my TBR list so I snatched it up quickly and then I found another by the same author and thought for this price I will grab it too.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga according to Amazon is about:

A stunning literary debut critics have likened to Richard Wright’s NativeSon, The White Tiger follows a darkly comic Bangalore driver through the poverty and corruption of modern India’s caste society. “This is the authentic voice of the Third World, like you’ve never heard it before” (John Burdett, Bangkok 8).

The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

Recalling The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, The White Tiger is narrative genius with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.

I wanted to read it to explore more about India. I have read several books about India and wanted to add more. It also will fulfill one of my 2015 reading goals.

The second book by Aravind Adiga is called, “Between Assassinations” and according to Amazon is about:

Welcome to Kittur, India. It’s on India’s southwestern coast, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and the Kaliamma River to the south and east. It’s blessed with rich soil and scenic beauty, and it’s been around for centuries. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. And if the characters in Between the Assassinations are any indication, Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and the prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.

A twelve-year-old boy named Ziauddin, a gofer at a tea shop near the railway station, is enticed into wrongdoing because a fair-skinned stranger treats him with dignity and warmth. George D’Souza, a mosquito-repellent sprayer, elevates himself to gardener and then chauffeur to the lovely, young Mrs. Gomes, and then loses it all when he attempts to be something more. A little girl’s first act of love for her father is to beg on the street for money to support his drug habit. A factory owner is forced to choose between buying into underworld economics and blinding his staff or closing up shop. A privileged schoolboy, using his own ties to the Kittur underworld, sets off an explosive in a Jesuit-school classroom in protest against casteism. A childless couple takes refuge in a rapidly diminishing forest on the outskirts of town, feeding a group of “intimates” who visit only to mock them. And the loneliest member of the Marxist-Maoist Party of India falls in love with the one young woman, in the poorest part of town, whom he cannot afford to wed.april24_2015b

The final book I picked up let’s face it, was a total ‘cover love’ that sucked me in so I added it to my basket. But look at the inside of the jacket cover:

april24_2015cWho could seriously pass this book up? Not to mention the very low price of $4.00.  This book is called, “Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern and according to Amazon is about:

One of the world’s most popular writers of women’s fiction—author of the beloved international bestseller, P.S. I Love You, basis for the popular film starring Hilary Swank—Cecelia Ahern now gives us Thanks for the Memories, a heartwarming tale of déjà vu and second chances. Reminiscent of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Thanks for the Memories is a love story brimming with hope and feeling and enlivened with an enchanting touch of magic.

How is it possible to know someone you’ve never met?

With her marriage already in pieces, Joyce Conway nearly lost everything else. But she survived the terrible accident that left her hospitalized–and now, inexplicably, she can remember faces she has never seen, cobblestone Parisian streets she’s never visited. A sudden, overwhelming sense of deja vu has Joyce feeling as if her life is not her own.

Justin Hitchcock’s decision to donate blood was the first thing to come straight from his heart in a long time. He chased his ex-wife and daughter from Chicago to London–and now, restless and lonely, he lectures to bored college students in Dublin. But everything is about to change with the arrival of a basket of muffins with a thank-you note enclosed–the first in a series of anonymous presents that will launch Justin into the heart of a mystery . . . and alter two lives forever.

Apparently this author has written a lot of books and this will be my first. I will be sure to put reviews up as I read these lovely selections.

Happy reading!!

Belinda

Belinda’s Book Nook: Unexpected Book Haul

 

mar2015haul1Hello Everyone! I hope you are all well. I am still trying to settle back in to the rhythm of work and blogging after my girlfriend getaway last week. So I apologize for such delays. But today I went to our local Job Lot store to pick up some really great hard candies my girlfriend Ashley introduced me to on our roadtrip and I came across some great book bargains. So you know me, I had to stop and take a peek.

I found four great deals. I haven’t even removed the sale stickers off them before sharing them with you it was just a great haul that I only paid about $10 total.

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The first was a book I have been wanting to read since last year called, The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman. I got the book for $2.99 and you know it goes for $16 in Barnes and Noble so it had to come home with me. I’m pretty sure a box of tissue will be needed while reading this book. Here is the description from Good Reads:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

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The second book is called, Some Dream for Fools by Faiza Guene. I never heard of this book before but I knew it would be a perfect read for one of my reading goals. Which is to read a book that is set in a country from each of the 7 continents (Asia, North American, South America, Europe, Africa, Antartica, Australia). It also a very short book so I should breeze through it. Here is the description from Good Reads:

Ahlème, a young woman living on the outskirts of Paris, is trying to make a life out of the dreams she brought with her from Algeria and the reality she faces every day. Her father lost his job after an accident at his construction site. Her mother was lost to a massacre in Algeria. And her brother, Foued, boils with adolescent energy and teeters dangerously close to choosing a life of crime.

As she wanders the streets of Paris looking for work, Ahlème negotiates the disparities between her dreams and her life, her youth and her responsibilities, the expectations of those back home and the limitations of life in France.

With the same laugh-out-loud, razor-sharp humor that made Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow an international hit, Some Dream for Fools shows Faïza Guène’s evolution as a novelist and reminds us of her extraordinary talent as she explores what happens to people when a lid is put on their dreams.

mar2015haul4So Easy: Healthy Recipes for Every Day of the Week by Ellie Krieger is the third book I picked up. I love cookbooks and when I see one for under $5 that has some good food inspiration and recipes, I am all over it. I remember watching Ellie Krieger on the Food Network and loved her fresh clean take on recipes. I am looking forward to some of the new breakfast ideas from this cookbook. Here is the description on Good Reads:

Grab-and-go breakfasts for hectic days, as well as easy breakfast options for more leisurely mornings
Lunches to go, each road-tested in a cooler pack, along with at-home lunches for when you have the luxury of eating in
A month’s worth of different rush-hour dinners-fabulous meals you can whip up in less than thirty minutes-as well as dinners for days when you have a little more time to marinate or roast, but still want it all to be effortless
Decadent desserts, some ready in minutes, others truly worth waiting for-all easily pulled together
As a mom with a full-time job, Ellie knows how busy life is when you’re juggling your family’s needs. Now, you can stop stressing over whether to eat healthily or to eat fast.

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The Last book I bought isn’t really a book it is a collector’s magazine from Essence Magazine called, “A Salute to Michelle Obama“. Can’t say enough about this woman and this book includes the most amazing wardrobe she has graced the public with while attending to world affairs. Simply stunning and for $1.50 I should have picked up one for my sister!! (Hope she isn’t reading today!) Here is the description from Good Reads:

Through her commitment to her family and community, professional pursuits and personal passions, First Lady Michelle Obama is redefining possibilities and opportunities for women in this century. ESSENCE has chronicled Mrs. Obama before she ventured into the national spotlight. Now, in First Lady Michelle Obama, ESSENCE editors will recapture those early moments and illuminate her current role as First Lady today in a special commemorative book that charts one of the most incredible personal journeys in American history.

A Salute to Michelle Obama will document Mrs. Obama’s life from the South Side of Chicago to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This lavishly illustrated title will explore the social, cultural, and political impact of the First Lady’s education, health, and military family initiatives; her national and international causes and campaigns, and her broad fashion sense that connects with both Seventh Avenue and Main Street.

I hope you all are enjoying a great book and I will be back again with more book happenings.

Belinda

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