SUNDAY UPDATES/MAILBOX MONDAY — SUMMER DAYS — JUNE 22

Good morning!  Today’s post will link up to Sunday Salon, The Sunday Post, and Mailbox Monday!

This past week has been a continuation of blogging, reading, and a little more book purging.  And I took special delight in my early morning online viewing of All My Children and One Life to Live via my TV/laptop hook-up, shown here:

And I also spent time on the patio with my laptop.

Here is what I accomplished:

ON THE BLOGS:

Tuesday Potpourri:  Intros/Teasers-Secrets from the Past

Hump Day Potpourri:  Reading, TV, & Cool Breezes

Going out on a Limb with Upcoming Releases:  W is for Wasted

A Journey Through Book Beginnings & the Friday 56:  The Red Garden

Sweet Saturday Sample:  A Single Dad Ponders His Life (An Excerpt)

Reading:  Click Titles for Reviews:  THIS WEEK, I FINISHED MY 100TH BOOK OF THE YEAR!  YAY!!

Innocent Little Crimes, by C. S. Lakin (Review Book)

Secrets from the Past, by Barbara Taylor Bradford

The Red Garden, by Alice Hoffman (From Mt. TBR)

Looking for Me, by Beth Hoffman

Incoming Books:

None of my new books came via the “mailbox,” but I downloaded three new books for Sparky:  two purchases and one freebie.

The Age of Innocence (e-book), by Edith Wharton (freebie!)

Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don’t bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton’s story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer’s impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when “society” had rules as rigid as any in history.

Daddy’s Gone A Hunting (e-book), by Mary Higgins Clark

In her latest novel, Daddy’s Gone A Hunting, Mary Higgins Clark, the beloved “Queen of Suspense,” exposes a dark secret from a family’s past that threatens the lives of sisters Kate and Hannah Connelly when the family-owned furniture firm explodes into flames in the middle of the night, leveling the buildings to the ground, including a museum where priceless antiques have been on permanent display for years.

The ashes reveal a startling and grisly discovery and provoke a host of suspicions and questions. Was the explosion deliberately set? What was Kate—a CPA for one of the biggest accounting firms in the country—doing in the museum when it burst into flames? Why was Gus, a retired and disgruntled craftsman, with her at that time of night? What if someone isn’t who he claims to be?

Now Gus is dead, and Kate lies in the hospital in a coma, so neither can tell what drew them there or what the tragedy may have to do with the hunt for a young woman missing for many years. Nor can they warn that somebody may be covering his tracks, willing to kill to save himself.

In a novel of dazzling suspense and excitement, Mary Higgins Clark once again demonstrates the mastery of her craft that has made her books international bestsellers for years. She presents the reader with a perplexing mystery, a puzzling question of identity, and a fascinating cast of characters—one of whom may just be a ruthless killer…

Always Watching (e-book), by Chevy Stevens

She helps people put their demons to rest.

But she has a few of her own…

In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire—healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years.

When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her—and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island.  What happened to Nadine?  Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?

And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most…and fight back.

Sometimes you can leave the past, but you can never escape.

***

Looking back, I think it was a great week!  And today I’m reading:

A Widow’s Story, by Joyce Carol Oates (From my TBR Mountain)

What did your week look like?  What’s coming up next?