SUNDAY UPDATES/MAILBOX MONDAY: MORE HEAT, SOME EYE ISSUES, ETC. — JULY 21

Good morning!  Today’s post will link up to Sunday Salon, The Sunday Post, and Mailbox Monday! (July will be Book Obsessed)

With another hot week behind me, I am staying inside a lot!  I’ve done some blogging and reading, but the reading has suffered due to an eye problem.  Nothing serious…a huge floater in my left eye that makes reading tedious.  The ophthalmologist gave me a good report…retina still intact.  Meanwhile, my new “companion” feels like a big, hairy spider!   Yikes.  Something like this?

Therefore, my blogging and reading took a back seat this week.

ON THE BLOGS:

Tuesday Sparks:  Intros/Teasers – Island Girls

Summer Reading – Redux (Booking Through Thursday)

A Little Chocolate on a Friday

Friday Potpourri:  Books, Books, and More Books

Sweet Saturday Sample:  A Budding Romance (An Excerpt)

Saturday Snapshot:  Berlin Artist

READING/REVIEWS (Click Titles for Reviews)

Sisterland, by Curtis Sittenfeld

Something About Sophie, by Mary Kay McComas

Always Watching (e-book), by Chevy Stevens

INCOMING BOOKS:

Nothing came in the mailbox this week, but I downloaded two books onto Sparky. 

The Wednesday Daughters (e-book), by Meg Waite Clayton

In the tradition of Kristin Hannah and Karen Joy Fowler, Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of The Wednesday Sisters, returns with an enthralling new novel of mothers, daughters, and the secrets and dreams passed down through generations.

It is early evening when Hope Tantry arrives at the small cottage in England’s pastoral Lake District where her mother, Ally, spent the last years of her life. Ally—one of a close-knit group of women who called themselves the Wednesday Sisters—had used the cottage as a writer’s retreat while she worked on her unpublished biography of Beatrix Potter, yet Hope knows little about her mother’s time there. Traveling with Hope are friends Anna Page and Julie, first introduced as little girls in The Wednesday Sisters, now grown women grappling with issues of a different era. They’ve come to help Hope sort through her mother’s personal effects, yet what they find is a tangled family history—one steeped in Lake District lore.

Hope finds a stack of Ally’s old notebooks tucked away in a hidden drawer, all written in a mysterious code. As she, Julie, and Anna Page try to decipher Ally’s writings—the reason for their encryption, their possible connection to the Potter manuscript—they are forced to confront their own personal struggles: Hope’s doubts about her marriage, Julie’s grief over losing her twin sister, Anna Page’s fear of commitment in relationships. And as the real reason for Ally’s stay in England comes to light, Hope, Julie, and Anna Page reach a new understanding about the enduring bonds of family, the unwavering strength of love, and the inescapable pull of the past.

Second Chance Grill (e-book), by Christine Nolfi (.99 this weekend!)

Dr. Mary Chance needs a sabbatical from medicine to grieve the loss of her closest friend. But when she inherits a struggling restaurant in Liberty, Ohio she isn’t prepared for Blossom Perini. Mary can’t resist falling for the precocious preteen–or the girl’s father. The bond they forge will transform all their lives and set in motion an outpouring of love that spreads across America.

Welcome back to Liberty, where the women surrounding the town’s only restaurant are as charming as they are eccentric.
Second Chance Grill is the prequel to Treasure Me, 2012 Next Generation Indie Awards Finalist and book two of the Liberty Series.

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And that is what my past and future weeks look like!  What about yours?  Come on by and share.