Mailbox Monday

 

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week. It was created by Marcia @ A Girl and Her Books but now has a permanent home here

 

This week I received a copy of A Snow Garden and Other Stories from Transworld Publishers. It's a short story collection by Rachel Joyce and looks like a great read for the winter and the lead up to Christmas.

 

 

Seven stories to span the Christmas holidays:

A Faraway Smell of Lemon:  The School Term has ended. It is almost Christmas but Binny, out last-minute shopping couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit.

The Marriage Manual: Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son’s Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage.

Christmas at the Airport: A glitch in the system, travellers stranded and all sorts of lives colliding in the face of a sudden birth...

The Boxing Day Ball: Maureen has never been out with the local girls before. Who knew that a disco in the Village Hall could be life-changing?

A Snow Garden: Two little boys, dumped with their divorced father for his share of the Christmas holidays and none of them with a clue how to enjoy it.

I'll Be Home for Christmas The most famous boy in the world comes home hoping to escape the madness with a normal family Christmas.

Trees: As if Christmas wasn't wearing enough, now his elderly parent is asking for a hole in the ground … Father and son break old habits and plant a tree to mark the start of the new year.

Six stories as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be.

 

 

Publication date: 5th November 2015

 

Book Beginnings on Fridays - The Watchers

Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Rose City Reader and as she says the idea of this meme is for you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name. There's a linky list on the website and you can use #BookBeginnings on Twitter.

 

This week my book beginning is The Watchers by Neil Spring. It's the follow up to his first novel The Ghost Hunters and you can read my review of that  here

 

Perhaps it was the prospect of meeting the new prime minister that accounted for his ashen expression; perhaps it was the weight of history which lay behind that famous black door. Whatever it was, the young man looked fearful. I might even go so far as to say tortured. 

 

 

 

Book Description:

1977
The Havens, Wales

My Name is Robert Wilding.

Since childhood I have been running from my parents' deaths. From my grandfather Randall Llewellyn Pritchard - his fanatical omens about fires in the sky. From what happened at Broad Haven.

But now my memories have returned to haunt me.

In the ministry of Defence Room 800 I met the man who keeps the nation's secrets - who wants me to investigate the sightings at Broad Haven: the ghostly figures, the lights from another world.

In know its is my duty to expose the truth behind 'the happenings', even if it will be dangerous. Even though I may not live to tell the tale.

I know it is my duty, but still I am afraid. I know the Watchers will be waiting for me there.  

Book Beginnings on Fridays - The Radleys

Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted by Rose City Reader and as she says the idea of this meme is for you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name. There's a linky list on the website and you can use #BookBeginnings on Twitter.

 

My book beginning is The Radleys by Matt Haig. It was in the Kindle daily deal offer yesterday and I started reading it this morning.

 

It is a quiet place, especially at night.

Too quiet, you'd be entitled to think, for any kind of monster to live among its pretty, tree-shaded lanes.  

 

  

 

Book Description:

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have--for seventeen years--been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking--and disturbingly satisfying--act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara's trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage.