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
I got two kindle eBooks this week and both were only £0.99 each.
The Railway Man's Wife by Ashley Hay
In a small town on the
land's edge, in the strange space at a war's end, a widow, a poet and a
doctor each try to find their own peace, and their own new story.
In
Thirroul, in 1948, people chase their dreams through the books in the
railway's library. Anikka Lachlan searches for solace after her life is
destroyed by a single random act. Roy McKinnon, who found poetry in the
mess of war, has lost his words and his hope. Frank McKinnon is trapped
by the guilt of those his treatment and care failed on their first day
of freedom. All three struggle with the same question: how now to be
alive.
Written in clear, shining prose and with an eloquent
understanding of the human heart, The Railwayman's Wife explores the
power of beginnings and endings, and how hard it can be sometimes to
tell them apart. It's a story of life, loss and what comes after; of
connection and separation, longing and acceptance. Most of all, it
celebrates love in all its forms, and the beauty of discovering that
loving someone can be as extraordinary as being loved yourself.
A story that will break your heart with hope.
The Silent Hours by Cesca Major
An epic, sweeping tale of love and loss inspired by heartrending true events in the Unoccupied Zone of wartime France.
The Silent Hours follows three people whose lives are bound together, before war tears them apart:
Adeline, a mute who takes refuge in a convent, haunted by memories of her past;
Sebastian, a young Jewish banker whose love for the beautiful Isabelle will change the course of his life dramatically;
Tristin, a nine-year-old boy, whose family moves from Paris to settle in a village that is seemingly untouched by war.
Beautifully wrought, utterly compelling and with a shocking true story
at its core, The Silent Hours is an unforgettable portrayal of love and
loss.
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 this week is The Fireman. At the time of writing this post I'm almost a third of a way into the book, I love apocalyptic fiction and I'm thoroughly enjoying the latest Joe Hill novel. My copy is an ARC from Netgalley and Orion Publishing and it's published in the UK on 7th June.
Harper Grayson had seen lots of people burn on TV, everyone had, but the first person she saw burn for real was in the playground behind the school.
Book Description
Nobody knew where the virus came from. FOX News said it had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s. MSNBC
said sources indicated it might've been created by engineers at
Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of
Revelation. CNN reported both sides. While every TV station debated the cause, the world burnt.
Pregnant
school nurse, HARPER GRAYSON, had seen lots of people burn on TV, but
the first person she saw burn for real was in the playground behind the
school. With the epic scope of THE PASSAGE and the emotional impact
of THE ROAD, this is one woman's story of survival at the end of the
world.
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 Secret To Not Drowning by Colette Snowden. I only heard about this book on Twitter the other day and have borrowed an ebook from Suffolk libraries, it's one of the books included in Brave New Reads and you can read about them all here
There are four people in the room but only one of them is me.
I am the only one flat on my back, legs in the air, knickers somewhere on the floor. I am the only one focusing only on the paper towels stacked in piles from the floor almost to the ceiling. Little green bundles, ready and waiting for all those doctors and nurses to wash their hands and dry them again afterwards.
Book Description:
How did a girl who once
dreamed of being a Charlie's Angel become such a cowed and submissive
woman? When a chance meeting at her once a week trip to the swimming
baths develops into a secret relationship she has the chance to become
the women she wanted to be but is it too late?
Hex was originally published in The Netherlands in 2013 but has just been released in the UK and US. It is set in a small, fictional place called Black Spring, but this is no normal American town. It is haunted by a woman from the seventeenth century whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut, she wanders the streets and can enter any home she chooses. Known to the residents as the Black Rock Witch they believe that if her stitches are cut open the entire population of Black Spring will die but a curse prevents any of them from leaving for more than a few days. Surveillance cameras are everywhere and the town is practically under quarantine.
At the beginning it was amusing to see how people dealt with her, she was hidden from outsiders by being disguised or covered up so the secret wouldn't get out. The story was far from light-hearted though and it was creepy when the witch (Katherine) was first introduced. The idea that she can suddenly appear in the corner of a room while you're doing normal, everyday things or by your bed while you're sleeping is
quite frankly terrifying. Hex didn't scare me all the way through but is original and different to anything other novel I've read before. Something that often disappoints me with horror fiction is how authors end a story, this wasn't the case with Hex though, I loved it.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Thanks to Bookbridgr and Hodder & Stoughton for my copy in return for an honest review.
Laura (Lo) Blacklock is a travel journalist given a chance to go on the maiden voyage of a luxury cruise ship. She's hoping the trip will do her good and help her recover from a break in at her flat where she came face to face with the burglar.
One night she's woken by noises coming from the cabin next door and is convinced she heard a body being dumped into the sea. Everyone tells her this isn't possible as no one is missing and the cabin has been empty, but if that's the case who was the woman who answered it's door to Lo and lent her a mascara?
The story started well and when the characters on the ship were introduced I was immediately trying to work out who could and couldn't be trusted. This has been compared in other reviews to Agatha Christie and I can see why. Unfortunately I began to lose interest towards the last part of the story, it felt rushed, as though the author had run out of ideas and wasn't sure how to finish and tie everything up. Lo was also making some annoying and at times perplexing decisions. You need to suspend belief for most crime thrillers to work but this went too far and I'm also not entirely sure what the very end was supposed to mean. Plenty will enjoy this quick and easy read though.
Thanks to Netgalley for a copy in return for an honest review.
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 from Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt which I only started reading yesterday.
Steve Grant rounded the corner of the parking lot behind Black Spring Market & Deli just in time to see Katherine van Wyler get run over by an antique Dutch barrel organ. For a minute he thought it was an optical illusion, because instead of being thrown back onto the street the woman melted into the wooden curlicues, feathered angel wings, and chrome-coloured organ pipes.
Book Description
Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.
Welcome
to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted
by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and
mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and
enters homes at will. She stands next to children's beds for nights on
end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often
forget she's there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches
are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.
The
curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have
used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with
being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break the strict
regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send
the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.
In a small town on the
land's edge, in the strange space at a war's end, a widow, a poet and a
doctor each try to find their own peace, and their own new story.
