Happy Tuesday! Today TTT bloggers are posting random books from our shelves — either physical or digital. Sharing from either is really going to expose my lack of timely reading. đ My Kindle, physical shelves, and NetGalley shelf are filled with hopes and dreams — hope that I will finally choose a book and dreams of having all the time in the world to read! Sad for so many reasons. But I will play along anyway. I chose to go the physical book route — have you read any on my list? Tell me which should head to the top of the TBR pile.
For more random book goodness, please visit That Artsy Reader Girl.
10 Random Books from My Book Shelves
The Cairo Brief by Fiona Veitch Smith
Code of Valor by Lynette Eason
Version 1.0.0
Every Hour Until Then by Gabrielle Meyer
A Gardin Wedding by Rosey Lee
The Secret Book of Flora Lee by Patty Callahan Henry
Happy Tuesday! Spring has definitely sprung around my house. The azaleas are in full bloom now and the dogwoods are showing off. Our blueberry bushes are full of blossoms and seem to have escaped any late frosts! Yay! Along with the beauty outside my windows, I’ve got some book beauties on the shelf. Today’s TTT topic is Spring-yBook Covers. The covers are lightening my mood and adding some really pretty granny squares to my 2025 book blanket project. Find new releases and oldies — I have a bountiful mix on my shelves — below.
I had a fun time with a good friend at a book event at the Atlanta History Center earlier in the week. Fellow authors and friends Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, and Kristi Woodson Harvey helped celebrate Patti Callahan Henry‘s newest book, The Story She Left Behind, with a Friends and Fiction Live! And I snagged a signed copy! If you have never attended any type of book event, you really need to search one out. Great, great fun.
Here’s the first line of Henry’s book:
It is two o’clock in the morning when she leaves everyone she loves.
In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harringtonâs magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.
By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her motherâs lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her motherâs vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of Londonâs most deadly natural disastersâthe Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jamesonâs family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.
Told in Patti Callahan Henryâs lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling novelist of fifteen novels, including the historical fiction (writing as Patti Callahan) BECOMING MRS. LEWISâThe Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. In addition, she is the recipient of The Christy AwardâA 2019 Winner “Book of the Year.â, The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020, the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019, and the RNA UK finalist for Romantic Historical Fiction.
She is also the co-founder of the Facebook weekly show Friends and Fiction.
Happy Tuesday! How is it already Spring? Now, I am not complaining. The winter here in the Sunny South was cold by our standards. But how has the time gone so quickly!? While my reading isn’t as quick as it used to be, I am steadily making progress on my TBR list. TTT helps me get it in line too. So here’s my Spring TBR, a mix of review books, book club selections, and just because. Wish me luck! đ
Happy Tuesday! I had a hard time getting into today’s TTT topic — Books I Read/Avoided Because of the Hype. So I decided to go off on a tangent and list books whose covers made me buy them. I am a sucker for a great cover. And I don’t seem to have a type that catches my eye either, although 4 on my list include children. But all the books languish on the TBR shelves. Clearly I have a problem with buying, then not reading books. I buy books as though I will live until I am 538. LOL! Let me know if you have read any, and if so, which I should begin immediately.
For all the hype, visit That Artsy Reader Girl.
The Covers Made Me Buy Them
Catching The Wind by Melanie Dobson
The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin
The Constantine Conspiracy by Gary E. Parker
The Good Dream by Donna VanLiere
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict
Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson
Remember Me by Mario Escobar
The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade
The Rose And The Thistle by Laura Frantz
The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry
Happy Tuesday! Today bloggers are tasked with coming up with favorite relationships. I have focused on sisters and on brothers before, but I don’t think I ever created a list of books that explore mother/daughter dynamics. Whether featuring the good, the bad, or the ugly, it’s almost always plenty complicated! There are positives as well, especially in terms of forgiveness and redemption. I hope you like my list.
Happy Tuesday! Today’s TTT is Water. Bloggers could choose titles or covers depicting water. I could have gone with places you find water — lakes, creeks, rivers, oceans, bays, waves, rain . . . even tears, but I chose to stick to plain old water(s) in the title. I was amazed at how quickly I compiled 10 titles. All but one of the novels has water on its cover too! Win-win! The books chosen represent a variety of genres, so there should be one you like.
My book club chose The Bookshop at Water’s End by Patti Callahan Henry as a recovery read following our discussion of a particularly difficult and emotional novel. It looked like a fun summer-y read featuring our favorite — a bookstore. It is summer-y, since its setting is a vacation home — the River House as it is known to those who spent summers there. This Southern women’s fiction explores mother-daughter relationships, dreams both fulfilled and unfulfilled, and romantic relationships within and outside marriage. The opinions on this book were mixed — some loved it, others said it was okay, while I am in the really didn’t enjoy it camp. For those who have read Surviving Savannah or Becoming Mrs. Lewis, this book is a departure from faith-based themes. Henry’s writing style is easy and her descriptions of emotions are beautiful. I just didn’t care very much for any of the characters. Was it my mood? I don’t really know. I just found them tiring. đ I also didn’t care for the adult language and situations used and described. It has an overwhelming favorable rating on Amazon, so you need to judge it for yourself.
(I purchased the Kindle version of this novel from Amazon. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it… Â Bonny Blankenshipâs most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Laineyâs mother disappeared.
Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times, Globe and Mail, and USA Today bestselling author of seventeen novels, including her newest, The Secret Book of Flora Lea. Sheâs also a podcast host of original content for her novels, Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis.
âShe is the recipient of The Christy Award âBook of the Yearâ; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the co-host and co-creator of the popular weekly online Friends and Fiction live web show and podcast. Patti also was a contributor to the monthly life lesson essay column for Parade Magazine. Sheâs published in numerous anthologies, articles, and short story collections, including an Audible Original about Florence Nightingale, titled Wild Swan narrated by the Tony Award winner, Cynthia Erivo.Â
âA full-time author, mother of three, and grandmother of two, she lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama with her husband, Pat Henry.
Happy Friday! After a very hard read, my book club wanted a recovery book for its next selection. We chose The Book Shop At Water’s End by Patti Callahan Henry. Early reports is that it’s good.
Do you ever need a recovery read following an especially emotional or difficult book?
Here’s the first line:
We are defined by the moods and whims of a wild tidal river surrounding our small town, cradling us in its curved basin.
The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it…
Bonny Blankenshipâs most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Laineyâs mother disappeared.
Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
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