Summary
The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a “good crop.”
Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that’s never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it.
For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever.
My Review
Recently I’ve really become hooked on Grisham so I decided to try this novel although I had heard it was in a style unlike any of his other books. The rumors were true but I still adored this story and hung on every moment of Luke Chandler’s life. A Painted House
follows a farming family through the course of just one summer. But the youngest character, Luke, just 7 years old experiences people from all walks of life: cotton farmers like his family, Mexican laborers, townspeople, churchgoers, Circus people, and more. It was great!
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Summary
They watched Danilo Silva for days before they finally grabbed him. He was living alone, a quiet life on a shady street in Brazil; a simple life in a modest home, certainly not one of luxury. Certainly no evidence of the fortune they thought he had stolen. He was much thinner and his face had been altered. He spoke a different language, and spoke it very well.But Danilo had a past with many chapters. Four years earlier he had been Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a prominent Biloxi law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Then one cold winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car and died a horrible death. When he was buried his casket held nothing more than his ashes.From a short distance away, Patrick watched his own burial. Then he fled. Six weeks later, a fortune was stolen from his ex-law firm’s offshore account. And Patrick fled some more.But they found him.
My Summary
Recently I went to a library book sale and filled a bag for $5! I managed to squeeze over 40 books into the bag and I just finished this one by John Grisham. It was slightly slower paced than the others that I’ve read by him but still very enjoyable. You’ll never guess how Patrick’s life turns out after all his scheming, evading, capture & release!
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Light on Snow
Summary
What makes a family? That’s what twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing, abandoned baby in the snow-filled woods near their New Hampshire home. Through the days that follow, the Dillons face a thicket of decisions, each seeming to carry equal possibilities of heartbreak or redemption.
Writing with all the emotional richness that has drawn millions of readers around the world to her fiction, Anita Shreve unfolds in Light on Snow a tender and surprising novel about love and its consequences.
My Summary
I enjoyed Shreve’s “The Pilot’s Wife” so much I decided to read another book by her. Light on Snow did not disappoint! Shreve was able to portray the inner struggles of each character involved in this unbelievable story of a father and daughter discovering an abandoned new born baby, coping with the loss of their family members years prior, the unexpected visit by the baby’s mother, and more … all amidst a Nor’Easter. I can’t wait to give another one of Shreve’s books a try.
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The Black Echo
Summary
For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch — hero, maverick, nighthawk — the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.
The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam “tunnel rat” who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horrors of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the tortuous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.
Joining with an enigmatic female FBI agent, pitted against enemies within his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.
My Review
I borrowed this book from my father-in-law and figured if he liked it I should give it a shot! Not only was the book way too long for the given plot but the author gave 3 or 4 characters the same first name for some bizarre reason. So it was a little confusing. And honestly, by the last third of the book it was easy to figure out who was actually involved. Sorry but I probably won’t be reading Michael Connelly novels in the future.
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Summary
Samantha Carlyle knows someone is watching her—someone who wants her dead. So she runs to the safety of her tiny Texas hometown, and to the sweet, haunting memories of John Thomas Knight. A dedicated small-town sheriff as tender as he is tough, John Thomas was Samantha’s best friend, her first love—and now he is her only chance. Fate has carried them down different roads, but the fire has never died—and the passion flares white-hot the moment their eyes meet again. But this time Samantha must trust the proud, strong, devastatingly handsome lawman with more than her heart—she must trust him with her life. Because there is another man who wants her, and he’s waiting for the right time to strike. And the next sweet, sensuous kiss she and John Thomas share could well be Samantha’s last.
My Review
I found “Deep in the Heart” on my grandmother’s old, dusty bookshelf and figured if she liked this author I might as well give it a try. Turned out this was a decent suspense novel and I’d be willing to read another book by Sala.
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Summary
Wifey is tired of chicken on Wednesdays and sex on Saturdays.
This morning the mysterious motorcycle flasher revealed himself to Wifey and brought her frustrations into rigid focus!
Wifey sees her wildest fantasies taking flight, and Wifey has an itchy–and uncontrollable–urge to catch up to them!
My Review
I found this book at a local library book sale and figured since I liked reading Judy Blume as a kid - why not try her again? This book was racey, realistic, and I recommend giving her a try as an adult.
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Summary
We begin - at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country - in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities - she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon.
Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa’s fiancé, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen - has summoned - to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life.
We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls “the big house on the corner,” which is soon populated with Clara’s spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban’s political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children: Blanca, a practical, self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman, and the twins, Jaime and Nicolás, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca’s daughter (the family does not recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban’s anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all.
For all their good fortune, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of “the big house on the corner” are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And, as the twentieth century beats on, as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism, as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate, as Alba falls in love with a student radical, the Truebas become actors - and victims - in a tragic series of events that gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and meaning.
My Review
My coworker recommended that I read this and after the first 30 pages I thought she was just trying to torture me. This was the first book since I’ve started this book blog that I couldn’t finish a novel I started. I found the author too long winded… paragraphs that were the length of entire pages without indentations. Maybe you could give it a try and let me know if you feel differently?
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