The Sea of Tranquility and The Fort

I love a good YA novel and this one fit the bill. Nastya has just moved in with her aunt and is attending a new school. Something really horrible happened in her hometown and she's hoping dressing like a hooker and being mean will keep everyone away from her by not talking. She doesn't want any involvement with people and hates everyone....except Josh, who is also a loner. The two strike up an unusual friendship that helps them both recover from traumatic events in their lives.

If I were still teaching, I'd definitely recommend this one to my students.



This is another YA novel that reads like an adult book. It involves three twelve-year-olds who witness an abduction. No one believes them, though, so they must try to find the missing girl by themselves. The boys are believable, the parents, too. I really liked it!

And the Mountains Echoed

I eagerly awaited this new novel. I used to teach The Kite Runner to my World Literature students and I've always loved his writing.

And the writing in this novel is good! I love how he manages to make the bleak landscape of Afghanistan sound beautiful. His love of that country shines through.

I'm not sure about the format, though. I was all into the characters when, poof, they were gone and new characters took their place. They are all loosely connected but....very loosely! It was like beginning a whole new novel.

Of his three books, this is my least favorite.

Skeletons at the Feast

I've read a couple other books by Chris Bohjalian and liked them so thought I'd give this one a try. It's a departure for him from his more modern settings. This one traces the plight of four different characters as they try to escape the onslaught of the Russians at the end of WWII.

Anna Emmerich is 18 when she and her family must abandon their beautiful estate to head west to stay ahead of the Russians.

With them is Callum Finella, a Scottish POW who had been sent to help on their farm. They hide him in their wagon. He's also Anna'a lover.

Uri Singer and his family were rounded up by the Germans and shipped like cattle to concentration camps. On the train, Uri sees an opportunity to escape and takes it. He survives by killing Germans and then impersonating them. Now, he, too, is fleeing west from the Russians.

Cecile is a French girl trying to survive in a concentration camp with only her positive attitude and hope to help her. As the Russians near the camp, the guards are ordered to burn it and force the women to march westward.

It's a harrowing book. It's a horrible book. It's a novel but is based on an actual diary so the atrocious incidents are believable. I couldn't put it down!

The Buddha in the Attic

My friend was reading this little book when she visited about a month ago. She'd just started it and was liking it okay. So, I decided to download it and read it, too. I mentioned it to her in a Words With Friends message and she answered that she hated the ending.

Well, I did, too!

I won't give it away, though.

The book is about the plight of Japanese brides who were purchased by Japanese Americans, married through the mail, and brought over here.

The weird thing about this novel, though, is there is no main character. The book is written in the first person plural so we get a broad picture of what the experience was like for these young brides.

All I can say is I'm glad it was short!

Playing Catch Up, Again

I really wanted to like this book and at first I did but the further I got into it, the less and less I enjoyed it. It's reminiscent of Stephen King's writing but the main character just isn't lovable enough for me.

I can't remember her name but she has the ability to find lost things by riding her bike across this bridge. As the years go by, she ends up having to find a child who has been abducted by a nut case and taken to Christmasland in his old luxury car with the license plate: NOS4A2.

That's as far as I got....maybe someday I'll finish it...maybe not.



So, I needed something totally different and this fit the bill. I gulped it! Avery Daniels is in an airplane crash. When she wakes up, she's so injured that she can't speak or even move. A man is in her room calling her Carole. She has no way of communicating to him that she isn't his wife.

That night someone sneaks into her room and warns her not to change their plans which include her "husband's" death.

Plastic surgery is performed on her shattered face and she ends up looking just like Carole. By the time she can communicate the mistake, she decides not to, to try to protect her own life as well as that of her "husband."

Corny? Yes. Medically possible? Unlikely. Entertaining? Absolutely!



How could I resist a book with this title? No way! Peter Byerly is mourning the death of his young wife by secluding himself in the cottage they'd purchased in the English countryside. He's an antique book seller and can't resist visiting the old book shop in his village. There he finds, in between the pages of a book, a painting of his wife...but, it was painted in the 1800s.

And, thus begins his search for the artist and his subject. It will take him all the way back to William Shakespeare and solve the question of who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

I was expecting this book to be stuffy but no way! I raced through it!



Yes, another James Patterson novel! His books are just so readable with nonstop action and heart.

John O'Hara, suspended FBI agent, is asked to look into the deaths of two honeymooners. Soon more honeymooners turn up dead.

Sarah Brubaker, another FBI agent, is asked to investigate a murder spree. The murderer is killing only men by the name of John O'Hara.

John and Sarah join forces to solve these two mysteries.

I laughed, I cried, I read it in one day.

Don't Go

This was a quick read for the plane ride back to Maine for the summer. It made the flight zip by!

Mike Scanlon is a doctor serving in Afghanistan when he gets news that his wife has died from an accidental fall in the kitchen. He returns home to try to make sense of his life. He has an eight-month old daughter to care for and questions about his wife's death and life.

I found the picture on the cover to be a bit misleading since his daughter is just an infant and she hates him because she was only one month old when he got deployed.

But, I still enjoyed the book and was happy to have it to keep me company on the plane ride.

Beautiful Ruins

I was attracted to this novel because of the cover. I recognized the picture right away. It's part of the Le Cinque Terre coastline. The day we visited that area in Italy last summer was my favorite day. It's absolutely gorgeous!












And, the novel was not a disappointment. It's quirky and romantic, and wonderfully written with surprises all the way through.

It's 1962. Pasquale Tursi runs a small hotel in Porto Vergonga. One day a beautiful American actress, Dee Moray, arrives. She's dying and is here to meet her lover. Pasquale falls head long for her. How she affects his life makes for a wonderful story.

It jumps around from the past to the present. Some of it is told through others' eyes, a play, chapters in books, and a movie pitch. It's never boring and the characters, especially Pasquale and Dee, are human and lovable.

Now, I want to read his other books!