Peeking Between the Pages

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Friday Finds

Friday Finds (Dec 23)

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.

 

My pick is a novel I found while browsing through Fantastic Fiction the other day.  It’s called The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey set to release on February 1, 2012 and it sounds really good.  Here’s a bit about it from Fantastic Fiction…

 

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone–but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

 

Doesn’t this sound great!  I hope I get a chance to read it.  What about you?  What did you find this week that you’d like to read?

Friday Finds (Oct 6) & A Good Reason to Read a Book

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.  I haven’t done a Friday Finds in ages because of the blog being so busy but when it isn’t I really love to showcase a book I want to read.

This past week I was contacted by an author, Grace Conti, to read her new book Through an Icon’s Eyes.  As I normally do I headed over to Amazon to check it out and it sounds fantastic so, of course I wanted to read it.  As I neared the end the author had a note that all proceeds from the sale of her eBook (Kindle – US, UK, Germany) was to go to Breast Cancer Research.  All who read my blog know how passionate I am about this issue – I’ve lost many family members including my favorite auntie and one of my best friends to breast cancer.  So what did I do?  Well I zipped to the top of the page and bought the eBook to do my little part as well.  What I’m hoping this week is that those of you with Kindles will go and buy Grace’s eBook, not only to read a good book (my review will be coming soon) but to support breast cancer research – something that is very near to many of us unfortunately…

 

About Through an Icon’s Eyes by Grace Conti

Set in 1440s London, Italy and Greece against a turbulent political background enflamed by religious divisions, the unfolding narrative of Benedict Paston and Annie Carter’s relationship encompass memories of heresy, murder, loss and betrayal.
Benedict an erstwhile sundial maker, is lost to the world. His self-imposed exile, both emotional and physical, in a remote Greek monastery is relieved only by the task of painting an icon under the monks’ instruction. Their hope: to save his tortured soul. As the hours of devotion mark the progress of one day in his monastic cell, an escape from Benedict’s self-destructive isolation is brokered by the image of Mary Magdalene, guiding him back to his previous life and a new understanding of the events that have led him to Greece.
Annie, a young widow beset by visions and facing death, finds that she too has an unusual guide and confessor as the light and shadows mark the progress of an English day in a very different cell …..

Visit Grace’s website
Find Grace on Facebook

Buy at Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, Amazon.de

 

Ok, this sounds really good, doesn’t it?  This novel is definitely one that appeals to me and I hope to start it this weekend.  Anyhow, again I hope that you too will help to support this author, not only for her writing, but also her generosity in donating the proceeds from her book, Through an Icon’s Eyes,  to such a worthwhile cause.  Thanks everyone!

Friday Finds (May 6)

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.


My pick this week is Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares releasing on June 14/11. I’ve read all the Sisterhood books and loved them so I’m really looking forward to revisiting the girls ten years later. Here’s a description of the book from Fantastic Fiction…

Return to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . . . ten years later

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Brashares comes the welcome return of the characters whose friendship became a touchstone for a generation. Now Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting.

Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness.

Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever – but in ways that none of them could ever have expected.

As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one.

It sounds fantastic! For me, reading a series from the beginning makes this book a little like a visit with friends and I’m looking forward to it. How about you – did you find anything good this wee that you’d love to read? Share in the comments or leave me a link to your post. Have a great day everyone!

© 2010, Darlene of Peeking Between the Pages. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Peeking Between the Pages or Darlene’s Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

Friday Finds (August 27)

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.

My pick this week is a book called The Virgin Cure by Ami Mckay not releasing until Oct 2011 by Knopf Canada but I was way too excited to post about it to wait until then. Have any of you read The Birth House by Ami Mckay? Well it is one fantastic novel that is very well worth reading so needless to say when I saw that Ami McKay had a new one coming out I was very excited. Here’s some info on it from Amazon.ca:


The much-anticipated follow-up to the phenomenon that is The Birth House, The Virgin Cure secures Ami McKay’s place as one of our most beguiling storytellers.
“I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.” So begins The Virgin Cure, a novel set in Victorian New York in the year 1871. As a crowded, sweltering summer of riots and poverty comes to a close, twelve-year-old Moth’s journey is just beginning.

Sold away by her mother, Moth is befriended by a young pickpocket named Torch Boy. He introduces her to the formidable Marm Birnbaum, matron of the leading pickpocketing ring of the Lower East Side. There, under the guidance of a female thief named Kid Glove Lena, Moth is given lessons in survival, loyalty and, surprisingly, the art of melodramatic “blood-and-thunder” theatre.

Moth soon learns that life as one of Marm’s girls is filled with unexpected dangers. After witnessing a violent crime involving a little girl, Moth is taken into the care of Dr. Sadie Fonda, a physician at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Moth’s confessions about that night confirm what the young doctor has suspected all along, that there is a dark secret haunting the young women of the city — the myth of the virgin cure.

Determined to expose the myth, Sadie unknowingly puts herself in harm’s way, leaving Moth to travel down a twisted, strange and dangerous path, alone. From a dime museum of anatomical wonders, to a dance hall populated by child prostitutes, to an apothecary shop where a magical pear tree once stood, Moth must rely on the lessons she learns from both Sadie and the streets to make things right.

The Virgin Cure is a tale of secrets and truths, of dark myths and magic of the heart — of one woman’s fight to be heard, and one girl’s desire to be loved.

I’m very excited! Yet I obviously have a very long time until it is published but she’s an amazing writer so I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait. How about you – did you find anything that you’re over the top excited about this week? Leave me your link or share in the comments.

© 2010, Darlene of Peeking Between the Pages. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Peeking Between the Pages or Darlene’s Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

Friday Finds (August 20)

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.

My pick this week is a book called The Convent by Panos Karnezis to be released November 8, 2010 by W.W. Norton & Company. With my fascination of convents this one sounds right up my alley. Take a look at a bit about it from Fantastic Fiction…

The crumbling convent of Our Lady of Mercy stands alone in an uninhabited part of the Spanish sierra, hidden on a hill among dense forest. Its inhabitants are devoted to God, to solitude and silence – six women cut off from a world they’ve chosen to leave behind. This all changes on the day that Mother Superior Maria Ines discovers a suitcase punctured with air holes at the entrance to the retreat: a baby, abandoned to its fate. Is it a miracle? Soon she will find that the baby’s arrival has consequences beyond her imagining, and that even in her carefully protected sanctuary she is unable to keep the world, or her past, at bay.

In this beautifully told novel, “we witness justice and injustice, theological controversy, the politics of a tiny enclosed society, despair, cruelty, generosity, scandal, suspicion and suicide, all told with immense verve and skill” (London Sunday Times).

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Convent life, for some reason, is really interesting reading for me. I’d be curious to see how this story evolves. How about you – are you waiting for anything this week? Leave your link or share in the comments. I can always use more book suggestions. lol. Have a great day everyone!

© 2010, Darlene of Peeking Between the Pages. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Peeking Between the Pages or Darlene’s Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

Friday Finds (August 6)

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Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week.


My pick this week is a novel I found while browsing through Fantastic Fiction. It’s called The Boat House by Pamela Oldfield releasing October 1, 2010 by Severn House Publishers. Here’s a bit about it from Fantastic Fiction…

A gripping murder mystery set in Henley-on-Thames – 1912, Henley-on-Thames. Twenty-four-year old Marianne Lefevre is pleased to be taken on as a governess in the affluent Matlowe household. The young twins Emmie and Edie are bright and friendly, even if their grandmother, Georgina Matlowe, is a forbidding presence – and the whereabouts of the girls’ parents seems to be a closely-guarded secret. But Marianne soon grows concerned. Why are the children forbidden to go near the boat house at the end of the garden? Who is the ‘ghost’ they claim to have seen lurking there? And what really happened to their parents . . .?

Does this not sound great! Of course anything that involves a ghost is usually my cup of tea and this one does sound a bit creepy. How about you – did you find anything that caught your attention this week?