Friday Finds – July 31, 2015

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jenn of A Daily Rhythm to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

My Finds for the month of July include a modern classic, a non-fiction and four series mysteries. A nice haul!

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Justine
(Book One of the Alexandria Quartet)
by Laurence Durrell

I’ve known about and considered reading the Alexandra Quartet for a number of years. When I saw it on Fred’s Desert Island list earlier this month, I knew the time had come. Thanks, Fred!

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Places
The Journey of My Days, My Lives
by Thaao Penghlis

Having enjoyed watching Thaao Penghlis on General Hospital and Days of Our Lives, I’ve been looking forward to the paperback publication of Places. Thaao Penghlis has also been in a number of movies, including portraying a fascinating character in one of my favorite movies, Altered States.

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Now for the series mysteries:

The Blood of an Englishman (Agatha Raisin #25) by M C Beaton – a tried and true series for me which I have been following for years.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas (Royal Spyness #6) and Heirs and Graces (Royal Spyness #7) by Rhys Bowen – a new series I put off reading, finally tried thanks to Selah at A Bibliophile’s Style and now love.

Dead Water (Benjamin January #8) by Barbara Hambly – I first heard of Barbara Hambly through her Star Trek novels and am now hooked on her historical mystery series set in New Orleans.

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Share your Finds with us! We’d love to know if you found anything exciting this week.

Friday Finds – January 16, 2015

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

My total finds for the last couple of week are seven library books and three thrift shop books. Yep, I am already falling behind for this year.

I’ve already finished Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris. It is the fifth book in her Sookie Stackhouse series and each book appeals to me more. Yes, I am hooked on this series.

I’m currently reading The Kraken Project by Douglas Preston. More on that Tuesday.

 One of the books I’m most looking forward to is The Street Lawyer by John Grisham, although I don’t know when I’ll be able to actually get around to reading it. I hadn’t read much (if anything) in the way of legal thrillers until Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. It is the first in Connelly’s Mickey Haller series. I was going to skip them until discovering that Harry Bosch shows up in the next two books. I found The Lincoln Lawyer absolutely riveting and decided I might actually enjoy legal thrillers. Who better to sample than the master John Grisham.

The only other item of particular note is The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber. It is the first of her Rose Harbor series. Back at home, I found out this is a spin-off of her Cedar Cove series, so this book will go in storage for a while. I haven’t read the Cedar Cove books, but love the television series. My local library has the entire Cedar Cove series so I’ll try them as soon as time permits.

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Any exciting finds for you this week? Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – December 26, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

Eleven books made it into my home this month. The one I am most excited about is non-fiction (an unusual occurrence for me).

The River of Doubt
Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
by Candice Millard

Cover blurb:

The River of Doubt–it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world.

. . . . . Theodore Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the Western Hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks.

Theodore Roosevelt’s own account of this journey in Through the Brazilian Wilderness is available free from Project Gutenberg.

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The other ten books are all series mysteries:

Sold Down the River by Barbara Hambly (Benjamin January #4)
Die Upon a Kiss by Barbara Hambly (Benjamin January #5)
Wet Grave by Barbara Hambly (Benjamin January #6)

The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone #24)
Locked In by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone #26)
Coming Back by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone #27)

Breakdown by Sara Paretsky (V.I. Warshawski #15)
Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky (V.I. Warshawski #16)

Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody #18)
A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody #19)

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Tempt us with your Friday Finds! Miz B is on a holiday break, but you can  leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post below. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – November 28, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

My Friday Finds this time are the books I purchased during November.

This was one of the first mystery series I started reading back in the 80s. A couple of moves and being busy in general caused a lapse. These are the next two up for me:
Dead Midnight (2002) by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone #21)
The Dangerous Hour (2004) by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone #22)

One of the few mystery series with which I’m up to date:
Death of a Policeman (2014) by M. C. Beaton (Hamish Macbeth #30)

This is a new mystery series for me!
The Vanishing Thief (2013) by Kate Parker (Victorian Bookshop Mystery #1)

That’s the mystery series, now the others:
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

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Share your Friday Finds with us! Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your Finds as a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week or this month.

Friday Finds – October 10, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

I stopped at the library of a neighboring town and found two books in their sale room.

The Rescue
by Nicholas Sparks

Although I’ve long heard of Nicholas Sparks, surprisingly I haven’t yet read one of his books.

Too Many Murders
by Colleen McCullough

This is book #2 of McCullough’s Carmine Delmonico series. I may have vaguely heard of these but had forgotten about them. I almost didn’t buy this one but it is set in 1967 and I’m a sucker for the sixties. The $1 price will give me the opportunity to see if I like this series enough to add it to my long list of series mysteries that are must reads.

Share your Friday Finds with us! Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – September 26, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

I only have one find to report this week. It’s a short story and can be read free at Literary Fictions, another WordPress blog.

Miriam by Truman Capote

Miriam was suggested as a group read by Cheryl at the Nutshell Cubbyhole. The discussion begins today for one week. Everyone interested is welcome to join. We’d love to have you.

Share your Friday Finds with us! Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – September 12, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

I have two this week and, luckily for my budget, both are library books.

A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett is a no-brainer for me since I’ve long been a fan of his music.

I am more ambivalent about Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1) by Charlaine Harris. These are the books on which the HBO series True Blood is based. I overdosed on vampire stories during the 90s and so many of the newer ones simply don’t catch my interest. When Hannah featured the tenth book, Dead in the Family, in one of her Teaser Tuesdays earlier this month, I noticed the author’s name. I had enjoyed Harris’ Aurora Teagarden series earlier, so it wouldn’t be like trying a new author. Then I discovered my local library has them and decided to start with the first one and see how it goes.

Are you a fan of Jimmy Buffett and his music? Have you read any of the Sookie Stackhouse series? Please share your Friday Finds with us! Just leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. Or you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – August 15, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

 

 
I am very excited about my finds this week. I spotted the first book on the Cozy Crimes poll at Goodreads.

 

Amanda Albright Still:
1. Echoes of the Storm
2. Brides of the Storm
3. Secrets of the Storm

 

The Galveston Hurricane Mysteries feature female attorney Dash Gallagher and are set in the aftermath of the devastating hurricane which hit Galveston in 1900 killing several thousand people. This caught my eye because I have vacationed in Galveston and read about the hurricane. In researching whether or not these books would interest me, I learned that the author died earlier this year.

 

Please share your Friday Finds with us! It’s easy. Just leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – August 8, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

 

This book was brought to my attention a few weeks ago when Mike nominated it as a group read at the Yahoo French Literature group and arrived earlier this week. The read and discussion will take place in October. Anyone interested is welcome to join us. We’d love to have you.

The Life Before Us
(La Vie devant soi)
by Romain Gary
Translated by Ralph Manheim

I was unable to find a cover image for the particular edition I have, so chose another by the same translator.

Several readers I know are fans of Romain Gary’s books. Emma at Book Around The Corner has a page devoted to him. She wrote the following of the next book: “Back in February, when I prepared the fourth Wednesday with Romain Gary post, I felt the urge to reread Lady L and I wasn’t disappointed.” This persuaded me to add Lady L to my book order.

Lady L
by Romain Gary

This book was originally written in English which confused me until reading at Emma’s site that Gary’s first wife was British writer Lesley Blanch.

Both these books have been made into movies. La Vie devant soi, which won the Prix Goncourt the year it was published, was made into a movie titled Madame Rosa starring Simone Signoret. The movie of Lady L retained the book title and starred Sophia Loren, Paul Newman and David Niven.

Did you make any fabulous discoveries this week? Share your Friday Finds with us! Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Friday Finds – August 1, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything works.

 

My find this week was recommended to me by Wanda. It will be a group read at 19thCenturyLit beginning October 12. Everyone is invited to participate.

The Cloister and the Hearth
by Charles Reade

A beautifully illustrated edition can be downloaded free at Project Gutenberg.

Share your Friday Finds with us! Please leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. If you don’t have a blog, you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.