Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.

Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The May host is Marths’s Bookshelf.

This was a good week. I received several review books for upcoming tours, a contest win and an audiobook I’ve been looking forward to. I even received a book from Goodreads. I think that is the first book I’ve won from them in two years.

For review from HarperAudio:

The Shoemaker’s Wife
by Adriana Trigiani

A breathtaking multigenerational love story that spans two continents, two World Wars, and the quest of two star-crossed lovers to find each other again. The Shoemaker’s Wife is replete with the all the page-turning adventure, sumptuous detail, and heart-stopping romance that has made Adriana Trigiani one of the reigning queens of women’s fiction.

Two books for upcoming tours:

Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter

The story begins in 1962. Somewhere on a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea—blue as his eyes—and sees a vision: a slender blonde woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying. And it begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio’s back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel fifty years before.

Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
by Rachel Joyce

Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie–who is 600 miles away–because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die.

A win from Quirk Books:

Bedbugs: A Novel
by Ben H. Winters

Susan and Alex Wendt have found their dream apartment. Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric. But the rent is so low, it’s too good to pass up. Susan soon discovers that her new home is crawling with bedbugs . . . or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. An exterminator searches the property and turns up nothing. The landlady insists her building is clean. Susan fears she’s going mad — until a more sinister explanation presents itself: she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.

For review from Goodreads:

Redshirts
by John Scalzi

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting,and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn’t be better . . . until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Share what you read last week and what you are currently reading.

I only finished one audiobook last week and half of a print book.

I’m still looking through all those landscaping books from the library that I mentioned last week and wandering around the garden centers looking at plants for the new perennial garden. This is going to be a lot more work than I originally planned on doing, but that seems to be the way most home improvement projects end up.

Finished Listening/Reading Last Week:

I finished and reviewed The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark.

After a few hours of listening I gave up on All I Did Was Shoot My Man. I just couldn’t stay interested and my mind kept wandering.
 
 

Reading/Listening This Week:

I’m reading a little of The Secret Garden each week this month for the read-a-long hosted by Book Journey.

I’m half way through Year of the Gadfly for an upcoming tour and I’m listening to The Shoemaker’s Wife.

What Are You Reading?

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