A nice mix of historical, contempary, fantasy and mystery.
July 1
Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn
Goodreads Description;
A daughter pulled between two worlds and a mother willing destroy both to protect her…
Gods and men wage their petty wars, but it is the women of spring who will have the last word…
Demeter did not always live in fear. Once, the goddess of spring loved the world and the humans who inhabited it. After a devastating assault, though, she becomes a shell of herself. Her only solace is her daughter, Persephone.
A balm to her mother’s pain, Persephone grows among wildflowers, never leaving the sanctuary Demeter built for them. But she aches to explore the mortal world–to gain her own experiences. Naïve but determined, she secretly builds a life of her own under her mother’s watchful gaze. But as she does so, she catches the eye of Hades, and is kidnapped…
Forced into a role she never wanted, Persephone learns that power suits her. In the land of the living, though, Demeter is willing to destroy the humans she once held dear–anything to protect her family. A mother who has lost everything and a daughter with more to gain than she ever realized, their story will irrevocably shape the world.
I gave the first book I read by Hannah Lynn three stars. I knew I had to give her another try when I read this description.
July 2
The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan
Goodreads description;
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.
Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.
Goodreads had an article with recommendations for books set in each state. That prompted me to look at books I’ve read from different states. Maine was one of the states I was surprised I didn’t have more from.
July 9
The Briar Club by Kate QuinnGoodreads description:
Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?
Kate Quinn has never disappointed me. This sounds like another winner.
The Sawmill Book Club by Carolyn Brown
Goodreads Description:
A restless woman discovers the comforts of small-town Texas—and more—in a bighearted novel about the next chapters in life by New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.
Unsure of the future but ready for risks, Libby O’Dell trades big-city life for whatever the back roads hold. In this case it’s the small community of Sawmill, Texas, where Libby’s taken a temporary job putting an antique store in order. Her new boss, Benny Taylor, a handsome charmer with a three-legged dog named Elvis, isn’t a bad change of scenery, either.
Across the street Benny’s surrogate grandmothers—the widows Minilee and Opal—are ready with homemade corn bread, sweet tea, and an invitation for Libby to join their book club. Even if it is mostly a gathering for local gossip and meddling. The ladies’ main agenda: find Benny a wife. Except Benny’s not looking, and Libby’s only passing through until she decides what direction she’s headed next.
Truth is, Sawmill is starting to feel pretty nice. Benny, even nicer. Time will tell if this meantime job in a stopover town is just what Libby’s been looking for—and where she belongs.
Brown’s Cadillac Texas series is so much fun and this seems like a similar vibe.
July 16
Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
Goodreads Synopsis
Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.
Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.
On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past, and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.
I love the world Harkness has created in this series and I’m excited to return to it.
July 23
The Haunting of Hecate Cavendish by Paula Brackston
Goodreads description;
New York Times bestselling author Paula Brackston returns with a new, magic-infused series about Hecate Cavendish, an eccentric and feisty young woman who can see ghostsEngland, 1881. Hereford cathedral stands sentinel over the city, keeping its secrets, holding long forgotten souls in its stony embrace. Hecate Cavendish speeds through the cobbled streets on her bicycle, skirts hitched daringly high, heading for her new life as Assistant Librarian. But this is no ordinary collection of books. The cathedral houses an ancient chained library, wisdom guarded for centuries, mysteries and stories locked onto its worn, humble shelves. The most prized artifact, however, is the medieval world map which hangs next to Hecate’s desk. Little does she know how much the curious people and mythical creatures depicted on it will come to mean to her. Nor does she suspect that there are lost souls waiting for her in the haunted cathedral. Some will become her dearest friends. Some will seek her help in finding peace. Others will put her in great peril, and, as she quickly learns, threaten the lives of everyone she loves
This sounds like a fascinating series. I love stories of librarians/bookstore owners who get dragged into intriquing situations.
July 30
Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight
Goodreads Description:
A daughter races to uncover her mother’s secret life in the wake of her disappearance in this thriller.
When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.
But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.
Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . .
Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.
I like that even though this is a thriller, it seems like the focus will be on secrets and family relationships versus violence,
Maria by Michelle Moran
Goodreads Description:
In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. What should have been a ten-month assignment, however, unexpectedly turned into a marriage proposal. And when the family was forced to flee their home to escape the Nazis, it was Maria who instructed them on how to survive using nothing but the power of their voices.
It’s an inspirational story, to be sure, and as half of the famous Rodgers & Hammerstein duo, Hammerstein knows it has big Broadway potential. Yet much of Maria’s life will have to be reinvented for the stage, and with the horrors of war still fresh in people’s minds, Hammerstein can’t let audiences see just how close the von Trapps came to losing their lives.
But when Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he’s busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary, Fran, instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life, contradicting much of what will eventually appear in The Sound of Music.
A tale of love, loss, and the difficult choices that we are often forced to make, Maria is a powerful reminder that the truth is usually more complicated—and certainly more compelling—than the stories immortalized by Hollywood.
Every time I watch The Sound of Music, I wonder how much is fictionalized. Obviously, this is fiction as well, but it should be an interesting insight to the real woman.