WHEN THE MOON IS LOW (JULY 2015)

Following the success of her internationally bestselling debut novel, THE PEARL THAT BROKE ITS SHELL, Nadia Hashimi returns with WHEN THE MOON IS LOW. Set in Kabul during the Taliban’s rise to power, this sophomore effort introduces readers to a happy, middle class man, Mahmoud, and his wife, Fereiba. 

THE PEARL THAT BROKE ITS SHELL was one of my favorite books for 2015. This new one has all the elements of being equally as powerful. Read what Bookreporter.com had to say.

WHEN THE MOON IS LOW by Nadia Hashimi 

Mahmoud's passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she's ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power. 

Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister's family in England.

GOOD ONE FROM GOODREADS (JULY 2015)

This is a recommendation for history buffs or wanna-be buffs. Intriguing and loaded with details, Philippa Gregory does her usual job of combining suspense and intrigue in this intimate portrayal of Henry VIII's sixth queen. If you liked Wolf Hall, this is a no-brainier. 

The Taming of The Queen Kateryn Parr, a thirty-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when King Henry VIII commands her to marry him—despite the fact that he is old enough to be her father and has already buried four wives Kateryn has no doubt about the danger she faces: Henry’s previous queen lasted sixteen months, the one before barely half a year. But the king adores his new bride and Kateryn’s trust in him grows. But is this enough to keep her safe? "Full of vivid details and fraught with the constant tension of a court run by a madman, this novel will appeal most to historical fiction readers and those who enjoyed Wolf Hall." —Library Journal

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME (July 2015)

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the National Correspondent for the Atlantic.com. His new book is a 155 page letter to his teenaged son. He writes "Here is what I would like you to know.  In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body-it is heritage." This is a powerful book, not just about race...but a thoughtful, evocative story.....not a beach read, for sure!!!

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Memoir)
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men --- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his son.

(Bookreporter.com)

READ IT OR NOT...JULY 2015

GO SET A WATCHMAN by Harper Lee (Fiction)
Originally written in the mid-1950s, GO SET A WATCHMAN was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. GO SET A WATCHMAN features many of the characters from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD some 20 years later. Returning home to Maycomb to visit her father, Jean Louise Finch --- Scout --- struggles with issues both personal and political, involving Atticus, society, and the small Alabama town that shaped her.

So much controversy over this novel...Reviews have been mixed, readers are confused and  disillusioned!! What to do???

According to Bookreporter.com, it's definitely worth reading. Let me know...

LOVERS ON ALL SAINTS DAY (JULY 2015)

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, the Columbian writer, best known for his novel THE SOUND OF THINGS FALLING has a new release. It's a collection of brilliantly told short stories with ageless themes and memorable characters. Readers remarked that Vasquez can capture a scene or an emotion with just a few well-chosen phrases....Publishers Weekly commented below....

Lovers on All Saints' Day by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean 

These stories from Vasquez (The Sound of Things Falling) were originally published in Spanish, in 2001, when the Colombian author was in self-imposed exile in Europe and aghast at how “fate or fluke is the name we give to events beyond our control that lay waste to our soaring dreams.” A number of Vasquez’s characters are middle-aged or old, mostly flawed men falling toward solitude at the expense of their lovers and wives. 

Many of the settings are in the forests of the Ardennes, peopled with hunters and fishermen, and impart a kind of foreboding; the metaphors for which Vasquez is celebrated abound: in “Hiding Places,” an immature fish cannot be saved when lured by a callous sportsman; in “The Lodger,” an address book once rejected by a lover contains beautiful maps of places that do not exist. 

The title story tells of a man who agrees to spend All Hallow’s Eve night with a young widow, even donning her dead husband’s pajamas to comfort her. Vasquez charts the internal struggles of small men whose mistakes and betrayals condemn them to a confounding world that repeatedly fails to satisfy, a world about which one character wonders “if everything had a human cause and another random one...”

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BOOK ALERT(JULY 2015)

AMONG THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS by Julia Pierpont is my next read!

Why am I interested in this debut novel by Julia Pierpont? Aside from riveting reviews it sounds like a witty, lucious, smart novel about two middle aged self centered " babies" who want to stay in a dysfunctional marriage for purely selfish reasons. What could be more intriguing? (Rhetorical question...)

So download, buy or whatever you do...it's going be a blockbuster..