QUOTES FROM THE INTERIOR: “WHERE WE BELONG”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What better way to spend a Friday!

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Today’s spotlight is shining on an e-book that has been on Pippa since August 2014!  Where We Belong is from Catherine Ryan Hyde, an author I have not yet read.

 

 

Beginnings:  (1. Hem)

By the time I was seven, I had twenty-two packs of playing cards.  Twenty-two.  And I never played card games with them.  Not once.  Card games are boring.

They were for building, not playing.

***

56:  He stood there, quiet, for a minute.  I watched his face change.  Not a huge change.  Just a little.  It went from set-like-a-rock to…almost…curious.

***

Blurb:  Fourteen-year-old Angie and her mom are poised at the edge of homelessness… again. The problem is her little sister, Sophie. Sophie has an autism-like disorder, and a tendency to shriek. No matter where they live, home never seems to last long.

Until they move in with Aunt Vi, across the fence from a huge black Great Dane who changes everything. Sophie falls in love immediately, and begins to imitate the “inside of the dog,” which, fortunately, is a calm place. The shrieking stops. Everybody begins to breathe again. Until Paul Inverness, the dog’s grumpy, socially isolated owner, moves to the mountains, and it all begins again.

Much to Angie’s humiliation, when they’re thrown out of Aunt Vi’s house, Angie’s mom moves the family to the mountains after Paul and his dog. There, despite a fifty-year difference in their ages, Angie and Paul form a deep friendship, the only close friendship either has known. Angie is able to talk to him about growing up gay, and Paul trusts Angie with his greatest secret, his one dream. When the opportunity arrives, Angie decides to risk everything to help Paul’s dream come true, even their friendship and her one chance at a real home—the only thing she’s dreamed of since her father was killed. A place she can never be thrown out. A place she can feel she belongs.

***

What do you think?  I think I should have picked this one off my TBR sooner!

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QUOTES FROM THE INTERIOR: “THE BLACK WIDOW”

 

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What better way to spend a Friday!

Today I decided to change things up and present this post on my An Interior Journey site.

My featured book is one I downloaded last week, and haven’t started reading yet.  It is from an author I’ve been enjoying lately:  The Black Widow is a chilling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub, one woman looking for love online is entangled in a killer’s terrifying scheme . . .

 

 

Beginning:  (Prologue)

“Some things,” Carmen used to say, “just don’t feel right until the sun goes down.”

It was true.

Cocktails…

Bedtime stories…

Turning on the television…

Putting on pajamas…

All much better—more natural—after nightfall, regardless of the hour or season.

***

56:  June heat shimmers in waves on the pavement this evening as Gabriela steps out of her building’s lobby.  It’s not even summer yet, according to the calendar, but already the city is in the throes of its first official heat wave.

***

Blurb:  In the moonlight, shovelfuls of earth fall on a wooden crate at the bottom of a deep pit. Soon the hole will be filled and covered over with leaves, erasing all trace of the victim below, waking to the horror of being buried alive . . .

Newly divorced Gaby Duran isn’t really expecting to find her soul mate on a dating site like InTune. She just needs a distraction from pining over her ex-husband, Ben, and the happy marriage they once had. And she’s wise enough to know that online, the truth doesn’t always match the profile. Almost everyone lies a little—or a lot.

But Gaby quickly discovers there is much more at stake than her lonely heart. Local singles are going missing after making online connections. And a predator is searching again for the perfect match. One who will fulfill every twisted desire . . . or die trying.

***

Do these quotes make you want to keep reading?  What do you think?  I am eager to read more…I love a good thriller.

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FROM THE INTERIOR: BOOK BEGINNINGS/FRIDAY 56 – “NEVER TELL A LIE”

Welcome to some bookish fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

If you have been wanting to participate, but haven’t yet tried, now is the time!

What better way to spend a Friday?

Today I am featuring a book from Hallie Ephron:  Never Tell a Lie.

 

 

 

 

Beginning:  Tuesday, Nov 4

Pregnant Woman Missing from Brush Hills

BRUSH HILLS, MA Police continue to search for clues in the disappearance of Melinda White, 33, who was last seen on Saturday.  Authorities yesterday issued a bulletin describing the pregnant woman as “at risk” and a possible victim of foul play.

***

56:  “Her sister reported her missing, and we located her car.  It was parked down the block.  There was a copy of the Weekly Shopper on the front seat, with your yard-sale ad circled.”

***

Blurb:   “[A] richly atmospheric tale. You can imagine Hitchcock curling up with this one.”
—USA Today

Author Hallie Ephron’s fast paced and disturbingly creepy Never Tell a Lie is a page-turning thrill ride that maestro Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud to call his own. A descent into gripping suburban terror, this stunner by the Ellen Nehr Award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe has been called “a snaky, unsettling tale of psychological suspense” by the Seattle Times. Fans of Mary Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, and classic gothic mystery will adore this supremely suspenseful and consistently surprising story of a yard sale gone terribly wrong.

***

I have read and LOVED two books by this author now…so I can’t wait to get into this one.  What do you think?

***

FROM THE INTERIOR: BOOK BEGINNINGS/FRIDAY 56 – “THE HOME PLACE”

Welcome to some bookish fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

If you have been wanting to participate, but haven’t yet tried, now is the time!

What better way to spend a Friday?

 

Today I am spotlighting an ARC from Amazon Vine, from an author I have never read.  But the blurb sold me.  The Home Place, by Carrie La Seur, a debut novel…which would explain why I’ve never read the author!

 

 

 

 

Beginning:  (Chapter One:  Sunday, 2 A.M., Mountain Standard Time

The cold on a January night in Billings, Montana, is personal and spiritual.  It knows your weaknesses.  It communicates with your fears.  If you have a god, this cold pulls a veil between you and your deity.

***

56:  Helen slams down her fork, or tries to.  Her hand is curled awkwardly around the implement, so that her hand bangs the table instead and she must disengage her fingers deliberately, one at a time.

***

Blurb:  Carrie La Seur makes her remarkable debut with The Home Place, a mesmerizing, emotionally evocative, and atmospheric literary novel in the vein of The House Girl and A Land More Kind Than Home, in which a successful lawyer is pulled back into her troubled family’s life in rural Montana in the wake of her sister’s death.

The only Terrebonne who made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, with its bleak winters and stifling ways. But an unexpected call from the local police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she’d left far behind: Her lying, party-loving sister, Vicky, is dead. Alma is told that a very drunk Vicky had wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. But when Alma returns home to bury Vicky and see to her orphaned niece, she discovers that the death may not have been an accident.

The Home Place is a story of secrets that will not lie still, human bonds that will not break, and crippling memories that will not be silenced. It is a story of rural towns and runaways, of tensions corporate and racial, of childhood trauma and adolescent betrayal, and of the guilt that even forgiveness cannot ease. Most of all, this is a story of the place we carry in us always: home.

***

This one sounds like a book that will keep me hooked all the way through.  What are your thoughts?

***

ENTER THE INTERIOR FOR BOOK BEGINNINGS & THE FRIDAY 56: “THE LAST WINTER OF DANI LANCING”

Welcome to some bookish fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

If you have been wanting to participate, but haven’t yet tried, now is the time!

What better way to spend a Friday?

Today I’m reading an ARC from Amazon Vine entitled The Last Winter of Dani Lancing, by P. D. Viner, for fans of Tana French and The Silent Wife.

 

 

Beginning:  Saturday 18 December 2010

“There’s no such thing as monsters,” he tells her.

The girl screws up her nose.  “Look anyway.  Please.”

“Okay.”

She hugs Hoppy Bunny right as her dad slides sideways off the bed and onto the floor, pulling the duvet to one side and peering into the shadows.

“Nothing there.”

***

56:  The hallway was empty.  He just stood there, staring at the front door, his brief moment of optimism deflated like a ruptured balloon.

***

Blurb:  Twenty years ago, college student Dani Lancing was kidnapped and brutally murdered. The killer was never found. Dani’s family never found peace.

Thrust into an intense devastation that nearly destroys their marriage, Patty and Jim Lancing struggle to deal with their harrowing loss. Patty is fanatically obsessed with the cold case; consumed by every possible clue or suspect no matter how far-fetched, she goes to horrifying lengths to help clarify the past.  Meanwhile, Jim has become a shell of his former self, broken down and haunted—sometimes literally—by his young daughter’s death. Dani’s childhood sweetheart, Tom, handles his own grief every day on the job—he’s become a detective intent on solving murders of other young women, and hopes to one day close Dani’s case himself.

Then everything changes when Tom finds a promising new lead. As lies and secrets are unearthed, the heartbreaking truth behind Dani’s murder is finally revealed.
THE LAST WINTER OF DANI LANCING is a shockingly disturbing and deeply powerful debut, and P.D. Viner immediately joins the ranks of Tana French, A. S. A. Harrison, and Gillian Flynn.

***

Did that catch your interest?  Scare you a little?  Now share your links, and let’s chat.

 

A FRIDAY FROM THE INTERIOR: BOOK BEGINNINGS & THE FRIDAY 56 — OCT. 26

Welcome to some bookish fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

If you have been wanting to participate, but haven’t yet tried, now is the time!

And what better way to visit some blogs and find new friends?

Today I’m excerpting from Dead on Ice, by Lauren Carr.

Beginning:  Prologue

Saturday Night, June 3, 1978

Melody Lane Skating Rink, Hookstown, Pennsylvania

“For our last slow skate this evening,” the announcer’s voice boomed over the chatter of the young people filling every corner of the roller skating rink, “we will play ‘How Deep is Your Love’ by the Bee Gees.”

***

P. 56:  Upon its discovery, the investigators pulled it out from the corner and opened it.  The smell of death burst forth like evil escaping from Pandora’s box.

***

Amazon Description:  Dead on Ice is the first installment of Lauren Carr’s new series (Lovers in Crime) featuring Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton and Pennsylvania State Police homicide detective Cameron Gates. Spunky Cameron Gates is tasked with solving the murder of Cherry Pickens, a legendary star of pornographic films, whose body turns up in an abandoned freezer. The case has a personal connection to her lover, Joshua Thornton, because the freezer was located in his cousin’s basement. It doesn’t take long for their investigation to reveal that the risqué star’s roots were buried in their rural Ohio Valley community, something that Cherry had kept off her show business bio. She should have kept her hometown off her road map, too—because when this starlet came running home from the mob, it proved to be a fatal homecoming.

***

I like the beginning that hints at sweet and happy times, since we know that grisly events are going to transpire. 

Now I’m off to see what the rest of you are sharing!

THE FRIDAY 56

This Friday meme is hosted by Storytime with Tonya.

Here’s how it works:

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Here’s mine:

By my junior year, I thought I had turned myself into a reasonable model citizen of Peninsula High, but even I was aware that the bar I had set for myself was a low one.  p.56

That is from South of Broad, by Pat Conroy, which I just bought, so it happened to be sitting atop a short stack on my table/desk.

I’ve been salivating over this one for quite awhile—I so loved Prince of Tides!—so naturally, when Borders was having a big sale, I had to have it.  Never mind that my stacks are still huge.

Here’s a blurb from Amazon:

Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy’s first novel in 14 years. In the late ’60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city’s inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach’s son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo’s coterie stormed Charleston’s social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator’s awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group’s love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy’s florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.)

What book happened to be nearby for you?  Hope you’ll stop by and share.

THE FRIDAY 56

Hosted by Storytime with Tonya, this meme offers a peek into those books that just happen to be close by.

Here’s how it works:

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Here’s what I found on a stack nearby—a book  I just happened to pull off the larger stacks in my bedroom and brought into my office.

In more realistic moods, Edward thought he should find a proper job, teaching history in a grammar school and making certain he avoided National Service.  p. 56

This tidbit is from On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan.

I had first heard about this one from a book reviewer and ordered it from Amazon.

That was quite awhile ago, and then the other day, someone else mentioned it on a blog, and I again recalled why I had wanted to read it.

So that’s why it’s sitting close by.

Here’s what Amazon says about it:

It is 1962 when Edward and Florence, 23 and 22 respectively, marry and repair to a hotel on the Dorset coast for their honeymoon. They are both virgins, both apprehensive about what’s next and in Florence’s case, utterly and blindly terrified and repelled by the little she knows. Through a tense dinner in their room, because Florence has decided that the weather is not fine enough to dine on the terrace, they are attended by two local boys acting as waiters. The cameo appearances of the boys and Edward and Florence’s parents and siblings serve only to underline the emotional isolation of the two principals. Florence says of herself: “…she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires….”

What books were in close proximity to you today?  I hope you’ll stop by and tell us about them…

THE FRIDAY 56

Good morning!  Here we are at Friday again—how did that happen?—and we get to play this meme hosted by Tonya, at Storytime with Tonya.

Here’s how it works, in case you are now intrigued and would like to play.

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

But most of them helped her—helped them—in more intimate ways:  cooking for them, feeding Lauren, taking her to the bathroom, getting her to bed at night when he was working.

She had welcomed this, because her main wish was that he be freed of all these tasks so that he could see her as a woman still, not an invalid.  p. 56

This excerpt is from The Lake Shore Limited, by Sue Miller, which is sitting close by because it just arrived in the mail.

This passage sounds intense, doesn’t it?

Here’s a snipped from Amazon to tell us a little more about the book.

Four people are bound together by the 9/11 death of a man in Miller’s insightful latest. Leslie, older sister and stand-in mother to the late Gus, clings to the notion that Gus had found true love with his girlfriend, Billy, before he was killed. But the truth is more complicated: Billy, a playwright, has written a new play that explores the agonizing hours when a family gathers, not knowing the fate of their mother and wife who was aboard a train that has been bombed…

What did you find sitting right next to you?  Hope you will come by, leave some comments, and link back to your “56.”

THE FRIDAY 56

In this weekly meme hosted by Tonya, at Storytime with Tonya, we get to explore books that we are drawn to because of their proximity to us at this moment.

Here’s how it works:

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

So, here goes:

But there does remain something determinedly scruffy about the area, as though the locals banded together and made a populist proclamation to disdain gentrification.  And this despite the area’s broad leafy streets and huge houses ranging from elegant early Victorian white stucco to the comfortably sprawling Edwardian villas built for middle-class professionals.  p.56

This excerpt is from Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word, by Linda Kelsey.

On Amazon, we read this blurb:

Hope Lyndhurst-Steele has it all—a wonderful, loving husband; a great son; a job she loves as a magazine editor; and a lovely house in London. After her much-dreaded fiftieth birthday, everything she has come to rely on disappears. She is dismissed from her job and replaced with a younger, smarmier editor; her 18-year-old son starts dating the single mother down the street; and her husband leaves her. No wonder Hope is in a funk. And there is worse news on the horizon. Her mother announces at dinner that she is dying. How we cope with adversity offers great insight into people. Hope’s method is sleep, food, and huge doses of self-pity until she starts to wake up and realize that her life is not over, and that just maybe being 50 is the right place for her to be. Kelsey, a magazine editor herself, creates a witty foray into one woman’s psyche as she accepts her age and proves that there is, indeed, life and adventure after the 50-year milestone. –Patty Engelmann.

One of the most unexpected outcomes from this game is that a book just sitting there on a stack can be promoted to the “up next” list!

And this one now has my interest piqued!

What about your finds this week?  Hope you’ll stop by, leave some comments, and link back to your post.