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Showing posts from April, 2012

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

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Summary from Goodreads : It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather and once the finest home in Walls of Water, North Carolina—has stood for years as a monument to misfortune and scandal. Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite Paxton Osgood—has restored the house to its former glory, with plans to turn it into a top-flight inn. But when a skeleton is found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, long-kept secrets come to light, accompanied by a spate of strange occurrences throughout the town. Thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the passions and betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover the truths that have transcended time to touch the hearts of the living. The Peach Keeper. I was excited about

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

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Summary from Goodreads : Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's  An American Tragedy,  Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original. This  novel has two stories alternately told. One tells of Mattie and her life in the North woods in her dad's farm. From when her family was still complete, and how she recalled blissfully how that had been. And then her mother was taken away from them by an illness and soon after her  big brother ran away and

Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantoc

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Image from Amazon Griffin: It's good to get in touch with you at last. Could I have one of your fish postcards? I think you were right -- the wine glass has more impact than the cup. --Sabine These few lines seems harmless enough but not when Griffin has never met a woman named Sabine. More so that this woman happens to both know and see the artworks that he did in private, as if she can see through his eyes. A correspondence between the two ensues, with each one being drawn into the mystery that is the other. I did not really have high expectations as to the story in this book. I only expected it to be a visual feast and not much else but I was thrilled to find so much mystery and intrigue in the letters between Sabine and Griffin. I was drawn not only into the amazingly beautiful art work but I was also drawn into both the characters and their somewhat magical link to each other. Griffin and Sabine, although they share the same love and passion for art, they are quite dif

Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud

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Image from Goodreads Summary from Amazon : Three years after the events of The Golem`s Eye, the young magician Nathaniel is an established member of the British Government. But he faces unprecedented problems: foreign wars are going badly and Britain`s enemies are mounting attacks close to London. Increasingly distracted, he is treating Bartimaeus worse than ever: the long-suffering djinni is growing weak from too much time in this world, and his patience is at an end. Meanwhile, undercover in London, Kitty has been stealthily completing her research into magic and Bartimaeus` past. She hopes to break the endless cycle of conflict between djinn and humans - but will she be able to get anyone to listen? Before any of these problems can be resolved, disaster strikes London from an unexpected source and the destinies of Bartimaeus, Nathaniel, and Kitty are thrown together once more. They have to face treacherous magicians, a long-fermented conspiracy, and an enemy from `The Other Plac