I picked up these books at the library, both recieved very high ratings on Amazon.com: The Art of Fielding and Madame Tussaud.

I took this right off Amazon: Though The Art of Fielding is his fiction debut, Chad Harbach writes with the self-assurance of a seasoned novelist. He exercises a masterful precision over the language and pacing of his narrative, and in some 500 pages, there’s rarely a word that feels out of place. The title is a reference to baseball, but Harbach’s concern with sports is more than just a cheap metaphor. The Art of Fielding explores relationships–between friends, family, and lovers–and the unpredictable forces that complicate them. There’s an unintended affair, a post-graduate plan derailed by rejection letters, a marriage dissolved by honesty, and at the center of the book, the single baseball error that sets all of these events into motion. The Art of Fielding is somehow both confident and intimate, simple yet deeply moving. Harbach has penned one of the year’s finest works of fiction.–Kevin Nguyen

And then this one:

Again, from Amazon: Marie Tussaud, she of the wax museum, lived a long and colorful life, but the focus here is on 1788�94, when she was a young woman in Paris. Under the tutelage of a Swiss doctor whom she calls her uncle, she has become an accomplished artist as well as an astute businesswoman, helping to run the family firm, the Salon de Cire, with its changing array of exhibits of historical and contemporary figures in wax. Hired as a wax tutor by the king�s sister, Madame Elisabeth, she gains an entr�e into Versailles. Her uncle�s home, meanwhile, serves as a regular meeting place for Robespierre and other revolutionaries. First and foremost a survivor, during the Revolution Marie makes models of its heroes and its victims alike. Moran takes liberties with the facts, as any historical novelist has a right to do; but some of her inventions tend to clutter up a story that is already fascinating on its own. Still, readers will be intrigued by Madame Tussaud, and by witnessing a tumultuous era through her eyes. –Mary Ellen Quinn

Both of these were from my local library and they both had to go back  before I got to read them! I read a few pages into Madame Tussaud and wow, the writing is super detailed, no wonder why the novel is enormous. The Art of Fielding is a big book too. These are perfect for vacation, when there is plenty of time to sit and read for hours and hours. Im disappointed that I didnt get the chance to read either but I will try to get them again.

Currently I am reading V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton. I really enjoy the Kinsey Millhone mysteries. I began with A and have worked my way down the entire alphabet. Basically Sue Grafton and her novels have been a part of my entire adulthood. I started around age 23 reading these and have continued through my life as a single woman, as I got married, had children, moved to California and embarked on my own writing career!

 I am loving V is for Vengeance, I’m so impressed that the author can pump out novel after novel and still keep millions of readers intrigued. The writing flows, I’m hooked on the storyline and I can’t wait to finish up everything I have to do today so I can steal a few minutes to continue reading.

And if you are pressed for time and want an easy story to sail through, my novel, Here if You Need Me  is available for only $3.99 on kindle and nook!

In The Lost Book of Mala R by Rose MacDowell, the year is 1948 and young Mala is a gypsy exiled from her community when her predictions indicate some disastrous events will take place. With no money or place to go, Mala sets out to find the woman from her past who took care of her when she was a child. As she travels, she keeps a journal full of bits and pieces from her spells and her life.

The book flips from 1948 to present day California in a community where three women struggle with issues in their lives. There’s Linda whose precocious ten- year old step daughter has just gone missing, Christina’s husband is a suspect in a murder case and Audrey is  an unhappy social worker who is having an affair with one of her clients.

One day Linda discovers Mala’s journal at a garage sale and the three women set out to discover more about this mysterious Mala, both through the words on the pages of the journal and by trying to track her down.

The author does a great job of keeping the reader hooked, I loved reading about Mala plus the three other women,  and their struggles to improve their lives and find love and find answers.

 The end of the book made me teary eyed. If you are searching for a gripping novel, check out The Lost Book of Mala R.

 Sometimes I will read a review in People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly, then look for the author and see if I can get a review copy. And then I use my library so often that I feel like everyone knows me there. I receive emails from the PR department at book publishers, offering to send books for review which is my favorite since so many books slip under my radar. I’m sure there are thousands of novels that I’d love, I simply don’t know about them!

In this case, I found Ellis Island on Amazon after looking for books like Wildflower Hill, a book I thoroughly enjoyed. My library had not yet gotten this one in and I was dying to read it. Having just spent fifty bucks on books for my kindle, I didn’t have it in my budget to buy it so I wrote the author who never got back to me. Insert sad face. (I know emails don’t always reach their intended recipient) I kept the book in mind though and finally my library got a copy- I’m glad they did because this novel  is a real treasure!

I like many kinds of books but I have a special place in my heart for immigrants coming to America at the turn of the century, or early 1900′s. I find it fascinating to leave one country in search of dreams in another.

At the heart of this book is smart, independent Ellie who leaves not only her home in poor, rural Ireland  but also her true love John, in search of work and opportunities in America. John needs an operation and the only way Ellie can find to earn a decent living is to head to the US and make good money, send it home and pay for her husband’s surgery.

Ellie heads to New York to work  for a wealthy socialite. It’s here where Ellie falls in love with the big city and all it offers, in stark contrast to the small town in Ireland where she grew up and where she left her husband. Ellie enjoys New York and  modern conveniences like showers and electricity, automobiles and so much more. The authors descriptions are so vivid, I felt like I was walking along the streets with Ellie.

After a few years in New York, its with a heavy heart Ellie must decide whether to return to the farm where her husband waits for her or stay in her beloved New York. How can she ever leave behind the glamour of the city for the poor farm town in Ireland? Yet how can she stay away from the man she’s loved since she was a child? I enjoyed this book very much and highly recommend it!

Recently I read The Linen Queen and The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey and really enjoyed those. When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt was excellent too.  I am always in the mood for a good book!

 Here If You Need Me is available on Kindle, Nook etc and that book is a rewrite of A Thousand Dollars for a Kiss which is in regular novel form.(I wouldn’t recommend buying that one however since I never got royalties from it!) I’d love for you to  buy it, a real  bargain at only $3.99!

 The reason I am rambling on about this is because today I read through Amazon’s best sellers in Women’s Fiction and I dream of the day that I see one of my novels on that list! The list is updated hourly so keep checking to see whats new.

On the list I found some of my favorite authors  like Caroline Leavitt,  Sophie Kinsella, Lesley Kagen, Jodi Picoult, Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner plus outstanding must-read novels like The Help, Room, The Family Fang, The Language of Flowers, Still Alice, Sarah’s Key.

On the list should be books by Gayle Brandeis and Liane Moriarty who are two of my favorite authors and their books are well worth your time to read. Other awesome novels include Wildflower Hill by Kimberley Freeman and Mudbound by Hilary Jordan.

Happy Reading!

Feeling like I was the one person in the world who hadn’t read this best seller, I finally got around to reading it on my cruise. Honestly- I was bored to tears during the first 100 pages of the book. I kept flipping pages (clicking the forward button on my kindle!) until Lisbeth Salander came on to the scene. Once the genius hacker become part of the story, things began to look up and I was hooked.

I love the character of Lisbeth. She’s tough, smart, socially awkward, dresses in leather, has many piercings and is someone I felt myself rooting for throughout the story.

In case you are one of the few who havent read the book, here is a brief synopsis: the book centers around the 40 year old murder of a member of the powerful and wealthy Vanger family. Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist who is living with a scandel of his own, is brought in to investigate and find answers. Lisbeth is hired as his assistant. The Vanger family is full of strange characters with secrets as to what happened to young Harriet Vanger. The setting is cold Sweden which is both dark and chilly, lending a foreboding backdrop to the story.

I liked the book enough to want to read the other two in the series. Today I saw the movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. When I heard David Fincher directed this adaptation, I knew it would be good. I loved The Social Network so I went into this movie with high expectations. Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist was fantastic but it was Rooney Mara who did a phenomenal job as Lisbeth. She carried Lisbeth’s tense, pent up anger yet there was some kind of untouchable emotion just below the surface of the character.

I was happy to see the movie followed the book closely aside from a few plot changes and a tweaking of the ending. Naturally film is a different medium than a novel so its understandable certain scenes were not included. Everything important is in the movie and kudos to the screenwriter who adapted the book.

Here’s  a short trailer that shows quite a lot of the movie.

I spent hours on Amazon.com reading different reviews for a variety of books. I have no single type of book that I like, my only criteria is that it pulls me in, in some way. I just loved Wildflower Hill and would love nothing more than to find more novels like that one!

I really want to read Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan and The End of Everything by Megan Abbott. I’ve tried to get in touch with the  authors so I could get review copies of these books but with no luck.  I wish I had endless funds to buy all the books I want to read.

I feel like I might be the only person left in the world who has not read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo so I downloaded that one too. Since I loved Liane Moriarty’s other books, I bought The Last Annivesary. From ebook fling, I borrowed The Apothocary’s Daughter. I dont know much about that one but it sounded interesting. I tried to find a few different genres!

Recently I read The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey which was really good. She wrote a wonderful novel called The Linen Queen which I loved. These books are good Irish fiction set in another time and place. About as far away as you can get from present day southern California! I also finished reading The Last Van Gogh which was a beautifully written novel about Van Gogh, as he lived with the Gachet family in France. This book was based on a real family with whom Van Gogh shared his last summer. It takes a lot of research and detail to complete a book like this and I enjoyed reading it and learning. I really want to read the book Van Gogh: The Life. That is on my to be read list!

I’d love to read the Steve Jobs biography but have you seen the size of it? I’d need to clear my calender for a month to get through that one. My book club chose Don’t Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon which looks good…but creepy. And I have the Hunger Games trilogy in my possesion but haven’t gotten past the first novel. I need more time to read!

And if you are looking for a quicky and fun read, might I recommend my novel, Here if You Need Me? I’ve seen that one so many times, I plan on reading it in a few years when I’ve forgotten what I wrote!

As always, Happy Reading!

I have the The Mother Daughter Show that I am bringing with me on vacation soon. I can’t wait to dig in. It has the potential to be funny and satirical which I happen to love in a novel!

Here’s the premise: At Barton Friends–-a D.C. prep school so elite its parent body includes the President and First Lady–-three mothers have thrown themselves into organizing the annual musical revue. Will its Machiavellian intrigue somehow enable them to reconnect with their graduating daughters, who are fast spinning out of control? By turns hilarious and poignant, The Mother Daughter Show will appeal to anyone who’s ever had a daughter–and anyone who’s ever been one.

I thought this next book took place in present day. I was wrong. The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin takes place during the 19th century and I’m glad it does, I love being swept away to another time and place in history! 

Beautiful, saucy Cora Cash is an extremely wealthy young woman who has spent her life being schooled and groomed for the proper husband. An unfortunate horse riding accident in England lands her in a duke’s care where the two fall in love. Her status seeking mother is very pleased and Cora is head over heels in love but of course not all is as it seems.

Young Cora must find  way to carve a spot for herself in difficult British society and attempt to understand her secretive husband who runs hot and cold. Money can buy a lot but it can’t buy everything which  Cora finds out in this lavishly described  novel. It’s a big book but I tore through it quickly, devouring the lush details!

If you loved The Secret Life of Bees, which I did, you will enjoy Saving CeeCee Honeycutt. I can’t believe I haven’t read this book before now. Why didn’t I know about it? I think I saw it but as is usually my problem, I didn’t think I’d like it! The old adage of judging a book by its cover comes to mind. I’m finishing it up soon and I loved every single page of this story about CeeCee, whose mother dies suddenly. CeeCee is sent to live with her aunt in Savannah, Georgia and the women she meets help her heal and grow and change.  It’s a wonderful story and written so well that I’m sad to finish the book!

This year, I signed up and  followed through and I’m excited about it. I am also proud. I’ve written novels quickly before but never like this. Having to write at least five pages a day kept me moving forward every single day of  this month. I had an idea that brewed in my mind for a while and this was an excellent way to see the idea grow into a full book.

At first, fifty thousand words in the span of only thirty days was very daunting. I sat at my computer and the blank space loomed in front of me like an endless frontier. I wondered how would I fill the pages, what would I write  and most of all, will my writing be awful? Will my story ever see the light of day? I’m still wondering about that last part.

Years ago, maybe ten years or so, I wrote my first novel and expected it to be published right away. I thought for sure I’d have the big success I’d always dreamed about. WRONG.

I remember another writer telling me that it took her seven novels to get published. I scoffed and thought, “Seven books until you found an agent and got a publisher? No way!”  Well, yes way. This is my sixth novel and I have yet to find an agent, a publisher or get the success that I am still hoping for.

I need to finish the ending of this book and I must go through the story to add scenes and edit (a lot of edits) but what a feeling of accomplishment to have written almost an entire novel in one month. I want to encourage everyone to tackle their dreams whether its writing a story or going after something insurmountable, and just give it your all. You can do it!

Congrats to those of you who completed Nano. There’s something very fulfilling about setting a very large goal in a short amount of time and actually reaching what you set out to do.

 For as long as they can remember, Annie and Buster Fang  have been forced to do strange “performance art” in public places by their parents Camille and Caleb. Refered to as child A and child B, Annie and Buster have long grown tired of being involved in their parents capers and schemes all for the benefit of creating something artistic. Caleb and Camille insist on pushing boundaries with their art with no regard to how it affects their children.

 The Family Fang is the story of a highly dysfunctional family, the Fangs. Are they a family at all? With parents consumed with creating their conceptual art,  Annie and Buster have grown up without the comfort of a traditional family unit and have their own issues to overcome because of their very selfish parents. Now adults, Annie and Buster do not have the emotional tools it takes to deal with being grownups.

Caleb and Camille are disengaged in the toll their performances take on their children. Their final stunt creates such a fissure, it’s not possible to repair. This book was an instant New York Times best seller and its been featured in countless magazines. My friend Gayle Brandeis told me about it and I knew I needed to get my hands the book  immediately! Kevin Wilson is a fantastic writer, the book is at times funny then sad, you feel sorry for Child A and Child B and you root for them to succeed. Not so much their parents. 

Here is a great interview with Kevin. Nicole Kidman is rumored to be interested in bringing the film to the big screen so stay tuned.

In her memoir, Suzanne takes us to Bali, where she studied yoga for several rigorous weeks under the tutelage of her enlightened yoga teachers from Seattle. Here Suzanne hopes to “find herself” and put to rest some concerns about her life. As the book starts, Suzanne has a deep admiration for her beautiful and seemingly perfect yoga teacher, her idol in many ways- but as the book ends, she realizes her teacher is as flawed and imperfect as everyone else.

Suzanne’s memoir is the diary she kept while studying yoga, along with her present day thoughts. In the memoir, Suzanne has many questions about love,  life, faith and the practice of yoga itself. She hopes to find answers during her stint at yoga teacher training but many of her questions go unanswered.

Against the backdrop of beautiful Bali,  Suzanne is skeptical  about the path to spiritual enlightenment especially when she learns everyone engages in “urine therapy” ie drinking their own urine for medicinal benefits. There are many other laugh- out- loud moments in Yoga Bitch. Suzanne lets loose and talks about the good, bad and gross while doing yoga everyday in hot sweaty Bali. She admits to craving cigarettes, wants to eat sugary foods and is skeptical about the very journey she is on. And because this is a true story, nothing is tied up and perfect by the end of her time in Bali.  I loved Suzanne’s funny, honest writing style as she tells her story of studying yoga in Bali. Kudos to her for seeing it through to the end, I think I would have been on a plane back to California after the first mention of pee drinking. 

I highly recommend Yoga Bitch.