River Readers

New York Times best-selling Harper's two earlier novels were both constructed around the harsher extremes of the Australian outback, and in this one we experience the isolated and inhospitable desert in Queensland. It is a brutal existence for the ranchers who live and work there, in relentless heat, hours away from any vestige of civilization. When the sun-baked body of Cam Bright, experienced at desert survival, is found by his brothers adjacent to a lone headstone in the middle of nowhere, marking the stockman's grave, they are hard pressed to find an explanation.

Lida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she?

But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II.

Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor. Starving and terrified, Lida bonds with her fellow prisoners, but none of them know if they'll live to see tomorrow.

The Bird King takes place during the end of the reign of the last sultan of Granada. The story centers on a concubine named Fatima and her beloved friend, Hassan. Hassan has a magical skill that enables him to draw maps of places he's never seen and alter the reality of those places. His gift is coveted because of its importance in times of war and retreat. On the edge of losing his kingdom, the sultan hands Hassan over to the Inquisitors who have come to negotiate the transition of power to Spain.

When Jessica awakens in a French hospital on the day after the 2015 Paris attacks, all she can think of is fleeing the site of the horror she survived. Her friend Patrick urges her to reconsider her decision, and she reluctantly agrees to follow through with the trip they'd planned before the tragedy. At a country flea market Jessica finds a faded document concealed in an antique.

A mash-up of Jane Eyre & Beauty and the Beast in Steampunk mode. Entertaining enough, with a heroine a bit more agentic than Jane Eyre

Young Kano Murasaki's nickname is Risuko (Squirrel), earned by the strength of her climbing abilities. When the rich, elderly Lady Chiyome arrives at her village, Risuko is whisked away to be trained to be kunoichi, a term the girl doesn't understand. Put to work with other trainees in the kitchen at Lady Chiyome's remote compound, Risuko balances work with her desire to discover her purpose for being there.

After Viji and Rukku escape their abusive father, they find themselves struggling to survive under an abandoned bridge in Chennai, India. They bond with two boys also on the bridge and together they eek out an existence pilfering the trash pits in and around the city.

This was a nice story. The illustrations were amazing and I really liked the dresses. Some would be quite fashionable even now. The dreams of a person can change with circumstances, but their basis is always the same. One must decide how much to give up to achieve them. Yourself or the dream. It's nice when you can get both.

While did enjoy this audiobook, I felt like a needed a "Clue" type score card to keep track of who was who, what day it was, and what happened when. When it all wrapped up it made perfect sense. I did like the way it ended with hope for the future. I was still a bit confused on what happened to some of the characters since there were multiple endings each day, but sometimes it better not to know for sure.

The Rules of Blackheath: Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m.
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.

CREEPY STORY ALERT! This was a very good mystery, but it gave me the creeps as I tried to work my way through it. Awful thoughts of how Ellie disappeared and Poppy was born, make you wonder about the true character of a couple people. All is explained and there is still and OOH factor, but not as bad as I at first imagined. The story is told in past and present voices which took a bit of getting use to, but did make it easier to understand all the different characters and what was happening during the same time period in various lives.

This book is not a glowing review for health spas! It was a little long and drawn out, but Moriarty did give each character a detailed story with background and futures. Some were very pat and easy to figure out, others much more complex and worth investing your time in following. No surprise when there were a couple of new relationships that came out of their shared ten day experience. It is enjoyable in the end.

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Young Adult

For readers of Between Shades of Gray and All the Light We Cannot See, international best-selling author Ruta Sepetys returns to WWII in this epic novel that shines a light on one of the war's most devastating - yet unknown - tragedies.

Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season.

I didn't like this one as well as the first volume. I guess I'm not as in to the group being crime busters instead of singers. There was more info on the pasts of Valerie and Melody and the relationship between Alex and Alexandra. Who knows what comes next.