Tuesday Memes: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.

Opening

   Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

My Teaser

    A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.

page 147

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

Tuesday Memes: Orphan #8

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade.

A stunning debut novel of historical fiction set in the forgotten world of New York City's Jewish orphanages

In 1919, four-year-old Rachel Rabinowitz is placed in the Hebrew Infant Home where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research on the children. Dr. Solomon subjects Rachel to an experimental course of X-ray treatments that establish the doctor's reputation while risking the little girl's health. Now it's 1954, and Rachel is a nurse in the hospice wing of the Old Hebrews Home when elderly Dr. Solomon becomes her patient. Realizing the power she holds over the helpless doctor, Rachel embarks on a dangerous experiment of her own design. Before the night shift ends, Rachel will be forced to choose between forgiveness and revenge.

Inspired by true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful novel about the human capacity to harm—and to love.

Opening

Chapter One

    From her bed of bundled newspapers under the kitchen table, Rachel Rabinowitz watched her mother’s bare feet shuffle to the sink. She heard water filling the kettle, then saw her mother’s heels lift as she stretched up to drop a nickel in the gas meter. There was the sizzle of a struck match, the hiss of the burner, the whoosh of catching flame. As her mother passed the table Rachel reached out to catch the hem of her nightdress.

   “Awake already, little monkey?” Visha peered down, her dark hair hanging in loose curls. Rachel nodded, open eyes eager. “You’ll stay put until the boarders leave for work, yes? You know it makes me nervous when there’s too many people crowding in the kitchen.”

My Teaser

   All the children got x-rayed, that was routine, doesn’t mean a thing. The important work was our research.

page 60

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

Thoughts For Tuesday: When The Moon Is Low

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting When The Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi.

   By turns astonishing, frightening, and triumphant, When The Moon Is Low chronicles one brave Afghan woman's odyssey to save her family

In Kabul, we meet Fereiba, a schoolteacher who puts her troubled childhood behind her when she finds love in an arranged marriage. But Fereiba's comfortable life implodes when the Taliban rises to power and her family becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime. Forced to flee with her three children, Fereiba has one hope for survival: to seek refuge with her sister's family in London.

Traveling with forged papers and depending on the kindness of strangers, Fereiba and the children make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness, the start of a harrowing journey that reduces her from a respected wife and mother to a desperate refugee.

Eventually they fall into the shadowy underground network of the undocumented who haunt the streets of Europe's cities. And then, in a busy market square in Athens, their fate takes a frightening turn when Fereiba's teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family. Without his mother, Saleem is forced, abruptly and unforgivingly, to come of age in a world of human trafficking and squalid refugee camps.

Heartbroken, Fereiba has no choice but to continue on with only her daughter and baby. Mother and son cross border after perilous border, risking their lives in the hope of finding a place where they can be reunited.

Opening

Prologue

Fereiba

    Though I love to see my children resting soundly, in the quiet of their slumber my uneasy mind retraces our journey. How did I come to be here, with two of my three children curled on the bristly bedspread of a hotel room? So far from home, so far from voices I recognize.

    In my youth, Europe was the land of fashion and sophistication. Fragrant body creams, fine tailored jackets, renowned universities. Kabul admired the fair-complexioned imperialists beyond the Ural Mountains. We batted our eyelashes at them and blended their refinement with our tribal exoticism.

    When Kabul crumbled, so did the starry-eyed dreams of my generation. We no longer saw Europe’s frills. We could barely see beyond our own streets, so thick were the plumes of war. By the time my husband and I decided to flee our homeland, Europe’s allure had been reduced to its singular, sexiest quality — peace.

My Teaser

    The coins slipped through my fingers as I leaped to my feet and turned. Just inches from me stood one of the leering boys from the marketplace.

page 33

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)

Tuesday Memes: The Mapmaker's Children

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy.

   When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

  Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.

  Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.

Opening

Prologue

New Charlestown, West Virginia

February 2010

    The old house on Apple Hill Lane shuddered against the weighty snow that burdened its pitch. The ancient beams moaned their secret pains to the wintering doves in the attic. The nesting duo pushed feathered bosoms together, blinked, and nodded quickly, as if to say, Yes-yes, we hear, yes-yes, we know, while down deep in the cellar, the metal within the doll’s porcelain skull grew crystals along its ridges. Sharp as a knife. The skull did all it could to hold steady against the shattering temperature for just one more minute of one more hour.

    The front door banged open, and a gust of snowy wind ran madly through the house’s heart chambers.

    “The newspapers and TV weatherman called it Snowmageddon!” said a silver-haried man, not yet old by the house’s standards. He was followed by a woman bundled in thick knits and gloves. “There’s another on the way. An Alberta clipper storm, driving down from Canada, apparently. Did we have to do this today?”

    “We’ve waited long enough, Dad,” said a younger man, entering last.

My Teaser

    Accident, blessing in disguise, fate, fortune, or happenstance — they were definitions of the same: life with no guaranteed happy ending. What fable and history could agree upon was that everybody was searching for their ever-after, whatever that may be.

page 205

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)

Tuesday Memes: Whisper Beach

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting Whisper Beach by Shelley Noble.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Colors and Breakwater Bay comes this unforgettable story—reminiscent of Kristin Hannah’s beloved novels—of friends, loyalty, and love as three women who are reunited in the idyllic beach town where they grew up are forced to re-evaluate their bonds

Fifteen years ago, seventeen-year-old Vanessa Moran fell in love and lost her virginity but not to the same boy. Pregnant, desperate, and humiliated, she fled friends and family and Whisper Beach, New Jersey, never breathing a word about her secret to anyone. She hasn’t been back since. Now a professional Manhattan organizer, she returns to the funeral of her best friend’s husband. She intends on just paying her respects and leaving—though she can’t deny she also wants the town to see how far she’s come as a successful business woman. But her plans to make this a short visit fall by the wayside when her girlfriends have other ideas.

Dorie, the owner of the pier’s Blue Crab Restaurant where Van and her friends worked as teenagers, needs help. Dorie’s roving husband spends every penny they make and now their restaurant is failing.

Joe, the boy Van left behind without an explanation, has never stopped loving her. While he’s wary of getting hurt again, he also can’t help wondering what would happen if they took up where they left off.

As the summer progresses and the restaurant takes on a new look, trouble comes from unexpected sources. For Van, this summer will test the meaning of friendship and trust—and how far love can bend before it breaks.

Opening Paragraph

Chapter 1

    Vanessa Moran was wearing black. Of course she always wore black; she was a New Yorker . . . and it was a funeral. She’s dressed meticulously (she always did), fashionable but respectful, chic but not different enough to call attention to herself.

    Still, for a betraying instant, standing beneath the sweltering August sun, the gulls wheeling overhead and promising cool salt water nearly within reach, she longed for a pair of faded cutoffs and a T-shirt with some tacky slogan printed across the front.

    She shifted her weight, and her heels sank a little lower in the soil. The sweat began to trickle down her back. She could feel her hair beginning to curl. She should have left after Mass, sneaked out of the church before anyone recognized her.

My Teaser

    As they walked toward the front door, it opened and Suze stepped out. She zeroed in on Gigi and then her hand. “Is that the mail?”

page 113

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)

Tuesday Memes: Ana of California

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting Ana of California by Andi Teran

A modern take on the classic coming-of-age novel, inspired by Anne of Green Gables

In the grand tradition of Anne of Green Gables, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and The Three Weissmanns of Westport, Andi Teran’s captivating debut novel offers a contemporary twist on a beloved classic. Fifteen-year-old orphan Ana Cortez has just blown her last chance with a foster family. It’s a group home next—unless she agrees to leave East Los Angeles for a farm trainee program in Northern California.

When she first arrives, Ana can’t tell a tomato plant from a blackberry bush, and Emmett Garber is skeptical that this slight city girl can be any help on his farm. His sister Abbie, however, thinks Ana might be just what they need. Ana comes to love Garber Farm, and even Emmett has to admit that her hard work is an asset. But when she inadvertently stirs up trouble in town, Ana is afraid she might have ruined her last chance at finding a place to belong.

Opening

CHAPTER ONE

  She was out of beginnings, this she knew.

Ana ran her hands through her knotted hair, wondering when she'd last washed it. She'd been up for more than twenty-four hours, and there was still ketchup on her shirt.

"This is the fifth home you've been expelled from in the last ten years."

"To be fair, it was only four. I was at the Mitchell house twice."

"Well, this time it's ... a situation."

My Teaser

    "No, it doesn't," Abbie said. "But life isn't fair, and you can't choose who you're born to. It's all beyond our control, I'm afraid. There's power in how we react to our situations, though."

page 71

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

Tuesday Memes: All The Single Ladies

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting All The Single Ladies by Dorothea Benton Frank

Few writers capture the complexities, pain, and joy of relationships—between friends, family members, husbands and wives, or lovers—as beloved New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank. In this charming, evocative, soul-touching novel, she once again takes us deep into the heart of the magical Lowcountry where three amazing middle-aged women are bonded by another amazing woman’s death.

Through their shared loss they forge a deep friendship, asking critical questions. Who was their friend and what did her life mean? Are they living the lives they imagined for themselves? Will they ever be able to afford to retire? How will they maximize their happiness? Security? Health? And ultimately, their own legacies?

A plan is conceived and unfurls with each turn of the tide during one sweltering summer on the Isle of Palms. Without ever fully realizing how close they were to the edge, they finally triumph amid laughter and maybe even newfound love

Opening Paragraph

Chapter 1

Meet Lisa St. Clair

June 2014

    I hail from a very theatrical climate. Coming to terms with Mother Nature is essential when you call the Lowcountry of South Carolina home. At the precise moment I ventured outside early this morning, my sunglasses fogged. In the next breath I swatted a mosquito on the back of my neck. The world was still. The birds were quiet. It was already too hot to chirp. And, Lord save us, the heat was just beginning to rise. I thought the blazes of hell itself could not be this hot.

My Teaser

    “Here I am with my dear friend’s ashes in my arms, practically warm, mind you, and her landlady wants me to hustle and get her belongings so she can rerent the apartment. What is this? New York?”

page 30

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

Tuesday Teasers: Letters To The Lost

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting Letters To The Lost by Iona Grey

Late on a frozen February evening, a young woman is running through the streets of London. Having fled from her abusive boyfriend and with nowhere to go, Jess stumbles onto a forgotten lane where a small, clearly unlived in old house offers her best chance of shelter for the night. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives and when she can’t help but open it, she finds herself drawn inexorably into the story of two lovers from another time.  

In London 1942, Stella meets Dan, a US airman, quite by accident, but there is no denying the impossible, unstoppable love that draws them together. Dan is a B-17 pilot flying his bomber into Europe from a British airbase; his odds of survival at one in five. The odds are stacked against the pair; the one thing they hold onto is the letters they write to each other. Fate is unkind and they are separated by decades and continents. In the present, Jess becomes determined to find out what happened to them. Her hope—inspired by a love so powerful it spans a lifetime—will lead her to find a startling redemption in her own life in a powerfully moving novel perfect for fans of Sarah Jio and Kate Morton.

Opening

Prologue

Maine, February 2011

   The house is at its most beautiful in the mornings.

   He designed it that way, with wide, wide windows which stretch from floor to ceiling, to bring in the sand and the ocean and the wide, wide sky. In the mornings the beach is empty and clean, a page on which the day is yet to be written. And the sunrise over the Atlantic is a daily miracle he always feels honored to witness.

    He never forgets how different it could have been.

My Teaser

    He was standing right beside where she’d sat last night; the place where her watch was most likely to be now. She hesitated, clammy with sudden panic, torn between the temptation to turn around and slip quietly out again before he saw her, and the need to complete the task she’d come all this way to do.

page 86

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)

Tuesday Memes: The Last Original Wife

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

Leslie Anne Greene Carter is the last original wife among her husband's group of cronies. They've all traded in their first wives-the middle-aged women they long ago promised to love and cherish 'til death did them part-for riper peaches: younger . . . blonder . . . more enhanced models.

Leslie is proud of her status and the longevity of her marriage. Sure the spark isn't quite as bright and sometimes takes a little longer to flame. And it wouldn't be too much to ask if her husband paid just an itty bit more attention to her desires. But there's something to be said for a comfortable and deeply familiar relationship. Or at least she thinks until the day, out golfing with her husband and his friends, she slips into a manhole. And nobody realizes that she's gone.

That one misstep opens Leslie's eyes to the sham her perfect life has become. No longer will she be invisible. No longer will she accept being taken for granted. With the healing powers of South Carolina's lush white beaches, candy-colored sunsets, and fiesty and funny residents, Leslie is going to transform herself and reclaim the strong, vibrant, sexy woman she was meant to be.

The Last Original Wife is classic Dorothea Benton Frank: an intoxicating tale of friendship and love that is as refreshing as a soothing breeze across a golden lowcountry marsh and as invigorating as a dip in cool, salty waters on a sizzling South Carolina summer day.

Opening

CHAPTER 1

Leslie and Wesley’s Present Situation

ATLANTA, SEPTEMBER 2012

   Welcome to Saint Magnolia’s Wounded Theater. At least that’s what I called it. Within these slick walls reside Atlanta’s pish-posh team of premier psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and relationship counselors who specialize in the broken hearts / crushed egos of the privileged and renowned. Their lavish confessionals, pershed high above the city, are, well, breathtaking. I was here because my husband, Wesley, insisted this was the only place he’d even consider receiving, as he was loath to say, therapy. And as is was on my first visit, the vast waiting area was packed.

    Just for the record? Wesley needed therapy. I. Absolutely. Did. Not.

My Teaser

    Funny question. Just so you know, I’m only here for the marriage. Going back to how things were would be fine with me, but my wife has other ideas.

page 21

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

Tuesday Memes: The Cherry Harvest

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along!

Today I am spotlighting The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna

A memorable coming-of-age story and love story, laced with suspense, which explores a hidden side of the home front during World War II, when German POWs were put to work in a Wisconsin farm community . . . with dark and unexpected consequences.

The war has taken a toll on the Christiansen family. With food rationed and money scarce, Charlotte struggles to keep her family well fed. Her teenage daughter, Kate, raises rabbits to earn money for college and dreams of becoming a writer. Her husband, Thomas, struggles to keep the farm going while their son, and most of the other local men, are fighting in Europe.

When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, strong-willed Charlotte helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit.

But when Thomas befriends one of the prisoners, a teacher named Karl, and invites him to tutor Kate, the implications of Charlotte's decision become apparent--especially when she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Karl. So busy are they with the prisoners that Charlotte and Thomas fail to see that Kate is becoming a young woman, with dreams and temptations of her own--including a secret romance with the son of a wealthy, war-profiteering senator. And when their beloved Ben returns home, bitter and injured, bearing an intense hatred of Germans, Charlotte's secrets threaten to explode their world.

Opening

    The rain came again, harder this time. Charlotte pulled her knit hat tight, pushed up the collar of her gray wool coat, and stared through the chicken wire at the rabbits. Kate’s prize rabbits.

     She entered the pen and chose a plump one, furry and warm in her cold hands. Its heart thumped like a tiny sewing machine. Charlotte brought it into the dim barn and stroked its fur until it calmed, trusting. She hesitated a moment—stealing from my own daughter—then picked up the butcher knife.

My Teaser

    Kate stiffened at the thought of personal messages between this man and her daughter. But before she could respond, Kate said, “In the barn. I’ll tack my homework to the rabbit hutch.”

page 78

So...what do you think? Is this one you would pick up? Leave a comment below!

(These quotes are from uncorrected advance proofs. Please refer to the final printed book for corrected quotes!)