Author: elzaread

The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict

The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict

The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict on January 17th, 2023 Genres: Historical Fiction Pages: 352 Format: ARC Source: Netgalley Buy on Amazon Goodreads From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict—she’ll have to choose: her country or her sisters? Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they’ve weathered scandals before, the family falls into disarray when Diana divorces her husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows her sister’s lead, inciting rumors that she’s become Hitler’s own mistress. Novelist Nancy Mitford is the only member of her family to keep in touch with Diana and Unity after their desertion, so it falls to her to act when her sisters become spies for the Nazi party. Probing the torrid political climate of World War II and the ways that sensible people can be sucked into radical action, The Mitford Affair follows Nancy’s valiant efforts to end the war and the cost of placing loyalty to her country above loyalty to her family.

Posted August 25, 2023
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One French Summer by Gillian Harvey

One French Summer by Gillian Harvey

One French Summer by Gillian Harvey Published by Boldwood Books on February 14th, 2023 Genres: Romance Pages: 282 Format: ARC Buy on Amazon Goodreads Discover the brand new escapist read from the author of A Year at the French Farmhouse. Only child out of the house – so far out that she’s gone all the way to Australia! A husband, who has requested a break. Life isn’t quite going as planned for Katy. She’s suddenly at a loss, but she still has her friends Sam, Vicky and Ivy. The girls have been there for her through thick and thin and they’re not about to stop now. However, they think Katy might need more than boot camp . . . so they kidnap her and head off to France on a last minute retreat. Can a reset give her a new lease on life or help her win back her husband? Or could there be a new love in her life? She went for a holiday, but it could become the start of a second chance . . .

Posted August 20, 2023
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Genies and Gibberish by Elizabeth Pantley

Genies and Gibberish by Elizabeth Pantley

Genies and Gibberish by Elizabeth Pantley Series: Magical Mystery Book Club Novella #1 Published by Better Beginnings Inc Genres: Cozy Mystery Pages: 190 Format: ARC Source: Author’s Copy Goodreads This club gets whooshed into a book. They become characters! To get out they must find the killer. ~ ~ ~ Whenever this group chooses a book, magic happens. The mystery comes to life, and they find themselves part of the story. To exit the book and get back home, they need to solve the mystery and reach The End. This time, the club chooses a book set in a mansion atop the mountains of Arizona. They discover a strange antique oil lamp that contains a shocking surprise. Could this enchanted lamp have something to do with their host’s fall from a door to nowhere? Or could he have been pushed out the door by one of the strange people who belong to the quirky group who live here? This brave, crazy, motley group must work together to unravel the mystery in their latest inside-the-book journey. This novella can be read as a standalone. It happens between books 4 and 5 in the Magical Mystery Book Club series.

Posted August 5, 2023
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Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang

Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang

Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang Genres: Mystery Pages: 402 Format: ARC Source: Netgalley Goodreads Sir Lawrence Linwood is dead. More accurately, he was murdered—savagely beaten to death in his own study with a mediaeval mace. The murder calls home his three adopted children: Alan, an archeologist; Roger, an engineer; and Caroline, a journalist. But his heirs soon find that his last testament contains a strange proviso—that his estate shall go to the heir who solves his murder. To secure their future, each Linwood heir must now dig into the past. As their suspicion mounts—of each other and of peculiar strangers in the churchless town of Linwood Hollow—they come to suspect that the perpetrator lurks in the mysterious origins of their own birth.

Posted July 30, 2023
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Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man

Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man

Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man by Emily J. Edwards Series: Girl Friday #1 Published by Crooked Lane Publishers on November 8th, 2022 Genres: Mystery Pages: 288 Format: ARC Source: Netgalley Buy on Amazon Goodreads Life as a secretary in New York just got tougher when Viviana Valentine’s boss goes M.I.A in this debut historical mystery, perfect for fans of Susan Elia MacNeal and Frances Brody. New York City, 1950. Viviana Valentine is Girl Friday to the city’s top private investigator, Tommy Fortuna. The clients can be frustrating, and none more maddening than fabulously wealthy Tallmadge Blackstone, who demands Tommy tail his daughter, Tallulah, and find out why she won’t marry his business partner, a man forty years her senior. Sounds like an open-and-shut case for a P.I. known for busting up organized crime—but the next day, Viviana opens the office to find Tommy missing and a lifeless body on the floor. The cops swoop in and Detective Jake Lawson issues a warrant for Tommy’s arrest. Desperate to clear Tommy’s name, Viviana takes on the Blackstone case herself. When she goes out for a night on the town with the heiress, she begins to learn the secrets behind Tallulah’s headline-grabbing life. […]

Posted July 28, 2023
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Ten Books I’ve send to the Shelter

Ten Books I’ve send to the Shelter

Greetings you guys! Good grief, you honestly only just about see me for Top Ten Tuesday this year. At least we haven’t disappeared completely – it has to count for something. Agh, we just love Top Ten Tuesday and we can see that Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl, is also quite busy with life outside of blogging. So we are ever so grateful to her for still hosting TTT! Today’s prompt is Ten most recent books I did not finish. I’m  not really good with this DNF thing. I normally prefer to finish what I start. That’s a cat-thing. If you chase the mouse, you don’t give up until you’ve made the kill. Mommy on the other hand, quite easily puts a book down. The problem is that she normally don’t even keep it on her Goodreads page and it gets lost in oblivion. What she does do, however, is place a book in her abandoned shelf. That is almost like taking a pet to a shelter if you can’t take care of it anymore or lo and behold – don’t want it anymore.  Taking a pet to the shelter is way better than just dropping it at the side of the […]

Posted July 25, 2023
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Wednesday Wisdom from Go As A River by Shelley Read

Wednesday Wisdom from Go As A River by Shelley Read

Go As A River by Shelley Read Published by Transworld Digital on March 7th, 2023 Genres: Historical Fiction Pages: 299 Format: Paperback Source: Book Club Buy on Amazon Goodreads On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family’s farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a dishevelled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives. So begins the mesmerising story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength. Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life for ever. GO AS A RIVER is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate. “What I have learned most about becoming, is […]

Posted July 5, 2023
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Top Ten Tuesday – Fun with Flags

Top Ten Tuesday – Fun with Flags

Greetings you guys! Welcome to this week’s edition to Top Ten Tuesday. As you all know by now, TTT is proudly hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Top Ten Tuesday is a fun way to connect with your fellow bloggers and to just have some fun with books. Or that is our interpretation at least! Today’s prompt is Book Covers In the Colors of My Country’s Flag (It’s the 4th of July in the USA today, so tell us what country you live in and share book covers that match the colors of your country’s flag!) Both me and my Mommy are born and bred in South Africa. We are mostly proud of that (as you can see on our brand new graphic in the sidebar). For today’s prompt, we are going to have a bit of fun with our current loadshedding debacle here in SA. If you don’t know what “Loadshedding” means, you can read our Wondrous Words Wednesday post with a full description here South Africa has a very bright and colorful flag. We can’t say the same of our night skies at the moment. It’s mostly very dull and dark. I’ll quickly go through the first […]

Posted July 4, 2023
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Alfie all Alone by Holly Webb

Alfie all Alone by Holly Webb

Alfie all Alone by Holly Webb Series: Animal Stories #2 Published by Stripes Publishing on January 1ste, 2007 Genres: Childrens Pages: 128 Format: Paperback Source: VCS Buy on Amazon Goodreads Evie is overjoyed when she is given her very own puppy, Alfie. Alfie adores Evie – he loves to be cuddled, sleeps on her bed and welcomes her home from school every day with a wag of his tail. But it’s not long before another new member of the family arrives: Evie’s baby brother, Sam. Suddenly no-one has much time to look after Alfie, let alone play with him and take him for walks, and soon he finds himself unwanted and all alone… Greetings you guys! It’s time for another book review from one of our eager readers from Victory School. This amazingly throrough review landed on my Mommy’s desk with a lovely note from Gia Josephs. Gia is in Grade 5 and she loves reading so much! No wonder she is second in her class for this term. Gia decided to write her first book review (I have another by her waiting to get published!) on one of the Holly Webb Animal Stories books. Holly Webb is a very […]

Posted June 22, 2023
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10 Turkish Books on my I-don’t-care-what-season-it-is Reading List 2023

10 Turkish Books on my I-don’t-care-what-season-it-is Reading List 2023

Greetings you guys! Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday. As always, hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Today’s prompt is one of those that we get every season and it is usually a wonderful way to sort your reading list for the next couple of months. Books on my Summer Reading list.  It’s anything but summery weather across South Africa this week. It’s dreadfully cold with wind and rain here in our little coastal town. Mommy was fortunate enough to catch a cold, but school only closes on Friday. So she just has to push through. Luckily she has a few really great books waiting at the moment. That always helps! Most excitedly at the moment, however, is Mommy and Daddy’s upcoming trip to Turkey! Yes, it’s still 5 months to go, but she is already very excited and of course she has to prepare as well as possible. What better way to prepare than by reading a whole selection of books! We spend the whole of Saturday searching for books set in Turkey, or with a Turkish setting in some or other way. So this is our upcoming reading list for this season. At once a fiendishly devious mystery, […]

Posted June 20, 2023
42 Comments