Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Summer 2019 TBR

Top Ten Tuesday new

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

20 Books of Summer 2019This week’s topic is Books On My Summer 2019 TBR. This is an easy one for me because I’m taking part in the 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books so it was just a case of picking ten books from my list that I haven’t yet read.

Click on the book title to view the full description on Goodreads.


  1. A Modern Family by Helga Flatland‘a beautiful, bittersweet novel of rich insights and extraordinary perception as a family drama creates a quiet earthquake’
  2. The Mathematical Bridge by Jim Kelly – historical crime mystery set in 1940s Cambridge, the follow-up to The Great Darkness
  3. Improvement by Joan Silber‘a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in Harlem, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them’
  4. The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle‘Delicious but never indulgent, sweet with just the right amount of bitter’
  5. The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey‘A novel of loneliness and regret, the legacy of World War II and the ever-changing concept of the American Dream’
  6. Transcription by Kate Atkinson‘a bravura novel of extraordinary power and substance’
  7. Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce – ‘A disturbing, toxic and compelling novel that explores the power of fear and desire, jealousy and betrayal, love and hate’
  8. In My Life by Alan Johnson‘this isn’t just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man’
  9. Munich by Robert HarrisSeptember 1938. When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?
  10. Ponti by Sharlene Teo‘A radiant, achingly beautiful novel about relationships between women’ (Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From)

WWW Wednesdays – 19th June ‘19

WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!


Currently reading

Birdie & JudeBirdie & Jude by Phyllis H. Moore (ebook, courtesy of Rachel’s Random Resources)

A serendipitous meeting on a beach in Galveston before a hurricane forces two strangers to take shelter with each other. Birdie, an older woman, and Jude, a young woman and lone survivor of a fatal accident are destined to spend time together during a strengthening storm. Their lives couldn’t be any different. However, they recognize something in the other that forges a friendship between them. As their relationship solidifies, they share glimpses of their past.

Birdie is a product of the ’60’s, an aging hippie, with a series of resentments hovering over her present life. She had a sheltered childhood in an upper class family. Her parents longed to see her make the Texas Dip at their krewe’s Mardi Gras ball. Jude, however, entered foster care as an infant. Her parents, victims of a murder/suicide, left her and her siblings orphans and separated into different homes.

Their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different, but there is something about their connection that strikes Birdie as familiar. Can souls know each other in different lives? Birdie struggles with the awareness that she has had regrets and hasn’t lived an authentic life, while Jude faces an uncomfortable truth about her own life.

20190607_101841The Dancing Floor by John Buchan (paperback)

Vernon Milbourne, orphaned since childhood and haunted by a recurring dream, is friends with the protective lawyer and MP, Sir Edward Leithen.

An Aegean cruise takes them to the mysterious island of Plakos, where Vernon is fascinated by the island’s myths.

Local superstitions turn to menace as Vernon’s encounter with a beautiful woman results in obsession and adventure.


Recently finished

A Long Way From HomeA Long Way From Home by Peter Carey (audiobook)

Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in rural south eastern Australia. Together with Willie, their lanky navigator, they embark upon the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive.

A Long Way from Home is a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, then takes you to another place altogether. Set in the 1950s in the embers of the British Empire, painting a picture of Queen and subject, black, white and those in-between, this brilliantly vivid novel illustrates how the possession of an ancient culture spirals through history – and the love made and hurt caused along the way.

Monopoli BluesMonopoli Blues by Tim Clark & Nick Cook (ebook, courtesy of Unbound and Random Things Tours)

In November 1944, Sub Lt Bob Clark, a twenty-year old agent with Britain’s top-secret Special Operations Executive, parachuted into northern Italy. He left behind the girl he had fallen in love with, Marjorie, his radio operator.

Captured by the enemy, Bob’s fate hangs in the balance and Marjorie won’t know for six months whether he is alive or dead.

Monopoli Blues recounts the story of Tim Clark’s journey to uncover the story of his parents’ war – and the truth behind the betrayal of his father’s Clarion mission to the Nazis…

the serpent's markThe Serpent’s Mark by S. W. Perry (hardcover, courtesy of Corvus and Readers First)

Treason sleeps for no man…

London, 1591. Nicholas Shelby, physician and reluctant spy, returns to his old haunts on London’s lawless Bankside. But, when the queen’s spymaster Robert Cecil asks him to investigate the dubious practices of a mysterious doctor from Switzerland, Nicholas is soon embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not just the life of an innocent young patient, but the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth herself.

With fellow healer and mistress of the Jackdaw tavern, Bianca Merton, again at his side, Nicholas is drawn into a dangerous world of zealots, charlatans and fanatics. As their own lives become increasingly at risk, they find themselves confronting the greatest treason of all: the spectre of a bloody war between the faiths… (Review to follow as part of blog tour)


What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Body LiesThe Body Lies by Jo Baker (ebook, courtesy of Transworld and Random Things Tours)

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote countryside, it’s meant to be a fresh start, away from the big city and the scene of a violent assault she’s desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of a new life and single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative writing group.

When a troubled student starts sending in chapters from his novel that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognises herself as the main character in his book – and he has written her a horrific fate.

Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it’s too late?

A Modern FamilyA Modern Family by Helga Flatland (ebook, courtesy of Orenda and Random Things Tours)

When Liv, Ellen and Håkon, along with their partners and children, arrive in Rome to celebrate their father’s seventieth birthday, a quiet earthquake occurs: their parents have decided to divorce.

Shocked and disbelieving, the siblings try to come to terms with their parents’ decision as it echoes through the homes they have built for themselves, and forces them to reconstruct the shared narrative of their childhood and family history.

A bittersweet novel of regret, relationships and rare psychological insights, A Modern Family encourages us to look at the people closest to us a little more carefully, and ultimately reveals that it’s never too late for change…