#TopTenTuesday Books I Hope Santa Brings #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday ChristmasTop 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.

Christmas 4This week’s topic is Books I Hope Santa Brings. Realistically Santa is unlikely to bring me any books because friends and family rarely buy me them. They don’t know what I already own – let’s face it, sometimes I don’t either – or what I’ve already read. However if I’m fortunate enough to receive a gift card, here are some that might be on my shopping list.  If one or more of these books has appeared on your ‘Best Books of 2023’ list, then thank you for the recommendation. Links from the titles will take you to the full book description on Goodreads.

  1. His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet – The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae.
  2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett – It’s spring and Lara’s three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the one story they’ve always longed to hear – of the film star with whom she shared a stage, and a romance, years before.
  3. Light Over Liskeard by Louis de Bernières – Q wants a simpler and safer life. His work as a quantum cryptographer for the government has led him to believe a crisis is imminent for civilisation and he’s looking for somewhere to ride out what’s ahead.
  4. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
  5. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan – After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabrine, with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. 
  6. Prize Women by Caroline Lea – Toronto, Canada, 1926. Best friends Lily di Marco and Mae Thebault were once inseparable. They lived under the same roof and cared for each other’s children. But with mouths to feeds and demanding husbands to keep happy, both women are forced into terrible decisions as the Great Depression tightens its grip.
  7. The Spirit Engineer by A. J. West – Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with spiritualism in the form of seances that attempt to contact the spirits of loved ones lost at sea.
  8. Limberlost by Robbie Arnott – Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom – the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches – a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned’s older brothers.
  9. Not One of Us (Teifi Valley Coroner #4) by Alis Hawkins – Harry Probert-Lloyd, is struggling: with the blindness that drove him home from London, with the county magistrates and with an estate teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. He needs an escape, so when Dr Benton Reckitt is asked to give a second opinion on the apparently natural death of young Lizzie Rees, Harry willingly goes with him.
  10. Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle – Rome 1611. Artemisia Gentileschi dreams of becoming a great artist. Motherless, she grows up among a family of painters — men and boys. She knows she is more talented than her brothers, but she cannot choose her own future.

What books are you hoping to receive? 

#TopTenTuesday Books On My Winter 2023-2024 To-Read List #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday ChristmasTop 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.

This week’s topic is Books On My Winter 2023-2024 To-Read List. My list is made up of eight books for my personal Backlist Burrow reading challenge that I hope to read by the end of this month (yes, I know, fat chance) and two NetGalley eARCs that publish in January. Links from the titles will take you to the full book description on Goodreads.

  1. The Slowworm’s Song by Andrew Miller – An innocent-looking letter drops on to the doormat in Stephen Rose’s Somerset home like an unexploded bomb. 
  2. Pure by Andrew Miller – Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby.
  3. Back Trouble by Clare Chambers – On the brink of forty, newly single with a failed business, Philip thought he’d reached an all-time low when a topple on a London street lays him literally flat.  
  4. A Dry Spell by Clare Chambers – In 1976, four students took a trip to the desert. Now the repercussions of that fateful summer are coming back to haunt them.
  5. All Day at the Movies by Fiona Kidman – When war widow Irene Sandle goes to work in New Zealand’s tobacco fields in 1952, she hopes to start a new, independent life for herself and her daughter – but the tragic repercussions of her decision will resonate long after Irene has gone.
  6. The Infinite Air by Fiona Kidman – Jean Batten became an international icon in 1930s. A brave, beautiful woman, she made a number of heroic solo flights across the world. The newspapers couldn’t get enough of her.
  7. Himself by Jess Kidd – A charming ne’er-do-well returns to his haunted Irish hometown to uncover the truth about his mother, and turns the town – and his life – upside down.
  8. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler – The 15 stories, all written in the first person, blend Vietnamese folklore, the terrible, lingering memories of war, American pop culture and family drama. 
  9. The Storm We MadeThe Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan (published 4th January by Hodder & Stoughton) Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s children are in terrible danger. Her eldest child Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. Jasmin, the youngest, lives confined in a basement for her own safety. And her son, Abel, has disappeared without a trace.
  10. Munich WolfMunich Wolf by Rory Clements (published 18th January by Zaffre) – Munich in the 1930s is a magnet for young, rich, aristocratic Brits. They come to learn German, but also to go wild, free at last from the suffocating constraints of strait-laced England. They ski in the Alps, swim in the lakes, drink in the beer cellars and fall for the charms of dashing SS officers. What they don’t see – or choose to ignore – is the cold, brutal, underbelly of the Nazi movement which considers Munich its spiritual home.

What books are you looking forward to reading in the next few months?