Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #40

 Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want. 

 

Here's what I'm reading this week:

 

A Sprinkling of Murder

(A Fairy Garden Mystery #1) 

by Daryl Wood Gerber

Synopsis:

Fairy garden store owner Courtney Kelly believes in inviting magic into your life. But when uninvited trouble enters her shop, she'll need more than a sprinkling of her imagination to solve a murder . . .

Since childhood, Courtney has loved fairies. After her mother died when she was ten, she lost touch with that feeling of magic. A year ago, at age twenty-nine, she rediscovered it when she left her father's landscaping business to spread her wings and start a fairy garden business and teashop in beautiful Carmel, California. At Open Your Imagination, she teaches garden design and sells everything from fairy figurines to tinkling wind chimes and trickling fountains. Now she's starting a book club tea.

But the light of the magical world she's created inside her shop is darkened one night when she discovers neighboring dog-grooming business owner Mick Watkins dead beside a fountain. To make matters worse, the police suspect Courtney of the crime. To clear her name and find the real killer, Courtney will have to wing it. But she's about to get a little help from an unexpected new friend . . .

Book Beginning:

"Do you see her? Is she down there?" I tried not to let my five-year-old customer hear the panic in my voice.

The book opens with a rather lovely scene in which a little girl sees her first fairy. How cute!

The Friday 56:

Summers studied me as if he knew I was keeping something from him. My insides grumbled. Obfuscating the truth wasn't good for my digestion.

 

This cozy mystery, although I'm not even half way through it, has already made me obsessed with fairy gardens and right now I'm planning to create my first one...

What are you reading this week? Don't forget to leave your Friday links below so I can visit your blog and find out!

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #39

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

This week in the spotlight:

The Silence of the Girls

by Pat Barker

Synopsis:

When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis's old life is shattered. She goes from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the godlike warrior Achilles as a prize of battle. She's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long, bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

As told in The Iliad, the Trojan War was a quarrel between men. But what of the women in this story, silenced by their fates? What words did the speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

In this magnificent novel of the Trojan War, Pat Barker summons the voices of Briseis and her fellow women to tell this mythic story anew, foregrounding their experiences against the backdrop of savage battle between men. One of the contemporary writers on war and its collateral damage, here Pat Barker reimagines the most famous of all wars in literature, charting one woman's journey throught it, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story.

Book Beginning:

Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles... How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him 'the butcher'. 

Well, Achilles is not described as the great hero in this one, that's for sure...

The Friday 56:

Somebody once said to me: You never mention his looks. And it's true, I don't, I find it difficult. At that time, he was probably the most beautiful man alive, as he was certainly the most violent, but that's the problem. How do you separate a tiger's beauty from its ferocity? Or a cheetah's elegance from the speed of its attack? Achilles was like that – the beauty and the terror were two sides of a single coin.

 I love this snippet!

What are you reading this week?

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #38

 Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

This week I'm featuring the book I'm starting the Easter Readathon with:

My Family and Other Animals 
(Corfu Trilogy #1)

by Gerald Durrell

Synopsis:

Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu.

But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies.

Book Beginning:

 July had been blown out like a candle by the biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky.

This is quite a beautiful sentence.

 The Friday 56:

Having slept for the better part of three hours in the fierce sun, she found her eyes so puffy and swollen that she could hardly see out of them. The wind and spray had made them worse, and by the time she reached the jetty she could hardly see at all. She was read and raw with sunburn and her eyelids so puffed out that she looked like a particularly malevolent Mongolian pirate.

Someone took sunbathing to another level, haha.

What are you reading this week? Share your Friday post with me by leaving a link below.

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #37

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

What I started reading this week:

Stormhaven

(Whyborne & Griffin #3)

by Jordan L. Hawk

Synopsis:

Mysterious happenings are nothing new to reclusive scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne, but finding one of his colleagues screaming for help in the street is rather unusual. Allan Tambling claims he can’t remember any of the last hour—but someone murdered his uncle, and Allan is covered in blood.

Whyborne’s lover, dashing ex-Pinkerton detective Griffin Flaherty, agrees to prove Allan’s innocence. But when Allan is deemed insane and locked away in the Stormhaven Lunatic Asylum, Griffin finds himself reliving the horrifying memories of his own ordeal inside a madhouse.

Along with their friend Christine, the two men become drawn deeper and deeper into a dark web of conspiracy, magic, and murder. Their only clue: a missing artifact depicting an unknown god. Who stole the artifact, and why can’t Allan remember what happened? And what is the truth behind the terrible experiments conducted on Stormhaven’s forbidden fourth floor?

It will take all of Whyborne’s sorcery and Griffin’s derring-do to stop the murderers and save Allan. But first, they must survive an even greater challenge: a visit from Griffin’s family.

Book Beginning:

Newly installed electric lights blazed from atop the department store, theater and even the street corners where ordinary gas lamps had burned just a month ago.

The winds of change are blowing in Whyborne and Griffin's world.

The Friday 56:

He flung himself off the end, dragging me with him. We had an instant of weightlessness as we fell – then the rank water slammed into me with physical force, knocking the air from my lungs before it closed over my head.

From what I've read so far from this book it looks like water as an element will have a key role in the story.

What are you reading this week? Share your Friday post with me by leaving a link below.

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #36

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

This week the spotlight is on:

The Lost Queen

by Norah Lofts 

 Synopsis:

'Princesses are born to the exiled. What is the alternative? Spinsterhood?' Thus the future of Caroline Matilda, youngest sister of George III, was settled - exile to a foreign country, and marriage to a nearly insane Crown Prince of Denmark. This novel tells her story.

Book Beginning:

The Dowager Princess of Wales had long ago learned to control her voice, her facial expression, and her hands; but in anger or distress the pupils of her eyes widened, reducing the blue to a mere rim. 

The Friday 56:

He had entertained thoughts – When I am King I will put Count Reventlow in the Blue Tower and have him beaten, every day – but such thoughts were not sufficient to sustain him in moments of misery.

Not a very promising king-to-be...

Leave a link to your Friday post so I can visit your blog and see what you're reading this week.

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #35

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

What I'm reading this week:

Escape to Everly Manor

by Chalon Linton

 

Synopsis: 

Nineteen-year-old Lizzy and her young brother, Thomas, find themselves orphaned after a tragic accident claims the lives of their parents. Their estranged Uncle Cline arrives to claim his inheritance, and his roguish ways cast a shadow over the manor. Both the family estate and guardianship of his niece and nephew were left to him, and diabolical Uncle Cline is determined to indulge in his newfound wealth and rid himself of his charges. Desperate to save her brother from a dangerous life at sea, and herself from being married off to a detestable old gentleman, Lizzy knows there is only one choice left—they must run.
 
Lizzy and Thomas sneak away and find refuge in an abandoned cabin. There they remain hidden—until fate acquaints Lizzy with Mr. Barton, a charming gentleman who is immediately intrigued by the mysterious young woman. Concealing her identity, Lizzy is unaware that there is much more to this compassionate man than meets the eye. Through his kindness to herself and her brother, Lizzy begins to trust him. Soon Lizzy realizes Mr. Barton may be her best hope for a life in which she can live—and love—as she chooses . . .

Book Beginning:

Elizabeth Stafford would not quit.

A persistent lady, I love her already!

The Friday 56:

"What about you, Miss Stafford? Are you anxious to be on your way, or will you perhaps miss Everly Manor?" He held his breath and waited for her answer.

"As I've told you, we can't remain," she replied quickly. Too quickly.

"Because of your fiancé?" Miss Stafford's profile turned to stone. Barton did not mean to cause her discomfort, but he had to know. "Is Mr. Simpkin your fiancé, Miss Stafford?"

What an inconvenient situation...

Share with me what you're reading this week by leaving a link below!

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #34

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

 What I've started reading this week:

Circe

by Madeline Miller

Synopsis:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe has neither the look nor the voice of divinity, and is scorned and rejected by her kin. Increasingly isolated, she turns to mortals for companionship, leading her to discover a power forbidden to the gods: witchcraft.

When love drives Circe to cast a dark spell, wrathful Zeus banishes her to the remote island of Aiaia. There she learns to harness her occult craft, drawing strength from nature. But she will not always be alone; many are destined to pass through Circe's place of exile, entwining their fates with hers. The messenger god, Hermes. The craftsman, Daedalus. A ship bearing a golden fleece. And wily Odysseus, on his epic voyage home.

There is danger for a solitary woman in this world, and Circe's independence draws the wrath of men and gods alike. To protect what she holds dear, Circe must decide whether she belongs with the deities she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

 

 Book Beginning:

When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

The first witch ever, Ladies and Gentlemen!

The Friday 56:

I had a wild thought there, beneath that sky. I will eat these herbs. Then whatever is truly in me, let it be out, at last. 

She is yearning so much to know herself, I like her already!

Don't forget to share your Friday post with me below!

Happy Reading!

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #33

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

 
This week in the spotlight:
 

Lady Audley's Secret

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 

Synopsis:

In this outlandish, outrageous triumph of Scandal fiction, a new Lady Audley arrives at the manor: young, beautiful - and very mysterious. Why does she behave so strangely? What, exactly, is the dark secret this seductive outsider carries with her?

A huge success in the nineteenth century, the book revels in an anti-heroine - with her good looks and hidden past - who embodied perfectly the concerns of the Victorian age with morality and madness.

Book Beginning:

It lay low down in a hollow, rich with fine old timber and luxuriant pastures; and you came upon it through an avenue of limes, bordered on either side by meadows, over the high hedges of which the cattle looked inquisitively at you as you passed, wondering, perhaps, what you wanted; for there was no thoroughfare, and unless you were going to the Court you had no business there at all.

A good long description of English countryside as an opening just does the trick for me - every time.

The Friday 56:

'I shall write to my cousin Alicia to-day, George' the young barrister said, upon this very 30th of August . 'Do you know that the day after to-morrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we will both run down to the Court for a week's shooting.'

'No, no, Bob: go by yourself; they don't want me, and I'd rather–'

'Bury yourself in Fig-tree Court, with no company but my dogs and canaries! No, George, you shall do nothing of the kind!'

'But I don't care for shooting.'

'And do you suppose I care for it?' cried Robert, with charming naiveté. 'Why, man, I don't know a partridge from a pigeon, and it might be the 1st of April instead of the 1st of September for aught I care.'

They are young and rich and boooored. 

Which book have you featured in your Friday post today? 
Leave a link below so I can visit your blog!

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #32

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

This week in the spotlight:

 The Balance of Heaven and Earth

by Laurence Westwood

Synopsis:

I have been unable to write a judgement that does not seem to offend my conscience, or indeed Heaven, in some manner. Because I do not wish to influence your thinking unduly, I have destroyed all my personal papers and notes in regard to this dispute, preferring you to start afresh. Forgive me for this. All I ask is that you consider and examine Jade Moon most carefully before coming to a decision. I find her fascinating and unsettling in equal measure, and fear the consequences of a wrongful judgement. I will say no more.

My sincerest best wishes to you and your family,

Magistrate Qian
Fifth District, Chengdu Prefecture
1st day of the 2nd Moon, 1085

So ends the letter of welcome (and of warning) to Magistrate Zhu, newly arrived in the remote border town of Tranquil Mountain. He has travelled far from his extensive family estates on the outskirts of Kaifeng – the glorious Song Dynasty capital – hoping to find atonement for past mistakes.

Yet he quickly discovers that Tranquil Mountain is anything but tranquil. The town is beset with simmering tensions since the death of his predecessor. Before Magistrate Zhu even has time to accustom himself to his inexperienced and wayward constabulary and the lowliness of his new surroundings, there is a mysterious murder, rumours of ghosts and blood-thirsty bandits out on the streets, and a disturbing kidnapping to solve – as well as the tragic and tangled legal circumstances of the local heroine Jade Moon to unravel.

For the balance of Heaven and Earth to be maintained, and to prevent catastrophe coming to Tranquil Mountain, Magistrate Zhu is well aware that not a single injustice can be allowed to stand. As he struggles to reach the correct judgements, he realises he has no choice but to offer up his career and perhaps even his own life for the greater good. And, in so doing, he discovers that as Jade Moon’s fate rests in his hands, so his fate ultimately rests in hers.

 Book Beginning:

"At least something will happen now," said Fast Deng, excited by the news.

(from Chapter 1)

And just like that I'm pulled into the story... What's the news??

The Friday 56:

Magistrate Zhu smiled again, warmly, and Senior Scribe Xu could only nod, as if sagely, hoping that would suffice. He was having trouble keeping up with the Magistrate's quick changes of mood and tone. He wondered if he was being teased... or even tormented.

 Magistrate Zhu's personality fascinates me.

Which book have you featured in your Friday post today? 
Leave a link below so I can visit your blog!

Book Beginnings and the Friday 56 #31

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56 are weekly memes hosted by Rose City Reader and Freda's Voice.

Rules: 

Book Beginnings: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. 

The Friday 56: Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% in you eReader. Find any sentence (not spoilery) and reflect on it if you want.

Here's what I'm currently reading:

The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

Synopsis:

Set in the turbulent times of twelfth-century England when civil war, famine, religious strife and battles over royal succession tore lives and families apart, The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of the building of a magnificent cathedral.

Against this richly imagined backdrop, filled with intrigue and treachery, Ken Follett draws the reader irresistibly into a wonderful epic of family drama, violent conflict and unswerving ambition. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, the dreams, labours and loves of his characters come vividly to life. The Pillars of the Earth is, without doubt, a masterpiece - and has proved to be one of the most popular books of our time.

Book Beginning:

The small boys came early to the hanging.

And I assume their parents joined them soon too to watch the entertainment. I still can't imagine how people could actually enjoy hangings back then.

The Friday 56:

Villages which left the autumn ploughing a little late broke their ploughshares on the rock-hard earth. The peasants hastened to kill their pigs and salt them for the winter, and the lords slaughtered their cattle, because winter grazing would not support the same number of livestock as summer. But the endless freeze withered the grass, and some of the remaining animals died anyway. Wolves became desperate, and came into villages at dusk to snatch away scraggy chickens and listless children.

It makes me feel cold just reading this.

Show me what you're reading this week, leave your link in a comment below!