I hope you all had a great weekend. I was pretty lazy all weekend but it felt so good to take naps, drink tea and read! Hm, with the gray skies we’ve had today I could easily have done the same but I guess a new week, means back to work.

I do have a book haul to share though thanks to various publishers:

A Fortune Fortold by Agneta Pleijel. This is a novel of childhood in the aftermath of WWII and set in the suburbs of Stockholm.

The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen. Liborio leaves Mexico to find a better life in the U.S. I think Europa Editions always have some fascinating novels so I couldn’t pass this one up.

Things We Have In Common by Tasha Kavanagh. A thriller with a fifteen-year-old girl as the main protagonist.

Cruel Is The Night by Karo Hamalainen. Three cell phones ring in an opulent London apartment. The calls go unanswered because their recipients are all dead. A Finnish thriller.

The Radius Of Us by Marie Marquardt. YA novel about a young girl who is finding it hard to live life after she was mugged in a parking lot one night.

The Sun King Conspiracy by Yves Jego and Denis Lepee. A historical mystery of stolen documents which have the power to change the course of history for France and the Sun King himself.

My Husband’s Wife by Jane Corry. When young lawyer Lily marries Ed, she’s determined to make a fresh start. But then she takes on her first murder case and meets Joe. A convicted murderer whom Lily is strangely drawn to.

I love that there’s a mix of YA, thrillers and fiction in translation. All of these sound interesting and I wish I could jump into them right away but first to clear off my nightstand of some ongoing reads. Have you heard of some of these titles? Which one would you start with?

My nightstand is pretty crowded right now with several books in progress and I want to mention three books that recently joined the already overflowing stack. These are so good and I am so excited it’s almost the weekend because I hope to make some progress in them.

Daisy In Chains by Sharon Bolton. I’ve enjoyed quite a few books by this author and this one is no exception so far. In this standalone, a charismatic and handsome doctor is in prison convicted of murdering several women. He claims he is innocent and now he wants Maggie Rose, a notorious defense attorney, to write his story.

I’m reading this book during my lunch break and it’s hard to put it away and get back to work. I don’t believe the convicted killer but I also have some questions about Maggie and her background. If the killer didn’t actually kill those girls then who did? Talk about suspense!

Equally intriguing is my other read Confessions by Kanae Minato. A teacher confronts her students with the knowledge that she is aware that two of them killed her daughter. Instead of going to the authorities she will exact her own revenge.

This book has received several awards and I can already see why. Perhaps what has been the most chilling aspect of this book is that it’s not just a crime novel about adults but of an adult making children pay for their behavior.

Finally to come off of a suspenseful edge from these books I’ve also started Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Who doesn’t already know the story of the Dashwoods? I have watched the film version with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet many times, my mom is a huge fan of the film, but had never picked up the book. I’m thoroughly enjoying reading this and can only wonder why I waited so long to open the book.

Anyway, these are the reads I plan to savor this weekend. Hope you have a great weekend and let me know what book you plan to enjoy!