Reading in Quarantine

Do you have a personal library full of reading material to get you through this crazy time? Or are you in serious need of some new titles? Here are some titles I found on Amazon that may be of interest to you. Also, don't forget to check out my list of used books I have for sale. 

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Children's Mystery, Detective, & Spy, Children's Classics, Children's Art Fiction
Format - Hardcover
Length - 168 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

When Claudia decided to run away, she planned very carefully. She would be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson in Claudia appreciation. And she would go in comfort-she would live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She saved her money, and she invited her brother Jamie to go, mostly because be was a miser and would have money.

Claudia was a good organizer and Jamie bad some ideas, too; so the two took up residence at the museum right on schedule. But once the fun of settling in was over, Claudia had two unexpected problems: She felt just the same, and she wanted to feel different; and she found a statue at the Museum so beautiful she could not go home until she bad discovered its maker, a question that baffled the experts, too.

The former owner of the statue was Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Without her-well, without her, Claudia might never have found a way to go home.

*My Review* 

My 5 year old choose this book as her "blind date with a book" even though we tried to tell her that it was a book for an older kid. She insisted and so we started it. I think she listened to the first 2 chapters and then lost interest. Since I had started, I couldn't simply stop reading.
It turned out to be a pretty cute book. Claudia and her brother Jamie run away together. I was curious how they would make it in New York City, but Claudia was quite the planner and thinker when it came to all that.

What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Coming of Age Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Contemporary Literature & Fiction
Format - Paperback
Length - 336 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now seventeen, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloging items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

Clara Cartwright, eighteen years old in 1929, is caught between her overbearing parents and her love for an Italian immigrant. Furious when she rejects an arranged marriage, Clara's father sends her to a genteel home for nervous invalids. But when his fortune is lost in the stock market crash, he can no longer afford her care--and Clara is committed to the public asylum.

Even as Izzy deals with the challenges of yet another new beginning, Clara's story keeps drawing her into the past. If Clara was never really mentally ill, could something else explain her own mother's violent act? Piecing together Clara's fate compels Izzy to re-examine her own choices--with shocking and unexpected results.

*My Review* 

This book!!! If I rated books with more than 5 stars, this would definitely get them. My love of reading started late in life (really just a few years ago) and it started with this book. I think I read it within 24 - 48 hours. I have just read it again for my book club at the library.

This book will make you wonder about how many people (mainly women) were institutionalized that were completely sane and no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to get out. Everything they did or said was twisted to make it sound like they were crazy.

Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Suspense, Thrillers
Format - Hardcover
Length - 352 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Christopher J. Yates’s cult hit Black Chalk introduced that rare writerly talent: a literary writer who could write a plot with the intricacy of a brilliant mental puzzle, and with characters so absorbing that readers are immediately gripped. Yates’s new book does not disappoint. Grist Mill Road is a dark, twisted, and expertly plotted Rashomon-style tale. The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends—Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah—are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again—with even more devastating results.

*My Review* 

This book grabbed my attention immediately. I figured I would have it read within just a couple days. It turned out not to be the case. At one point the book changes point of view and you start reading as Hannah. I am not sure what happened here, but I struggled more than anything to read her chapters. I felt like there was just a lot of information given about her growing up that did nothing except fill space in the book. Even after finishing the book, I still don't think I needed to know anything about her families history.
I also lost the connection I felt with Patrick in the beginning. At first I felt for him and understood where he was coming from, but he seemed to deteriorate as a character for me the more I read.

The House Swap by Rebecca Fleet

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre - Psychological Thrillers, Fiction, Thriller
Format - Audio-book
Length - 10 hours

*Amazon Blurb*

She may not know exactly who is in her house. But she knows why they are there. Be careful who you let in....
A house swap becomes the eerie backdrop to a crumbling marriage, a long-buried affair, and the fatal consequences that unfold.
When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap - from their city apartment to a house in a leafy, upscale London suburb - they jump at the chance for a week away from home, their son, and the tensions that have pushed their marriage to the brink.
As the couple settles in, the old problems that permeate their marriage - his unhealthy behaviors, her indiscretions - start bubbling to the surface. But while they attempt to mend their relationship, their neighbor, an intense young woman, is showing a little too much interest in their activities.
Meanwhile, Caroline slowly begins to uncover some signs of life in the stark house - signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music might seem innocent to anyone else - but to her they are clues. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone who knows her, someone who knows the secrets she's desperate to forget....
Be careful who you let in....

*My Review* 

I really wished I'd read this book instead of listening to the audio book. When it switched over to the person staying in Caroline's house it was done in a whisper which just irritated me more than anything. I think it should have just been told like the rest of the story.
Other than the whispered sections I truly enjoyed the book, though I did get angry at Caroline for not being straight forward with her husband sometimes and with the neighbor at the house they were staying at. I was shocked to find out everything that Caroline did in the end. I think it was a bit far fetched, but still enjoyable.

Autonomy by Blake Pitcher

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘
Genre - Science Fiction Anthologies, Magical Realism, Science Fiction
Format - Paperback
Length - 139 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Self-crashing cars; a rabbit that transcends reality; the inexorable passion of artificial intelligence-- Autonomy is a collection of stories dealing with reality, strangeness, and the space between.
Includes the novella The Young Hyenas.

PLUS…

“SWITCH”
An outing with grandma turns into a nightmarish joyride.

“Robot Butler”
Dymotron’s Robot Butler is the best help a man can buy, but at what cost?

“GOBi & the Jo-Bird”
Google’s “Online Being” runs rampant and… falls in love.

“Autonomous”
A detour in a self-driving car turns deadly.

“Horse Mode”
For Marshall, life is full of choices. But who is actually making them?

“Cold, As I Am”
A loner in a strange city overthinks an innocuous question.

Aeneatha, in the Sky
A woman follows a rabbit out of an alien world.

“Ice Cream for Smitty”
When Smitty is terrorized by two young boys, a tiny thought inspires meaningful action.

“Elisha Rabbit”
A magical rabbit transcends death and reality.

And, Eclectic-noir Flash Fiction:

Big Sky
A Week Along the Coast
Cooley’s Cabin
Ga!.

*My Review* 

I don't usually enjoy short stories all that much because there's either no time to get into them or they end just as you do. These ones seemed to be just the right amount of writing to enjoy and feel complete. The beginning and the end ones were the best. I did have a hard time with the stories in the middle. They didn't make any sense and were hard to read.

The Night Before by Wendy Walker

Available on Amazon

Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Family Life Fiction, Psychological Thrillers, Domestic Thrillers
Format - Hardcover
Length - 310 pages

*Amazon Blurb*

Laura Lochner has never been lucky in love. She falls too hard and too fast, always choosing the wrong men. Devastated by the end of her last relationship, she fled her Wall Street job and New York City apartment for her sister’s home in the Connecticut suburb where they both grew up. Though still haunted by the tragedy that’s defined her entire life, Laura is determined to take one more chance on love with a man she’s met on an Internet dating site.
Rosie Ferro has spent most of her life worrying about her troubled sister. Fearless but fragile, Laura has always walked an emotional tightrope, and Rosie has always been there to catch her. Laura’s return, under mysterious circumstances, has cast a shadow over Rosie’s peaceful life with her husband and young son – a shadow that grows darker as Laura leaves the house for her blind date.
When Laura does not return home the following morning, Rosie fears the worst. She’s not responding to calls or texts, and she’s left no information about the man she planned to meet. As Rosie begins a desperate search to find her sister, she is not just worried about what this man might have done to Laura. She’s worried about what Laura may have done to him…

*My Review* 

This book was nonstop suspense for me. The chapters switch back and forth between Laura and her sister Rosie. Laura leaves to go on a date, but never comes home. As the story unfolds you learn why Rosie immediately panicked about her sister not coming home like she promised she would. Did Laura get hurt or did she hurt someone? I wasn't able to figure it out. Then the ending.....it never even crossed my mind.