Our #1, 2, and 3 picks – Cathy Lamb
We have just recently discovered author Cathy Lamb and have just finished reading three of her books. She is a wonderful writer and her books feature fabulous strong women and great characters you will love. Here first two novels, Julia’s Chocolate, and The Last Time I Was Me are available in paperback. And our favorite, Henry’s Sisters will be released in July. It is a must read. Here are the synopses.
Julia’s C
hocolates“I left my wedding dress hanging somewhere in North Dakato.” From that very first sentence to the last, Cathy Lamb’s debut novel will have you laughing, crying, and falling in love with its cast of some of the most wonderfully eccentric women since The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Secret Life of Bees, as she explores the many ways we find the road home.
From the moment Julia Bennett leaves her abusive Boston fiancé at the altar and her ugly wedding dress hanging from a tree in South Dakota, she knows she’s driving away from the old Julia, but what she’s driving toward is as messy and undefined as her own wounded soul. The old Julia dug her way out of a tortured, trailer park childhood with a monster of a mother. The new Julia will be found at her Aunt Lydia’s rambling, hundred-year-old farmhouse outside Golden, Oregon.
There, among uppity chickens and toilet bowl planters, Julia is welcomed by an eccentric, warm, and often wise clan of women, including a psychic, a minister’s unhappy wife, an abused mother of four, and Aunt Lydia herself—a woman who is as fierce and independent as they come.
Filled with warmth, love, and truth, Julia’s Chocolates is an unforgettable novel of hope and healing that explores the hurts we keep deep in our hearts, the love that liberates us, the courage that defines us, and the chocolate that just might take us there.
Buy direct from the publisher for $9. 80 (30% off list price.) Also available at booksellers everywhere.
The Last Time I Was Me
"I wrapped up my grandmother’s tea cup collection and my mother’s china, then grabbed a violin I'd hidden way back in my closet that made me cry, a gold necklace with a dolphin that my father gave me two weeks before he died of a heart attack when I was twelve and, at midnight, with that moon as bright as the blazes, I left Chicago.”When Jeanne Stewart stops at The Opera Man's Cafe in Weltana, Oregon, to eat pancakes for the first time in twelve years, she has no idea she’s also about to order up a whole new future. It’s been barely a week since she succumbed to a spectacularly public nervous breakdown in front of hundreds of the nation's most important advertising and PR people. Jeanne certainly had her reasons—her mother’s recent death, the discovery that her boyfriend had been sleeping with a dozen other women, and the assault charges that resulted when Jeanne retaliated in a creative way against him, involving condoms and peanut oil. Now, en route to her brother’s house in Portland, Jeanne impulsively decides to spend some time in picturesque Weltana. Staying at a B&B run by the eccentric, endearing Rosvita, she meets a circle of quirky new friends at her court-ordered Anger Management classes. Like Jeanne, all of them are trying to become better, braver versions of themselves. Yet the most surprising discoveries are still to come—a good man who steadily makes his way into her heart and a dilapidated house that with love and care might be transformed into something wholly her own, just like the new life she is slowly building, piece by piece.
As heartfelt as it is hilarious, The Last Time I Was Me is a warm, wise novel about breaking down, opening up, and finally letting go of everything we thought we should be, in order to claim the life that has been waiting all along.
Buy direct from the publisher and save 30%.
Henry's Sisters
Cathy Lamb Pub Date : July 28, 2009 Kensington PublishingWrite July 28 on your calendar and then immediately go to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or any other bookseller and get this book. If you loved Terms of Endearment, the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and Steel Magnolias, you will love Henry’s Sister. Cathy Lamb just keeps getting better and better. We loved, loved, loved this book!
Ever since the Bommarito sisters were little girls, their mother, River, has written them a letter on pink paper when she has something especially important to impart. And this time, the message is urgent and impossible to ignore—River requires open-heart surgery, and Isabelle and her sisters are needed at home to run the family bakery and take care of their brother and ailing grandmother.
Isabelle has worked hard to leave Trillium River, Oregon, behind as she travels the globe taking award-winning photographs. It’s not that Isabelle hates her family. On the contrary, she and her sisters Cecilia, an outspoken kindergarten teacher, and Janie, a bestselling author, share a deep, loving bond. And all of them adore their brother, Henry, whose disabilities haven’t stopped him from helping out at the bakery and bringing good cheer to everyone in town.
But going home again has a way of forcing open the secrets and hurts that the Bommaritos would rather keep tightly closed—Isabelle’s fleeting and too-frequent relationships, Janie’s obsessive compulsive disorder, and Cecilia’s self-destructive streak and grief over her husband’s death. Working together to look after Henry and save their flagging bakery, Isabelle and her sisters begin to find answers to questions they never knew existed, unexpected ways to salve the wounds of their childhoods, and the courage to grasp surprising new chances at happiness.
Poignant, funny, and as irresistible as one of the Bommarito sisters’ delicious giant cupcakes, Henry’s Sisters is a novel about family and forgiveness, about mothers and daughters, and about gaining the wisdom to look ahead while still holding tight to everything that matters most.
Available July 28th at booksellers everywhere.
# 4-5 The Higgins Clarks
# 4-5 The Higgins Clarks
Anything by Mary Higgins Clark or Carol Higgins Clark. We thoroughly enjoyed their two latest novels, Just Take My Heart (Mary Higgins Clark) and Cursed, Carol Higgins Clark. See our previous reviews. Picks #7-8 Marie Bostwick
Another wonderful New York Times best selling writer is Marie Bostwick. We loved A Single Thread (which we reviewed awhile back, and the sequel, which we're reading now, A Thread of Truth.
If you read the NY Times bestseller, The Knitting Club, you will find a similar theme, in A Single Thread and it’s sequel, A Thread of Truth. However, we much preferred both of these books. With fuller, richer characters and a multi-thread plot line, you’ll love the stories that bind the characters together, and to our hearts.
Another wonderful New York Times best selling writer is Marie Bostwick. We loved A Single Thread (which we reviewed awhile back, and the sequel, which we're reading now, A Thread of Truth.
If you read the NY Times bestseller, The Knitting Club, you will find a similar theme, in A Single Thread and it’s sequel, A Thread of Truth. However, we much preferred both of these books. With fuller, richer characters and a multi-thread plot line, you’ll love the stories that bind the characters together, and to our hearts.
#9 Nelson DeMille
Our favorite DeMille novel is The Gold Coast (1990). It was laugh out loud funny, especially for those of us who know Long Island’s North Shore quite well. And finally he has written the sequel, The Gate House. It’s on our summer reading list. Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say:
Our favorite DeMille novel is The Gold Coast (1990). It was laugh out loud funny, especially for those of us who know Long Island’s North Shore quite well. And finally he has written the sequel, The Gate House. It’s on our summer reading list. Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say: Fans of bestseller DeMille will welcome this sequel to The Gold Coast (1990), in which Susan Sutter, then the wife of tax attorney John Sutter, had a torrid affair with Frank Bellarosa, a powerful Mafia boss and the Sutters' neighbor on Long Island's tony Gold Coast, with fatal results for Bellarosa. After divorcing Susan, John sailed the world for three years, then built himself a new life in London. Now John has returned to the small gatehouse that was once part of his ex-wife's family estate, only to find Bellarosa's thuggish son, Anthony, living next door. In another coincidence, Susan has just reacquired the six-bedroom guest cottage where she and John lived as a married couple on her family's former property. Susan and John soon begin to explore an improbable reconciliation, even as they suspect she may be in Anthony's gun sights. The plot more than takes its time getting to its violent and predictable resolution, but DeMille devotees should have plenty of fun along the way. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
#10 Jodi Picoult
We are huge fans of Jodi Picoult and it all started when we read My Sister’s Keeper. The book has been made into a movie which opens June 26th and stars Cameron Diaz and Alec Baldwin. Don’t skip the book for the movie. It’s a classic.Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate - a life and a role that she has never questioned… until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister - and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable… a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves. My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life… even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less?
