my novels this week

Subject: my novels this week Wed Apr 23, 2008 8:33 pm

i get a few novels to read after my son goes to bed etc.. and since im a fast reader, i go through several a week

this week im reading:

This taut novel is sure to hold readers' attention from beginning to end. Seventeenth-century New York is the perimeter within which Catherwood, a young mother, finds herself after a perilous beginning in England. Through flashback and letters across the Atlantic to her adopted brother, readers learn how Catherwood had been plucked from a homeless existence as a child and brought to live in a caring and privileged environment. After marrying a man of her adopted mother's choice, she leaves a familiar and easy life for that of the unknown in New York Colony. Returning home after a visit with friends in the widely scattered primitive community, the young woman and her infant daughter become lost. It is Catherwood's survival in the wilderness for seven months that becomes the story. The novel is based on an account "copied into the Church Record, Westfield, the colony of Massachusetts in New-England, on the first December Anno Domini 1678." Youmans lets her imagination go free in picturing how this account came to be. The novel takes place from 1676 to 1678, but so much happens during that short span that YAs will be left breathless with Catherwood's strength, courage, and grief during those years. Students looking for a short book with substance, suspense, and much to think about in the process will find this title rewarding

In this intense, lyric coming-of-age story, Anna Berter, the privileged daughter of the local doctor and his patrician wife in post-World War I rural Iowa, loses her innocence and discovers the power of the truth. Anna is pulled in one direction by her domineering mother, whose life is based on her childlessness and her fear of losing her adopted daughter's love, and in another by the Old One--their housekeeper--who shows Anna the strength of love and its responsibilities. Edwina, the housekeeper's granddaughter, is seduced by a charming but irresponsible houseguest of the Berters. When the Berters adopt Edwina's daughter, giving Anna a new sister, they set in motion a complicated and unnerving confrontation with small-town duplicity and hypocrisy

Subject: Re: my novels this week Fri Apr 25, 2008 8:02 am

I like the sound of your first novel....I am just taking up an interest in reading once again. I've rather got hooked on the internet and all things related and reading is generally something I only do occassionally.

My hubby and I went out for a few hours yesterday and visited thrift shops. We are always on the lookout for books (we have boxfuls of books that we have no room for and keep buying more!).

I got 4 yesterday...."BBC Coast" (a tv series which shows the coastline of GB and as I love the water/coastline I felt it was well worth the £2 I paid for it).

I also got a series of books written by an English author Billy Hopkins "Kate's Story", "High Hopes" and "Going Places"....all detailing his mother's moving story of triumph over tragedy and his own life in Manchester in the 1950's. I think I will enjoy them.

Oh...and I got one other book too....James Harriot's "Cat Stories". James Harriot was a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales (his life as a vet was serialized for tv and was very enjoyable). As I love cats and miss our previous pet Sheba who died at 19 yrs. of age and hubby does insist we have no more pets as we are retirement age now...I thought I'd enjoyreading about other cat stories to fill the longing iyswim.

Jacquie x
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Subject: Re: my novels this week Sat Apr 26, 2008 2:14 am

I finally have been able to check out At Home In Mitford and am thoroughly enjoying it! So lovely and quaint.

Subject: Re: my novels this week Sat Apr 26, 2008 6:04 am

those sound like great books!! my aunt collects cat books.. ill have to look for the one you mentioned

Subject: Re: my novels this week Sat Apr 26, 2008 10:39 am

Karla, glad to hear you are reading At Home in Mitford, you will end up loving the charcters if you continue the series.