Saturdays at the Café

Saturdays at the Café is a weekly feature hosted here to talk about and discuss the books I’ve discovered during the past week, added to my shelf and am excited about reading. They may be new/scheduled releases I’ve seen on NetGalley, at the library, or from publishers or they may be older titles my friends have reviewed and shared on Goodreads or blogs.

 

 

For Rose Enright, enrolling in a prestigious New England boarding school is the opportunity of a lifetime. But for Rose’s vulnerable twin sister Bel, Odell Academy is a place of temptation and danger. When Bel falls in with a crowd of wild rich kids who pressure her into hazing Rose, the sisters’ relationship is shattered. Rose turns to her dorm mother, Sarah Donovan, for advice. But Bel turns to Sarah’s husband Heath, a charismatic and ambitious teacher. Is Heath trying to help Bel or take advantage of her? In a world of privilege, seduction, and manipulation, only one sister will live to tell the truth.

In a novel full of twists, turns, and dark secrets, Michele Campbell once again proves her skill at crafting intricately spun and completely compelling plots. 

This kept showing up on so many of my friends’ shelves I finally gave in.

 

 

Divorces are often messy, and Imogen’s is no exception. Phillip Rochester is controlling, abusive, and determined to make things as difficult as possible. When he shows up without warning demanding that Imogen move out of their house by the end of the month or he’ll sue for sole custody of their young son, Imogen is ready to snap.

In a moment of madness, Imogen does something unthinkable–something that puts her in control for the first time in years. She’s desperate to protect her son and to claim authority over her own life.

But she wasn’t expecting both Phillip’s ex-wife and new girlfriend to get tangled up in her plans. These three very different women–and unlikely allies–reluctantly team up to take revenge against a man who has wronged them all.

My friend Jennifer@ Tar Heel Reader strikes again! I think I’m gonna have to create a shelf specifically for books she’s put on my radar.

 

 

He’s a sexual dominant. She’s sworn off sex. There’s no way they can make a relationship work–or can they? 

I’m a big Marie Force fan but was afraid to dip my toe into this trilogy. But, it showed up as a Kindle freebie and I grabbed it.  Plus, the author says this is her most favorite.  Couldn’t resist.

 

 

When Clara’s boyfriend, Luke, disappears, everyone believes that he’s left her, but Clara thinks she knows the truth. Recent evidence suggests that Luke had a stalker, and Clara worries that he’s been kidnapped. Then Luke’s older sister, Emma, who vanished twenty years ago, suddenly reappears.

Emma wants to help Clara with her search for Luke, but she refuses to talk about what happened–even though it nearly destroyed her family when she vanished. And the deeper Clara digs into Luke’s mysterious disappearance, the more convinced she is that the two incidents are connected.

Those Traveling Sisters keep me on my toes! This time it was Kaceey and I can’t wait to get to this one.

 

 

With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.

Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.

I met Woodward years ago as part of my job and I found him to be a serious and measured journalist.  I own many of his books on past presidents and the narrator is also my most favorite ever…Robert Petkoff.

 

 

Six days ago, Joe Lynch was a happily married man, a devoted father, and a respected teacher living in a well-to-do London suburb. But that was before he spotted his wife’s car entering a hotel parking garage. Before he saw her in a heated argument with her best friend’s husband. Before Joe confronted the other man in an altercation where he left him for dead, bleeding and unconscious.

Now, Joe’s life is unraveling. His wife has lied to him. Her deception has put their entire family in jeopardy. The man she met at the hotel has vanished. And as the police investigate his disappearance, suspicion falls on Joe.

Unable to trust the woman he loves, Joe finds himself at the mercy of her revelations and deceits, unsure of who or what to believe. All he knows is that her actions have brought someone dangerous into their lives–someone obsessed with her and determined to tear Joe’s world apart.

What if your whole life was based on LIES?

I waited forever for this audio and was finally able to nab it from the library. It just kept showing up on my friends’ shelves and the description hooked me.

 

 

The beginning of any love story starts with the meet.

I’ve known Garrett Hollis since before I can remember, and I’ve loved him just as long. I loved him while he loved someone else. I loved him when he had a baby with her. I loved him when she left him.

The greatest of love stories is that between a dad and his daughter. I should know. I’ve had a front row seat. First steps, first words, all the big moments. 

Garrett was just a teenager when Mia was born. I’ve watched him braid his daughter’s hair, hold her hand crossing the street, seen her asleep on his chest. I’m the best friend, the one they can count on for everything from dance lessons to motherly advice, anything they need. I’m their go-to girl.

The best part of any love story is the happily ever after.

But what if the happily ever after doesn’t include you?

All my life, that’s how long I’ve loved him.

Of course, he’s clueless.

I’ve been with the author since her debut novel so when I was asked to read this for review, it was an automatic “yes.” She’s one of the few writers of New Adult romance that I read. HIGHLY recommend.

 

 

First the fire, then the heat…

A brutal home invasion. Two small traumatized survivors who may have witnessed the horror. Lieutenant Sam Holland has never worked a case quite like this one, in which her eyewitnesses are five-year-old twins. But when Sam steps up in a big way for them, she risks her heart as much as her career.

While Sam and her husband, Vice President Nick Cappuano, go to battle in more ways than one for her tiny witnesses, her colleague Sergeant Tommy Gonzo Gonzales battles his own demons. Months of unbearable grief and despair come to a head in an unimaginable way that threatens Gonzo’s status with the department and his relationship with his fiancee, Christina.

With trouble both at the precinct and on the case, Sam struggles to keep her priorities straight at home and at work while trying not to lose her heart to her latest crime victims.

Told you I was a Marie Force fan and it started with this series. This is #13 and I’ll be listening to it as soon as I get my hands on the audiobook.

 

 

When it was published in 1955, Lolita immediately became a cause célèbre because of the freedom and sophistication with which it handled the unusual erotic predilections of its protagonist. But Vladimir Nabokov’s wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as one of the twentieth century’s novels of record not to the controversy its material aroused but to its author’s use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness.

Awe and exhilaration–along with heartbreak and mordant wit–abound in this account of the aging Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America, but most of all, it is a meditation on love–love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

I’ve seen both the original and remake movies but have never read the book. Normally I cannot do this as the movie interferes with my capture of the written story. However, my friend at What’s Non Fiction reviewed The Real Lolita this week and after discussion, she recommended I read this first. Picked up the audio version, which is narrated by Jeremy Irons, the star of the remake.

 

 

A dark, twisty psychological thriller set in paradise

Amber wakes up in a Vietnamese hospital; she has been left for dead on the holiday of a lifetime after a night-time swim in the picturesque So Den caves.

We flashback to her fairytale wedding with Ollie, where a mystery guest puts in motion a change of events that will lead to murder.

Unable to come to terms with the police’s version of events, Amber returns to the scene of the crime. She remembers that there was another couple during the night of the murder. And the killer is still out there…

My friend Berit @ Audio Killed the Bookmark reviewed this one and I just could NOT resist…AGAIN!!!

 

 

A frank, smart, and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve JobsBorn on a farm and named in a field by her parents-artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs-Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley.

When she was young, Lisa’s father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical, and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he’d become the parent she’d always wanted him to be.

Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ poignant story of a childhood spent between two imperfect but extraordinary homes. Scrappy, wise, and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide through her parents’ fascinating and disparate worlds. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling book by an insightful new literary voice.

I saw Brennan-Jobs’ interview on the Today Show and decided to read this book.  It popped up suddenly at the library and I snagged the audio.

 

 

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She’s the Man, Christina Lauren’s latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you’ll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.

It’s Christina Lauren. I read anything written by this author. It’s scheduled for release in December.

What books did you add to your shelves this week?