This week’s reading list is another lengthy one. On reaching the end of the second month of 2022, I am already two-thirds of the way to my reading goal for the year. My ‘Want to Read’ list is under fifty titles and my TBR cart is down to just the top level. Which, naturally has me feeling very accomplished!

My list this week includes an advanced reader copy of Roy Hoffman’s upcoming release, The Promise of the Pelican. I have the great privilege of being acquainted with Mr. Hoffman. If you are a fan of Harper Lee, you should definitely check out his books!

I’m also looking forward to reading The Mandarin Seeds by Olga Swan. This story is set in Vienna, beginning in 1935. As tensions are beginning to rise, the protagonists are seeking refuge from the growing threat of Nazi Germany. And they find their escape in Shanghai.

At once a literary crime novel and an intergenerational family drama, The Promise of the Pelican is set in the multicultural South, where justice might depend on the color of your skin and your immigration status. Hank Weinberg is a modern day Atticus Finch, recently retired as a defense attorney in Mobile, Alabama, and a Holocaust survivor, who fled the Nazis as a young child. With his daughter in rehab, he’s now taking care of his special needs grandson. Mourning his dead wife, spending mornings fishing on the pier with other octogenarians, he passes the rest of his days watching over his sweet grandson with the help of Lupita, a young Honduran babysitter. When her brother Julio, an undocumented immigrant, is accused of murder, Hank must return to the courtroom to defend him while also trying to save his daughter and grandson’s life from spinning out of control. The Promise of the Pelican takes its title from the legend that a pelican will pierce its own breast for blood to feed its starving chicks, a metaphor for one old man who risks all to save the vulnerable.

In 1935 Vienna, the demi-monde enjoy the delights of the Grünberger patisserie. Eva and boyfriend Michael love dancing in the illicit American jazz clubs but Nazi terror is rising. For Michael there is an added anxiety over his previous liaison with mercurial showgirl Marta.
Soon, the desperate situation for the Jewish civilians of Vienna forces them to try to leave, but where can they go?
Step forward an unlikely Chinese hero who miraculously helps them obtain visas for Shanghai.

A black comedy of manners about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City – people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

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What I know: a boy in my class will one day unleash a deadly pandemic that wipes out two-thirds of the population.

What I don’t know: who he is.

In a race against the clock, I not only have to figure out his identity, but I’ll have to outwit a voice from the future telling me to kill him. Because I’m starting to realize no one is telling the truth. But how can I play chess with someone who already knows the outcome of my every move? Someone so filled with malice they’ve lost all hope in humanity? Well, I’ll just have to find a way―because now they’ve drawn a target on the only boy I’ve ever loved…

Iris Carr was young, wealthy, attractive – and bored. Despairing of her society friends, tired of skiing with the crowd, she decides to return to England alone by train. But she hadn’t bargained for the extraordinary Miss Froy – a lively, gossipy spinster who is determined to befriend her, nor had she expected Miss Froy’s sudden disappearance.

Certain that she has not imagined so bizarre a character, and outraged by the blank faces of the passengers who deny her existence, Iris vows to find her companion, unaware of the terrifying trail ahead, so wildly different from her notion of a comfortable journey home.