The Stopped Heart by Julie Myerson

The Stopped Heart by Julie Myerson

With shades similar to Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica, The Stopped Heart offers readers a thrilling adventure that leaves you wondering if grief really can play tricks on the our mind. Long ago in the idyllic countryside, a chilling event takes place, and at the center of the ring is someone with red hair. Fast forward a century, and a family moves to the same countryside to escape their grief that is the result of a terrible family tragedy. A chilling parallel between past and present begins to reveal itself, and the reader is left turning the pages to become immersed in this gruesome tale. This book depicts crimes against children, so for readers disturbed or revolted by that narrative, they should be warned. For the thriller in you, this book will suit the dark side of your reading tastes. Read the synopsis to decide if The Stopped Heart is the kind of book to add to your bag!

Synopsis

Internationally bestselling author Julie Myerson’s beautifully written, yet deeply chilling, novel of psychological suspense explores the tragedies—past and present—haunting a picturesque country cottage. Mary Coles and her husband, Graham, have just moved to a cottage on the edge of a small village. The house hasn’t been lived in for years, but they are drawn to its original features and surprisingly large garden, which stretches down into a beautiful apple orchard. It’s idyllic, remote, picturesque: exactly what they need to put the horror of the past behind them. One hundred and fifty years earlier, a huge oak tree was felled in front of the cottage during a raging storm. Beneath it lies a young man with a shock of red hair, presumed dead—surely no one could survive such an accident. But the red-haired man is alive, and after a brief convalescence is taken in by the family living in the cottage and put to work in the fields. The children all love him, but the eldest daughter, Eliza, has her reservations. There’s something about the red-haired man that sits ill with her. A presence. An evil. Back in the present, weeks after moving to the cottage and still drowning beneath the weight of insurmountable grief, Mary Coles starts to sense there’s something in the house. Children’s whispers, footsteps from above, half-caught glimpses of figures in the garden. A young man with a shock of red hair wandering through the orchard.

Has Mary’s grief turned to madness? Or have the events that took place so long ago finally come back to haunt her…?

It is intriguing, right? A huge thank you to Harper Books for the early copy of this book.

The Important Thing About Being a Girl

This may be the most conversation that we have about girls and sex. It has been a rough go reading this book only because I lived through so many of the scenarios depicted in this book. I can stand with conviction and tell you that i will definitely have different conversations not only with my daughter, but also with my son as a result of this book. The prolific use of technology and devices as a means to humiliate and pigeon-hole girls into categories that rank them based on their beauty and worth is not only disturbing but tragic. This book "offers a clear-eyed picture of the new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage—high school through college—and reveals how they are negotiating it. A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow’s women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it." This is the part where we, as parents, come in to the picture. Ignoring or turning our backs tot he needs of our children does not mean they are not engaging in sexual acts, and (gasp!) posting about it, but that they are more than likely doing it behind your back. So much has changed in the landscape of parenting, and I am struggling to keep up. But I'll be damned if my children grow up not understanding the implications that the choices they make have on them, their peers, and their futures. "Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, renowned journalist Peggy Orenstein goes where most others fear to tread, pulling back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important possibilities of girls’ sex lives in the modern world." The frustrations I felt while reading this book were reminiscent of those that I felt while reading Missoula by Jon Kraukauer. It is just maddening to me how little progress we have made with regard to equality of treatment of boys and girls with regard to sexuality and objective treatment of girls.  

"While the media has focused—often to sensational effect—on the rise of casual sex and the prevalence of rape on campus, in Girls and Sex Peggy Orenstein brings much more to the table. She examines the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people’s lives; what it means to be the “the perfect slut” and why many girls scorn virginity; the complicated terrain of hookup culture and the unfortunate realities surrounding assault. In Orenstein’s hands these issues are never reduced to simplistic “truths;” rather, her powerful reporting opens up a dialogue on a potent, often silent, subtext of American life today—giving readers comprehensive and in-depth information with which to understand, and navigate, this complicated new world. " A worthy, important and worthwhile read.

The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle

The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle

Published by HarperCollins

352 pages

 

How compelling is an opening line such as this? "This is a life told back to front." It makes you immediately want to mark this as "To-Read" on your Goodreads profile. It is amazing to think of how little we actually know about most of the people we are surrounded by, and reading books like The Good Liar doesn't make it any easier to build the bonds of trust! In this book, you take a con artist, a wealthy widow, and a grandson who knows that things do not seem right, and you have a masterful tale of suspense that will take you by surprise. Everyone has their own secrets, and often a dark past is difficult to hide. All of the things about your past that you try to hide, and perhaps should have seen coming are played out for the reader, and to oh my- how we benefit! I love when a book builds suspense for the reader and ploys you by taking a seemingly unsuspecting woman and placing her in the path of a con artist bent on taking all of her money and living out the rest of his days in comfort. 

Synopsis

"This is a man who has lied all his life."  

Roy is a conman living in a small English town, about to pull off his final con. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman and slip away with her life savings. But who is the man behind the con? What has he had to do to survive a life of lies? And who has had to pay the price?

"Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, The Good Liar is a page-turning story of literary suspense, weaving a masterful web of lies, secrets, and betrayals that unravels to a shocking conclusion."

Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson

Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson

Harper Collins Publishers

A look into the world of the New York City ballet, its mounting pressures and ideals set by the industry that forces the dancers on a quest for perfection. Many times, the perfection is unattainable, and readers will be immersed into the culture that is utterly enthralling. Set in 1977, it is a throwback novel, but also completely relevant and contemporary. A young girl seeks solace from her parent's divorce through ballet, which offers her the power and control she lacks in her home life. This leads her in to dark places, and a compromising of morality. Fast-forward to Kate's world, where not much in the industry has changed and girls experience the same pitfalls in this dark world. Please read the following publisher's excerpt on Girl Through Glass.

Synposis

"An enthralling literary debut that tells the story of a young girl’s coming of age in the cutthroat world of New York City ballet—a story of obsession and the quest for perfection, trust and betrayal, beauty and lost innocence.

In the roiling summer of 1977, eleven-year-old Mira is an aspiring ballerina in the romantic, highly competitive world of New York City ballet. Enduring the mess of her parent’s divorce, she finds escape in dance—the rigorous hours of practice, the exquisite beauty, the precision of movement, the obsessive perfectionism. Ballet offers her control, power, and the promise of glory. It also introduces her to forty-seven-year-old Maurice DuPont, a reclusive, charismatic balletomane who becomes her mentor.

Over the course of three years, Mira is accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet run by the legendary George Balanchine, and eventually becomes one of “Mr. B’s girls”—a dancer of rare talent chosen for greatness. As she ascends higher in the ballet world, her relationship with Maurice intensifies, touching dark places within herself and sparking unexpected desires that will upend both their lives.

In the present day, Kate, a professor of dance at a Midwestern college, embarks on a risky affair with a student that threatens to obliterate her career and capsizes the new life she has painstakingly created for her reinvented self. When she receives a letter from a man she’s long thought dead, Kate is hurled back into the dramas of a past she thought she had left behind.

Told in interweaving narratives that move between past and present, Girl Through Glass illuminates the costs of ambition, secrets, and the desire for beauty, and reveals how the sacrifices we make for an ideal can destroy—or save—us."

http://goo.gl/RPT8Gd

Happy Reading!