The Forgotten Children by Anita Davison (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

Flora, Bunny and my beloved Sally are all back for their grittiest and more heart-wrenching case yet. Anita Davison's Flora Maguire series just keeps getting better and better! The Forgotten Children is the fourth in the series so, of course, I have to recommend that you start at the beginning so you know all of the ins and outs of our main characters. This could be read as a standalone, but you really want to follow them through. They're definitely worth it!

This latest installment sees Flora adjusting to life as a new mum. She and her husband are invited to visit a local children's hospital in hopes of getting them to donate money, but before long they end up investigating some rather disturbing happenings instead. "Rather disturbing" leads to "extremely disturbing," which only makes Flora fight harder to figure it all out.

As always, Anita Davison's attention to historical detail and character development is amongst the best. It's almost as though you can smell all of the smells and feel all of the feels. If you're a fan of historical mysteries and have yet to pick her books up, get thee to the bookstore!

Friday 56 (today is 56% from the ebook) is hosted at Freda's Voice

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.

Lucy's Book Club for the Lost and Found by Emma Davies (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

I have a huge weakness for books about the bookish so when I saw Emma Davies' Lucy's Book Club for the Lost and Found on Netgalley my finger couldn't hit the request button fast enough! The cover claims it to be "a heartwarming feel-good romance novel" and they absolutely nailed it for a description. 

The story centers around Lucy and the book club she forms at the library where she works. It's a mixture of people who attend -- elderly widower Oscar, shy computer nerd Callum, single mom Hattie and Lia, whose entire life is centered around caring for her mother with dementia. Each of them, in their own way, is "lost" and Lucy wants to use the book club as a way to help them find what's missing. Of course, she doesn't take into consideration that she needs the same for herself, too. 

Watching the individual stories unfold and how they end up intertwining as a group was an absolute delight at times and absolutely heartbreaking at others. It didn't take long at all for me to care about all of the book club members and that made for a quick and highly recommendable read.  

It's being released this coming Friday, just in time for the post-holiday unwind for those of us here in the States and it's available for pre-order at the oh-so-amazing price of 99 cents so you won't even have to think about it while debating where to do your Black Friday shopping! It will already be waiting on your Kindle!

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. "Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

Amazon Description

Release Day Blitz! Gone Missing by T.J. Brearton

I am absolutely thrilled to be participating in today's blitz celebrating the release of T.J. Brearton's Gone Missing. I had a feeling that I would enjoy it because of the oohing and aahing from other Bookouture fans, but I had no idea just how much I would love this book.

Now, the vast majority of the Bookouture books that I have read thus far have been based in the UK which has been great since I'm a huge Anglophile. I didn't do any research at all into the book or  T.J. Brearton before diving in to this like I normally would. I had assumed that it would be based somewhere "across the pond" and was hit with a huge happy surprise of places I know and have been and roads that I have traveled numerous times over my almost 42 years. I'm a "north country" New Yorker in so many ways. I was born in Ogdensburg; dated a guy who went to Paul Smith's College when I was in high school; did my first year of college in Plattsburgh; taught workshops on the north end of Lake George throughout graduate school and beyond. This is my home turf that Brearton wrote about and he wrote about it beautifully.

Of course, the actual storyline of the abduction and search of Katie Calumet is what most people would be paying attention to and, luckily, Brearton wrote that beautifully as well. It takes a lot to get me hooked on crime thrillers, but from the very beginning I found that it was one that I didn't want to put down. (I even got caught once or twice sneaking in some pages at work.) The alternating chapters between Katie and the investigation led by Detective Justin Cross kept the pace riveting and the turns as twisty as a north country drive -- which, believe me, are plenty twisty! I gasped out loud more than a few times, was full of "you go, girl!"s for Katie, and ended up wanting more of Cross. (Please? Make this the first of many? I know that there are other series and lots of other books of Brearton's to read, which is great ... but I really want to see more of Cross and his team!)

The Murderess by Jennifer Wells (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

Even when I wasn't very far into Jennifer Wells' The Murderess, I was finding it difficult to put down. The characters tugged at me and kept pulling me back in and the further I got, the more I had to keep reading to find out what would happen -- and what did happen. The story jumps between Millicent's story in 1915 to Kate's in 1940. It's not an easy task to pull off and I have read far too many books that end up a jumbled mess when such things are attempted, but Wells pulls it off beautifully.  

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is from the first paragraph or two of a book being read now (or in the future) and is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. "Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read.

Amazon Description

Lies Jane Austen Told Me by Julie Wright (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

As always, Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice &
Book Beginnings is at Rose City Reader.
This week my "56" comes from the 56% ebook mark.

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Amazon Description

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Books inspired by my beloved Jane are very much hit or miss for me. They tend to either fall in the "why would they do this" category or the "I need this on my Jane shelf" category. Rarely does a book fall in between. Julie Wright's Lies Jane Austen Told Me is definitely in the "I need this on my Jane shelf" category and in spite of having received an advanced ebook from the publisher and NetGalley, I've already made plans to obtain the paperback and know exactly where on the shelf it will go.

I adore Emma and especially Lucas. Each one has traits of some of my favorite Austen characters woven together beautifully. She's a little Lizzy mxed with Emma; he's a bit Knightley mixed with Tilney. If you've been paying attention at all, you know what a combination like that means! New book boyfriend? Hmmm...

Mostly, though, I love the premise of Emma breaking up with Jane Austen as her romance guru ... or at least trying to. I think at one point or another all Austenites have become disillusioned when we take into consideration the fact that Jane never got her happily-ever-after romance. Who is she to say anything about anything? Watching Emma's relationship with Jane play out was almost as satisfying as watching her romantic entanglements.

Definitely one for the shelves!