It's Monday! What Are You Reading!

 

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.

My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.

My 2013 reading list can be found here.

I'm late catching up on my reading status but such is life...

FINISHED:

Synopsis here.

i enjoyed this as a page of history as I had no idea the roles played by neutral nations during WWII. it takes place within the Vatican and is full of interesting facts about 

Much to the embarrassment his superiors, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty rescued many from fascism and certain death in Rome during World War II. He did it all with a twinkle in his eye and a sense of humour that kept him sane throughout it all. He didn't see himself as a hero but just a priest doing his job.

From the author of The Absolutist, a propulsive novel of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the Romanovs.
 
Part love story, part historical epic, part tragedy, The House of Special Purpose illuminates an empire at the end of its reign. Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenev is haunted by his past—a past of death, suffering, and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England with his beloved wife, Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported to St. Petersburg, to the Winter Palace of the czar, in the early twentieth century—a time of change, threat, and bloody revolution. As Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover the story of the house of special purpose.

Partly historical and partly fiction John Boyne weaves a captivating tale of the Russian 

Revolution set over sixty years of Georgy's life. Even though it doesn't take one long to realize where the story is going it is still a spell-bounding look into the lives of the Romanovs.

“Despite its title, Marrying the Mistress is no mere sexy romp detailing the lurid details of a juicy affair. Instead, Joanna Trollope offers a domestic drama that gives us an insider’s view of what happens to a family when the respected head of the household—60-year-old judge Guy Stockdale—announces he is leaving his wife of 40 years to marry his much younger mistress, Merrion. From his teenage grandson who thinks it’s cool that Gramps can still snag a hot young babe to his feisty daughter-in-law who sets up a secret meeting to check out the Other Woman, this is a nuanced tale that manages to be both familiar and surprising. What makes the situation complex—and the book beach-bag worthy—is that Merrion is far from the stereotypical villain/slut/husband stealer. She is intelligent, independent, successful and impossible not to like. Reading Marrying the Mistress is like spying on the neighbors that everyone on the street is gossiping about—without the guilt.” —Salon.com

A lovely, guilty read while sitting on the porch in the Florida sunshine. A peek inside an extended family with all their daily dramas. My only complaint, the trite ending.

In The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, Uncle and Ava are summoned by Wong Changxing, "The Emperor of Hubei" and one of the most powerful men in China, when he discovers that the Fauvist paintings he recently acquired are in fact forgeries.

Ava uncovers a ring of fraudulent art dealers and follows their twisted trail to Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Dublin, London, and New York. But the job is further complicated by Wong's second wife, the cunning and seductive May Ling, who threatens to interfere in Ava's investigation.

Will Ava find the perpetrators and get the Wongs' money back? Or will May Ling get to them first . . 

A new author to me, and I will be coming back to read more of this series!!

I loved being taken to all these cities that I know, Dublin (my birthplace), London, New York, Hong Kong, and my home town of Toronto.

I really was captivated about the art world and its workings. The story worked well and had me intrigued. 

STARTED:

Following from Jo Nesbø's electrifying international best-sellersThe Snowman and The Leopard, now comes Phantom, which plunges the brilliant, deeply troubled, now former police officer Harry Hole into a full-tilt investigation on which his own tenuous future will come to depend.

When Harry left Oslo again for Hong Kong—fleeing the traumas of life as a cop—he thought he was there for good. But then the unthinkable happened. The son of the woman he loved, lost, and still loves is arrested for murder: Oleg, the boy Harry helped raise but couldn't help deserting when he fled. Harry has come back to prove that Oleg is not a killer. Barred from rejoining the police force, he sets out on a solitary, increasingly dangerous investigation that takes him deep into the world of the most virulent drug to ever hit the streets of Oslo (and the careers of some of the city's highest officials), and into the maze of his own past, where he will find the wrenching truth that finally matters to Oleg, and to himself.