The Lost Gardens by Anthony Eglin

I just finished reading this book. I had trouble putting it down. The suspense held on to the very end. A retired Doctor is hired by a young American girl who has inherited the Wickersham Estate in England from a stranger. She wants to restore the 10 acre gardens to reflect what they were in their heyday. 

It's learned that the land the estate stands on was once a priory, destroyed during the Reformation. But there was a secret maze of underground rooms that holds a secret and a healing fountain in an above ground chapel that holds the bones of an unknown male.

I can't wait to read his other books! 

Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson

I read only about a quarter of this book before I gave up. Now part of it could have been because of my head injury, I had trouble keeping things straight. I felt there was too much going on right at the beginning of the book. I'm sure it all came together eventually because Davidson is a writer whose books I really enjoy.

I will probably pick it up again at a later date and retry it.

Edited on May 17, 2013. I never did get back to this book but from the comments I've read on Amazon it's just as well. It appears no one really liked it, it wasn't up to her normal standard. Hopefully her book that is coming out in September of 2013 will be much better.

I want Goldie back.

Donna Andrews

My goodness, I've been reading so much and yet gotten so far behind. I've got to keep this up so that I can look back to remember if I've read something or not.

First off I discovered Donna Andrews books when I was given one by a friend. I haven't read them in order, although I've been trying. Because I spend so much on books I've been trying to rely on our local library when I can.

Because I had a brain injury and need to rest the speed of my reading has increased. Donna Andrews books are well written and have a great amount of humor. Meg Lanslow has a huge extended family and their escapades (especially her father) elicit lots of giggles.

So far I've read the following books. I'd have to say my favorite is which ever one I am currently reading.

 


I've just gotten two more. I started to read one of her other books that weren't in this series but didn't really enjoy it.

Update October 1, 2012: Been reading lots. Still as funny as ever

London by Edward Rutherford

I have wanted to read this book for about 10 years but the copy I had had print so small that I couldn't comfortably read it. Now that I have a Kindle I decided to download it. It was Edward Rutherford's first novel and I found that it bounced around quite a bit and I would get lost from generation to generation but I stuck with it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's Historical Fiction but the historical part was quite accurate. I was particularly interested in the beginnings of London. I had no idea that Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, among other buildings, are so old. I didn't realize that London wasn't really the centre of the United Kingdom. Many of the Kings were French and didn't even live in London. 

I had no idea that, aside from the Romans, there were so many different cultures that made up England. That explains why, although they all speak English there were many different dialects and it would appear, to me anyway, why there are so many different accents. There were Danes and Celts and French and Latin,  so many other languages spoken up until relatively recently, or more recently than I had thought. 

For some reason (probably because I have a lot of British in my ancestry) I've been very interested in the Monarchy and this was a perfect book to learn this from.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

This book was written after Jeanette Walls book The Glass Castle. I'm so glad that she decided to write it. As a true story I was having difficulty when I read the Glass Castle really understanding the life that they had lived and why Jeanette's parents lived as they did.

Half Broke Horses was an eye opener. Jeanette's grandparents lived a good life. They did have a roof over their heads and were hard working. Life was hard and yet there was something about their life, a way that the children were raised perhaps, that fit in with the free spirit that her mother became. I'm so glad that Jeanette was able to break the cycle that was her parents and make a better life for herself. I was sad that her mother ended up homeless and on the street and yet that fit with her personality. It was nice to see that Jeanette was able to continue to have her own life and have a relationship with her mother that she was able to detach from and just let her mom be her mom.

Beautiful Lie The Dead by Barbara Fradkin

I absolutely LOVE Barbara Fradkin's novels. She is one amazing writer. Her Inspector Green mysteries all take place in Ottawa, or the general vicinity and since I know the city so well the ability to be able to visualize where he's driving adds an extra special element. She sure didn't disappoint with this novel. You'd think after reading so many that the plots would begin to get stale. I don't want to give any of this book away cause it has more twists and turns than, well, a back country cottage road in a winter snowstorm. But it's not the average murder mystery.

I can't wait for her to finish her next one.