Books On My Reading List

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These books on my reading list are novels I’ve bookmarked to acquire after I’ve worked through my current stack of unread books

These books include the woman who starts a rumor that gets out of control. And another woman, not yet 20, who has to learn to survive in harsh conditions in the wilderness.

There is the woman who transcribes people’s stories, and the terminally ill woman whose story she’s in the midst of transcribing. It turns out that there’s a common thread between their two lives that impacts them both. Then there’s the story of the triplets that come of age watching their mother fight for justice.

There’s the story of four college students who become fast friends, then are bound by a tragedy no one could have anticipated. The Elizabeth Berg book about Arthur Truluv in his early years. And the story of a woman married for decades who keeps the existence of a son she abandoned from her husband.

There is the group of writers who come together to go through the belongings of a member who has died. And how they are changed by this circumstance. There is also the book about the man who preys on women online. Who he meets, and then kills. And how he will be brought to justice in an extraordinary way.

All of these books that I’m sharing with you crooked their finger and beckoned me to read them. They might compel you to read one or two of them as well.

1. Eliza Starts A Rumor:

The author of Nine Women, One Dress delivers a charming, unforgettable novel about four women, one little lie, and the big repercussions that unite them all. 

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. When Eliza Hunt created The Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board fifteen years ago she was happily entrenched in her picture-perfect suburban life with her husband and twin preschoolers.

Now, with an empty nest and a crippling case of agoraphobia, the once-fun hobby has become her lifeline. So when a rival parenting forum threatens the site’s existence, she doesn’t think twice before fabricating a salacious rumor to spark things up a bit.   

It doesn’t take long before that spark becomes a flame.  

Across town, new mom and site devotee Olivia York is thrown into a tailspin by what she reads on the Bulletin Board. Allison Le is making cyber friends with a woman who isn’t quite who she says she is. And Amanda Cole, Eliza’s childhood friend, may just hold the key to unearthing why Eliza can’t step out of her front door. 

In all this chaos, one thing is for sure…Hudson Valley will never be the same. 

Link: Eliza Starts A Rumor

Why I Want To Read This Book:

I like to read books with more than one protagonist and this one has four characters. Years ago I wrote an article about a woman with agoraphobia and I remember how she seemed nervous even to stand at the window.

2. Go As A River:

Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home—where least expected.

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado. She is the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.

Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known, fleeing into the surrounding mountains. She struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring.

As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward. She wants to rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland. The ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard has been in her family for generations.

Link: Go As A River

Why I Want To Read This Book:

This one just sounds like a book I could sink my teeth into. I like to read about women who charts their own course. Those are the strongest of women I tend to think.

3. Tell Me How This Ends:

Can Henrietta find out what happened to Annie’s sister―before it’s too late?

Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…

Unlike Henrietta, Annie is brimming with confidence. But even she has limits when it comes to opening up. Ever since that terrible night when her sister left a pile of clothes beside the canal and vanished, Annie has been afraid to look too closely into the murky depths of her memories.

When her attempts to glide over the past come up against Henrietta’s determination to fill in the gaps, both women find themselves confronting truths they’d thought were buried forever. Especially when Henrietta’s digging unearths a surprising emotional connection between them.

Could unlocking Annie’s story help Henrietta rewrite the most devastating passages in her own life? And, in return, can she offer Annie a final twist in the tale, before it’s too late?

Link: Tell Me How This Ends

Why I Want To Read This Book:

This sounds like it has a very interesting story line. One woman is terminally ill, and the other transcribes their stories; such a contrast. Both feel compelled by their experiences that happened in the past.

4. One Two Three:

Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. Laurie Frankel has written a novel about how expanding our notions of normal and making the world a better place for everyone. And how when days are darkest, it’s our daughters who will save us all.

Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can’t speak. Monday is the town’s purveyor of books now that the library’s closed. Tell her the book you think you want, and she’ll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab’s job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne.

For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother’s endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone’s seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets.

Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they’ve been alive. Because it’s hard to let go of the past when the past won’t let go of you.

Link: One Two Three

Why I Want To Read This Book:

I’ve enjoyed Laurie Frankel’s novels in the past and I’ll probably enjoy this one too. I want to give it a go anyway and see.

5. The Summer Pact

In the wake of tragedy, a group of friends makes a pact that will cause them to reunite a decade later and embark upon a life-changing adventure together.

Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama. Tyson, a brilliant scholar and aspiring lawyer from Washington, D.C. Summer, an ambitious, recruited athlete from the Midwest. And Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner who is content to quietly round out the circle of big personalities. Soon after arriving on campus, they strike up a conversation in their shared dorm, and the seeds of friendship are planted.

As their college years fly by, their bond intensifies and the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. Stunned and heartbroken, they make a pact, promising to always be there for one another. No matter how separated they may become by circumstances or distance.

Ten years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are all facing their own crossroads. True to their promise, they agree to take a time out from lives headed in wrong directions and embark on a shared journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and acceptance.

Link: The Summer Pact

Why I Want To Read This Book:

I typically enjoy reading books about friends who met in college and remained friends into adulthood. And especially those that share a secret that follows them through the years.

6. Earth’s The Right Place For Love:

The story of two young people growing up in Mason, Missouri, and how Arthur Moses, a shy young man, becomes the wise and compassionate person readers loved in The Story of Arthur Truluv.

Nola McCollum is the most desirable girl in Arthur Moses’s class, and he is thrilled when they become friends. But Arthur wants far more than friendship. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses, Arthur’s older brother, Frank, who is busy pursuing his own love interest. And avoiding the boys’ father, a war veteran with a drinking problem and a penchant for starting fights.

When a sudden tragedy rocks the family’s world, Arthur struggles to come to terms with his grief. In the end, it is nature that helps him to understand how to go beyond loss and create a life of forgiveness and empathy. But what can he do about Nola, who seems confused about what she wants in life and only half aware of the one who loves her most?

Link: Earth’s The Right Place For Love

Why I Want To Read This Book:

I’ve never met an Elizabeth Berg novel I didn’t like. So there’s that. Secondly, I enjoy her books that showcase the character of Arthur Truluv. I want to read about Arthur’s earlier years. And also, nature is a very important element in my own life. So I’m interested to know how it impacts this character.

7. Still True

One summer evening, Lib Hanson is confronted by her painful past when Matt Marlow, the forty-year-old son she abandoned as an infant, shows up on her porch.

Fiercely independent, Lib has never revealed her son’s existence—or her previous marriage—to her husband, Jack. Married nearly three decades but living in separate houses (to the confusion but acceptance of their neighbors), they enjoy an ease and comfort together in small-town Anthem, Wisconsin. But Jack is a stickler for honesty, and Lib’s long-dormant secret threatens to unravel their lives.

When ten-year-old Charlie Taylor arrives at Jack’s workshop shortly thereafter, he’s not the first kid in town to need help with a flat tire. And Jack gladly makes the repair to his bike. The Taylors are new to Anthem, and Jack soon discovers that Charlie and his mom, Claire, are struggling to fit in. Even as Charlie’s dad, Dan, is thriving in his new job.

Extending friendship and kindness, as well as introductions around the local café, Jack assumes a grandfatherly role. What he doesn’t see is the drinking that Claire hides from everyone, or the secret son that Lib has allowed to move into her house. As well as the growing attraction between Claire and Matt. When the terrible events of a fateful evening threaten everyone’s carefully crafted lives, Jack, Lib, and their new friends must each determine the value of truth for the ones they love.

Link: Still True

Why I Want To Read This Book:

First, I like the idea of being married but living in separate houses. Sounds like that’s a real workable solution to possibly escape marital grief! I want to see how the characters handle this kind of lifestyle.

8. The House On Olive Street

When a group of writers loses a member, a summer spent sorting through her things offers the perfect escape for the friends who loved and miss her.

Sable has everything and her bestselling novels have made her a star. But she has a past she is desperate to hide. Elly is an intellectual who has hidden herself within the walls of academia, afraid to admit she is tired of being alone. Barbara Ann is the talent behind twenty-six romance novels, but she’s lost control of her career and her family.

Beth’s popular mysteries have become the only way she can fight against the secret tyranny of an abusive husband.

Gathering in Gabby’s house on Olive Street, away from their troubles, the four women discover something wonderful: themselves. And together they realize a dream. For, in telling the story of a remarkable woman, their own stories begin to change.

Link: The House On Olive Street

Why I Want To Read This Book:

The story line of four female writers sounds like a good jumping off point for a book. I want to read about their writing routines. And how telling the story of the friend they lost affects their own lives.

9. Ask For Andrea:

Meghan, Brecia, and Skye have just one thing in common. They were all murdered by the same man.

He hunted them online, masquerading as an eligible bachelor. Then he played the perfect gentleman, a thick layer of charm and a thousand-watt smile hiding the fact that his first dates end in shallow graves.

He’s gotten away with murder three times now.

The only thing that might keep him from killing again? The women he murdered.

Meghan, Brecia, and Skye might be dead, but they’re not gone. They’ve found each other. And they won’t rest until they find a way to stop him.

The haunt is on.

Link: Ask For Andrea

Why I Want To Read This Book:

I’m interested in learning what exactly is meant by “They’ve found each other. And they won’t rest until they find a way to stop him.” I have a feeling what it means, but I want to see how this story concept plays out. Sounds intriguing.

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