Top 10 Tuesday: April Blues

April 2: April Showers — Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt (books with rain on the cover/in the title, that have rainstorms in the story, or that have anything to do with rain)

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

That Artsy Reader Girl

I have been Ms. Anxiety for the last month. Consequently, I am far behind in correspondence. I will be doing better going forward.

🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

I was going through my TBR list, at my local library’s online site, looking for April showers type of books and I noticed all these beautiful blue book covers.

Here are ten from the middle of the list:

1

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness – book 1 of All Souls series – First published February 8, 2011 – 594 pages, Kindle Edition – Romantasy, Vampires, Witches, Magic

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos.

goodreads

2

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez – First published June 3, 2014 – 305 pages, Kindle Edition – Literary Fiction, Contemporary

A dazzling, heartbreaking page-turner destined for breakout status: a novel that gives voice to millions of Americans as it tells the story of the love between a Panamanian boy and a Mexican girl: teenagers living in an apartment block of immigrant families like their own.

goodreads

first take: sounds Shakespeaerian

3

The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott – First published September 30, 2014 – 400 pages, Kindle Edition – Fantasy, Paranormal, Magical Realism

On an ordinary day, at an air show like that in any small town across the country, a plane crashes into a crowd of spectators. After the dust clears, a thirteen-year-old girl named Ava is found huddled beneath a pocket of rubble with her best friend, Wash. He is injured and bleeding, and when Ava places her hands over him, his wounds disappear.
Ava has an unusual gift: she can heal others of their physical ailments. Until the air show tragedy, her gift was a secret. Now the whole world knows, and suddenly people from all over the globe begin flocking to her small town, looking for healing and eager to catch a glimpse of The Miracle Child. But Ava’s unique ability comes at a great cost, and as she grows weaker with each healing, she soon finds herself having to decide just how much she’s willing to give up in order to save the ones she loves most.

goodreads

4

The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke – First published November 4, 2014 – 369 pages, Kindle Edition – Humor, Denmark, Mystery

Take the format of a spy thriller, shape it around real-life incidents involving international terrorism, leaven it with dark, dry humor, toss in a love rectangle, give everybody a gun, and let everything play out in the outer reaches of upstate New York–there you have an idea of Brock Clarke’s new novel. Filled with wonder and anger in almost equal parts,The Happiest People in the World is a ripped-from-the-headlines tale of paranoia and the all-American obsession with security and the conspiracies that threaten it.

goodreads

Humor and conspiracy theories, and before we had even experienced the Trump presidency; I think I should read this sooner rather than later.

5

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny – First published August 26, 2014 – 385 pages, Kindle Edition – Mystery, Canada, Crime

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible…. his neighbor Clara Morrow: Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache’s help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three Pines. “There’s power enough in Heaven,” he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, “to cure a sin-sick soul.” And then he gets up. And joins her.

goodreads

It is becoming obvious to me that this part of the list was added probably in 2015. 😃

6

The Afterlife of Billy Fingers by Annie Kagan – First published March 1, 2013 – 211 pages, Kindle Edition – Spirituality, Nonfiction, Memoir

Suffering from world-weariness, former singer/songwriter Annie Kagan gave up her life in New York City and moved to a small house by the bay. While trying to figure out what to do with her life, her brother Billy died unexpectedly.
A few weeks after his death, Billy woke his sister at dawn. “It’s Billy, darling! I’m drifting weightlessly through gorgeous galaxies and I feel a loving, beneficent presence twinkling all around me.” Was Billy real or just a figment of her imagination? In The Afterlife of Billy Fingers, Kagan shares her unprecedented journey into the mysteries of the afterlife.

goodreads

7

Crash by Carolyn Roy-Bornstein – First published January 1, 2012 – 224 pages, Hardcover – Nonfiction, Memoir

After 25 years of caring for children, first as a nurse, then as a pediatrician, Carolyn Roy-Bornstein finds herself on the other side of the stretcher when her 17-year-old son Neil is hit by a teenage drunk driver while walking his girlfriend Trista home after a study date. Trista did not survive her injuries. Neil carries his with him to this day.      Gratitude for her son’s survival ultimately gives way to grief. While initially told Neil’s only injury was a broken leg, Roy-Bornstein quickly finds herself riding in the front seat of an ambulance transporting her son to the ICU at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; his brain is bleeding. … The world she so easily navigates in a white uniform or a white coat now must be traversed, understood, and dealt with from the perspective of a parent. 

goodreads

8

Messenger of Fear by Michael Grant – First published September 23, 2014 – 272 pages, Kindle Edition – Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal

I remembered my name – Mara. But, standing in that ghostly place, faced with the solemn young man in the black coat with silver skulls for buttons, I could recall nothing else about myself.
And then the games began.

goodreads

9

Life of Pi by Yann Martel – First published September 11, 2001 – 461 pages, Kindle Edition – Fantasy, Classics, Magical Realism

After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. 

goodreads

I loved the movie and always wanted to read the book.

10

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch – First published April 8, 2008 – 217 pages, Kindle Edition – Nonfiction, Memior, Philosophy

A lot of professors give talks titled ‘The Last Lecture’. 
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’, wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

goodreads

Thoughts