Maybe You'll Like One of These. Get it, MAYbe.

Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty

Boyd Varty grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa where along with his adventurous sister learned to track animals, raised leopard and lion cubs, and followed their uncle on his many filming adventures. Founded eighty years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty’s father and uncle. If only I could afford to stay there life would be complete.

♥♥♥

Letters Form Berlin by Kerstin Lieff

Margarete Dos was abused by her violent stepfather and her adolescence and young adulthood coincided with the Nazi regime. Talk about bad luck. Transcribed and translated from Lieff’s interviews with her mother, Margarete,  its an incredibly heartbreaking story complete with awesome photos. ♥♥♥

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

Louisa is 26, and lives with her parents in a small English town. When the cafe closes, she is hired to care for Will Traynor, a former world traveler, ladies' man and successful businessman who's been a quadriplegic since a traffic accident two years ago. ♥

April

Queen of Sugar by Natalie Baszile

Charley Bordelon’s father left her eight hundred acres of sugarcane in rural Louisiana so she and her eleven-year-old daughter, Micah, head on over from LA. ♥

Saint Monkey by Jacinda Townsend

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, wants to get out of Kentucky and her piano playing fingers may be the ticket. Honestly about half this book was unnecessary. The other half was really great. My favorite part was the peek into the booming jazz scene in Harlem. ♥

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

A comic look at futuristic America – life, work and improbable love. ♥♥

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Set in early nineteenth century Charleston, Sarah’s eleventh birthday present is ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow them over the next thirty five years, as they find their way in the world. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke. ♥♥♥

The Map of Enough by Molly Caro May

Molly Caro’s family never settled in one place for long. She kept the tradition alive and moved from foreign country to another, but shy of thirty years old, everything changed when she and her fiancé move to 107 acres in Montana. ♥♥

The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout’s

AhhHaa. Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Tommy Lee Jones. This story of early pioneers in 1850s American West puts us inside the sod huts and hardship that the women had to endure. It seems after each harsh, endless winter there are several wives gone crazy and a “homesman” must be found to escort  them back East, to a sanitarium. ♥♥♥♥

March Madness

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Boy Novak runs away and lands in a small Massachusetts town. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his daughter, Snow. After the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, she becomes a wicked step-mother. I can’t say I loved this book, but it was weirdly enchanting. ♥♥

Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates

The Mayfield’s missing 19-year-old daughter, Cressida, is feared dead in the Adirondack woods. Most people in the town of Carthage suspect she was beaten to death and dumped in the Black River by her older sister’s ex-fiancé, Brett Kincaid, a decorated Iraqi War vet. The case spans nearly seven years, and Joyce Carol Oates make it seem like nearly everyone in the town could have been responsible for the crime. ♥♥♥

Mermaid by Eileen Cronin

Eileen Cronin’s memoir is pretty incredible – she was born without legs. Her Catholic family accepts it as “God’s will,” and she “squiddled” through their 1960s Cincinnati home. As she grew older, Cronin wondered if her mother had taken the drug thalidomide. ♥

The Bear by Claire Cameron

Five-year-old Anna manages to get her brother into the family’s canoe and away from the three hundred pound Black Bear that attacked and killed her parents. Out in the middle of nowhere, they must battle hunger, and a wilderness full of danger. ♥

The Anatomy Lesson by Nina Siegal

Set in 1632, the story is about an anatomy lesson given in Amsterdam with the historical fiction take on Rembrandt's first great work of art. Told by many characters, from a curio dealer who collects bodies for medical dissection, to Rembrandt, and finally the lover of the man who is to be dissected. ♥♥

The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard

This memoir received much acclaim. I liked it, but without much acclaim. ♥

February

Hollow City: 

The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I really enjoyed the first book installment, published in 2011, not because the writing was terribly good, but I adore vintage photographs and use them in my art. The photographs that go along with the story-line are the glue holding the whole thing together. This second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. O.K. not great. ♥

Out of the Woods by Lynn Darling

Lynn Darling, long ago widowed, is currently really alone. To find herself she leaves New York and starts life in rural Vermont. Her new companions are a dog and a compass. ♥♥

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

Rebecca Winter is a photographer whose most well-known work is about dirty kitchens. Now she’s getting older and her career is in another room most notably the toilet. She takes a risk, moves to the middle of nowhere and amazingly enough, because this, is after all fiction,  meets and falls in love with a hunky roofer. ♥

The Misremembered Man by Christina McKenna

A sad and slapstick story of Jamie McCloone, a middle-aged Irish farmer and Lydia Devine, an unmarried schoolteacher still living with her mother. An upcoming wedding motivates her to put an ad in the paper to find a date so she won’t have to take her mother. ♥

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

The true story of Louis Zamperini, a very talented runner who went all the way to the Berlin Olympics. But on a May afternoon in 1943, his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and his mates drift in the ocean on a journey that is unbelievable. Another strong candidate for movie-dom. ♥♥♥♥

What She Left Behind by Ellen Wiseman

Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father and as an orphan of sorts, is. passed among foster families until she lands in the home of a couple who work at the local museum. They entice Izzy to help catalog items at a long-shuttered state asylum where she finds evidence of a woman who had a more heartbreaking life than her own. ♥♥♥