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. ♥♥♥