The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

After finally finishing The Mirror and the Light, I'm ready for a fast summer read! The Mirror and the Light was interesting, even engaging, but so long. I felt like I was living through Tudor England in real time. 

What are you reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) with us here on Books Beginnings on Fridays. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now. 

MY BOOK BEGINING

I was standing at the bar in the Green Parrot, waiting for a guy named Carlos from Miami who’d called my cell a few days ago and said he might have a job for me.

-- The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille. 

That's the kind of opening sentence I like because it creates a visual picture and sets up the story for all sorts of interesting possibilities. We know the narrator drinks, hangs out in fun bars (snooty bars are not named the Green Parrot and customers don't stand at the bar), and works some sort of free lance job where he takes work from strangers who call him out of the blue. He could be anything from a caterer to a mercenary. As it turns out, he has his own charter boat.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Another fun Friday event is The Friday 56. Share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your book, or 56% of the way through your e-book or audiobook, on this weekly event hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

From The Cuban Affair:

“We’re not smuggling people out of Cuba.”

“Then what are you doing in Cuba while I’m fishing?”

DeMille knows how to keep a story moving fast. This one is no exception. I just started it and it is racing along. 

Books in the Attic: Mailbox Monday

I discovered a forgotten box of books in the attic!

Maybe this isn't exactly an adventure. It's not like I found a matching set of first edition Jane Austen or anything. And it's not like my attic is the romantic, trunk-filled garret of children's books.

My attic is really the top floor of my house, where my home office is. But confessing that I found a box of books I bought at the Friends of the Library store last December and then forgot about in holiday hubbub doesn't sound very exciting. It sounds like real life - messy and disorganized.

These are my "new to me all over again" books in the attic:

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman. The novel takes place in one day, as three Americans spend the day in Paris with their French tutors. Sounds like an interesting premise.

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn. A novel that imagines what would happen if the Queen went on a little trip by herself.

A Pig in Provence by Georgeanne Brennan. An ex-pat memoir by a woman who moved to the south of France in the late 1970s with her husband and young child.

The White Russian by Tom Bradby. A murder mystery set in St. Petersburg in 1917, the last days of the tsars.

Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille, the 7th book in the John Corey series, although I can't keep them straight.

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett. Historical fiction about an antiquarian bookseller searching for the true identity of Shakespeare.

What looks good? What books did you get, or find, last week?

There were other books in the box. But they aren't for me. I bought them for my mom and my sister, intending to give them to them for Christmas, I'm sure. My sister's birthday is this week, so now she will get them for her birthday instead. We are planning to see each other for a six feet a-PARTY, since Portland is still shut down for coronavirus.

Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf host Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts.

Teaser Tuesday: The Panther

The tribal lands, also known to the Americans there as the Badlands, or Indian Territory, were basically lawless. Also known as dangerous.

-- The Panther by Nelson DeMille. I like to start off the year with a big chunkster of a book and this one counts, at over 600 pages. But it's Nelson DeMille, so it's also lightning fast and a nail-biter.

Teaser Tuesdays is now hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday:

As far as I was concerned, this meeting was over. We'd covered the walk down memory lane, and I'd squashed the clumsy recruiting pitch, so unless Junior wanted to hear that his father had actually been a government stool pigeon, or wanted to hear about my feelings on the subject of his father pulling some strings to get my tax returns examined, or seducing my wife, then there was little else to talk about –- unless he wanted to talk about the night his father was murdered.

-- The Gate House by Nelson DeMille.

This is the sequel to his incredibly popular book, The Gold Coast. No need to go back and read or re-read the first one -- he gives a lot of reminders like the passage above.

It is still a lot of fun and very funny. 

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.