Teaser Tuesday: To the Survivors by Robert Uttaro

I was born on Holy Thursday.. . . My parents left the hospital after three days on Easter Sunday, which is celebrated by Catholics and Christians as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and brought me to Sunday mass. I was in a Catholic Church before I was in a home.

To the Survivors: One Man's Journey as a Rape Crisis Counselor by Robert Uttaro. That seemed like a good teaser for the week after Easter.

To the Survivors is Robert Uttaro's account of his experiences and lessons from working as a rape crisis counselor, along with essays and first hand accounts from sexual assault survivors about their experiences and healing. The stories are rough, but powerful in their honesty.

Right now, To the Survivors is available on Kindle for only $.99.

FROM THE AUTHOR'S WEB SITE:

To the Survivors is about my journey as a rape crisis counselor with true stories of sexual violence shared by survivors in their own words. Gently and beautifully constructed, To the Survivors is moving, tender, sharp, and piercingly true all at once. Readers will encounter uncensored written stories, poems, and interviews from women and men who have experienced rape and sexual assault, plus some of my stories as a counselor and educator. The survivors are diverse in age, gender, and ethnicity, yet each gives a similarity raw and heartfelt account of his or her victimization and recovery. The authenticity and vulnerability with which survivors speak resonates profoundly. But this book is not just for survivors of sexual violence. I believe anyone can benefit from the words in these pages, rape survivor or not.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Her Sister's Tattoo by Ellen Meeropol

Her Sister's Tattoo, Ellen Meeropol's new novel, launches today from Red Hen Press! Here's a teaser:

Waiting for Jake or Esther to answer their doorbell the next afternoon, Allen admitted to himself that he probably shouldn’t have come. He could have telephoned with the news, or even asked Rosa’s lawyer to tell them.

There's no big bash for publication day when everyone is inside and socially distancing. But that means there are online events we can all watch on Ellen's author webpage, where you can also order the book in paperback or ebook.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

In August 1968, Rosa and Esther Cohen march through downtown Detroit protesting the war in Vietnam. The march is peaceful, but when a bloodied teenager describes a battle with mounted police a few blocks away, the sisters hurry to offer assistance. Trying to stop the violence, they instead intensify it. An officer is seriously injured. Rosa and Esther are arrested and charged with conspiracy and attempted murder.

For Rosa, their arrest offers an opportunity to make a political statement, another way to protest an unacceptable war. Esther wants to avoid prison and stay home with her infant daughter, Molly; the only way to do that is to accept a plea bargain and testify against Rosa at trial. The consequences of these actions lead one sister underground and to prison, the other to leave town to bury her past in a new life. Molly grows up unaware of her family history until she meets Rosa's daughter, her cousin Emma, at summer camp.

Told from multiple points of view and through the sisters' never-mailed letters, and bracketed by the Vietnam and Iraq wars, HER SISTER'S TATTOO explores the thorny intersection of sibling loyalty and clashing political decisions.

Read my earlier interview with Ellen Meeropol here, about her novel Kinship of Clover.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Orphan Train and the New Normal

The night of the fire, the night they took me in, I could hear Mrs. Schatzman in her bedroom, fretting with her husband about what to do with me. "I didn't ask for this," she hissed, the words as distinct to my ears as if she'd been in the same room.

-- Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. This popular book of historical fiction goes back and forth between Depression-era Minnesota and contemporary Maine. The protagonist is an Irish immigrant who was sent as an orphan to Minnesota. Back in Maine as an elderly widow, she sorts through her attic and her past with the help of a 17-year old girl with her only family history.

I saw this book a lot when it first came out, but I didn't read it. The highlight of my first day of Oregon's Stay Home Order yesterday was finding a copy in my nearby Little Free Library when I ventured out to deposit a stack of books.

Now that the governor issued a Stay Home Order for all of Oregon, this is my new normal:

• Working from home, trying to practice law from my dining room table.
• Meeting with clients by Zoom.
• Dinosaur hands from washing them 85 times.
• Venturing out for neighborhood walks as long as we all stay six feet from each other.
• Small acts of kindness, like sharing our books through Little Free Libraries. Although I did wipe down the cover with Lysol when I got home. And washed my hands. Again.

How about you? How has COVID 19 changed your daily life?

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: P. G. Wodehouse and Oregon History

I have a Teaser Tuesday Twofer this week, as I make up for several missing weeks. My book blog has been sadly neglected while my law practice got a little crazy the past few weeks. Over 20 former students at Catlin Gabel, a private school here in Portland have come to us to help them with claims against the school for sexual, physical, and mental abuse when they were students, dating back to the 1960s. We've filed lawsuits for six of them so far and are working on the others.

In the meantime, the Boy Scouts of America filed for reorganization bankruptcy last week to shield its assets and get a deadline for sex abuse claims. We represent roughly three dozen former Boy Scouts who were abused when they were kids, so have been sorting out what happens now that their claims will move into the bankruptcy case. And getting calls from other abuse survivors looking for help. I love my work, but it's been a hectic stretch.

So let's spend time with books!

As with many others who are bitten by the theatre bug, Plum had fallen in love with the the experience as a whole: what theatre represented, just as much as what it actually was. Yes, it was fun, glamour, energy and magic, but at its heart was that fragile and capricious connectedness that would make or break a show.

-- Pelham Grenville Wodehouse: Volume 1: "This is Jolly Old Fame" by Paul Kent.

I love P. G. Wodehouse and am trying to read all his books. I keep a list of Wodehouse books here on this blog and am working my way through them, sometimes in order, sometimes when I can find an audiobook at the library. I particularly love Wodehouse in audiobook editions.

This Jolly Old Flame is the first volume of Paul Kent's three-volume biography of Wodehouse, based in part on new access to Wodehouse's papers and library. It is available from TSB an imprint of Can of Worms Enterprises, or from Book Depository.

Honoria Plum at Plumtopia has an enjoyable review here.

The people of Eastern Oregon were never a homogeneous whole. Attitudes towards environmental issues, and much else, varied widely.

-- The Other Oregon: People, Environment, and History East of the Cascades by Thomas R. Cox, new from OSU Press.

From the publisher's description:

With a staggering variety of landscapes, from high desert to alpine peaks, Oregon east of the Cascades encompasses seventeen counties and two time zones. Although this vast region defies generalization, its history is distinct from the rest of Oregon. The interrelationship between its people and the land has always been central, but that relationship has evolved and changed over time. Regional economies that were once largely exploitive and dedicated to commodity exports have slowly moved toward the husbanding of resources and to broader and deeper appreciations.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Lara Tupper and Billy Lombardo

Both Lara Tupper and Billy Lombardo are showing up here for Teaser Tuesday because I missed last week so am doubling up.

(1) Lara Tupper has a new book out this month called Off Island that is my favorite kind of historical fiction novel, one that weaves in a contemporary story line.

In Off Island, Tupper creates an imagined history of artist Paul Guaguin, famed for his vibrant paintings from the South Seas, visiting an island off the coast of Maine. A hundred years later, a contemporary painter finds the paintings and letters Gauguin left behind, and learns maybe Guaguin also left a family in Maine.



TEASER

The tails  of the Pastor's coat flapped as he watched the sun sink behind the buffer island, a slash of red caught in the hermit's broken window. Like the light was stuck there.

Off Island by Lara Tupper, from Encircle Publications.

(2) Billy Lombardo's novel, Morning Will Come, launches this month as well. It's the story of a couple with three kids learning to cope after their oldest daughter disappears. I admit it sounds so sad I haven't dived in. But I've dipped my toes and it looks more hopeful than it sounds.



Morning Will Come by Billy Lombardo, from Tortoise Books.

TEASER

She'd loop her arm through his and maybe he wouldn't lock his arm, maybe he would loosen it and keep it there for the two-block walk to his apartment, Maybe he would say he missed her.

SLOW BLOGGING WEEK!

I didn't get much posted the past week because things have been hopping at work. Catlin Gabel, a private school here in Portland, released a report last month identifying nine child molesters who worked at the school from the 1960s to 2016.  My law partner and I specialize in representing sexual abuse survivors. We filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of one of the Catlin Gabel survivors.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: This Particular Happiness by Jackie Shannon Hollis

How could a man have two marriages and almost thirty-nine years and not have kids? I tried to think of any man his age I knew who didn't.

-- This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story by Jackie Shannon Hollis, from Forest Avenue Press. This new memoir is the story of one woman's decision to love and marry a man who did not want children.

This Particular Happiness has generated a lot of buzz already, including endorsements from Cheryl Strayed and others, press coverage, and places on several best of 2019 book lists, like this list from Gateway Women.

Here is the Publisher's Description:

Knowing where your scars come from doesn’t make them go away. When Jackie Shannon Hollis marries Bill, a man who does not want children, she joyfully commits to a childless life. But soon after the wedding, she returns to the family ranch in rural Oregon and holds her newborn niece. Jackie falls deep into baby love and longing and begins to question her decision. As she navigates the overlapping roles of wife, daughter, aunt, sister, survivor, counselor, and friend, she explores what it really means to choose a different path. This Particular Happiness delves into the messy and beautiful territory of what we keep and what we abandon to make the space for love.

From Jackie's website:

Jackie’s memoir, This Particular Happiness, explores the complicated relationship with the self through the lens of childlessness and the unfolding relationships between husband and wife, mother and daughter, friends, and sisters. A childless woman surrounded by children (with over forty nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews), Jackie believes we all have an important role in supporting the children in our lives.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: A Place in the World by Amy Maroney

Books are a big part of Christmas for me. I love to give and receive books for presents, and I love curling up with a good book for a little me time to escape the holiday bustle.

Last year, I gave The Girl from Oto to several people and it was a huge hit. My aunt said it was "the best book I have ever read" and she reads a lot of historical fiction. So this year I am excited to follow up and give those same people the other books in Amy Maroney's Miramonde series.

Here is my teaser from the latest, and final, book in the series, A Place in the World:

In his father's chambers in the Tower of Blood, Pelegrin flung open the shutters, struck as usual by the beauty of the Broto Valley unfurling to the south. Cowbells jangled in some unseen pasture.

-- A Place in the World by Amy Maroney.

The Miramonde series follows Mira, a female artist in the early 1500s in Basque sheep country, and Zari the modern day art historian trying to prove Mira's existence. It starts with The Girl from Oto, continues with Mira's Way, includes a prequel novella called The Promise, and concludes with A Place in the World.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

2016: Zari Durrell seizes one last chance to return to Europe in search of sixteenth-century painter Mira de Oto. When the art world embraces a theory that Mira’s work was actually made by a famous old master, Zari must act. In a desperate bid to save Mira from obscurity, she travels to the windswept Basque coast of Spain. What she discovers there solves the puzzle of Mira forever—and unlocks the stunning secrets of Zari’s own past.

1505: Mira finally arrives in the city of her dreams. But Bayonne is nothing like she imagined. Navigating a strange world ruled by merchants and bishops, she struggles to reignite her fledgling career as an artist. When an old enemy hunts her down, Mira must make a terrible choice—will she avenge those she’s lost, or protect her family’s future?

Read my interview with Amy Maroney about her books, women artists, and what drew her to historical fiction.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: The Preserve and Choosing Diversity

I'm doubling down on the teasers this week, with one from a new historical thriller and another for Nonfiction November.

They traveled south for two hours, the truck's headlights finding only green tropical forest, brown streams, and an unending line of steep hills and surely mountains beyond. The last signs of civilization they passed was a village called San Mariel, just a junction of huts, their tires thumping on old cobbled road.

-- The Preserve by Steve Anderson. This post-WWII thriller is set on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1948. Wendell Lett, war hero turned deserter, seeks treatment for combat trauma at The Preserve, only to get caught up in an assassination plot that runs all the way to General Douglas MacArthur.

The Preserve is Anderson's second book featuring Wendell Lett, who first appeared in Under False Flags. They can be read as stand-alones, and are even better read back to back.

From the book flap: "Based on on of history's darkest secrets, The Preserve is a fast-paced historical thriller that will leave you breathless."

And that is the secret of charter schools – their ability to use the autonomy granted to them to create education programs that are very different from the regular public schools and very different from each other, but which responded to the individual demands of families. No one has to go to a charter school, but parents and their children vote with their feet because, as Moskowitz says, "There's a problem with the system and what it's delivering for children."

-- Choosing Diversity: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children by Lance Izumi. In celebration of Nonfiction November, I've been reading and featuring many nonfiction books this month, including this book that profiles 13 charter schools around the country.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday Trifecta: Two Memoirs & a Beer Cozy

I missed teasing last Tuesday because I was visiting family in Brooklyn. So I'm making up for it with a Teaser Tuesday Trifecta this week.

First, to celebrate Nonfiction November, I have two memoirs:

Maybe just the practice of coming here has been my transformation. Somehow my long personal aversion to all the apparatus of preaching and saving has fallen away, and I'm able simply to sit here and receive.

-- The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Rewrote My Life by David Oates. Oates spent a winter and spring living in Paris. In his new memoir, he writes about how the art, music, architecture, and Notre Dame in particular shifted the trajectory of his spiritual journey.

From the back cover:

In long years of mountaineering, Oates fought the self-loathing that had infused him as the gay kid in the Baptist pew. And in The Mountains of Paris, he ascends to a place of wonder.

The next night at the Easter Vigil after Father had sung the Exsultet, and I approached the lectern to read, I looked in his eyes. It was a split second, but I could see how excited he got.

-- Celibate by Maria Giura. Giura fell in love with a Catholic priest and writes about their complicated, angry relationship in her new memoir.

From the back cover:

Celibate focuses on her ten-year struggle to let go of this priest, to heal from her childhood, and to finally embrace her true calling.

And, as we head into the holidays, a cozy beer-themed mystery set in the Bavariana town of Leavenworth, Washington sounded perfect.

After the tour, I poured the group a tasting tray and had them put their newfound beer education to the test. I smiled as they took turns holding each tasting glass to their nose before sipping.

-- Beyond a Reasonable Stout by Ellie Alexander. This is the third mystery in Alexander's Sloan Kraus series featuring a brewer Sloan and her sidekick Garrett Strong.

From the back cover:

Alexander has created an appealing cast of characters and a lovely setting for them to live in. Best of all, she treats the reader to a fascinating look at the skill and artistry involved in brewing craft beer.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Birds of Wonder by Cynthia Robinson

Taking him in without a warrant was a skate along the knife-edge of the Fourth Amendment, but once she had a confession protocol wouldn't matter. Consent searches weren't illegal; he'd consented, she'd searched.

Birds of Wonder by Cynthia Robinson. Sounds dicey! This snippet gets my lawyer ears perked up and I'm not a criminal lawyer.

This exciting new novel is part thriller, part family drama, set in upstate New York. Here's the publisher's description:

One August morning while walking her dog, high-school English teacher Beatrice Ousterhout stumbles over the dead body of a student, Amber Inglin, who was to play the lead in Beatrice’s production of John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. Barely able to speak, Beatrice calls the police. That is to say, she calls her daughter. Jes is a detective with two years of experience under her belt and a personal life composed primarily of a string of one-night-stands, including the owner of the field in which Beatrice has found Amber. In addition to a house and a field, Child Services lawyer Liam Walsh owns a vineyard, where Amber Inglin, along with a handful of other teens who’ve had difficulty negotiating the foster system, was an intern. Set among the hills and lakes of upstate New York and told in six vibrantly distinct voices, this complex and original narrative chronicles the rippling effects of a young girl’s death through a densely intertwined community. By turns funny, fierce, lyrical and horrifying, BIRDS OF WONDER probes family ties, the stresses that break them, and the pasts that never really let us go.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday Twofer: The Melon by Amy Goldman & Frank's Revenge by Don DuPay

I have two teasers this week because I have stacks of new books on my desk!

These types of plants may not be as easy to grow as tomatoes, but you don’t need a staff of gardeners and a greenhouse, either. If you are blessed with a long, warm, dry summer, and a garden with lots of room to sprawl, plants produce flavorful fruit in just a few months.

The Melon by Amy Goldman. Goodman is a gardener, writer, and heritage seed advocate, Her latest book is a voluptuous, picture-filled celebration of melons and watermelons, a revamp of her original melon book. It would make a great holiday gift for gardeners, heritage seed savers, and anyone who loves beautiful photography.

Our summers here in Portland are typically cool and damp, not warm and dry. We do not grow melons here (although Hermiston, Oregon in the eastern part of the state is known for a particularly sweet melon variety), but the gorgeous pictures in this book make me wish we did.

Bart turned and staggered out the back door leaving his empty Hennessey bottle on the poker table. Roosevelt tucked the .38 back in his belt, and the two men looked at each other, both taking deep breaths and looking out the window at Bart’s disappearing, bobbing head, bent forward and slumping down the darkened street.

Frank's Revenge: Albina After Dark by Don DuPay. This new crime novel set in 1970s Portland is as gritty as it gets. DuPay is a former homicide cop and his debut novel is great urban noir.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday Twofer: Generation Share and Listening at Lookout Creek

I have two teasers today because I have so many new books stacked up on my desk. Just like I've double dipped for Book Beginnings posts lately, here are two teasers:

"The Share Shed is trying to cut down on stuff that people buy by sharing and borrowing instead. I want people to think, 'Could I borrow that instead of buying it?'"

Generation Share: The Change Makers Building the Sharing Economy by Benita Matofska and Sophie Sheinwald, a new release from Policy Press. This new book features interviews and photos highlighting 200 case studies of the new worldwide sharing movement.

I admit I have mixed feelings about the quote above. I have warm fuzzy feelings about a sharing tool shed. Sharing sheds are popular in Portland, where I live. On the other hand, what if you owned the neighborhood hardware store or you were the tool manufacturer? Tony, who runs the Beaumont Hardware Store in my neighborhood, is a nice guy, trying to make a living. He'd like people to buy a  hammer.

I like a book that gets me thinking.

The bottom line is this: Different forests have different spirits about them. The spirit of the woods is a  spirit of a particular place located in a specific region's biota and culture.

-- Listening at Lookout Creek: Nature in Spiritual Practice by Gretel Van Wieren, a new memoir from OSU Press. Van Wieren went to the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s western Cascade Mountains to reconnect with the natural world. It is a beautiful book.

And now I have to go look up "biota."

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from the book they are reading or featuring. Please remember to include the name of the book and the author. You can share your teaser in a comment below, or with a comment or link at the Teaser Tuesday site, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Shrug by Lisa Braver Moss

It was gloomy at the store, but somehow business went on; people kept coming in for cigarettes or for an issue of Ramparts or Jaques Loussier doing jazz versions of Bach pieces. When I arrived, my father was pacing, clearly annoyed by one of the regulars, known in our family as "the mooch."

-- Shrug, by Lisa Braver Moss.

Shrug is loosely based on the author's own tumultuous childhood in Berkeley in the 1960s, in a violent household. Teen-aged Martha has to navigate the complexities of family abuse with a violent father who owns a record store and a mother who is off the rails. Instead of going downhill herself, all Martha wants to do is finish high school go to college. But the stress in her life manifests itself in a tic she can't control, a shrug of her shoulder.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

Martha perseveres with the help of her best friend, who offers laughter, advice about boys, and hospitality. But when Willa and Jules divorce and Jules loses his store and livelihood, Willa goes entirely off the rails. A heartless boarding school placement, eviction from the family home, and an unlikely custody case wind up putting Martha and Drew in Jules's care. Can Martha stand up to her father to do the one thing she knows she must—go to college?

With its running "soundtrack" of classical recordings and rock music and its vivid scenes of Berkeley at its most turbulent, Shrug is the absorbing, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting story of one young woman’s journey toward independence.

Lisa Braver Moss is a writer who was born in Berkeley and still lives in the Bay Area. She usually writes nonfiction, specializing in family issues, health, Judaism and humor. Her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post, Parents, Tikkun, Lilith, and other publications. Shrug is her second novel; The Measure of His Grief was her debut novel.

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

Teaser Tuesday: The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist

It was amazing how much of a difference seeing Lawrence made, and not simply in the ways she would have expected. . . . She founded a wonderful new thrill to keep so vast a secret from her friend; Laura's natural inquisitiveness only made it that much more of a challenge, as though getting through an interview with her might somehow prepare Sarah for the more daunting task of concealing the affair from her husband and her therapist. 

– The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist. This psychological thriller finds a Manhattan wife and mother at the center of a woman's disappearance from the park, but nothing is as it seems.

Co-author Tullan Holmqvist wrote about what it what like to collaborate with another writer on a novel, here on Holmqvist's author's blog.

The Woman in the Park is published by Beaufort Books, an independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION

When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children.

But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police.

With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence.

A thriller that questions what is real. With its shocking twists, secrets, and lies, The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

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

Teaser Tuesday: Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton

I didn't like to tell strangers who learned about my cancer that I was a non-smoker. Dealing with strangers was always tricky.

– Winded: A Memoir in Four Stages by Dawn Newton. In her new memoir, Dawn Newton writes about living life to the fullest after she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.

Winded is available for pre-order. It releases on October 1, 2019 from Apprentice House Press, the nation's first entirely student-managed publishing house, located at Loyola University Maryland.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

When Dawn Newton, an adjunct professor and mother of three, gets a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, the path forward appears rutted. The Great Recession has left her exhausted and juggling multiple jobs. Then she learns of her cancer's mutation. She can take a pill each day to live longer.

Fifteen months into survival, she feels overwhelmed by the effort of staying alive. She longs to embrace moments and display gratitude yet can't find words to articulate her needs. Regardless of any control she exerts over her body's frailties, her emotional life asserts its own disruptive trajectory. Even as she labors to anchor herself to the love of family, she faces a blasphemous question: "If no cure is available, and death lurks around the next corner, is more time really worth it?"

In Winded, Newton describes life with terminal disease, exploring dark crevices of the psyche as she tries to assess the value of a life. The final lessons she imparts to her family may not be about resilience but about illuminating vulnerability and embracing the imperfect.

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

Teaser Tuesday: Big Sky by Kate Atkinson

Crystal was hovering around thirty-nine years old and it took a lot of work to stay in this holding pattern. She was a construction, made from artificial materials – the acrylic nails, the silicone breasts, the polymer eyelashes.

– Big Sky by Kate Atkinson, the new Jackson Brodie novel. This is the fifth in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series, my favorite mystery series.

I've only just started this one. I'm reading it with my ears because my library has it available on Overdrive for instant download with no wait list (unbelievable). And -- what a treat -- it is read by Jason Isaacs, the cutie patootie who plays Jackson Brodie in Case Histories, the tv adaptation of the first three books.

All the Brodie books have involved several disparate stories that more or less come together. Like with her literary fiction, Atkinson's droll commentary and crackling wit make every page a delight. These are in no way conventional mysteries. They are stories about people facing conflict, struggling with relationships, finding their place, and trying to understand life. That they have a few dead bodies thrown in make them "mysteries," but they are literature.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes.

Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network-and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.

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

Teaser Tuesday: Celibacy, A Love Story: Memoir of a Catholic Priest's Daughter by Mimi Bull

I tried to imagine my way back to early 1936 and to my mother's mind set when she discovered that she was pregnant. She was twenty-four; my father, the recently appointed young pastor of the local Polish Catholic, was twenty-eight.

-- Celibacy, A Love Story: Memoir of a Catholic Priest's Daughter by Mimi Bull. You can tell from the title and the teaser that this is an unusual story -- and a very interesting memoir.

I was lucky to get an advanced copy of this fascinating story. Celibacy: A Love Story is available for pre-order and releases in October. Check back here for an interview with Mimi Bull about her book and her family history.

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION

Mimi Bull grew up secure in the love of family, friends, and neighbors, never questioning the unusual circumstances that caused her to be adopted by two women in the late 1930s. It was years before she learned the secret truth: that one of the women was her grandmother, the other her biological mother, and that the story of her adoption had been concocted not only to shield her mother’s reputation, but to hide the fact that her father was the gregarious young parish priest everyone adored. It has only been very recently that the Catholic Church has begun to acknowledge the existence of other children of priests, and Bull writes candidly of the emotional toll that this policy of secrecy and denial took on her—“I should like to have lived a life with my loving parents, knowing who we all were, knowing my father’s family from the beginning, and without the forty years of depression that compromised me and those I loved.”

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

Teaser Tuesday: Artificial Intelligence: Rise of the Lightspeed Learners by Charles Jennings

Personally, I'm less concerned in the short term about doing battle with self-controlled AIs then I am about defending against bad guys who have powerful AIs at their command, particularly Machiavellian dictators of rogue nations. Long before we have sentient, malevolent androids at the gates, dictators will be weaponizing AI for war.

Artificial Intelligence: Rise of the Lightspeed Learners by Charles Jennings. AIs are self-learning machines with artificial intelligence. This new book about is a quick and easy primer on AI and its key issues.

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

Teaser Tuesday: Grit and Ink: An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018 by William F. Willingham

Pendleton in the early 1880s exemplified a cinematic image of the Wild West. Almost every issue of the EO told of fist fights, pistol whipping, knife fights, racing horses on the major streets.

-- Grit and Ink: An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018 by William F. Willingham, with a Preface by Stephen A. Forrester and a Forward by R. Gregory Nokes.

Grit and Ink is the history of the East Oregonian Publishing Company, an independent newspaper company that has been publishing across Oregon for close to 140 years. The history is still living -- the company was in the news today for outbidding two national newspaper chains to buy The Bulletin in Bend, and the weekly Redmond Spokesman.

Grit and Ink is a great read for anyone interested in the newspaper business, local journalism, or Oregon history.

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

Teaser Tuesday: ParentShift: Ten Universal Truths That Will Change the Way You Raise Your Kids by Linda and Ty Hatfield & Wendy Thomas Russell

Please do not misunderstand us. Being a solidly great parent to your child, in your country, in your culture, in your family allows for endless variety.

ParentShift: Ten Universal Truths That Will Change the Way You Raise Your Kids by Linda and Ty Hatfield and Wendy Thomas Russell.

I have three little grandsons, so my "parenting" is limited to occasional grand-parenting. But this book is still really interesting and one I will get for my stepdaughters.

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