Friday 12 June 2009

Friday Finds



Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at You Should Be Reading and you can find it here.

I have found four books this week, that I would really like to add to my collection.

White is for Witching is by Helen Oyeyemi, who is one of Waterstones 25 authors for the Future.
Her first novel The Icarus Girl was written whilst she was studying for her A levels. This book was written during a year Helen spent doing volunteer work in South Africa. She got the idea from the house she was staying in .

Here is a synopsis of the book.


In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, the gentle Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. All is not well with the house, either, which creaks and grumbles and malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter apples in the garden when the branches should be bare. Generations of women inhabit its walls. And Miranda, with her new appetite for chalk and her keen sense for spirits, is more attuned to them than she is to her brother and father. She is leaving them slowly –
Slipping away from them –
And when one dark night she vanishes entirely, the survivors are left to tell her story.

A real spine tingling tale, with Gothic roots.

I came across this Sarah Waters book by accident, whilst searching for another one and was quite taken by it. This book is set in the same time period as Night Watch.

Here is a synopsis of it.

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.

I do love a spooky story!


The Chosen One by Carol Lynch William. I read about this book on Lost in Books which you will find here
The synopsis from Amazon is as follows.
'Taking a story “ripped from the headlines,” Williams looks inside a polygamist cult and the dangers it poses for one girl. Kyra and her father, three mothers, and 20 siblings live in an isolated community under the thumb of a prophet, who controls every aspect of his apostles’ lives. The most shocking intrusion of all comes when the prophet decrees that Kyra is to become the wife of her 60-year-old uncle. A secret patron of a local mobile library, Kyra knows there’s a world away from the compound she might escape to, but first she pins her hopes on her father’s ability to change the prophet’s mind. Instead, her family is threatened, and the stakes for her refusal to marry are raised. The clandestine relationship Kyra is having with one of the compound’s teenage boys is a romance more convenient than convincing (everyone is carefully watched except this duo, it seems). Contrivances notwithstanding, this is a heart pounder, and readers will be held, especially as the danger escalates. Williams’ portrayals of the family are sharp, but what’s most interesting about this book is how the yearnings and fears of a character so far from what most YAs know will still seem familiar and close.'
The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt.
Here is the blurb on the book.
Olive Wellwood is a famous writer, interviewed with her children gathered at her knee. For each of them she writes a separate private book, bound in different colours and placed on a shelf. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins, children of a city stockbroker, and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets. Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum's treasures. And in midsummer a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany. The sons rebel against their parents' plans; the girls dream of independent futures, becoming doctors or fighting for the vote. This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead. In their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children's book.

I am absolutely intrigued by this book.
So there are my findings this week, what books did you find?

19 comments:

  1. I've been seeing The Chosen One everywhere. I'll have to see about that one.

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  2. That first book has such a great cover. The Chosen One is getting a lot of blogger love --great finds!

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  3. Ooh, the Children's Books sounds really good! You have some great finds!

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  4. The last three books you mention are already on my wish list and the first one sounds very intriguing! Just not sure if it would be too spooky for me...

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  5. Wow these all sound amazing - the first two maybe a bit too spooky for me these days but all in all, wow.

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  6. Great finds! I love the cover of The Children's Book...beautiful!

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  7. Such beautiful covers. I especially like the first two, they both sound like such fun reads. I'll be adding them to my wish list along with The Children's Book. Great finds!

    ~ Popin

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  8. Ooh, and they all have gorgeous covers! Enjoy.

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  9. Awesome finds! White is for Witching sounds really good and I've had my eye on The Chosen One too. I have The Little Stranger on my shelf-hope to get to it soon. I just love adding books to my wishlist. lol.

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  10. I already have The Chosen One on my list but the other three are intriguing too. I think White for Witching sounds really good.

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  11. Great finds! The first two are intriguingly creepy! I haven't heard of The Children's Book before, but I'm going to check it out (I love the cover too).

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  12. I love your finds! I've heard of The Chosen Ones, while the cover for The Children's Book looks fascinating. After reading the blurb, I think it's going on my TBR list.

    Thanks for sharing! =)

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  13. The Chosen One looks really good..its on my WL!

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  14. I want The Little Stranger so badly!

    I actually caved and bought The Children's Book in hardcover, something I rarely do. But I haven't started it yet because I know Byatt demands time and concentration, and the new few weeks are going to be busy ones for me. I'm really looking forward to it, though.

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  15. I've been seeing a lot of The Chosen One. Here are my finds: (1) and (2)

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  16. Some interesting ones in there, I shall check them out

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  17. Hi Viv, the first and last one greatly interest me. :D

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  18. Great finds, they all sound good. And the cover on the last one is beautiful.
    http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/

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Hiya, thanks for stopping by, it is always nice to hear what you have to say, so do leave a comment if you have time.