Some rummage sale reads to help me cope with what’s to come

My No-Buy November on books officially began on the third of this month as I did pick up a few new reads at the local rummage sale over a week ago.

It’s a biannual event (Fall and Spring) that I really look forward to and given the current state of the world right now, having such a nice moment like this to remember helps to bring me some comfort (more on that later).

Anyway, I spotted two Nora Roberts titles and one of them I’m reading at this point in time; Tribute, which was published in 2008. Our leading lady is Cilla, the granddaughter of acclaimed actress Janet Hardy, who has left show business and gone into house renovations.

She’s bought her late grandmother’s country house and is restoring the place with a few upgrades of her own design. Across the way is Ford, a graphic novelist who finds Cilla to be the perfect inspiration for his next action adventure heroine.

While she has plenty on her plate already, Cilla discovers a set of hidden letters, written to Janet by a secret lover who also happened to be a married man to boot. Curious about this past affair, she decides to look into the matter but there are those that don’t want such a long ago relationship to be revealed. Is Cilla putting herself in danger here or does this secret deserve to be brought to light once and for all?

I have to say that so far, this is a very engaging story with solid characters that fully click well together. Some of my favorite scenes involve dreams where Cilla is speaking with Janet via the elder’s past memories. It’s a concept that plays out believably and should lead to an interesting plot point along the narrative way.

I also learn that this book(among other Roberts novels) was made into a Lifetime Channel movie starring Brittany Murphy! I may have to check that out once I finish the book:

The other Nora Roberts was Three Fates, originally released in 2001 , where a stolen statue brings together a trio of siblings on a mission to reclaim this family heirloom.

Ironically, this inheritance was stolen to begin with as the great grandfather of Gideon, Malachi and Rebecca Sullivan survived the sinking of the 1915 luxury liner The Lusitania with one of the three silver Fate statues in his possession. That experience lead to his reformation, keeping the statue as a reminder of his petty theft past.

Nevertheless, his descendants are not about to let some cutthroat art dealer get away with this robbery and reluctantly team up on an international quest to retrieve their lost legacy, making enemies and allies as they go.

This does sound like fun and I would like to see how Nora handles an action adventure caper like this:

To my surprise, the next book that I added to my purchase pile was a much more recent release from this past spring.

An Inconvenient Wife by Karen E. Olson is subtitled A Modern Tudor Mystery as the story takes an imaginative twist on the six wives of Henry the Eighth.

Kate Parker is the sixth and current wife of wealthy Hank Tudor, whose assistant she was when his marriage to wife number five, flighty actress Kaitlyn Howard, went bad.

Granted, Kate knew enough about Hank’s past and expected to deal with some flack from his prior relationships but when Kaitlyn is found dead in a manner very similar to wife number two, things get even more complicated than anyone expected.

Convinced of his innocence, Kate teams up with wife number one, reclusive Katherine Alvarez and wife no. four, B&B owner Anna Klein, to find out what really happened to Kaitlyn and hopefully stop it from happening again!

As someone who finds the six Tudor wives very fascinating, this fresh fictional spin is a must read indeed:

My last pick yet far from least is a lovely collection of culinary tales from Everyman’s Library.

Stories from the Kitchen is a 2015 anthology that includes excerpts from classic novels by Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust to short stories from modern writers such as Amy Tan and T.C. Boyle, all themed around food and its emotional impact upon people, places and things.

As a fan of foodie writing, this book feels like a banquet of tasty storytelling worth savoring with the ultimate dinner quest list that has Charles Dickens, M.F.K. Fisher and Nora Ephron ready to be seated:

Sadly, a few days later, the election results came in and I am sure that I’m not the only one to sigh and say “Well, here we go again!”(that being the mildest response to the situation for sure).

As it is now, the future looks pretty bleak and it will be important to not totally give into despair. Not an easy task to be certain but supporting one another as we do our level best to speak up against what’s wrong and to protect our friends, family and neighbors from injustice is what has to be done.

Keeping our spirits up is also going to be a challenge but it is necessary for our collective mental and emotional health. I intend to keep this bookish blog going if only to provide some relief from the deluge of disastrous headlines that are sure to come.

Reading is a vital part of freedom and one that needs to celebrated now more than ever. I hope to see a better world someday and with any luck, that path will be paved with wonderful books . So let us join hands and sing of glory at the end of this particular witches road: