The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop  is organised by Judith at Leeswammes' Blog.

The giveaway runs from June 22nd to June 26th 2013 and there are lots of book blogs taking part - check the list lower down this post!

My giveaway is open internationally to countries that The Book Depository delivers free to - check the list here.

The choice of books on offer in my giveaway are:

Journey Into The Past by Stefan Zweig
(read my review)

The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman
(read my review)

The Girl who Fell from the Sky by Simon Mawer

(read my review)

The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen

(read my review)

THIS GIVEAWAY HAS NOW ENDED - please see 27th June post for the winner!

I'd love it if you'd like to leave a comment too, with which book you might like to win, or your thoughts if you've read any of these.

The winner will win their choice of one of the titles listed above, and will be drawn at random and contacted as soon as the giveaway ends. 

If I don't hear from the winner within 48 hours a new winner will be selected. 

Linky List:

Leeswammes Ciska's Book Chest The Book Garden Sam Still Reading Ephemeral Digest Curiosity Killed the Bookworm Rikki's Teleidoscope The Things You Can Read (US) Seaside Book Nook The Relentless Reader (US) Under a Gray Sky Blog Exurbanis Candle Beam Book Blog Booklover Book Reviews Books in the Burbs (US) Babyboomerwrites River City Reading (US) Lakeside Musing (N. America) Read Lately (US) The Book Diva's Reads A Place That Does Not Exist Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book (US) A corner of the library Roof Beam Reader The Misfortune of Knowing Girl Vs Bookshelf

heavenali Love at First Book The Little Reader Library The Siren's Tale Musings and Ramblings The Readers Realm (US) Lost Generation Reader Readerbuzz Literary Meanderings Book Clutter Bay State Reader's Advisory Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity Nose in a book Audios & More Laurie Here Mythical Books Books in the City

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop - Winners!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered my giveaway, and thank you to Judith for hosting a great blog hop!


Congratulations to the two winners selected at random:

Helen from She Reads Novels

and 

Treez from Lovely Treez Reads

Both winners have been contacted and have chosen their prizes from those on offer.

Thanks again for the support and I look forward to hosting another giveaway in the future!

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop is an event taking place from Saturday October 27th until (and including) Wednesday October 31st and is hosted by Judith at Leeswammes' blog.

I am giving away 2 preloved copies from a selection of 8 in very good condition which have been gently read. 

The books on offer, to choose one from if you win, are:

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen (read my review here)

The Kaiser's Last Kiss by Alan Judd

Regeneration by Pat Barker

The Cleft by Doris Lessing

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

The Visiting Angel by Paul Wilson (read my review here)

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons (read my review here)


I hope there is a nice variety and something that everyone might fancy!


Rules:

The giveaway is open to UK and Europe.

I will pick a winner who may choose one book they would like to win from the eight books on offer. 

I will pick a second winner too who can also choose one book from the seven remaining.

Winners will be chosen at random using a random number generator.

The giveaway runs October 27th to October 31st 2012.

Winners will be contacted by email and need to reply within 48 hours please, otherwise another winner will be selected.

Do enter my giveaway using the form below, and also do visit all the other blogs taking part and enter their giveaways too!

Leeswammes Read in a Single Sitting Ephemeral Digest My Devotional Thoughts Devouring Texts Tony's Reading List Nishita's Rants and Raves Too Fond The Parrish Lantern Kristi Loves Books The Book Club Blog Sam Still Reading Silver's Reviews (USA) Bibliosue Heavenali Under My Apple Tree Misfortune of Knowing (North America) Lena Sledge's Blog Lost Generation Reader Seaside Book Nook The Relentless Reader Rikki's Teleidoscope Monique Morgan That READioactive Book Blog kaggsysbookisahramblings Ragdoll Books Blog Kate's Library The Book Garden Uniflame Creates Curiosity Killed The Bookworm

Ciska's Book Chest The Book Divas Reads Alex in Leeds Simple Clockwork Bluestalking (USA) Fresh Ink Books Sweeping Me Giraffe Days Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book (USA) Books Thoughts Adventures (USA) emmalikestoread Colorimetry Page Plucker Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity 2606 Books and Counting Book Nympho She-Wolf Reads The Little Reader Library (Europe) Booklover Book Reviews Dolce Bellezza

Good luck and thanks for visiting and taking part!

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Jubilee Giveaway Blog Hop 2nd - 5th June 2012

Welcome to the Jubilee Giveaway Blog Hop hosted by Ellie at Curiosity Killed The Bookworm.

This giveaway (on my blog) is open to UK entrants only this time, but other bloggers taking part may be hosting international giveaways. (And I will likely have another Int. giveaway soon :) )

The giveaway is open from 2nd to 5th June 2012.

The prize is a copy of The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall. You can read my review here.

Or you can choose Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington. My review of this is here.

Please complete the entry form below to enter.

You can visit all the other blogs taking part too by clicking here, and enter their giveaways.

The winner will be contacted by email at the end of the giveaway. It they do not reply within 48 hours another winner will be randomly selected.

Thanks for entering and good luck!

- THIS GIVEAWAY HAS NOW CLOSED - THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST -
THE WINNER IS KAREN - CONGRATS - WINNER CONTACTED BY EMAIL

Wishlist Wednesday ~ Waiting on Wednesday

Wishlist Wednesday is hosted by Dani at 'Pen to Paper', and Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at 'Breaking the Spine'. They are both weekly events that highlight an upcoming release that we are eagerly anticipating, or a book that has been on our wishlists for a while.


My choice today is Secrets of the Tides by Hannah Richell.

Synopsis from 'Goodreads':


Every family has its secrets. Some are small, like telling a white lie or snooping through a private drawer. Others are more serious like infidelity and betrayal. And some secrets are so terrible they must be hidden away in a deep, dark place, for if they ever came to light, they would surely tear a family apart.

The Tides are a family full of secrets. Returning to Clifftops, the rambling family house high up on the Dorset coastline, youngest daughter Dora hopes for a fresh start, for herself and the new life she carries. But can long-held secrets ever really be forgiven? And even if you can forgive, can you ever really learn to love again?

Secrets of the Tides is a compelling family drama with a dark thread of suspense at its heart.


Due to be published by Orion on April 12th 2012.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It was so very cold here over the weekend, especially on Saturday, that curling up under several blankets with a book was really the only sensible option!  


'It's Monday! What are you reading?' is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney.


What I read last week:


The Queen's Secret by Victoria Lamb
The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich


What I'm currently reading:


The Holy Thief by William Ryan
Cells by Harriet Grace
The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen
Love Always by Harriet Evans


What I hope to read next:


Vanished by Liza Marklund
The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall
Please Don't Stop the Music by Jane Lovering


~~~~~


Have a wonderful reading week all. 

Wishlist Wednesday ~ Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

I'm taking part in a weekly blog hop today, hosted by Dani at Pen to Paper. Visit the site and join in.

'Wishlist Wednesday' is a book blog hop where we will post about one book per week that has been on our wishlist for some time, or just added (it's entirely up to you), that we can't wait to get off the wishlist and onto our wonderful shelves.

This week the book I am highlighting that is on my wishlist is: 

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Synopsis from goodreads:

A sophisticated and entertaining debut novel about an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose. 

Set in New York City in 1938, Rules of Civility tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.

The story opens on New Year's Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Condé Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.

Elegant and captivating, Rules of Civility turns a Jamesian eye on how spur of the moment decisions define life for decades to come. A love letter to a great American city at the end of the Depression, readers will quickly fall under its spell of crisp writing, sparkling atmosphere and breathtaking revelations, as Towles evokes the ghosts of Fitzgerald, Capote, and McCarthy.

This sounds like a wonderful read and I can't wait to read it!

Wishlist Wednesday

I'm taking part in a weekly blog hop today, hosted by Dani at Pen to Paper. Visit the site and join in.

Wishlist Wednesday is a book blog hop where we will post about one book per week that has been on our wishlist for some time, or just added (it's entirely up to you), that we can't wait to get off the wishlist and onto our wonderful shelves.

This week the book I am highlighting that is on my wishlist is Night Waking by Sarah Moss

Synopsis from goodreads:

Historian Anna Bennett has a book to write. She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women's vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss's second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range - showing her to be both an excellent comic writer and a novelist of great emotional depth.

I haven't read anything by this author before, but I think this one sounds intriguing. Plus I love puffins! :)

Wishlist Wednesday

I'm taking part in a weekly blog hop today, hosted by Dani at Pen to Paper. Visit the site and join in.

Wishlist Wednesday is a book blog hop where we will post about one book per week that has been on our wishlist for some time, or just added (it's entirely up to you), that we can't wait to get off the wishlist and onto our wonderful shelves.

This week the book I am highlighting that is on my wishlist is The Girl on Paper by Guillaume Musso.

Plot summary from amazon.co.uk

Just a few months ago, Tom Boyd was a multi-million selling author living in LA, in love with a world-famous pianist. But after a very public break-up, he's shut himself away, suffering from total writer's block with only drink and drugs for company. One night, a beautiful, naked stranger appears in Tom's house. She claims to be Billie, a character from his novels, who has fallen into the real world because of a printer's error in his latest book. Crazy as her story sounds, Tom comes to see that this must be the real Billie. And she wants to strike a deal with him: if he writes his next novel she can go back to the world of fiction. In return she will help him win back his beloved Aurore. What does he have to lose? Guillaume Musso's latest romantic adventure is a story of friendship, love and the special place that books have in our lives.

I have already read one novel by this author, Where Would I Be Without You, (click the title for my review), and it was an interesting combination of romance, thriller and a little bit of the supernatural, and this one sounds a bit special too. They are translated from the French original.

Teaser Tuesday!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 My two teaser sentences:

'But even with all my years of training and experience, my determined work ethic, and the ability to simultaneously eat, type, and talk, the hardness of it all does sometimes get overwhelming. There are days when there is no room for error, no time for lunch or to pee, no extra minutes to squeeze on more of anything out of me.'

From Left Neglected by Lisa Genova - one of my current reads

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey

I haven't had a very good reading week this past week, I read and finished one book and seemed to struggle with concentrating, maybe it's the transition to shorter days. Not sure why! This happens every so often. The main thing is, I am enjoying the book I am reading now, and looking forward to what's coming up next. 

What I've read in the last week...

Chosen by Lesley Glaister

What I am reading at the moment...

Sektion 20 by Paul Dowswell

and also reading (ongoing)

The German Boy by Tricia Wastvedt

The Picture Book by Jo Baker

What I hope to read next...

So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards

Hope everyone has a great week reading!

Wishlist Wednesday

I'm taking part in a weekly blog hop today, hosted by Dani at Pen to Paper. Visit the site and join in.

Wishlist Wednesday is a book blog hop where we will post about one book per week that has been on our wishlist for some time, or just added (it's entirely up to you), that we can't wait to get off the wishlist and onto our wonderful shelves.

This week the book I am highlighting that is on my wishlist is Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. 

I've just finished reading her latest book, The Peach Keeper, and it was a light, magical enjoyable read. I'd like to go back and read her previous novels now, I believe there are three, and this is one of them which appeals to me. 

Synopsis from goodreads:

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.


For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways.


As the sisters reconnect and learn to support one another, each finds romance where she least expects it, while Sydney's child, Bay, discovers both the safe home she has longed for and her own surprising gifts. With the help of their elderly cousin Evanelle, endowed with her own uncanny skills, the Waverley women redeem the past, embrace the present, and take a joyful leap into the future.