Faultlines - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

    Maybe it's because I have a son or because I was born and raised in Texas or maybe because the man character's name is Sandy, but Barbara Taylor Sissel's Faultlines spoke to me deeply. The story tells of a family torn apart by an automobile accident in which Sandy's son was believed to have been driving. Drinking was involved. He and his passengers were seriously injured, one of them fatally. The wreck has far-reaching consequences. 
   If you enjoy books that delve into family relationships in true-to-life situations, you'll enjoy Faultlines too. I definitely recommend it.
FYI: I saw no errors or typos in this book, which I always appreciate.


First Paragraph:
     Jordy wasn't dead.
     Sandy plucked that single fact from the sea of information she was hearing from the police sergeant, and she clung to it as tightly as she clung to the phone. Behind her, she felt the bed shift when Emmett sat up. She felt his warmth, his sleepy unawareness - his beforeness, and she envied him. "What is it?" he asked, and he was close enough that his breath on her bare shoulder made her shiver.

Teaser (from 28% on my Kindle):
    But there had always been so much goodness in her life, enough that at times she felt compelled to apologize: I'm sorry my childhood was so happy, stable, abundant. It was only after she learned that the one blessing she longed for most - a child - would be denied her that she thought there was a price for having been given so much when she was young, that possibly there was such a thing as too much good, too much joy.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Mystery
Book Length: 305 Pages
Amazon Link: Faultlines
Author Website: Barbara Taylor Sissel

Synopsis (from Amazon):

It’s the phone call every parent dreads: in the middle of the night, Sandy Cline learns that her twenty-year-old son, Jordan, has been in a car accident. Her nephew, Travis, was also in the car, along with Travis’s girlfriend. All three are alive—but barely. The car was smashed against a tree along a remote and winding road, beautiful but deadly, in their rural Texas Hill Country town.

In the wake of the car crash, the close-knit family is tested like never before. Jenna, Travis’s mother, blames Jordan—as well as her sister, Sandy—after reports surface that Jordan had been driving. As the young adults struggle to survive, tension between their parents escalates. But when trust is broken and a shocking family secret is exposed, it creates a perfect storm of harrowing consequences. Rumors in the small town spread like wildfire. When details of the accident are questioned, Sandy and Jenna wonder if their family has been destroyed beyond repair.

As always, there’s much more to the story…if the family is to survive, they will have to come together to confront the terrible truth and overcome their pain. But are some betrayals unforgivable?

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be at the Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

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The Secret Wife - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

Love this book! Two separate plots - one beginning in 1914, one in 2016. They come together to create an enchanting book. I learned more about Russian history from this story than I expected and in an entertaining way. The author did a great job of tying everything together. It is definitely worth reading.

Book Beginning:
Lake Akanabee, New York State,
19th July 2016
     It was twenty-nine hours since Kitty Fisher had left her husband and in that time she had travelled 3,713 miles. The in-flight magazine had said there were 3,461 miles between London and New York, and the hire car's Sat Nav told her she had driven 252 miles since leaving the airport. A whole ocean and half a state lay between her and Tom. She should have been upset but instead she felt numb.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
She grasped the letter and hugged it tightly to her chest as she wept like a child, with complete abandon. There was a painful spot deep inside and she hoped the crying jag might shift it but when she clambered up to the cabin and pulled herself into bed fully clothed, it was still there.

Genre: Historical Fiction / Mystery
Book Length: 417 Pages
Amazon Link: The Secret Wife
Author Website: Gill Paul

Synopsis (from Amazon):

A Russian grand duchess and an English journalist. Linked by one of the world’s greatest mysteries . . .

Love. Guilt. Heartbreak.

1914

Russia is on the brink of collapse, and the Romanov family faces a terrifyingly uncertain future. Grand Duchess Tatiana has fallen in love with cavalry officer Dmitri, but events take a catastrophic turn, placing their romance – and their lives – in danger . . .

2016

Kitty Fisher escapes to her great-grandfather’s remote cabin in America, after a devastating revelation makes her flee London. There, on the shores of Lake Akanabee, she discovers the spectacular jewelled pendant that will lead her to a long-buried family secret . . .

Haunting, moving and beautifully written, The Secret Wife effortlessly crosses centuries, as past merges with present in an unforgettable story of love, loss and resilience.

Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Dinah Jefferies.

               

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
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The Pecan Man - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

If you enjoyed Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, or the Miss Julia series, then you'll definitely like The Pecan Man. Told in the voice of an 82-year-old woman, the author paints a vivid portrait of life in small-town Florida and the realities of race relations in parts of the South. The story is told with warmth and humor, and the author doesn't preach. 

The Pecan Man is beautifully written and free of grammatical and other errors, which I always appreciate. I'm delighted to feature Cassie Dandridge Selleck and other indie authors on my blog.

Book Beginning:
In the summer of 1976, the year of our Bicentennial, preparations for the Fourth of July were in full force. Flags hung from the eaves of every house along this stretch of Main Street. The neighborhood women were even busier than usual. I watched them come and go from a rocking chair on my own front porch.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
The inside walls were covered with wood paneling. A large brown gas heater burned noisily at one end of the room and a picture of The Last Supper hung wearily over a deep red couch at the other end.

Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Length: 146 Pages
Amazon Link: The Pecan Man 
Author Website/Blog:  Cassie Dandridge Selleck

Read Chapter One from Selleck's latest book What Matters in Mayhew HERE. 

Synopsis from Goodreads:
The Pecan Man is a work of Southern fiction whose first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category. In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief's son is found stabbed to death near his camp, the man Ora knows as Eddie is arrested and charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man. In narrating her story, Ora discovers more truth about herself than she could ever have imagined. This novel has been described as To Kill a Mockingbird meets The Help.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
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The Japanese Lover - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I've been trying to find words to describe how much I enjoyed The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende, but nothing I write can compare to what others have already said.

"Themes of lasting passion, friendship, reflections in old age, and how people react to challenging circumstances all feature in Allende's newest saga, which moves from modern San Francisco back to the traumatic WWII years." - Booklist

"The Japanese Lover is a poetic and profound meditation on the power of love: a common theme, sure, but in Allende's capable hands this trope is made utterly new." - Bustle

"Animated...lush...a novel that's a pleasure to recommend." - The Washington Post

First Paragraph (Current day)
Lark House
     When Irina Bazili began working at Lark House in 2010, she was twenty-three years old but already had few illusions about life. Since the age of fifteen she had drifted from one job, one town, to another. She could not have imagined she would find a perfect niche for herself in that senior residence, or that over the next three years she would come to be as happy as in her childhood, before fate took a hand. Founded in the mid-twentieth century to offer shelter with dignity to elderly persons of slender means, for some unknown reason from the beginning it had attracted left-wing intellectuals, oddballs, and second-rate artists. Lark House had undergone many changes over the years but still charged fees in line with each resident's income, the idea being to create a certain economic and racial diversity. In practice, all the residents were white and middle class, and the only diversity was between freethinkers, spiritual searchers, social and ecological activists, nihilists, and some of the few hippies still alive in the San Francisco Bay area.

Teaser #1 (During World War II - from Page 82):
     The Belascos' garden remained deaf to the defamatory propaganda campaign against the Japanese, who were accused of unfair competition against American farmers and fishermen, threatening white women's virtue with their insatiable lust, and corrupting American society by their Oriental, anti-Christian ways. Alma only found out about these slurs two years after she had arrived in San Francisco, when from one day to the next the Fukuda family became the "yellow peril." By that time she and Ichimei were inseparable friends.

Teaser #2 (Current day - from Page 185):
At sixty she had thought of death in abstract terms as something that did not concern her; at seventy it was a distant relative who was easy to forget because it never arose in conversation, but would inevitably come to visit one day. After she turned eighty, however, she began to become acquainted with it, and to talk about it with Irina. She saw death here and there, in a fallen tree in the park, a person bald from cancer, her mother and father crossing the street: she recognized them because they looked just like they did in the Danzig photograph. 

Genre: Saga / Magical Realism
Book Length: 321 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Amazon Link: The Japanese Lover
Author Website:  Isabel Allende

Synopsis (from the author's website):

     In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

     Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco’s charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years. Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Betrayed - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

Lisa Scottoline knows how to ramp up the tension! In BETRAYED, her character is dealing with a demanding job, a favorite aunt who's facing surgery for breast cancer, a strained relationship with her mother, a boyfriend who just isn't working out, and then there are the murders! That's not all, either, but I don't want to include spoilers. This is the only book in the Rosato & DiNunzio Series that I've read, and I'm looking forward to more. (It stands alone.)
FYI: Betrayed is another book I picked up from the bargain shelves at Barnes & Noble. I like this author a lot. 

First Paragraph:
Judy Carrier eyed her reflection in the shiny elevator doors, wondering when mirrors stopped being her friends. Her cropped yellow-blonde hair stuck out like demented sunrays, and her pink-and-blue Oilily sweater and jeans clashed with her bright red clogs. Worst of all was her expression, easy to read on a face as flat as an artist's palette, with troubled blue eyes set wide over a small nose and thin lips pressed unhappily together. 

Teaser (from Page 125):
Whoomp! Judy startled at a rushing sound, a rapid movement in the air around her, too fast to be anything natural. A large figure zoomed into her, a shadowy blur streaking the darkness.

Genre: Legal Thriller/Mystery
Length: 340 Pages (hardback)
Amazon Link: Betrayed
Author Website: Lisa Scottoline

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     Blockbuster author Lisa Scottoline returns to the Rosato & Associates law firm with Betrayed, and maverick lawyer Judy Carrier takes the lead in a case that's more personal than ever. Judy has always championed the underdog, so when Iris, the housekeeper and best friend of Judy's beloved Aunt Barb, is found dead of an apparent heart attack, Judy begins to suspect foul play. The circumstances of the death leave Judy with more questions than answers, and never before has murder struck so close to home. 
     In the meantime, Judy's own life roils with emotional and professional upheaval. She doesn't play well with her boss, Bennie Rosato, which jeopardizes her making partner at the firm. Not only that, her best friend Mary DiNunzio is planning a wedding, leaving Judy feeling left behind, as well as newly unhappy in her relationship with her live-in boyfriend Frank.
     Judy sets her own drama aside and begins an investigation of Iris's murder, then discovers a shocking truth that confounds her expectations and leads her in a completely different direction. She finds herself plunged into a shadowy world of people who are so desperate that they cannot go to the police, and where others are so ruthless that they prey on vulnerability. Judy finds strength within herself to try to get justice for Iris and her aunt -- but it comes at a terrible price.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

The Last Anniversary - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

I loved this unusual story. The protagonist is approaching forty, and her biological clock is clanging louder with each passing day. Then she inherits a house on an Australia island from her ex-boyfriend's aunt, and her life changes in unexpected ways.

Book Beginning:
     "Do you really think we can get away with it?"
     "If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be suggesting it, would I?"
     "We could go to jail. That's my third worst fear. First funnel-webs, then childbirth, then jail."
     "Neither of us is going to jail, you ninny. One day we'll be sweet little old ladies and we'll probably forget that it didn't happen the way we said it did."

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
He has refused to see her true ugliness. It's exhausting and not very fair having to pretend all the time.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Mystery
Book Length: 402 Pages
Amazon Link: The Last Anniversary
Author Website: http://LianeMoriarty.com

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Sophie Honeywell always wondered if Thomas Gordon was the one who got away. He was the perfect boyfriend, but on the day he was going to propose, she broke his heart. A year later he married his travel agent, while Sophie has been mortifyingly single ever since. Now Thomas is back in her life because Sophie has unexpectedly inherited his aunt Connie's house on Scribbly Gum Island—home of the famously unsolved Munro Baby mystery.

Sophie moves onto the island and begins a new life as part of an unconventional family, where it seems everyone has a secret. Grace, a beautiful young mother, is feverishly planning a shocking escape from her perfect life. Margie, a frumpy housewife, has made a pact with a stranger, while dreamy Aunt Rose wonders if maybe it's about time she started making her own decisions.

As Sophie's life becomes increasingly complicated, she discovers that sometimes you have to stop waiting around—and come up with your own fairy-tale ending.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
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A Man Called Ove - #TeaserTuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter / Tuesday Intros

Ove is one of the most fascinating characters I've read about in a long time. He's not likable, and I'm pretty sure I'd avoid him if he were my neighbor. But ... sometimes there's more to a person than what we see on the surface.
This is a 5-star book that I highly recommend.

First Paragraph:
Ove is fifty-nine.
     He drives a Saab. He's the kind of man who points at people he doesn't like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman's flashlight. He stands at the counter of a shop where owners of Japanese cars come to purchase white cables. Ove eyes the sales assistant for a long time before shaking a medium-sized white box at him.
     "So this is one of those O-Pads, is it?" he demands.

Teaser from 36% on my Kindle:
She talked as if she were continuously on the verge of breaking into giggles. And when she giggled she sounded the way Ove imagined champagne bubbles would have sounded if they were capable of laughter.

Genre: Literary / Humorous
Book Length: 352 Pages
Amazon Link: A Man Called Ove

Synopsis:
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” (Booklist, starred review).

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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Redneck P.I. - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

   I'm only partway into Redneck P.I. but I'm already loving the main character. Twila Taunton is an amber-haired, curvaceous redneck from Quisby, Alabama, currently trying to earn a living in Boston. So far, someone has shot at her at a company picnic, she's been fired from her job (gee, all she did was show a co-worker her boobs!) and she has talked her way into a new job as assistant to a good-lookin' private investigator. I can't imagine what the rest of the book will bring, but I know it will be fun! 

    Redneck P.I. is the first book in the Redneck P.I. mystery series:
Book 2 Link: Kiss Assitude
Book 3 Link: Backwoods Boogie

Genre: Mystery / Humor
Book Length: 314 Pages
Amazon Link: Redneck P.I.
Author Website: Trish Jackson

Opening:
   The words of a co-worker bitch started the whole thing.
   She hadn't done a very good job of tracking my whereabouts that morning, and obviously didn't know I was in one of the restroom stalls, with my pants on the ground.

Teaser (from 31% on my Kindle):
   Having any sort of gun pointed at you makes you feel pretty helpless, but somehow if you're butt naked when it happens, you feel even more helpless, as if clothes would protect you from a bullet in some way.
   "Holy crap, Velda," I had shouted, "What the fu... What are you doing?"

Synopsis from Amazon:
   Twila Taunton hates living in Yankee territory and has vowed never to allow a man into her life again. Everything is turned upside down when she invites hunky P.I. Harland O'Connor to the company picnic and she looks into his bedroomy eyes. Even worse, his equally as hunky twin brother makes her overlook her cop allergy. 
   Twila finds herself ducking bullets, and when Harland is wounded, she steps in to pinch-hit for him. Her lack of city-sophistication and disregard for political correctness help her solve some tough cases. And then someone tries to blow her up. She and Harland are soon caught in a dizzy, dangerous tangle that could cost them more than their lives.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger 

A New Dawn in Deer Isle - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

    After George McLast's wife Lorna died, his life seemed to lose its purpose. He rarely left the trailer they'd bought in Florida, took afternoon naps to break the monotony, and worst of all, he'd started having a squeezing feeling in his chest. He'd  mourned for almost three years before deciding to take action in the form of a road trip in his van, something he and his wife had planned to do. A New Dawn in Deer Isle tells the story of George's adventure. With surprises along the way, he examines his life and his future.
     Readers who enjoy books with older characters (Baby Boomer age), road trips, and introspective narrative will definitely like this touching story. The author's voice is conversational, as if telling a story to a friend, and the book is an easy, engrossing, and true-to-life read. 
I'll look for more books by this author.

Genre: Fiction/Travel/OA (Older Adult)
Book Length: 181 Pages
Amazon Link: A New Dawn in Deer Isle
Author's Website: Tom Winton

Book Beginning:
     For thirty-five months my life had been a living hell. Every morning, noon, and night relentless flames ravaged my mind, my spirit, and my soul. You see, in 2011 my wife and I moved to that blazing-hot inferno they call Florida. And by the time we'd made it just halfway through the first nine-month summer in that overdeveloped, sub-tropical jungle, we absolutely hated the place. Then in September of the same year, with our hearts broken because we had made the move and couldn't afford to go back to Long Island, my Lorna began to weaken.

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
Through the glass I saw Sarah Poulin's face again. She was placing short stout glasses of water  in front of five family members who'd entered the diner minutes earlier. And her lovely face was all lit up with that warm smile of hers. 

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
     Every once in a while we read a book that profoundly affects the way we perceive our lives. A NEW DAWN IN DEER ISLE is one of those rare books. 
     A common man of modest means, world-weary George McLast decides to forget all his problems and take the trip him and his beloved wife had only dreamed about before she passed away three years earlier. Despite all the unnerving feelings he’s been getting in his chest, his son’s disapproval, and his precarious financial situation, he sets out across America following the same route John Steinbeck took in 1959 with his pet poodle, Charley. And as the legendary author wanted to do back then, George hopes to reacquaint himself with his country and its people. 
     But everything doesn’t work out as planned. Along the way George encounters far more than he had bargained for. And so will readers. During his many adventures and mishaps you’ll feel like you’re right alongside him, in the passenger seat of his old van. And you will not only read his words you’ll learn from them as well. 
                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

Have you ever read a book that goes backward in time instead of forward? That's the structure of Girl in Hyacinth Blue. In this story, the ownership of a painting is traced back through history, with each chapter revealing the effect the painting has on its owner, until the final chapter reveals the artist.

First Paragraph:
Love Enough
     Cornelius Engelbrecht invented himself. Let me emphasize, straight away, that he isn't what I would call a friend, but I know him enough to say that he did purposely design himself: single, modest dresser in receding colors, mathematics teacher, sponsor of the chess club, mild mannered acquaintance to all rather than a friend to any, a person anxious to become invisible. However, that exterior blandness masked a burning center, and for some reason that became clear to me only later, Cornelius Engelbrecht revealed to me the secret obsession that lay beneath his orderly, controlled design. 

Teaser (from Page 83, trade paperback edition):
And her headdress! She thought it clever to suggest her family's contributions to Dutch naval history by building a ship, a man-of-war I think it was, atop horizontal rows of cadogan curls - no one wore cadogan curls anymore - as if the vessel were bravely battling those ferocious blond waves. On its stern she flew a tiny flag. 
(In case you're curious, I did a Google search for "cadogan curls" and found this: "...the ladies adopted the "cadogan," an English style, similar to the wigs worn by the men. The hair was still powdered, but it was bunched out at the side and braided or curled, and looped up at the back.")  

Genre: Literature / Historical
Book Length: 196 Pages
Amazon Link: Girl in Hyacinth Blue
Author Website: Susan Vreeland

Synopsis:
This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer—but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that trace the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Susan Vreeland's characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Miz B of A Daily Rhythm. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at ADailyRhythm.com

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

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