Wordless Wednesday

This is my first post as part of the Wordless Wednesday meme. Yes, I've been lurking on everyone's sites in previous weeks, but today I finally decided to just jump on in.

Today's photo features Rainier cherries -- a treat in Washington State only once a year. I'm eating some right now. 

Yummy!

Here's the link to other beautiful Wordless Wednesday posts: Awesome Photos

Teaser Tuesday - Orphan Train

Maybe it's because my grandfather was an orphan, but ever since I heard about the real-life Orphan Trains, I've wanted to learn more. Christina Baker Kline's novel provides a realistic glimpse at that time in history.  It's a book about a teenager who is in foster care (present day) and a woman who was an Orphan Train child back in the early 1900s. Their stories are fascinating, and I came to care about the characters and the challenges they faced. Anyone who enjoys good fiction, taking place during real historical events, will be glad they read ORPHAN TRAIN. It's a book I won't soon forget.

FYI: According to the author's notes, between 1854 and 1929 approximately 200,000 orphaned children were transported via rail from the East Coast to the Midwestern U.S. for the purpose of adoption. 

In my Teaser (from Page 28) the children are waiting on a train platform, getting ready to be considered for adoption:
I am with a group of twenty children, all ages. We are scrubbed and in our donated clothes, the girls in dresses with white pinafores and thick white stockings, the boys in knickers that button below the knee, white dress shirts, neckties, thick wool suit coats. It is an unseasonably warm October day, Indian summer, Mrs. Scatcherd calls it, and we are sweltering on the platform.

Genre: Literary Fiction
Length: 273 Pages
Amazon Link: ORPHAN TRAIN
Goodreads: Synopsis

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 and author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers
• Leave a comment on MizB's Teaser Tuesday post (HERE) and include your link so everyone can find your post.

The Light Between Oceans - Teaser Tuesday

Sometimes I'll read a book and it's entertaining for a while, but when I put it down, I forget it. That's not going to happen with THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Stedman. Set in Australia after the end of World War I, the main characters are a lighthouse keeper and his wife - two people I came to care about so much that I cried when I read their story. That hasn't happened in a long time. 

If you want to read a book that will keep you turning pages, wondering what will happen next with a story you won't soon forget, then you'll enjoy The Light Between Oceans.


Genre: Thriller / Historical
Length: 354 Pages
Amazon Link: The Light Between Oceans
Goodreads: Synopsis

Here's my two-sentence Teaser from 2% on my Kindle:
As he walked down the path, he heard the sweet notes of Isabel's voice as she sang, "Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly, blow the wind south o'er the bonnie blue sea." Though the music was tuneful, it failed to comfort him as he climbed the stairs of the light, fending off a strange uneasiness at the concession he had made.

Partial Synopsis from Goodreads:
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. 

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 and author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers
• Leave a comment on MizB's Teaser Tuesday post (HERE) and include your link so everyone can find your post.

Teaser Tuesday - THE COMEBACK KISS

Has anyone heard of (or recall) the Volkswagen "Thing?" I didn't remember it until I started searching online for a photo of the car. The main character in THE COMEBACK KISS had one of these funky little vehicles, and she painted "colorful daisies all over it...."

Teaser Tuesday - Two sentences from 1% on my Kindle:

It was a vintage 1974 VW Thing, a boxy, funky-looking model that didn't sell well and didn't last long; theorists were split on whether the blame fell on the name or the design. But Tessa had loved it with all her heart.

Photo by Sven Storbeck

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: 336 Pages
Amazon Link: THE COMEBACK KISS

Goodreads Synopsis:
Sometimes love just won't go away. — ALL IT TAKES IS ONE LITTLE KISS... — 

In order to keep custody of her teenage sister, Tessa Scuderi told a small (okay, big) lie to the people of Lucy's Lake, Vermont, about what really happened ten years ago when Dermot Finnegan took off with her virginity, her car, and the town bell. It had been working, too, until she found her old car parked in front of her house, keys in the ignition, and a telltale red hair stuck to the headrest.

TO TOTALLY SCREW EVERYTHING UP.

All Finn wanted to do was return the stupid car and get going. But he stopped to save a burning pet shop (big mistake), ended up kissing Tessa behind the drugstore (big mistake, but worth it), and discovered that Tessa's been building him up as some kind of town hero all these years (gonna have to puzzle that out). Now Finn has to find out who's behind a string of mysterious fires and deal with the heat between him and Tessa. Hey, one more kiss can't hurt -- or can it?

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 and author too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers
• Leave a comment on MizB's Teaser Tuesday post (HERE) and include your link so everyone can find your post.