What Are You Reading This Week?

An appointment that I had scheduled for this morning was rescheduled, so that gives me an unexpected block of time to enjoy two of my favorite things:  reading and coffee.  This is just a bit of what's on my to-be-read pile.  If I showed you everything, you would probably call for an intervention!

During the summer I typically opt for lighter reading fare.  Nothing too heavy.  More fiction than non-fiction.  There are, of course, some exceptions.

On top of this pile is my Kindle.  Before we left for the beach, I had downloaded Dangerous Passage (Southern Crimes Book #1) by Lisa Harris.  It was free and sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try.  It was a very enjoyable read.  So much so, that during beach week, I also read Fatal Exchange (Southern Crimes Book #2) and Hidden Agenda (Southern Crimes Book #3).  Each of them can be read as a stand-alone book, but reading the first one led me to want to read the next one, and then there was a plot twist at the end of book 2 that I had to have resolved!  These are Christian fiction, well-written with interesting characters, and I enjoyed them very much.

Once I had finished those three, I started on another book on my Kindle:  The Flinck Connection by Estelle Ryan.  This is the 4th book in the Genevieve Lenard series.  Again, each book can be read as a stand-alone, but reading the entire series helps you understand the development of relationships between the characters.  The main character, Genevieve, has high functioning autism spectrum disorder, and the series revolves around a team of people who investigate art theft.  In this book, the art in question is painted by Flinck.  In case you weren't paying attention in art appreciation class, Flinck was a Dutch painter, similar to Rembrandt.  The book contains some colorful language and is written with a different world view than my own.  Even so, I've read all the books in the series up to this point and found them to be very interesting.

Once I finish The Flinck Connection, I'll be diving into this stack.  The two books on top of the pile are A Beauty Refined and Back in the Saddle, both being books I have received to read and review.  So, you'll be hearing more about that later.

There are two non-fiction titles in the stack. I have been leisurely working my way through Simply Tuesday by Emily Freeman, which I also began while we were at the beach, and I'm looking forward to The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, subtitled Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

What I am most looking forward to in this stack is The Black Widow by Daniel Silva. Since I read the first book in this series, The Kill Artist, I have been fascinated by Gabriel Allon, art restorer and spy/clandestine operative/assassin for the Israeli government.  Silva is one of the best writers of espionage fiction that I have read, and I look forward to each new installment in the Gabriel Allon saga.  This is no exception. The promos all point to The Black Widow being one of the best books in the series, so I'm excited to read it.

So that's a little bit of what I'm reading.

I'd love to hear from you.  What are you reading this week?