Wendy’s Book Haul

I’m focused on World Without End’s Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge and my local library has been good to me. I did my best to walk out with only the books I had requested, but got caught right at the check out desk with the “book of the day”: The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen.

The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen

In this lyrical reimagining of the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber, set against the breathtaking backdrop of eighteenth-century Beijing, the lives of three unforgettable women collide in the inner chambers of the Jia mansion. When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the Capital, she is drawn into a world of opulent splendor, presided over by the ruthless, scheming Xifeng and the prim, repressed Baochai. As she learns the secrets behind their glittering façades, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, reaching from the petty gossip of the servants’ quarters all the way to the Imperial Palace. When a political coup overthrows the emperor and plunges the once-mighty family into grinding poverty, each woman must choose between love and duty, friendship and survival.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”

They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister’s death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura’s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist.

The Gathering by Kelley Armstrong

Sixteen-year-old Maya is just an ordinary teen in an ordinary town. Sure, she doesn’t know much about her background – the only thing she really has to cling to is an odd paw-print birthmark on her hip – but she never really put much thought into who her parents were or how she ended up with her adopted parents in this tiny medical-research community on Vancouver Island. Until now.

Aaaand as I was writing this post, this just popped up on my Goodreads radar (Amazon’s one-click buy button wins again!):

Eye of the Goddess by M.J. Faraldo

Kyra St. Clair’s life is about to change. Terrible events will thrust her head first into a world unknown to her, a secret world where ancient Egyptian gods are not myth but in fact very real. With the help of an unexpected friend she will come to terms with who she is, and in doing so they will both discover that there is much more to the story than meets the eye.