It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment and add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at The Book Date.

Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kid-lit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle-grade novels, young adult novels, or anything in those genres – join them.

---

Compared to the previous week, last week was pretty low-key. Like last week, I am going to bullet point the highlights.

• The top of my street is still closed, but it hasn’t stopped people from driving around the barriers to get to the main street. I heard a huge bang on Thursday and found out from a neighbor (who was walking in the area) that the car drove around the barriers and hit the curbs still in place. Which in turn wrecked their tires and scraped up the underside of their car. My neighbor said the person driving was screaming about suing the DoT and the city. Sigh….can’t fix stupid.
• Miss R is cantering over cross-rails in horseback riding. Her lessons kept getting moved around, but her trainer and I decided that Wednesday at 5 pm is perfect. The sun’s going down (so the horses won’t overheat) and Miss R won’t get sunburnt.
• Mr. Z broke the chain on his Herbst device Thursday night and the orthodontist wasn’t open until today. I still don’t know how he broke it.
• I made a Creamy Kitchen Garden Pasta on Wednesday and Maggie’s Ranch Chicken on Friday. The kids loved both. Click on the links to be taken to the recipe. FYI: I found a quick, easy way to make honey mustard dip on the chicken recipe. Take the glaze recipe, add cornstarch and water, and bam, dipping sauce.

So, that’s my catch-up. Anything exciting or different happen this week?

Here is what I am planning on reading this week. Please let me know if you have read or are planning to read any of these books.

---

What I am Reading Now:

“It is not often that a man steps through a doorway knowing that he has just made the best and worst decision of his entire life.” So declares notorious criminal, Vazeer the Lash, at the start of A Dream of Shadows. Raised in Hell’s Labyrinth, the corrupt city where crime and violence are the order of the day, Vazeer has lived on a knife’s edge his entire adult life working as a contract smuggler. Having turned himself into an educated man, Vazeer longs to retire from his nefarious career, which has always been at odds with the more cultured side of his personality.

His chance comes when he is paid a fortune to bring down The Raving Blade, one of Hell’s Labyrinth’s most infamous and sadistic power brokers. Vazeer joins a rogue’s gallery of expert Shadow Bidders, each a master of a unique set of unsavory skills, to complete one last contract. Among them are a brilliant actress who finds herself playing a key role in a criminal world where she doesn’t belong, and a calm, mysterious assassin, who draws events ever forward towards a series of increasingly dire consequences.

With life and death hanging in the balance, a dangerous romance unfolds. Secrets are revealed and violence erupts, irreversibly blurring the line between good and evil.

Perfect for fans of George RR Martin, Joe Abercrombie, and Patrick Rothfuss, A Dream of Shadows marks the start of a thrilling new literary fantasy series from Peter Eliott.

---

Books I plan on reading later this week:

Desperate Housewives meets The Couple Next Door in a chilling story of murder and intrigue set in a well-to-do DC suburb.

Sometimes the darkest acts occur in the most beautiful houses…

When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbors welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind.

But the neighborhood’s picture-perfect image is shattered when their neighbor Teddy – a handsome, successful father of three – is found dead on the steep banks of the Potomac River. The community is shaken, and as the police struggle to identify and apprehend the killer, tension in the neighborhood mounts and long-buried secrets start to emerge.

In the midst of the turmoil, Alexis takes comfort in her budding friendship with Teddy’s beautiful and charismatic widow, Blair. But as the women grow closer, the neighborhood only becomes more divided. And when the unthinkable truth behind Teddy’s murder is finally uncovered, both Blair and Alexis must reexamine their friendship and decide how far they are willing to go to preserve the lives they have so carefully constructed.

“A stunning display of relationships, suffering under the weight of grief and broken hearts. An emotional journey that Einerson has been able to masterfully achieve through flashbacks and character interactions that are raw. A real portrayal of how love can both heal and hurt you.”

A tragedy brought them together as teens, and then fate tore them apart. After fifteen years, can the pain and secrets of the past be forgiven to rekindle a once-in-a-lifetime love?

As a teen, Milo Covell’s life was destroyed when his mother was killed and his father was imprisoned for causing her death. His first love, Olivia Dunham, was the only beacon that brought his soul back into the light, promises of forever whispered under the stars creating an unbreakable bond—until the night Milo left Olivia heartbroken and alone.

When an unexpected phone call draws Milo back to New York, he’s forced to face the ghosts of the past he left behind fifteen years ago. Finding his estranged father, Mac, losing his battle with cancer, Milo is overcome with anger and betrayal when he discovers the girl he once loved has befriended the man who destroyed his life.

As Olivia struggles with her grief at the thought of losing Mac, she must also confront the man who abandoned her in her greatest time of need, leaving her life in pieces.

Brought together by fate during this trying time, the two must face hard truths, unshared secrets, and long-forgotten feelings.

Is their teenage love strong enough to span the decades and heal old wounds, or is the pain of the past too powerful to be forgiven and forgotten?

In love they breathed. In destiny they believed. In the end, will divinity be their demise?

After Séverin’s seeming betrayal, the crew is fractured. Armed with only a handful of hints, Enrique, Laila, Hypnos and Zofia must find their way through the snarled, haunted waterways of Venice, Italy to locate Séverin.

Meanwhile, Séverin must balance the deranged whims of the Patriarch of the Fallen House and discover the location of a temple beneath a plague island where the Divine Lyre can be played and all that he desires will come to pass.

With only ten days until Laila expires, the crew will face plague pits and deadly masquerades, unearthly songs and the shining steps of a temple whose powers might offer divinity itself… but at a price they may not be willing to pay.

Returning to the dark and glamorous 19th century world of her New York Times instant bestseller, The Gilded Wolves, Roshani Chokshi dazzles us with the final riveting tale as full of mystery and danger as ever.

Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why — or even who Tobias Hawthorne is.

To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s touch — and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a conwoman, and he’s determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather’s last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.

Leticia
I know a piece of fine art when I see one.
That’s why I’m drawn to Carter.
His seductive gaze and stunning physique have been rendered in exquisite detail.
The stress of my new job as head curator for a leading museum has me aching for relief.
When I lock eyes with Carter on the dance floor, I know he’ll get the job done.
I take him back to my apartment for one wild, unforgettable night.
But, come Monday morning, Carter’s still under me… working under me as my new assistant.

Carter
Life hasn’t been kind to me. I’ve loved and I’ve lost.
Now my daughter and my art are the most important things in my life.
Until I meet Leticia at my best friend’s bachelor party.
She’s a masterpiece of strength, beauty, wit, and grace. She’s also my new boss.
I know that I should stay away, but my body betrays me every time I look at her.
She thinks she can resist my charms.
I’ll show her who’s boss.
But is there enough room in her heart for me and my daughter?

This is a full length standalone romance novel with a happily ever after (HEA), no cliffhanger and no cheating.