BlogaBook

The Abingdon Book Group had a summer open house this month & instead of reading a particular title, read whatever they wanted & then shared that book with the group.
Below is a short list of titles that they recommend.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
This novel follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian’s Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.

Lying with the Enemy by Tim Binding
This novel is set on the Island of Guernsey during World War II. It is partly a war story and partly a murder mystery, & follows the relationships between the islanders and the invading Germans.
Try this if you enjoyed The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Since it was first published in 1955, Gift from the Sea has enlightened and offered solace to readers on subjects from love and marriage to peace and contentment.

Fidali's Way by George Mastras
From Publishers Weekly
Nick Sunder, a disillusioned Boston lawyer, has been backpacking in Asia for more than a year when disaster strikes at the start of Mastras's stirring first novel: the police in Peshawar, Pakistan, arrest him for cutting his French girlfriend's throat. Innocent of the crime, Sunder escapes custody by killing a cop. He heads into the Himalayas on foot, and after several weeks arrives at a remote medical clinic in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, where he gets a job as an aid worker, falls in love with a female Muslim doctor and witnesses horrifying acts of terrorism. Mastras, a TV writer (Breaking Bad) who's trekked through Asia himself, delivers a winding, character-rich plot full of authentic detail and regional history. While sentimentality mars some passages, the odysseylike story grips. Though Sunder's naïveté can be distracting at times, readers will cheer him along his path toward spiritual renewal, guided by the wisdom and advice of the titular Fidali, whom he meets on his journey. (Jan.)
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The Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons
When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a nineteen-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't...at first.
This brilliant novel, rich with emotion, is filled with appealing, intense, and indomitable characters. Anne Rivers Siddons paints a portrait of a woman determined to preserve the spirit of past generations--and the future of a place where she became who she is...a place called Colony.

Labels: Anne Rivers Siddons, Fidali's Way, Gift from the Sea, Kashmir, Lying with the Enemy, Maine, Pakistan, The Colony, The School of Essential Ingredients