Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews, which is all about sharing the books that you’ve acquired in the past week!

 

These are the & eBooks I bought this week:

Substance: Inside New Order by Peter Hook

I’m a huge Joy Division and New Order fan, so can never resist a book about them. This has been on my radar since it was first published so when I spotted it in a kindle daily deal offer this week I snapped it up. It’s a much longer book than I realised so it may be a while before I get a chance to read it but I’m looking forward to it.

Synopsis:

Two acclaimed albums, an upcoming US tour – Joy Division had the world at their feet. Then, on the eve of that tour and the beginning of what would surely have been an international success story, the band’s troubled lead singer, Ian Curtis, killed himself.

‘We didn’t really think about it afterwards. It just sort of happened. One day we were Joy Division, then our lead singer killed himself and the next time we got together, we were a new band…’Peter Hook

That band was New Order.

Buy Buy Baby by Helen MacKinven

I’ve had this book on my wish list for a while so when I spotted on twitter that it had been made free on Amazon for this weekend I immediately downloaded it. It sounds like such a good read and I can’t wait to start it. I believe the book is free all weekend so it’s worth having a look if you’re in the UK.

Synopsis:

What price tag would you put on a baby?
Set in and around Glasgow, Buy Buy Baby is a moving and funny story of life, loss and longing.
Packed full of bitchy banter, it follows the bittersweet quest of two very different women united by the same desire – they desperately want a baby.
Carol talks to her dog, has an expensive eBay habit and relies on wine to forget she’s no longer a mum following the death of her young son.
Cheeky besom Julia is career-driven and appears to have it all. But after disastrous attempts at internet dating, she feels there is a baby-shaped hole in her life.
In steps Dan, a total charmer with a solution to their problems.
But only if they are willing to pay the price, on every level…

 

The Absence of Wings by Mark Stewart

I was contacted by the author about this book and as it sounds like something I’d be interested in reading I downloaded it through my Kindle Unlimited subscription. I’m finding myself drawn to books about the natural world at the moment so I’m looking forward to this one.

Synopsis:

“The Absence of Wings” is a collection of short stories intended to show the world through the eyes of some of the Earth’s most endangered and persecuted animals.

The collection is an ark of sorts, offering a literary refuge for creatures that may one day exist only in story books, fables and myths.

These are stories that will change the way you look at the natural world.

Lost Connections by Jim Ody

I got this book when it was a freebie on Amazon this week as it looks like an engrossing mystery novel. I hope to get a chance to read this soon.

Synopsis:

What would you do if the most important person to you had been kidnapped? One minute your daughter is there, and the next she has been bundled into a van right under your nose. They want something of your father’s. You don’t know what that is, and your father mysteriously disappeared over 7 years ago. Going to the police is not an option. And the answers will slowly appear in the most unlikely of places.

As single-parent Eddie’s world falls apart, an unlikely alliance forms between friends and neighbours who put their differences aside, to help get his daughter Daisy back. As the mystery unfolds a huge secret is uncovered that not only will affect Eddie and his family, but the whole of mankind…

Phantom Limb by Lucinda Berry

The cover of this book caught my eye when I was looking through the Kindle Unlimited books this week, so I decided to download it. The book sounds intriguing and one that would keep me hooked so I may well pick this one up very soon.

Synopsis:

Emily and Elizabeth spend their childhood locked in a bedroom and terrorized by a mother who drinks too much and disappears for days. The identical twins are rescued by a family determined to be their saviors.

But there’s some horrors love can’t erase…

Elizabeth wakes in a hospital, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak. The last thing she remembers is finding Emily’s body in their bathroom. Days before, she was falling in love and starting college. Now, she’s surrounded by men who talk to themselves and women who pull out their eyebrows.

As she delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Emily’s death, she discovers shocking secrets and holes in her memory that force her to remember what she’s worked so hard to forget—the beatings, the blood, the special friends. Her life spins out of control at a terrifying speed as she desperately tries to unravel the psychological puzzle of her past before it’s too late.

I also received 8 ARCs:

Fell by Jenn Ashworth

I’ll be honest here… I actually squealed when this book arrived this week! It’s a book that I’ve heard so many good things about and I’ve been so keen to read it. I’m so excited to read that I may well start it this weekend!

Synopsis:

When Annette Clifford returns to her childhood home on the edge of Morecambe Bay, she despairs: the long-empty house is crumbling, undermined by two voracious sycamores. What she doesn’t realise is that she’s not alone: her arrival has woken the spirits of her parents, who anxiously watch over her, longing to make amends. Because as the past comes back to Jack and Netty, they begin to see the summer of 1963 clearly, when Netty was desperately ill and a stranger moved in. Charismatic, mercurial Timothy Richardson, with his seemingly miraculous powers of healing, who drew all their attention away from Annette… Now, they must try to draw another stranger towards her, one who can rescue her.

This Love by Dani Atkins

I was contacted by the publisher to ask if I’d like to read and review this and of course I said yes! I read Fractured by Dani Atkins back when it first came out and I loved it so I’m really looking forward to reading this new one by her. I hope to get chance to start reading it next week.

Synopsis:

Sophie stopped believing in happy endings a long time ago, but could this love change all of that?

Sophie Winter lives in a self-imposed cocoon – she’s a single, 31-year-old translator who works from home in her one-bedroom flat. This isn’t really the life she dreamed of, but then Sophie stopped believing in dreams when she was a teenager and tragedy struck her family.

So, to be safe, she keeps everyone at arm’s length. Sophie understands she has a problem, but recognising it and knowing how to fix it are two entirely different things.

One night a serious fire breaks out in the flat below hers. Sophie is trapped in the burning building until a passer-by, Ben, sees her and rescues her.

Suddenly her cocoon is shattered – what will be the consequences of this second life-changing event?

Friend Request by Laura Marshall

I requested this on NetGalley and was thrilled when I got approved. The premise for this book sounds so creepy and intriguing. I’m trying to hold off reading this now as it’s not published until later in the year but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to resist.

Synopsis:

Maria wants to be friends.
But Maria is dead.
Isn’t she?

When Louise Williams receives a message from someone left long in the past, her heart nearly stops.

Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook.

Maria Weston has been missing for over twenty-five years. She was last seen the night of a school leavers’ party, and the world believes her to be dead. Particularly Louise, who has lived her adult life with a terrible secret.

As Maria’s messages start to escalate, Louise forces herself to reconnect with the old friends she once tried so hard to impress. Trying to piece together exactly what happened that night, she soon discovers there’s much she didn’t know. The only certainty is that Maria Weston disappeared that night, never to be heard from again – until now. . .

A Book of Untruths by Miranda Doyle

I wished for this book on NetGalley so was very excited when my wish was granted. I’m really intrigued about the way this book is set out, it sounds like a very interesting way to tell your story and that’s what caught my attention with this book. I’m very keen to read this one soon.

Synopsis:

A Book of Untruths is a family story told through a series of lies. Each short chapter features one of these lies and each lie builds to form a picture of a life-Miranda Doyle’s life as she struggles to understand her complicated family and her own place within it.

This is a book about love, family and marriage. It is about the fallibility of human beings and the terrible things we do to one another. It is about the ways we get at-or avoid-the truth. And it is about storytelling itself: how we build a sense of ourselves and our place in the world.

A Book of Untruths is a surprising, shocking and invigorating book that edges towards the truth through an engagement with falsehood. It brings questions to its readers; not answers.

 

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

This is another of my wished for books on NetGalley that got granted this week. It was the cover of this one that caught my eye and then when I read the synopsis I knew I had to read it. 

Synopsis:

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and darkly observant. A college student in Dublin and aspiring writer, she works at a literary agency by day. At night, she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are profiled by Melissa, a well-known journalist, they enter an exotic orbit of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence.

Initially unimpressed, Frances finds herself embroiled in a risky menage a quatre when she begins an affair with Nick, Melissa’s actor husband. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances’s intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new – a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment. But as Frances tries to keep control, her relationships increasingly unspool: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi.

Written with rare precision and probing intelligence, Conversations with Friends is exquisitely alive to the pleasures and inhibitions of youth.

The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse

I was pre-approved for this one on NetGalley, which was a lovely surprise. I love the sound of this and really want to read it but it’s a tough subject matter for me so I’m going to wait for the right time to read this one.

Synopsis:

With her fortieth birthday approaching, Lucy Carpenter thinks she finally has it all: a wonderful new husband, Jonah, a successful career and the chance of a precious baby of her own. Life couldn’t be more perfect.

But becoming parents proves much harder to achieve than Lucy and Jonah imagined, and when Jonah’s teenage daughter Camille comes to stay with them, she becomes a constant reminder of what Lucy doesn’t have. Jonah’s love and support are unquestioning, but Lucy’s struggles with work and her own failing dreams begin to take their toll. With Camille’s presence straining the bonds of Lucy’s marriage even further, Lucy suddenly feels herself close to losing everything…

This heart-wrenchingly poignant family drama from bestselling author Amanda Prowse asks the question: in today’s hectic world, what does it mean to be a mother?

Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately by Alicia Cook

This is another NetGalley book where the cover caught my eye first. I’m trying to read more poetry this year and this sounds like a great collection. I think it might be one of those serendipitous happenings where the right book found me at the right time with this one, so I really hope I’m right. 

Synopsis:

Structured like an old-school mix-tape, Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately is Alicia Cook’s lyric message to anyone who has dealt with addiction. “Side A” touches on all aspects of the human condition: life, death, love, trauma, and growth. “Side B” contains haunting black-out remixes of those poems.

Deconstructing Dirty Dancing by Stephen Lee Naish

I accidentally ended up with this one from NetGalley – you know when you click a link in an email by accident and the book gets added to your shelf?  The young part of me really wants to read this as Dirty Dancing was one of my favourite films when I was a young teen. The other part of me has personal reasons for not being able to cope with the film anymore. I want to try and read this but I’m on the fence at the moment.

Synopsis:

Renowned film critic Roger Ebert said Dirty Dancing “”might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything.”” In this broadly researched and accessible text, Stephen Lee Naish sets out to deconstruct and unlock a film that has haunted him for decades, and argues that Dirty Dancing, the 1987 sleeper hit about a young middle-class girl who falls for a handsome working-class dance instructor, is actually about everything. The film is a union of history, politics, sixties and eighties culture, era-defining music, class, gender, and race, and of course features one of the best love stories set to film. Using scene-by-scene analyses, personal interpretation, and comparative study, it’s time to take Dirty Dancing out of the corner and place it under the microscope.

I also won a giveaway this week on JaffaReadsToo blog…

Foxes Unearthed by Lucy Jones

Firstly, hasn’t this book got the most gorgeous cover? It really is a stunning looking book. I’m really interested to read this and to learn move about foxes, so hopefully I’ll be able to read it very soon.

Synopsis:

As one of the largest predators left in Britain, the fox is captivating: a comfortably familiar figure in our country landscapes; an intriguing flash of bright-eyed wildness in our towns.

Yet no other animal attracts such controversy, has provoked more column inches or been so ambiguously woven into our culture over centuries, perceived variously as a beautiful animal, a cunning rogue, a vicious pest and a worthy foe. As well as being the most ubiquitous of wild animals, it is also the least understood.

In Foxes Unearthed Lucy Jones investigates the truth about foxes in a media landscape that often carries complex agendas. Delving into fact, fiction, folklore and her own family history, Lucy travels the length of Britain to find out first-hand why these animals incite such passionate emotions, revealing our rich and complex relationship with one of our most loved – and most vilified – wild animals. This compelling narrative adds much-needed depth to the debate on foxes, asking what our attitudes towards the red fox say about us – and, ultimately, about our relationship with the natural world.

 

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So, that’s all of my new books from the past week. Have you bought any new books recently? Tell me all in the comments below, or if you have a stacking the shelves post on your blog feel free to post the link below too.

My weekly wrap up post will be on my blog tomorrow so please look out for that.