Tag: First Line Friday

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First Line Friday

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature A Corpse Among the Carolers by Debra Sennefelder a book published in November of this year. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to read it soon.

276 pages November 12, 2024 Beyond the Page Publishing

First Line

Food Blogger Hope Early always gets a hearty holiday laugh knowing that the weeks leading up to Christmas are as frantic as they are festive.

Would you want to continue on with reading this? I probably would just based on the adorable cover alone. You’ve got to love Beagles.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Hope Early is fully immersed in the spirit of the Christmas season, until the sounds of joyful carolers are silenced by the words “Ho-ho-homicide” . . .

Food blogger Hope Early always gets a hearty holiday laugh from knowing that the weeks leading up to Christmas are as frantic as they are festive. But in spite of everything she has to do, the one thing she always has time for is the annual Jingle Bell Stroll, a night when the community gathers to sing their hearts out and enjoy each other’s company. This year’s caroling feels especially heartwarming, until the final note lands with a thud when Hope finds the body of the man who’d volunteered to play Santa, a knife plunged into his back.

With virtually the whole town present at the caroling, the list of suspects seems endless. It doesn’t take long, though, for both Hope and the police to turn a sharp eye on the victim’s bitter and vindictive ex-wife, along with his new wife, who may have been after his money. Then Hope unearths a clue that suggests the dead man may have been hiding a sordid past and connections to unseemly characters. But as she closes in on the killer, they’re determined to wring her neck before she can ring in the new year . . .

Includes tasty and toasty holiday recipes!

About the Author:

Debra Sennefelder lives and writes in Connecticut, where she shares her home with her family and slightly spoiled Shih Tzu. An avid reader across a range of genres, mystery fiction is her obsession. Her interest in people and relationships is channeled into her novels against a backdrop of crime and mystery. She’s the author of the Food Blogger Mysteries, the Resale Boutique Mysteries, and the Cookie Shop Mysteries. When she’s not writing, she’s either baking or reading. To learn more, visit her on the web at debrasennefelder.com.

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First Line Friday

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature Freedom’s Song by Kim Vogel Sawyer. I haven’t read one of her books for some months and this one is from 2021. I need a catch up.

Pub Date Oct 19 2021

ABOUT THE BOOK

Her voice made her a riverboat’s darling—and its prisoner. Now she’s singing her way to freedom in this powerful novel from the bestselling author of The Librarian of Boone’s Hollow.

“[An] enjoyable faith-filled adventure . . . Sawyer’s episodic narrative and rich assortment of characters fighting for freedom provide the story with many twists and unexpected side-plots.”—Publishers Weekly

Indentured servant Fanny Beck has been forced to sing for riverboat passengers since she was a girl. All she wants is to live a quiet, humble life with her family as soon as her seven-year contract is over. So when she discovers that the captain has no intention of releasing her, she seizes a sudden opportunity to escape—an impulse that leads Fanny to a group of enslaved people who are on their own dangerous quest for liberty. . . .

Widower Walter Kuhn is overwhelmed by his responsibilities to his farm and young daughter, and now his mail-order bride hasn’t arrived. Could a beautiful stranger seeking work be the answer to his prayers? . . .

After the star performer of the River Peacock is presumed drowned, Sloan Kirkpatrick, the riverboat’s captain, sets off to find her replacement. However, his journey will bring him face to face with his own past—and a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be free. . . . 

Uplifting, inspiring, and grounded in biblical truth, Freedom’s Song is a story for every reader who has longed for physical, emotional, or spiritual delivery.

FIRST LINE(S)

On the Mississippi River, near Monticello, Missouri Mid-April ,1860

Fanny Beck

Thunderous applause, Cries of “Encore, encore! ” Fanny Beck bowed her head in humble acknowledgement and gratitude.

Let me know the book closest to you and leave its first lines below.

Enjoy a peaceful weekend. Thank you for stopping in.

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First Line Friday

Happy Friday & welcome to the First Line Friday post! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature A Louisiana Christmas to Remember. I really enjoy novella collections by multiple authors. What about you? Hosted at Reading is my Superpower.

By Betsy St. Amant; Morgan Tarpley Smith; Lenora Worth

Pub Date Sep 01 2023 

FIRST LINE(S)

Three weeks before Christmas

Moreau, Louisiana

Mattie Hayes froze, her fingers warm around a latte, and stared at the flurries of white outside the window of Le Petit French Press coffee shop, the sight briefly restoring faith to her disheartened state of mind.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Rare Snowfall Leads to a Christmas to Remember

Three heartwarming, interconnected stories of faith, love, and restoration, brought to you by three Louisiana-native authors. Will a rare snowy Louisiana Christmas bring restoration and hope to the hometown and hearts of three women from the town’s founding family?

In A Louisiana Snow by Morgan Tarpley Smith, meet Mattie: A passionate visionary who learns to forgive and finds love in unexpected places…

In Restoring Christmas by Betsy St. Amant, meet Jolene: An artist and prodigal daughter who discovers love exists in the very place she once called home…

In A Christmas Reunion by Lenora Worth, meet Adale: A beautiful widow who finally dares to love again…

And don’t forget Granny, whose feisty spirit, blunt dialogue, and quirky ways play an important and endearing role.

Thank you for stopping in. Happy weekend.

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First Line Friday on Saturday

Happy weekend & welcome to the First Line Friday post! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature Pumpkin Cottage by Anna and Jacqui Burns, a mother daughter team.

329 pages Allison & Busby publisher September 19, 2024 publication date



FIRST LINES

Pippa lets out involuntary shriek as she spots the sign, ‘Welcome to Riverdean.’ She has arrived. She follows the road as it bends sharply to the right, and her Audi is plunged under a canopy of trees. The brilliant blue of the sky peeks through the green and mustard leaves, as though even the sky is promising good times to come. And boy, does Pippa need good times. It’s been one hell of a year, filled with grief, job stress and break-up angst.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Pippa Mason is ready for a fresh start. She has bought Pumpkin Cottage in the picturesque Wye Valley village of Riverdean, where her late mother grew up, and plans to renovate a run-down bed and breakfast. Despite the complications of the project and a very surly builder, Pippa is settling into village life and starting to fall for the charms of local, outdoorsy Jake when problems start coming thick and fast …

Jenny Foster has plenty on her plate. It’s busy enough running Riverside Lodge but now her husband Phil has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. With doubts about how long she will be able to keep running the business, Jenny didn’t need the threat of another B&B on her doorstep and the newcomer worming her way into the community.

When the spat between the rival businesses escalates and an autumn storm brings matters to a head, Pippa and Jenny will have to see if Riverdean is big enough for the both of them.

THE AUTHORS

Jacqui Burns is a lecturer and one half of a writing team with her daughter Anna Burns. They write their novels while living over two hundred miles apart, emailing chapters back and forth, focussing on strong but relatable women at the centre of families and communities. Love at Café Lompar was shortlisted for the RNA Debut Novel Award.

Anna Burns is a psychiatrist and one half of a writing team with her mother Jacqui Burns. They write their novels while living over two hundred miles apart, emailing chapters back and forth, focussing on strong but relatable women at the centre of families and communities. Love at Café Lompar was shortlisted for the RNA Debut Novel Award.

I hope you are doing well today. Happy Weekend!

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First Line Friday

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line(s) of The Sirens by Emilia Hart.

First Line(s)

She breathes in time with the sea.

In

The waves crash against the rocks, frothing through the mouth of the cave. Icy on her toes, her shaking thighs.

Out

St. Martin’s Press publisher April 2,2025 publication date

A spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea, from the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller Weyward

2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found.

As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves. Desperate for answers, Lucy finds and begins to read her sister’s adolescent diary.

1999: Jess is a lonely sixteen-year-old in a rural town in the middle of the continent. Diagnosed with a rare allergy to water, she has always felt different, until her young, charming art teacher takes an interest in her drawings, seeing a power and maturity in them—and in her—that no one else has.

1800: Twin sisters Mary and Eliza have been torn from their loving father in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship bound for Australia. For their entire lives, they’ve feared the ocean, as their mother tragically drowned when they were just girls. Yet as the boat bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can’t explain, and they feel the sea beginning to call to them…

A breathtaking tale of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood across time and space, The Sirens captures the power of dreams, and the mystery and magic of the sea.

What are the first line of the closest book to you ?

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First Line Friday

FIRST LINE FRIDAY

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line of Fables from Scotland by Samuel Denhartog.

FIRST LINE(S)

Thomas Learmont, the young laird of Ercildourne Castle, was known throughout the land for his charm and wit. He was a man of many talents-skilled with both pen and lute, and blessed with a love for poetry and music, unusual tastes for a man in the thirteenth century.

426 pages Part of series Fable Anthologies Publication date September 13, 2024

Would this make it onto your reading list? Please share the first lines of what you’re reading or the book closest to you.

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First Line Friday

FIRST LINE FRIDAY

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line The Seaside Homecoming by Julie Klassen.

FIRST LINE(S)

May 1820

Bleak. The weather, her mood, her life. Miss Claire Summers pulled back the dusty velvet curtain and looked out onto another dreary Edinburgh day.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Pub Date Dec 03 2024 

A surprise homecoming tests the bonds of sisterhood as a hidden past comes to light . . .

Disgraced eldest sister Claire Summers has been living in exile as companion to a stern great-aunt in Scotland. About to lose her place and longing to be reconciled with her estranged family, Claire sees an advertisement from someone looking for a “respectable female partner” in a Sidmouth boarding house. Is it a sign? She answers the ad, hoping she has not made another reckless mistake. When she meets the handsome, secretive proprietor, she wonders what he’s hiding and if he’s any more trustworthy than the nobleman who betrayed her years ago. Claire is drawn to him even though she fears he will reject her when he discovers her genteel façade hides a less-than-respectable past.

Meanwhile, the Summers family learns their great-aunt has died and Claire has disappeared without a word. The sisters rally together to find their lost sibling, but will their unexpected reunion heal old wounds and rekindle their bonds . . . or deepen the divide?

Return to the captivating Devonshire coast as the Summers sisters navigate romance, second chances, and the enduring strength of sisterhood in the face of adversity.

I have been waiting for this book to be available for what seems like forever. Will this be making it onto your to read pile? What currently in your hands to read?

Have a wonderful day. Thank you for stopping in.

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First Line Friday

FIRST LINE FRIDAY

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line of The Garden by Nick Newman. This is a new to me author and I look forward to getting into it.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A darkly beautiful, eerie, hypnotic novel about two elderly sisters living alone at the edge of the world.

In a place and time unknown, two elderly sisters live in a walled garden, secluded from the outside world. Evelyn and Lily have only ever known each other. What was before the garden, they have forgotten; what lies beyond it, they do not know. Each day is spent in languid service to their home: tending the bees, planting the crops, and dutifully following the instructions of the almanac written by their mother.

When a nameless boy is found hiding in the boarded house at the center of their isolated grounds, their once-solitary lives are irrevocably disrupted. Who is he? Where did he come from? And most importantly, what does he want?

As suspicions gather and allegiances falter, Evelyn and Lily are forced to confront the dark truths about themselves, the garden, and the world as they’ve known it.

  1. G.P. Putnam’s Sons
  2. Publication date February 18, 2025

FIRST LINE(S)

Somebody had moved the beehive. Evelyn couldn’t understand how it had happened. It was at a slight angle to the others, like it had been shoved, and beneath each of its wooden feet there was a shallow red trench in the earth. An animal? A storm? It couldn’t have been.

Does this sound like one you’d add to your reading list? Thank you for your visit today.

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First Line Friday: On Saturday

FIRST LINE FRIDAY

Thanks for the heads-up nudge, Heidi. Life can get pretty busy, but I do enjoy doing this one. So glad you’re enjoying it.

Happy Friday & welcome to the First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Super Power ! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line of Count the Night by Stars by Michelle Shocklee. Now this is the same author I featured last week with her book Appalachian Song which is a book I have read and loved. The one I am featuring today I have not read but hope to very soon, enjoy.

FIRST LINE(S)

May 29,1897

My darling,

No one could accuse Luca Moretti of being a coward. I thought you brash and arrogant that day I saw you in the lobby of the Maxwell House Hotel. You stood taller than all the other men in their tailored suits, not caring that the elbows of your coat were worn or that one of the brass buttons was missing. Instead, you kept your shoulders back and your gaze steady, even when the mean treated you as though they bettered you somehow. I’d never seen that kind of boldness before, and it intrigued me.

414 pages Tyndale Fiction March 22, 2022 publication date

ABOUT THE BOOK

Count your nights by stars, not shadows. Count your life with smiles, not tears.
1961. After a longtime resident at Nashville’s historic Maxwell House Hotel suffers a debilitating stroke, Audrey Whitfield is tasked with cleaning out the reclusive woman’s room. There, she discovers an elaborate scrapbook filled with memorabilia from the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Love notes on the backs of unmailed postcards inside capture Audrey’s imagination with hints of a forbidden romance . . . and troubling revelations about the disappearance of young women at the exposition. Audrey enlists the help of a handsome hotel guest as she tracks down clues and information about the mysterious “Peaches” and her regrets over one fateful day, nearly sixty-five years earlier.

1897. Outspoken and forward-thinking Priscilla Nichols isn’t willing to settle for just any man. She’s still holding out hope for love when she meets Luca Moretti on the eve of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Charmed by the Italian immigrant’s boldness, Priscilla spends time exploring the wonderous sights of the expo with Luca—until a darkness overshadows the monthslong event. Haunted by a terrible truth, Priscilla and Luca are sent down separate paths as the night’s stars fade into dawn.

I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend. Thank you for stopping in today.

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First Line Friday

FIRST LINE FRIDAY

Happy Friday & welcome to First Line Friday hosted at Reading is my Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line. Today I’m delighted to feature the first line of the book I am currently reading, Appalachian Song by Michelle Shocklee.

339 pages Tyndale Fiction publisher October 3, 2023 publication date

Isn’t that a beautiful Fall cover?

ABOUT THE BOOK

Forever within the memories of my heart.

Always remember, you are perfectly loved.

Bertie Jenkins has spent forty years serving as a midwife for her community in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Out of all the mothers she’s tended, none affects her more than the young teenager who shows up on her doorstep, injured, afraid, and expecting, one warm June day in 1943. As Bertie and her four sisters tenderly nurture Songbird back to health, the bond between the childless midwife and the motherless teen grows strong. But soon Songbird is forced to make a heartbreaking decision that will tear this little family apart.

Thirty years later, the day after his father’s funeral, Walker Wylie is stunned to learn he was adopted as an infant. The famous country singer enlists the help of adoption advocate Reese Chandler in the hopes of learning why he was abandoned by his birth parents. With the only clue he has in hand, Walker and Reese head deep into the Appalachian Mountains to track down Bertie Jenkins, the midwife who holds the secrets to Walker’s past.

For fans of historical and Southern fiction comes a poignant story of love and sacrifice set in the heart of Appalachia, from award-winning author Michelle Shocklee.

FIRST LINE(S)

Appalachian Mountains

North Carolina

Feb 1,1943

My heart thumped hard beneath Mama’s thin coat while I waited for Amos at our secret place. Holes from the chinking in the old trapper’s cabin let in frigid mountain air, with another storm brewing by the looks of heavy gray clouds in the sky, but I couldn’t leave for Tennessee tomorrow without seeing Amos one last time. Tears blurred my vision.

This book is really good so far and I expect that to continue. I’d love to see the first line(s) of a book you’re reading.