Summer reading recommendations.

It's going to be a steamy Monday here in Toronto, so I'm planning to stay indoors and continue with a few projects.

But first, it's been a good reading weekend.  With Alex away in Kingston and my other two lads returning jet-lagged from Paris, I had lots of time to read.  I finished Resurrection Row by Anne Perry.  For whatever reason, she has completely escaped my notice and this was my first Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel.  The series is set in Victorian England.  Thomas is a police inspector, married to Charlotte who has "married down" and who serves as an entrée into middle- and upper-class society.  This enables her to help Thomas out in his investigations.  There is lots of period detail, but not at the expense of moving the story along.  I'll definitely be reading more in this series, starting with The Cater Street Hangman, the first in the series.

I also picked up The Restoration of Emily by Kim Moritsugu from the Staff Picks shelf at the library.  As soon as I got going on it, I realized that I'd listened to it via a CBC Between the Covers Podcast a year or so ago, but it's such a good story that I gobbled it up in a day.  Emily is an architect in Toronto and a single mother of a teenage son, Jesse.  Her specialty is restoring older homes.  She's happy in her single, solitary life as a 50-something cranky businesswoman when circumstances bring back parts of her past and (possibly) a new future.  The voice in this novel is witty and real.  Emily's thoughts, her conversation with her friend Sylvia, and her interactions with her son ring impossibly true. Perhaps it's because we're in the same peri-menopausal bitchy life stage, but many times I could feel Emily's words coming out of my mouth.  I definitely recommend this as a good summer read!  It's fast paced, funny yet poignant, and for bonus points, set in my city.

Last night I started in on The Irresistable Henry House by Lisa Grunwald.  Once again, I have no idea where this book was recommended to me, but it's off to a good start!  Henry is introduced to us as a baby, and orphan who is brought up in the late 40s in a university Domestic Science department as the "practice baby".  It follows him through adulthood.  I'm still in the baby phase, so I'm not sure yet where it's going, but 30 pages in and it's caught my attention!