Finished: Truly Madly Guilty (Moriarty) Another good page-turner, set in Australia, about the lives of three ordinary couples who get turned upside down by a near tragic event at a neighborhood barbecue, and how they are each affected and why they each feel their own level of guilt after the event. And, how three other people on the periphery arre affected in a major way without any of the rather self-absorbent couples even realizing it. Clementine and Erika have been best friends since elementary school, when Clementine's social worker mother forced Clementine to befriend the friendless Erika, who was growing up in a home with a mother who was a hoarder of massive proportions. Clementine resented Erika more than befriended her, but still as young, married adults, they have an unbreakable bond. Clementine is pretty, talented, married to a lovely man, Sam, and has two adorable little girls, 4 year old Holly and 2 year old Ruby. Clementine is a talented cellist who has an audition for the Sydney Opera House coming up, so she's rather preoccupied with herself and her own feelings. Sam is a great dad who has a new job, but also does more "stay at home dad" type parenting with the girls. Erika is an obsessive, compulsive neat freak with a very orderly life after her horrible, hoarding childhood. She's married to semi-hypochondriac, Oliver, who grew up as an only child with alcoholic parents. They love each other terribly, and have tried In-vitro Fertilization for the past two years to have their own child. Erika is the godmother to Holly and Ruby, and both she and Oliver love the two girls dearly. They often judge Clementine and Sam, though, thinking they are too lax in their parenting. Vid is a loud, friendly, huge man in his second marriage to his beautiful, younger, ex-stripper wife, Tiffany. They have a ten year old daughter, Dakota. Vid and Tiffany have lots of money and love to entertain in their ostentatious house, complete with twinkling lights and replica Trevi fountain in the backyard. Harry is the cranky octogenarian that lives next door to Vid and Tiffany and is constantly complaining about their music being too loud, their dog tearing up his yard, and anything else he can think to complain about. He's usually fairly rude, even when Vid always invites him over for the backyard get together's. He never comes, but just stays alone in his house next door. The only person he ever bothers to talk to and be friendly with is Oliver, because Oliver is just a super nice guy. So, one day Vid and Brittany have a barbecue and invite Erika, Oliver, Clementine, Sam and the girls. Vid, though he loves his wife dearly, is mesmerized by classical music and loves hearing about Clementine's playing. Tiffany is rather flirty with the other men, but nothing that bothers anyone. Of course, Erika feels inferior and proceeds to get tipsy, while Oliver constantly plays with the girls and points things out to them. At one point, Erika goes into the house to retrieve some dessert plates, while Oliver goes to the restroom in the backyard cabana. Dakota, who has also been watching the little girls, tells her mother she's going to her room to read. Tiffany tells Clementine that Dakota is no longer watching the girls, and Clementine says, that's fine...she'd done more than enough already. So, Clementine and Sam start watching their own daughters. They're good parents, but not the hovering always three feet away type. While Erika and Oliver are in the house and restroom, Clementine, Sam, Vid and Tiffany get caught up in a conversation and no one sees little Ruby toddle off with Holly's precious purse of collected rocks slung over her shoulder towards the huge fountain. Not until Erika comes out of the house and sees Ruby lying face down in the fountain and screams bloody murder does anyone jump into action. Oliver comes tearing around the cabana and he and Erika get to Ruby first, pulling her out and performing the CPR they have so carefully learned as they feel prospective parents should. It looks for awhile like little Ruby might not make it, but she finally gasps and throws up all the water and is helicoptered to the hospital. The near tragedy changes everything for everyone as different levels of guilt affect each one. Sam becomes despondent that "super dad" that he is let himself get enthralled in a story by ex-stripper Tiffany. Clementine feels the same way. They both blame themselves and each other and their marriage starts crumbling. Vid takes a sledge hammer to the fountain the next day and tears it apart. Erika can't remember any of the details leading up to the grabbing of  Ruby from the fountain, but something is niggling at her conscience. She does remember one thing very clearly though. Right before the party, she and Oliver had privately asked Clementine if she'd be an egg donor for them...the next step in having their own child after IVF had failed so many times. Clementine had been shocked and said she'd think about it before they all headed to the party. Privately, she told Sam that the thought disgusted her and why did Erika always, her entire life, have to have a piece of her to make her life right? Sadly, Erika overhears this conversation and she's devastated. She's still thinking about that when she goes out and sees Ruby in the fountain. Unbeknownst to her parents, Dakota, the ten year old of Vid and Tiffany's assumes a terrible guilt on her own shoulders. She thinks it's her fault that Ruby nearly drowned because she went inside to read. She starts have terrible spells of just sitting and staring and hating her once beloved books until Vid and Tiffany finally pry it out of her and convince her it wasn't her fault. They take her to see the recovered Ruby and Clementine reemphasizes to Dakota that it wasn't her fault, and she's much better. Sadly, one day Oliver and Tiffany realize that the old neighbor, Harry, hasn't put his trash out in weeks, so they go to the door to check on him. No one has seen him since he was cranky about the dog the day of the barbecue. They get into his house and discover to their horror that he's dead at the foot of the stairs and must have been like that for weeks! They are wracked with guilt that they weren't friendlier to him or checking on him earlier. We also come to find out a few weeks later that Erika has secretly taken things from Clementine all her life! She's got an old necklace, her grandmother's pearl-handled scissors, a missing family ice cream scoop, and even little Ruby's light up tennis shoe that they couldn't find earlier the day of the bbq. When Oliver discovers Erika's secret hoard, he doesn't worry about her becoming a hoarder, but does freak out that she has an obsession with things from Clementine. He ixnay's the egg donor process, which Clementine, out of guilt, has finally said that she'd do, and insists that Erika give back the missing things, a little at a time. In the meantime, when Sam almost implodes at a CPR life-saving course that he and Clementine start to take, he breaks down and cries and Clementine realizes that he might be suffering from PTSD about the near-drowning. Sure enough, he goes to a therapist and they begin to get back on track with their marriage. At the end of the book, we are hit with a couple of surprises, one which I assumed all along. Erika finally remembers everything that happened the day of the barbecue and what she remembers is walking outside with the dessert plates and hearing an incessant knocking! When she finally looks up she sees the old Harry banging on his window and pointing at the fountain. The tipsy Erika looks at the fountain and at first thinks that Harry is complaining about some trash floating in the fountain. It takes her a minute to realize that it's Ruby and she drops the plates, screams and runs! Harry, not understanding why Erika is just standing there, runs as fast as his 80-something arthritic legs will let him to go downstairs. He never makes it, though, because he trips on the top step and tumbles to his death. Yes, Harry the crank, died trying to save little Ruby. :-( Then, we also see the flashback of little Holly asking her grandmother that night if Ruby was going to die. She's very upset and confesses that she was mad at her for taking her rock purse so she pushed her! That's the one I kind of saw coming. Holly's grandmother tries to force the memory away from young Holly by telling her that Ruby slipped and fell. Anyway....everyone ends up pretty un-psychologically scarred by the end of the book. Erika and Oliver decide to try foster parenting first, Sam gets his head back into his new job, and Clementine does make the Sydney Opera House orchestra. I, myself, am so very glad that the author did not have two year old Ruby, who carried around a kitchen whisk like it was a teddy bear, die!! She was my favorite character. :-)

Finished: The Couple Next Door (Lapena) I just read this book in a few hours...couldn't put it down! It's about a couple who goes to a dinner party in the house next door, leaving their sleeping six month baby home alone, using the baby monitor to keep tabs on her, and going over every thirty minutes to check on her. Needless to say, when they get back home at 1:30 in the morning, the front door is open, and the baby is gone!!! What follows isn't exactly the best literary read, but it sure is a page-turner. Do we suspect one of the parents who took turns going over every thirty minutes? Who else knew the baby would be home alone after the babysitter canceled at the last minute?? No one is without their faults or suspicions! I'm not even going to do a recap. :-) Just a nice summer read! For anyone who may be reading this....I will spoil one thing about the ending...so stop reading now if you don't want to know. The baby is alive at the end!!

Finished: The Sheltering Sky (Bowles) A very well written, and oddly hard to put down book, about three angst-ridden Americans who travel to North Africa post-World War II and face misadventure, mostly brought on by their own stupidity. I'm not really sure how to describe this book. I just read one description that said they were in "existential despair", and when I clicked on that it says "a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life: whether this life has any meaning, purpose, or value." So...I can definitely see this in the three characters, but honestly cannot fathom how any of them thought that traveling to the small towns nestled in North Africa, on the edges of the Sahara, could possibly fix what was wrong? Port and Kit Morseby are a young, married couple who are apparently suffering marital difficulties, though we never hear why. We know only that they are both way too much in their own heads and about their own feelings to truly care about the other. Whine, whine, whine. Angst, angst, angst. Why me? Why me? Why me? On and on. When deciding to leave New York to embark on their possible marriage recovering trip, they invited along a male friend of theirs, Tunner. He hasn't been a friend for long, but eagerly agrees to go along with his new friends. Kit constantly feels as if Tunner would like to put the moves on her, and they do spend one night together. She does what she does best after that and completely avoids Tunner, not really wanting to be with Port either though. Port, who refused to be inoculated for any diseases before traveling, comes down with typhoid fever. He spends a miserable few sick days as he insists on moving to an even smaller town and insisting Tunner go ahead to their final destination to meet them. This leaves the incapable Kit alone to take care of Port, but to no avail. Port dies from the typhoid fever and Kit, rather than face the reality and going back to meet Tunner for help or comfort, takes off on her own out into the Sahara desert. She comes upon a caravan of two men and all their servants carrying supplies back to their home. She lifts her arms up to the youngest of the men and he takes her up onto his camel. Of course, he also begins to force her to have sex with him at night, but she quits struggling and decides she actually likes the comfort and the closeness and she becomes attached to him. She doesn't realize that he will also allow the other, older, man to also have his sex with her each night too. The man takes her back to his home, where he already has three wives, and keeps her locked in a room where he comes to visit her every day for several hours. She lives for her time with him. (This is truly weird. I mean, she's clearly not in her right mind.) Anyway, after he is away for several days, she comes to her senses and decides to escape. She does so, and is actually taken back to the American consulate at one of the larger cities by a French man she comes across. Luckily Tunner, who has stayed in Africa to look for Kit, has put the word out to all the consulates and has been contacted that Kit has been found! When Kit realizes that Tunner will be there and she'll have to face the real world again, she disappears outside the hotel they've taken her to for shelter and blends into the crowd. That's where the book ends! So very well written, as I said, but a very surreal, head-shaking book!

Finished: Edge of Eternity (Follett) Another great story, the third book in Follett's Centuries trilogy which follows the families of four different countries: The U.S., Germany, Russia and Great Britain. The main characters are the children of the main characters we got to know in the second book, and the grandchildren of the people we grew to love in the first book! The families: the Dewars, the Jakes, the Williams, the Murrays, the Francks, the Peshkovs and the Dvorkins. The book is far too long to recap in great detail, but it runs from 1961 to 1989. We follow the characters through major points in history, as each of them is involved in some way in these pieces of history, kind of the way Forrest Gump was inadvertently involved in so many pieces of history in the movie. We see the establishment of the Berlin Wall, the Civil Rights Movement in the deep south, the rise of Martin Luther King, the presidency of JFK, the terror and uncertainty of the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of JFK, then Bobby Kennedy, then Martin Luther King, Watergate, the Vietnam War, the rising up and subsequent crushing of the Solidarity movement by Lech Walesa in Poland, and the Russian leadership of Khrushchev, then Brezhnev, then Andropov, and finally Gorbachev, who helped to undermine the cold war and led to the breaking down of the Berlin Wall. George Jakes, the half-African American grandson of Russian immigrant to the U.S., Lev Peshkov, becomes a Harvard educated lawyer and resounding fighter for civil rights, and also one of Bobby Kennedy's top advisers. He has two major relationships with strong women and in the end, finds his own happiness. He's a good man! Cameron and Beep Dewar, the grandchildren of American Gus Dewar, go in totally different directions. Beep embraces the free love of the 60's, falling for both main members of an up and coming rock group. Cam becomes an avid Republican, working for Richard Nixon and continuing on with Reagan, eventually working for the CIA to carry out whatever questionable instructions his superiors want. The British Dave and Evie Williams are also a brother and sister duo, grandchildren of Eth Leckwith, the maid turned British parliament woman who we came to love in the first book. Dave becomes the first member of that up and coming rock group, Plum Nellie, despite his father's insistence that he'll never make it as a musician instead of finishing school. Dave falls in love with Beep Dewar, and she with him, until she cheats on fiance Dave with the other main member of the band, and Dave's best friend. Evie becomes a famous actress whose talent enchants the multitudes, until she protests the Vietnam War by posing with North Vietnamese soldiers on a tank in North Vietnam. Jane Fonda anyone? She is eventually forgiven and makes her comeback on Broadway. Jasper Murray, who was basically adopted by the Williams family growing up, turns into a reporter with few scruples who even uses stories about the people who took him in to make his way up the ladder and eventually be there to cover first hand such stories as the assassination of MLK and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Walli and Lili Franck are the children of Carla Franck, the daughter of beloved character from the first book, Maud von Ulrich. They have an adopted sister, Rebecca, who Carla adopted as a teenager in the second book when her parents were killed in the war. The story for all three of these siblings centers around the erection of the Berlin wall, Rebecca's and Walli's escape to West Berlin, the decades long separation of their family, and their eventual reunion with the fall of the wall in 1989. Walli becomes that second member of Plum Nellie! He's a great songwriter and musician, and he and Dave become best friends. However, Walli leaves behind the love of his life, Karolin, when he escapes to West Germany. She refuses to cross over with him when she realizes she is pregnant with his child. She doesn't want to endanger the baby, so little Alice is born in East Germany and isn't reunited with her father for over 20 years. Meanwhile, Walli gets into drugs in the Haight-Ashbury music and free love scene. He sleeps with Beep, and ruins his relationship with both Dave and the band. The band breaks up and Dave sends Walli back to his sister, Rebecca, in West Germany to kick his drug habit. Eventually, Walli has that happy ending when he's reunited with Karolin and also meets his daughter for the first time. The Russian Tanya and Dimka Dvorkin are twin brother and sister who are the grandchildren of the great Grigori Peshkov (brother or Lev) who we got to know in the first book. Again, we have a brother sister duo who are at opposites in their beliefs, but never waver in their love and support of each other. Dimka is a true believer in communism and works for years in the government until he finally becomes disillusioned by the various leaders until Gorbechev comes along. He falls in love twice and ends up happy with his second wife and two children. Tanya works tirelessly behind the scenes in Russia as a TASS news reporter/secret revolutionary who covers such world events as the Bay of Pigs and the Polish solidarity movement for Russia, all the while sending intelligence back to the revolutionaries to try and abolish communism. She falls early on for a dissident named Vasili, who is sentenced to labor camp in Siberia for distributing a mere pamphlet about freedom. Tanya eventually finds Vasili while on assignment in Siberia, and she manages to smuggle his novel out of Russia and into the hands of British publisher Anna Murray, sister of Jasper. So, for years these writings come out of Russia to the frustration of the Russian government. Eventually Vasili is released from Siberia, with some influence by Dimka, but Tanya and Vasili are still stuck living in Russia, unable to leave, and with Vasili still unable to claim authorship of his books. The book ends with the breaking down of the Berlin Wall and with the Franck family finally reuniting after so many years of separation. Amazingly, none of the major characters die and most all of them end up happy with children! I'm kind of wondering if there will be another book (even those this was labeled a trilogy) to follow up what continues to happen in these fascinating families! :-) Now, for a shorter book.....