{Meme} It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday, everyone!!! =)

We hope that your week is starting off wonderfully and that you have a book or two you're enjoying. Below is a list of books that Kathy, Charlene and Mandy are currently reading.

Enjoy!

Charlene:

For Review

What happens when a bright young man's promising future is tragically derailed at the age of eighteen?

Thirty-five-year-old James Milligan, the solitary and impenetrable chief architect at one of Chicago's leading design firms, has never recovered from the gruesome death of his best friend nearly two decades before. He's learned that a distant heart is the only way to shut out the nagging guilt and pain that threatens to capsize him at any moment. Only the dying veterans at the Aaron Milligan Palliative Care Center know the depth of the overwhelming compassion that James harbors within himself, and he is determined never to let anyone else into his heart - or his future - again. However, when caring and patient palliative care nurse Rebecca Doyle enters his world, his hardened exterior begins to crack against his will.

Will Martin Diggs, the charismatic and perplexing Vietnam War veteran convince James that it's not too late to reclaim his future?

Kathy:

For Back to the Classics Reading Challenge

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince ... a king ... a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince he envisioned would be unencumbered by ordinary ethical and moral values; his prince would be man and beast, fox and lion. Today, this small sixteenth-century masterpiece has become essential reading for every student of government, and is the ultimate book on power politics.

Just For Fun

Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two friends are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets - to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it.

As the deadline looms, research has stalled - until a vital clue is unearthed: a long-lost diary that may prove to be the key to deciphering the ancient text. But when a longtime student of the book is murdered just hours later, a chilling cycle of deaths and revelations begins - one that will force Tom and Paul into a fiery drama, spun from a book whose power and meaning have long been misunderstood.

Just For Fun

In Pam Houston's critically acclaimed collection of strong, shrewd, and very funny stories, we meet smart women who are looking for the love of a good man, and men who are wild and hard to pin down. Our heroines are part daredevil, part philosopher, all acute observers of the nuances of modern romance. They go where their cowboys go, they meet cowboys who don't look the part - and they have staunch friends who give them advice when the going gets rough.

For Review

Calidon Dannik has been in love with Alynde, the daughter of Horgeond's most powerful Baron, since he was 10 years old. Now, Cal's father schemes to win her hand for Henrick, Cal's older brother. Unable to accept his father's decision, Calidon resorts to intrigue to win Alynde for himself. The aspiring Knight soon finds himself enmeshed in elaborate plots that extend far beyond the confines of his homeland.

His adventure takes him from his father's Barony to the vast dwarf warrens of Nidafall and finally to the fabulous City of Selinger - whose Prince has struggled for decades to bring the warring Barons under his sway. Cal must accept the destructive nature of knighthood before he can help Prince Keldrin thwart the corrupt powers that yearn to dominate Horgeond.

Mandy:

Review For Book Blog Tour

The name Doc Holliday conjures images of the Wild West and the shootout at the OK Corral, but before he was a Western legend he was a Southern son, born in the last days of the Old South with family links to the author of Gone with the Wind. Now this amazing story is told for the first time in a trilogy of novels entitled Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday. The story begins with Inheritance, set during the turbulent times of the American Civil War, as young John Henry Holliday welcomes home his heroic father and learns a terrible secret about his beloved mother. Inheritance is the first novel in an epic tale of heroes and villains, dreams lost and found, families broken and reconciled, of sin and recompense and the redeeming power of love.

For Review

One of the greatest novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream - and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American writer.