Vacation To-Read List
When we get ready for vacation, my daughter takes the time to pack her favorite stuffed animals, books, and her sleeping bag. You never know when you'll need that for a sleep over. This year, she'll probably add her favorite swim goggles and toys for the pool.
Me, I pack the essentials -- BOOKS. I always over pack books for a trip. If we go away for a long weekend, I bring at least 5 books. While I don't often read them all, I do change my mind on which one holds my attention while away. A kindle has helped in years past, allowing me to take several more books than usual. This year will be no different, but my top three picks this vacation are below.
Let me know if you've read them before and what you think I should start with:
The Inseparable Mr. & Mrs. Darcy by Jennifer Joy, this is book three in the Meryton Mystery series.
Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet have had their fill of crime-solving. Now engaged to be married, their greatest wish is to leave Meryton with its penchant for mysteries for the serenity of Pemberley. If only Mr. Bennet would give his consent.
When a secret correspondence is discovered, revealing a possible elopement, a plot against Parliament, and exposing their families’ reputations to shame, the investigations begin anew. The couple’s search for answers unfolds more trouble as Mr. Bennet becomes the target of their unknown enemy … or is it merely the desperate act of a lonely father unwilling to part with his favorite daughter?
Darcy and Elizabeth team up to once and for all prove that family trumps adversity and love conquers all — if they can make it to the altar...
Cocoa Beach by Beatriz Williams
Burdened by a dark family secret, Virginia Fortescue flees her oppressive home in New York City for the battlefields of World War I France. While an ambulance driver for the Red Cross, she meets a charismatic British army surgeon whose persistent charm opens her heart to the possibility of love. As the war rages, Virginia falls into a passionate affair with the dashing Captain Simon Fitzwilliam, only to discover that his past has its own dark secrets—secrets that will damage their eventual marriage and propel her back across the Atlantic to the sister and father she left behind.
Five years later, in the early days of Prohibition, the newly widowed Virginia Fitzwilliam arrives in the tropical boomtown of Cocoa Beach, Florida, to settle her husband’s estate. Despite the evidence, Virginia does not believe Simon perished in the fire that destroyed the seaside home he built for her and their young daughter. Separated from her husband since the early days of their marriage, the headstrong Virginia plans to uncover the truth, for the sake of the daughter Simon never met.
Simon’s brother and sister welcome her with open arms and introduce her to a dazzling new world of citrus groves, white beaches, bootleggers, and Prohibition agents. But Virginia senses a predatory presence lurking beneath the irresistible, hedonistic surface of this coastal oasis. The more she learns about Simon and his mysterious business interests, the more she fears that the dangers that surrounded Simon now threaten her and their daughter’s life as well.
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To Lay To Rest Our Ghosts: Stories by Caitlin Hamilton Summie
In these ten elegantly written short stories, Caitlin Hamilton Summie takes readers from WWII Kansas City to a poor, drug-ridden neighborhood in New York, and from the quiet of rural Minnesota to its pulsing Twin Cities, each time navigating the geographical boundaries that shape our lives as well as the geography of tender hearts, loss, and family bonds. Deeply moving and memorable, To Lay To Rest Our Ghosts examines the importance of family, the defining nature of place, the need for home, and the hope of reconciliation.
What do you pack as a must-have on vacation?