Our Reading Radar

Tara's finds:

Spotted on a friend's blog: Cicada by Moira McKinnon. It's on my wishlist as sadly it doesn't appear to even be available to the States. :(

A stunning novel of terror, love and survival in the greatest wilderness on earth. A lyrical, heartbreaking epic debut.

An isolated property in the middle of Western Australia, just after the Great War. An English heiress has just given birth and unleashed hell. Weakened and grieving, she realises her life is in danger, and flees into the desert with her Aboriginal maid. One of them is running from a murderer; the other is accused of murder.

Soon the women are being hunted across the Kimberley by troopers, trackers and the man who wants to silence them both. How they survive in the searing desert and what happens when they are finally found will take your breath away.

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Cowgirl Dreams by Heidi M. Thomas. Came to my attention via Amazon's recommendations. I'm interested because it's a woman doing the rodeo circuit in times when that was not "acceptable" and also it takes place in Montana.


From her ranch home in Montana in the 1920s, Nettie Brady dreamed of joining the rodeo circuit and becoming a star. Defying her mother's wishes and trading her skirts for trousers--and riding the range with her brothers and taking on the occasional half-ton steer in local rodeos--Nettie bucked convention to compete with men in the arena. When family hardship and tragedy threaten her plans, she turns back toward a more traditional life as a ranch woman, but chafes against its restrictions. Then she meets and falls in love with a young neighbor who rides broncs and raises rodeo stock. Can Nettie's rodeo dreams come true if she's also a wife and mother?
Based on the life of the author's grandmother, a real Montana cowgirl, this novel takes on the big issues of a woman's place in the west, the crushing difficulties of surviving on a homestead, and the excitement and romance of a young girl aching to follow her dream.

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Spotted on Edelweiss and on my wishlist. Sourcebooks Landmark tends to have some great titles and rarely disappoint me: The End of Innocence by Allegra Jordan. The whole woman at Harvard thing grabbed me.

On the eve of WWI, two students fall in love in Harvard's hallowed halls and must face a world at war from opposing sides

Helen Windship Brooks is struggling to find herself at the world-renowned Harvard-Radcliffe University when brooding German poet Wils bursts into her life. As they fall deeply in love on the brink of WWI, anti-German sentiments mount and Wils' future at Harvard-and in America-is in increasing danger. When Wils is called to fight for the Kaiser, Helen must decide if she is ready to fight her own battle for what she loves most.

From Harvard's hallowed halls to Belgium's war-ravaged battlefields, The End of Innocence is a powerful new vision of finding love and hope in a violent, broken world.