What did YOU buy today? January 2017

Boy, have I ever needed this group! Book buying isn't only fun for me, but I use it to cope with stresses of daily life and will happily go without food in order to buy some books.

I haven't posted here in a long time (too long to count), but I'm hoping to be back and posting more often from here on out.

So what did I buy so far this month?

A hardcover copy of Girl Waits With Gun to lend to my Mom, plus a hardcover copy of the sequel, Lady Cop Makes Trouble.

Upstream by Mary Oliver

A first edition of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez - bonus not only because it was in great shape, but also because I haven't read it yet!

Enigma of China by Qiu Xiaolong since I needed an author whose last name started with an X.

Heritage of Darkness by Kathleen Ernst, since I'm slowly making my way through the series.

I've also gotten a few through PaperbackSwap, but since I requested them last year, I won't count them against me this year.

Sounds dreary, I know, but I don't have money for either right now. Or for anything, really.

I didn't buy any books in December, although I did bring home the following ARCs:
* Seven Minutes in Heaven by Eloisa James (pub 2/17, historical romance)
* The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams (1/17, historical fiction)
* The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo (1/17, historical fiction)
* The Dressmaker's Dowry by Meredith Jaeger (2/17, multiple time period story/mystery)

I did buy one book so far in January (and, looking at my bank account, there'll be nothing else until at least February) and made a haul on ARCs.

The purchase was The Gatehouse Mystery by Julie Campbell, book 3 in the children's mystery series about Trixie Belden and her family and friends. I'm still hoping one day I'll grow up to be Trixie Belden....

The haul of ARCs:
* _You May Kiss the Bride_ by Lisa Berne (4/17, historical romance)
* The Widow's House by Carol Goodman (3/17, multiple time period story -- I've read Goodman before and like her)
* The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (6/17, multiple time period story involving two world wars and women who spied)
* The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker (8/17, historical fiction set in Norway)
* The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck (4/17, in which she attempts to examine the variety of responses of women of Germany during and after WWII)

FYI - for one of my book groups right now I'm reading a novel set in 12th century Sweden and Denmark. The author is a Swede, Jan Guillou. The book is the first in a trilogy, The Road to Jerusalem, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The amount of material culture and social history presented in the book is marvelous. And there's a ton of world history on view, too. Yum.

I had a day off and wandered into an antique store where I found an 1890s edition of Our Voyage Around the world in the Yacht Sunbeam. I keep a running list of books I'm looking for and it was shoved in with a bunch of junk, but in good condition. The spine was a little sun faded, but the cover was still a bright blue with a nice illustration. When I went to check out the clerk even said, "Wow, that's a heavy book." It's not very big, but it did have some heft. They don't make them like that any more.

Another ARC that had apparently escaped my attention before: Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare (pub date 10/16, historical romance).

Just spontaneously bought two books at B&N online - what? They sent a coupon!

One Wild Bird At A Time by Bernd Heinrich. An LT friend highly recommended it, and I'm trying to get back into birding

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann. I've always wanted to read it, and with a movie coming out some time soon I wanted a non-movie cover copy.

Oh yeah, and last night I finally clicked "buy" at Amazon. Some things will be going to my Mom, but the books I got for myself are:

The Visitors by Simon Sylvester. Sounds good, epistolary (I think) and sort of magic-y. Should be good!

All three in the Midnight, Texas series by Charlaine Harris. I really enjoyed them all and keep thinking about them (plus I have nearly all of her other work), so I pulled the trigger and bought them. (They are Midnight Crossroad, Day Shift and Night Shift if you're interested.)

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 and The Best American Travel Writing 2016 because I enjoy this series and have gotten away from the books. Plus, they're edited by two of my favorite authors.

And then some used books I've been lurking around for awhile and found good deals on.

The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch

The second Mary Westmacott omnibus - I already own the first.

Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood. A Virago Modern Classic that's out of print, it's written by the daughter of the popular Diary of a Provincial Lady series by E.M. Delafield.

Two more ARCs:

* _Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms_ by Amanda Steinberg (pub 2/17; financial fitness, although wasted on me now)
* The Good at Heart by Ursula Werner (2/17; historical fiction based on her great-grandfather, who was a minor figure in Nazi Germany)

Two more ARCs:

* All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai (2/17; alternate history/time travel-y)

* Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr (4/17; historical mystery)