Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce – Jane, an American raised in France, is swept off her feet by Malcolm, a rich American art dealer. At the same time she finds out that she is a witch but her grandmother dies without telling her how to use her powers.
Malcolm takes Jane to NY and there she meets his mother. Jane realizes that he is part of a powerful witch family and starts to worry about what the family’s plan for her is.
I usually avoid evil mother-in-law stories because they annoy me and because I had my own evil mother-in-law once upon a time.  I liked this book though. It seems to be the beginning of a series.

This Must Be The Place by Kate Racculia – When Arthur’s wife Amy dies in an accident he realizes that he doesn’t know anything about her life before they met. He finds an unmailed postcard addressed to Mona Jones in NY. He shows up on the steps of the boarding house that Mona runs hoping to find answers.
This book is full of offbeat characters and their interactions are the heart of the story. Mona holds the key to finding out secrets that Amy kept from Arthur. Mona’s daughter is falling for the local bad boy – who may not be as bad as he appears even if he comes from a family of secret criminals.

Sisters by Danielle Steel – Four sisters get together every Fourth of July at their parents’ house. One is a TV producer, one is an attorney, one is a supermodel, and one is a starving artist in Italy. Typical Danielle Steel family. A quick run to the store ends in an accident that disables one of the sisters. The others decide to rent a house in NYC for a year so they can live together to help get her back on her feet.

The Wave by Susan Casey- The idea of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean freaks me out. I don’t like that you are standing on top of miles of stuff that you aren’t able to stand on. Planes don’t bother me that much. I think that’s because you die pretty fast if that goes wrong instead of waiting to drown or freeze or get eaten. Now that I’ve read this book I know I was right to be wary.

Did you know that at least one supercarrier is lost in the ocean every week? If you start looking at small boats like yachts the numbers are even bigger. The author contrasts the problem of freak waves on ships and coastlines with the stories of big wave surfers like Laird Hamilton who go out looking for ever larger waves to ride. She followed along on surfing adventures around the world where people are routinely maimed and killed. She went to Lloyd’s of London, the insurance company that covers most of the big shipping fleets who has a person who is in charge of updating the companies centuries old ledgers of ships lost at sea every day. She visits wave scientists and sites of tsunamis to get an idea of the power of waves and what can be done to predict them.

Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma by Zoya Phan – By the time she was 17, Zoya Phan had fled from Burma to Thai refugee camps twice. Her family is Karen, an ethnic group targeted for extermination by the Burmese. Her father and mother were leaders of the Karen resistance. Eventually she and her sister were able to win scholarships that let them study as illegal immigrants in Thailand and then in the U.K. She was put on the Burmese army’s hit list along with her father. After being granted asylum she was able to work for an NGO that campaigns for increased aid to refugees and internally displaced people in Burma. Her father was to be nominated for President of the Karen but was assassinated. This is a heartbreaking story of people trying to survive in a land at war.

4 Blondes by Candace Bushnell – This is basically a collection of four stories about women in New York. No one in these stories are the least bit likable so I’m not sure why I kept reading except that I’m sick and it was way too much work to get off the couch for a new book.

Where Am I Reading?  Additions-  New York times four, Hawaii, Burma