Tuesday Intros -- The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
Today, I was determined to have an intro that is not connected to France. So I chose The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks.  Truthfully, I hesitate to pick up a book written by a man, especially a man writing from a woman's viewpoint, but the story sounds interesting so I

thought I'd try it.
Here's the intro:

Caroline Jacobs rose, pointed her finger at the woman seated at the center of the table reserved for the PTO president and her officers, and said it. Shouted it, in fact. In the cafeteria of Benjamin Banneker High School, surrounded by crowded bulletin boards, scuffed linoleum, and the lingering smell of chicken nuggets, Caroline Jacobs had shouted a four-letter word. The four-letter word.
The room fell silent. 

 I'm also joining in with Teaser Tuesday which is a weekly bookish meme, hosted Ambrosia @The Purple Booker.
Here's my teaser from page 37:

"Your daughter attacked another student in the biology lab this morning."
"She attacked someone?"
"Yes," Dr. Powers said. "A classmate. Mr. Schultz said that the girls were arguing about something in the back of the classroom and then Polly began shouting. Using profanity, from what I'm told. Before Mr. Shultz could reach them to intervene, Polly had punched Miss Dinali in the face. In the nose to be exact."

Interested to see where this books goes. What do you think?

Tuesday Intros - Love From Paris

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
Alexandra Potter wrote Love From Paris about a young Brit who is stood up by her American

boyfriend on her birthday so she goes to stay with a friend in Paris.
Here's the opening:

OK, calm down, it's got to be here somewhere.Rushing around my bedroom, I grab hold of my make-up bag and start rifling through it. Which of course is completely futile. I mean, is it just me, or does anyone ever pu a lip gloss in their make-up bag? It's always stuffed in a coat pocket gathering fluff. Or lost in a random handbag. Or stuck down the back of the sofa, top off, smearing pink gloop everywhere...

This book is definitely chick lit, which I enjoy many times. I'm a little worried because the next step is the friend in Paris representing an apartment that has been  untouched for 60 years, which is what The Paris Apartment was about. This is obviously a different take on it.
Hope you're reading something fun.

Tuesday Intros -- A Star for Mrs. Blake

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

I've started giving away books set in France, as you can see by the post on the right side of my blog, and as I looked through books, I found one that I hadn't read. It's called A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith and I won it in a giveaway. The book, set in 1931, focuses on five women, gold-star mothers whose sons died in World War I, who travel together to the American Cemetery in France.

Cora Blake was certainly not planning on going to Paris that spring. Or ever in her lifetime. She was the librarian in a small town on the tip of an island off the coast of  Maine, which didn't mean she'd never traveled. She did spend two years at Colby College in Waterville and visited family in Portland, went to Arizona once, and if you counted yachting, knew most of the New England coast. Her mother had been the great adventurer, married to a sea captain who'd taken her all around the world. Cora was born off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, which might account for her venturesome spirit, but now she roamed only in books. Summer people from North Carolina and Boston would stop by the quaint old library building to chat, and wonder how she could stand to live in such a tiny place with those terrible winters.
"I have everything I want right on the island," she'd say. "We're so off the beaten path, you've got to be satisfied with the way it is."

 I'm not crazy about this opening, but I'll give the book a chance. Any novel that takes me to France might win my heart.

Tuesday Intros -- Villa America

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.

I lucked upon this book in the library -- Villa America by Liza Klaussmann.
When I picked it up to read the inside cover, an American couple from New York move their family to the South of France and become part of the elite group of the Hemingways, Fitzgeralds and Picasso. Say no more! I'm in.
Here's the intro:

The sky was as blue as a robin's egg on the afternoon they pulled Owen Chambers's body out of the  Baie des Anges. It had taken three days before they could reach him -- spring tides off the coast of Antibes, a lack of proper equipment -- and he was almost unrecognizable when he was finally recovered, seaweed wending its way through his tangled blond hair. 

I'm definitely intrigued. I hope I enjoy.
Looking forward to finding other books that everyone is reading.

Tuesday Intros -- Monday's Lies

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I'm home sick today, but I have to drag myself into work this evening. I hope that I'll just be able to relax and read, but I might force myself to grade papers instead.
I hadn't  heard anything about this book, but it's kind of intriguing. It skips back and forth between the narrator's childhood with a mom who is, apparently, in the CIA, and her current life with suspicions about her husband cheating. It's called Monday's Lie by Jamie Mason.
Here's the intro:

It's funny what you remember about terrible things.
The scattered shards were far more beautiful than the crystal lamp they'd been an hour before. The clearest night sky had nothing on the flicker and shine strewn across the black canvas bag that lay at the foot of the stairs. The industrious back-and-forth of the man's shadow tricked the shimmer into life with his every pass. 

Hope you're reading something that you love.