Sweet Bean Paste

LauraLeave a Comment on Sweet Bean Paste
あん
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Oneworld Publications
February 6th 2013
Paperback
213
Japanese
Alison Watts
November 14, 2021 November 16, 2021
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Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste.

But everything is about to change.

Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape and Tokue's dark secret is revealed, with devastating consequences.

Sweet Bean Paste is a moving novel about the burden of the past and the redemptive power of friendship. Translated into English for the first time, Durian Sukegawa's beautiful prose is capturing hearts all over the world.

About the book

Sentarou works in a doriyaki shop, typical Japanese sweets, but uses industrial bean jam. Perhaps this is why the sales are not good.

Tokue is a peculiar old woman, who understands what Sentarou’s problem is and she hopes to get hired by the young man for a very small sum of money. But the woman has deformed hands and a lot of scars and at first Sentarou is afraid that people will not want to eat his doriyaki for this reason.

However, he owes a debt to the store owner and after Tokue lets him taste her bean jam, he realises that he has no choice if he wants to pay off the debt as soon as possible he has to hire Tokue.

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Next Door

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Next Door
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, Book # 1
Indipendent
October 2nd 2018
Paperback
192
English
October 27, 2021 October 30, 2021
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FBI Evidence Response Team intern Chloe Fine, 27, finds herself forced to confront her own dark past when her troubled twin sister needs her help—and when a body turns up dead in her small, suburban town.

Chloe feels life is finally perfect as she moves back into her home town, and into a new house with her fiancé. Her career with the FBI looks promising, and her wedding is on the horizon.

But, she learns, all is not as it seems in suburbia. Chloe begins to see the underside—the gossip, the secrets, the lies—and she finds herself haunted by her own demons: her mother’s mysterious death when she was 10, and her father’s imprisonment.

And when a fresh body is found, Chloe soon realizes that her past, and this small town, might hold the key to solving both.

An emotionally wrought psychological suspense with layered characters, small-town ambiance and heart-pounding suspense, NEXT DOOR is book #1 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night.

About the book

Chloe Fine is a trainee on the FBI research team and returns to live in her small hometown with her boyfriend. Here she meets her old high school friends and she soon realises that gossip is going around in a small town. She also lost her mother when she was 10 years old, apparently killed by her father who is, in fact, serving his sentence in prison. Chloe has a twin sister, Danielle, who has never been the same after her mum’s death and she’s jumping from relationship to relationship, but it seems that she has met the man of her life. Obviously, as soon as Chloe arrives in her hometown, a corpse is found, and it could be the key to discovering what really happened to her mother.

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One Corpse Too Many

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One Corpse Too Many
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, Book # 2
Mysteriouspress.Com/Open Road
1979
Paperback
292
English
November 8, 2021 November 13, 2021
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In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden into a battlefield of passions, deceptions, and death. Not far from the safety of the abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, Brother Cadfael agrees to bury the dead, only to make a grisly discovery: one extra victim that has been strangled, not hanged.

This ingenious way to dispose of a corpse tells Brother Cadfael that the killer is both clever and ruthless. But one death among so many seems unimportant to all but the good Benedictine. He vows to find the truth behind disparate clues: a girl in boy's clothing, a missing treasure, and a single broken flower . . . the tiny bit of evidence that Cadfael believes can expose a murderer's black heart.

About the book

The war between Empress Maud and King Stephen is close to the abbey in which Father Cadfael lives. King Stephen kills all his enemies after he conquer the city, but Father Cadfael is the only one who finds out that among the dead, there is one who wasn’t executed.

More over at the abbey a new novice arrives and he seems strange and with a secret.

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2022 Finishing The Series Challenge

LauraLeave a Comment on 2022 Finishing The Series Challenge

Last year I’ve finished 5 series, yay me! so I’m doing this challenge again. I did read a bunch of books that counted as progressing in the series so I’m ever so close in finishing those series and I even read more than my goal.

Here the challenge post if you want to join. I’m going for C-LIST SERIES FINISHER ⇒ COMPLETE 1-4 SERIES again.

Hashtag for the challenge is #FinishingTheSeries2022 and I need to remember the quad link-ups:

Jan-Dec

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