Goodreads Giveaways gives me good news!

It’s nice to wake up to something positive in my inbox once in a while… and this week, I received not one, but two emails informing me that I’d won Goodreads Giveaways! I’m happy about both books — I’ll be hovering around my mailbox waiting for them to arrive sometime in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, here’s a peek at what I’m waiting for. First, I found out I’d won:

The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline
Release date: May 12, 2026

Synopsis:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of an astonishing true two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina—Kline’s own distant relatives—who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.

When Chang and Eng Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity—they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.

Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Addie sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sallie, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.

Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.

I’m so looking forward to reading this book! I loved this author’s 2020 novel The Exiles. I’ve actually read a different novel about the same historical figures (Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss, published 2020). It’ll be interesting to compare the two!

My second giveaway book is:

Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison
Release date: July 21, 2026

Synopsis:

Four friends. One funeral. An endless Saturday.

When Babe—the complicated, magnetic matriarch of their teenage summers—dies, four estranged friends return to sleepy Mercy Island, a storm-swept stretch of coastal Georgia, summoned by the reading of her will.

Didion expects nothing more than an awkward visit with her sister and, maybe, a sundrenched funeral attended by beer-soaked locals. Instead, she arrives at the timeworn pink house to find the friends she never thought she’d see again—along with the tensions, attractions, and unfinished business that once bound them together and blew them apart.

What should be a brief weekend of small talk quickly unravels. Because the next morning, it’s Saturday again.
And again.
And again.

Trapped in a time loop with no end and no instructions, they’re forced to confront the betrayals, breakups, and buried truths that shattered them ten years ago. Something on the island isn’t ready to let them go—and if they can’t find a way to fix things, it may never let them leave.

I love this author’s 2025 novel, The Other Side of Now, and I’m so eager to read this new one!

Two very different books… and I’m excited for both!

What do you think? Would you read either of these?

And speaking of giveaways… do you tend to enter Goodreads Giveaways? Have you ever won a giveaway for a book you were dying to read?

It’s a giveaway!

Guess what?

It’s a Saturday, just an ordinary weekend, nothing in particular to celebrate… except I feel like giving away some books!

I’m working on downsizing my stacks (and stacks and stacks) of books and getting my shelves in order. In addition to setting up a Pango store to try selling some of my used books, I thought I’d spread the joy around a bit by giving away some books too!

I have a stack of ARCs that have piled up over the years — some I’ve read, some not; some were Goodreads giveaway books, some came through other sources. In any case, I’m ready to part with them, and what could be better than passing them along to another reader?

Here are the books up for grabs:

  • The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner
  • The Girl Explorers by Jayne Zanglein
  • Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
  • Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
  • The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry
  • Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash

The giveaway closed September 15, 2024.

One lucky winner will be chosen! The winner will have their choice of one of the books shown.

Restrictions: Open to US entries only. No overseas/international shipping available.

To enter, simply participate at the Rafflecopter link below!

Click here to enter!

Good luck, and thanks for playing!