Top Ten Tuesday — Flowers!? It‘s hit-and-miss for me…

Top Ten Tuesday moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

https://www.thatartsyreadergirl.com/top-ten-tuesday/

Topic for May 7: May Flowers — Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt (books with flowers on the cover, flower names in the title, characters whose names are flower names, stories involving flowers/gardeners)

Wow, tough topic. I strongly doubt that I can find 10 books on my shelves that somehow include flowers…. Let‘s see… hey-hey, I found one!

Fortune’s Flower (Passport to Romance #1)
by Anthea Lawson

This book has been on my shelves since 2016. I went through a phase where I read quite a lot Regency Romance. I am tempted to delete this ebook from my unread TBR pile….

From USA Today bestselling, RITA-nominated author Anthea Lawson comes this full-length Victorian romantic adventure full of wit, adventure, and plenty of passion!*

Miss Lily Strathmore has made a desperate bargain. One last adventure abroad with her botanist uncle and his family, and then she will do as her parents bid and wed the proper (and boring) viscount her mother has selected as Lily’s ideal husband.

James Huntington is on a mission. Retrieve his grandfather’s lost journals from the wilds of Tunisia, and win the estate and fortune he so desperately needs. This quest will be the making of him–or his ruin.

Thrown together on a botanical expedition, James and Lily’s attraction is immediate, and impossible. Despite every reason to keep their distance, the two find themselves inexorably drawn together as they race to reach a hidden valley before their enemies can bring all their dreams crashing down.   

It does sound like fun though, right? Keeping for now…

Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope (Patrick Melrose #1-3)
by Edward St. Aubyn

Honey of roses, from the Latin mel rosae, a mixture formerly used in gargles and lotions…. Has been on my shelf since 2018. I got this when I saw trailers for the TV adaptation with Benedict Cumberbatch—I was still heavily into my BBC Sherlock infatuation at the time, I think. Haven‘t watched the adaptation nor read the book. Not sure what I was thinking when I got this ebook, the story contains so many topics I don‘t like to read about.

Moving from Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, from the savageries of a childhood with a cruel father and an alcoholic mother to an adulthood fraught with addiction, Patrick Melrose is on a mission to escape himself. 

But the drugs don’t make him forget his past, and the glittering parties offer him no redemption . . .

Undecided.

So much for flowery things on my shelf of owned and unread books. Now to my want-to-read shelf…. This one here is on my library-want-to-read list, because the audiobook is narrated by Tom Hanks:

The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett, Tom Hanks (Narrator)

That‘s a yellow flower on the right side (as viewed) of that cover, right?

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

Literary fiction and probably really not down my alley. Maybe I should just delete every single book I so far nominated for this list… 😏

And another cover with a flower…. Well, the ripe fruits after the flowering stage anyway. I am not even sure what this is called in English. A dandelion clock? I like the German name for it much better.

A Half-Built Garden
by Ruthanna Emrys 

On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm–and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn’t agree, they may need to be saved by force.

More my cup of tea, not deleting this one from my list. And another cover with a flower… Looks like a poppy:

The Warm Hands of Ghosts
by Katherine Arden 

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

A poppy definitely fits the theme of WWI. This one is also a keeper. And another one by this author with a flower on the cover:

The Bear and The Nightingale
by Katherine Arden 

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods…

A touch of fairytale… I like the sound of it.

Ok, that‘s only six books, but it‘s all I‘ve got… 🤷