TBR Thursday #11

TBR Thursday is a weekly post hosted by Book Love Blog.

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  Post about all the books in all forms and from all sources that you received/bought/picked up to read in the last week.
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  Leave a link to your TBR Thursday post in the comments.

Trying to get back into the swings of things over here now that things have settled down.

Tena's 3 books...

A Discourse on Dating From A to Z by Lisa Pacheco
Stephanie Melendez, a thirty-year-old divorcee, is thrust onto the dating scene after her husband, Harold Stifniple, leaves her for his secretary, Suzie the Floozy. From that point on, it’s all unrestrained mayhem. Follow Stephanie on one zany dating adventure after another as she struggles to manage her life as a waitress, a student trying to get ahead, and a single woman dating in Los Angeles. With the help of her best friends, Shelby, Candy and Lance, Stephanie attempts to make sense of men while she weeds through a string of dating disasters looking for Mr. Right.
Chapter A is titled Adios. As her first post-divorce conquest, Stephanie immerses herself in a passionate sexual dalliance with Antonio, a twenty-year-old dishwasher at McKee’s, her place of employment. In addition to washing dishes, Antonio also cleans the restaurant after closing time. Stephanie engages in several middle of the night rendezvous with him, making love all over the restaurant, including their meeting place, the dishwasher bay. At first, Stephanie is basking in the opportunity to exercise her over active libido with her young lover, and things seem perfect, until Antonio proposes marriage after only a short while. Stephanie, enjoying her new single life and seeing through Antonio’s transparent quest to become a citizen, promptly tells him adios. After that, Stephanie encounters a string of dating debacles in her quest to find true love. When all seems hopeless, and Stephanie’s cynicism and lack of trust in men threatens to overshadow her dreams of ever finding Mr. Right, Josh unseemingly enters her life, and she comes to realize she has finally found Z-Right Guy.

Slate by Brian Rowe
Hollywood casting director Vivien Slate thought she had it all, until coming home one day to find her husband cheating on her with a younger woman. With her marriage on the rocks, she decides it's the perfect time to recapture her sexual identity... by finding a younger man of her own.
Vivien realizes she has a dating service right inside her own office-she's a casting director, after all. She devises a scenario to make the town believe her newest film project is as real as any other. She populates the cast with male characters spanning the ages of twenty to forty and begins holding auditions with hundreds of Tinseltown's most eligible bachelors.
Vivien stops at nothing to find her perfect younger man, even if it means leaving her morals behind and ultimately putting her life in danger.

Infinite Betrayal by Gayle Donnelly
Mina Roarke had always been told she was special. In what way, she never fully understood until circumstances led her down a path of adrenaline-charged danger, blazing sexual heat and ultimate betrayal.
Mathias, a warrior for a secret shifter race known as The Coteri, has been ordered to protect Mina at all costs. Although his oath to protect her is paramount, can he rein in his animal instincts long enough to not claim the one person he’s forbidden to have?

Allison's 3 Books

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife by Irene Spencer 
Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch. They lived in squalor and desolate conditions in the Mexican desert with Verlan's six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and children. Readers will be appalled and astonished, but most amazingly,
greatly inspired. Irene's dramatic story reveals how far religion can be stretched and abused and how one woman and her children found their way out, into truth and redemption.


 Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea. 

What's on your list?