August Book Haul

It's been an exciting week this week: I have five new books waiting to be read!
Yesterday brought my first library trip of the month...

Sense and Sensibility - Joanna Trollope 
This has been on my to-read list for some time, and the other day I read a brilliant review of it over on Girl with her Head in a Book's blog. It felt like fate when I saw it on the library shelf yesterday!

When sisters Elinor and Marianne lose their father and their beloved home, Norland Park, all in a matter of weeks, the shock affects them in very different ways. As young architect student Elinor holds the family together, Marianne resists with all her might the change they must endure.
Thrust into a tiny cottage in Devon, the two sisters are soon united by one thing, dilemmas of the heart. But where Marianne proclaims her love, Elinor holds her tongue. And in a world that turns on an axis of money, sex and power, what will prevail: following one's head or one's heart?


Last Voyage of the Valentina - Santa Montefiore 
Since my holiday to Italy last month -which I still need to post about!- I've been a little obsessed with all things Italy, and especially Amalfi.

An eccentric aristocrat is savagely murdered in his Italian palazzo at the end of World War II. Twenty years later, this unsolved crime touches the life of Alba, a hedonistic girl who lives on a houseboat in sixties Chelsea.
Between these two events runs a thread of love, decadence and betrayal that takes Alba from the country houses of the shires to the olive groves of the Amalfi coast, rich with the scent of figs, the drama of wartime and lingering decay of tragedy.
As the past unfolds, it reveals a secret web of partisans and Nazis, peasants and counts and in the centre of it all, an alluring woman of mystery: Alba's mother.
Alba investigates not only a murder but also the forbidden truth. What she finds in the past is heartrending, but it's the gateway to her own future.


I also received this book via Bookbridgr to review:

and have these two titles on the way to me courtesy of Goodreads Giveaways!

It's going to be a busy month! What's new on your shelves this week?