Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield

Why I have it: Not sure.

Summary: When Orlando Whitfield first meets Inigo Philbrick, they are students dreaming of dealing art for a living. Their friendship lasts for fifteen years until one day, Inigo – by then the most successful dealer of his generation – disappears, accused of a fraud so gigantic and audacious it rocks the art world to its core.

I’m thinking: No (interesting story but the style will irritate me).

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst (also titled Maurice and Maralyn)

Why I have it: On so many ‘best of 2025’ lists.

Summary: Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives and dream of running away from it all.  In June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Missing Persons or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills

Why I have it: a Goodreads buddy loved it.

Summary: In 2015, the Irish government commissioned an investigation into the state’s network of Mother and Baby Homes after the discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of up to eight hundred children prompted international outrage. The homes, which operated from the 1920s to the 1990s, were responsible for nearly nine thousand child deaths and countless other abuses. Wills’s investigation leads her back to the discovery that nearly thirty years ago a cousin of hers had been born in one of the Homes and her existence had been covered up.

I’m thinking: Maybe but the sample was just the table of contents!