Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

 

It's been a hard year for the Koubek family.  The father died after a years long battle with cancer.  The mother had left the family years before and now lives away with a new husband and stepchildren.  The Koubek brothers are grown but they can't count on each other for support.

Born more than a decade apart, they have little contact with each other.  When the younger, Ivan, was small, he idolized his big brother Peter.  But as Ivan grew, the brothers came to realize that they had little in common and in fact, didn't really like each other very much.  These days they rarely talk and when they do, often fight.

Peter has weathered other disastrous times.  The love of his life is Sylvia and he always thought they would marry and make a family.  But Sylvia was in a horrific accident several years back and will never be that healthy again; her life a daily round of pain that has left her unable to do many of the things she could before.  She broke up with Peter after that but they remain in contact and are 'good friends'.  In the meantime, if Peter can't have her, he starts and ends relationships with girls in their twenties.  The latest is Naomi and Peter can't quite shake her off as he has the others.  This leaves him in love with two women.

Ivan's life has been focused on chess.  He is a star in that world but at twenty-two, he has just left university and has no idea what to do for a job or a life or a relationship.  While visiting a small town for a chess exhibition, he meets a woman fourteen years older than him and starts a love affair.  She is hesitant and Ivan's family doesn't approve but he can't give her up or she him.

I've read all of Sally Rooney's novels.  This one is my favorite by far.  After reading the others, the characters always seemed distant and uninvolved in their own lives.  These brothers and the women they love are strong characters and I wanted to know what would happen next to them and would they ever find their way back to each other.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Mothers Of Sparta by Dawn Davies

 

This is the memoir of Dawn Davies' life.  It is written as a series of essays, each of which portrays some aspect of her life.  It starts with her first marriage and children, her post partum depression that went unrecognized and her divorce.  It follows on about how she found the courage to become an author, her eventual successful second marriage, her feelings as her children grow and leave home and in the title story, a chilling portrayal of her youngest son.

I can't remember reading anything that affected me as much as this essay.  Davies' youngest son was born with a cleft palate.  In his first few days in the NICU, he had to be revived several times.  He couldn't nurse or even take a bottle but had to be fed every two hours and he couldn't take in enough nutrients to offset the effort of taking them in.  When he was vaccinated, he ran a fever of one hundred and five for several days.  Any or all of these have left him with various diagnoses.  He has been named as autistic and that the impulse control part of his brain has been damaged.  That means he does whatever comes to him to do when it occurs to him to do it with no thought of consequences.  He has done all the warning signs of a psychopath; setting fires, harming animals and moving on to child pornography.  Davies's life means that she must have line of sight control on this man child (sixteen at the time of this book) every minute.  There have been no schools that will keep him on as he always breaks any rules and acts out in destructive ways.  This child is handsome and charming and considered a sociopath.  Davies has no idea what to do with him or what will happen to him in life.  It is a stunning portrayal of a mother who loves her damaged child but knows he could easily hurt others seriously at any time.  

Other essays are more lighthearted.  The one about their small terrier who was the bane of every small animal around him was interesting and comical.  Again, the family loved this terrier who managed to kill every hamster, rat, or bird the family adopted.  Davies' freely admits she was the cause of most of the disasters as her own ADHD means that she would often forget to implement the procedures the family put in place to control the dog.  It doesn't sound funny and wasn't, but her style of writing about it is.  Her essays about being a soccer mom hit home also and were full of humor about that lifestyle.

Dawn Davies came to writing later than many authors.  This book gained a lot of accolades when it was published and I know I will be recommending it to others for a long time as it really hit me hard.  Her ability to have such a difficult situation and her willingness to share it with others and to write about it is stunning.  Her lighthearted tone about other parts of her life is endearing.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers who enjoy memoirs and for struggling women everywhere.  

The Stark Beauty Of Last Things by Celine Keating

 

When Clancy agreed to go to a party out on Montauk Island, he never expected that the decision would change his life.  Once he gets there, he realizes that this is where Otto, his Big Brother, would take him fishing as a child.  Clancy lost his parents when he was young and with no other family, grew up in foster homes and institutions.  He meets Julianne, a local innkeeper at the party and she tells him Otto is still alive and still living there.

Clancy goes the next day to look up Otto.  Otto is overjoyed to see Clancy but tells him that he is dying.  He asks Clancy if he would meet with his daughter, Therese, and see if Clancy can bring about a reconciliation.  Otto and Therese have been estranged since Otto's second marriage and not speaking.  Clancy tries but to no avail.

Clancy has come to Montauk at a critical time.  The island is changing from a blue collar fishing harbor to a rich person's playground and local residents are being priced out of the housing market.  Climate change and overbuilding is ruining the environment and for every environmentalist, there is another person who wants to cash in on their home and move elsewhere.  When Otto dies, he leaves Clancy as his executor of his estate and one of the biggest decisions is what to do with a several acre parcel of land Otto has held for decades with some other local families.  Some of them want to leave it as a natural area, others want to sell it to the highest offer.  What would Otto want?

This novel hits several themes.  It highlights the inevitability of change as new people discover undeveloped areas and want some of the untouched beauty for themselves.  It discusses the lives of the existing residents and how their livelihoods are being affected.  It also delves into family relationships and the need for a feeling of belonging that everyone has.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.  

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

 

It is Daisy's grandmother's eighth birthday and the entire family has gathered at her house to celebrate.  Nana lives in a sprawling mansion that is cut off by high tide twice a day.  The celebration is forced because this is no happy family.  Nana is a famous author; her most famous book is Daisy Darker named after her favorite granddaughter, Daisy.  There are three sisters, their parents and the neighbor boy who spent most of his childhood with the girls.

The mother is Nancy, who showed favoritism to her two older daughters, Rose and Lily.  She alternated between ignoring Daisy and over protecting her as Daisy was born with a broken heart and had numerous operations to try to keep her from dying.  The father is Nana's son but his musical career was more important to him than his family and he and Nancy divorced and the girls rarely saw him after that.

Rose is now a vet.  She had an early love affair with Conor, the neighbor boy but never had another serious love or married.  She devotes herself to her career.  Lily is the spoiled one, a mother herself.  Trixie is her fifteen year old daughter, no news on who the father was.  Lily was the kind of teenager who was boy crazy and would do anything to get attention.  Conor is now a journalist, his days of living with a brutal, alcoholic father long gone.  

Now someone is killing all the family while they are cut off from help and a storm rages.  One person dies each hour.  Who is doing the killing and who will survive?

Alice Feeney is known for her thrillers, often involving family relationships.  As each person dies, their secrets and backstory are revealed.  The sisters were never close, Daisy envying the older girls and those two locked in a rivalry and feud that has lasted for decades.  There are twists and turns and few readers will see the ending beforehand.  This book is recommended for readers of psychological thrillers.  

Many Rivers To Cross by Peter Robinson

 

One thing is sure in Eastvale.  There will always be more murders for DCS Alan Banks' team to solve.  This week's case is that of a young Middle Eastern male teenager whose body has been found in a household's trash bin.  He has been stabbed but no one around seems to have seen him before or know his name.  As the case is investigated, it turns out that he had spent months getting to England and the plan was to work and send money back home to bring over the rest of his family.  That never happened because they were all killed by a bomb after he left.  He had gotten mixed up in drugs as the cartels like to use young people who won't be prosecuted or punished as heavily as an adult.

In the meantime, Annie Cabbott's father has moved into the locality although he is currently in the United States due to his painting and business interests there.  Zelda is the young woman who lives with him although she could easily be his granddaughter.  But she had undergone sex trafficking as a young woman and Ray is the only man she has found that she feels safe with.  Zelda has seen the man who tried to kill Alan Banks years before and is working on trying to find him in London.  Alan doesn't want her involved so she is investigating in secret.  How will that turn out?

This is the twenty-sixth book in the series.  Alan is feeling his age as are others on his team.  The newest members of the team are working on fitting in and they tend to have degrees that Alan never did.  But the cases keep coming and somehow Robinson manages to make each book seem fresh even as the reader becomes familiar with the team and feels like they are old friends.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire

 

Melanie is 'the sick girl'.  She was supposed to be a twin but something went wrong during her mother's delivery and both her mother and sister died.  Melanie was left with a bad heart and she has had multiple surgeries and hospitalizations.  Her father is overprotective and Melanie just wants to be a regular girl.  Harry is her boyfriend.  They have been drawn to each other and together for years and he watches out for her and protects her.

But now everything has changed.  They both passed out at the same time and it turns out that it is because it's time for their destiny.  Melanie will be a contestant as the new Winter Queen and Harry as the Summer King.  There are other contestants and each is determined to take the prize, even killing the other contestants if necessary.

Harry and Melanie flee town and take off to determine what they need to do in this new situation.  They are accompanied by Jack, who is sent to shepherd Melanie through the process and along the way they pick up Jenny, who does the same for Harry.  They meet both friends and foes along the way and there is violence.  Who will win through and become the next King and Queen?

Seanan McGuire is well known in the fantasy genre and as Mira Grant, the science fiction/horror genre.  She holds the record for most Hugo nominations in one year when she had five in various categories.  In this book, which is the second in a trilogy, she gets the teenage relationship just right.  The world building feels right and Melanie and Harry both have secrets in their lives that are slowly revealed.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did a great job in bringing the action alive.  This book is recommended for fantasy fans.

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

 A young man, Mieczyslaw Wojnicz, develops a slight case of tuberculosis and is sent by his gruff father to a sanitarium for treatment.  Mieczyslaw grew up without a mother as his died young and his adult models were his father and his military uncle, both of whom consider him too sensitive and want him to be more masculine.

Set in the early 1900's, there was no real effective treatment for tuberculosis.  Patients were sent to hospitals to rest, take restorative baths and eat good food.  Mieczyslaw is not able to get a room at the main sanatorium and along with some other patients, has taken a room at a nearby inn.  His fellow patients are all older men except for one man around his age.

Mieczyslaw has secrets but he's not about to share them with anyone there.  In fact, everyone seems to have a secret, including the whole town which hides the fact that each November, a young man is taken and killed in the forest, by whom or what no one knows.  The villagers are fairly primitive and full of superstitions which makes finding anything out pretty much impossible.  The village seems a place of death as there are frequent patient deaths to go along with the short lives of the villagers.  When all the secrets are revealed, there will be shock and horror.

Olga Tokarczuk burst onto the American literary scene with her novel Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  She has also won the International Booker and is one of the most prominent Polish authors now working.  This novel has connections to Thomas Mann's masterpiece, The Magic Mountain, which is set in the same time era and environment but Tokarczuk has chosen to take her story into the horror genre.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

End Of Watch by Stephen King

 

This is the third novel in the Bill Hodges trilogy.  Hodges is a retired cop who now runs a private detective agency with his partner Holly Gibney.  The Robinson family is also featured, Jerome is now in college and Barbara a high school student.  Hodges is known as the man who took down Brady Hartsfield who five years ago mowed down a dozen or more people with a stolen Mercedes and then tried to blow up a teenage concert with explosives.  Hodges figured out who he was; Holly took him down by hitting him in the head before he could reach the bomb's trigger.

For five years, Brady has been on the neurological unit in the hospital.  He was in a coma for at least a year but slowly started to come back.  Now he can shuffle to the bathroom and say a few words.  Or at least that's what he has everyone convinced is the most he can do.  Hodges has always suspected that Brady is still there inside, waiting to do more damage and he is right.

Bill's ex-partner calls him to come see a crime that just got.  It was a murder-suicide with the murder victim being one of the original victims of the Mercedes massacre and her mother the killer.  Holly finds a gadget in the house, an old gaming device called the Zappit.  The police want to close the case but Bill and Holly suspect there is more to it and are convinced when Barbara is almost killed while also playing with a Zappit.  What is afoot?

No one writes suspense better than Stephen King and this trilogy has been a masterpiece.  The book Holly continues the series and it's already been announced that another book featuring Holly is one the way.  While there is evil, there is also love between friends and family and a determination to make the world right again.  This book is recommended for thriller fans.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

 

This classic, set in the early 1800's, gives the reader a look at English society among the elite in a small town.  Dorothea and Celia Brooks are wards of a wealthy uncle.  Celia marries a baronet who lives in Middlemarch while Dorothea, for reasons no one can fathom, marries a scholar/vicar who is old enough to be her father.  On her honeymoon, they tour Europe and in Rome, she meets Will, who is a cousin to her husband and a young, virile man who falls in love with her.

Other characters include a doctor, Tertius Lydgate, who has come to the town to try to modernize the practice of medicine.  A local family, the Vincys, have two characters who are featured.  Rosamond marries Dr. Lydgate while Fred, an impetuous young man who went to university but doesn't want to be a churchman, becomes a surveyor and manager who works outside.  There are other businessmen and local families who form the society of Middlemarch.

The novel was serialized like much of the work of Charles Dickens and has much the same feel.  It outlines the strictness of society and how easy it was to scandalize it.  A man with no money had no place and was vilified if he tried to mix with society.  Medicine and business as practiced at the time are discussed.  There is a big secret one man is keeping and possibly a murder.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

 

This is an anthology of linked stories, each of which outlines the life of someone who has not been able to make a connection in the world with a love interest.  The stories are connected; a strange date in one man's story tells her story in another; there are stories by a brother and then later his sister.  It is a bleak book in which rejection is the norm and pleasure and love rarities to be chased but never quite obtained.  

If this is the reality of dating in today's environment, I can only say that I'm glad not to be in the dating scene.  Everyone seems to be playing games and there is name calling and identification of others as not fitting ideals.  I'm not sure who I would recommend this book for; there are very graphic descriptions of demeaning acts and just an overall feeling of hopelessness.  There is merit in seeing the daily lives of those who feel excluded from normal relationships of friendship or love but I'm not sure reading this would make that person feel any better.  It is, however, a wake-up call to those of us lucky enough to have someone.

Signs Preceding The End Of The World by Yuri Herrera

 

Makina is the communicator in her small Mexican village.  She takes messages from one person to another and since she has the only telephone, she answers and goes and gets the person who the call is from.  But now her mother has a job for her.  She wants Makina to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, find her brother, and give him a message asking him to return.  Makina agrees but before she can start her journey, she is also contacted by a member of the local cartel who demands that she also deliver a package.

As Makina makes her way, she encounters other travelers and the coyote who ferries them.  She is in danger several times but knows how to dodge problems.  She not only moves from one country to another but from one language to another as need asks.

Yuri Herrera is considered by many as the best Mexican author writing today.  He has written three novels which gained several literary prizes and is about to publish his fourth.  He was born in Mexico and received his doctorate in literature from Berkley.  His novels are short but he packs a lot of information in each sentence, showing the world what it is to be born and to grow up in Mexico.  He explores the alienation of those who move to other countries and the loneliness of leaving one's friends and family behind.  He is currently a professor at Tulane in New Orleans.  This book is recommended for readers interested in other cultures and literary fiction readers.  

The Last Murder At The End Of The World by Stuart Turton

 

When the Fog came, it killed everything in its path.  Plants, animals, humans, they all perished when covered by the Fog.  Except for one island.  On that island, owned by a scientist, shields were developed that repelled the Fog and kept it away and those on the island survived.  

Now there are one hundred and twenty-two villagers and three elders, or scientists.  It is a paradise where everyone lives and eats communally and there is no violence.  Abi is a type of computer which can track everyone's thinking and trains everyone to be kind above all.

That is, until this morning when the body of the main scientist the woman the villagers regard as a mother, is found dead.  She has been stabbed and hit on the head with something heavy, then the building in which she was found set on fire.  Who could have done such a thing?  The remaining scientists, her son and her best friend enlist a villager Emory, to solve the murder.  It must be done quickly because when she was killed, the shields came down and the Fog is approaching.  There are only ninety hours until it gets there and kills everyone and everything.  

I've read Stuart Turton's books before and I can't imagine what must go on in his head on a daily basis.  Each of his books are involved and full of twists.  The story is narrated by Abi, the computer like entity that knows what everyone is thinking and all the secrets of the island.  But is Abi a reliable narrator?  The secrets are slowly unearthed to reveal that the villagers have been living in a world of artifice and falsehoods and the tension mounts as Emory attempts to solve the murder.  This book is recommended for both mystery and science fiction readers.  

A Changed Man by Francine Prose

 

It's a normal day at a human rights organization headed by Meyer Maslow.  He is a Holocaust survivor and now dedicates his life and resources to freeing political prisoners, fighting hate, etc.  Bonnie is his right hand staffer, in charge of funding and soliciting contributions.  Then in walks Vincent Nolan.

Vincent hasn't made his way in life yet.  His most recent incarnation was as a Neo-Nazi, mostly because he needed a place to live and his cousin was willing to let him sleep on his couch but was always looking for more members of his hate group.  Vincent got the tattoos but the rhetoric never made much sense to him and he has left the group and his cousin.  Unfortunately, he took his cousin's truck and savings but hey, no one's perfect.  

Vincent says he is there because he has changed his viewpoint and wants to help Meyer keep other young men from making the same mistakes he did.  Meyer and Bonnie are thrilled; here is a publicity event that has fallen in their laps.  Vincent doesn't have anywhere to stay because he feels the Neo-Nazis will be after him.  Meyer convinces Bonnie to let Vincent stay with her and her two teenage boys in the New Jersey suburbs.  Is Vincent just setting up this group or is he really ready for a change?

Francine Prose is a prolific American author.  Her works have been well received and listed for many literary awards.  I've read several of her books and this one was my favorite.  Vincent is a scalawag but you can't help but like him.  He helps Bonnie's boys with their various disasters and encourages them to be good guys and there's a hint of romance between Bonnie and Vincent.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.  

It All Comes Down To This by Therese Anne Fowler

 

Marti Geller is dying.  She's had a long, happy life so she's not that sad and she's ready to be reunited with her husband who preceded her.  Her main regret is leaving her three daughters.  She thinks none of them are as happy as they should be and she suspects they are no longer as close as she would wish.  She plans her will to try to remedy that.

Marti's instinct about her daughters is right.  Becky, or Beck, is the eldest.  She is a freelance journalist but it's never been more than a part time occupation as she preferred making a home and raising her children.  Lately, with the children grown, she realizes her marriage is just one of friendship and she even suspects that her husband might be gay and hiding it.  Clare is a pediatric cardiologist and has just gone through a divorce caused her confession to her husband that she is hopelessly in love with another man, a man she can't have.  Sophie seems like a successful jetsetter with an art galley job but in reality she is thousands of dollars in debt and has been homeless for years, jumping from one housesitting job to another and doing errands and jobs for rich people.  The sisters rarely talk and when they do it never reaches the realm of disclosures.

The family has had a lake cottage in Maine and all the girls have fond memories of summers there.  But Marti declares in her will that the cottage is to be sold.  Sophie is glad as she needs the money.  Beck is distraught as she had thought she might use it as a second home while she worked on a novel and decided what to do about her marriage.  Clare is indifferent but probably more on the side of selling.  There is even a potential buyer, a man who also summered there as a teenager and who has returned to the area after some personal issues of his own. 

Therese Anne Fowler started her literary career later than most.  She had already been married and was the mother of two sons when she went through a divorce and decided she needed to go back to the university and get some credentials for a career.  She thought about sociology and law but ended up in North Carolina State University's MFA degree program.  Her first couple of novels didn't get much buzz but she broke out with the publication of Z, Zelda Fitzgerald, and her marriage to Scott Fitzgerald.  Since then her novels have been bestsellers.  She specializes in everyday issues and problems and how people work through them.  This novel is about relationships, both in birth families and later with love interests.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did a great job of bringing the women and their issues to light and resolution.  This book is recommended for readers of women's fiction.  

The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave

 

It's been a bad year for Nora.  Her mother died and now her father has also.  He was at his refuge, a cottage on the ocean in California and fell from the cliffs one night.  Liam had built a hotel empire during his life with the concept of small, designer hotels that had every luxury.  The cottage was near the first of his hotels and he had kept it as a getaway.  Nora has grieved so much that she has even created a distance between her and her fiancé.

While he was a success in business, he was less of one in love.  Liam had married three times and divorced three times.  Nora was the daughter of his first marriage and there were twin boys, Sam and Tommy from his second.  Liam was a good father but kept his families strictly apart so Nora doesn't know her brothers that well.  She is shocked when Sam tells her that he believes that Liam didn't fall but was pushed.

Sam and Nora fly out to California to see what they can discover.  They find that almost no investigation was done.  A couple was on the beach below and found her father.  There was also a jogger whose name no one had gotten.  The autopsy was hurried and when the verdict came down as an accident, that was the end of the investigation.  But why would Liam fall on land he knew like the back of his hand?  Why had he been thinking about selling the business?  Why did he change his will that last month?   As Nora and Sam find discrepancies they realize they never really knew their father at all.  Will solving his death help them know the man?

Laura Dave has made her career in the suspense genre.  Six of her novels have been adapted for film or television and this one is headed the same way.  I had a few questions left at the end of this novel but overall it was an interesting take on serial families and the difficulties of love.  This book is recommended for suspense readers.  

Marlena by Julie Buntin

 

When Cat is fifteen, her life changes dramatically.  Instead of a private school and a wealthy background, her father walks out and her mother picks up Cat and her brother and move them to rural Michigan.  Once there, Cat undergoes a dramatic change.  

She has always been the good girl and decides to be a different girl.  Much of this is because she meets the next door neighbor, Marlena.  Marlena is the daughter of a drug dealer.  She is addicted to pills and alcohol and sleeps with whomever she wants.  She rarely attends school and basically does whatever strikes her to do.  Cat has never known anyone like Marlena and she decides to be like her and her circle of friends.

Cat starts drinking and picks up an addiction she is still fighting in her thirties when married and living in New York.  Marlena never makes it out of Michigan as she drowns one night while high in a few inches of water.  Was it an accident or murder?  Cat doesn't know but the question and what more she might have done for Marlena haunts her life as she tries to move forward.

Julie Buntin is writing about a life she knows.  This is her debut novel but she grew up in the same environment in northern Michigan and now lives in New York.  The book was longlisted for various prizes and named a best book of the year by publications such as Kirkus, Huffington and the Washington Post.  It is a novel of struggle as a teenager has the rug pulled from under her feet and has to reinvent herself.  Marlena is the first person she meets and she falls into her orbit.  Parents will not be thrilled to read about how impressionable teenagers are and the lengths they will go to in order to fit in.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

 

In Argus, North Dakota, sugar beets are king.  Most of the farmers grow nothing but that and use every chemical they can to up their production.  There isn't much industry so farming is the big business with the Geist family being the biggest farmers.  They bought up a lot of the littler family farms during recessions and now have a mega farm.  The population has a lot of Native Americans also whose families have been there for centuries.

Kismet Poe is the town beauty.  Although they are only finishing high school, two men are determined to marry her.  Gary Geist is the son of the richest family and the high school quarterback.  But Gary has issues having been in an accident after a drunken party at his house in which several of his friends died.  Since then, Gary has been anxious and bedeviled but he always feels safe around Kismet.  Hugo is the town genius.  His parents own the town bookstore and Hugo and Kismet bond around books.  He is probably the man that Kismet loves but Gary keeps pushing along with his mother who is planning the wedding no matter what misgivings Kismet has.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, works for the Geists, driving a front loader that moves beets from the farm to the place where they are processed.  She never married Kismet's dad as he seems a bit flaky.  That decision pays off when he disappears along with the church building fund.  

Louise Erdrich is an American treasure.  She writes about the Native American life in present days and is herself Native American.  I wait anxiously for each novel she writes and each one is a delight.  She writes about the characters' daily lives and along the way describes the ways that big business is ruining the American experience.  Her characters are not the rich but those working hard, living paycheck to paycheck and trying to make sense of their lives.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

My Wife Is Missing by D.J. Palmer

 

This family trip to New York is just what the family needs.  Michael and Natalie have had some strains in their marriage and this family trip with their children should go some way to patching things up.  The kids are hungry when they get to the hotel so Michael goes to pick up some food.  When he returns, the room is empty and Natalie's phone is going to voice mail.  He searches the hotel and when he doesn't find them, he starts to panic.  Where could they be?

Michael calls the police.  But when they come, they are able to see on camera footage that Natalie and the kids have left on their own and the taxi driver they hailed took them to Penn Station to catch a train.  Michael has to face the facts that Natalie has planned this and has left him.

But would she really leave over a suspected affair or is there more?  Natalie has insomnia and hasn't been sleeping for months.  That condition can have delusions and hallucinations.  But it's no illusion that the woman Natalie suspects Michael is having an affair with is dead, murdered by knife wounds.  Natalie fears that Michael is a killer, never more than when she investigates his past and discovers secrets there she never knew about.  Who is this man she has built a life with?

This is my first title by D.J. Palmer who specializes in suspense novels.  I listened to this title and the narrator had just the right voice to build the tension as more and more of the truth is revealed.  Both Natalie and Michael have hidden the truth so long that it is an earthquake to their marriage when the truth starts to emerge.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Engine House by Rhys Dylan

 

DCI Evan Warlow has recently retired from his job as a detective in Wales.  He anticipates lots of long walks with his dog and time to relax and catch up on all the things he had to put aside during his career.  He's sure he will miss it as he was very good at his job but retirement comes to everyone lucky enough to get that far.  

One unsolved case nags at him.  Seven years ago, a couple set out on a walk on the coastal trail.  They disappeared during that walk and Warlow and his team were never able to discover where they were or what happened that day.  It's the unsolved cases that live in a policeman's head.

Now, suddenly, a break.  A landslide happens on the cliffs and left in the crevice were the skeletons of the couple.  They had been killed by bludgeoning with a hammer and stuffed down in a crevice.  Warlow's old boss calls and asks if he will come back and help the new DCI, Jess Allenby, with her first major case since he knows it best.  Warlow reluctantly agrees as he is still curious and wants to know what happened.  Can he and the new DCI solve the case?

Rhys Dylan is a Welsh author.  This is the first book in his series about DCI Evan Warlow

The Return by Hisham Matar

 

When Muammar Gaddafi took over as a dictator in Libya, he ordered that his opponents be rounded up and imprisoned.  Hisham Matar was nineteen when most of the male members of his family were disappeared, uncles, cousins and his father.  They were imprisoned in the most notorious prison, Abu Salim where torture and interrogations were the norm along with deprivation of food and any comforts.  Most lived there for over twenty years and were only released with the overthrow of Gaddaffi and his government.  Matar's father, Jaballah, was never heard from again although it is suspected that he was one of the over one thousand men who were killed one day by firing squad at the prison.

This book tells the story of Matar's return to Libya after living his life in Egypt and England.  He reunites with his male relatives and uses whatever connections he has to try to get a definite answer about his father.  Was he killed that day?  Is he still imprisoned?  

Although one hears about cases like this, only the concrete recollections of someone who has lost a relative and gone through years of agony trying to find the answers brings it home in such a definite way.  This memoir won the Pulitzer Prize and Matar has been listed for the Booker several times, including this year.  His love and his search is inspiring while the understanding of what those men went through for twenty years, losing the best years of their lives and their dreams of how their lives would turn out is heartbreaking.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers.   

Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

 

Janie Jenkins is twenty-six and has just been released from prison where she has been imprisoned since she was sixteen for the murder of her wealthy mother.  Janie was one of the press's favorite girls to gossip about until she was found covered in blood, her mother lying on the floor in a pool of blood.  Janie doesn't remember killing her but she was rarely straight those days.

Now due to mishandling of evidence, Janie has been freed.  She has a few clues that might lead to someone else as the killer, the name Tessa and the name of a town in rural South Dakota.  She tricks the paparazzi who are trailing her and heads to the town which is very rural and with only a small population.  There she discovers that Tessa was her mother, brought up in poverty and that she has relatives here she never imagined existed.  But who killed her mother?

This was Elizabeth Little's debut novel and it got lots of buzz, being nominated for several debut novel awards.  Janie is the Paris Hilton of her time, lots of bad press which probably was greatly exaggerated.  As she learns the truth about her mother and her background, she learns secrets about herself as well.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The God Of The Woods by Liz Moore

 

The Adirondack Mountains are ancient.  The first English settlers were those who came to farm and log the trees.  When that time ended, the owners of a large tract of forest sold it to the Van Laar family.  They have summered here for generations and created a summer camp so that future generations could learn about the land and develop survival skills and appreciation for nature.

The current generation had a tragedy fifteen years ago.  Their son, nicknamed Bear, disappeared when he was eight on the property.  He was never found and no one was ever charged with his murder although a local man was suspected but died before anything could be determined.  That tragedy decimated Bear's mother and she has lived in a fog of drugs and alcohol ever since.  Even the birth of a daughter, Barbara, two years later couldn't restore her.

Barbara, now thirteen, has been a thorn in the Van Laar's sides.  She is a defiant teenager, sent away to boarding schools early and only home in the summers when she spends her time with the woman who runs the camp and lives on the land year-round.  She has known TJ her whole life, as TJ as fourteen when Barbara was born and was her babysitter in the summers and later in Albany during the winters.  Barbara has decided she wants to attend the summer camp this year.  She is assigned to Balsam cabin where Louise is the counselor and makes a new best friend in Tracy.

Now Barbara has gone missing.  It happens during the Van Laar's annual party for their friends and business acquaintances so there are lots of suspects.  A killer has escaped from prison whose family was the original owner of the land and the police suspect that he is making his way back to the area.  There are other suspects.  Louise should have known if Barbara left but was involved with the other counselors in a late night party.  Her fiancé, the son of the Van Laar's best friends, is on the scene and has a temper fueled by alcohol and drugs.  What has happened to Barbara?

Liz Moore is an author who lives in Philadelphia and teaches creative writing at Temple University.  This mystery follows her successful novel Long Bright River.  The novel is also an indictment of rich enclaves that exist side by side with blue collar towns but have little interaction with them except for hiring the inhabitants as employees.  It also explores the lives of the rich and successful in money who have little time for their children, leaving them to be raised by others.  This book is recommended for mystery fans.    

The Editor by Steven Rowley

 

James Smale grew up in a repressed household, never sure if he fit. His father spent a lot of time with James' brother who was a replica of himself but had little time for James whose interests were more in literature and art than woodworking and sports.  When the two older children grew up and left the household, so did James' father, a move that he always felt was related to the distance between them.  After that, James and his mother also had a distance between them until now they barely speak.

Now James is an adult and about toe be a published author, the book a story of his upbringing and an attempt to understand his mother.  To his shock, his book is assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as his editor.  At first James is hesitant around her but as the weeks roll on, they develop a working relationship and even the beginning of a friendship.  She pushes him to change the ending of his novel and to do so he must explore what went wrong with his childhood and expose the secrets there.  Can he do it?

Steven Rowley has written other novels, among them the successful Guncle series.  He has won awards for humor but this book is more serious and is a beacon to those attempting to make sense of a childhood where they never seemed to fit into their family.  James has a steady love, Daniel, and Daniel provides a counterweight to James' angst as he seems very balanced.  But above all, it is an exploration of how we fit into our birth families and the relationships there.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.  

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

 

Elektra is the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra.  When the king calls for all Greek men to come together to go rescue Helen from the man in Troy who kidnapped her, a thousand ships are needed to carry them all.  The war is expected to be short but ends up taking ten years.  Clytemnestra spends that decade plotting what she will do when the King returns as he performed an act of betrayal before he left.  It was an act that negates their marriage and her love for him.

When Agamemnon returns, the next act plays out.   Clytemnestra has spent her time with another man, Agamemnon's cousin, whose father he killed to gain the throne. He returns with Cassandra who knows the future but is cursed that no one believes her.   Now Clytemnestra takes her ultimate revenge and her children are placed at risk.   Her son is spirited away to safety while Elektra marries a commoner to escape the palace.

Jennifer Saint grew up interested in Greek mythology.  She was a teacher when she wrote her first novel Adriane which is the story of the Minotaur.  This was her second novel and since this, she has written several more novels all based in mythology and the stories many are familiar with.  In this one, she gives the reader insight into the House of Atreus and retells the story of the Trojan War.  Elektra is not a main character until part three when her story of her hatred for her mother and her adoration of her father is told.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did a great job, her accent adding to the reading.  This book is recommended for historical fiction readers and those interested in mythology.

The Garden Of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

 

Yun Ling Teoh has returned to the Highlands of Malaysia now that she has retired from her career as a judge.  She had come there after World War II where she had been taken prisoner along with her sister by the Japanese when they occupied her country.  The prison camp had been brutal and Yun was the only survivor.  Her sister had died along with the rest after having been made a comfort woman for the staff.

Yun wants to make a Japanese garden in honor of her sister but she knows she doesn't have the knowledge or skills.  In the Highlands, next to the tea plantation owned by family friends where she is staying, is a Japanese gardener who was gardener to the Japanese Emperor.  Yun tries to hire Aritomo but he says he only wants to work on his own garden.  He does agree to make her his apprentice.

Yun learns about garden design and other cultural rites that Aritomo teaches her.  When she leaves to take up her law career, she leaves with that knowledge and appreciation.  Now she is back and Aritomo has left her his house and gardens.  As she looks back, the secrets of those other times are slowly revealed.

Tan Twan Eng was born in Malaysia so this is a book of his country's history.  This book and others of his have been nominated for the Booker Prize.  It is a novel of war and hatred, of forgiveness both of others and of oneself, and an exploration of what our souls need in order to thrive.  The language is lush yet contained, setting the environments in which Yun found herself during different periods of her life.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica

 

Eleven years ago, a peaceful community was rocked by a series of disappearances.  Shelby Tebow was a brand new mother, her baby only a few months old.  She went out for an evening run and didn't return.  Several weeks later, Meredith Dickey and her six year old daughter, Delilah, disappeared.  Meredith was a birth doula and Shelby had been one of her clients.  Were their disappearances linked somehow?

Shelby was later discovered half buried in a remote woodland location, her nude body bruised and battered.  Meredith was found later in a disreputable motel, her death ruled a suicide.  In the note she left, she told her husband not to look for Delilah because he would never find her.  Josh is left to raise their son, Leo, by himself, wondering forever what happened to Meredith to cause her to bring such horror into their family.  Shelby's husband, Jason, was convicted of her murder and is now in prison.

Then everything is brought back to light.  A teenage girl escaped from captors and identifies herself as Delilah.  That six year old girl is now seventeen.  She tells a tale of being kept in captivity, in a basement with no light ever and another captured child, Gus, her only company.  Somehow she finds a way to escape after all the years of captivity and is now home.  Can she supply the answers that have been left behind by the deaths of the two women?

Mary Kubica is known as a suspense writer.  She has written many bestsellers and this book sold over a million copies.  I read a ton of thrillers but this managed to surprise me.  As the secrets emerge with the return of Delilah, everything comes clear but with a shock to the reader.  The reader learns about the lives of the women who disappeared and the lives of those left behind like spouses, children and friends.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Color Storm by Damian Dibben

 

It is the early 1500's in Venice, Italy, the beginning of the Renaissance.  It is a great time to be an artist although with masters such as Titian, da Vinci Michelangelo, Bosch  and Raphael, it is a very competitive time.  Zorzo Barbarelli, 33, also known as Giorgione runs a studio but times are hard.  He needs more commissions and he hears about a huge one about to be given out.

A German banker, Alfred Fugger, rumored to be the richest man in Europe, has come to Venice with his beautiful wife, Sybille.  He is the one who will pay for the huge commission and he also own mines where artists' colors start as minerals.  It's rumored that he has a new mineral that creates a color never seen.  Zorzo hopes to be in the running for the commission or at least for a lesser one and he dreams of gaining the new color.

He meets Sybille and gets a commission to paint her portrait.  Soon he begins an affair with her although he knows that it will be certain death if Fugger discovers it.  Sybille fills his head with stories of Fugger's cruelty to her and soon a plot is hatched.  What will happen next?

Damien Dibble is a British author and screenwriter.  He is familiar with the artistic scene and the book is well researched.  The reader will find it interesting to read about all the great artists that were working at once and art studios are run.  The plot of Zorzo's romance provides the drama with all the art history in the background.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.   

Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

 

Jai and his friends Pari and Faiz live in a crowded basti or neighborhood.  His family consists of his sister, mother and father.  His father works construction and his mother works in a high rise for a rich woman, spending her days cleaning and cooking for others in a location Jai can only imagine.  What he knows are the crowded streets, the market redolent of spices and butchers and dirt.  Jai's sister is the track champion of their school but Jai isn't interested in school  He lives for his television shows, especially the police ones and imagines that he is a crime fighter as well.

Then a classmate goes missing.  Jai is sure he can find him with his friends' help.  They go around asking questions.  Faiz is sure that a djinn has taken the boy.  The boy's family go to the police but they are only interested in cases where they can get a bribe and brush the family off, saying the boy obviously ran away.  Then a second boy goes missing, then a teenage girl.  The basti, mainly Hindu, insists this must be the work of Muslims.  When Muslim children are also taken, the mystery deepens.  Can Jai and his friends find the truth?

This is a debut novel from an Indian author with a journalist background.  It explores the disparity of how crimes are investigated depending on the victim's background.  I thought about the Atlanta child murders while reading this book, how the police were slow to realize a serial killer was working the streets of Atlanta just as the police in this case were slow to investigate missing children from a basti.  Anappara uses the naivete of a child to explore how justice is often uneven depending on social class and how crime is the same in its effect no matter who it targets.  This book won the Edgar Award the year it was released and was a Woman's Fiction longlist choice.  This book is recommended for those readers interested in other cultures, mystery and literary fiction.   

The Skill Of Our Hands by Steven Brust and Skyler White

 

The Incrementalists are a group of people whose goal is to make the world better, bit by bit.  The people in the group are immortal.  When they die, their memories and personalities are gathered into what is called a stub and a volunteer new person who wants to join the group receives the stub and becomes the person who died.  

Phil, married to Ren, has just been shot so a new second for him has to be found.  The entire group gathers from all over the world both looking for the new person to receive Phil's stub and to investigate his murder and find out who shot him.  Each person in the group seems to have their own candidate and the clues to Phil's murder are slowly uncovered.  Can the group get back to normal?

The authors are both highly regarded in the science fiction genre.  Brust is the son of Hungarian labor organizers and White is the daughter of two college professors.  Both have other interests; Brust as a musician and White as a dancer.  This is the second novel in the Incrementalist series and the first in the series was a Best Book in several science fiction awards.  The world building is interesting as well as how new individuals are chosen, having to meld well with those who come before them.  This book is recommended for science fiction readers.   

The Good People by Hannah Kent

 

The setting is the rural Irish countryside in the early nineteenth century.  Life is hard for the farmers and tradesmen of the valley and everyone is dependent on the crops and the milk and eggs and meat of their livestock.  The inhabitants are superstitious and whenever anything goes wrong, they look to the folklore they were raised with to find who is responsible.  A new priest has come to the valley and he insists they must put aside their old beliefs as the Church is against reminders of paganism.

Nora is having an especially hard time.  Her husband recently dropped dead unexpectedly.  She is left to raise her grandson by herself and it is more than she can handle.  Micheal was brought to her after the death of her daughter by her son-in-law.  Although he was a normal child at two, toddling and talking, now at four he cannot walk or talk or even relate to anyone.  Nora hires Mary at a hiring fair as her maid and to help her with Micheal.  Over the months that follow, as the other inhabitants of the valley come to hear about Micheal, they call him a changeling and start to blame him for the poor crops and weakened milk and egg production they are experiencing.  Nora starts to believe that her real grandson has been taken by the fairies or Good People as they are called and that this changeling has been left in his place.

Nance is the herbalist who treats the people of the valley.   The priest is determined to drive her out and preaches against her and using her from the pulpit.  Nance is scared and ups her efforts to help those around her so she won't be driven away.  She tells Nora that she can restore her real grandson to her.  When the treatments go awry, the three women are arrested and charged with murder.

Hannah Kent is an Australian author who is interested in history and what went on in those places which were not yet part of the modern world.  The reader will be transported into this rural countryside and the difficult lives of its people .  Everyone knows everyone and secrets are not allowed.  It is a claustrophobic environment and one that lives by its own rules and laws.  The book is based on a true case and Kent has done a superb job of taking the reader to this place and time.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

The Last Days Of The Dinosaurs by Riley Black

 

Everyone has a picture in their mind of what the world looked like when the dinosaurs were the kings of the world.  Most of those pictures are based on movies such as Jurassic Park which may mix and match dinosaurs who didn't live in the same environment or at the same time.  Regardless an event happened that annihilated all the dinosaurs simultaneously.

Most people believe this was a meteorite.  Black shows evidence of one that hit that was seven miles wide which is hard to even imagine.  A blow of that sort created intense fires and then with all the particulates resulting from that, a blocking of the sunlight and dark days with frigid temperatures.  The dinosaurs could not hide nor find food and they died.  Some living creatures survived, such as those small mammals or amphibians that could shelter under water or in dens far below.  They would reinhabit the world along with plants that were again different from what existed before.  

Riley Black is a paleontologist who has written books and magazine articles about the dinosaurs and their demise.  Her work has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Nature and Sierra.  In this history, she explains what happened immediately after the meteorite hit, then what was the state of the world a year out, ten years, a hundred, a thousand.  In each of those chapters, she discusses what organisms were alive, how they survived and what they are.  She also states that some scientists believe that the widespread demise came from other sources but her belief is the meteorite was the culprit.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers interested in dinosaurs and how the world changed since then.  

The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles

 

Penn Cage is now mayor of his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi.  In the past, he has been a prosecutor in Texas and a successful author, but when he moved home after the death of his wife, he saw a need for reform and his friends convinced him that he would be the perfect man to take on that task.  He had hoped to land a car factory to bring in jobs but when that failed, he agreed and helped to bring riverboat gambling to town.

When a childhood friend asks to meet with him in secret, Penn reluctantly agrees.  The man is working on the largest riverboat and he tells Penn that the owners have brought a series of crimes to Natchez.  They are involved in money laundering, dogfighting, prostitution, and other crimes.  His friend is scared but wants to help Penn bring them to justice.  Penn agrees but his friend is killed before he can give him the evidence.

A crew of Irish men run the riverboat.  They are rough men, men that would kill at a moment's glance and have.  As Penn and his friends attempt to bring them down, more murders occur and Penn's love, Caitlin, is kidnapped.  But Penn has resources also.  There is a former Texas ranger and an elite commando who returns from Afghanistan to help.  There is a former army sniper who is now a deputy sheriff and Penn's own family and his friends.  Will they be enough to bring down this evil?

This is the third book in the Penn Cage series.  Penn is what used to be considered a Southern gentleman, a man with honor but who will do almost anything to protect those he loves.  Greg Iles is a master of the suspense genre and he has lived in Natchez most of his life so his depiction of the area and the people are written from that knowledge.  This book is recommended for suspense readers.