Trouble In The Brasses by Alisa Craig

 

Detective Inspector Madoc Rhys of the Canadian Mounties is visiting his parents.  His father is the conductor of an orchestra and the rest of his family is musical as well with the exception of Madoc.  While watching one of his father's performances, Madoc notices that one of the players in the brass section seems to be having issues.  The man finishes the performance then collapses and dies.

It appears to be a health issue and the orchestra needs to leave for their next performance in another town so they leave and board a plane.  However, it definitely isn't their night and the plane develops engine problems and has to make an emergency landing in remote country near a deserted resort.  The orchestra is able to stay in the resort and there is some food left in the hotel kitchen but there is no phone or radio to summon help.  Soon more deaths occur and it is clear that someone is targeting orchestra members.  Can Madoc solve the case before more tragedy occurs?

Alisa Craig is a pen name for the well known mystery author, Charlotte MacLeod.  She was born in Canada but spent most of her life in New England.  She wrote more than forty novels under both her birth name and as Alisa Craig, most of which were in four different series.  This book was published in 1989 and does show its age somewhat, specifically in gender roles.  Still, the mystery has twists and turns and is successfully solved.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

 

The Thursday Murder Club is worried about Elizabeth.  She is still grieving the loss of her husband and they aren't sure what to do for her.  Joyce is ecstatic as her daughter is getting married to Paul.  Ron and Ibrahim are going about their lives.  They all attend the wedding including Elizabeth.

When things get too much for her, she goes outside for some air.  There she is approached by the groom's best friend, who tells her that someone is trying to kill him and that he heard she might be able to help him.  The man, Nick, tells Elizabeth that he and his friend, a woman he and Paul both knew from their university days, had been in business together for years.  They have something that is very valuable and only they can retrieve it.  When the woman is killed and Nick goes missing, the Thursday Murder Club goes into action.

But of course, there's always more to the story.  Ron is involved in family matters and worried that he may be getting too old to be the protector that is so much a part of his identity.   Ibrahim is treating a non-reformed criminal and just when he thinks he's making progress with her, she brings a naive young girl into her criminal world.  Can all these issues be solved?

This is the fifth Thursday Murder Club mystery and it is just as much a joy as the others were.  The supporting cast of Donna and Chris from the police, Bogdan the handyman who can do anything, and Ron's family are there.  The way these individuals all work together and put each other first is an amazing testament to the human spirit and it's all funny on top of that!  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

 

Birdie isn't living the life she envisioned for herself as a child.  She's stuck in a cabin next to the diner where she works and caring for her daughter, Emaleen.  She hadn't planned on being a single parent but loves her daughter more than anything.  But she wants to be free; free to wander, free to do whatever she wants whenever it strikes her fancy.

She sees another life when Arthur starts to come to the diner.  He is about her age but rarely comes to town, preferring to live miles away in his family's summer cabin deep in the forest.  He seldom speaks and when he does, it's like speaking is a task for him.  There are scars on his face and head and rumors about how he got them.  But Birdie sees more in Arthur and they strike up a relationship.  When he suggests that she and Emaleen move in with him, Birdie is ready to go, even when her boss and Arthur's father both recommend against it.

Because Arthur has a secret.  His father found him deep in the woods as a toddler, unable to speak English and apparently raised by a mother bear sow and her cub.  His father takes him home and he and his wife spend the next years trying to help Arthur settle into human society.  Only they know his secret but now Emaleen knows it as well as she watches Arthur near the forest where they now live.

Cut forward fifteen years.  Emaleen is now grown and has returned to Alaska to try to remember her early life which just seems like a dream to her now.  Will she learn the truth finally?

Eowyn Ivey was born and raised in Alaska and still lives there with her family.  In this book, there is a mythic quality about the writing.  What is the truth about Arthur?  Is he really different or does he have mental issues that can endanger Birdie and Emaleen?  The author leaves the issue open so that the reader can make up their own minds what really happened in the forests of Alaska in Emaleen's childhood.  I'm still thinking about it and can't decide what the author believes herself.  I find myself pondering questions about the book days after I finished it.  Emaleen is a real heroine and the reader will cheer for her.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham

 

DI Tom Thorne can't believe what those above him want him to do now.  Years ago, he put away a psychotic killer named Stuart Nicklin.  Now Nicklin has agreed to tell the authorities where he buried one of his first victims and the boy's family wants nothing more than to have him home to give a decent burial.  The catch?  Nicklin will only tell if Thorne is the policeman to accompany him and if his friend from the prison goes also.

The murder happened when the victim and Nicklin were teenagers.  They were both sent to an experimental prison that gave the boys much more freedom than most youth prisons and that was on a small island.  The water surrounding the island were the only bars.  But Nicklin escaped one night, killing the victim as he left. 

Thorne takes two of his team, the prison sends a couple of guards and there is a forensic team  The island is remote and can only be accessed by boat and not even that on every day if the sea is rough.  The group heads out and looks where Nicklin says he thinks is the spot..  Soon they find the victim and another one as well.  But when they are ready to leave, the weather has changed and a storm is coming.  They will have to stay on the island until things settle down.  What could possibly go wrong?

This is the twelfth Tom Thorne book in the series and one of the best so far.  The tension steadily increases as the book progresses.  The reader knows something will happen but what is it?  Thorne is still with his new girlfriend and it's nice to see this relationship and especially Thorne's relationship with her young son.  Readers will definitely get their money's worth from this episode.  I've started reading these more and more slowly as I dread when the series is over.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Venetian Vespers by John Banville

 

Evelyn Dolman is a journalist but not a top-flight one.  His talent has taken him only to a job on a middling newspaper  When he meets Laura Rensselaer, whose father is one of the richest men on Earth and she seems amenable to his romantic pursuit, he is ecstatic.  The two marry and Evelyn expects that he and Laura are set for life.  But Laura and her father fall out shortly before his death and when his will is read, he has left the majority of his estate to Laura's sister.

Mr. Rensselaer had paid for the couple's honeymoon, so they go to Venice.  Laura has acted strangely since the wedding, refusing marital relations and acting like she is distracted and is not sure what Evelyn is doing accompanying her.  Fed up, Evelyn goes for a walk alone the first night they are in Venice.  He stops at a restaurant and runs into a man who claims that he remembers Evelyn from a shared boarding school experience.  Evelyn doesn't remember him but the man is younger and schoolboys don't hang out with younger ones although the younger ones may idolize the older boys.  Evelyn is about to brush off Freddie FritHerbert when he insists that Evelyn come and meet his sister.  

Cesca FitzHerbert is gorgeous, a woman who knocks the newlywed Dolman off his feet.  He believes he has fallen in love at first sight.  All he can think about is how can he find a way to see Cesca again?  He returns to his rented villa and has a fight with Laura.  When he wakes up the next morning, Laura has disappeared with no note left behind.  

John Banville, an Irish author, is one of my must-read authors.  This book was a joy to read.  The reader feels like they aren't sure what exactly is going on.  Cesca wraps Evelyn around her little finger and he is willing to do anything for her to be near her.  The atmosphere is haunting and it feels like everything should be shrouded in fog.  It is unclear what is happening for most of the book and then there is a stupendous climax where everything is explained and the reader is left saying, 'Of course!'  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction and I won't be surprised if this novel is on the next Booker longlist.  

The Tumbling Girl by Bridget Walsh

 

The time is Victorian London.  The Variety Palace Music Hall is one place people can go for entertainment, trapeze artists, animal acts, singers, comics, acrobats and mediums.  Minnie Ward used to be a mimic on the stage but got tired of it and now helps run the Hall  She is shocked when her best friend goes missing and is found dead.  It's ruled a suicide but Minnie doesn't believe it nor does her friend's mother.

Minnie and the mother decide to hire a detective since the police consider the death a closed case.  Albert Easterbrook comes from money.  He was a policeman himself and a boxer but he left both professions to go private.  He starts to investigate and soon agrees that the girl's death was no suicide but murder.  Minnie insists on helping and soon the two are deep in the midst of a scandalous club whose members regard women as disposable.

This is Bridget's debut novel.  She was an English teacher for twenty-three years and has a degree in Victorian domestic murder so the setting and actions are quite realistic.  There is romantic tension between Minnie and Albert, as they both realize that a romance between two people from differing social classes is fraught with difficulties.  I enjoyed this mystery and will be looking for others by the author.  This book is recommended for mystery and historical fiction readers. 

Rednecks by Taylor Brown

 

This is the story of the battle to unionize the coal industry of West Virginia. Miners were little better than indentured servants.  They lived in company houses from which they could be thrown out of at a minute's notice.  They were paid in company script which could only be spent in the company store with outrageous prices.  The miners seldom saw sunlight, entering the mines before sunrise and only emerging after sunset.  The mines were dangerous places with few safety devices and if a man was injured, he was done working.

A few men were willing to do whatever it took to make things better  They talked to the others and the miners decided to go out on strike.  The company responded by kicking them out of their houses to live outside with their families in tents in the freezing West Virginia winter.  Scabs were hired to break the strike and the union leaders had to go into hiding when several of them were beaten to within a beat of their lives.  Hard men who didn't care about the law were brought in to break the miners' will, no matter how far they had to go. 

The local law enforcement was on the miners' side.  Sidney Hatfield, from the Hatfield and McCoy family feuds, was the local sheriff.  When the company's men came to town with guns and the desire to use them, a fight broke out, leaving company men dead as well as some of the townspeople.  This brought things to a head.  Soon hundreds of miners from all over come to support the men of West Virginia.  It turns into a battle that ends with the largest battle ever fought on American soil outside of the Civil War.  

Taylor Brown was born in the South and his novels have focused on those who settled the land and built the country.  His work has been awarded various prizes and this work was a revelation to me.  I vaguely knew that there had been violence while unionizing but had no idea of the magnitude of the fight.  Historical figures were featured such as Sidney Hatfield and Mother Jones, a female union organizer who traveled the nation fighting for rights for working men until she was in her nineties.  Even those characters who were fictional were based on real men such as the author's grandfather who immigrated from the Middle East and was a doctor in the area and a composite figure who was legendary in the battle.  

The book also gave a reason for the term redneck.  Growing up, we always thought that the term came from farmers in the field who wore hats but their necks were unprotected and got red from the constant sun.  But these brave men also used the term, wearing red bandanas around their necks to distinguish themselves in the fight from those determined to break them.  This book is recommended for historical fiction readers  

Behindlings by Nicola Barker

 

Wesley has a following, although most people aren't sure why.  There are groups of people that attempt to locate where he is at all times and follow him.  They are known as Behindlings for their locations walking behind him.  Wesley is either loved or hated with a passion.  He is considered evil by some, a savior by others.  What does Wesley think?  Now that is something no one knows.

This week Wesley is in Canvey, a small island town.  The Behindlings discover he is there due to a contest that he is running that hints at the location.  Some of the more prominent characters in the group that follows Wesley are Shoes, an aging hippie, Doc who pretty much leads the way, Patty who is a young boy who should never have gotten mixed up in this quest and Josephine who is a nurse and acts as a go-between.

Then there are the town inhabitants, many of whom know Wesley.  There is Katherine, a woman who is known for her promiscuity.  Dewi is a huge man who lives across from Katherine and loves her even as she sleeps with other men.  Ted is a real estate man, a close friend of Katherine's and someone who despises Wesley.  Arthur is a sponsor of the contest Wesley is running and falls under Katherine's sway.

Nicola Barker was born in England but raised in South Africa.  Her novels are often about eccentric or offbeat characters and it is sometimes difficult to understand the points her novels are making.  Behindlings falls in this category, full of strange characters and leaving the reader with multiple questions.  Is Wesley evil or good?  What's the truth about Katherine and is her character maligned?  What will the Behindlings do if they manage to catch up with Wesley?  I feel like I will need to reread this novel in order to settle my mind about what is happening and which characters I like.  This novel is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Wolf Hour by Jo Nesbo

 

A new serial killer is working the streets in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  To all accounts, it seems to be a man called Tomas Gomez, who is an immigrant and who used to be an assassin for a local gang.  Now he seems to be working off a list and killing all those who were involved in a murder of a family on the streets of the city.

Bob Oz is a city cop but he's not been the same reliable detective for the past year.  These days, after a tragedy of his own, he comes to work when he comes, drunk.  His squad has been carrying him for almost a year but the higher ups are getting tired of him and he's been given warnings that its shape up or ship out.  Maybe catching Gomez will be his golden ticket back into the force's good graces.  

This is a new departure for Jo Nesbo.  His most famous work is his Harry Hole series with a detective set in Norway.  But his sympathy for those who life has beaten down is evident in this mystery as well.  I could read more books about Bob Oz, and I love that Nesbo is branching out as I always read everything he writes.  He is one of my favorite mystery authors and this one is no different.  This novel is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar

 

Silas and Eva are living deep in the country, off the grid as much as they can.  Silas works as a logger, using the techniques used by the settlers who lived there before, with horses and sleds.  Eva grew up with money and no one would have predicted that she would end up with Silas.  She was in art school when they met and everyone expected an art career for her.  Instead, she married Silas and moved with him to his family land.  Now, they have a small daughter and a toddler son.

Things are going well and everyone is happy when it happens.  An accident with a rotten tree brings it down prematurely and Silas is trapped underneath it.  His uncle, who works with him, barely escapes.  Silas is taken to the hospital where he is in a coma, brain-dead.  Eva makes the hard decision to let him go but takes him home to die with the family.  Now she must figure out how to do everything he did and keep things going for the children.  Should she stay in this hard-scrabble life to honor Silas?  Or should she take the children and move away for an easier life?

This is Carol Dunbar's debut novel.  Eva's life echoes Dunbar's, although she was more of an actor and soprano than an artist.  But she also gave up her city life to live off the grid with her husband and children.  The reader will be crushed as Eva was by the accident and will question what they would do in such a circumstance.  It could be a depressing book but I felt the hope in it as Eva finally grows up without someone to watch over her and to start to make logical decisions for her family going forward.  I listened to this book and the narrator did such an impressive job.  This book is recommended for women's and literary fiction readers.  

Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

 

At twenty-five, Takako finds herself at loose ends after her boyfriend announces that instead of them getting married, he is marrying another woman.  Since they work together, she ends up losing her job as it is too painful to go in and see the couple together day after day.  She spends her days holed up in her apartment, spending entire days in bed.  Then her uncle calls.

Satoru runs a bookshop, one that has been in their family for several generations.  It is located on the street where there are more bookshops than in anywhere else in Japan and he suggests that Takako come and stay with him and work in the store.  Satoru has had his own heartbreak when his wife, Momoko, left him out of the blue five years ago.  Takako reluctantly agrees.

Slowly she gets her feet back under her as she works and starts to know Satoru's customers.  She finds a coffee house where she spends time reading and chatting.  When Momoko shows back up, she befriends her to help her uncle figure out why she left, why she is back, and if she plans to stay.

Satoshi Yagisawa is a Japanese author and this is his debut novel.  It has been popular and Yagisawa wrote a sequel to this one.  As in many Japanese novels, not much occurs but readers will get a real sense of the Japanese culture and the ways it differs from the more open friendships and casual ways other cultures handle friendships and acquaintances.  At the end of the novel, there is a hint that Takako has found a new relationship that could be very important in her life.  This book is recommended for multicultural readers.  

Solar by Ian McEwan

 

Dr. Michael Beard won a Nobel Prize when he was a young man.  These days, as a middle-aged one, he has skated on his reputation for years.  Headlining a conference here, giving a lecture there, sitting on corporate boards and currently, heading up a company interested in alternative energy.  He is on his fifth marriage and due to his constant cheating, is about to get his fifth divorce.

He knows it's about time to reinvent himself and when a young research scientist at the company gives Beard his research notes shortly before he dies, Beard sees the way.  He appropriates the young man's work as his own and creates a new kind of solar energy device.  It doesn't hurt that he is able to frame his wife's lover as the young man's murderer and get him out of the way as well.

Although Beard is a despicable man and most people don't like him, somehow he still manages to get good women interested in him.  He currently has two on the go.  One has been with him for years and he has a daughter with her.  The other is a woman he met in Texas where the new solar device is about to be tested and wants to be the sixth Mrs. Beard.  Will he ever get his comeuppance?

Ian McEwan is a British writer whose novels have been nominated six times for the Booker Prize and his novel Amsterdam won.  Another novel, Atonement, was adapted into a movie.  He has also won various other literary awards.  In this novel, he has created a villain who readers will long remember while also sending up the environmental crisis field of study a bit.  His works are quite readable and are memorable after reading.  This one wasn't his best but I enjoyed reading it quite a lot.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

 

In this anthology, Salman Rushdie has given his readers five stories about the end of life.  In the first, 'In The South', two men live next to each other.  One is rich with a large family, the other is poor with no one.  They share a last name but are not related and have known each other for years.  Yet which is happiest?

In 'The Musician Of Kahani' a girl is born who is a musical prodigy, playing both the piano and sitar.  She makes a bad romantic choice, falling in love with an extremely wealthy athlete who lives for fun and entertainment.  As the marriage progresses, she becomes pregnant and the differing ways they see the pregnancy leads to a life-shattering event.

Another story, 'Late' tells what happens to a Cambridge don when he dies.  In 'Oklahoma' we read of a man who idolized a famous one.  As they were both immigrants, the older man took the younger under his wing for a while but then he disappeared one morning, his clothes left on the beach when he went for his morning swim.  The younger man learns the reality of the older one's life as he delves into it.

Salman Rushdie has long been my favorite author and these stories are just reminders of his genius.  Although all are focused on the later years of life, they portray old age and death as just another step in life and not something to be feared.  Readers will enjoy the stories and the message underneath.  I regard anything he writes at this point in his life to be a jewel to be appreciated and enjoyed.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Blood Of The Mantis by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

This is the third novel in the Shadows Of The Apt series by Tchaikovsky.  Most of the action in this series is centered around the shadow box that was stolen in the last novel.  Achaeos the Seer knows he must find the box and keep it safe but there are many others who also want it, including the Emperor of the Wasps.  He has been told that possession of it would be necessary for his magician to complete the ritual that would make him immortal and he is willing to dedicate any resources necessary to gain possession of it.  

Stenwold continues his project of gaining allies and uniting the Lowlands against the Wasps.  His group spends time with a new group of characters the Skater-kinden and Shay finds a new friend in a female Fly who is also a pilot and from whom Shay can learn more about flying.  The Skater-kinden are built much like the mantis kingdom and can skate on water on their long spindly legs.  The Mantis Tisamon and his daughter are there for protection but he is starting to have fantasies about a female mantis although his race is supposed to mate for life and his wife died long ago.  

This series has ten novels.  I'm getting drawn further and further into the steampunk world of men with insect-like traits.  There are battles, but also magic and spies and skullduggery.  Tchaikovsky is a master of conceiving a complex world and the reader is treated to a master of world building with lots of characters who interact in both loving and violent ways.  I've been listening to the series and the narrator, Ben Allen, does an amazing job of drawing in the reader and keeping attention focused on this world.  This book is recommended for fantasy readers.

House Of Day, House Of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

 

An unnamed woman and her partner, named only by R., move into a small Polish village far into the country and right on the border with Czechoslovakia.  They know no one and the book tells their story through the stories of those they meet and get to know.  One theme running through the entire book is that of a local saint, who was crucified by her own father for refusing to leave the nunnery and marry a man he wished to get in his debt.  Before he killed her, the woman was given a long golden beard by God in order to make her look like Jesus and thus save her from the marriage.

Much of what the couple learn about the villagers and their culture and history come from an old woman, Marta, who lives next door.  She treats their illnesses, brings them mushrooms and other plants to cook, and tells them stories.  The couple start to feel responsible for Marta's well-being.

The reader also learns the stories of other characters.  Paschalis is a monk who wishes he were a woman.  He is beautiful and ends up living in a nunnery where he writes the story of the local saint, who is named Kummernis.  There is the man who dies with one leg on the Polish side of the border and the other leg on the Czechoslovakian side and whose body border sentries move back and forth, hoping to get their own relaxation and put the work of reporting a death on the guards from the other country.  There is an alcoholic who drinks himself to death, after a lifetime of believing that he shares his body with that of a bird.

Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish author who has won both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the International Booker.  Her books tend to focus on lives in the country and how the isolation molds their characters.  Some are mysteries, some are biographical and some are shaped by classic books that were written in the past.  Her writing is dense but well-researched and the reader is drawn along by the desire to learn more about the individuals she is portraying.  I liked this book more than the other two I've read by her and was fascinated by the story of Saint Kummernis.  This book is recommended for literary and multicultural readers.

Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen

 

Cricket Campbell hasn't been to the lake and the cabin for over a decade.  She left after a tragedy rocked her world and set her on a path of dead end jobs and stalled relationships.  But now she is needed back on the lake.  Her father has Alzheimer's and needs someone to look after him.  Her sister, Carol, has been doing that but now she is headed to Europe for her job and someone else needs to step up.  

Cricket goes home, she thinks to help Carol find a new home for her dad but once she is there, she decides that she can stay and look after him at least for a while.  They both know her dad wants to stay on the lake in the cabin where he has lived for years.  Carol is hesitant but finally agrees and gives Cricket the strict schedule she has developed for their dad.

But once Carol is gone, Cricket decides that maybe the schedule isn't the best way to go.  Perhaps what her father needs is a life built around what he wants to do at any moment.  She settles in, spending hours with him just sitting on the porch or watching the lake.  Her dad has a friend who helps sometimes, a friend who is a neighbor.  Slowly she starts to realize that her dad is still thinking and sensing, it's just that he is reporting back from a different part of his brain.  Soon he is known as a wise man, a seer who can help others make sense of their lives.  But Cricket knows this is temporary.  What will happen in the future?

Tory Henwood Hoen is a Canadian-American author.  She writes lovingly about the relationship between Cricket and her father and the way that Cricket's ability to go with the flow frees her father not only to stay in his home but to thrive and find meaning in what Alzheimer's has left him.  In the process Cricket also has the time to resolve the tragedy that set her on her restless travels and find the stability to go forward with her life.  This novel is recommended for literary and women's fiction readers.   

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamante

 

This novel is set in Boston in the early 1900's and tells the story of the life of Addie Baum.  It is told by Addie now that she is eighty-five and is looking back at her life and telling her favorite granddaughter all about it.  Addie's family is Jewish and her parents are immigrants.  They come to America for a better life but expect to raise their three girls the way things were done in the old country.  Addie wants something more, something better.  She wants an education and a job that feels like she is contributing to society along with a family.

She joins a library group where she meets other girls who want the same kind of things she does.  That opens doors to a summer camp where she meets women from all classes and makes friends.  They help her get her first job at a newspaper and she meets more mentors there.  Addie is grateful for any help she gets and relishes knowing women who have accomplished what she wants.  Later, after a first love affair that doesn't go well, she meets her true love and they eventually marry.

Anita Diamante is an American author who writes about women and their place in society.  Her early book, The Red Tent, pointed out the injustice of menstrual shaming.  She writes about women who yearn for an education and how they use that to make lives different from what was traditional.  In this novel, Addie is a strong, determined woman who never stops trying to make her life have meaning.  This book is recommended for historical and women's fiction readers.   

The Truth And Other Lies by Sascha Arango

 

Henry Hayden is a famous author and doing quite well.  He lives with his wife in a large house and drives a luxury car.  He also has a mistress.  But Henry is not what he seems.  He has never written a single sentence.  His wife, who is extremely introverted, has written all of his best-sellers and has him submit them under his own name.  She loves Henry with all her heart.

But now things aren't going as planned.  Henry's mistress is pregnant and expects him to step up and be a loving father.  Henry arranges to meet her in an isolated spot along the cliffs and when he gets there, he pushes her car over the cliffs into the sea.  But, when he gets home, his mistress is there and informs him that she and his wife had swapped cars, so he has killed his wife rather than his mistress.

But some people live charmed lives and Henry is one of them.  Or is he?

Sascha Arango is a German writer who is known for his television screenplays.  This book is his debut novel and was a New York Times Notable book.  It is deftly plotted, with Henry rising above the fray no matter what happens.  Readers won't like him but will marvel at his ability to avoid the consequences of his actions.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

8 Lives Of A Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee

 

This novel tells the story of Korea, both North and South through the life of a woman who would do whatever it took to survive.  Through the years, she was a slave, a mother, a spy, a murderer, a terrorist, an escape artist, a lover and a trickster.  She goes by several names, her own as a girl, then one she appropriated as a woman.

As a young woman, she is kidnapped in the market along with her servant and taken miles away to serve as a comfort woman during World War II for the Japanese who had invaded Korea.  She becomes friends there with another woman and when that women dies, she takes her life as her own.  She finds a way to escape, killing some of the soldiers, and escapes along with the other women.  She makes her way back to the other woman's home and starts living as her with the other woman's husband and child.

But governments are not through with her yet.  In order to survive, she must become a spy and a terrorist.  She finally escapes to South Korea where she builds yet another life.

Mirinae Lee grew up in Korea and now lives in Hong Kong.  This is her debut novel and it has received many awards, including being longlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize.  The story is inspired by one of Lee's relatives who was one of the oldest women to ever escape from North to South Korea.  The book portrays the poverty and starvation suffered by the people of North Korea as a tyrant governs them.  The trickster will do whatever is needed to survive and protect the people she loves, no matter how difficult or what it takes from her personally.  The novel is told in interconnected stories and it is an amazing debut.  I can't wait to see what this author will do next.  This book is recommended for multicultural and literary fiction readers  

The Book Club For Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick

 

The time is the 1960's and the place is a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC.  The suburb is full of stay-at-home moms, men who worked grueling careers and tons of expectations.  Men were to work and support the family.  Women were to stay at home, cleaning and watching the children and making a home.  The man was the undisputed head of the household.  Women couldn't open a bank account or buy a car by themselves but had to have their husband's permission and signature.

Four women get tired of the usual gossipy coffee klatches and decide to start a book club.  Margaret has three children and wants to be a writer.  As far as she has gotten is a household tip column in a women's magazine.  Bitsy is just married.  She wanted to be a veterinarian but had to settle for marrying one instead.  Viv has six children and another on the way.  She was a nurse during the War and would love to restart her career.  Charlotte is the outrider.  She comes from money and has designer clothes.  Her two children are almost grown and her husband spends his life working for her father and cheating on her every chance he gets.  Charlotte spends her time painting although she isn't sure she has enough talent to make it.  She is the one who chooses the first book, Betty Freidan's The Feminine Mystique. 

As the women read the book and discuss it's ideas, they start to change.  They form a support group and each one starts to go after her dreams  It isn't an easy road but they are committed to making changes and not living the stultifying life they have been dealt.  Things change in their lives, some changes positive, some negative but whatever happens they have each other.  

Marie Bostwick is an American author and has written over twenty books, most in the women's fiction genre.  This is my first book by her but I enjoyed it quite a lot and will be looking for more of her work.  I was in elementary school in this time period so this is the story of my mother's generation.  I remember how little support there was when she decided to go back to teaching; she couldn't drive and still had to handle all the cooking and cleaning.  I was a young adult in the 1970's and I do remember having to be married to get the birth control pill and having a man at the car dealership tell me I needed to bring my husband if I wanted to buy a car.  Things have changed quite a bit and I hope younger women read this book and see where their freedoms started and how strong women had to be in order to claim their own rights to live lives they dreamed of.  This book is recommended for women's fiction readers.    

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

 

Considered one of the great American novels, Blood Meridian tells the story of the Old West, not the one of John Wayne fame, but the one of hard men and bloody battles, of little sentiment and the willingness to kill men for little or no reason.  It is set in the deserts and small towns of the American southwest and northern Mexico in the time period 1849 and 1850, after the American-Mexican War.

The reader follows the life and growing up of 'The Kid' who is fourteen when the story starts.  An orphan, he does whatever he can to stay alive and falls in with the Captain Glanton gang.  This gang roams the area, killing and scalping both Native Americans and Mexicans for the bounty on their heads.  They are an especially brutal gang in a land of brutality and blood lust.  The Kid is a sharpshooter and willing to kill to defend himself but he doesn't have the blood thirst of the rest of the gang, just the desire to have a purpose and food and shelter.

The villain of the book is The Judge.  He is described as an almost supernatural being, seven feet tall, bald, a man who has vast knowledge but no mercy.  When he and The Kid fall out, The Judge tracks him across miles and miles of desert but never manages to kill him.  The Judge adopts a man who had been displayed in sideshows as a brute but who was in reality someone who was mentally challenged.  The Judge regards him as a possession rather than another human being.

This was a reread for me and I anticipate reading it again.  This novel is considered an American classic and shows the opposite side of the Western expansion, that of the brutality and bloodlust of those who wrenched the land away from earlier inhabitants.  It sets aside the concept of Manifest Destiny and shows what really took place in the American desire to capture all land between the oceans.  

Cormac McCarthy was an American author who many consider one of the best American novelists to come along.  In addition to this novel, he wrote the Border Trilogy books, No Country For Old Men and The Road which won the Pulitzer Prize.  I love his writing although it is bleak and violent and not for everyone.  This book is recommended for historical and literary fiction readers.   

The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves

 

A group of school mates meet up every five years on the island where they first connected at a school workshop.  Now in their late sixties, they can look back and see if the bright futures they anticipated as teenagers has played out.  Some are not there; Dan quit coming after he and Annie divorced and Isabella died in a car accident at the first reunion.  Ken is now in the early stages of dementia but his wife Louise takes care of him.  Rick went on to be a celebrated journalist and media player but lost much of his career when allegations of sexual misconduct with young girls hit the papers.  Phil is perhaps the most surprising.  A party guy, he became an Anglican priest after Isabella's death.  Annie is still living near the island, running a deli on the other side of the island causeway.

Everyone enjoys the first night, laughing and reminiscing and drinking.  But when Annie goes to wake Rick for breakfast the next morning, she finds him dead, hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom.  Was it suicide?  Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team are called to the scene and she quickly decides this is no suicide.  Rick has been murdered.

Vera and her team, Joe Ashworth and Holly Clarke, start to investigate.  Vera feels that the solution lies in the death of Isabella at the first reunion, some secret that has remained hidden for fifty years and festered.  The teacher who arranged the first conference is still in the area as is Rick's ex-wife.  Both of them have secrets as well.  Can Vera and her team solve the murder before more deaths occur?

This was the tenth Vera Stanhope mystery.  Ann Cleeves is a recognized mystery master, writing both the Vera Stanhope and the Shetland mystery series, as well as recently branching out into new series.  She lives in the Northumberland area many of her books are set in.  I listened to this one and the narrator did such an excellent job, her accent making the location and characters come alive.  The mystery is rooted in the past of the characters and Vera and her team are the best at digging into the past and excavating the secrets hidden there.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Unspeakable Acts Of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou

 

Eva Georgiou is a Cypriot interpreter for the police in London, a side job she does to supplement her work as the hatcheck girl at a local club.  Her husband, Jimmy, works a night job so they often don't see much of each other and their marriage is strained after the loss of a baby.  But Eve never expected what she discovered when the police called her in to interpret.

Zina Pavlou is a tiny Cypriot woman, her five children grown and scattered.  She has lived in one Cyprus village her own life but her son has sent her the money to come for a visit.  Zina is hoping that the visit will turn into a permanent thing.  Her son is married to Hedy and has two children, a little girl named Anna and a new baby.

But things had not gone well and the fault lay depending on whom you spoke to.  Hedy says that Eva is overbearing and criticizes Hedy's housekeeping and how she raises her children.  Eva says that Hedy tries to keep her from the children and comes between Zina and her son.  Regardless of who is correct, Eva's son sides with his wife and they tell Zina that she must leave.  Soon after, Hedy is found dead, brutally murdered.

Zina is arrested but cannot communicate with the police.  Eva is brought in to interpret and she becomes fascinated with Zina and the case.  There are occasional hints that this might not be Zina's first murder and Eva believes that Zina has mental health issues.  Soon Eva is not translating faithfully but only telling the police the things that she believes make Zina look better.  Will Zina be found guilty?

Eleni Kyriacou is the daughter of Greek Cypriot parents who immigrated to London and married there.  The book reflects a true case, that of the penultimate woman to be hanged in Britain.  The reader will have sympathy for everyone in the book, for Zina whose life hasn't turned out like she expected, For Eva who is caught up in sympathy and for the son and his wife whose good act turned out much differently than they expected.  This book is recommended for mystery and multicultural readers.  

Heart The Lover by Lily King

 

She meets them in a college class when the professor picks her essay to read.  Sam and Yash are best friends and living in a professor's house this senior year while he is on sabbatical.  Sam asks her out and she accepts although the first date is awkward.  It gets better when Yash comes home with his engaging extroverted personality.  Soon she is a regular with Sam but spending most of her time at the house, meeting all their friends and playing cards.  The crew nicknames her Jordan and that is how she is known for the rest of her time at university

When she and Sam break up, she and Yash admit their attraction.  Both feel that being together would be unfair to Sam but the attraction is more than they can resist.  When Sam finds out, there is a schism and Yash hangs with one or the other but it puts a strain on him.  He and Jordan plan to move to New York after graduation but Yash is still torn.  

Jumping forward, the three don't see each other for years.  By the time Yash asks if he can stop by on his way to see other friends, Jordan has been married for years and has two boys.  She and Yash part as friends but both are keeping secrets.  Will there be a time when all the truth comes out?

Lily King is an American author who writes about the twists and turns of relationships.  Her books have won many awards and I expect the same will be true about this one.  I loved this novel and I'm sure it will be one of my favorites for the year.  She captures the truth about first loves, college friendships and how our choices in our youth influence our entire life.  The ending will both break your heart and give the reader hope for life.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah

 

The news is brutal; a mother and young daughter had been found dead, each in a separate bathtub.  Worse, it appears as if the mother killed them both after a diary emerges that outlines her frustration with being a stay-at-home mother.  The husband, Mark Bretherick, is not a suspect as he was in the United States at a convention the entire week and had found the bodies when he arrived home.

Sally Thorning is shocked at the news, then shocked again when she sees Mark Bretherick.  She is a working mother, desperate to handle both a successful career and a marriage and two small children.  Last year, she had taken a week to herself and ended up having a fling with a man.  A man who gave his name as Mark Bretherick and described his wife and daughter and house.  A man who is not the Mark Bretherick whose picture is in the paper.

Things are different at the local police these days.  Charlie Zailer had transferred out of the detective section after she was humiliated at a party by the man she loves, Simon Waterhouse.  Simon is still in the detective bureau and missing Charlie, the only person he had trusted to understand his brilliant but offbeat thinking.  He doesn't know how he feels about her emotionally, as Simon's emotions are not something he spends time thinking about.  He is, however, sure that Geraldine Bretherick did not kill her daughter and herself and he is desperate to prove it.  Can he?

This is the third novel in the Zailer/Waterhouse series.  Sophie Hannah is a well-known name in the mystery genre and her plots twist and turn like a rollercoaster.  Readers will enjoy the slow building romance between Waterhouse and Zailer and spend as much pondering it as the mystery.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Testament Of Mary by Colm Toibin

 

In this short novel, Mary is nearing the end of her life.  She is hidden away from the enemies of Jesus although she wonders if her overseers are friends or foes.  Mary looks back over her own life and that of her son.  She relates the day of his crucifixion and his agony.  In this telling, Mary and her cousin leave behind his death, slipping away so that they would not be rounded up with the rest of his followers as they knew the plan to be.  She left the cleansing of his body and his burial to others and this is her greatest regret.

Colm Toibin is an Irish author whose books have been nominated four times for the Booker Prize along with many other awards.  This book was longlisted in 2013 for the Booker.  It gives an alternate testament of the times surrounding the death of Jesus and underlines the dichotomy Mary's life became, as a mother and an icon of the religion.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.   

The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny

 

Sonia and Sunny are both Indian but living in the United States on a visa.  Sunny is working as an entry level journalist and living with an American woman.  Sonia falls in love with an older artist who uses his art to control and ultimately, degrade her.  She loses her job in a gallery after the affair breaks up and must return to India where she is adrift, not sure what direction her life should take next.

When Sunny returns home for a visit, the two meet and there is a spark but Sonny is attached.  When he returns to the United States and finds his girlfriend gone, the spark between the two becomes more serious.  Sonia goes to Goa to research an article and Sunny joins her there.  

But Sonia cannot get a visa to return to the United States and Sunny does not want to live in India where his controlling mother will try to run his life.  Their romance takes them next to Venice but while there they discover an exhibit by the artist who was involved with Sonia and when she sees the pictures he has painted of her, she is humiliated and flees back to India.  Sunny returns to the United States where he gets his green card and then moves to Mexico on a grant to study the culture there.  Will the two get together?

Kiran Desai is an Indian author who immigrated to the United States when she was sixteen.  Her novel The Inheritance Of Loss won the Booker Prize and this novel was also nominated for that award.  I loved this novel.  It is a sprawling book that introduces the reader to different versions of India, that of wealthy and poor inhabitants.  The culture and family expectations are finely drawn and readers will cheer on the love affair between Sonia and Sunny.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Murderland by Caroline Fraser

 

This intensely researched book has a theory: the time in the 1970's-1980's that saw many serial killers in the Northwest states was a direct result of the smelting and release of toxins into the environment, specifically lead and arsenic.  Fraser follows the rise of the mineral extraction business from its beginning and how the industry was first centered in Pennsylvania but later moved to the Northwest, specifically the area around Tacoma, Washington.

She then gives examples of various serial killers who grew up in the area such as Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway and others.  Much of the book follows Ted Bundy from his birth to his execution in Florida years later and details the various crimes he committed in states such as Washington, Idaho, Colorado and Florida.  She also talks in detail about other killers such as Israel Keyes, Dennis Rader, Richard Ramirez and George Russell on Mercer Island.  

Fraser presents research showing the correlation between lead exposure and violence, presenting the lead levels released in various years.  She also shows a decrease in these types of crime as the smelting industry was finally brought into compliance with EPA levels that were steadily lowered.  

Carolina Fraser is an American author whose prior work, Prairie Fires, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.  This book was selected a New York Post Notable Book, Edgar Award finalist for true crime and a best book by various publications.  I was impressed by the research and the way she used the lead exposure to track alongside the stories of these violent men.  I'm not sure that I'm convinced that this was the sole reason for this spate of occurrences.  Why only these men when the exposure was felt by thousands of people?  I'm also leery of those men who didn't live there for their entire childhood such as Keyes and Rader but who grew up in various states as their families moved from location to location.  Also, there are serial killers in other locations during this time period such as the Son of Sam and they continue to the present such as the Long Island Killer.  Still, this is a work that merits reading and serious consideration.  I'm glad to have discovered Fraser and intend to read the rest of her work  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers, specifically science and true crime readers.  

Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

 

Blue van Meer has had an unusual upbringing.  Her mother died in an auto accident when Blue was five.  She grew up moving from town to town as her father took visiting professorships in various colleges and universities.  He made sure that Blue didn't lack for an education and indeed, she is far advanced from her peers although he has done most of her education himself.  As she nears her senior year, he promises Blue a year in one town so that she could more easily apply for her own university experience.  

They settle in a small Southern town and Blue is enrolled at St. Galloway, an exclusive school.  She is used to being the new girl and not having friends but for some reason the drama teacher, Hannah Schneider, takes Blue under her wing and invites her to her Sunday salon where the school's most popular students came.  Jade is the queen bee with Leulah her beautiful second.  Charles is the school's most desired boy and Mr. Everything, good in every sport and class president and prom king.  Nigel is slight but highly intelligent.  Milton is Blue's first real crush, a boy who seems older and a bit dangerous.

With her new friends, Blue becomes a more typical teenager.  They go to bars with fake ids, drink until they are drunk (a new experience for Blue) and the other girls pick up men for a night of fun.  The Sunday lunches are full of exciting topics and hints of mystery, most of which is supplied by the back story of Hannah, whom the students adore but want to know everything about.  When things turn dark, Blue realizes that once again she is on her own and must solve the mystery that she never knew influenced her entire life.

I adore Marisha Pessl.  She is an American author who grew up in Ashville, North Carolina, which is very similar to the setting of this novel.  She was twenty-eight when she wrote this novel so she was close enough in age to the characters to remember how high school attendees were.  Blue is the narrator of the novel and her intelligence yet naiveté is dominant.  The writing is very erudite yet the reader seldom feels lost.  The mystery bursts onto the scene late in the book with only the slightest hints that it is coming and the solution is one I never saw coming.  I can only hope Pessl has another novel in the works and highly recommend this one for literary fiction readers.   

The Turn Of The Key by Ruth Ware

 

Rowan Caine is dissatisfied with her life.  Working as an assistant in a childcare facility in London, she doesn't have a boyfriend, her roommate is going traveling for a year without her, and she doesn't have realistic hopes of advancement at her job.  So when she sees the ad looking for a nanny with a fantastic salary, she answers right away.

Her resume gets her an interview and soon Rowan is off to Heatherbrae House, in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.  There she meets Sandra Ellencourt, an architect.  She and her husband Bill have four children, all girls.  They range in age from fourteen to a toddler.  The Ellencourts have designed their house to be an advertisement for their business.  It is full of modern age technology, with cameras in every room and automatic locks and heating and a program that oversees everything called Happy.  

Rowan is offered the job even though Sandra tells her that four nannies have left suddenly in the recent past and that she and Brian are leaving on a work conference the next week.  The oldest daughter is at boarding school and Rowan feels that she can handle an eight, six and eighteen-month old on her own.  But the girls don't warm to her except for the baby.  The two girls at home run off with their parents' permission on long explorations of the outdoors.  That upsets Rowan as there are ponds and dangers in the woods and even a poison garden, one of the few in existence and protected by the government.  

The strangeness continues inside.  Keys go missing, then reappear.  She thinks she hears someone outside her windows and she knows she hears a creak, creak, creak at night overhead as if someone were walking in an attic, an attic she is told doesn't exist.  There is a woman who comes in to cook and clean who doesn't like Rowan on sight and a caretaker who is also young and who Rowan flirts with but doesn't trust. 

The book is written as a series of letters, mostly from Rowan to a solicitor general.  A child has died under her watch and she is arrested for murder.  What really happened and what was the secret that Rowan herself was keeping?

Ruth Ware is a British author who started in the young adult genre then switched to adult mysteries in 2015.  She has released ten books since then and most have been very successful.  In this one, I felt that the ending was a bit abrupt after a lot of buildup with many tension raising events.  I did like the device of the story being told through the letters which gives the author the ability to ramble on if she feels like it and unlike a conversation could have allowed.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.