Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger

 

Ten years ago ended Madeline Martin's innocent life.  It was the night that she went to a party against the pleas of her best friend, Badger.  The night she found out that her first love, Evan Handy, was cheating on her with her best friend.  The night Evan killed her best friend in front of her and would have killed her also if she hadn't escaped and been found on the shore of a frozen river by Badger.

Now Evan has been in prison for ten years and Madeline is trying to go on with her life.  She runs a bookstore in the town where she was raised.  Her father, the former sheriff, had a stroke that has disabled him and she lives with him and takes care of him as best she can.  Her life is bland and unexciting and that's how she likes it.

Then Harley Granger shows up in town.  He is a crime podcaster and he has decided that the Evan Handy case would make for a blockbuster.  He tries to get Madeline to come on his podcast and stirs up all the people involved that night.  Evan still insists from prison that he is innocent.  Girls have gone missing since that night, one just days ago.  Is there someone else out there?  Madeline has been receiving Christmas presents sent anonymously and she doesn't know if she has a secret admirer or if they are a warning that someone is coming to finish the job from ten years ago.

Lisa Unger is known for her work in the suspense genre.  She has written over twenty novels, most of them bestsellers, and has received numerous awards.  In this book, she knows exactly how to racket up the tension and let the clues emerge slowly.  I listened to this book and the narrator has a voice full of suspense.  Madeline is still living in the past and ignoring what is coming in the present.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

The Heart Of Winter by Jonathan Evison

 

This is the story of a long marriage.  They shouldn't have lasted as they are so different.  Abe is grounded, practical and logical.  He ends up selling insurance and has his own agency.  Ruth is artistic and creative and longs for culture.  They have almost nothing in common but we pick up the story when they have been married for over seventy years.  They have raised four children and even been through the absolute worst thing, the loss of a child.  

Abe has adored Ruth from the start.  He ends up on an island in Washington because there he can give Ruth a farm where she can garden and raise the children.  Over the years, they ebb and flow, sometimes at a distance when Ruth starts to find Abe boring, closer when they need to handle a crisis.

The story picks up when Ruth is diagnosed with cancer.  The grown children insist that Abe is too old to take care of Ruth after extensive surgery, chemo and radiation but he is just as insistent that he can and Ruth wants his comfort and her own home.  They have always thought Abe would go first, but is that true?

Jonathan Evison is an American author who lives in Washington like Abe and Ruth.  I could really relate to this novel as my husband and I have married for fifty-two years now.  Evison gets the reality of a day to day relationship and how couples can grow closer as they age and how successful marriages adapt to a crisis that every marriage eventually faces.  I loved the way Abe adored Ruth from start to finish.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Tall Bones by Anna Bailey

 

When Abi goes missing after a teenage party in the woods one night, the secrets of Whistling Ridge start to emerge.  Who was the boy Abi went into the woods with?  Why was the father of the local drug dealer wandering the woods that night?  Where is the gun from which a shell casing was found?

The police investigate but some believe Abi just ran away that night.  She lives with restrictive parents who believe in the local fire and brimstone preacher who thinks everything is a sin.  Her father is abusive both to his wife and the children, his days in Vietnam still present in his mind.  

Then there are Abi's brothers.  There's Noah, a bright man who should have been at college but who had to give up his dreams when his college fund was needed for a family emergency.  He's not sure about his sexuality but he knows his father will have something to say about it, probably with his fists.  There's her little brother Jude, who walks with a stick after the night he was thrown down the stairs.  They know what goes on in the house but are afraid to tell.

Emma was Abi's best friend or at least she always thought so.  But now she's finding that Abi had a whole secret life she never shared with Emma.  Emma starts drinking heavily and skipping school.  Then there is Rat.  He's the man who drifted into town a few months ago.  He parties with the high schoolers and always has alcohol and drugs to share.  His RV is where Emma goes to drink and where she realizes that he and Noah have a relationship.  The preacher decides to use Rat, or the gypsy as he calls him, as the town scapegoat, the one responsible for all the bad things happening.

Anna Bailey is an English author and this is her debut novel.  It was chosen as a Guardian Book of The Month and was nominated for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Of The Year award.  She spent time in Colorado which is where this book is based.  Bailey captures the frustrations of the late teen years and the fact that most have secrets they don't want exposed.  Some are willing to do anything to keep those secrets in the dark.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

 

This is the story of an Irish family and their relationships.  The narrator is a woman who has just grown up and moved out of the family home.  She talks about how the household was focused on her younger brother who was diagnosed as a boy with a brain tumor.  He was expected to die but had a miraculous recovery.  Yet the mother could not believe he is still there and dedicates her life and the family focus and resources on him. 

Left on her own, the narrator falls prey to her uncle who arouses her first sexual feelings and then seduces her at fifteen.  She knows this is wrong but it sets up a life where she goes out and has random sex with strangers from bars.  When her brother's cancer returns and it becomes clear that this time he will pass away, she returns home and resumes the relationship with her uncle, the only kind of release and attention she can be sure of obtaining.

Eimear McBride is an Irish author and one of my favorites.   This is her debut novel and it won The Goldsmiths Prize in 2013.  The novel is written in a stream of consciousness fashion from the point of view of the young woman and it is chaotic, uncertain, groping forward, and full of rage.  The narrator is never sure exactly what she owes her family but knows she loves her brother who she is going to lose.   McBride's writing is fierce and amazing and the reader is sure to remember her stories long after the last page is read.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Bad Actors by Mick Herron

 

In this eighth novel in the Slough House series, a government employee has gone missing.  Not just an everyday employee.  This is the government's superforecaster who predicts how the average person in the street will react to the government's policies and moves.  She has been imported from Russia and has now disappeared.  Have the Russians kidnapped her back?  Has she gone on the lam?  

Claude Whelan, head of the Park and Diana Travener's former boss, is given the assignment of finding her or at least finding out what happened to her.  Diane is upset that he is back and clues are pointing at Jackson Lamb at Slough House.  Slough House is shorthanded these days although since they do nothing it doesn't matter that much.  River Cartwright is taking some time off after the death of his grandfather while Shirley Dander is off taking the cure at the rehab center for spies.  

This is definitely one of the best books in the series.  Watching Shirley and getting into her head is a rare joy while her alliance with Whelan when a pack of mercenaries try to kidnap her is an amazing piece of work.  Instead of being a throwaway character, we get to know more about Lach and see why he was recruited by MI-5 in the first place.  Jackson Lamb, of course, is on top of things while appearing not to care a bit about his job or anyone else.  My only fear is that Mick Herron will get tired of writing about the misfits at Slough House and that would be a disaster as this series is becoming one of my absolute favorites.  This book is recommended for mystery and spycraft readers.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

 They are different, the superwealthy.  The ones who can charter a private plane at a moment's notice when the commercial schedules don't suit.  The ones who can eat at a restaurant no matter the time or if it is open for business.  The ones who think nothing of giving a taxi driver thousands of dollars for a ride.  The ones who made their money through the suffering of others.

Christian has come home to take care of his mother.  She is eighty and recently released from a psychiatric hospital, a common occurrence he is used to.  They go on a last trip together in Switzerland which is their home country, visiting the mountains and places from long ago.  His mother is also physically challenged and Christian helps her with her issues.

But the two are not close.  His mother pretty much ignored him as a child, especially after his parents divorced when he was young.  He rarely comes home and despises the money they have and the munitions industry that gave it to them.  He is searching for a way to reconcile his life, and this is another attempt.

Christian Kracht is a German author and this is his second novel.  It was nominated for the International Booker and considered a Best Book by the Financial Times and the UK Times.  Kracht explores the dynamics of a life where nothing is required of the individual; there is so much money that they need not work and can have anything they want.  But the human relationships have suffered and he narrates a last chance to resolve the most primal relationship, that of parent and child.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Through The Window by Diane Fanning

 

Tommy Lee Sells was one of the worst serial killers the United States has seen.  Thirty-five when caught, he spent the years before traveling the country and killing men, women and children.  He seemed to have no preference although he would sexually assault his female victims.  He killed by bludgeoning, shooting or his seeming preference, slitting the throats of those he murdered.

He was caught in Texas.  He went through the window of a home during the night.  In the home was a woman, her two daughters and her younger daughter's friend who was having a sleepover.  He bypassed the adult woman and her elder daughter.  He killed the younger daughter in front of her friend, slashing and stabbing her to death.  He then used his twelve-inch boning knife to slit the throat of ten year old Krystal Surles.  Somehow this little girl found the strength to crawl to the neighbor's house and get help.  As soon as they stabilized her in the hospital, she was ready to testify.   Although she couldn't speak she wrote what happened that night and helped a portrait artist to make a mugshot.  Sellers was arrested and started confessing.

Tommy Sells confessed to more than seventy murders.  He was known as the Coast To Coast Killer.  His real total is not known as some of the murders he claimed were proven to be committed by others but he did kill across the country.  One of the saddest to me was the case where he broke into a house, killed a ten year old boy with a kitchen knife he found there and escaped.  He always cleaned the site of his prints and DNA as best he could.  The boy's mother was arrested, found guilty and served time until she was finally exonerated after Sell's death.  

Diane Fanning is known for her true crime books although these days she has moved on to write mysteries more often. She started in advertising and then worked as an executive director at several nonprofits.  She has won numerous awards both for her work and her writing.   I've had this book for years but finally found the courage to reading it.  I cannot imagine the strength it took for her to sit across a table in prison and look into the eyes of Tommy Lynn Sells as he confessed crime after horrid crime.  He was executed in Texas in 2014. This book is recommended for true crime readers.  

In Other Worlds by Margaret Atwood

 

In this interesting volume, Margaret Atwood talks about her relationship with science fiction and fantasy.  She started as a child with her brother as they explored the fantasies of childhood and made up their own.  Atwood created a race of superhuman flying rabbits and gave them many adventures.  As she grew, she continued to read in this genre and while at university studied its relationship to literature.  

The part I found most interesting is her evaluation of other authors' works and their relationship to the genre.  She talks about Marge Piercy, H. Rider Haggard, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bill McKibben, George Orwell, H.G. Wells, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bryher, Aldous Huxley and Jonathan Swift and explores their work and how it contributed to the genre.

In the last section, she discusses her own work.  There is an excerpt from The Blind Assassin, she talks about cryogenics and other science fiction memes.  At the end there is a letter from her to the Judson School District which banned her book The Handmaid's Tale defending the work and the sexual aspect which show the attempt to control women's sexuality through the ages.  There is also a section about the gorgeous art covers that have often adorned works in fantasy and science fiction.

Margaret Atwood is a treasure.  She has written eighteen novels, eleven books of nonfiction, eighteen books of poetry and nine anthologies.  She is a Canadian author and a defining force in the genre.  Her book, The Handmaid's Tale has been made into a successful television series and several of her novels have been made into movies.  In this work, the reader gets to see beyond the pages at what Atwood was trying to accomplish with various works.  She sees sexuality as a normal part of childhood interest as they slowly become aware of it, and she also sees that women's sexuality has been controlled throughout the ages by whatever mechanism is available at the time.  This book is recommended for science fiction readers and those interested in authors' lives and thoughts about their work.

The Cambourne Killings by Sally Rigby

 

Detective Lauren Pengelly and her partner Matt Price are called out to a murder in their patch of Cornwall.  A woman's body lies discarded, with a note beside if 'Ten Green Bottles'.  The note is reminiscent of a Cornish song and American fans will recognize the rhyme as 'One Hundred Bottles Of Beer On The Wall'.  The body is soon identified as a former police officer and the hunt is on.

The next murder has another note that now says, 'Nine Green Bottles'.  Does the killer plan on ten murders?  When there is a police connection with this victim as well, the force realizes that it may be tied to a case years ago.  Was there corruption then that is only now demanding that retribution be paid?

This is the fourth book in this series.  Rigby builds the relationship between Lauren and Matt which is professional.  One of Matt's friends, a female police officer on another force, is in town for a vacation, and comes to work with the Cornwall force when one of their officers goes out on an extended medical leave.  Could there be a romance brewing there?  The case is intriguing and readers will be interested to continue the series.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Our Kind Of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

 

Mike and Verity have a perfect relationship.  Mike came from poverty and foster homes and institutions but he's an investment banker now and doing well financially.  Verity came from wealth and position with a supportive family and she now works in IT.  They are bonded in every way and they like to play a game.

They all it The Crave.  They go to a pub and Verity flirts with another man until he is interested.  Then Mike comes over and pushes him away, claiming ownership of Verity.  It is stimulating for them both and some of their best times start this way.

Mike takes a job overseas but Verity can't leave her own job.  They agree that a long distance relationship will work but as the months add it, it starts to have issues.  Both stray and when Mike returns for Christmas, it's to Verity breaking up with him.  He can't believe it; they are meant to be together.  But eventually he returns overseas to his job and tries to convince Verity from afar that he still loves her and that they should be together.

But when he finally manages to get transferred back to London, it's to a horrid surprise.  Verity is getting married to another man, a man she loves and who everyone believes is a perfect match.  Mike decides that this is another version of the Crave and he knows how to play.  What will happen?

Araminta Hall is a British author.  She worked as a magazine journalist before she started writing books and also teaches.  She writes in the thriller genre and this book is chilling.  The pace is rapid and we get to see what's it's like inside the mind of a stalker, someone so obsessed with another that they can't imagine a world where their interest is not returned.  This book is recommended for thriller readers.

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

 

In what may be their most challenging case, Robin and Strike are asked by a father to help him return his son from the church where he has been for four years.  The father believes that the church is a cult and that there are illegal things going on.  Their son is living at the church's farm estate where he uses his intelligence and resources to hoe gardens and clean bathrooms.  Strike and Robin do a preliminary investigation and agree to take the case against the Universal Humanitarian Church.

But the church is wily and guards against revelation of its secrets  Those few who have escaped have often found death on the outside, perhaps tied to their association.  The two investigators agree that the only effective way to handle the case is for someone to go undercover.  Robin is the one chosen and she will only have contact with Strike and the company once a week through a hidden stone with a place for a note.  She goes to a service and before she knows it, she is on the farm.

Church members are expected to revere Papa J as the leader is known and his wife, who is in charge of discipline.  The members are given little food or sleep and as the days go by, Robin finds herself falling into the mindset of those who are true members.  She starts to hear of deaths and punishments and everyone is expected to sleep with whomever asks.  Will Robin get to the church's secrets before her identity is stolen?

This is the eighth Comoran Strike novel and it is definitely one of the best.  Robin is dating a police officer and Strike always has a woman around but the two are starting to admit to themselves that their true interests are in each other.  The church's secrets are slowly revealed which builds the tension around whether Robin will be able to escape their clutches.  It is very long, over nine hundred pages, but it's hard to see what could have been left out as everything comes to a head.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.  

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

 

Elizabeth Zott wants to be known for one thing, her mind.  She wanted to get her doctorate in chemistry but a doctoral supervisor who stole her research and then tried to have sex with her put an end to that.  She ends up at a research facility but in the 1960's, Elizabeth is seen as lab assistant material not scientist.  That is, until Calvin Evans notices her.  Calvin is a Nobel-nominated scientist and he is entranced with a woman he can talk with who understands him.  It doesn't hurt that Elizabeth is gorgeous and soon they fall in love.

But when Calvin is killed leaving Elizabeth alone and pregnant, she is pushed out of her job.  She creates her own lab in her kitchen and her former co-workers often come by to get her assistance with their work.  But it's not enough money to support her and her daughter.  So when she is offered the chance to host a cooking show on the local PBS station, she reluctantly agrees.

Elizabeth is a hit!  She doesn't only teach women how to cook nutritious meals but she tells them daily to reach for their dreams.  To go get educated, to do what they dream of doing in life.  Where will it all end?

This is a debut novel and it took off like a rocket.  It won numerous awards and has been made into a television series.  Women love Elizabeth and her refusal not to be taken seriously and her determination to live her dreams.  Bonnie Garmus was a copywriter when she wrote this novel.  There are elements of her own life here, Elizabeth and Calvin are rowers as is Bonnie, and the amazing dog echoes her real life companion.  The book is humorous while insisting on women as individuals who should be given credit for their accomplishments.  This book is recommended for women's fiction readers.    

The Meaning Of Night by Michael Cox

 

Edward Glyver grows up with his single mother in a coastal city.  His mother is an author and spends countless hours writing.  Edward grows up as a scholar and a bibliophile, having been able to attend a good school through the help of one of his mother's friends.  When she dies, he discovers something amazing.  She was not his mother at all.  She was raising him as a favor for her best friend, a woman who was married to nobility.  But Edward has no legal proof.

He becomes friends with various men who hold parts of the puzzle and who help him.  Chief among these is his boss, who owns a legal firm and who hired Edward when he returned to England from several years abroad.  Edward also falls in love along the way and that may be his downfall.

This is the first novel in a series.  It is written in a Victorian manner and reminded me of several Charles Dickens novels.  Edward has a nemesis who haunts his life and has since boyhood.  He is also about to win the place in life that should be Edward's.  Who will be recognized as the rightful heir to estates and unimaginable wealth?  Cox is an English author and this is his debut novel.  It is recommended for literary fiction readers.  

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

 When Bryan Stevenson graduated law school, he knew what he wanted to do.  He wanted to help those who had been wrongly convicted and were on Death Row.  He wanted to stop the state executing those who had been minors when they were convicted.  He wanted to stop the executions of those who had been at a crime scene but had done nothing there.  He moved to one of the worst states for injustice at the time, Alabama, and opened his law firm, a nonprofit.

In this book about his law practice, he illustrates the injustices he fights by narrating the case of one of his first attempts, Walter McMillian.  Walter had been doing fairly well for himself in an area where black people were usually impoverished as he had a timber business.  But Walter had a straying eye and one of his conquests was a white woman.  This was in the 1980's and there was still a lot of prejudice around interracial relationships and lots of people had it out for Walter.  When a young white girl was killed while working in a dry cleaning store, it was a major case.  Although Walter was twenty miles away at a family fish fry with several dozen witnesses, he was arrested on the word of a white witness and a black man who wanted to get his own sentence reduced.  Walter was sent to Death Row and was there for six years.  Eventually, Stevenson managed to prove his wrongful conviction and get him released.  Walter had years left to live but sadly, as he got older, he believed he was back on Death Row and spent many days scared and lonely.

This nonfiction book has won numerous awards, as has Stevenson's law practice which continues its work to eliminate the death penalty or at least to free those wrongfully convicted.  That means not only those who didn't do the crime for which they were sentenced but those who were too young to have formed intent or those who were mentally incapable.  Stevenson even won the McArthur Fellowship which gives a cash award, $800,000 currently, to those who show creativity and talent in a field.  Readers will follow the cases he discusses with disbelief and horror and the book has the potential to change minds about the death penalty.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers.  

When We Cease To Understand The World by Benjamin Labatut

 

This book looks at various scientific explorations and discovers, mostly in the fields of mathematics and physics.  Names many will have heard are discussed here such as Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and others more obscure, Haber and Grothendieck.  Each man's work and discoveries are outlined and their lives explored.  Unfortunately, most of them led sad lives with alienated loves and often madness after a promising start to life.  

The discoveries were not all positive.  For example, the discovery of the beautiful Prussian Blue color for painters later resulted in the use of it in the cyanide that was used in Germany's death camps.  Einstein, for one, disagreed with the results of some of the scientists although they were proven correct in the end.  The math was so above the average and even expert understanding that those who made those breakthroughs had no one to discuss their knowledge with and that played some part in their eventual withdrawals and madness.  Many felt that their discoveries had left the world worse off rather than better. 

Benjamin Labatut's childhood was spent between The Netherlands and South America and he has lived in Chile since he was twelve.  This novel was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award for translated works.  He sees his work as different from others because he feels that most novels focus on character and his work focuses on ideas.  He seems attracted to thinkers in science as his following novel was about John von Neumann, another mathematical genius whose work is pivotal but is understood by few.  One thing I did not like was that in the afterword Labatut says some of what he wrote is true and some fiction but the parts that were not true were not identified.  Since I know little about the scientific fields he was discussing, that left me frustrated not knowing which parts to believe.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers, especially those interested in science and math.

The River Swimmer by Jim Harrison

 

This book has two novellas in it.  In the first, Clive is a sixty-year old man.  He had been an artist but gave it up and became an art professor and someone who served as an expert when validating authenticity of paintings. He lives in New York City far from his surviving family, his mother and a sister back on the Midwestern farm he fled as a young man.  Now his mother is aging and his sister wants a break and a vacation.  Clive agrees to come home for a month and take care of everything while his sister travels.  He rediscovers his love of painting while there as well as rekindling the attraction of his first love who lives next door.

The second novella is about the River Swimmer.  Thad was born to swim and feels most at home in the water.  He takes long journeys, swimming miles to Chicago and other locations.  He falls in with a rich girl and she takes him traveling and he swims some of the largest rivers in Europe.  But his heart lies back home and the rivers he grew up with and the water babies only he is able to see.  

Jim Harrison was the author of The Legends Of The Fall and thirty other novels.  I love his spare yet beautiful writing.  He often writes of men attempting to make human connections and find love.  He was also a lover of nature and it plays a large part in most of his work.  He also delves into family connections and what they mean to us as adults.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers. 

Joe Country by Mick Herron

 If Spook Street is where spies live, Joe Country is where they go to die. (Quote from Amazon)

Slough House and its inhabitants move on in a life that is always more of the same.  Same falling down workplace, same colleagues, same make work, same Jackson Lamb who rules over it all.  

But some things happen.  River's grandfather, the OB, has finally died after a long career as a spy and having raised River.  Lech is the newest Slow Horse and he is determined to find out what got him assigned there and who was behind it.  Catherine Standish is starting to buy booze again after years of being dry.  And River's father, the man Jackson Lamb hates above all others, is still out there.

When River sees his father at the cemetery at his grandfather's funeral, he takes off chasing him but once again his father manages to escape.  But this time the group and Lamb have an idea where he is heading.  Louisa Guy has taken on the task of finding her former lover's son who has disappeared.  River's father seems to have been hired to find him as well.  Lamb sends the Slow Horses out to find the son and capture River's father but he has hired guns with him.  Will everyone return?

This is the sixth Slough House novel in the series.  These books are an addiction.  I'm so glad I waited until there were nine of them as I've listened to them as quickly as I can, starting the next as soon as I finish the former.  I've listened to them as Gerald Doyle is the best narrator match I can imagine.  He can hit the sly notes, show the determination of the agents even when wrong and bring Jackson Lamb to life in a way that is perfectly done.  Lamb pretends not to care but his agents are his charge and no one hurts his charges.  This book is recommended for mystery and spycraft readers.  

Acts Of Desperation by Megan Nolan

 When she meets Ciaran in a bar one night, she is instantly attracted.  She soon goes out with him and starts having an affair.  Not a relationship as he seems interested one night and offputting the next.  Ciaran is a beautiful man but cold.  His relationship before her had been with a woman back in Sweden where he is from and over Christmas holidays, he suddenly returns to the former love.

She is gutted and spends her nights drinking herself into oblivion.  Then months later, she sees Ciaran again and they get back together.  She is determined to do whatever it takes to keep him this time and soon they are living together.  She spends her days thinking of what she can do next and her evenings cooking, cleaning, doing whatever he wants.

But can such a one-sided affair continue?  As the weeks go by, she starts to rebel against his continued coldness and his assumption of all power in the relationship.  Eventually, she gravitates to another man who is warm and loving and interested in her, not just what she can do for him.  

This is a debut novel for Megan Nolan who is an Irish author.  She won a Betty Trask award for this book which his given for first books written by someone under thirty.  Readers won't be able to turn away from this love affair but will be sickened by the narrator's willingness to give herself over so totally to someone who doesn't appreciate her.  Personally, I hate to think that love can be so desperate and that women can think so little of themselves.  It is, nonetheless, a book that can't be put down and Nolan will take her place among the many stellar Irish authors.  This book is recommended for literary and women's fiction readers.  

The Definitions by Matt Greene

 

A virus has decimated humanity.  It's effect is that people forget how to speak and what things are called or named or what a word means.  When affected individuals come to the Center to recuperate, most don't know their names, so they take a name from the weekly movies they view.

These people attend classes that instruct them in what they need to know.  Some excel and graduate back into the outside world.  Some never again retain the meaning of language and become lifetime inhabitants of the Center.  The Center gives them work, classes and a social structure.  Newcomers must work to be defined in one of the two main groups; those who go and those who stay.

It seems benevolent but is it?  Over time, some try to challenge the rules and the structure and then they find that they are not the free agents they had imagined themselves to be.  

Matt Greene is an English author.  His first novel, Ostrich, won a Betty Task Award, which is 10,000 pounds and given to a first novel by an author under the age of thirty-five.  In this dystopian novel, he explores the meanings of love and friendship and how individuals can be duped into giving up their freedom.  This book is recommended for readers of dystopian novels.

Jack Of Spades by Joyce Carol Oates

 

Andrew Rush is an author of mysteries.  He has been successful, his books hitting the top of the bestseller lists regularly.  His success has brought wealth and he and his wife have contributed to his community, which also makes him well thought of.

But Andrew has another side.  He writes another series under a pen name, Jack Spade.  Those mysteries are dark and gory and the villain often wins.  No one knows about these novels, not even his wife. 

When Andrew is sued for plagiarism by an elderly woman who lives in his town, his two sides start to merge.  He can't believe someone dares to accuse him and soon he finds himself breaking into her home and stealing her treasures.  Then one night she is there and Andrew becomes one of the villains he writes about.

Joyce Carol Oates has a long history as an author whose work is prolific and on the dark side.  Along with other honors, she is a National Book Award winner.  In this novel, Andrew moves from a respected, staid middle-aged man to someone who finds himself doing things he never thought he would do.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.