 The site is free to use, but it is not without cost. If you find it useful please consider a contribution and click this link. Thank you! |
Share
Preview Book
The Weekend Retreat by Tara Laskowski ⭐⭐½
A wealthy family's vacation at their lush winery estate becomes a weekend to kill for in this deliciously twisted novel of suspense.
Preview Book
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson ⭐⭐⭐½
This is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence.
Preview Book
Tired of Winning by Jonathan Karl ⭐⭐⭐½
Donald Trump is one of history’s great losers and is dragging the Republicans down with him, argues this hard-hitting chronicle of Trump’s post-presidential doings. Drawing on his own meticulous reporting and interviews with Trump and his associates, Karl’s portrait is uncompromising in its negativity. Trump haters will find plenty of red meat here.
No Preview
Astor by Anderson Cooper ⭐⭐⭐½
The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.
Preview Book
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak ⭐⭐⭐½
It is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to continue for so long and provides essential information for young readers about a shameful period in U.S. history.
Preview Book
Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood ⭐⭐⭐½
Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin. To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone
Preview Book
Zero Days by Ruth Ware ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A woman in a race against time to clear her name and find her husband's murderer. Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect—her.
Preview Book
Never Lie by Freida McFadden ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tricia happens upon a secret room. One that contains audio transcripts from every single patient Dr. Hale has ever interviewed. As Tricia listens to the cassette tapes, she learns about the terrifying chain of events leading up to Dr. Hale's mysterious disappearance. Tricia plays the tapes one by one, late into the night. With each one, another shocking piece of the puzzle falls into place, and Dr. Adrienne Hale's web of lies slowly unravels. And then Tricia reaches the final cassette. The one that reveals the entire horrifying truth.
Preview Book
12 Months to Live by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐½
Once an NYPD cop, then a private investigator, Jane Smith is now an undefeated defense attorney who's steering a client possibly responsible for multiple murders through a headlines-making trial. She's confident and newly in love, but there are problems: she's facing a terminal diagnosis with just 14 months to live, and someone is trying to kill her.
Preview Book
The Bell in the Fog by Lev AC Rosen ⭐⭐⭐½
San Francisco, 1952. Detective Evander "Andy" Mills has started a new life for himself as a private detective—but his business hasn't exactly taken off. It turns out that word spreads fast when you have a bad reputation, and no one in the queer community trusts him enough to ask an ex-cop for help. The case will take him back to the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, and then out into the gay bars of the city, where the past rises up to meet him, like the swell of the ocean under a warship. Missing people, violent strangers, and scandalous photos that could destroy lives are a whirlpool around him, and Andy better make sense of it all before someone pulls him under for good.
Preview Book
Everyone Here Is Lying by Shari Lapena ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.
Hours later, Avery’s family declares her missing. Suddenly Stanhope doesn’t feel so safe. And William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbors become increasingly unhinged. Who took Avery Wooler?" 
Preview Book
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to continue for so long and provides essential information for young readers about a shameful period in U.S. history.
Preview Book
Sally Brady's Italian Adventure by Christina Lynch ⭐⭐⭐⭐
What if you found yourself in the middle of a war armed only with lipstick and a sense of humor? Abandoned as a child in Los Angeles in 1931, dust bowl refugee Sally Brady convinces a Hollywood movie star to adopt her, and grows up to be an effervescent gossip columnist secretly satirizing Europe's upper crust. By 1940 saucy Sally is conquering Fascist-era Rome with cheek and charm.
Preview Book
Klan War by Fergus M. Bordewich ⭐⭐½
A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil—when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK
Preview Book
Red Memory by Tania Branigan ⭐⭐⭐
During this decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976, children turned on parents, students condemned teachers, and as many as two million people died for their supposed political sins, while tens of millions were hounded, ostracized, and imprisoned. Yet in China this brutal and turbulent period exists, for the most part, as an absence; official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia. Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness. Deftly exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?
Preview Book
The Fifth Guest by Jenny Knight ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Five friends. One deadly secret. Five old university friends gather on the eve of their flatmate's memorial at a beautiful riverside house. Host Caro is as perfect as always. Shy, awkward Lily's now a bestselling author. Sports hero George loves suburban fatherhood. Bad-boy Travis only gets his highs from meditation. And gatecrasher Elle is still a troublemaker. Estranged for years, they're finally ready to reminisce over dry martinis and delicious food. But there's more than that on the menu... Because each guest is hiding a dark secret about their time at Oxford. They're all guilty of something. Is one of them guilty of murder? 
Preview Book
Flee North by Scott Shane ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"A riveting account of the extraordinary abolitionist, liberator, and writer Thomas Smallwood, who bought his own freedom, led hundreds out of slavery, and named the underground railroad, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, Scott Shane. Flee North tells the story for the first time of an American hero all but lost to history. Born into slavery, by the 1840s Thomas Smallwood was free, self-educated, and working as a shoemaker a short walk from the U.S. Capitol. He recruited a young white activist, Charles Torrey, and together they began to organize mass escapes from Washington, Baltimore, and surrounding counties to freedom in the north. At a time when Americans are rediscovering a tragic and cruel history and struggling anew with the legacy of white supremacy, this Flee North—the first to tell the extraordinary story of Smallwood—offers complicated heroes, genuine villains, and a powerful narrative set in cities still plagued by shocking racial inequity today." 
Preview Book
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Robin Miles shines in this compelling story about family, culture, and justice. The story is set in Boston against the backdrop of the 1974 protests against public school integration. Mary Pat Fennessy has lived in the Southie housing projects all her life. One summer night, her daughter Jules doesn't come home, and a young Black man is killed. As Mary Pat asks questions--and closes in on what happened--she begins to rethink everything she's been told about what separates us and what brings us together. Miles captures the dialect of the community, as well as Mary Pat's desperation and determination. 
Preview Book
You Will Own Nothing by Carol Roth ⭐⭐½
The New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur investigates what would happen if a new financial world order took hold, one in which global elites own everything and you own nothing—and yet you are somehow happy. In You Will Own Nothing¸ Roth reveals how the agendas of Wall Street, world governments, international organizations, socialist activists, and multinational corporations like Blackrock all work together to reduce the power of the dollar and prevent millions of Americans from taking control of their wealth. She shows why owning fewer assets makes you poorer and less free. This book is essential guide to protecting your hard-earned wealth for the coming generations.
No Preview
Malice Prepense by Kate Wilhelm ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Someone has murdered one of Oregon's congressmen, and it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that this politician led the field trip during which Teddy's accident occurred almost twenty years ago. Nor does it seem to be coincidental that the killer left rocks strewn about the murder site, rocks just like the ones Teddy plays with. And the only thing that's certain is that the person who cast the first of these stones is not without sin. As Wilhelm spins her riveting tale, she not only makes the legal system comprehensible and compelling but also makes her readers care about her characters, particularly the efficient yet vulnerable Barbara.
Preview Book
The Belgrade Conspiracyby Jason Kasper ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Few spy thriller clichés go unused, including the description of a female operative as not “just beautiful, but drop-dead gorgeous.” Sometimes-risible prose and thin characterizations don’t help, but Kasper’s military experience lends heft to the exciting fight scenes. Still, this is strictly middle of the road.
Preview Book
The Wager by David Grann ⭐⭐⭐½
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.
Preview Book
The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon ⭐⭐⭐½
The Quiet Tenant explores the psychological impact of Aidan’s crimes on the women in his life—and the bonds between those women that give them the strength to fight back. Both a searing thriller and an astute study of trauma, survival, and the dynamics of power, The Quiet Tenant is an electrifying debut thriller by a major talent.
Preview Book
The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff ⭐⭐⭐
Smirnoff, following Stieg Larsson and David Lagercrantz as the series’ third author, adds new maturity and depth to the two leads, offers several jaw-dropping plot twists, and draws clever—if occasionally implausible—connections between disparate characters. Fans will find this a worthy addition to the series. 
Preview Book
Against the Web by Michael Brooks ⭐⭐⭐
Brooks provides a theoretically rigorous but accessible critique of the most prominent "renegades," including Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and Brett Weinstein while also examining the social, political, and media environment that such rebels thrive in.
Preview Book
The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt ⭐⭐⭐
With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity. 
Preview Book
Simply Lies by David Baldacci ⭐⭐⭐½
Baldacci keeps the twists coming fast and furious in this tense page-turner, never losing credibility even as it takes bigger and bigger swings. Readers will fall in love with Mickey and hold their breath for her through to the very end. 
Preview Book
Moscow Exile by John Lawton ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Featuring crackling dialogue, brilliantly plotted Cold War intrigue, and the return of beloved characters, including Inspector Troy, Moscow Exile is a gripping thriller populated by larger-than-life personalities in a Cold War plot that feels strangely in tune with our present.
Preview Book
American Prometheus by Kai Bird ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A lethal shipment of military hardware. An international terrorist group on a mission of mass destruction. One man stands to forever change the course of history, unless David Rivers can stop him. David Rivers is an expert in the art of violence. Together with his team of CIA operatives, he's executed dozens of covert assassination—but this mission might turn out to be his deadliest yet. One man stands behind the transfer of high-level military hardware to an international terrorist syndicate. 
Preview Book
The House of Lincoln by Nancy Horan ⭐⭐⭐
The story of Abraham Lincoln's ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to the Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker who arrives in Lincoln's home of Springfield from Madeira, Portugal. Showing intelligence beyond society's expectations, fourteen-year-old Ana Ferreira lands a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and with the hostess duties borne by the wife of a rising political star. Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln's views on equality and the Union and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife, Mary. 
Preview Book
A Father's Objection by B. Love ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It took Naeem Cassidy ten years to get over his wife’s death and move on. Then, he found out she was still alive. Now, he has to choose between the life he had with Destiny and the life he’s built with Dijon. There is one major problem though—Destiny’s father. Because of his lies and secrets, someone has to die... and Naeem refuses to grieve for his wife again. Will his choice cause the end of his relationship with Dijon and create a war with the Black Mayhem Mafia 
Preview Book
Beethoven in the Bunker by Fred Brouwers ⭐⭐
Intriguing study of “the complex relationship between Hitler, the Nazis, and music.” In a series of capsule biographies, 
Preview Book
The Courage to Be Free by Ron DeSantis ⭐⭐⭐
This book gives a great understanding of the philosophy behind Governor DeSantis's agenda. The book is a bit self-serving, but that's understandable since he takes "arrows" from every single media outlet, as well as from the former President. Someone has to tell his story, so it might as well be himself. The book tells the story of a man who came from humble beginnings, who loves and understands the constitutional founding of the American Republic. It's a story of a man who chose to serve his country in the Military rather than chase the fortunes so many of his Yale and Harvard Law peers chose to do. 
Preview Book
Obsessed by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐½
A killer is targeting young women in every New York borough, and Det. Michael Bennett has just discovered the latest victim floating in the Hudson. It's especially scary that Bennett's eldest daughter seems to fit the victims' pattern. 
Preview Book
Code Name Blue Wren by Jim Popkin ⭐⭐⭐½
The story of Ana Montes, an intelligence analyst for the U.S. government who, probably before she joined the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985, was spying for Cuba. In 1998, the efforts of her sister, Lucy, an FBI analyst, to bring down a Cuban spy ring in Miami led to clues about a highly placed U.S. citizen working for Cuba. The FBI and DIA spent more than two years investigating, but came up short due to a lack of cooperation between the agencies. It wasn’t until they finally shared information that they identified the spy as Montes. She was arrested 10 days after 9/11, which explains the lack of headlines her capture received. Montes pleaded guilty to one count of espionage, receiving 25 years in prison. Popkin thoroughly explores her upbringing—an abusive father divorced her mother—but never really explains why she became an ardent supporter of Fidel Castro to the extent that she risked her high-level position at the DIA and ultimately her freedom. This is a must-read for espionage fans.
Preview Book
The Trump Tapes by Bob Woodward⭐⭐⭐½
As anyone who has heard Trump speak can attest, the former president can talk around a subject with the best of them, but this work puts that skill to the test. Woodward does not accept Trump's word salads as answers. Trump sounds typically brash and boastful, talking glibly about everything, often exaggerating or telling out-and-out untruths. When he does, Woodward corrects him, sometimes to his face, other times in notes to listeners. While Woodward speaks slowly and distinctly, age has clearly taken its toll, forcing him at times to e-nun-ci-ate every syllable. The work is a powerful statement about contemporary politics. 
Preview Book
The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer ⭐⭐⭐½
An action-packed account of the German plan to assassinate the leaders of the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union in Tehran in 1943. 
Preview Book
The Marriage Act by John Marrs ⭐⭐⭐
Four couples are about to discover just how impossible relationships can be when the government is monitoring every aspect of our personal lives—monitoring every word, every minor disagreement…and will use every tool in its arsenal to ensure everyone will love, honor and obey. 
Preview Book
Untouchable by Elie Honig ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A disturbing analysis of how the U.S. justice system makes it so difficult to hold the wealthy and well-connected to account for their crimes. Though Honig’s case studies include Mafia bosses, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein, his particular focus is on Donald Trump. Among factors that help to insulate elites from legal action, Honig identifies the use of lower-level actors to carry out crimes; the hiring of top lawyers who have the connections and knowledge to game the system; and prosecutors’ reluctance to bring cases against powerful criminals without an overabundance of evidence. Zeroing in on Trump, Honig details how he was protected by the Justice Department’s long-standing policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and argues that the copious evidence of Trump’s alleged crimes—including obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations, and incitement of sedition—should have resulted in an indictment soon after he left office. 
Preview Book
Central Park West by James Comey ⭐⭐⭐
The novel opens as Tony Burke, who left office tainted by a #MeToo scandal, is murdered in his Central Park West apartment. With the assassin having dressed up like Tony’s estranged wife, Kyra, to gain access to the building, Kyra herself is soon hauled up on murder charges. Meanwhile, assistant U.S. attorney Nora Carleton is prosecuting a mob case that gets derailed after her star witness tells her the mafia was involved in Burke’s death—shortly before turning up dead himself. The stakes climb as the wheels of justice churn, with Kyra’s case hanging in the balance while a team of investigators works to identify the killer who framed her. Comey draws on his vast experience in the criminal justice world to bring a sense of authenticity to the setting and plot machinations, though he’s occasionally guilty of leaning a bit too much toward education over entertainment. 
Preview Book
Victory City by Salman Rushdie ⭐⭐⭐½
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries 
Preview Book
A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Poe, who remains one of the most iconic of American writers, died under haunting circumstances that reflect the two literary genres he took to new heights. Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of death, from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder. But many of these theories are formed on the basis of the caricature we have come to associate with Poe: the gloomy-eyed grandfather of Goth, hunched over a writing desk with a raven perched on one shoulder, drunkenly scribbling his chilling masterpieces. By debunking the myths of how he lived, we come closer to understanding the real Poe—and uncovering the truth behind his mysterious death, as a new theory emerges that could prove the cause of Poe’s death was haunting him all his life. 
Preview Book
Pines by Blake Crouch ⭐⭐⭐½
One way in. No way out. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. 
Preview Book
What Have We Done by Alex Finlay ⭐⭐⭐½
Several teen residents of a group home commit an act that someone tries to kill them for 25 years later. The pals come together to try to find out who is behind the scheme. The story bounces between their time at the home and the present day. 
Preview Book
Mastering the Art of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge ⭐⭐½
Tabitha Knight, a fictional neighbor of Julia Child (yes, that Julia), finds herself at the top of the suspect list when a dead body is found in the cellar--with a note in her handwriting. Lee excels at evoking the wide-eyed wonder of this American in Paris. She balances this tone with the predictable antics of a murder mystery. Fans of the renowned American chef and Francophiles in general will enjoy this creative caper.
Preview Book
The Last Kingdom by Steve Berry ⭐⭐⭐½
Cotton Malone has discovered a plot to wrest Bavarian independence from Germany and restore the Wittelsbach monarchy. It's all based on a lost document purporting to grant King Ludwig II legal rights to land now wanted by Germany, China, and the United States. And the race to find the document is on! 
Preview Book
Worthy Opponents by Danielle Steel ⭐⭐⭐½
Spencer has no interest in outside investors meddling in her family business; her grandfather never saw the need for them, and neither does she. She refuses to be tempted by Mike’s offer, despite her big dreams of expanding the store. But when bad luck strikes, suddenly she is backed into a corner. From Danielle Steel comes a powerful novel about a woman running her family’s luxury department store and the wealthy investor who threatens to take it over.
Preview Book
So Shall You Reap by Donna Leon ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The man had been living in a converted garden home behind a decaying palazzo, where Brunetti had met him the day before. Brunetti was inquiring whether the palazzo owned by a university professor was for sale. With no official record the man even existed, Brunetti taps into Venice’s gossip chain and the memories of longtime residents to investigate. He comes to suspect that the death may be related to Italy’s complicated history and politics. Along the way, Brunetti is reminded that Venice is basically a small town where “everyone... knows something about everyone.” Brunetti’s respect for his squad, coupled with his detectives’ regard for him, plays a major part in the crime solving, while the portrait of his strong marriage and solid relationship with his family serves to reinforce his beloved character. As usual, the rich backdrop of Venice complements the well-designed plot.
Preview Book
Judas 62 by Charles Cumming ⭐⭐⭐½
JUDAS 62 has all you could want from a tense, topical and intelligent spy thriller. Thirty years after a deadly attempt to extract a Russian scientist to safety in Ukraine, master spy Lachlan Kite eludes an assassin in the streets of Dubai
Preview Book
Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica ⭐⭐⭐½
Two very different couples, Christian and Lily, Nina and Jake, become caught up in a mystery when Jake suddenly disappears and Lily is the last person to have seen him. Told from the alternating perspectives of Christian and Nina, the dual narration helps move the slow pace along and adds emotion. Unfolding conflicting accounts and dark secrets, the author tries her best to keep listeners guessing. Sadly, the narrators' earnest attempts to build suspense are stymied by the repetitive and stilted story. The implausible ending is a letdown.
Preview Book
Where the Crawads Sing by Delia Owens⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kya Clark is a young woman growing up practically on her own in the wild marshes outside Barkley Cove, a small coastal community in North Carolina. In 1969, local lothario Chase Andrews is found dead, and Kya, now 23 and known as the “Marsh Girl,” is suspected of his murder. As the local sheriff and his deputy gather evidence against her, the narrative flashes back to 1952 to tell Kya’s story. Abandoned at a young age by her mother, she is left in the care of her hard-drinking father. Unable to fit in at school, Kya grows up ignorant until a shrimper’s son, Tate Walker, befriends her and teaches her how to read. After Tate goes off to college, Kya meets Chase, with whom she begins a tempestuous relationship.
Preview Book
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley ⭐⭐⭐½
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface.
Preview Book
The Unlocking Season by Gail Bowen ⭐⭐½
On a Saturday bright with harbingers of spring, Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their family prepare to celebrate the season. Joanne's life is full, and at 60, she has been given the chance to understand a part of her history that for years was shrouded in secrecy.
Preview Book
Every City Is Every Other City by John McFetridge ⭐⭐⭐½
Gord Stewart, 40 years old, single, moved back into his suburban childhood home to care for his widowed father. But his father no longer needs care and Gord is stuck in limbo. He's been working in the movie business as a location scout for years, and when there isn't much filming, as a private eye for a security company run by ex-cops, OBC. When a fellow crew member asks him to find her missing uncle, Gord reluctantly takes the job. The police say the uncle walked into some dense woods in Northern Ontario and shot himself, but the man's wife thinks he's still alive.
Preview Book
48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister ⭐⭐
When a woman mysteriously vanishes, her sister must tally up the clues to discover her fate. Marguerite, a beautiful woman, has disappeared from her small town in Upstate New York. But is foul play involved? Or did she merely take an opportunity to get away for fun, or finally make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities? Her younger sister Gigi wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite's having seemingly vanished. The police examine the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots leaving the house, ending abruptly, and puzzle over how that can help lead to her. Gigi, not so pretty as her sister, slowly reveals her hatred for the perfect, much-loved, Marguerite. Bit by bit, like ripping the petals off a flower blossom, revelations about both sisters are uncovered.
Preview Book
The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes ⭐⭐⭐
Maya is 25 and a closet drug addict who is struggling to get clean. She also has an overfondness for alcohol. Maya is haunted by the death of her best friend, Aubrey, who died seven years earlier, when she was with Frank, a man Maya had been dating. When the older Maya sees a video of another woman dying in Frank's company, she decides to find out exactly what happened in her Berkshires hometown.
Preview Book
A Strange Habit of Mind by Andrew Klavan ⭐⭐⭐½
Cameron Winter, who once worked for a covert government entity called the Division, now a literature professor at a Midwestern university after blackmailing the dean about “things the dean wanted to keep hidden until the end of the world.” Winter is troubled by the suicide of a former student, Adam Kemp, who jumped from the roof of his San Francisco apartment building right after texting Winter, “Help me.”
Preview Book
Thirst for Justice by David R. Boyd ⭐⭐⭐
Michael MacDougall is a talented trauma surgeon whose life in Seattle is slowly unraveling. Frustrated as an ER doctor and with his marriage in trouble, he volunteers with a medical aid charity in the Congo. Disconsolate at the lives he cannot save in the desperate conditions of the region, he is shattered by a roadside confrontation with the mercenary Mai Mai that results in unthinkable losses.
Preview Book
Desert Star by Michael Connelly ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving "the Late Show" to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. For years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him—the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Ballard makes Bosch an offer: come volunteer as an investigator in her new Open-Unsolved Unit, and he can pursue his "white whale" with the resources of the LAPD behind him.
Preview Book
Bitter Paradise by Ross Pennie ⭐⭐⭐
The fellow in the surveillance photo looks like actor Javier Bardem. One man frowning at the photo says the handsome devil is a barber in Ontario, Canada. Another says he's a respected surgeon, a Syrian refugee fleeing that country's secret police. A third claims he's a mystery man involved in an outbreak of a killer polio virus. Dr. Zol Szabo, a Canadian health official and star of this confounding, slow, but damnably brilliant novel, knows the Bardem-man is all three things, and he must be found. The investigation takes Szabo through the twilight world of immigrants fleeing unbelievable horrors in the Middle East and using dodgy ploys to stay alive in Canada, a country not as friendly as it seems. The writing is masterful, but there's too much of it
Preview Book
Under an Outlaw Moon by Dietrich Kalteis ⭐⭐⭐
Under an Outlaw Moon is based on the true story of Depression-era bank robbers Bennie and Stella Mae Dickson. She's a teenage outsider longing to fit in. He's a few years older and he's trouble. They meet at a local skating rink and the sparks fly.
Preview Book
The Favor by Nora Murphy ⭐⭐⭐½
The Favor explores with compassion and depth what can happen when women pushed to the limit take matters into their own hands.
Preview Book
Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can't recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.
Preview Book
Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman ⭐⭐⭐½
Deeply reported and immersively told, this is an essential contribution to the overloaded bookshelf on Trump.
Preview Book
The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man⭐⭐⭐½
Actor, race car driver, and philanthropist Newman (1925–2008) was a deeply private man living an intensely public life; this posthumous memoir features the Hollywood legend’s own voice as he “sets things straight” and “pokes holes in the mythology” that accompanied his celebrity. Adapted from interviews taped with his friend Stewart Stern before his death.
Preview Book
Oath of Loyalty by Vince Flynn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
With President Anthony Cook convinced that Mitch Rapp poses a mortal threat to him, CIA Director Irene Kennedy is forced to construct a truce between the two men. The terms are simple: Rapp agrees to leave the country and stay in plain sight for as long as Cook controls the White House. In exchange, the administration agrees not to make any moves against him.
Preview Book
To Rescue the Republic by Bret Baier ⭐⭐⭐½
An epic history spanning the battlegrounds of the Civil War and the violent turmoil of Reconstruction to the forgotten electoral crisis that nearly fractured a reunited nation, Bret Baier's To Rescue the Republic dramatically reveals Ulysses S. Grant's essential yet underappreciated role in preserving the United States during an unprecedented period of division.
Preview Book
The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredericks⭐⭐⭐½
Betty Gow, a 26-year-old Scottish immigrant and Lindbergh family nanny, narrates this poignant crime novel , which fictionalizes the 1932 kidnapping of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr. from the family’s New Jersey home. Historical mystery fans and true crime aficionados will be well pleased.
Preview Book
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid ⭐⭐⭐
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface.
Preview Book
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington ⭐⭐⭐½
A powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps.
Preview Book
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson ⭐⭐⭐½
Short stories set in Virginia, which focus on the lives of African Americans. Questions of racial identity, post-racial society, and the legacies of slavery.
Preview Book
Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one's own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, an era-defining story of finding a home—both in one's history and in one's self.
Preview Book
Jackie and Me by Louis Bayard ⭐⭐½
An enchanting narrative of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier in which their marriage might not happen after all. The story is told from the perspective of Jack’s best friend, Lem Billings,
Preview Book
Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover ⭐⭐⭐⭐
When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she doesn't think it's love at first sight. They wouldn't even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn't want love, she doesn't have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her. Never ask about the past. Don't expect a future. They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can't handle it at all.
Preview Book
The Omega Factor by Steve Berry ⭐⭐⭐
The Ghent Altarpiece is the most violated work of art in the world. Thirteen times it has been vandalized, dismantled, or stolen. Why? What secrets does it hold? From the tranquil canals of Ghent, to the towering bastions of Carcassonne, and finally into an ancient abbey high in the French Pyrenees, Nick Lee must confront a modern-day religious crusade intent on eliminating a shocking truth from humanity's past. Success or failure—life and death—all turn on the Omega Factor.
Preview Book
The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The pace is breezy, the characters are intelligent and varied in their interests and backgrounds, and the humor is often pitched to readers who understand the vagaries of getting older.
Preview Book
Sparring Partners by John Grisham ⭐⭐⭐
Thinly developed characters and underwhelming plots mar the three entries in bestseller Grisham’s first novella collection.
Preview Book
Overkill by Sandra Brown ⭐⭐⭐½
A nicely woven plot involving fraud, murder, and life in the Kent retirement village of Coopers Chase. At the club’s regular meeting in the Jigsaw Room, the four members—Elizabeth, a retired but still well-connected British spy; Ibrahim, a well-meaning psychiatrist; Ron, a still-feisty activist for workers’ rights; and the unexpectedly shrewd Joyce, whose diary entries enliven the narrative—decide to tackle the cold case of Bethany Waites, a journalist for the local TV station whose wrecked car was found at the bottom of a cliff 10 years earlier.
Preview Book
Insomnia by Sarah Pinborough ⭐⭐⭐
Emma Averell sees her enviable existence start to implode days before she turns 40, the age at which her mother’s psychotic breakdown shattered their family. As Emma struggles with insomnia, her mind races with obsessive thoughts—what if she really is going off the rails like her mother? Increasingly exhausted, she bungles client conferences and snaps at her stay-at-home husband, Robert, and their two children. Emma loses it when an emergency call from her estranged older sister, Phoebe, tricks her into a situation that lands her in a murder investigation. She becomes convinced she’s being gaslighted by either Phoebe or Robert, who kicks her out of the house because of professed concern about the impact her deteriorating mental state is having on their kids. As she strives to figure out who’s trying to destroy her and why, the suspense becomes almost unbearable. Only a paranormal-tinged deus ex machina to tie up the unruly plot twists disappoints.
Preview Book
City on Fire by Don Winslow ⭐⭐⭐
Two criminal empires together control all of New England. Until a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire. Exploring the classic themes of loyalty, betrayal, and honor.
Preview Book
Benevolence by Julie Janson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A searing historical novel that tells a story of colonization, survival, and resistance in a way never done before—a beautiful, brilliant, and brutal reimagining of the first contact between Indigenous people and white British settlers and the far-reaching consequences for one Aboriginal girl coming of age in an unsteady and dangerous world.
Preview Book
The Measure by Nikki Erlick⭐⭐⭐⭐
How would people behave if they knew the length of their lives, asks the moving but predictable debut novel from Erlick. One night, mysterious wooden boxes appear outside every door on Earth, each holding a string, the length of which corresponds to how long its recipient will live, which the recipients begin to figure out and share on social media. Erlick introduces seemingly unconnected characters as they grapple with the news.
Preview Book
More Than Youll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez ⭐⭐⭐½
A unique drama about two women whose worlds collide through a complicated murder. Dolores Rivera lives a double life as the wife of two men--until they find out about each other. Cassie Bowman is an author in search of an excellent story, and she finds it when one of Dolores's husbands murders the other.
Preview Book
How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don’t know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check—because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.
Preview Book
Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke ⭐⭐⭐½
After the death of his daughter, a depressed, grief-stricken Aaron Holland Broussard is forced to adopt the serenity prayer and acknowledge he must accept the things he cannot change. His daughter, Fannie Mae, has passed, but her spirit lingers to guide him as he navigates hate, racism, misogyny, fanatical religion, and manifestations. In Montana, where the long and wide landscape promises open skies and freedom, Broussard sees dark, troublesome shadows, a revelation of what was and still is the brutality of human existence. Evil is manifested as Major Eugene Baker, who commanded the massacre of many Blackfeet people in 1870. Clarity is Ruby Spotted Horse, a Montana state trooper who holds evil at bay behind a door in her cellar. And hope is Fannie Mae, who precedes him in the afterlife and ensures him there is much he can still do, must do.
Preview Book
To the Nines by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cousin Vinnie, a bail-bondsman, sends Plum in search of a missing immigrant, but the tables are turned when sedative-laced darts, mysteriously delivered flowers, and creepy email messages make it clear that Plum has become the prey in a strange, deadly game. Lust, love, and family dysfunction break up the steadily intensifying tension with humor.
Preview Book
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig ⭐⭐⭐⭐
English actress Carey Mulligan narrates this wondrous audiobook about a woman's existential journey between life and death. At age 35, Nora Seed attempts suicide. Instead of dying, Nora arrives at a metaphysical library that represents all her possible existences had she made different choices. Each book transports Nora to another life, which she experiences firsthand until she feels unfulfilled. She then returns to the library to try again
Preview Book
Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen⭐⭐⭐½
A con artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp . . . Counterfeit is an entertaining, luxurious read—but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority
Preview Book
Chasing History by Carl Bernstein ⭐⭐⭐½
Chasing History opens up the world of the early 1960s as Bernstein experienced it, chasing after grisly crimes with the paper's police reporter, gathering colorful details at a John F. Kennedy campaign rally, running afoul of union rules, and confronting racial tensions as the civil rights movement gained strength. We learn alongside him as he comes to understand the life of a newspaperman, and we share his pride as he hunts down information, gets his first byline, and discovers that he has a talent for the job after all.
Preview Book
Dream Town by David Baldacci ⭐⭐⭐
It's the eve of 1953, and Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan's: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits. After a series of increasingly chilling events—mysterious phone calls, the same blue car loitering outside her house, and a bloody knife left in her sink—Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she's saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor's home . . . and Eleanor herself disappears.
Preview Book
The Missing Piece by John Lescroart ⭐⭐⭐½
Hardy, an attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area, agrees to represent Doug Rush, a man accused of murder. More than a decade earlier, Rush's daughter was raped and murdered and her boyfriend went to prison. When an exoneration committee uncovers new facts that pin the crime on someone else, the boyfriend is released. Then he's murdered, and the police suspect Rush. Private eye Abe Glitsky is asked to help clear up the mess and find the truth but the deeper he delves, the further he feels like he's moving away from his own moral path. Reader Jacques Roy does a fine job of giving each major character a distinctive voice corresponding to the mood and tone of the situation.
Preview Book
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it—the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
Preview Book
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy ⭐⭐⭐½
In My Reading Life, Conroy revisits a life of reading through an array of wonderful and often surprising anecdotes: sharing the pleasures of the local library’s vast cache with his mother when he was a boy, recounting his decades-long relationship with the English teacher who pointed him onto the path of letters, and describing a profoundly influential period he spent in Paris, as well as reflecting on other pivotal people, places, and experiences. His story is a moving and personal one, girded by wisdom and an undeniable honesty. Anyone who not only enjoys the pleasures of reading but also believes in the power of books to shape a life will find here the greatest defense of that credo.
Preview Book
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones ⭐⭐⭐½
This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.
Preview Book
Making Numbers Count by Chip Heath ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren't built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as "lots." While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. How can we translate millions and billions and milliseconds and nanometers into things we can comprehend and use?
Preview Book
Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Wisecracking bounty hunter Stephanie Plum searches for a mother who has broken a child custody bond and fled with her young daughter. The child's grandmother secured the bond and is about to lose her home. When Plum encounters a businessman/gangster named Abruzzi, a frustrated military man who tortures and plays mind games to get what he wants, the war games begin--with Plum as hostage.
Preview Book
The Omega Factor by Steve Berry ⭐⭐⭐
From the tranquil canals of Ghent, to the towering bastions of Carcassonne, and finally into an ancient abbey high in the French Pyrenees, Nick Lee must confront a modern-day religious crusade intent on eliminating a shocking truth from humanity's past. Success or failure—life and death—all turn on the Omega Factor.
Preview Book
Seven Up by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sassy bounty hunter Stephanie Plum joins a rich cast of characters, with feisty Grandma Mazur, who keeps her .38 in the cookie jar, the most endearing. Geriatric Eddie DeChooch didn't appear for his court date, which puts him on Plum's list. Lorelei King delivers accents and a variety of ages with seamless credibility. She characterizes buffoonish potheads with appropriate hipster lingo and a slow, deliberate delivery. And her rendering of Grandma Mazur, with an elderly, breathless, sometimes crackling, voice is superb. Filled with several laugh-out-loud moments, the seventh in the Plum series, never disappoints.
Preview Book
This Will Not Pass by Jonathan Martin ⭐⭐⭐
This is the authoritative account of an eighteen-month crisis in American democracy that will be seared into the country's political memory for decades to come. With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden's first year in the White House.
Preview Book
Hot Six by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
While trying to make an honest buck apprehending bond-skippers, Stephanie is shocked to learn her mentor—master bounty hunter Carlos "Ranger" Manoso—is suspected of murder. Digging through the local weapons and drug rackets, Stephanie hopes to get her man off the hook. But finding time for her other man, vice cop Joe Morelli, is getting harder each day. And it doesn't help when Grandma moves in, takes up driving lessons, and dyes her hair pink
Preview Book
E.R. Nurses by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
They save our lives every day, and we've never heard their stories. The life-or-death intensity of working on the front lines, from America's greatest unsung heroes. The compassion, the work ethic, and the selflessness of nurses ... are given the respect they deserve and captured beautifully here. James Patterson's account of the twilight world between life and death that nurses inhabit is one of the most moving things I have ever read. Around the clock, across the country, these highly skilled and compassionate men and women sacrifice and struggle for us and our families. You have never heard their true stories. Not like this. From big-city and small-town hospitals. From behind the scenes. From the heart. This book will make you laugh, make you cry, make you understand.
Preview Book
22 Seconds by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
22 seconds... until Lindsay Boxer loses her badge—or her life. SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer has guns on her mind. There's buzz of a last-ditch shipment of drugs and weapons crossing the Mexican border ahead of new restrictive gun laws. Before Lindsay can act, her top informant tips her to a case that hits disturbingly close to home. Former cops. Professional hits. All with the same warning scrawled on their bodies: You talk, you die. Now it's Lindsay's turn to choose.
Preview Book
Dream Town by David Baldacci⭐⭐⭐½
1950s murder whodunit featuring private eye Aloysius Archer. Visiting an aspiring actress friend in Los Angeles, Archer is approached by a screenwriter who fears for her life, and then disappears. His investigation leads him beyond glamorous Hollywood to Chinatown and the surrounding desert, where he crosses paths with dangerous criminals. Brittany Pressley delivers the dialogue of all the female characters. She employs stereotypical bombshell voices for most of them, falling short of the opportunity to portray depth in some multilayered women, including Archer's sharp-witted friend, Liberty. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable for noir fans
Preview Book
Burmese Days by George Orwell ⭐⭐⭐½
Colonial politics in Kyauktada, India, in the 1920s, come to a head when the European Club, previously for whites only, is ordered to elect one token native member. The deeply racist members do their best to manipulate the situation, resulting in the loss not only of reputations but of lives.
Preview Book
High Stakes by Danielle Steel ⭐⭐⭐½
Five successful women play for high stakes in their careers at a boutique literary and talent agency.
Preview Book
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James ⭐⭐⭐½
A true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings
Preview Book
The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stephen Aston is getting married again. The only problem is, he's still married to his first wife, even though she is in a care facility for dementia. But he'll take care of that easily, by divorcing her—even if his adult daughters protest. Tully and Rachel Aston look upon Heather as nothing but an interloper. Heather is the same age as Rachel and even younger than Tully. Clearly she's a golddigger and after their father's money. Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and reasons of her own for wanting to marry Stephen. With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is. But will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses...in all of them?
Preview Book
The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf ⭐⭐⭐½
The frightening experiences of Wylie Lark as she finds herself trapped in a snowstorm during the writing of her most recent book. Stuck in a quiet cabin that is a former murder site, Wylie soon discovers a child with a shaved head and no protective gear out in the snow. When she spots a vehicle on fire not far away, she realizes that her cozy dream of riding out the storm may lead her to the center of a true-crime mystery she thought she had left behind.
Preview Book
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ⭐⭐⭐½
Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media—has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 AF (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
Preview Book
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—undeterred by the pressure and prejudice of the classical music world—when a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world. When he discovers that his beat-up, family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach, and together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Without it, Ray feels like he's lost a piece of himself. As the competition approaches, Ray must not only reclaim his precious violin, but prove to himself—and the world—that no matter the outcome, there has always been a truly great musician within him.
Preview Book
Fake by Erica Katz ⭐⭐⭐½
The story of naive and mentally unstable art copyist Emma Caan. Working as a legal forger of valuable masterpieces for owners who wish to store the originals, Emma is flattered to be accepted into the jet-setting world of Russian oligarch Leonard Sobetsky, one of her clients. But soon her new life in the high-end art world spirals out of control, and she realizes that she is being used as a pawn. Arndt gives well-developed voices to a wide-ranging cast of secondary characters ranging from Emma's friends and colleagues to Leonard's Russian associates and art-world stars
Preview Book
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death. The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
Preview Book
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner ⭐⭐⭐½
Penner’s story starts strong but peters out as the engaging premise gets muddled in convenient plot turns, though the author does a good job of making two disparate stories into eventual foils for one another. This has a few things going for it, but in the end it fails to cast a spell.
Preview Book
Enough Already by Valerie Bertinelli ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Delaneys are not an ordinary family, and Joy and Stan, well-respected retired tennis coaches and parents of four near-pros, find themselves immersed in the mystery of a lifetime. Australian narrator Joy's frustration with her adult children, her husband's lament for what could have been, and the tedium of retirement, setting the stage for uncharacteristic behavior. Chaos strikes when Joy and Stan's boredom leads to a random knock on their door, and the diabolical Savannah enters, ultimately causing the Delaney family to search for their missing mother while facing their imperfections and interrelationships.
Preview Book
Red-Handed by Peter Schweizer ⭐⭐⭐½
That the Chinese government seeks to infiltrate American institutions is hardly surprising. What is wholly new, however, are the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Exhaustively researched, crisply told, and chilling, Red-Handed will expose the nexus of power between the Chinese government and the American elites who do its bidding.
Preview Book
One Damn Thing After Another by William P. Barr ⭐⭐⭐
The former attorney general provides a candid account of his historic tenures serving two vastly different presidents, George H.W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.
Preview Book
Freezing Order by Bill Browder ⭐⭐⭐⭐
At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one of the most dangerous and ruthless villains in the world.
Preview Book
Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cursed with a disastrous new hair color and unable to shake Lula-a 230-pound former prostitute and bounty hunter wannabe-Stephanie must find Mo Bedemier, Trenton's most beloved citizen, before it's too late. With the body count rising, Stephanie struggles to stay one clue ahead of gun-toting drug dealers. Fast-paced, impudently funny, and screaming with suspense
Preview Book
Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship. Gina Apostol's debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution. It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos.
Preview Book
My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura ⭐⭐⭐½
What transforms a person into a killer? Could it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime. Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, revealing with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer.
Preview Book
The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christi⭐⭐⭐⭐
In Christie's clever and beautifully crafted tale, Detective Hercule Poirot receives an urgent letter from Paul Renauld summoning him to France. Upon their arrival, Poirot and his companion, Arthur Hastings, find they are too late. Plus, to complicate things further, certain facts just don't add up.
Preview Book
The Cage by Bonnie Kistler ⭐⭐⭐½
This gripping thriller begins with two women getting stuck in an office elevator together. When the elevator finally opens, one of them is dead. The story is told from two points of view: Shay, the surviving woman, and Barrett, her employer. Shay is determined to prove her innocence by providing evidence that suggests that the other woman committed suicide, while Barrett has tampered with evidence regarding his own agenda to prove that Shay has murdered her colleague. Although only fiction, this story dives headfirst into the corporate world of common white privilege and corruption that often surrounds lawyers and businesspeople. In addition, it sheds light on the sexism experienced by women and the racism experienced by people of color through the eyes of both white protagonists, regardless of their stance.
Preview Book
Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton ⭐⭐⭐½
ICountry music legend Parton’s strong debut, an exhilarating rags-to-riches story coauthored with bestseller Patterson (The President Is Missing with Bill Clinton), revolves around the troubled past of plucky singer/songwriter AnnieLee Keyes. AnnieLee’s plan is to “get the hell out of Texas” and hitchhike to Nashville, Tenn., where she hopes to start her career as a performer. In Nashville, AnnieLee encounters ruthless, predatory agents and managers, but she also meets positive role models, notably Ruthanna Ryder, “one of country music’s grandest queens,” who takes AnnieLee under her wing. Never mind that the mystery element runs a distant second to the story of AnnieLee making good in Nashville. Parton fans will relish this timeless fairy tale, which displays the singer’s lively way with words and draws liberally from her experience in the music business.
Preview Book
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Delaneys are not an ordinary family, and Joy and Stan, well-respected retired tennis coaches and parents of four near-pros, find themselves immersed in the mystery of a lifetime. Australian narrator Joy's frustration with her adult children, her husband's lament for what could have been, and the tedium of retirement, setting the stage for uncharacteristic behavior. Chaos strikes when Joy and Stan's boredom leads to a random knock on their door, and the diabolical Savannah enters, ultimately causing the Delaney family to search for their missing mother while facing their imperfections and interrelationships.
Preview Book
The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz ⭐⭐⭐½
Everyone has the same questions about best friends Owen and Luna: What binds them together so tightly? Why weren’t they ever a couple? And why do people around them keep turning up dead? Masterfully plotted, The Accomplice is both a keep-you-guessing mystery and a keenly and tenderly observed character study.
Preview Book
Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell ⭐⭐⭐½
Scarpetta has become the chief medical examiner of Virginia, where she has run-ins with rivals from the early days of her career. Ericksen's relentless portrayal accurately reflects Scarpetta's hunt for a possible serial killer in a Beltway suburb. Attacks keep hitting closer and closer to Scarpetta's own family, still reeling from devastating pandemic losses. She also carries out a virtual examination of a crime scene at a top-secret space station. Cutting-edge science, politics, and chilling crimes make for a thrilling ride.
Preview Book
One for the Money by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stephanie Plum of Trenton, N.J., a recently laid-off lingerie buyer who has no job, no car and no furniture. She does have a hamster, a deranged grandmother, two caring parents and several pairs of biking shorts and sports bras. Finding work with her cousin Vinnie, she becomes a bond hunter and scrounges money enough to buy a gun, a Chevy Nova and some Mace. Her first assignment is to locate a cop accused of murder. Joe Morelli grew up in Stephanie's neighborhood. Possessed of legendary charm, he relieved Stephanie of her virginity when she was 16 (she later ran over him with a car). In her search, Stephanie catches her prey, loses him and grills a psychotic prizefighter, the employer of the man Morelli shot. She steals Morelli's car and then installs an alarm so he can't steal it back. Resourceful and tough, Stephanie has less difficulty finding her man than deciding what she wants to do with him once she's got him. While the link between the fighter and the cop isn't clear until too late in the plot, Evanovich's debut is a delightful romp and Stephanie flaunts a rough-edged appeal.
Preview Book
2034 by Elliot Ackerman ⭐⭐⭐½
A conflict between the United States, Iran, Russia, and China begins with a cyberattack and builds into a doomsday scenario. The world witnesses the destruction of American cities, and a culture of reliance on passive technology may be to blame. The ensemble performers skillfully enhance the complicated premise with absorbing clarity befitting the military setting. They effectively weave together characters who seem only obliquely connected at first but who eventually converge.
Preview Book
Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Stephanie Plum, the sassiest, spunkiest female bounty hunter in America (or at least New Jersey) is back to take on her second case. She's armed with attitude and outrageous fashion sense-not to mention stun guns, defense sprays, killer flashlights, and her trusty .38-and all the determination a neophyte bounty hunter can muster.
Preview Book
The Defense Lawyer by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐
For more than a decade, Barry Slotnick never lost a case—no matter how notorious or dangerous his clients.Everyone deserves the best defense. Known for his sharp mind, sharp suits, and bold courtroom strategies, Bronx-native Barry Slotnick is known as the best criminal lawyer in the US. He calls himself "Liberty's Last Champion."
Preview Book
Find Me by Alafair Burke ⭐⭐⭐½
Alafair Burke's latest propulsive thrill-ride is a suspenseful, twisty mystery about memory, friendship and secrets. A page-turner of the highest orde. The disappearance of a young woman leaves her best friend reeling and an NYPD homicide detective digging into her own past in this twisty mystery about the power of female friendships.
Preview Book
The Princess Spy by Larry Loftis ⭐⭐⭐
As exciting as any spy novel/, The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS's most daring World War II spies before marrying into European nobility.
Preview Book
World Travel by Anthony Bourdain ⭐⭐⭐
IA guide to some of the world's most fascinating places, as seen and experienced by writer, television host, and relentlessly curious traveler Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from the hidden pockets of his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to Tanzania's utter beauty and the stunning desert solitude of Oman's Empty Quarter—and many places beyond. In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places—in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid, World Travel provides essential context that will help readers further appreciate the reasons why Bourdain found a place enchanting and memorable.
Preview Book
King Richard by Michael Dobbs ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A riveting account of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a president Structured like a classical tragedy with a uniquely American twist, King Richard is an epic, deeply human story of ambition, power, and betrayal.
Preview Book
The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A community's past sins rise to the surface in New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain's The Last House on the Street when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery.
Preview Book
The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A community's past sins rise to the surface in New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain's The Last House on the Street when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery.
Preview Book
The Family by Naomi Krupitsky ⭐⭐⭐½
Two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn itself. Two daughters. Two families. One inescapable fate. Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, loud and untamed. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends since birth, they live in the shadow of their fathers’ unspoken community: the Family. Sunday dinners gather them each week to feast, discuss business, and renew the intoxicating bond borne of blood and love. But the disappearance of Antonia’s father drives a whisper-thin wedge between the girls as they grow into women, ...
Preview Book
We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz ⭐⭐⭐½
This book is every suspense lover's dream and it kept me up way too late turning pages. . . . A novel with crazy twists and turns that will have you ditching your Friday night plans for more chapters. A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this "eerie psychological thriller . . . with alluring locales, Hitchcockian tension, and possibly the best pair of female leads since Thelma and Louise
Preview Book
Falling by T. J. Newman ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A plane has been hijacked. Bill, the pilot, is faced with a choice: Crash the plane, or his wife and two children will be murdered. The story jumps around from the plane to the kidnapper holding Bill's family to events in the past that shaped the characters. Weber sounds authoritative as Bill speaks to his passengers and keeps his emotions in check as he develops a plan to ensure the safety of his family and those on the flight. Sam, the terrorist, is driven by revenge. In spite of some holes in plot and character development,
Preview Book
Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara ⭐⭐⭐
The year is 1944, and Japanese- American Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from the Manzanar internment camp in California. They are sent to resettle in Chicago, where they learn of the death of Aki's beloved older sister, Rose. Unconvinced of the police's ruling of Rose's death as a suicide, Aki is determined to figure out what really happened. Listeners experience everything through Aki's eyes, and narrator Hiroto captures her drive and persistence. While Hiroto's expression is subtle and could use more energy, listeners will be intrigued by the rich period details, elegant prose, and absorbing story.
Preview Book
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield ⭐⭐⭐½
We might have expected him to draw on his expertise to tell a story involving astronauts and space travel, but to set the story during the Cold War (1973, to be precise)? Interesting. To use Apollo 18, one of several canceled NASA missions to the moon, as its backdrop? Intriguing. To incorporate real people (flight director Gene Kranz, CIA director James Schlesinger) into the story? Clever. To incorporate a murder mystery and a race between nations to find a rare treasure on the moon? Gutsy. Rich in the kind of scientific and technical details. the book also features very well drawn characters, natural-sounding dialogue, and a story that leads the reader to expect a spectacular conclusion (and delivers it).
Preview Book
Another Kind of Eden by James Lee Burke ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The latest installment in James Lee Burke's masterful Holland family saga, Another Kind of Eden is both riveting and one of Burke's most ambitious works to date. It dismantles the myths of both the twentieth-century American West and the peace-and-love decade, excavating the beauty and idealism of the era to show the menace and chaos that lay simmering just beneath the surface.
Preview Book
The Therapist by B.A. Paris ⭐⭐⭐½
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they've dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive... As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem...
Preview Book
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pregnant and uncertain of her future, a desperate Charlie investigates her cousin's disappearance during World War II--a probe that soon uncovers secrets about a vast network of female spies during World War I.
Preview Book
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fifteen-year-old Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers. She and her boyfriend made a teenaged golden couple. She was days away from an idyllic summer vacation with her whole life ahead of her. And then she was gone. Now, her mother Laurel Mack is trying to put her life back together. It's been ten years since her daughter disappeared, seven years since her marriage ended, and only months since the last clue in Ellie's case was unearthed. So when she meets an unexpectedly charming man in a cafe, she is surprised at how quickly their flirtation develops into something deeper. Before she knows it, she's meeting Floyd's daughters-and his youngest, Poppy, takes her breath away. Looking at her is like looking at Ellie. And now, the unanswered questions
Preview Book
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this powerful and extraordinarily timely social history, Pulitzer winner Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns) investigates the origins, evolution, and inner workings of America’s “shape-shifting, unspoken” caste system. Tracking the inception of the country’s race-based “ranking of human value
Preview Book
Flying Angels by Danielle Steel ⭐⭐⭐½
Audrey Parker’s life changes forever when Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7, 1941. Her brother, a talented young Navy pilot, had been stationed there, poised to fulfill their late father’s distinguished legacy. Fresh out of nursing school with a passion and a born gift for helping others, both Audrey and her friend Lizzie suddenly find their nation on the brink of war. Driven to do whatever they can to serve, they enlist in the Army and embark on a new adventure as flight nurses. 
Preview Book
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author Michelle Zauner's poignant memoir about her mother's life and death. She writes about their complicated relationship, her Korean-American identity, the uneven terrain of grief, and, perhaps most vividly, food. There's a beautiful sureness when she's describing food: the Korean dishes her mother cooked, learning to make kimchi after her mother's death, her painful attempts to enjoy a meal out with her father in the midst of their grief. By turns funny, heartbreaking, and self-reflective, this poignant memoir captures all the messy truths of a mother-daughter relationship. 
Preview Book
Cold Mourning by Brenda Chapman ⭐⭐⭐½
It’s a week before Christmas when wealthy businessman Tom Underwood disappears into thin air — with more than enough people wanting him dead. New police recruit Kala Stonechild, who has left her northern Ontario detachment to join a specialized Ottawa crime unit, is tasked with returning Underwood home in time for the holidays. Stonechild, who is from a First Nations reserve, is a lone wolf who is used to surviving on her wits. Her new boss, Detective Jacques Rouleau, has his hands full controlling her, his team, and an investigation that keeps threatening to go off track. 
Preview Book
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A historical novel on the life of Belle da Costa Greene. Born Belle Marion Greener--daughter of activist Richard Greener, Harvard's first Black graduate--she "passes" as a white Portuguese woman while working as the personal librarian of financier J.P. Morgan. Belle is an astute observer of the wealthy class. Her shrewd intellect, charm, and, most of all, her boldness enable her to become an important figure in the male-dominated field of arts acquisitions. Miles creates vibrant portrayals of each Morgan family member, as well as a m�lange of New York and European society, affording listeners an illuminating picture of the opulence, prejudices, and restraints of this insular social milieu. 
Preview Book
Taste by Stanley Tucci ⭐⭐⭐⭐
From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.? Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner. 
Preview Book
The Last Checkmate by Gabriella Saab ⭐⭐⭐
A revenge plot set amidst the horrors of the Holocaust. In April 1945, three months after Maria Florkowska escaped from Auschwitz, she returns to the camp armed with a gun in order to challenge Nazi officer Lagerführer Fritzsch, who’d tormented her there, to a chess match. Flashbacks provide the backstory of their relationship: At 14, Maria, a chess prodigy, joined the Polish resistance in Warsaw, delivering blank baptismal certificates to Jews so they could avoid being sent to the death camps. On one mission, she panicked when she was confronted by German officers, and, as a result, she and her family were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. There, she was separated from them, eventually learning they were executed. She was spared because Fritzsch had been sufficiently impressed by Maria’s chess playing to allow her to survive as his regular playing partner. But when Maria learns that Fritzsch may have personally executed her family, she plots her retribution. Knowing from the outset that Maria survived the camp reduces the tension in the flashback segments, though they serve to set up a powerful crescendo. 
Preview Book
The Cellist by Daniel Silva ⭐⭐⭐
Allon takes on the evil Russian empire, which is undermining democracy while blatantly robbing its own people. His weapon is a beautiful, brave, and talented cellist who is working for a bank known as the Russian Laundromat. 
Preview Book
Bourdain by Laurie Woolever ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An unprecedented behind-the-scenes view into the life of Anthony Bourdain from the people who knew him best When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. His impact was outsized and his legacy has only grown since his death. Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain’s life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. 
Preview Book
The Judge's List by John Grisham ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A frightened professor who's trying to stop a serial killer who murdered her father and confident, skeptical judicial investigator Lacy Stoltz. All the victims have ties to Judge Ross Bannock. As the story homes in on the judge, we get a sense of the routine lives of his victims and the equally routine process of his serial murders. With mockery and then paranoia entering the judge's thoughts as the probe comes closer. 
Preview Book
State of Terror by Louise Penny ⭐⭐⭐½
Former presidential candidate/secretary of state/senator Clinton joins forces with top-notch mystery writer Penny to craft a story featuring a woman politician who joins a rival's administration as--you guessed it--secretary of state in a world undermined by the previous administration's bumbling. Terrorist attacks are breaking out everywhere, and the new secretary of state must put together a team to ferret out a conspiracy aimed directly at the U.S. government. 
Preview Book
Forward by Andrew Yang ⭐⭐⭐½
A lively and bold blueprint for moving beyond the "era of institutional failure" by transforming our outmoded political and economic systems to be resilient to twenty-first-century problems, from the popular entrepreneur, bestselling author, and political truth-teller Preview Book
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles ⭐⭐⭐⭐br />
A precocious 8-year-old, dreams of traveling to California on America's first transcontinental roadway, the Lincoln Highway. After his brother is released from reform school, they hit the road, but life takes more turns than any roadway ever could, and the two Nebraska farm boys begin a series of adventures involving sundry characters.
Preview Book
The Guest List by Lucy Foley ⭐⭐⭐⭐br />
A wedding taking place between an ambitious magazine publisher and a reality television star on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland, with friends and family in attendance. They all have secrets, and it only takes a few days of drinking games, isolation, and resentments to bring every murky feeling to the surface. The island and the ancient folly where the wedding party stays are themselves characters, adding to the feeling of almost supernatural mystery and the unease that something is lurking in the shadows and getting ready to strike.
Preview Book
Peril by Bob Woodward ⭐⭐⭐½
This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with vivid, eyewitness accounts of what really happened. 
Preview Book
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard ⭐⭐⭐½
In this timely thriller, Ciara and Oliver meet at a Dublin supermarket just as COVID-19 descends and, once lockdown is imposed, decide to move in together. Fifty-six days after they first meet, the police arrive at their apartment to find a rapidly decomposing body. Who's dead, and why? 
Preview Book
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz ⭐⭐⭐½
When failing novelist Jake Bonner hears that one of his MFA students has died, he steals the plot from the student's novel in progress and enjoys momentous success. But he soon finds himself threatened with exposure--or something worse. Jake's purloined storyline features a much-heralded twist, and author Jean Hanff Korelitz has a few cunning twists up her own sleeve. This is one of those can't-stop-listening puzzlers that may not have you on the edge of your seat but will certainly keep you at wit's end for almost 11 diverting and satisfying listening hours.
Preview Book
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams ⭐⭐⭐½
Do words mean different things to men and women? That is the question at the heart of Williams' thoughtful and gentle first novel based on original research in the Oxford English Dictionary archives and set during the women's suffrage movement in England. Motherless Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, the garden shed in the back of the house where her father works for the Scots-born lexicographer James Murray and his monk-like team, who are collecting words for the first edition of the OED. "Instead of storing shovels and rakes, the shed stored words." Some slips of paper carrying words are misplaced or discarded, and it is these "lost" words that Esme is determined to rescue from certain oblivion. The words that resonate with her range from the profane to the political. As Esme confronts sexism in her daily life, she finds solace in the meaning and significance of "women's words," which address the female experience. A lexicographer's dream of a novel, this is a lovely book to get lost in, an imaginative love letter to dictionaries.
Preview Book
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In Dave’s suspenseful latest (after Hello Sunshine), a Bay Area woman copes with her husband’s sudden disappearance. Owen Michaels, a coder for a prominent tech company, vanishes just before his boss is arrested for corruption, leaving his 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, over half a million dollars in cash. Bailey and her stepmother, Hannah Hall, aren’t close, but they work together to uncover what made Owen flee, convinced he is innocent. Still, Hannah remains uncertain, and after she remembers how a man claimed to have recognized Owen from high school in Austin, Tex., despite Owen having said he’s from the East Coast, Hannah and Bailey travel there in hopes of triggering Bailey’s early childhood memories. Bailey does remember Texas, though her memories don’t track with what Owen had told both of them. Meanwhile, a U.S. Marshal who’s familiar with Owen’s past encourages Hannah to cooperate as Hannah and Bailey find themselves in danger. The first two-thirds are riveting, with mysteries unspooled at a steady pace and believable stepfamily angst, but unfortunately the final act slips into some loopy turns.
Preview Book
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Runaway humor sustains an otherwise grim story in Austin’s exuberant debut. After a car accident in which 27-year-old Gilda breaks her arm, she visits an emergency room where she’s a frequent patient, then responds to an ad offering free mental health support at a church. There, a priest mistakes her for a job applicant, and she doesn’t correct him. After the interview, Gilda accidentally becomes a receptionist, taking over for the late Grace Moppet, who may have been the victim of a homicidal nurse. As the receptionist, Gilda rapidly falls prey to impostor syndrome, a problem she faced during her last job as a bookseller (“I didn’t really get 1984 and... I hate poetry”). Meanwhile, Gilda, an atheist and a lesbian, makes awkward attempts to masquerade as a good Catholic, mistaking communion wafers for crackers, trying to understand hymns, catechism, baptism, and the blessed sacrament of confession. The plot thickens as Gilda responds to emails from one of her predecessor’s friends as Grace. What starts out as genuinely bleak affair, with a depressed Gilda considering suicide, becomes a brisk story underpinned by a vibrant cast.
Preview Book
Hatchet Man by Elie Honig ⭐⭐⭐
A former federal and state prosecutor now serving as a CNN legal analyst, Honig argues that the two key qualities of a good prosecutor are credibility and independence--qualities that William Barr did not exhibit as an attorney general.
Preview Book
First Friends by Gary Ginsberg ⭐⭐⭐⭐
For a President, having friends teems with difficulties. Are they friendly because they really do love you, or are they merely after proximity to perceived presidential power? Worse yet, are they trying to turn their relationship with the nation's leader into personal gain? Some presidents have nevertheless had very striking friendships over their lives, people they could rely on and who sometimes conveyed uncomfortable truths.
Preview Book
Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena ⭐⭐⭐⭐
After a particularly contentious dinner with their three adult children, Fred and Sheila Merton are murdered in cold blood at their home in a wealthy, upstate New York neighborhood. Immediately, the children begin to suspect each other and those in their orbit: the longtime housekeeper, who was also listed in the will; a bitter aunt who has always disliked them; as well as others who may have their eye on the Mertons' vast estate. Everyone has a motive, and, as alibis begin slipping away, the Merton children become increasingly suspicious and accusatory of each other. This story is fast paced and character-driven, with the points of view bouncing back and forth between the Merton children as well as among other central characters. More of a murder mystery than a psychological thriller, this ensnaring story will please readers
Preview Book
Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig ⭐⭐⭐½
The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming mismanagement of the Obama and Trump years, right up to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. Bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today—from a toxic work culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders, who put protecting the agency’s once-hallowed image before fixing its flaws. But the Secret Service wasn’t always so troubled.
Preview Book
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A San Francisco homicide detective traumatized by personal tragedy and the many horrors she's encountered returns to Mendocino, once her childhood sanctuary, only to be drawn into the case of a missing girl and the unresolved mysteries of her own past. "For as long as I could remember, I'd had reasons to disappear," Anna Hart muses. "I was an expert at making myself invisible." Orphaned at 8 and reared in a series of foster homes, this police detective has an unwavering commitment to the cases of missing and murdered children and an uncanny "radar for victims." Then her own family is shattered by a death she might have prevented. Anna flees to Mendocino, where a foster family once provided not only love, but also survival lessons and where Anna agrees to help a local sheriff--also a childhood friend--as he investigates the case of a teenage girl who seems to have been abducted. But the disappearance of Cameron Curtis recalls for Anna a more distant Mendocino mystery: the vanishing of a childhood friend of hers in 1972. And when two more girls are abducted shortly after Cameron--one of them the real-life Polly Klaas--the stage seems set for a predictable serial killer hunt. But McLain largely avoids that well-trodden path to craft instead a psychological thriller that deftly evokes both the entrancing landscape of the Mendocino hills and the rough terrain of shattered lives. "No one can save anyone," the haunted Anna laments at the outset, but the novel's convincing outcome, while grimly realistic, permits her to think otherwise. Most memorable of all are the girls, past and present, who emerge here not as convenient victims but as vulnerable, believable characters. A muted yet thrilling multilayered mystery enriched by keen psychological and emotional insight.
Preview Book
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey ⭐⭐⭐⭐
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book. "This is an approach book," writes McConaughey, adding that it contains "philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life." Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: "When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze"; "Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate." Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Tour?, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories--which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz's recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright--of his debut in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he's an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey's prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock 'n' roll, and "chicks," and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: "Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more." It's clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card-ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons. A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey's life and thought.
Preview Book
Nine Days by Paul Kendrick ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A trumped-up traffic case endangered Martin Luther King Jr. and transformed America, according to this probing if sometimes overwrought study. Father and son journalists Stephen and Paul Kendrick (Douglass and Lincoln) explore an October 1960 episode in which the civil rights activist was jailed for leading antisegregation sit-ins in Atlanta and then sentenced to four months in Reidsville State Prison for driving without a Georgia license. (He had an Alabama license.) His incarceration sparked an uproar and pleas for presidential candidates John Kennedy and Richard Nixon to intervene. According to the authors, Kennedy’s actions, including a sympathy call to King’s wife and quiet lobbying of Georgia politicians to release King, were made out of pragmatic considerations rather than idealistic principles, yet they won him crucial Black votes. Meanwhile, Nixon courted Southern whites by avoiding the issue. The Kendricks argue cogently that the episode inaugurated the modern racial divide between Democrats and Republicans, though they overhype the unlikely possibility that King might have been assassinated at Reidsville. Still, King is shown in an unusually intimate and human light—hesitant, fearful, unhappily girding himself for the ordeal of prison. The result is a revealing take on a watershed moment in American politics and in King’s personal journey.
Preview Book
Murder of Innocence by James Pattersonn ⭐⭐⭐½
Mark Putnam is a rookie FBI agent given his first assignment in a remote part of Kentucky, a land of coal miners and meth dealers. Within his first months on the job, a young female informant named Susan Smith helps him make a big break in an important case. Rumors begin circulating that the agent and his informant are having an affair. After Susan starts telling people that she is pregnant with the FBI agent's baby, she suddenly disappears. .
Preview Book
The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell ⭐⭐⭐⭐
a ruminative, anecdotal account of what led up to the deadliest air raid of WWII: the firebombing of Tokyo by U.S. forces in March 1945. Expanding on a recent multiepisode arc of his Revisionist History podcast, Gladwell begins with the development in the 1920s of the Norden bombsight, which gave pilots the ability to aim at specific targets, rather than drop their bombs indiscriminately. A group of young U.S. Army Air Corps pilots including Haywood Hansell enthusiastically endorsed the bombsight and other new aviation technologies and their potential for reducing casualties. Hansell eventually took charge of U.S. bomber units in England during WWII, and used “precision bombing” techniques to target German factories and supply lines. But when he arrived on the Mariana Islands to command the U.S. air attack on Japan in 1944, bad weather and the jet stream near Tokyo made precision bombing impossible. After refusing to launch a full-scale napalm attack, Hansell was replaced by Gen. Curtis LeMay, who directed the raid on Tokyo that killed an estimated 100,000 people. Gladwell provides plenty of colorful details and poses intriguing questions about the morality of warfare, but this history feels more tossed off than fully fledged.
Preview Book
The President's Daughter by Bill Clinton ⭐⭐⭐
A disgraced former American president, a teenager snatched from safety by a dangerous man, a father who will risk everything he has left to save his daughter--although the latest from the marketing superduo of Patterson and Clinton is not strictly a sequel to The President Is Missing (2018), it does carry over many of that novel's themes and settings. Matthew Keating, who was a Navy SEAL before he was president, was pushed out of office after his first term by his aggressive, conniving VP, who capitalized on a highly publicized raid on a terrorist compound that cost innocent lives. Now Keating discovers he's being targeted by those same terrorists, and they make their first move by abducting his teenage daughter. It's painfully obvious what's going to happen next--Keating will draw on his SEAL skills to get his daughter back--but the authors throw in enough action to keep things moving, and Keating is an interesting enough guy to keep us rooting for him. Not a great thriller, but a notch or two above serviceable.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Three words--Patterson and Clinton.
Preview Book
Save Me from Dangerous Men by S. A. Lelchuk ⭐⭐⭐½
First-novelist Lelchuk's main character, Nikki Griffin, is cut somewhat from the same cloth as Thackeray's Becky Sharp. She is a young woman who knows what she wants out of life and thinks she knows how to get it. Except that instead of money and favor, she seeks revenge. Nikki was adopted by a librarian after her parents were murdered, and found solace between the covers of an extraordinary range of books. After college, she opened a bookstore, and her exchanges with her customers are the stuff that superb readers' advisory is made of. She genuinely enjoys this part of her life, even though it exists as a front for her private-investigation work, which consists mainly of tracking down men who hurt women and showing them what it feels like to be hurt and helpless. Dangerous men. It gets nasty. Nikki is a dangerous woman, sort of a Lisbeth Salander, but with a lot more heart. When she takes a legitimate (paying) case to maintain her cover, she finds there is more involved than a tech company's disgruntled employee selling off top-secret code. Soon enough, the case turns deadly, and Lelchuk takes readers on a rock-'em-sock-'em motorcycle ride to a surprising conclusion.
Preview Book
Find You First by Linwood Barclay ⭐⭐⭐⭐
At the start of this suspenseful, expertly paced thriller from bestseller Barclay (Elevator Pitch), two people identifying themselves as police bang on the door of 21-year-old Todd Cox, who runs phone scams targeting the elderly out of his trailer home near Springfield, Mass. Eager to appear innocent, Cox lets them in, only to discover they’re frauds. The fake cops inject Cox with a lethal drug before sealing him in a body bag and sanitizing the place and the surrounding area. One of them comments, “Two down. Seven to go.” Flash back three weeks. Miles Cookson, a Connecticut software millionaire, has been diagnosed with incurable Huntington’s disease. As Huntington’s is genetic, Cookson decides to use his affluence to bribe a desperate employee of the sperm bank he donated to decades earlier to trace any possible children, both to warn them that they may carry fatal genes and to name them in his will. The list he gets contains nine names, including Cox’s, hinting at a link to the initial homicide.
Preview Book
Later by Stephen King ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Teenager Jamie Conklin warns the reader at the outset that "this is a horror story." He's right--we learn in the opening chapter that Jamie can see dead people, sometimes with innards on display--but King's beguiling short novel is really more of a genre-bender, combining the horror with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and an old-school crime thriller. There's also a nifty publishing subplot involving Jamie's literary-agent mother, Tia, whose struggling business (she lost her savings when a Ponzi scheme imploded) depends on the continued output of a best-selling author of historical romances. Jamie would prefer to keep his eyes closed to dead people, but when his mother and her lover, police detective Liz, both in serious jams, are forced to admit the teenager is telling the truth about his special ability, Jamie is inveigled into doing some paranormal sleuthing. Cue more innards. But there are also relationship issues between Tia and Liz, leading to an even bigger jam (with demons) for Jamie. In his signature style, King keeps the narrative cantering along, mixing lots of pop culture into the flow and building Jamie into a witty and thoroughly empathetic lead
Preview Book
While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams ⭐⭐⭐½
A progressive superstar pens her first political thriller. Anyone who follows the news knows Abrams as a politician and voting rights activist. She's less well known as a novelist. Using the pseudonym Selena Montgomery, Abrams has published several works of romantic suspense. Her new novel begins when Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn falls into a coma. His clerk Avery Keene is shocked to discover that her boss has made her his legal guardian and granted her power of attorney. The fate of one of the most powerful men in the world is in her hands--and her life is in danger. Abrams gives us nefarious doings in the world of biotech, a president with autocratic tendencies and questionable ethics, and a young woman struggling to unravel a conspiracy while staying one step ahead of the people who want her out of the way. Unfortunately, the author doesn't weave these intriguing elements into an enjoyable whole. Abrams makes some odd word choices, such as this: "The intricate knot she had twisted into her hair that morning bobbed cunningly as she neared her office." The adverb cunningly is mystifying, and Abrams uses it in a similar way later on. There are disorienting shifts in point of view. And Abrams lavishes a great deal of attention on details that simply don't matter, which makes the pace painfully slow. This is a fatal flaw in a suspense novel, but it may not be the most frustrating aspect of this book. For a protagonist who has gotten where she is by being smart, Avery makes some stunningly poor decisions. For example, the fact that she has a photographic memory is an important plot point and is clearly a factor in Justice Wynn's decision to enlist her help. When she finds a piece of paper upon which is printed a long string of characters and the words "BURN UPON REVIEW," Avery memorizes the lines of numbers and letters--and then, even though she knows she's being surveilled, she snaps a shot of the paper with her phone, thereby making the whole business of setting it on fire quite pointless. More of a curiosity for political junkies than a satisfying story of international intrigue.
Preview Book
Northern Spy by Flynn Berry ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Berry juxtaposes the pleasures, wonder, and frustrations of life with a baby against a journalist's life in contemporary Northern Ireland. Terrorism first encroaches on Tessa Daly's life as a single mother when she sees her sister, Marian, on TV donning a ski mask to rob a bank with IRA members. Baby care and work fade to insignificance as Tessa scrambles to determine where her sister is, whether she was kidnapped by the terrorists and forced to do take part in the robbery, and how to get her home. That's just the start of this twisting thriller, though, as Tessa becomes far more involved with the terrorists' cause than she ever planned, risking her life to save all she loves. Edgar-winning Berry (Under the Harrow, 2016) unobtrusively uses Tessa's agonizing journey to portray life in the IRA and the nonchalance of the British forces toward Northern Ireland's locals, in the process dropping readers headfirst into the emotions of living in conflict. Berry's portrayal of Irish life is uncannily accurate; give this to all who love an emotional thriller, but also to Irish and Irish American patrons seeking a no-shamrocks look at Ireland in the not-so-distant past.
Preview Book
We Begin at the End by Chris Whitakert ⭐⭐⭐½
When Vincent King accidentally killed young Sissy Radley, he was convicted of murder and, as a 15-year-old, sent to a prison for adult men. Vincent's life wasn't the only one ruined; his best friend, Walk, and his girlfriend, Star, Sissy's older sister, were also affected. Thirty years later, Walk is the ineffectual chief of police of Cape Haven, the small coastal California town he never left. He looks after Star, who is struggling with addiction, and Star's two children (whose biological father is out of the picture): 13-year-old Duchess, who is tough as nails and is the main caretaker of her sibling, five-year-old Robin. When Vincent is released from prison and returns to Cape Haven, it's a changed landscape. Unscrupulous developer Dickie Darke is gobbling up the coastal homes and messing with Star and her family; Walk hides a secret about his health. Then Star is killed, and Vincent is accused of her murder. He refuses to defend himself, so Walk sets out to prove his friend's innocence. Meanwhile, the Radley children are sent far away to live with relatives, but Duchess knows that Darke will come after her. VERDICT Stubbornly loyal Walk and worldly-wise Duchess are complex, well-developed characters, each searching for truth and justice.
Preview Book
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevi ⭐⭐⭐⭐
When eight-year-old Beth Harmon's parents are killed in an automobile accident, she is placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more—and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother's tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted.
At thirteen, Beth wins the chess tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the US Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie in The Hustler, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the US champion—and Russia awaits.
Fast-paced and elegantly written, The Queen's Gambit is a thriller masquerading as a chess novel—one that's sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.
Preview Book
The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan ⭐⭐⭐⭐
WWII wreaked havoc on Great Britain in many ways, including disrupting the food-supply chain. Rationing was a difficult aspect of everyday life for the women left at home. In order to boost spirits and provide creative meal inspirations, the BBC produced The Kitchen Front, an informative radio cooking program. Ryan's (The Spies of Shilling Lane, 2019) heartwarming novel brings four very different women together as they compete for a co-host spot on the popular show: a widow struggling to raise three sons; her aristocratic sister, trapped in an acrimonious marriage; a young kitchen maid with dreams of a better life; and a single, pregnant chef desperate to prove herself in a male-dominated field. Ryan exquisitely captures the realities of wartime domesticity, including period-accurate recipes. She delivers an inspiring tale about the unbreakable bonds of family, the importance of friendship, and the resilience of the female spirit. A positively uplifting read that is as soothing as a warm cup of Earl Grey on a gloomy morning. The perfect book for fans of The Great British Baking Show.
Preview Book
Saving Freedomt by Joe Scarborough ⭐⭐⭐
The story of the aid program that helped launch the Cold War. MSNBC host and former congressman Scarborough reminds readers that 1947 began with Americans basking in peace after the end of World War II less than 18 months earlier, and the budgets for the armed forces were slashed drastically. This was the scene in February when the British Foreign Office delivered two notes described as "shockers" by undersecretary of state Dean Acheson. They summarized events in Greece, which was impoverished and reeling under a communist-led civil war, and Turkey, threatened by Soviet expansion. Britain had long provided their support, but, bankrupt after the war, it could do so no longer. Tactfully, British leadership suggested that America step in to prevent those nations from falling to the communists. Acheson showed the notes to Harry Truman, who agreed that the circumstances required action. Scarborough delivers a lively blow-by-blow account of Truman's consultations with advisers and meetings with congressional leaders, including Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (whom the author clearly admires), formerly a hidebound Republican isolationist but a convert to internationalism who won over many of his colleagues. There followed Truman's famous March 12, 1947, address before Congress urging aid to Greece and Turkey; the president proclaimed that America "must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way." Isolationist Republicans were opposed, as were liberal democrats, who urged that the matter be turned over to the U.N. and pointed out that Greeks were not "free" but ruled by an unpleasant autocrat. In the end, with Vandenberg's backing, the aid passed, and the Truman Doctrine was born. Defeating Greek communist rebels turned out to require several years, during which Truman returned America to world leadership with actions such as the Marshall Plan, the founding of NATO, and the defense of South Korea from the North's invasion. Solid American history and another feather in the cap of Truman, whose presidential reputation is rising steadily.
No Preview
On the House by John Boehnert ⭐⭐⭐
Former Speaker of the House John Boehner shares colorful tales from the halls of power, the smoke-filled rooms around the halls of power, and his fabled tour bus. John Boehner is the last of a breed. At a time when the arbiters of American culture were obsessing over organic kale, cold-pressed juice, and SoulCycle, the man who stood second in line to the presidency was unapologetically smoking Camels, quaffing a glass of red, and hitting the golf course whenever he could. There could hardly have been a more diametrically opposed figure to represent the opposition party in President Barack Obama's Washington. But when Boehner announced his resignation, President Obama called to tell the outgoing Speaker that he'd miss him. "Mr. President," Boehner replied, "yes you will." He thought of himself as a "regular guy with a big job," and he enjoyed it.
In addition to his own stories of life in the swamp city and of his comeback after getting knocked off the leadership ladder, Boehner offers his impressions of leaders he's met and what made them successes or failures, from Ford and Reagan to Obama, Trump, and Biden. He shares his views on how the Republican Party has become unrecognizable today; the advice—some harsh, some fatherly—he dished out to members of his own party, the opposition, the media, and others; and his often acid-tongued comments about his former colleagues. And of course he talks about golfing with five presidents. Through Speaker Boehner's honest and self-aware reflections, you'll be reminded of a time when the adults were firmly in charge.
Preview Book
Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The story of a favored slave of the Washingtons who had the "impudence" to flee a life of benevolent servitude.A runaway slave who happened to be among the household of the first president of the United States, Ona Judge Staines (1773-1848) shared her break for freedom nearly 50 years after the fact in an account in the May 1845 issue of the Granite Freeman. Dunbar (Black Studies and History/Univ. of Delaware; A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, 2008) unearthed an advertisement for the runaway slave and became determined to tell her story--and she tells it well. A "dower" slave--i.e., she was the property of Martha Washington's first husband, Daniel Parke Custis--Ona was born in Mount Vernon, the product of a favored house seamstress, Betty, and a white indentured servant, Andrew Judge. At age 15, Ona, slender, fair of complexion, and a good seamstress, was chosen among the few household slaves out of hundreds to make the trek to the temporary capital of New York City, where Washington had just been sworn in as the new president of the nascent republic. She would mingle with the free blacks of the bustling city, and, later in Philadelphia, when the capital was moved there, she was responsible for over six years for Martha's wardrobe, a role that relieved her of the drudgeries of kitchen and field work. In Philadelphia, there was a growing abolition movement, and when it was decided by the Washingtons that Ona was going to be given as a wedding present to the first lady's objectionable granddaughter, Ona had had enough. On May 21, 1796, she slipped out of the executive mansion in Philadelphia, boarded a transport to New Hampshire (probably with help from the free black community), and started a new life there--but not without being hounded by Washington's slave hunters. A startling, well-researched slave narrative that seriously questions the intentions of our first president.
No Preview
Jubal Sackett by Louis L'Amour ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jubal Sackett's urge to explore drove him westward, and when a Natchez priest asks him to undertake a nearly impossible quest, Sackett ventures into the endless grassy plains the Indians call the Far Seeing Lands. He seeks a Natchez exploration party and its leader, Itchakomi. It is she who will rule her people when their aging chief dies, but first she must vanquish her rival, the arrogant warrior Kapata. Sackett's quest will bring him danger from an implacable enemy . . . and show him a life—and a woman—worth dying for.
Preview Book
The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Grace and Viv, two young women from Norfolk, travel to London on the eve of World War II to lodge with Mrs. Weatherford, the best friend of Grace's mother. Viv is hopeful of a job at Harrods; Grace doesn't have proper references, so she must content herself with a job at the local shop Primrose Hill Books (although she's not much of a reader). Primrose Hill's owner, Mr. Evans, grudgingly hires Grace at Mrs. Weatherford's behest. Mr. Evans sets out some conditions: Grace may stay for only six months, after which he will provide her with references and she can seek employment elsewhere. He didn't count on Grace's entrepreneurial and community spirit, or the imminent war, or people's insatiable need for words and stories during hard times. Grace's first task is to make effective blackout curtains for the shop, as the war and air raids begin. Decency prevails in Martin's (Borderland Ladies) historically accurate book, despite the horrors of the London Blitz, which Grace, as an air raid warden, witnesses firsthand. VERDICT During times of crisis, who can deny the comfort of books and reading? Deftly written, and testament to survival in a challenging time, this book is a soothing and reassuring read.
Preview Book
One Got Away by S. A. Lelchuk ⭐⭐⭐½
Nikki Griffin, a bookstore owner who's also a private detective--one who turns the tables on abusers. In this second book in the series, Griffin turns to glamour as a disguise when she's hired to expose a possible con man who is in a relationship with a wealthy elderly woman. But when the con man himself becomes a victim, Griffin's grittier skills are brought into play as she fights her way through San Francisco's criminal underbelly. A minor plotline involves a child sidekick who's too young to be credible in the role, but otherwise fans of the first book or of hard-boiled women detectives in general will relish this heroine's latest outing, especially given that Lelchuk's writing is more nuanced and atmospheric than that found in hard-boiled mysteries of old. Those who followed the grisly antics of TV's Dexter are another audience, though Griffin's work is happily less gory than Dexter's. A fine choice for mystery collections.
Preview Book
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse ⭐⭐⭐
Le Sommet, the prestigious hotel fashioned from a former TB sanatorium, is more than just the setting for this atmospheric debut mystery: the building's history ultimately propels the plot. Elin Warner, an English police detective on extended leave, is somewhat fragile when she arrives at the hotel high in the Swiss Alps to celebrate the engagement of Elin's older brother, Isaac, and Elin's old friend Laure Strehl, a hotel staffer. Elin is dealing not only with the aftermath of a difficult case (about which more backstory would have been welcome), she also has a major unresolved issue with Isaac about the death of their younger brother, Sam, years earlier, as well as regret in letting her friendship with Laure wither. Then, as heavy snows lead to potential avalanches and the hotel is largely evacuated and totally isolated, bodies are discovered; it's clear that a killer is on the loose. With police unable to reach the hotel, Elin assumes the role of investigator, eventually putting herself at risk. Pearse not only creates believably fallible characters, she also vividly portrays the frigid landscape of Le Sommet buffeted by blizzards, and a chilling epilogue cries out for a sequel. Crime-fiction readers will want to keep an eye on Pearse.
Preview Book
The Bounty by Janet Evanovich ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The latest entry in the "Fox and O'Hare" series (after The Big Kahuna) continues the grand tradition of popcorn fare fun mixed with an international flair. An attempt to take down a master thief from a robbery in the Vatican reveals that Nick Fox's father is behind the effort. Kate O'Hare receives orders to arrest Nick and his father, but she soon learns the bigger picture. Now, if she wants to stop a plot and a treasure hunt with massive ramifications, she will have to defy orders and follow her gut. She has trusted Nick before, but can she rely on him to act honorably since his father is involved? This is a terrific installment in an engaging series, previously cowritten with Peter Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. Fans of Janet Evanovich will not be disappointed; her writing blends perfectly with the award-winning mastery of Hamilton ("Alex McKnight" thrillers). The globetrotting only adds to the enjoyment of what is arguably even better than her "Stephanie Plum" books. Mission: Impossible meets National Treasure in this winner that one hopes will be the first of many more adventures and more collaboration with Hamilton.
Preview Book
The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Set in the heady Jazz Age of New York, The Beautiful and Damned chronicles the relationship between Anthony Patch, a Harvard-educated aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful trophy wife, Gloria, as they wait to inherit his grandfather's fortune. Anticipating easy millions, they embrace the glittering, hedonistic lifestyle of the pretentious nouveaux riches, but find that they are living a dream that is all too fleeting. A devastating satire of reckless ambition and squandered talent, Fitzgerald's novel is also a shattering portrait of a marriage wasted by alcohol and wealth. It depicts an America embarked on the greatest spree in its history, a world Fitzgerald embraced even as he attacked its false social values and shallow literary tastes. .
Preview Book
A Time for Mercy by John Grisham ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A small-town Mississippi courtroom becomes the setting for a trademark Grisham legal tussle. Stuart Kofer is not a nice guy. He drinks way too much and likes to brawl. One night, coming home in a foul mood with a blood alcohol count more than triple the legal limit, he breaks his live-in girlfriend's jaw. He's done terrible things to her children, too--and now her 16-year-old boy, Drew, puts an end to the terror. Unfortunately for the kid in a place where uniforms are worshipped, Stu was a well-liked cop. "Did it really matter if he was sixteen or sixty? It certainly didn't matter to Stu Kofer, whose stock seemed to rise by the hour," writes Grisham of local opinion about giving Drew the benefit of the doubt. Jake Brigance, the hero of the tale, is a lawyer who's down to his last dime until a fat wrongful-death case is settled. It doesn't help his bank book when the meaningfully named Judge Omar Noose orders him to defend the kid. Backed by a brilliant paralegal whose dream is to be the first Black female lawyer in the county, he prepares for what the local sheriff correctly portends will be "an ugly trial" that may well land Drew on death row. As ever, Grisham capably covers the mores of his native turf, from gun racks to the casual use of the N-word. As well, he examines Bible Belt attitudes toward abortion and capital punishment as well as the inner workings of the courtroom, such as jury selection: "What will your jury look like?" asks a trial consultant, to which Jake replies, "A regular posse. It's rural north Mississippi, and I'll try to change venue to another county simply because of the notoriety." The story runs on a touch long, as Grisham yarns tend to do, and it gets a bit gory at times, but the level of tension is satisfyingly high all the way to the oddly inconclusive end. Grisham fans will be pleased, graphic details of evil behavior and all.
Preview Book
Fool Me Twice by Jeff Lindsay ⭐⭐⭐½
Riley Wolfe is a thief. And not just any thief. His targets are expensive, well guarded, and generally considered impossible to steal. In 2019's Just Watch Me, which introduced Riley to enthusiastic readers, he went after the Crown Jewels of Iran. Now, he's got an even tougher job: to steal a famous fresco?an image painted directly onto a wall?that just happens to be located in the Vatican. It's not Riley's idea: a big-time criminal has sort of, um, persuaded him to steal the fresco. But how does a guy make off with an actual wall from one of the most secure places in the world? And what will happen to him if he fails? Lindsay, creator of the serial killer Dexter Morgan, has created a character who, if not quite as darkly complex as Dexter, is certainly a highly watchable guy with a deep, wide streak of moral ambiguity. A rousing caper novel.
Preview Book
The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham ⭐⭐
Maugham was a very successful and well-regarded author, but even he, looking back on this early novel, had little good to say about it. Its dialogue, with an array of adept accents and moods. Even so, the villain, Oliver Haddo, comes across as more bombastic than evil. Only towards the end, when Adams has some genuine emotion and drama to work with, does the story start to come to life. As a rare fantasy story from Maugham's early career, the novel is an interesting artifact, and the research into the history of magic and alchemy is exhaustive.
Preview Book
The S.S. Officer's Armchair by Daniel Lee ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Historian Lee (Pétain’s Jewish Children) reconstructs the life of a lower-level SS officer in this richly detailed and eloquent account. Asked by an acquaintance to examine a cache of documents discovered in the cushion of an armchair her mother had taken in to be reupholstered, Lee linked the papers to Robert Griesinger, a Gestapo lawyer in Stuttgart. Lee tracks down Griesinger’s surviving daughters; reviews his SS file; and traces his family roots to America. One of the “countless enablers who kept the government running, filed the paperwork and lived side-by-side with potential victims of the regime,” Griesinger was the grandson of German-American slave owners in Louisiana. Despite an undistinguished academic career, he landed a job with the Ministry of the Interior after passing his law exams in 1933, joined the SS, and went on to serve in an army unit that executed Jews in the Soviet Union (though there is no evidence he directly participated in the murders). Lee compares 20th-century America’s anti-miscegenation laws to Nazi racial classifications, and offers numerous prosaic details drawn from the documents, including Griesinger’s difficulties in getting official approval to marry a divorced woman. Lee’s granular focus reveals the mechanisms by which ordinary Germans were drawn into horrific crimes. Even those well-versed in the history of the Holocaust will learn something new.
Preview Book
Saving Justicel by James Comey ⭐⭐⭐
The former director of the FBI seeks a pound of revenge in a combined memoir and defense of the values of an independent Department of Justice. Before heading the FBI, Comey was a U.S. attorney, a defense attorney in private practice, and a federal prosecutor. Much of this book, a fairly unremarkable follow-up to A Higher Loyalty (2018), centers on the juicier cases he pursued. In pre-9/11 New York, he took a special interest in the Mafia, going after members of the Gambino family. Of Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, Comey writes, "The guy may have killed nineteen people and devoted his life to a savage criminal organization, but...Gravano's guilty plea and cooperation meant the feds were finally going to get [John] Gotti." The cops-and-robbers stuff is all well and good, but the meat of the book concerns more recent matters. Comey has nothing good to say about Donald Trump, who demanded his fealty and, when not granted it, fired him. Trump, writes the author, "lied more often and about more things than any leader in our history, but he and his followers also did something profoundly dangerous: they attacked the idea that truth exists." Comey spares no scorn for William Barr ("How could an accomplished lawyer start channeling the president in using words like 'no collusion' and FBI 'spying'?"), assails Robert Mueller for a too-long, too-vague report on Trump's Russian collusion that "left his work susceptible to cynical distortion," and defends his choice to reveal the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails that helped land Trump the White House: "Even in hindsight," he writes wanly, "I believe it was the best thing for the FBI and for the Department of Justice"--institutions that, he concludes, must be rebuilt and kept free of political interference. A middling political memoir that may appeal to die-hard anti-Trumpers.
Preview Book
A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke ⭐⭐⭐½
A centuries-long feud between two warring criminal families might be coming to an end in MWA Grand Master Burke’s superb 23rd novel featuring New Iberia, La., cop Dave Robicheaux (after 2019’s New Iberia Blues), set loosely sometime before 9/11. Those who want to forge a union between the two clans, the Shondells and the Balangies, are pressuring teenage rock ’n’ roller Johnny Shondell to deliver Isolde Balangie, his teenage girlfriend and fellow singer, to his powerful, corrupt, and much older uncle, Mark Shondell, for what amounts to an arranged marriage. Johnny and Isolde decide to go on the run instead. Robicheaux’s efforts on behalf of the young couple lead to his developing a close relationship with Isolde’s mother, which causes a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the lawman must contend with Gideon Richetti, a time-traveling golem. Gideon, whom Burke presents unabashedly as a supernatural being, appears to have pure malevolence on his mind, but he turns out to be a far more complicated creation. Along the way to the wild and bloody climax, alcoholic Vietnam vet Robicheaux contends with his various personal demons and gets some much needed help from PI pal Clete Purcell. An imaginative blend of crime and other genres, Burke’s existential drama is both exquisitely executed and profoundly moving. 
Preview Book
The House of Kennedy by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐½
Humdrum history of the Kennedy clan. Joseph Kennedy is reputed to have made some of his early fortune in bootlegging during Prohibition, a claim that scholars such as David Nasaw have painstakingly examined--and largely dismissed. Patterson and Fagen skip by the matter, though their book is chock full of other salacious and lurid moments. What is certain is that the patriarch himself wasn't sure how much he was worth, protesting to his wife, "How could I tell you, when I didn't know myself?" It's possible he was shielding the figures for dark reasons, but not divorce. The Kennedys were devout Catholics, and even when Joseph, as a film studio executive, tried to convince his sometime lover Gloria Swanson to have a baby with him, he could be sure that his home life wouldn't be disrupted. Not so the next generation. The central conceit of the book is that there really is something to what Ted Kennedy once wondered aloud--whether "a curse actually did hang over all the Kennedys," Considering what happened--assassinations, accidental deaths, all sorts of misadventures and legal scrapes, and lashings of hubris--Ted's remark has weight, even if, as the authors breathlessly report, he got caught up in a cheating scandal that put him two years behind in school. There's not much of serious note that other biographers and historians haven't addressed, and much better, and the authors' intent often seems to be simply to shame their subjects: " 'Kennedys don't fail, ' his uncle Ted tells him. Yet David has failed sobriety over and over." "Trust me, that one is all smoke and mirrors," says Ethel Kennedy of Carolyn Bessette. And so on--and on and on. A tabloid-worthy approach to a subject that has filled many shelves with more substantial works. 
Preview Book
The Queen's Secret by Karen Harper ⭐⭐⭐
the private life of Queen Elizabeth, formerly Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. Harper traces Elizabeth’s long life through her marriage to King George VI, raising her daughters Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, and living through WWII. Harper’s artful prose brings Elizabeth to glorious life as tensions mount around the animosity between Elizabeth and upstart American socialite Wallis Warfield Simpson, whose intention to marry king Edward VIII led to his abdication (and about whom Elizabeth is said to have uttered “The two people who have caused me the most trouble in my life are Wallis Simpson and Hitler”). While not all of the dishy details are historically established—for instance, the story lines about Elizabeth’s supposedly true parentage, her largely celibate marriage, and certain peccadillos of her brother-in-law, the former king, which call his character into question—Harper’s evocative prose and able plotting make each twist and turn believable. 
Preview Book
The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Disappointed when her mother and boyfriend don't show up for a work party in her honor, Natalie is devastated to discover that they both died in a plane crash on their way to the party. As Natalie struggles through her grief, she also struggles with the problems her mother left behind: a bookstore in financial trouble and Natalie's grandfather Andrew, co-owner of the shop, who is in no shape mentally or physically to take over the business. Though Natalie wants to sell, for her grandfather's sake, she quits her job and moves back to San Francisco to operate the bookstore. Before her death, Natalie's mother had contracted with a handyman to fix up the shop and building. Peter Peach Gallagher is more than a contractor: he is also gorgeous, a caring father, and a bookworm. As Natalie navigates the complicated world of being a small-business owner and a caregiver, she finds herself relying on and growing closer to Peach. Though not as deeply moving as The Oysterville Sewing Circle (2019), Wiggs' latest is a cute, lighthearted book for those looking for a breezy read. 
Preview Book
Trust by Pete Buttigieg ⭐⭐⭐½
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Democratic presidential candidate explores how trust in our country's governmental foundations has drastically eroded over recent decades. With the monumental 2020 election looming, Buttigieg examines the fundamental issues compromising the integrity of our country's institutions and why we urgently need to take measures to rebuild confidence. The author begins with an informative overview on the "necessity of trust" and then moves on to a cogent account of how the U.S. got to this point. From a historical and philosophical perspective, he reflects on the Constitution and the framers' expansive intent for future generations. "They built into the system a way for it to become bigger than their own biases," he writes, "trusting their successors with the power to improve upon what they had created." Shedding some personal light, Buttigieg recounts a few memorable lessons he has learned during both his military and political career. For example, he shows how establishing trust was imperative to the success of his life-threatening duties as a military driver in Afghanistan. The author also gives plenty of attention to the gross injustices that have occurred under the Trump administration, many of which serve as cases in point for why our trust in government has eroded so much. "Presidents after the Trump era will need to return to the basics when it comes to trust and credibility," writes the author. "By 2020, each of the most important means available to the White House for building trust--transparency, responsibility, vulnerability, truth-telling, predictability, reciprocity--had been not just abandoned but torched." Ultimately, argues Buttigieg, we must seek to rebuild our reserves of trust and transparency; take actionable steps to secure a fairer tax code; and direct a more judicious eye toward our legal system regarding corruption and police misconduct. An eloquent call to action for socially conscious citizens to get involved in restoring essential networks of trust. 
Preview Book
Eat a Peach by David Chang ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Chang is a big name in the culinary world. From Momofuku and his other restaurants, to the gone-too-soon magazine Lucky Peach, to the popular Netflix show Ugly Delicious, his star has continued to rise, despite the occasional setback. Is it luck? Hard work? Tenacity? Yes, to all that and more. Chang's memoir wrestles with those questions and the feelings of inferiority, rage, and depression that have plagued him all his life, from his time first working in kitchens to success as a restaurateur to becoming a father. He is as open about his life with bipolar disorder and struggle with self-destructive impulses as he is in describing the missteps he made while managing the Momofuku empire. This openness about the business side of the culinary world makes for a compelling read, even as readers might wince at some of Chang's self-excoriation. He closes the book with a list of 33 Rules for Becoming a Chef; anyone considering the life would do well to read it before getting started. 
Preview Book
The Last Trial by Scott Turow ⭐⭐⭐½
Sandy Stern, an acclaimed defense attorney in his 80s, collapses in a federal courtroom, hovers over the rest of bestseller Turow’s impressive legal thriller. Stern and his daughter are representing Kiril Palko, a Nobel Prize winner and old friend, who’s accused of covering up deaths resulting from the use of Palko’s breakthrough cancer treatment and then cashing in stocks before news of the fatalities becomes public. Stern, who has vowed that this will be the last case he handles, is aware that both his body and mind are not what they once were. The twisty plot leaves the question of Palko’s guilt unsettled until the very end. While this entry lacks the gut punches of the author’s best books, it’s still a page-turner that makes a trial centered on fraud and insider trading fascinating. Turow remains in a class of his own in conveying the subtleties of criminal defense work while also entertaining his readers.
Preview Book
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld ⭐⭐⭐½
In this entertaining political fantasy, Sittenfeld imagines Hillary Clinton’s personal and professional life if she and Bill had gone their separate ways instead of marrying. The novel begins with an intimate perspective on historical events: At Wellesley’s 1969 graduation, Hillary feels the exhilaration of speaking her mind in public. Two years later, she meets Bill at Yale Law School. He is handsome, larger than life, proud of his Arkansas roots. She is ambitious, smart, hardworking, and opinionated. They fall in love and discuss marriage, but break up because of Bill’s philandering. Bill runs for president in 1992 but drops out of the race. Hillary, meanwhile, is a year into her first term as senator from Illinois. When she runs for president, in 2016, Bill is one of three primary challengers. Scenes with cameos from Donald Trump prove livelier than familiar elements like Hillary’s chocolate chip cookies, which she brings to a Yale potluck. Still, Sittenfeld movingly captures Hillary’s awareness of her transformation into a complicated public figure (“The feeling was in the collapse, the simultaneity, of how I seemed to others and who I really was”) Readers won’t have to be feminists (though it would help) to relish Sittenfeld’s often funny, mostly sympathetic, and always sharp what-if. 
Preview Book
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this illuminating history, best-selling writer Larson (Dead Wake) offers context for and understanding of Britain's defense against Hitler's Germany under Winston Churchill's leadership during World War II. Focusing on a single year (May 1940-May 1941), which coincided with Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister, Larson presents a near-daily account through a combination of diary and journal entries, archives, and new reports from Churchill's family, including his wife Clementine and his children, as well as officials from Britain, Germany, and the United States. The picture he paints unearths the intimate details of Churchill's family and cabinet, leadership style, personality, and idiosyncrasies, all of which laid the foundation for his determination to unite Britain during this national emergency while also navigating the monumental task of keeping the United States and President Roosevelt close at hand. 
No Book Preview
A Promised Land by Barack Obama ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In the first of two highly anticipated volumes of his presidential memoir, 44th President of the United States Barack Obama (Dreams of My Father) shares an intimate portrait that connects his personal journey as a son, husband, father, and leader to the very public life that people saw. From his early political aspirations through 2011 and the assassination of Osama bin Laden during his first term in the White House, Obama describes his humble beginnings and the events that shaped his world view. He discusses how the civil rights movement affected him and describes how his grassroots campaigns for the Illinois State Senate and U.S. Senate led to his ambitious run for the presidency in 2008. Obama interweaves key events from his personal and political life with the thoughts and conversations he had with family and friends in order to provide unparalleled context to his decision-making. Readers gain behind-the-scenes access to the shaping of the Affordable Care Act, Obama's response to the financial crisis and recession in 2008, the racial profiling of Henry Louis Gates in 2009, and the hunt for bin Laden in 2011, to name a few. VERDICT An eloquently written, enjoyable, and important memoir that will have a wide readership. Highly recommended for all collections. 
Preview Book
The Lincoln Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer ⭐⭐⭐½
This account of a conspiracy against President Abraham Lincoln, whose 1860 election became a flashpoint for southern opposition. As Lincoln traveled from Illinois to Washington, DC, for his 1861 inauguration, well-founded fears developed that Lincoln would be attacked in Baltimore, a choke point on the railroad routes between the northern U.S. and DC and a city with strong southern sympathies. The conspiracy failed, with Lincoln spirited through town to catch his DC train, but it allows a fascinating look at the conspirators and the investigators who thwarted them. Meltzer and Mensch introduce a constellation of pro-slavery militias and secret societies, with names like the Knights of the Golden Circle, which worked with the local police on plans to ensnare Lincoln, while their discussion of how the newly founded Pinkerton National Detective Agency infiltrated the conspiracy includes unexpected details of undercover work, 1860s-style?including by pathbreaking women detectives. A delightful addition to popular literature on the Civil War era. 
Preview Book
True Story by Kate Reed Petty ⭐⭐⭐½
30-something ghostwriter Alice Lovett is haunted by what happened at a lacrosse party 16 years earlier in a Baltimore suburb. In 1999, Nick Brothers and his high school lacrosse team are known for their legendary post-championship parties, usually followed by a midnight recap at their favorite Denny’s. After one party his senior year, Nick shows up at Denny’s with his crush Haley Moreland just in time to catch two of his teammates bragging about what they did with a passed out private school girl—whom the reader eventually learns is Alice—in the back of one of their cars. The facts of what happened that night morph as the story spreads through their suburban community, and the consequences will shape Alice, Haley, Nick, and his teammates over the following decades. Perry eschews conventional structure, replacing parts of the narrative with drafts of Alice’s college admissions essays, her emails to Haley after an abusive relationship as an adult, and Alice and Haley’s teenage screenplays to incendiary effect, and they mix seamlessly with the nimble prose. Though the plot sometimes wanders, Perry’s page-turner is as sly and devastating as the nature of truth. 
Preview Book
Under Occupation by Alan Furst ⭐⭐⭐½
Frenchmen working with the British to undermine the Nazi war effort. Paul Ricard is a spy novelist in the mode of Eric Ambler, but he is not involved in the Resistance himself until, like so many of Furst's heroes, he is thrust inadvertently into action. Walking beside the Seine, he instinctively helps a man running from the Gestapo and has a purloined document slipped into his hands after the man is shot. So begins a suspense-dripping, cat-and-mouse game in which Ricard, one small step at a time, finds himself a full-fledged Resistance agent, first slipping into Germany to take possession of a stolen torpedo, whose inner workings are much coveted by the Allies, and then running a safe house from where blown agents are exfiltrated out of harm's way. Working with an intrepid working-class Polish woman, Kaisa, and an aristocratic Frenchwoman, Leila, Ricard weaves his way through occupied Paris until, inevitably, his flimsy cover is finally blown. Many of Furst's signature themes are in full flower here?wartime love affairs (warm bodies beneath cold covers as Klaxons blare on dark streets) and character interactions as brief as they are indelible?but this time the special treat is the vivid detailing of Resistance operatives at work, well-oiled tradecraft blending seamlessly into everyday activities. 
Preview Book
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel ⭐⭐⭐½
Vincent Smith (named for poet Edna St. Vincent Millay) has no illusions about the relationship she enters into with Jonathan Alkaitis, an uber-wealthy investor more than twice her age. Vincent leaves her job at the remote Hotel Caiette to move into Jonathan's mansion in Connecticut and pretend to be his wife, attending dinners with his investors. Mandel reveals early on that Jonathan's business dealings aren't above board, but even with this information front and center, she still manages to build nail-biting tension as things start to go wrong for Jonathan and his associates. Mandel weaves an intricate spider web of a story, connecting the people whom Jonathan and Vincent's lives touch and irrevocably change, from Vincent's feckless brother to the small group of colleagues abetting Jonathan's scheme to the people whose fortunes are decimated by Jonathan's machinations. A gorgeously rendered tragedy. 
Preview Book
The Andromeda Evolutionn by Michael Crichton ⭐⭐⭐½
Wilson confidently captures the voice of the late Crichton (1942–2008) in this chilling sequel to the 1969 blockbuster The Andromeda Strain. Over 50 years ago, the deadly, alien Andromeda Strain nearly wiped out a small Arizona town. When Project Eternal Vigilance, put in place in the wake of the first breakout, detects an anomaly in the Amazon, a team of five scientists is sent to investigate. The scientists—among them astronaut Sophie Kline, who has paraplegia, and roboticist James Stone, whose famous father was involved in the first Andromeda incident—trek into the Brazilian jungle to study the outbreak and contain it as quickly as possible, only to discover that the Andromeda Strain has evolved into something even more deadly. The investigation, told partially via reconstructed transcripts, interviews, and descriptions of video footage, unfurls over the course of five action-packed days. Wilson, a roboticist himself, employs his expertise to add depth and credibility to the advanced technology the scientists use, trusting the reader to keep up with his technical terminology. Fans of the original techno-thriller won’t be disappointed. 
Preview Book
The Bourne Evolution by Brian Freeman ⭐⭐⭐½
Bourne is determined to unmask the killers of the woman he loved; the fact that the killers might be connected to Treadstone, the shadowy agency that (literally) created Bourne, is certainly an inconvenience, but readers who know Bourne will know that he won't let loyalties or his own past stand in his way. The writing is energetic, the story is well conceived and executed, and let's talk about suspense. While sticking broadly to the format established by the earlier Bourne novels, Freeman works a number of subtle variations, doing a very nice job of keeping us constantly guessing what's going to happen next. He keeps Bourne very much on his toes, and he breathes new life into a series that was?let's be honest?starting to feel a bit stale. 
Preview Book
Adrianne Geffel by David Hajdu ⭐⭐⭐½
A pianist of abrasive originality and persuasive power who hears music playing constantly in her head and shares it with the world. Adrianne grows up humming yet reacts violently whenever she hears other music played--it clashes with her own music--and after puzzling family and friends in her small town briefly ends up at Juilliard. Soon, she's downtown New York's "new Queen of Bleak Chic," but emotional reconnection with an old friend who truly cares for her makes her change direction, shocking acolytes, and vanish before a key concert. The story unfolds as oral history, delivered mostly by those who celebrate their stake in her--her clueless parents, a controlling self-styled boyfriend--resulting in a portrait that's as much about the exploitation of the gifted as it is about the gift of music, of the artist's exterior situation as it is of the artist's interior world. Hajdu is excellent at articulating the vitality of Geffel's music while leaving what it actually sounds like to our imagination. 
Preview Book
The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris ⭐⭐⭐½
This book is by-the-numbers, with all the expected elements. Yet the author's background is unusual enough on many scores to set her autobiography apart: She is the first American of Indian or Jamaican descent to serve in the Senate and the first African-American senator from California, having served prominently and sometimes controversially as the state's attorney general. Countering the whispering birther movement surrounding her early campaign, Harris recounts that she was born in Oakland of mixed descent, with an Indian immigrant mother who "understood very well that she was raising two black daughters" and took pains to "make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women." The author excelled in school but, she recounts in a moment of reversal, failed her first effort at the bar, overcoming defeat to take a visible role in the Bay Area legal community. Her efforts at judicial reform figure in her timely call for an overhaul of sentencing procedures, all as part of a platform of "what I see as women's issues: the economy, national security, health care, education, criminal justice reform, climate change." Harris also reveals a policy-wonk side, enthusiastically addressing issues such as cybersecurity ("a new front in a new kind of battle") and economic inequality ("with millions of Americans hanging by a thread," she deftly writes of the current president, "the White House reached for scissors"). 
Preview Book
Rage by Bob Woodward ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The big news from veteran reporter Woodward's follow-up to Fear has been widely reported: Trump was fully aware at the beginning of 2020 that a pandemic loomed and chose to downplay it, causing an untold number of deaths and crippling the economy. His excuse that he didn't want to cause a panic doesn't fly given that he trades in fear and division. The underlying news, however, is that Trump participated in this book, unlike in the first, convinced by Lindsey Graham that Woodward would give him a fair shake. Seventeen interviews with the sitting president inform this book, as well as extensive digging that yields not so much news as confirmation: Trump has survived his ineptitude because the majority of Congressional Republicans go along with the madness because they "had made a political survival decision" to do so--and surrendered their party to him. The narrative often requires reading between the lines. Graham, though a byword for toadyism, often reins Trump in; Jared Kushner emerges as the real power in the West Wing, "highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments"; Trump admires tyrants, longs for their unbridled power, resents the law and those who enforce it, and is quick to betray even his closest advisers; and, of course, Trump is beholden to Putin. Trump occasionally emerges as modestly self-aware, but throughout the narrative, he is in a rage. Though he participated, he said that he suspected this to be "a lousy book." It's not--though readers may wish Woodward had aired some of this information earlier, when more could have been done to stem the pandemic. When promoting Fear, the author was asked for his assessment of Trump. His reply: "Let's hope to God we don't have a crisis." Multiple crises later, Woodward concludes, as many observers have, "Trump is the wrong man for the job." An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.
Preview Book
The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck ⭐⭐⭐½
In this breezy and fascinating history that touches on dramas large and small, members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) come alive. Drawing from extensive archives at Texas Woman's University (where she serves as an associate professor of history), as well as interviews gathered over the previous decades, Landdeck breathes new life into the WWII period. With a bitter battle over ambition and power at its center and all of the expectations for their gender constantly thrown in their way, the WASPs managed to accomplish serious feats of flying while aiding in the war effort. The fact that they were then forced to move to the sidelines and, in many cases, were rarely allowed to fly again after the war's end is as devastating today as it was then. With a gripping review of the battle to receive full recognition and benefits decades later for their war contributions, Landdeck moves beyond most histories. Readers interested in women in the military, and military, aviation, and women's history will find much to relish in this fresh, detailed account. 
Preview Book
This Is How I Lied by Heather Gudenkauf ⭐⭐⭐½
Det. Maggie Kennedy-O’Keefe of the Grotto, Iowa, PD is assigned to a cold case, the murder of her 16-year-old best friend, Eve Knox, after two kids find a new piece of evidence, Eve’s boot, in the cave where Maggie found Eve’s body 25 years earlier. Maggie’s job is to inform the Knox family, review the case files, gather all the evidence, and send it to the state lab for testing. She speaks to Eve’s mentally unstable sister, the sister’s abusive boyfriend, a pedophile neighbor, and her own father, the former Grotto PD police chief, who suffers from dementia. To complicate matters, Maggie is eight months pregnant and fatigued. When she receives threatening phone calls, and the barn on her property is torched, it becomes clear this small town is filled with secrets people want to keep buried. Maggie has to make one impossible choice after another as the action builds to a satisfying conclusion. Through alternating viewpoints Gudenkauf keeps the tension high throughout. Fans of dogged, resourceful female detectives will cheer Maggie every step of the way.
Preview Book
The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Multiple realities explore the butterfly effects of two attempted teen suicides. Each of the narrative's alternate timelines starts the same way: Aaron Boroff and Tillie Stanley meet by coincidence at the George Washington Bridge. Both contemplate leaping into the Hudson River to end their lives--"facing each other like they're playing a deadly game of dare." Aaron, a White gay boy with a Christian mom and a Jewish dad who dreams of viral internet success as a singer/songwriter, feels he is a failure both musically and romantically. Tillie, a fat, adopted, Korean girl, has had enough of feeling out of place in her White family and being bullied at school. From there, the four linear timelines (presented one after the other) diverge into four possible outcomes: only Tillie jumps, only Aaron jumps, they both jump, or neither jumps. No outcome is presented as the true story, leaving readers to come to their own conclusions. Drawing from personal experience, Konigsberg's portrayal of depression is raw, honest, and nuanced. The deftly navigated third-person-omniscient narration powerfully evokes spiraling, obsessive thoughts and manic episodes. In addition to the focal teens' inner monologues, secondary characters--from family members to classmates--are sharply drawn and complicated. Though some plot points only happen in certain timelines, the text's careful construction hints that the best possible outcome is the teens' survival. A heartbreaking bridge into depression supported by a strong foundation of hope.
Preview Book
Murder Thy Neighbor by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐½
Two quick real-life crimes are described in this book. They both deal with people who are mentally deranged, leading to murder.
In the first story, a young man purchased a dilapidated house, planning to fix it up, but it becomes too much for him. His neighbor takes him to court to try to get him to work on the property. The second story is about a young woman with a crush on the brother of a friend she meets by chance. This crush becomes an obsession with deadly results. Both stories are easy, but disturbing reads, about how quickly someone loses their grip on reality.
Preview Book
The Nemesis Manifesto by Eric Van Lustbader ⭐⭐⭐
Evan Ryder, a field agent in a black ops shop, works deep within the Department of Defense. Her spymaster boss receives a list with six names of agents investigating a mysterious organization known as Nemesis. In the last 10 months, five of them have either disappeared or been badly injured. Evan and fellow agent Brenda Myers are sent to interview the one survivor, Patrick Wilson. The obviously unwell Wilson, who’s been tortured, keels over and dies while talking to them, and shortly thereafter Evan and Brenda are the target of a car bombing. The novel encompasses such standard thriller elements as Russians, Nazis, betrayal, treasonous U.S. politicians, and evil masterminds, but Lustbader elevates these familiar components well above the usual thriller norm. Credible action and often lyrical prose support the complex, intelligent plot. A series of twists and an extended fight sequence at the end will leave readers amazed and pleasantly exhausted. Lustbader is at the top of his game.
Preview Book
1774 by Mary Beth Norton ⭐⭐⭐½
Starting in late 1773 and proceeding until the spring of 1775, this step-by-step walk through political events in the American colonies casts aside any notions of consensus and unanimity. History is most certainly told by the winners, but contemporary newspaper accounts, letters, and sermons provide the narratives not told in our modern textbooks. The story of the Boston Tea Party, passed down throughout American history, is brought into the light as a multifaceted, controversial event. This laying out of detailed facts concerning everything from the aforementioned tea-dumping to the First Continental Congress encourages readers to question previous assumptions. Norton quotes firsthand accounts and draws on her long history of Loyalist scholarship to underline that what now seems an inevitable page in American history was not always so clear, and the past that we harken back to is sometimes all too similar to our present day.
Preview Book
A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne ⭐⭐⭐
Beginning with the Massacre of the Innocents in the first year of the Common Era and concluding in the year 2080, a singular voice narrates the biography of its soul through time and across the globe. Over the course of 2,000 years, this voice recounts episodes that take place in every country on Earth linked by shared details, such as family dynamics and conflicts from one time and place to the next. So the familial tensions and pivotal events of a life lived in 10th-century Iceland recur with nuanced and significant changes in Mozambique in the year 1000; a mother's warning in sixth-century Yemen comes to pass in eighth-century Egypt; and the mother who had loved and encouraged the son who narrates each vignette passes away in Mexico in the year 752. As multiple story arcs resolve and emerge in different times and places, the voice remains mostly consistent throughout, lending the tale continuity and cohesion. Also continuous is the violence and cruelty of patriarchy and the idea that beauty, creatively manifested in craft and art, has always been an antidote for these evils.
No Book Preview
Too Much And Never Enough by Mary L. Trump ⭐⭐⭐½
Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and the niece of President Donald Trump, delivers a concise and damning account of her family's dysfunctions and their role in shaping her uncle's toxic blend of cruelty, incompetence, and vainglory. The fault, according to Trump, lies mainly with her grandfather, Fred Trump, a "high-functioning sociopath" whose harsh treatment of his eldest son and namesake, Freddy Trump (the author's father, who died at age 42 after years of alcohol abuse), taught Donald to bury his insecurities behind "a perpetual sneer of self-conscious superiority" and to cheat and bully his way to success on wheels greased by his father's money and political connections. Though Trump begins and ends the book with scathing assessments of Donald's presidency and offers plenty of unflattering anecdotes, he remains a somewhat distant figure throughout. The most harrowing sections deal with Freddy Trump's yearslong decline after his attempt to leave his father's real estate business failed, and the family's callous treatment of his ex-wife, children, and grandchildren after his death. Writing with the sharp eye of a perpetual outsider in her own family, Trump presents a melancholic portrait of their complicity in her uncle's worst behaviors. Readers who despair for President Trump's ability to lead the country out of its current crises will have their worst suspicions confirmed.
Preview Book
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An exceptional thriller that boasts an utterly credible narrator who has had so many covert identities he can barely remember his original name. Soul-weary Scott Murdoch (aka the Pilgrim) has retired from the top echelon of ultrasecret espionage, but duty and faith in the human spirit call him back into service. A lone-wolf Middle Eastern native whom the Pilgrim code names “the Saracen” has a sure-fire bioterrorist plot to destroy the United States. In the cinematic chase that ensues, the action traverses the globe, from the Oval Office to the dusty trails of Afghanistan, each scene fleshed out in the smallest resonating detail (e.g., a Down syndrome child’s laughter, the endless nausea of waterboarding). Like many pilgrimages, this one is painfully long and packed with unexpected menace, its glimpses of the goal fitful and far between, but readers will agree that this journey of body and soul is well worth the effort.
Preview Book
In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this gripping exploration of Cold War spycraft, Blum (The Last Goodnight) lays out the complex chain of circumstances that led to the exposure of a major Soviet spy ring responsible for stealing America’s atomic secrets during and after WWII, and culminated with the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. As Blum follows the exploits of FBI agent Bob Lamphere and genius code breaker Meredith Gardner, he lays out the difficulties they faced in patiently unraveling the espionage network, one suspect at a time. To follow the trail to its source, they decrypted each stage of the code, compared it to a treasure trove of uncoded Soviet cables, and had to “re-create the KGB codebook” in order to match code names to actual people (“Kalibre” was Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass). Through extensive research and interviews, Blum brings a widespread cast of significant participants to life, from Lamphere and Gardner (from their awkward first meeting: “Meredith once again appeared to give the question considerable thought. But whether that was really the case... Bob could only guess. He found the man across from him inscrutable”) and their Soviet counterparts to the Rosenbergs and their many colleagues. Concise yet packed with details, this is a true page-turner, sure to appeal to those interested in the history of espionage or the Cold War.
Preview Book
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith ⭐⭐⭐
J.K. Rowling, under her Galbraith pseudonym, again demonstrates her adroitness at crafting a classic fair-play whodunit in a contemporary setting, peopled with fully realized primary and secondary characters. PI Cormoran Strike, who debuted in 2013's The Cuckoo's Calling, has had a professional renaissance after his success in that book. To spite an uppity client, he accepts Leonora Quine's request to trace her missing husband, novelist Owen Quine. Leonora is pretty sure that Owen is at a writer's retreat, but has hit a dead end trying to get its address. Meanwhile, someone is following Leonora, and excrement is being shoved through her mail slot. Strike begins his search in London's literary circles, aided by his resourceful assistant, Robin Ellacott. He eventually finds a horrifically mutilated Owen, who was killed in a manner apparently copied from a controversial unpublished manuscript. The evolving relationship between Strike and Robin, whose fiance objects to her choice of work, is realistically portrayed.
Preview Book
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante ⭐⭐⭐
At 16, best friends Elena and Lila are weary of their impoverished neighborhood and its crippling traditions, but while Lila seeks to alter these circumstances through an advantageous marriage, Elena strives to leave it behind by pursuing her education. When Lila's marriage fails to help her realize her goals, she becomes increasingly spiteful, and Elena, busy with an acceptance to college, grows critical of her progressively unpredictable friend. Once reliant on one another, the girls now find themselves occupying very different spheres in the rapidly changing landscape of 1970s Naples. As circumstances alternately draw them close and push them apart, they face difficult changes in the friendship that has always been their strongest source of love and support. Ferrante's writing is captivating and insightful. She delves deeply into the character of the girls' friendship, ushering them into womanhood with an honesty that is acutely personal.
Preview Book
True Crimes and Misdemeanors by Jeffrey Toobin ⭐⭐⭐
CNN legal analyst Toobin (American Heiress) delivers a vivid and doggedly reported rundown of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the impeachment of Donald Trump over the Ukraine affair. Drawing on interviews with more than 100 people, Toobin crafts an immersive narrative rich with insider details and astute observations. He credits teams led by Mueller and Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with doing excellent work under difficult circumstances, yet contends that Mueller's "caution and reticence led him to fail at his two most important tasks": getting a consequential interview with Trump, and delivering a comprehensible final report that couldn't be misrepresented by the president's allies, in particular Attorney General William Barr. Mueller established multiple instances of obstruction of justice, Toobin notes, yet "placed Trump effectively above the law" by refusing to say whether he should be prosecuted. Lucid prose, trenchant analysis, and colorful anecdotes—including the time Schiff's 13-year-old son asked if he could call his dad "sleazy" because the president had just done so—will keep readers engrossed despite knowing the outcome. The result is a definitive behind-the-scenes portrait of what these investigations accomplished, and why they didn't bring Trump down.
Preview Book
The Nation City by Rahm Emanuel ⭐⭐⭐
City leaders don't have time for partisan bickering. Their constituents demand pragmatic solutions, whether fixing potholes or improving social services, and hold their leaders accountable when they don't deliver. Emanuel breezily surveys the achievements of mayors such as Bill de Blasio, who enacted universal pre-K in New York City; Greg Fischer, who revamped Louisville's education system; and Anne Hidalgo, who upgraded Paris's transportation system in an effort to combat climate change. But most of all, Emanuel touts his own achievements: renovating O'Hare Airport, altering the school system, and luring corporate headquarters downtown, among others. It's a spun record, denuded of the controversy that marked much of his tenure, and predictably self-serving. Nevertheless, the book brims with the author's passion for the city's top job. At its best, Emanuel's chronicle offers a revelatory view into how mayors run cities, and provokes readers to ponder whether cities really might save the world.
Preview Book
Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride ⭐⭐⭐
Opening the book to a list of cities, readers first stop in Avignon, where an unnamed woman checks into a dingy hotel, with a plan. It involves drinking wine, readers understand, but not succumbing to a flirtation with her courtyard neighbor. The episode ends, and the next stop on the ticker-tape of cities is Prague, where, watching a rainstorm from an unsafe balcony, she hopes her previous night's encounter will exit her room. Incidents follow in Oslo, Auckland, and Austin, each separated by years. Readers catch glimpses of this woman's past and the future she's aging mostly gratefully into. As we begin to grasp why she, and thus we, are in these rooms, McBride interrupts the narrative with subject and tense changes that keep us, thrillingly, on our toes. 
Preview Book
Death in Mud Lick by Eric Eyre ⭐⭐⭐⭐
When William "Bull" Preece died of an overdose in 2005, his flinty sister Debbie recruited her friend, lawyer Jim Cagle, to find out why. A tiny mom-and-pop pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia (population 382) had received shipments of a staggering 9 million opioid pain pills in just two years. How could these clearly illegal sales go unchecked? The West Virginia attorney general taps Cagle to sue several drug distributors?until the election of a new, business-friendly attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, whose wife was?no joke?a lobbyist for one such distributor. Eyre covered the many threads of the story for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, chasing down a Goliath who kept changing: the distributors, who passed the blame to crooked doctors and pharmacists and, eventually, the addicts themselves; Morrisey, denying blatant conflicts of interest in late-night Twitter rants; and the DEA, a boar's nest of either incompetence or corruption. Meanwhile, the Gazette-Mail faces bankruptcy and layoffs, and Eyre himself faces a personal health crisis. This is an infuriating story, compellingly told, and adds another layer to the reporting of the opioid crisis laid out in Beth Macy's Dopesick (2018). It is also a tale of compassionate people deeply wronged and a dogged journalist who won't stand for it.
Preview Book
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty ⭐⭐⭐½
An exploration of characters with comfortable lives who can't help but make themselves uncomfortable. This time she takes on nine guests at a wellness retreat: a romance writer who is fading in popularity; a young married couple; a very handsome lawyer; a teacher, his wife, and their adult daughter; a divorced mother; and a familiar-looking middle-aged man. Tranquillum House, a nineteenth-century mansion in the middle of nowhere in Australia, has been converted to a well-guarded sanctuary, with yoga rooms, fruit smoothies, and an aggressively beautiful leader. Masha Dmitrichenko, emboldened by past success, plans to initiate this group into her new protocol, one that will shake up the wellness world. It's hard to share details, since each reveal is a delicious surprise. Readers will find themselves flipping through the nearly 500 pages. But even at that length, Nine Perfect Strangers is so well written and slyly constructed that it won't feel like enough. 
Preview Book
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Virginia Hall, a spirited young woman from a once-wealthy Baltimore family, embarked on an overseas career as a clerk with the State Department in 1931 after finding that women were not welcome in the Foreign Service. Despite impressive work, she was barred from taking the diplomatic corps entrance exam for unexplained reasons. Two years later, a gunshot wound in a hunting accident cost her half of her left leg. Despite her disability, Hall drove ambulances for the French army after the war started. An undercover British agent noticed her, and she was hired by the Special Operations Executive to recruit Resistance workers in France. Posing as a newspaper reporter, Hall established a vast underground network that pushed back against the German invaders. In late 1942, with her cover blown, Hall escaped France via a dangerous trek across the Pyrenees to Spain. When the SOE refused to send her back to France, she joined the American Office of Strategic Services to facilitate D-Day operations. Though the broader contours of Hall’s story will be familiar to those who’ve read about wartime France. 
Preview Book
Anyone by Charles Soule ⭐⭐⭐½
A suspenseful tale built on the back of an existential crisis around the nature of human consciousness. In the present day, chemist Gabrielle White stumbles across an intriguing new technology that lets her transfer her consciousness into her husband’s body. Interwoven into this narrative is another taking place 25 years in the future, when this new technology, dubbed “flash,” has become commonplace, and flash prostitute Annami chronicles her experiences as a vessel for the minds of anonymous users. Soule draws readers into a brave new world where identities are meaningless and manipulation and control are the name of the game. As the two tales twist and merge together, Soule pits his protagonists against the cutthroat denizens of the corporate world. Present-day concerns about technology, privacy, and anonymity are projected into a dystopian but plausible future. Although the dual narratives are sometimes unwieldy, the novel is fast-paced and suspenseful.
Preview Book
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin ⭐⭐⭐
This book plays with the conventions of the romantic thriller to comment on the uneasy relationship between working-class residents of a fictional island in the Caribbean and the wealthy American tourists who visit it. In 1995, a couple from a New York City suburb and their two daughters, adventurous college freshman Alison and cautious seven-year-old Claire, visit a resort on the island. Alison flirts with two workers at the resort, Clive and Edwin, and takes off with them nightly without her parents’ knowledge to visit a local club, where she dances, drinks, and gets high. One night, she doesn’t return, and her body is soon found on a nearby island. Though suspicion falls on Clive and Edwin, they are not charged with any crime. In present-day N.Y.C., Claire, who narrates much of the novel, recognizes Clive, now a cab driver, from the back seat of his taxi. Obsessed with learning what happened to Alison, she stalks him while neglecting her work and friends. As Claire embeds herself in Clive’s life, he grows increasingly wary, until he finally snaps and reveals what he knows about the final night of Alison’s life. As the novel gradually shifts to Clive’s point of view, Schaitkin subverts the other characters’ assumptions about the lives and intentions of strangers. This is a smart page-turner, both thought-provoking and effortlessly entertaining.
Preview Book
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as “a system of social control” (“More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850”). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the “war on drugs.” She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates “who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits.” Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: “most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration”—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that.
Preview Book
Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles ⭐⭐⭐½
After leaving a Confederate regimental band, Simon Boudlin finds himself in Texas with the twin goals of buying land and courting Doris Dillon, a young Irish governess. After catching Doris's eye at one of the band's last outings, Simon lands in Galveston while Doris continues her service to a colonel's family. The Civil War wasn't particularly kind to Simon, but starting a new band with other displaced musicians hasn't been easy, either. After scraping together enough paying gigs to keep themselves clothed and fed, the band begins to land a few higher-paying jobs. When an appealing piece of property catches Simon's attention, he begins a mission to capture Doris' heart, settle down, and continue his musical career. Imbued with the dust, grit, and grime of Galveston at the close of the Civil War, Simon the Fiddler immerses readers in the challenges of Reconstruction.
Preview Book
King of the Mississippi by Mike Freedman ⭐⭐⭐½
A towering monument to arrogance faces off against a wily underminer in Freedman’s precise and pungent satire of the business world (after School Board). Brock Wharton is a successful Houston business consultant and, at least according to him, the smartest guy in the room. He’s on partner track at his consultancy when he’s assigned to train a new hire, Mike Fink, an earthy ex–Special Forces operative who sees Brock as less a mentor than a target. As Fink endlessly capitalizes on his veteran status to win the trust of clients and engages in various forms of professional sabotage, Brock develops his own counterinsurgency (as he dubs it) to get rid of Fink, whose very existence is an affront to Brock’s Harvard-burnished values. It’s not ruining anything to say that the two end up conspiring together on a far-flung assignment, but the road to their detente is never a forced one. Freedman laces the narrative with acid observations (“Like Islamists, Houstonians shared a fanaticism for knocking down landmark buildings”) and fills it with jargon, though the business doublespeak conceit wears thin. Freedman deserves credit for sticking with such a hubristic antihero; his darkly comic skewering of capitalism is all the more potent for it. This is sly, sharp fun.
Preview Book
The Chef by James Patterson ⭐⭐
The story was unbelievable. One ex-cop against terrorists in Mardi Gras? Why not add some other cops to help out, even if FBI didn't cooperate? But, the part I hated the most, an ex-cop falls for another guys wife, okay, but it's written like a teenage romance novel, her kisses made my heart beat fast, oh jeez. Her hair like a blond halo, oh come on. And the recipes at the end? what, is Patterson Betty Crocker now? It is very different in style, and I was disappointed because this should have been short story - information is repeated often, short and choppy lines, no true depth, a lot of wasted paper space. It is NOT a thriller until the last 30 pages. I found myself putting the book down often - never have I read a James Patterson book and have wanted to actually take a break from reading it. I have read almost every James Patterson book and find this one was probably written mostly by the "co-author". The book was almost childish and subpar work for a James Patterson book. 
Preview Book
The Impeachers by Brenda Wineapple ⭐⭐⭐½
The Author persuasively argues in this detailed and lucidly written history, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, who ascended to the presidency after a mere six weeks as Lincoln’s v-p, was motivated by the impeachers’ view of Johnson’s actions as undermining the sacrifices Americans had made throughout four years of war. Many of Johnson’s fellow Republicans believed that his policies were antithetical to their aims of reconstructing the nation and helping millions of former slaves build new lives as free people. In February 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Johnson, but this decision was based less on his alleged offense—violation of the Tenure of Office Act—than on his refusal to support his party’s aims. While previous scholars have viewed the impeachment, which failed to remove Johnson from office and allowed him to serve out his term, as an embarrassing political grudge fight, Wineapple argues convincingly that it clearly upheld the limits of presidential authority and the power of the constitutional system of checks and balances. Her arguments are novel and her prose lively (she describes the 14th Amendment as “a farrago of political jockeying, political compromise, and nagging anxiety about the future of a country where all people are created equal”). This book has much to offer enthusiasts of both historical and contemporary American politics.
Preview Book
The First Wave by Alex Kershaw ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alex Kershaw tells the story of the D-Day from the points of view of the American, British, Canadian soldiers, and the French allied fighters, there are also a few comments from some of the German soldiers. This is a very appropriate time for this book to be published for the 75th anniversary of D-Day is June 6, 2019. This book is well researched. The author compiled and shares the stories of the people that were fighting the war. It is through the retelling of these stories that we learn of the fear and the courage of the men sent to defeat Hitler. Kershaw takes you right into the action through his meticulous research, interviews with veterans, and gift for narrative with “The First Wave…” It is a treat to read and once again inspires awe at the courage of those who fought that battle. If you study this period at all, you know that the conquest of Nazi Germany was not at all a certain thing in 1944. Looking back today, it sometimes seems that way, but from General Eisenhower to the lowliest private fighting fear and nausea in airplanes and landing craft, it was not at all sure. They were confident, yes, bus definitely not assured of victory. Kershaw’s writing skill reminds the reader of the uncertainty and the courage it took to overcome that and fight on to free Europe from the scourge of Nazi occupation. Every American should read this book. We need to never forget the sacrifices made that day to save the world from tyranny.
Preview Book
Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quinonez ⭐⭐⭐
The author has a poet's ear for the barrio's Spanglish rhythms and idioms, a brujo's gift for describing its alma, and an intense, unrelenting streetwise energy. The book features a cast of memorable characters, including dim-witted Neno, who can't complete a sentence without quoting a song lyric; the nefarious barrio lawyer Nazario; the drug runner and possible hitman Sapo, who would rather be flying a kite from the top of a tenement; and cameo appearances by many real artists and poets. But at the heart of everything is Willie Bodega, a former Young Lord who has become the biggest drug lord of them all. Bodega is also one of the most visionary and magnanimous characters in contemporary fiction. He hands out money for tuition, rent, whatever anyone needs--asking only loyalty in return. Bodega has a dream of what Spanish Harlem could become, and no scruples at all about how the money to fuel his dream is acquired. "We were all insignificant," says Chino, the narrator, "dwarfed by what his dream meant." Chino is an artist who can wax positively lyrical when he is not trading hilarious banter. The plot is basic noir--the fall of an anti-hero--but it is wrapped with a glittering array of scams and schemes that keep it all hopping.
Preview Book
After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry ⭐⭐⭐
A man becomes lost in the woods only to be welcomed by a household of strange but passionate residents. Tired of the summer heat, John Cole sets off from his London bookshop to visit his brother, who lives by the sea. But John never arrives. In the dark Thetford forest, his car breaks down, and he loses his way in the woods. At the end of a path, he reaches the door of a grand mansion. The young girl who opens it seems to recognize him. "John Cole! Is that you? It is you, isn't it--it must be, I'm so glad. I've been waiting for you all day!" So begins Perry's unsettling debut, which shuttles between fairy story and allegory without ever resolving into a single shape or genre. The house is both magnificent and menacing, with "broken chandeliers trailing chipped strings of glass drops," a glass eye constantly changing hands, and empty meat hooks dangling in the kitchen. Consumed with dread and guilt about being an imposter, John chronicles his days with the residents in a journal that reads like a fever dream. There's Hester, a fiercely protective matron and former actress; Elijah, a former preacher who has lost his faith and fears going outside; Walker, a chain-smoking, card-playing devil in a rumpled tuxedo; Eve, a coquettish pianist who longs for attention; and the siblings Clare and Alex, otherworldly changelings who seem at once capable of complete innocence and total guile. Unlike Perry's following two novels, plot matters less than mood here--confusion, uncertainty, and endless possibility unfold over the week of John's stay. Even the sundial in the garden tells "two times at once." What connects this fragile household together? Who is sending Alex cruel poison-pen letters? Why does Eve make John feel "pain set up very low in his stomach...as if hooks had been pushed through his flesh"? And whose place has John actually taken? Like Shirley Jackson, Carmen Maria Machado, and other evocative masters of the gothic, Perry circles closer to answers without ever dispelling the magic that holds her narrative in breathless suspense. A mysterious fable about honesty and deceit, love and self-loathing, and our sometimes-doomed quests for inner peace. 
Preview Book
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell ⭐⭐⭐⭐
At age 15, Vanessa had a relationship with her 42-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane, who claims to love her for her emotional intelligence and creative writing abilities. At least that's what she tells us nearly two decades later, when another student has called out Strane for their sexual activity and starts a social media firestorm. It also starts Vanessa thinking. She had always believed that she and Strane shared true love and defends him now against this student's so-called lies, but what really happened? Vanessa must decide whether she was a victim or willing participant, which of course raises the question of how willing you can be at age 15 in an unequal power relationship. As Vanessa slowly unpacks what happened, we see her youthful and ongoing denial, the impact of events on her still unsure self, how sedulous Strane was in drawing her in, how unabashed he remains, how much she needed and still needs to believe they had something special, and how she still takes Strane as a measure. 
Preview Book
Texas Outlaw by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Texas Ranger Rory Yates has another adventure to face head-on, though he might have wished he just stayed at home. While in a bank over the lunch hour, Rory Yates comes upon a robbery. Quick to act, Yates fires to quell the storm, only to find himself in a great deal of trouble from his superiors. While the entire event was captured on film and is now making its way through social media, the Texas Rangers want to cool things off and send Yates to a small Texas town to help with a mysterious death. A local woman has died of an apparent anaphylactic attack, but the fact that she told a friend she had to speak with the police has begun to raise some flags. Tasked with working alongside one of the local detectives, Yates begins poking around, though he soon discovers that he is not welcome. Butting heads with one of the local oil barons, Yates must try to solve this case before things get out of hand. Once one of the local oil workers is shot, Yates realises that this is no longer just fun and games. Evidence of the shooting takes a turn that Yates could not have expected, leaving him to bend the rules in order to help someone escape the clutches of the law. This is frowned upon and Yates becomes an outlaw himself, as his superior makes his way to this small town to tie off the loose ends. Refusing the stand down and remaining one step ahead of those looking for him, Yates stumbles upon something that might blow the case wide open. Patterson and Bourelle work well together in this piece, taking twang out of the story and providing a palatable piece worth reading. 
Preview Book
Nothing Ventured by Jeffrey Archer ⭐⭐⭐⭐
From age eight, William Warwick knew he wanted to be a police detective. His father, a criminal barrister, wished William would have followed in his footsteps. But with the assistance of his mother, William went to university, studied art, and became a police officer. He starts at the bottom, walking a beat as a police constable, although he could have been fast-tracked as a college graduate. When he passes the detective's exam, William is assigned to the Metropolitan Police Force, attached to Art and Antiques. While he works several cases, because of his knowledge of art, his major assignment involves the theft of valuable paintings, forgeries, and a finder's fee when the paintings are "recovered" on behalf of the insurance companies. While investigating, he meets Beth Rainsford, a beautiful gallery research assistant, who has family secrets. The case, and Beth's secret, result in riveting simultaneous court trials, in a story that builds in intensity. 
Preview Book
Empire of Lies by Raymond Khoury ⭐⭐⭐½
The Western world turns upside down in this time-traveling alternate history by the author of The End Game (2016, etc.). A naked "mystery man" suddenly appears in the Muslim city of Paris. After murdering a man for his clothes, he winds up in the hospital. The year is 1438, or 2017 if you live in the exclusively Christian and white Christian Republic of America. He is Ayman Rasheed, a strange, tattooed patient who eventually begins to babble apparent nonsense to a Dr. Ramazan about traveling across three centuries from the time of the Ottomans' siege of Vienna. "None of you would be here if it wasn't for me," Rasheed insists. Meanwhile, Kamal and Taymoor are partners in the counterterrorism unit of the sultan's secret police and are honored to witness the public beheadings of terrorists they have caught. It's that kind of society--the erstwhile Notre Dame cathedral is now called Faith Mosque, Paris has minarets, its main language is Turkish, and freedom doesn't exist. This is all because Rasheed isn't the "delusional joker" Ramazan thinks he is. Rasheed had traveled to 1683 C.E., bushwhacked Christian generals, and paved the way for the Ottoman conquest of Europe. The bad news: Europe is "a murderous, barbaric state," and America looks no better. The good news: There weren't two world wars with tens of millions of deaths. Which outcome is better is a subject Kamal must mull. Rasheed used a special Palmyran incantation for his time travel, but still, "it's not so easy to travel three hundred years across time." When Kamal and friends find those magic words, they must decide whether to undo Rasheed's deed and allow history to take its natural course. It's no matter why the words work--they are a simple plot device to show the stench, misery, and horror of that great clash of civilizations that "would decide the fate of the world." This untypical thriller powerfully mixes history, culture, warfare, and imagination. 
Preview Book
Broken by Don Winslow ⭐⭐⭐½
Rosenberg, professor emeritus of literature at Bard College, recounts his remarkable journey from young Polish-Jewish student to daring French underground freedom fighter in this powerful debut memoir. As the Nazis tightened their grip on the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1937, Rosenberg’s parents sent their blue-eyed, blond, 16-year-old son to schooling and safety in Paris. Three years later, he fled south after the Nazis occupied the city. In Marseille, through an amazing “confluence of circumstances,” he met an American journalist named Varian Fry who helped artists and intellectuals escape Nazi occupation. Rosenberg’s German background, French education, and fluency in several languages allowed him to become a successful espionage agent, and he went on to work with Fry, assisting the likes of Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, Franz Werfel, and Max Ernst to escape into Spain. Rosenberg, a modest narrator, nevertheless writes thrillingly of his life—of participating in reconnaissance and guerrilla attacks; joining the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion as interpreter and scout; and serving as supply officer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—all while dodging injury, imprisonment, and death. Rosenberg’s memoir has all the suspense of a tense spy thriller. 
Preview Book
The Art of Resistance by Justus Rosenberg ⭐⭐⭐
Rosenberg, professor emeritus of literature at Bard College, recounts his remarkable journey from young Polish-Jewish student to daring French underground freedom fighter in this powerful debut memoir. As the Nazis tightened their grip on the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1937, Rosenberg’s parents sent their blue-eyed, blond, 16-year-old son to schooling and safety in Paris. Three years later, he fled south after the Nazis occupied the city. In Marseille, through an amazing “confluence of circumstances,” he met an American journalist named Varian Fry who helped artists and intellectuals escape Nazi occupation. Rosenberg’s German background, French education, and fluency in several languages allowed him to become a successful espionage agent, and he went on to work with Fry, assisting the likes of Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, Franz Werfel, and Max Ernst to escape into Spain. Rosenberg, a modest narrator, nevertheless writes thrillingly of his life—of participating in reconnaissance and guerrilla attacks; joining the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion as interpreter and scout; and serving as supply officer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—all while dodging injury, imprisonment, and death. Rosenberg’s memoir has all the suspense of a tense spy thriller. 
Preview Book
A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen ⭐⭐⭐½
At the start of this stunning crime novel from Bollen, 25-year-old Nicholas Brink leaves his lover and life in New York City to meet his new boyfriend, Clay Guillory, in Venice. There, the two young men set in motion a supposedly foolproof con to unload counterfeit silver on Richard Forsyth West, a charming, wealthy ex-pat American for whom Clay once worked and who’s immersed in Venice’s renovation. Clay inherited the silver from his last partner, the much older Freddy van der Haar. The sale will allow Clay to pay off debts incurred while caring for Freddy and allow the couple a fresh start. While the swindle fuels the plot, the story gains its strength from its look at gay romance and how individuals become a couple, as well as its view of shabby yet chic Venice, with its “fugitive magic” that lacks “the reality check of poverty and ugliness and ordinary struggles.” Clay and Nick grapple with their morals and greed while remaining appealing. Readers will easily root for them to get away with the con. 
Preview Book
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins ⭐⭐⭐½
This terrifying and tender novel is a blunt answer to the question of why immigrants from Latin America cross the U.S. border--and a testimony to the courage it takes to do it. Cummins (The Crooked Branch, 2013, etc.) opens this propulsive novel with a massacre. In a pleasant Acapulco neighborhood, gunmen slaughter 16 people at a family barbecue, from a grandmother to the girl whose quinceañera they are celebrating. The only survivors are Lydia, a young mother, and her 8-year-old son, Luca. She knows they must escape, fast and far. Lydia's husband, Sebastián, is among the dead; he was a fearless journalist whose coverage of the local cartel, Los Jardineros, is the reason los sicarios were sent, as the sign fastened to his dead chest makes clear. Lydia knows there is more to it, that her friendship with a courtly older man who has become her favorite customer at the small bookstore she runs is a secret key, and that she and her son are marked for death. Cummins does a splendid job of capturing Lydia's and Luca's numb shock and then panic in the aftermath of the shootings, then their indomitable will to survive and reach el norte--any place they might go in Mexico is cartel territory, and any stranger might be an assassin. She vividly recounts their harrowing travels for more than 1,000 miles by bus, atop a lethally dangerous freight train, and finally on foot across the implacable Sonoran Desert. Peril and brutality follow them, but they also encounter unexpected generosity and heroism. Lydia and Luca are utterly believable characters, and their breathtaking journey moves with the velocity and power of one of those freight trains. Intensely suspenseful and deeply humane, this novel makes migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border indelibly individual.
Preview Book
Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard ⭐⭐⭐½
Historical thriller veteran Bayard (Lucky Strikes, 2016, etc.) finds suspense in the three-cornered relationship of Mary Todd, her awkward but compelling suitor, Abraham Lincoln, and his closest companion, debonair Joshua Speed.About to turn 21 when she arrives in Springfield in 1839, Mary teeters on the brink of old-maidenhood. She's too sharp-tongued and politically astute for the town's eligible men--including, she thinks regretfully, handsome merchant Joshua Speed, whom she initially finds more charming than his friend Lincoln, who is as tongue-tied with ladies as he is plainspokenly eloquent at the Illinois statehouse. But Mary becomes intrigued by Lincoln, a rising Whig politician who finds a woman with brains and savvy enticing rather than off-putting. She doesn't yet realize how destabilizing their budding romance is for Lincoln and Speed. For two years the men have shared a room and a bed, not in itself unusual for 19th-century bachelors, but as Lincoln hungrily learned the ways of polite society from his new friend, a deeper intimacy developed. By the time Mary appears, Lincoln and Speed, each profoundly lonely for his own reasons, share an unusually intense bond apparent to all. Alternating between Mary's and Joshua's points of view, Bayard chronicles the bumpy progression of the Lincoln-Todd courtship, its painful blow-up, and Lincoln's subsequent collapse into crippling depression. There are no villains in this acute and compassionate portrait: When Speed warns Lincoln that Mary "will drain [you] dry," we can see there's some truth in this statement but even more truth in Lincoln's retort, "Is it this girl you object to? Or is it any girl?" The author commendably refrains from imposing 21st-century sexual mores on the Lincoln-Speed relationship, profoundly loving but not physical in Bayard's depiction. Mary Todd, by contrast, gets a welcome contemporary reappraisal as a woman of spirit and will, not the needy hysteric painted by traditional historians.Not a lot of action, but in Bayard's skilled hands, three complicated people groping toward a new phase in their lives is all the plot you need.
Preview Book
The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon ⭐⭐⭐
In 1962, the year of Adolf Eichmann's execution, CIA analyst Aaron Wiley, nephew of famed Nazi hunter Max Weill, tracks notorious concentration camp torturer Otto Schramm to Argentina--where Aaron becomes involved with Schramm's daughter. Max, a Holocaust survivor who was on the cover of Time magazine with his "old rival" Simon Wiesenthal, refuses to believe official accounts that Schramm is dead. Maybe another evil Nazi, but not the one with whom he once studied medicine and the one who conducted hideous experiments on children at Auschwitz. Not the Mengele associate who chatted with Max at the camp knowing Max's son was being led into the gas chamber. The Nazi hunter's skepticism is borne out when, joined by Aaron at an outdoor cafe in Hamburg, he spots Schramm, whom he recognizes from the way he walks. Max's failing health doesn't allow him to pursue Schramm, aka Helmut Braun, after his prey slips away. Reluctantly, Aaron takes his uncle's place. It doesn't take him long to get introduced to the daughter, Hanna, in Buenos Aires. Quickly attracted to her, he finds himself in the untenable position of secretly tailing her when not enjoying her considerable charms. Fueled by brilliant scenes of dialogue between Aaron and Hanna, who, at considerable psychological cost, has come to accept her father's evil past, Kanon's latest sophisticated thriller is teeming with suspense. Surrounded by aggressively anti-Semitic acquaintances of Hanna's who are hoping for a Fourth Reich and working with British and Israeli operatives with conflicting agendas, Aaron is an endangered odd man out. As fast as the pages turn, though, the novel stumbles with less-than-convincing character developments and plot turns. While elements of the Casablanca formula work well at first, ultimately they don't. A fast-paced, atmospheric thriller that works less well in reflecting on the banality of evil.
Preview Book
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Steinbeck's tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America's most widely read and taught novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. They hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.
Preview Book
Silent Widow by Sidney Sheldon ⭐⭐⭐
Consulting psychologist Nikki Roberts takes on a host of bad guys—including vicious Russian mobsters, sadistic Mexican criminals, corrupt Los Angeles socialites, and greedy lawyers—in bestseller Bagshawe’s overwrought fifth contribution to the Sidney Sheldon franchise (after 2014’s Sidney Sheldon’s Chasing Tomorrow). When one of Nikki’s patients, a 28-year-old former model with an elderly billionaire boyfriend, is tortured and killed after she leaves Nikki’s office, the only clue to the perpetrator’s identity is a tiny bit of rotting human flesh found under the victim’s fingernails. Other murders follow, with the press dubbing them the Zombie Murders. LAPD detectives Goodman and Johnson, who take the concept of good cop/ bad cop to a new level, investigate. In particular, Johnson seems set on pinning the crimes on Nikki. Unfortunately, Nikki so consistently misjudges people and situations that it’s difficult to work up sufficient sympathy for her plight or make her professional role credible. Readers will struggle to follow who did what to whom and why. Only Sidney Sheldon buffs are likely to have fun.
Preview Book
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad ⭐⭐⭐
Conrad’s classic tale of one man’s desperate search for atonement is brought to life through an exceptional reading by Jerrom. The title character is a first mate on the small steamer Patna. A romantic, Jim holds dreams of being a hero. Those dreams are dashed when a disaster causes the crew to abandon the ship, with hundreds of passengers on board left to their own demise. Jim is subsequently brought to trial and stripped of his officer’s certificate, and the stigma of being a coward follows him, preventing him from finding any kind of peace. Jerrom delivers this story with the ease of an excellent after-dinner raconteur. His reading is relaxed, comfortable, and compelling. He expertly pulls the listener through Conrad’s dense intellectual ruminations to reveal a rich, multilayered novel about a person’s need, whatever the cost, for self-respect.
Preview Book
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In a British colony in West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious and righteous man of modest means enlisted with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out.
Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides against his better judgment to accept a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise's passage. It's just a single indiscretion, yet for Henry it precipitates a rapid fall from grace as one moral compromise after another leads him into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. And for a devout man like Henry, there may be nothing left but damnation.
Drawn from Graham Greene's own experiences as a British intelligence officer in Sierra Leone, The Heart of the Matter is "a powerful, deep-striking novel . . . of a spirit lost in the darkness of the flesh"
Preview Book
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
⭐⭐⭐⭐
The first of Anthony Trollope's works to receive widespread popular and critical acclaim, The Warden follows the career of Septimus Harding, the warden of an almshouse—an early form of subsidized housing for the poor—who is forced to adapt to looming social changes when a zealous young reformer comes on the scene. Confusion, crossed wires, and much hilarity ensue. A must-read for fans of witty social satire.
No Book Preview
The First Lady by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's four weeks until the election for the new President. Current President Tucker is enjoying himself at a hotel in Atlanta with his girlfriend, while his wife and first lady, Grace Tucker, is fulfilling the duties of her office. When the President leave the hotel with his mistress, all hell breaks loose. There are reporters everywhere, there to catch the scandal. It's all just too much for the First Lady to handle, so she retreats to one of her favorite places and then, she turns up missing. Sally Grissom is the Secret Service Agent in charge of the presidential detail and doesn't know how the First Lady going missing isn't something she is told. Until she is called into the President's office and is asked to look for her secretively. What is going on? Something isn't right. And Sally has her eye on the President's Chief of Staff and his strange request. But Sally doesn't work for him, she serves the Office of the President and she will find the First Lady, no matter what.
This is a book I really enjoyed. It captured my attention from the start and had some twists and turns, I didn't see coming. There was only one drawback from this audio version of the book, the narrator. She did a fine job of reading the story and the voices, but her pronunciation drove me crazy. If you're not from the Washington, DC area, you might not notice, but it is so obvious. Pronouncing Maryland like Merry-Land. Potomac like Pot A Mack, and Arapaho like Air a pay ho. I cringed every time.
Imagine in this day and time with smart phones everywhere if the First Lady went missing. It would be all over the news. Why doesn't the Chief of Staff want to share this with the world, to help find her? Why isn't the FBI involved? Something is going on in the White House and Sally doesn't know if the President is aware at all. Or is his mistress and the election much more important to him than finding his wife.
Sally is going to do all she can to do her job even when she is asked to stand down. Even when it seems like there is always an obstacle there to stop her. Will she find the First Lady before it's too late? You'll have to read the book to find out. 
Preview Book
The Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen ⭐⭐½
Lies take life in this excellent novel about a young Israeli girl who finds power in deceit. Nofar Shalev is 17, exceedingly unremarkable, and stuck in the shadow of her beautiful younger sister, Maya. She spends her summer evenings working at an ice cream parlor and hopes to be noticed by her high school crush. Instead, she encounters Avishai Milner, a winner of a televised singing contest who is now washed up and without future prospects. After Avishai lashes out verbally at Nofar, the teenage girl flees to the alley behind the shop, and Avishai follows and grabs her, causing Nofar to scream. When asked by police if she had been assaulted, Nofar says yes. This lie snowballs into an unstoppable force, garnering media attention and sweeping up friends and family members along with it as Nofar battles between her building guilt and her fear of rejection if she comes clean. Though some characters fall to the wayside and leave the reader curious as to their purpose in the story, Nofar’s internal journey makes up for it. This tender and satisfying coming-of-age story leads readers to question how a split second can change lives.
Preview Book
Montauk by Nicola Harrison ⭐⭐⭐
Harrison's historical fiction debut transports readers to a Long Island resort in 1938, where high-society ladies, occasionally joined by their husbands, spend summer days socializing and gossiping, and main character Beatrice Bordeaux longs for more. While Bea deals with infertility, the untimely death of her brother, and her husband's aloofness, she and the wealthy women around her swan through the tail end of the Great Depression in glittering dresses and fancy hats. The rich New Yorkers play tennis and sip cocktails at their posh resort, but Bea explores the nearby fishing village and befriends several year-round residents who barely make ends meet as laundresses and lobster fishermen. As she ventures further from the beau monde, she falls in love and works to find her place in the world around her. 
Preview Book
Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford ⭐⭐⭐½
Brimming with dark folklore and underworld energy, Rainsford’s stellar debut features a memorable heroine chafing against her monstrous isolation. Ada and her father are vegetal creatures born of the Ground, a special patch of hungry earth that “gorge on bodies” and shapes “them to its own liking.” They are strange, slowly aging beings who live apart from the human population, or “Cures,” but are tolerated for their extraordinary healing capacity. Ada and her father can open up bodies and sing away sickness; the most serious cases are put into the Ground to heal, though the results are unpredictable. Rainsford excels in describing the grotesque beauty of this alternative medicine in which the humming healers feel their “way to the pitch of hurt.” The novel alternates between short sections in which various Cures describe their impressions of Ada, the lonely young creature with an “unseeded” heart, and Ada’s own narration of her rapturous affair with a young man named Samson. Ada tries to hide the romance from her disapproving father, who sees Samson’s longing for Ada, as well as his intense relationship with his pregnant sister, Olivia, as indicative of a diseased nature—too poisonous even for the Ground to cleanse. This is a subtle, unsettling novel in which desire is an ineradicable sickness that can be preferable to health.
Preview Book
Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Good news, Baldacci fans; here's a new series starring Atlee Pine, an FBI special agent who plies her trade in America's Western wilds as a criminal profiler specializing in serial killers. Now she's investigating the slashed-up carcass of a mule in the Grand Canyon, hoping to find the rider--and to solve a glut of missing persons cases in the canyon.
Preview Book
Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Presidential historian Beschloss (Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789–1989) offers a sweeping history of American presidents seeking and waging war from the War of 1812—the first major conflict conducted by the executive office under the Constitution—through the conclusion of the Vietnam War. He provides insight into the motivations of American leaders; presidents’ battles with other branches of government; their degree of respect for civil liberties; and the role of personality, emotion, and the general political climate as American commanders-in-chief executed the power of the country’s military forces. Beschloss reviews the historical record from an American-expansionist yet not necessarily prowar perspective; he writes, for example, that President Polk “deserves credit for adding almost a million square miles to the United States,” referring to the U.S. conquest of much of Mexico during the Mexican–American War, but that “a major, bloody war... should have been his last resort,” in keeping with the founders’ intentions. With ample detail and enticing storytelling, this readable work will be enjoyed by students and American history buffs. 
Preview Book
Typhoon by Joseph Conrad ⭐⭐⭐½
This classic sea yarn of 1903, in which a fairly stupid captain somehow pilots his steamer through a horrendous storm, is remarkable for its evocation of life aboard ship, its quirky eloquence, and its psychological insight. 
Preview Book
The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An atmosphere of distrust and subterfuge pervaded the Colonies on the eve of war.In brisk, tense chapters, Meltzer (The Escape Artist, 2018, etc.) and documentary TV producer Mensch relate a tale of spies and treason, conspiracy and counterintelligence at the start of the colonists' war against Britain. Using present tense, the authors create a sense of immediacy and peril: Patriots are being hastily formed into a ragtag, rowdy army; the British, with its incomparable navy, are mounting a well-orchestrated campaign, sending hundreds of ships to assail Manhattan; and the clock, as clocks do in such thrillers, is ticking. Central to the convoluted plot is the fate of George Washington, portrayed by the authors as a paragon of leadership and perfection: "perfect poise, perfect manners, perfect horsemanship, perfect appearance." He faces a population of "divided loyalties and shifting allegiances...ripe for treachery, spying, and double-crossing." Farmers and townsfolk are lured into fighting for the king and conveying secret information. New York Gov. William Tryon and the city's mayor, David Mathews, are conspirators, Tryon masterminding treachery from aboard a British ship docked in New York's harbor. Shocked by rumors, Washington decides to assemble an elite band of soldiers enjoined to protect him. Their nickname was the Life Guards. In addition, he convenes "a dedicated team who can uncover the enemies' secret activities," learn their plans, and thwart them. The secret Committee of Intestine Enemies, the authors assert, will become, two centuries later, the CIA: "the domain of dedicated agencies with well-trained experts and sophisticated technologies." As rudimentary as it was, however, Washington's clandestine committee ferreted out important information: Among turncoats were members of Washington's Life Guards and, astonishingly, his housekeeper. The authors acknowledge that some elements of the plot remain mysterious: Washington's housekeeper, for example, left his employ suddenly, but no records point to her involvement. Nevertheless, the conspiracy is foiled, and in July 1776, Washington's public reading of the Declaration of Independence finally energizes his soldiers.A lively political thriller.
Preview Book
The Late Show by Michael Connelly ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The title of this excellent series launch from bestseller Connelly (The Wrong Side of Goodbye and 20 other Harry Bosch novels) refers to the midnight shift at LAPD’s Hollywood Division. Det. Renée Ballard has landed there in retribution for filing sexual harassment charges against her former boss, Lt. Robert Olivas. Two major crimes soon concern Ballard: the vicious beating of a woman, who says she was assaulted in the “upside-down house” but passes out before she can explain, and a nightclub shooting that kills five people. Though most “late show” cops hand off cases to their day shift counterparts, Ballard personally investigates the assault (with official approval) and the nightclub shooting (without). Olivas, who’s leading the latter investigation, wants her nowhere near the case. What follows is classic Connelly: a master class of LAPD internal politics and culture, good old-fashioned detective work, and state-of-the-art forensic science—plus a protagonist who’s smart, relentless, and reflective. Talking about the perpetrator of the assault, Ballard says, “This is big evil out there.” That’s Connelly’s great theme, and, once again, he delivers.
Preview Book
The Enemy of the People by Jim Acosta ⭐⭐⭐
CNN’s chief White House correspondent takes on an anti-media president in this passionate memoir. Acosta recounts the challenges of reporting after President Trump labeled CNN and him personally as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people,” which precipitated death threats, confrontations with foul-mouthed Trump supporters at political rallies, and pipe bombs delivered to CNN headquarters. The narrative recounts the big stories from the Trump campaign and administration—probing the investigation into Russian collusion, the travel ban on people from majority-Muslim countries, immigration policy, and the soap opera of White House infighting—with the focus on Acosta and his tenacious efforts at briefings and press conferences to get his confrontational questions answered, to the point of getting his press pass temporarily revoked in 2018. (“Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?” he asked White House press secretary Sarah Sanders about Trump’s border policies after then–attorney general Jeff Sessions used Bible passages to support the separation of migrant families at the U.S. border.) Framing modern-day political journalism as a truth-vs.-Trump showdown, Acosta is forthrightly opinionated, writing that “neutrality for the sake of neutrality doesn’t really serve us in the Age of Trump.” Fans of the author’s hard-hitting reporting will love it, but critics who have accused him of grandstanding and bias may not have their suspicions allayed. 
Preview Book
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal ⭐⭐⭐½
MacNeal’s lively debut finds a fresh way to dramatize the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of revolutionary, mid-19th-century British painters. In addition to William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, MacNeal creates a fictitious PRB member, Louis Frost, who meets Iris Whittle, the heroine, a painter of miniature faces at Mrs. Salter’s Doll Emporium. Dismissed for being a woman, Iris longs to be seen as a real painter, and when she meets Frost, he proposes a deal: if she poses for him, he will give her art lessons. At the same time, Iris also comes to the attention of Silas Reed, a taxidermist who sells stuffed animals to artists as props for their paintings. Unbeknownst to Iris, he stalks her with the intention of possessing her like an object. Louis turns out to be a generous mentor and Iris ends up falling for him. Only Albie, a light-fingered street urchin befriended by Iris, is aware of how much danger she is in from the obsessed Silas. Told against the backdrop of the Great Exposition at the Crystal Palace and its industrial wonders, MacNeal’s consistently enjoyable novel reads like an art history lecture co-delivered by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens and read from a revisionist feminist script. This debut is a blast; it enticingly vacillates between a realistic depiction of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s London and lurid Victorian drama.
Preview Book
Pursuit by Joyce Carol Oates ⭐⭐½
A young woman is haunted by a past she doesn't understand in this brief but powerful story of domestic violence. In her latest novel, Oates (My Life as a Rat, 2019, etc.) is in full domestic gothic mode. Like any bride, Abby Hayman is hopeful that she's stepping into a new and happy life. But she has more reason than most to long for transformation. Her parents disappeared when she was 5 years old. After a haphazard upbringing, at 20 she's pulling her life together. She's even put behind her the terrifying nightmares of skeletons hidden in tall grass that tormented her childhood--or so she thinks. Those visions return with a vengeance just before she marries Willem Zengler, a devoutly Christian pre-med student. The day after their wedding, she gets off a bus, then steps in front of it. Was it an accident or a suicide attempt? She's so seriously injured she can't answer the question, spending nine days in a coma and still feeling confused when she awakes. When Willem says, "We need to get to that moment, Abby. When you can tell me what you see," he might be talking about the accident--or about her screaming nightmares. The first part of the book focuses on Abby and her shadowy memories. It intensifies as Oates switches to the points of view of Abby's parents. Her mother married young and raised her baby alone while her husband was serving in the military in Iraq. When he returns, his wife hardly knows him: In the Army "he'd cultivated a cruel use of seemingly ordinary speech, given a mock-Southern inflection. Like a butter knife honed razor-sharp." That cruelty will quickly escalate into PTSD-fueled madness. The book is so submerged in the nightmares that intrude on Abby's life that it's a little shocking to be reminded, by such prosaic items as iPhones and MRIs, that the story takes place in the present, in the real world. A compelling domestic horror story reaches into a young woman's nightmares of her childhood in search of what's real.
Preview Book
The Book in Room 316 by ReShonda Tate Billingsley ⭐⭐⭐
Savannah Graham thought she had the perfect marriage...until grief drove her husband into the arms of his best friend's wife. Now, she believes revenge is the only way her heart can heal from the betrayal.For fifty-two years, Ollie Moss lived side by side with the love of his life, his wife Elizabeth. But now that she's gone, so is his desire to live, despite the love from his children, and his beloved grandson Samuel. Can anything save Ollie's life?
Anna Rodriguez just wants to work and provide for her three children by any means necessary. But her decision to break the law in order to get a job is threatening life as she knows it.
Trey Brown is known in his neighborhood as a hustler, so much so that the gangs want him to join their ranks...but there's a reason the nineteen-year-old does what he does—he's the only one left who can save his little brother.
Different circumstances lead each of them to The Markham Hotel, where they hope to find solace, comfort, and answers. Told from multiple perspectives, The Book in Room 316 will renew your strength and faith that there is always a way forward.
Preview Book
Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr ⭐⭐½
What is the history of a city if not an amalgamation of myths, stories, and archival documents? Carr's debut novel is an impressive literary experiment blending epistolary narratives, fragmented journal entries, and historical book chapters into a sprawling chronicle about the founding and development of Chicago in the 19th century. The story begins with Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (of African descent) establishing a settlement in 1785 and then proceeds chronologically, focusing on the key figures in Chicago's accelerated growth. Because chapters rotate between literary forms and time periods, readers may find the narrative structure challenging to follow. However, Carr effectively weaves the stories of his sprawling cast of minor and major figures to underscore the city's myriad threads of development: economic, political, and social. With minimal dialog, he melds the historical construction of the railroad and canals with a population struggling to define its political and social stratification during the Civil War. VERDICT An ambitious literary debut that occupies a space between alternative history and experimental literature.
Preview Book
The Parade by Dave Eggers ⭐⭐⭐½
A plan to lay down a roadway runs into a few barriers in this parable of friendship and politics.The pared-down style and global themes that Eggers has embraced since A Hologram for the King (2012)--he may be the only living American writer for whom the term "Hemingway-esque" meaningfully applies--have restricted him to writing two kinds of novels. Eggers the Compassionate Realist focuses on men and women forced to adapt to economic shifting sands (Hologram; Heroes of the Frontier, 2016); Eggers the Dour Lecturer focuses on social justice concerns in ways that smother his characters (The Circle, 2013). This short novel showcases the virtues of the former, though there's a whiff of pedagogy in the prose. Two men, Four and Nine, have been assigned to pave a road in an unnamed country recovering from civil war. Four is an experienced, by-the-book type, concerned only with meeting his deadline before a celebratory parade. Nine is a reckless newbie, neglecting cautions against eating local food, swimming in a local river, and carousing. Eggers doesn't play this for comedy, Odd Couple-style, not even a little; we're mostly in Four's increasingly infuriated mind, and we know that the country is unstable enough that Nine's antics court serious consequences. But when it does, Eggers ably weaves in a host of ethical questions over one man's responsibility to the other, what makes help transactional versus simply kind, and whether the road itself will truly "bring safety and progress to the provinces at seventy miles an hour." The closing paragraphs of this short novel take an abrupt turn into Dour Lecturer territory, but the shift is earned; Eggers is determined to counter the notion that social and economic improvement work hand in hand, and Four and Nine ultimately resonate as characters as much as archetypes.An unassuming but deceptively complex morality play, as Eggers distills his ongoing concerns into ever tighter prose.
Preview Book
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Refreshing; a transport back to a time and place when hard work is required, children mature quickly, reversals of fortune are dramatic, and where the least of us has an important role to play in the overall scheme of things. Life aboard a commercial fishing vessel in the nineteenth century was brutal: requiring hard, hard work, sleeplessness, constant physical danger, unforgiving conditions, and where the workplace is populated by sturdy, ruthless people. Big business interests, similarly. A story of survival at the school of hard knocks.
Preview Book
Small Silent Things by Robin Page ⭐⭐½
Page’s moving debut explores how tragedy forces surprising changes for a woman who feels out of place in her privileged life. When Jocelyn Morrow’s mother dies, a flood of pent-up emotions and memories of her physically and emotionally abusive childhood are released. Slowly, the dark emotions bleed into her daily life, as she feels increasingly detached from her six-year-old daughter, Lucy. Meanwhile, Jocelyn becomes attracted to her tennis instructor, Kate, and she notices feelings of sexual energy she hasn’t experienced in years. Concerned by Jocelyn’s melancholy, her husband asks her to start therapy. As she dredges up painful memories, she questions herself as a mother and frets over Lucy’s future; Lucy, like Jocelyn, is biracial, and Jocelyn fears Lucy will face many of the same challenges she did. Jocelyn also begins speaking with neighbor Simon, an architect and refugee of the Rwandan genocide who is tormented by the loss of his family. When Simon receives a letter from someone claiming to be his daughter, he must decide how to respond. As Jocelyn’s marriage slowly deteriorates, she forms a bond with Simon that helps her regain a sense of hope. Though several threads of the story feel incomplete, the climactic final scene makes for a dramatic finish. The plot is frustratingly circuitous, but Jocelyn’s electric voice and heartrending battle with depression make this a profound and pleasing character study.
Preview Book
The Eulogist by Terry Gamble Loan ⭐⭐⭐
Gamble’s third novel (after Good Family) concerns the lives of the Givens siblings, Irish immigrants who start over in 1819 Cincinnati. Olivia, the book’s strong-willed narrator, takes a shine to like-minded doctor Silas Orpheus, who admires her distaste for religion and allows her to surreptitiously dissect corpses with him. Olivia’s older brother, James, a successful candle maker who married rich, is initially reluctant to give his blessing for their marriage, as Silas’s disreputable brother, Eugene, sends a slave, Tilly, in lieu of a proper dowry. Olivia and Tilly become friendly, and Tilly helps her set up her own business doing hair. Olivia’s ambivalence toward slavery dissipates when Silas dies and she meets Eugene’s family on their Kentucky property. When Olivia enlists the help of her younger brother, Erasmus, now a Methodist preacher living on a river encampment, to help lead one of the slaves to freedom, Eugene retaliates by demanding that Tilly be returned. Since Ohio is a free state, an ill-fated trial ensues. Olivia and her family are thereafter pulled into the movement to smuggle slaves to freedom. Gamble adeptly chronicles Olivia’s transformation from a free-thinking but unaffected young woman into a determined widow who wants to indirectly avenge Tilly. This is a standout depiction of family dynamics, and will appeal to fans of fiction set in pre–Civil War America.
Preview Book
The Fox by Frederick Forsyth ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A lifetime of experience from both bestseller Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal) and his lead character, Sir Adrian Weston, informs every page of this terrifically entertaining spy thriller in the classic tradition. Sir Adrian may be retired from the British Secret Intelligence Service, of which he was once deputy chief, but he remains Prime Minister Marjory Graham’s personal adviser on matters concerning national security. When the U.S. National Security Agency is hacked, and it turns out that the perpetrator is Luke Jennings, an 18-year-old computer genius in the U.K., Adrian not only offers advice but comes up with a plan. After convincing the American president, a thinly disguised stand-in for Donald Trump, that there’s a major espionage opportunity here, Adrian initiates Operation Troy, whose object is “the greatest deception in the history of the cyberworld.” Adrian ensconces Luke, now known as the Fox, with his computer and his mother in a series of British safe houses while the spymaster concocts devilishly clever online attacks on the Russians, Iranians, and North Koreans. The risks for Adrian and Luke increase with each operation. That these attacks seem to explain some real-life events make the book even more fascinating. Along the way, Forsyth details the nuts and bolts of modern espionage. Genre fans will be enthralled. 
Preview Book
A Stranger on the Beach by Michele Campbell ⭐⭐⭐½
Well-to-do New Yorker Caroline Stark, the narrator of this engrossing, if flawed, thriller from Campbell (She Was the Quiet One), loses everything starting the night her husband, Jason, arrives late for the housewarming party at their new beach house followed by a Russian woman he claims is a business associate. Caroline knows the woman is his mistress, and their marriage falls apart. Soon the bank accounts are empty, the credit cards are canceled, and Caroline’s college-age daughter is siding with Jason. Drunk and despondent, Caroline has an impetuous fling with a bartender, Aiden Callahan, who has a history of violence. Aiden becomes obsessed with Caroline and her house, which is built on land that was once owned by his family. Meanwhile, Jason disappears and suspicion falls on Caroline that she murdered him. The fast pace and strong characters, especially secondary ones such as Aiden, will help the reader overlook the plot holes (some Russian mobsters show unconvincing restraint).
Preview Book
Dubliners by James Joyce ⭐⭐⭐⭐
James Joyce paints vivid portraits of the poorer classes of Dublin in a collection of stories whose larger purpose, he said, was to depict a "moral history of Ireland." From the first story, in which a young boy encounters death, to the haunting final story involving the middle-aged Gabriel, the book gives an unflinchingly realistic portrayal of the author's own "dear, dirty Dublin" in the early twentieth century.Joyce's first published work in prose, this brilliant study is by turns bawdy, witty, and tragic. Said Joyce of the work: "I am trying...to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own...Do you see that man who has just skipped out of the way of the tram? Consider, if he had been run over, how significant every act of his would at once become." .
Preview Book
The Better Sister by Alafair Burke ⭐⭐⭐½
Chloe Taylor is married to her estranged sister Nicky's handsome ex-husband Adam Macintosh, and raising her sister's son, Ethan, as her own. She's also the editor-in-chief at a women's magazine and has recently gained significant recognition--both good and bad--for a series highlighting everyday women and the #MeToo movement. By all appearances, she's super successful, with a loving spouse, a two-book deal, and a well-paying job. Then Adam is murdered, and a staged crime scene and an inconsistent account of Ethan's whereabouts leads to his arrest. Not sure whom she can trust, Chloe reluctantly lets Nicky back into her life. Together, they deal with the consequences of having their secrets exposed during a high-profile trial while also confronting the truth about the man they both once loved. VERDICT Burke (The Wife; The Ex) writes a straightforward and uncomplicated character-driven mystery that also delves into the topics of sisterhood and abuse. Vague references to current events might eventually date the story, but mystery lovers will find much to enjoy in this fast-moving whodunit.
No Book Preview
The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz ⭐⭐⭐½
Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist takes center stage in Lagercrantz’s exciting third addition to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (after 2017’s The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye). Lisbeth Salandar, the girl with the famous dragon tattoo, has been off traveling around Europe and not responding to Blomkvist’s emails, which has left him working halfheartedly on a story about Russian computer trolls. Then he receives a phone call from a medical examiner who tells him a dwarf has been found dead on a Stockholm street with Blomkvist’s phone number in his pocket. This is far more interesting than Russian trolls, and after Blomkvist enlists Lisbeth’s help, she figures out that the man was not a dwarf, but a Sherpa, which leads them to a deadly Everest expedition involving the Swedish defense minister. When Blomkvist gets into trouble, Lisbeth comes to his rescue. Lisbeth’s plan to kill her evil twin sister, Camilla, provides a diverting subplot. A tantalizing ending hints at important changes for Blomkvist and Lisbeth ahead. Series fans will be pleased with the thoughtful way Lagercrantz develops the character of their beloved action heroine in this worthy outing. 
Preview Book
The Heartland by Kristin L. Hoganson ⭐⭐⭐½
In this sophisticated, complex work, history professor Hoganson (Consumers’ Imperium) uses the history of Champaign County, Ill., to explore and question the American myth of its “heartland” as a safe, insulated, provincial place—“the quintessential home referenced by ‘homeland security.’” The first chapter shows how white settlers in 1700s and 1800s emphasized local settlement to justify taking land from the mobile Kickapoo population of Central Illinois. Hoganson uses the raising of cattle and hogs in Champaign to trace shifting borders on the North American continent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then she dismantles the myth of the isolationist heartland with an analysis of Champaign’s involvement with organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the International Institute of Agriculture. And she flips the “flyover country” cliché, looking at how Champaign citizens are connected to the rest of the world by telegraph wires, the weather, migratory birds, and military planes. The final chapter follows the Kickapoo people’s experiences into the 20th century, demonstrating that, contrary to myth, nothing about the heartland’s geography makes it a safe place. Deeply researched with a well-proven argument, Hoganson’s book will attract many scholars as well as general readers who like innovative, challenging history.
Preview Book
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
A wild child's isolated, dirt-poor upbringing in a Southern coastal wilderness fails to shield her from heartbreak or an accusation of murder."The Marsh Girl," "swamp trash"--Catherine "Kya" Clark is a figure of mystery and prejudice in the remote North Carolina coastal community of Barkley Cove in the 1950s and '60s. Abandoned by a mother no longer able to endure her drunken husband's beatings and then by her four siblings, Kya grows up in the careless, sometimes-savage company of her father, who eventually disappears, too. Alone, virtually or actually, from age 6, Kya learns both to be self-sufficient and to find solace and company in her fertile natural surroundings. Owens (Secrets of the Savanna, 2006, etc.), the accomplished co-author of several nonfiction books on wildlife, is at her best reflecting Kya's fascination with the birds, insects, dappled light, and shifting tides of the marshes. The girl's collections of shells and feathers, her communion with the gulls, her exploration of the wetlands are evoked in lyrical phrasing which only occasionally tips into excess. But as the child turns teenager and is befriended by local boy Tate Walker, who teaches her to read, the novel settles into a less magical, more predictable pattern. Interspersed with Kya's coming-of-age is the 1969 murder investigation arising from the discovery of a man's body in the marsh. The victim is Chase Andrews, "star quarterback and town hot shot," who was once Kya's lover. In the eyes of a pair of semicomic local police officers, Kya will eventually become the chief suspect and must stand trial. By now the novel's weaknesses have become apparent: the monochromatic characterization (good boy Tate, bad boy Chase) and implausibilities (Kya evolves into a polymath--a published writer, artist, and poet), yet the closing twist is perhaps its most memorable oddity.Despite some distractions, there's an irresistible charm to Owens' first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction.
Preview Book
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak."Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists--Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just--I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
Preview Book
Cemetery Road by Greg Iles ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bad things are astir on the banks of the Big Muddy, hallmark territory for homeboy Iles (Mississippi Blood, 2017, etc.)."Buck's passing seems a natural place to begin this story, because that's the way these things generally start." Yep. This particular bit of mischief starts when a Scoutmaster, surrogate father, and all-around good guy gets his head bashed in and his body dumped into the Mississippi. And why? That's the tangled tale that Iles weaves in this overlong but engaging yarn. Thanks to the back-room dealing of a bunch called the Poker Club, the little river-bluff city of Bienville has brought a Chinese paper pulp mill to town and, with it, a new interstate connection and a billion dollars--which, a perp growls, is a billion dollars "in Mississippi. That's like ten billion in the real world." But stalwart journalist Marshall McEwan--that's McEwan, not McLuhan--is on the case, back in town after attaining fame in the big city, to which he'd escaped from the shadow of his journalist hero father, now a moribund alcoholic but with plenty of fire left. Marshall's old pals and neighbors have been up to no good; the most powerful of them are in the club, including an old girlfriend named Jet, who is quick to unveil her tucked-away parts to Marshall and whose love affairs in the small town are the makings of a positively Faulknerian epic. Iles' story is more workaday than all that and often by the numbers: The bad guys are really bad, the molls inviting ("she steals her kiss, a quick, urgent probing of the tongue that makes clear she wants more"), the politicians spectacularly corrupt, the cluelessly cuckolded--well, clueless and cuckolded, though not without resources for revenge. As Marshall teases out the story of murder most foul, other bodies litter the stage--fortunately not his, which, the club members make it plain, is very much an option. In the end, everyone gets just deserts, though with a few postmodernly ironic twists.Formulaic but fun.
Preview Book
Crown Jewel by Christopher Reich ⭐⭐⭐½
Simon Riske returns for another car-studded adventure.Riske is a restorer of high-end automobiles--Ferraris, Bugattis, that sort of thing--who moonlights as a problem-solver to the wealthy, and this second caper (The Take, 2018) takes him to southern France and Monaco in the service of Toby Stonewood, managing partner of the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Toby has been losing money, millions of dollars, from his casino, and he wants Riske to try to uncover how he is being cheated and who is doing it. Riske is well-qualified to undertake this assignment, having spent his younger years with the Corsican mob and being familiar with the ways of gangsters. His cover will be that he is to take part in the Concours d'Élégance scheduled there and drive in a time trial. When fate drops a Ferrari Daytona in his figurative lap, Riske is off to the races. After minor complications on French highways, Riske arrives in Monte Carlo and quickly identifies the individuals involved in the casino scam. In addition, he makes the acquaintance of Vika, a particularly compelling woman, and allows himself to become involved in her problems. Vika's mother has recently died in an automobile accident--the authorities rule it suicide, but Vika knows that cannot be correct, because her mother had poor vision and rarely drove at all and never at night. Further, Vika's mother left Vika a disturbing voicemail that suggests she felt herself to be in some danger. Riske and Vika meet circumstantially, and Riske helps Vika try to sort out what really happened. After Vika is threatened, then assaulted, Riske intervenes and learns she is in fact a princess and also that her assailants are members of the same Bosnian gang that is bleeding the casino. Unraveling the connection, rescuing the princess, and driving fast cars exceedingly well keep Riske busy. Falling in love, even with a princess, seems a little déclassé for Simon Riske, whose loner identity was molded in a French prison, but Vika seems a pretty nice girl, and she's worth billions.Monaco, fast cars, rich women, bad Bosnians--what more is there?
Preview Book
The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay ⭐⭐⭐
The triumphant 11th novel from de Rosnay (Sarah’s Key) follows the unraveling of long pent-up frustrations within the Malegarde family against the backdrop of a natural disaster. Linden Malegarde, a Franco-American photographer, travels to Paris to celebrate the 70th birthday of his father, Paul. But when Paul suffers a stroke and is hospitalized, Linden decides to stay indefinitely. As Paul’s health ebbs, the river Seine floods the city, relentlessly rising due to driving rain. For Linden, the Paris he knows so well becomes “hardly identifiable, yet painfully familiar,” paralleling his own feelings and memories of his adolescence. Fearing more of the rejection and bigotry he’s experienced throughout his life, Linden, who is in his late 30s, has yet to come out as gay to his father or introduce him to his longtime partner, Sacha. During the days of unexpectedly close quarters with his father, mother, and sister, Linden begins to open up and discovers that each family member has secrets and emotional wounds just as intense as his own. Throughout, de Rosnay stokes the Malegardes’ histories with raw and powerful reminisces and gorgeous descriptions. This is an emotional tour de force and a thoughtful, deliberate examination of personal tragedy and the possibility of redemption.
Preview Book
A Delicate Touch by Stuart Woods ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A long-hidden safe turns out to contain enough material to juice the next half-dozen adventures of jet-setting lawyer Stone Barrington.Mary Ann Bianchi Bacchetti, the ex-wife of Stone's ex-NYPD partner Dino Bacchetti, who's now the police commissioner, calls Stone because she needs to open an Excelsior safe she's found in the library of her late father, reformed Mafioso Eduardo Bianchi, before turning the place over to its new buyer the next day. So Bob Cantor, Stone's tech guru, locates Solomon Fink, at 104 one of the last surviving members of the Excelsior firm, who opens the safe during a brief break from his nursing home, to reveal a prodigious sum of cash, documents leading to even more millions, and some detailed files on some very dangerous criminals. Since much of the money is earmarked for Dino, it looks at first as if this will be nothing more than another exercise in unbridled consumer spending, as Dino and his current wife, Viv, race to rival the conspicuous consumption that's marked Stone's recent outings (Desperate Measures, 2018, etc.). But the file on Jack Thomas, ne Gianni Tommassini, promises more interesting developments, from his initial and predictably unsuccessful attempts to silence everyone who knows about the file to his deep-laid plans to help his son, Congressman Henry Thomas II, become president by running as an independent against Secretary of State Holly Barker, one of Stone's many once and future lovers. Armed with a formidable bank of computers and a staff whose loyalty isn't limited by inconvenient notions of personal morality, the Thomases are formidable opponents. But Stone, Dino, Holly, Bob Cantor, and even Solomon Fink, who returns for a closing bow, are fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.The best of Woods' recent thrillers, a primer on election rigging that plays to both Democrats' recent alarm and Republicans' attachment to the material perks of the good life.
Preview Book
Fractured by Karin Slaughter ⭐⭐⭐⭐
At the start of bestseller Slaughter's heart-pounding sequel to 2006's Triptych, wealthy housewife Abigail Campano returns home one day to Atlanta's posh Ansley Park neighborhood to find a dead girl in the mansion's upstairs hallway, the apparent killer nearby. Thinking that the girl is her teenage daughter, Emma, the distraught Abby kills the alleged attacker only to realize that the murdered girl is not Emma, but Emma's friend, Kayla Alexander. Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation soon determines that he has a murder and kidnapping on his hands. Paired with Det. Faith Mitchell, Trent scrambles to put the pieces together and find Emma before it's too late.
Preview Book
Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? by Tina Cassidy ⭐⭐
Journalist Cassidy’s vivacious biography of militant activist Alice Paul, one of the undersung heroes of the American women’s suffrage movement and a key player in the adoption of the 19th Amendment, looks at her in the context of and in contrast to President Woodrow Wilson, whom Paul and her peers considered their primary antagonist. Cassidy highlights, with clear admiration, Paul’s energy, vision, and persistence, crediting her with pushing for methods of engagement that are still key to protestors today—marches, picketing at the White House, lobbying, silent protest, noncooperation with arresting officers, and hunger strikes. Her radical push for a constitutional amendment put her in conflict with others in the movement like Carrie Chapman Catt, who preferred a slow, state-by-state approach grounded in the willingness of men to accept the idea of women voting. The depiction of Wilson is conflicted, sympathizing with his stress and fatigue, but ultimately painting him as a failure and an unworthy opponent. Cassidy’s descriptions of the protests and marches led by Paul and her supporters are delightful, full of boisterous color and drama, and featuring the full texts of the wordy (and cheeky) banners used. This engaging history brings the suffrage struggle to life. 
Preview Book
I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney ⭐⭐⭐½
For most folks, being suspected in the disappearance of their spouse would be about as bad as it gets, but not for London actress Aimee Sinclair, the narrator of bestseller Feeney’s shock-filled second thriller (after 2018’s Sometimes I Lie). Aimee’s past is much darker than the disturbing film with a famous director for which she desperately wants to audition—and her future seems to be barreling full tilt toward the stuff of nightmares. For starters, Aimee’s husband of two years, journalist Ben Bailey, vanishes from their Notting Hill town house the day after they have a fight and she asks him for a divorce. The balance of their joint bank account also disappears, and there’s security footage of a woman who could be her doppelgänger making the withdrawal. Feeney displays her linguistic flair in the chapters devoted to her heroine’s harrowing early years, but this affecting backstory seems part of a different, better novel than the present-day story with its cardboard characters on a plot-powered roller coaster. The action speeds toward a finale that’s about as subtle as an ax. Fans of over-the-top psychological thrillers will be satisfied. 
No Book Preview
Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson ⭐⭐⭐½
The murder of a Chinese politician on the moon in the mid-21st century sends a mismatched couple on the run and signals a looming crisis on Earth.American Fred Fredericks is delivering a secure quantum-entangled phone to Chang Yazu, chief administrator of the Chinese Lunar Authority, but the two have barely shaken hands when Chang slumps to the ground, dead by poison. The confused Fred is accused of the crime, a pawn in a power struggle among various Chinese government factions, who also seek control of Chan Qi, the pregnant daughter of a top party official and the leader of a migrant workers rights movement. The two bounce between the Earth and moon and back in search of a safe refuge, aided at times by poet and "cloud star" Ta Shu, a friend of Peng Ling, the strong contender to become China's first woman president. The title initially seems like a call back to the first entry in Robinson's terraforming trilogy, Red Mars, but while the lunar landscape is a source of beautifully described detail and the lower gravity acts as obstacle and asset, this is not a hard sci-fi novel. Rather, it's a political thriller where the moon is a backdrop and game piece for both China and the United States, two powerful nations facing significant political and economic unrest. A white man writing about Chinese politics and mainly Chinese characters could seem questionable in a publishing milieu that still lacks sufficient diverse voices; all one can say is that as per usual for Robinson, it seems well-researched. It is unfortunate that Chan Qi's primary qualities are being pregnant and cranky; while tough and passionate, there's little sign of the charisma typically associated with a populist leader. The more well-rounded Ta Shu is still mostly a plot device: He writes the occasional profound-seeming poem, but he's mainly there to rescue our heroes at various moments and provide the author's desired infodumps on physics and Chinese politics. Fred Fredericks (the white man) is the most intriguingly drawn character. While no explicit diagnosis is given, the author offers a vivid and relatively plausible depiction of a man on the spectrum, with social difficulties and a sensory processing disorder.Not Robinson's (New York 2140, 2017, etc.) strongest work, but not without interest, either.
Preview Book
Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel ⭐⭐⭐½
This one is an old classic, and no reader who enjoys political thrillers should miss it. The premise is simple enough -- what to do if a President of the United States is seriously unbalanced. I first read this one in the early 1970s and re-read it today (2016) and it is as relevant now as it was then. Knebel's writing is very good, the plot moves along smartly to a satisfying conclusion (no spoilers here.)One of the things that comes through reading this book is how much less corrupt and vicious politics was in the 1960s-1970s as opposed to now. In my opinion this book indirectly corroborates my own belief that Vietnam and Watergate polarized American politics to an extent that did not previously exist. All of the politicians portrayed in this novel appear to be reasonably honest, if flawed. I doubt anyone thinks that this is true in 21st Century American politics. (Partisan comments omitted here.)
Please forgive the tangent, but the above is one of the unintended benefits of reading, in 2016, a political thriller written many decades ago. In any event, this one has aged well and most readers will find it to be an enjoyable and worthwhile read.
Preview Book
The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken ?
Faldbakken’s English-language debut is an ambitious, contained story set entirely in a grand old restaurant in Oslo called The Hills, narrated by a seasoned waiter over the course of a few gorgeous meals. The waiter and others on the staff—the nosy bar manager mixing drinks, the snooty maitre d’ sneaking drinks, the silent chef—find themselves ever more scandalized by the uncharacteristic behavior of their usually impeccably mannered clientele (one even takes out his phone) after a beautiful young woman joins the intimate setting. The waiter becomes so unsettled by the disruption of his establishment’s quotidian rituals that he finds himself in the kitchen smashing all the chef’s cherry tomatoes in the garlic press. He is almost completely undone when another patron asks to leave his daughter at the restaurant while he goes on a day trip, but the waiter musters enormous kindness by entertaining the child with an unusual-looking cauliflower. The story is absurd—when the scents of two diners mix, it is “equivalent to the miracle of mayonnaise... something completely new and special occurs between them”—about nothing, and everything. Faldbakken’s story vandalizes the old world the restaurant represents by revealing its inanities, while at the same time eulogizing it by making it his subject, resulting in a clever, striking novel.
Preview Book
Cari Mora by Thomas Harris ⭐⭐⭐
Morbid mysterian Harris (Hannibal Rising, 2006, etc.) returns with a trademark mix of murderous psychopaths and morally iffy good guys. Lesson No. 1: Don't mess with a determined Colombian woman, especially not one with combat experience and no fear of dying. The title character is a case in point: 25, pretty, though with scars that speak to a terrible past. Under the watchful eye of the immigration authorities, she works several jobs, including managing a luxurious Miami property with a murky title, a property that was once owned by drug lord Pablo Escobar and under which he tucked away a trove of gold ingots. Enter Hans-Peter Schneider, a decidedly nasty fellow in the tradition of other Harris villains. Hans-Peter has fangs with "silver in them that shows when he smiles" and is otherwise rather vampiric in aspect, and he has a thing for harvesting organs and selling women into slavery. He's after that gold, and Cari is a mere inconvenience to be dealt with in due time, minus a limb or two, perhaps. So it is with Cari's pool cleaner friend Antonio, anyway, who winds up an object of Hans-Peter's attention: "These were Antonio's legs. That was Antonio's torso. His head was missing." Things get ickier still as heads explode, bob around in liquid cremation machines, and otherwise undergo assorted unpleasantries. Hans-Peter isn't the only one after the gold, of course, and then there are the rising waters thanks to climate change, waters that have burrowed their way under the mansion. It's a race against time--and crocodiles, and all the other ways of dying unhappily in South Florida. It's vintage Harris, with nice twists and elegant ways of expressing just how bad bad people can be. Suffice it to say that, as the story winds to a blood-soaked close, some of the principals probably won't be showing up in a sequel. Refreshingly, entertainingly creepy and with nary a fava bean in sight.
Preview Book
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko ⭐⭐⭐½
Investigative reporter Balko and former criminal defense lawyer Carrington offer a clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system in this account of two medical professionals—Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s “former de facto medical examiner,” and his friend Michael West, a forensic dentist—who, in turn, built successful careers off of a broken system. The book focuses on the doctors’ roles in the trials of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, who were both wrongly convicted of crimes involving the sexual assault and murder of minors in the 1990s (both men were exonerated in 2007). The authors methodically dissect the doctors’ testimonies in the trials of the two men and point to major flaws; such as when, during Brooks’s trial, Hayne asserted that marks on the corpse were definitely human bite marks, despite the condition of the body, which had been submerged in water and was badly decomposed. The authors make clear that these two false convictions resulted from the willingness of Mississippi authorities to overlook legitimate questions about the quality of Hayne’s and West’s work; for example, Hayne, who performed 80% of the state’s autopsies for more than two decades, once wrote that he had removed the uterus and ovaries from a male cadaver. This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform.
Preview Book
The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz ⭐⭐
In this gripping historical about the defection of Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Schwartz (The Commoner) explores the wider political context that sharpens private tragedy. In 1967, the author’s father, lawyer Alan U. Schwartz, accompanied Alliluyeva from Switzerland to the U.S., setting off a firestorm of media attention and controversy. Told via Svetlana’s fictionalized journals, the story follows Svetlana, who, at age 41, abruptly abandons her homeland for the U.S., leaving her two children behind in hope that they can have a fresh start under a new identity. While attempting to hide her past from those she meets in the U.S., Svetlana also longs for connection. But after a short time working in Princeton, N.J., where she writes and gives lectures, she impulsively accepts an invitation to the cultlike fellowship run by Franklin Lloyd Wright’s widow at Taliesin West in Arizona. While Alliluyeva gains lovers, friends, and has another child, she never fills the void created when she left Russsia and her family behind. With CIA minders never far, the fraught political relationship between Alliluyeva and the U.S. government provides another layer of intrigue. But this lovely novel’s strength is the aching portrait of Svetlana: “not American, not Russian, neither this thing or that thing but always now between these things, which is the tragedy of my life.” Filled with historical details that enliven and ground the fictionalized elements, Schwartz’s elegant novel captures the emotion and strain of Alliluyeva’s second life in the U.S..
Preview Book
A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré ⭐⭐⭐½
After having turned from his peerless chronicles of George Smiley and his fellow spies to the tale of his own life (The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, 2016), le Carre returns to put yet another spin on the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).Looking back from half a century later, Peter (ne Pierre) Guillam resolves to tell the truth of how his senior colleague Alec Leamas met his death along with his lover, Elizabeth Gold, that fatal day at the Berlin Wall. More than an old man's memories prompt this valediction. When Peter, long retired from the British Intelligence Service to a Brittany farm, is summoned back to London, the Service's chief lawyer, a man who introduces himself only as Bunny, informs him that Christoph Leamas, Alec's bastard son, has discovered Liz's daughter, Karen, and made common cause with her, threatening a lawsuit against the Service and correspondingly ruinous publicity for leading their parents to their deaths through misdirection, falsehood, and professional betrayal. Many of the documents that might help explain the circumstances, Bunny notes with asperity, have gone suspiciously missing; what troubles Peter even more is the documents that survive, which root Alec's and Liz's fatal shootings not only in Alec's long-known battle of wits against Stasi Deputy Head Hans Dieter Mundt, but also Alec's well-concealed and institutionally unauthorized attempt to smuggle out of East Germany his most recent supplier of information, Doris Gamp (codenamed Tulip), the put-upon assistant to senior Stasi official Dr. Emmanuel Rapp who's been passing on photographs of classified documents her husband, ambitious Stasi functionary Lothar Quinz, has brought home. Any reader who knows le Carre's earlier work, and quite a few who don't, will assume that any attempt to second-guess the mandarins of the Service will backfire. The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.
Preview Book
Eliza Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mazzeo (Irena’s Children) centers love and devotion in this satisfying cradle-to-grave biography, the first written about the wife of the first U.S. secretary of the treasury. Drawing from an impressive breadth of sources, Mazzeo shows what made Eliza, in the words of her husband, Alexander, the “best of wives, best of women.” Born into a prominent New York family in 1757, Eliza Schuyler’s young life was dominated by war, especially the American Revolution. That war netted her a husband, the hardworking, ambitious Colonel Hamilton, who later served as President Washington’s secretary of the treasury. Mazzeo convincingly argues that Eliza’s determination to emulate the sacrifice and loyalty of classical Roman wives is key to understanding their marriage and the truth about Alexander’s infamous affair with Maria Reynolds, later revealed to be a coverup for financial misconduct that if revealed could have harmed not only the family but the Washington administration. After Alexander’s death in the 1804 duel, Eliza still had half her life ahead of her. Mazzeo gives less attention to the years during which Eliza exercised her widow’s independence, which is disappointing. Nevertheless, this is an expertly told story that’s certain to captivate Hamilton fans and intrigue anyone interested in early U.S. history.
Preview Book
The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott ⭐⭐⭐½
Ailsa Calder has inherited half of a house. The other half belongs to a man who disappeared without a trace twenty-seven years ago—her father.Leaving London behind to settle the inheritance from her mother's estate, Ailsa returns to her childhood home, nestled amongst the craggy peaks of the Scottish Highlands, joined by the half-sister who's almost a stranger to her.
Ailsa can't escape the claustrophobic feeling that the house itself is watching her— as if her past hungers to consume her. She also can't ignore how the neighborhood animals refuse to set one foot within the gates of the garden.
When the first nighttime intruder shows up, Ailsa fears that the manor's careless rugged beauty could cost her everything.
Preview Book
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez ⭐⭐⭐
Colombian novelist Vásquez (Reputations) is author, narrator, and protagonist of this clever, complex novel about political crimes, cover-ups, conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. In 2005, Vásquez meets conspiracy enthusiast Carlos Carballo at a respected Bogotá surgeon’s home. Carballo voices suspicions regarding 9/11, Princess Di, and Vásquez’s uncle. During their next encounter, Carballo reveals obsessions with assassinations, Orson Welles, and writing a novel. When the surgeon asks Vásquez to befriend Carballo in order to find out if Carballo has stolen assassination artifacts from the surgeon’s collection, Vásquez makes a guest appearance on Carballo’s talk radio program, then agrees to write the novel Carballo envisions, which will expose links between Colombian conservatives and two assassinations: presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1948) and General Rafael Uribe Uribe (1914). As he explores suppressed evidence, vanished witnesses, and distorted reports, Vásquez is left with more questions than answers. The novel, bolstered by humor and irony, includes photos, literary references, and intimate family moments, but the most memorable passages depict the assassinations and their aftermath. Vásquez’s captivating, disquieting account of a writer’s journey through the shadowy terrain of his country’s past dynamically illustrates how violence damages survivors, lies erode society, and fiction can convey truths history omits
Preview Book
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs ⭐⭐⭐½
Just days after mathematician and family patriarch Isaac Severy dies of an apparent suicide, his adopted granddaughter Hazel, owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives a letter from him by mail. In it, Isaac alludes to a secretive organization that is after his final bombshell equation, and he charges Hazel with safely delivering it to a trusted colleague. But first, she must find where the equation is hidden.
Preview Book
The Pioneers
The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough ⭐⭐⭐½
Popular historian McCullough (1776) uses his well-crafted writing style and thorough research to highlight the evolution of the “Ohio territory” (now Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) from late-18th-century settlement to well-regarded American cities (Marietta, Cincinnati) by the 1860s. He follows members of a few optimistic, well-connected families whose impact on the region spanned generations, admiringly portraying their efforts to create a new England on the frontier. Settler leaders Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler veered between Eastern political maneuvering for approval (including that of George Washington) for private purchase of the land they wanted and surviving the pioneer trials of wildlife, starvation, and violence between settlers and native Americans (which is treated as a minor subplot). The swiftly moving narrative also shines light on the territory’s consistent antislavery position beginning with the 1787 Northwest Territory Ordinance and leading to the first black vote in 1802. While some readers may be put off by the near-omission of the native people’s perspective, those seeking a pro-colonial history will find this is a fascinating and well-written look at the Cutler families and the Americanizing of Ohio. 
Preview Book
Holy Ghost
Virgil Flowers Novel by John Sanford ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In bestseller Sandford’s wickedly enjoyable 11th outing for Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers (after 2017’s Deep Freeze), Wardell Holland, the maverick mayor of Wheatfield (pop. 650), and his 17-year-old sidekick, John Jacob Skinner, decide the town needs an economic boost, so they contrive for the Virgin Mary to appear at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, with one of Skinner’s many sexual conquests, Jennie Fischer, in the Mary role. The Marian Apparition succeeds in bringing flocks of tourists to Wheatfield. Then sniper-like shootings that wound two citizens threaten the bonanza. Flowers’s subsequent investigation turns up suspects ranging from a few would-be Nazis to a farmer/gun range owner and Jennie’s porn-loving boyfriend. When the shootings turn deadly, Flowers gets help, which he badly needs as he comes to realize that he must outwit a clever killer who proves one of his maxims: “If it’s criminal, it’s either stupid or crazy.” Sandford’s trademark sly humor shines throughout.
Preview Book
Lies by T. M. Logan ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A spur-of-the-moment detour leads to disaster in this psychological thriller debut.Joseph Lynch and his 4-year-old son, William, are navigating North London traffic when William spots his mother's car exiting the highway. William wants to surprise Melissa, so they follow her to the Premier Inn, where Joe assumes she's meeting a client; instead, they find Mel in the hotel bar, arguing with her best friend's husband, tech millionaire Ben Delaney. Mel flees before Joe can flag her down, so he confronts Ben, who denies having seen Mel. The ensuing scuffle ends with Ben's striking his head on the parking garage floor and losing consciousness. Joe takes William home and then returns to the hotel, but Ben and his vehicle are gone. Also missing is Joe's phone, which he lost in the fray. Later that night, Joe interrogates Mel, who insists that the rendezvous was business-related. Joe initially believes her, but it's not long until he realizes that his wife is lying--and that thanks to her vengeful lover, his marriage isn't the only thing in jeopardy. Logan writes viscerally about the emotional devastation wrought by marital infidelity. Joe's heartbreak and desolation are palpable, the tale cunningly exploits the paranoia that springs from fractured trust, and although Logan fails to fully earn his twisting plot's final turn, the ending still packs a punch.British journalist Logan's first foray into crime fiction is an adrenaline-fueled page-turner that explores the fragility of domestic bliss.
Preview Book
American Moonshot
John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race by Douglas Brinkley, Stephen Graybill ⭐⭐⭐⭐
On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this promise kept, CNN's presidential historian Brinkley (history, Rice Univ.; Rightful Heritage) presents a sweeping narrative of the U.S.-Soviet space race, culminating in Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong's lunar walk on July 20, 1969. Much of the book delves deeply into Apollo's historical roots, beginning with Robert Goddard's pioneering rocketry experiments in the 1920s; continuing with Nazi party member and SS officer Werner von Braun's development of the V1 and V2 rockets that slaughtered thousands of English citizens but which did not prevent him from becoming Kennedy's space science expert; and concluding with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects (1958-72). Brinkley is at his best when sharing stories about astronauts such as John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The author concludes that, regrettably, only Kennedy's assassination in 1963 guaranteed full funding for the costly Apollo project: the cornerstone of Kennedy's New Frontier era. VERDICT Enlightening and absorbing, this account will fascinate historians, history buffs, and popular science enthusiasts. See also James Donovan's Shoot the Moon.
Preview Book
The Washington Decree by Jussi Adler-Olsen, Steve Schein ⭐⭐⭐
This ambitious, paranoid fantasy of how quickly things can go wrong in the hands of an American president who's determined to take a strong stand against threats of violence.Sixteen years after Virginia governor Bruce Jansen's first wife, Caroll, was stabbed to death during a very public moment on a visit to China, his successful run for the presidency comes to the worst possible climax when his second wife, Mimi Todd Jansen, is gunned down, perhaps in his stead, on election night. Deeply shaken by the first death, Jansen is so traumatized by the second that observers wonder whether he'll take the oath of office or resign in favor of Vice President-elect Michael K. Lerner. As it turns out, Jansen not only assumes, but transforms the office, using agencies and executive orders already in place to step up surveillance on his fellow citizens, unplug the internet, defang or shutter critical journalistic outlets, and ban first ammunition, then guns from private ownership. Members of paramilitary militias like Moonie Quale predictably go ballistic, but members of Jansen's cabinet, many of them touched by personal violence against their loved ones, overwhelmingly support him. So far the scenario recalls that of It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis' classic 1935 novel of homegrown American fascism. Adler-Olsen's complication is his decision to focus not on a single American oppressed and powerfully radicalized by the new regime but by an oddly assorted group--journalist John Bugatti, presidential press secretary Wesley Barefoot, Sheriff T. Perkins, and staff attorney Dorothy "Doggie" Rogers, whose father is convicted of arranging Mimi Todd Jansen's murder--who were all present on that fateful day in Beijing.Despite a disturbing and all-too-plausible concept duly supported by an appendix listing real-life executive orders ripe for tyrannical misuse, this nightmare gradually turns into a standard-issue lots-of-good-guys-versus-even-more-bad-guys scenario populated by characters you'll hardly miss when they're killed, as so many of them are.
Preview Book
Scrublands by Chris Hammer ⭐⭐⭐½
A year after a tragedy involving an Anglican priest, journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend, Australia, to tell the story of the small town. He discovers a dying community facing drought and economic disaster while fighting the impressions of the outside world. Martin attempts to dig deeper but faces opposition, anger, and stories that contradict one another. Was the priest a pedophile? Was he a saint or a sinner? Are the police even telling the truth? Identities are uncovered, and even old tramps are not who they appear to be. Dealing with his own war zone-induced PTSD, Martin also encounters an entire town suffering from the trauma resulting from the priest's actions, bushfires, and a fatal car accident. Father Byron Swift's secrets have already changed so many lives; they will also alter Martin's. VERDICT Hammer's intricately plotted, atmospheric debut introduces the bleak Australian scrublands, an area haunted by its past. Fans of Jane Harper's Australian crime novels will welcome another author with a rich descriptive style.
Preview Book
Foe by Iain Reid ⭐⭐⭐½
In the near future, a man and his wife are visited by a mysterious stranger offering a chance for previously unimagined adventure, though the true exploration--and danger--might be closer to home.Junior and Henrietta live in a dilapidated but cozy rural farmhouse, deep in a sea of canola fields, with only a few chickens for company. Their isolation is both comforting and eerie, a combination Reid pulled off exceptionally well in I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016). Then a man named Terrance arrives with an outlandish prospect: Junior is on the long list of lottery participants chosen to take part in the Installation, a temporary space resettlement project run by OuterMore. Though Terrance's enthusiasm is palpable, and unnerving, Junior and Hen are understandably leery. With all the cheer of a traveling Bible salesman, Terrance departs, promising to be back if Junior moves up the list. Two years pass in a flash, with Junior going about his job at the mill and Hen sinking into a minor depression of sorts. Like the warning of potential yet probable future disease, dread over Terrance's return settles over the narrative, and Junior and Hen's relationship, which at first seems strong, wobbles. As Junior moves up the list and his departure becomes more certainty than possibility, cracks appear in the marriage; Junior struggles with memories of his past, and Hen confronts her husband with feelings she's kept hidden for years. Terrance's role as observer and cataloger as he prepares the couple for the Installation is claustrophobic yet revealing, and Reid builds to a deeply unsettling climax.As much a surgical dissection of what makes a marriage as an expertly paced, sparsely detailed psychological thriller, this is one to read with the lights on.
Preview Book
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez ⭐⭐⭐
Colombian novelist Vásquez (Reputations) is author, narrator, and protagonist of this clever, complex novel about political crimes, cover-ups, conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. In 2005, Vásquez meets conspiracy enthusiast Carlos Carballo at a respected Bogotá surgeon’s home. Carballo voices suspicions regarding 9/11, Princess Di, and Vásquez’s uncle. During their next encounter, Carballo reveals obsessions with assassinations, Orson Welles, and writing a novel. When the surgeon asks Vásquez to befriend Carballo in order to find out if Carballo has stolen assassination artifacts from the surgeon’s collection, Vásquez makes a guest appearance on Carballo’s talk radio program, then agrees to write the novel Carballo envisions, which will expose links between Colombian conservatives and two assassinations: presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1948) and General Rafael Uribe Uribe (1914). As he explores suppressed evidence, vanished witnesses, and distorted reports, Vásquez is left with more questions than answers. The novel, bolstered by humor and irony, includes photos, literary references, and intimate family moments, but the most memorable passages depict the assassinations and their aftermath. Vásquez’s captivating, disquieting account of a writer’s journey through the shadowy terrain of his country’s past dynamically illustrates how violence damages survivors, lies erode society, and fiction can convey truths history omits.
Preview Book
The New Iberia Blues by James Lee Burke ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Despite a new slate of murders to investigate and a new love to provide hope, Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux provides still more evidence that nothing ever really changes in Louisiana's New Iberia Parish.Dave is feeling his age. Although his adopted daughter, Alafair, complains that he treats her like a child, he has to acknowledge that she's an attorney, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an adult who's presumably capable of managing her relationship with Lou Wexler, the producer of native son Desmond Cormier's latest film, now shooting in New Iberia and environs. Even as he's pointing out that Wexler's much too old for Alafair, Dave's embarrassed to have been smitten with his new partner, Bailey Ribbons, who's basically his daughter's age. All of which ought to take a back seat to the escape of convicted killer Hugo Tillinger from a prison hospital and the death of Lucinda Arceneaux, a minister's daughter who's been shot full of heroin and crucified in Weeks Bay. As usual, however, the case is deeply entangled with Dave's personal life, and the links are only tightened by the murders of ex-courtroom janitor Joe Molinari and Travis Lebeau, a confidential informant working for Dave's friend Cletus Purcel. It would be nice and neat to think that they'd all been killed by Hugo Tillinger--or by Chester "Smiley" Wimple, the wide-eyed, psychopathic avenger who's already crossed Dave's path (Robicheaux, 2018). In New Iberia, though, nothing is ever nice or neat, and even Desmond Cormier's dreamy fixation on the closing scene of the classic Western My Darling Clementine, which ought to be a sign of his nostalgic attachment to a noble image of mortality, ends up attracting him to Bailey Ribbons, whom he sees as another Clementine, placing himself along with virtually everyone else in the parish on a collision course with Dave.Many of the character types, plot devices, and oracular sentiments are familiar from Burke's earlier books. But the sentences are brand new, and the powerful emotional charge they carry feels piercingly new as well.
Preview Book
Doing Justice by Preet Bharara ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this fascinating combination of memoir and ethical-legal manifesto, former U.S. attorney Bharara posits that "the model of the American trial has something to teach us... about debate and disagreement and truth and justice." He leads readers through the work of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, in sections dedicated to inquiry (asking questions, conducting fair interrogations), accusation (choosing if and when to levy charges), judgment (trials, verdicts), and punishment (sentencing, prison reform). His prose has the quality of a well-written speech, with philosophical pronouncements ("Doing justice sometimes requires... a spark of creativity or innovation") followed by supporting tales from both his legal career and his personal life, recounted in a superbly accessible and conversational, even humorous, tone (at one point contrasting media depictions of justice with "the real world... where testosterone doesn't flow like a river in the streets"). Bharara also reminds readers that, while the law is an incredible tool, it is people who create or corrupt justice. With its approachable human moments, tragic and triumphant cases, heroic investigators, and depictions of hardworking everyday people, this book is a rare thing: a page-turning work of practical moral philosophy.
Preview Book
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Attorney Mickey Haller, who's making his fourth appearance in Connelly's April novel, The Fifth Witness, got his start in this 2005 legal thriller, the audio version of which is being reprised to tie in with the Lionsgate film adaptation. Its return is welcome. The book about a defense attorney who uses a Lincoln town car for an office is richly plotted, humorous, suspenseful, and full of surprisingly human touches. It's also populated by a large cast of colorful characters that allow Adam Grupper the opportunity to strut his stuff, shifting effortlessly from gruff, hardcore bikers to Beverly Hills society matrons. But he really shines during the poignant scenes involving Haller and the client whose trial he lost and the highly charged confrontation scenes between him and the homicidal socialite playboy Louis Roulet whose trial he fears he may win.
Preview Book
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin ⭐⭐⭐½
As taut as a crossbow and as sharp as an arrowhead, McLaughlin’s debut unfolds in the Appalachian wilderness of Virginia, a landscape whose heart of darkness pulses viscerally through its characters. Rice Moore is working as a biologist caretaker at the vast Turk Mountain Preserve when he discovers that poachers are killing bears to sell their organs on overseas drug markets. Rice’s efforts to curtail their activities antagonizes locals who raped the last caretaker and left her for dead, and—worse—it alerts agents of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, from which Rice has been fleeing for reasons revealed gradually, to his whereabouts. McLaughlin skillfully depicts Rice, revealing quirks and peculiarities of his personality that show how “his hold on what he’d always believed was right and what was wrong had grown fatigued, eventually warping to fit the contours of the world he inhabited”—a disconcerting revelation that helps establish the suspenseful feeling that anything can happen. Rice’s story builds toward violent confrontations with the poachers, the cartel, and nature itself. The novel’s denouement, a smoothly orchestrated confluence of the greater and lesser subplots, plays out against a tempest-tossed natural setting whose intrinsic beauty and roughness provide the perfect context for the story’s volatile events. This is a thrilling, thoroughly satisfying debut.
Preview Book
Astoria by Peter Stark ⭐⭐⭐⭐
At the dawn of the 19th century, America's Eastern coast had largely been settled, but the West remained largely uncharted and undeveloped. In 1810, entrepreneur John Jacob Astor proposed to Thomas Jefferson that Astor start a trading colony in what is now Oregon. In a page-turning tale of ambition, greed, politics, survival, and loss, historian Stark (The Last Empty Spaces) chronicles Astor's mad dash to establish a fur-trading company, Astoria, which would capture the territory's wealth and allow Jefferson to inaugurate his vision of a democracy from sea to shining sea. Astor sent two parties to build his empire, one by sea and one by land. They were to reach the Pacific coast at the same time, but dissension among the leaders of the overland party, as well as Indian attacks and other logistical difficulties, kept it from arriving according to plan. The sea party aboard the Tonquin was scarcely more fortunate. The establishment of the short-lived Astoria coincided with the War of 1812, and in October 1813, Duncan McDougall sold out the trading post to the British. Stark eloquently concludes that though Astoria failed, Astor's vision and drive pushed settlers to establish a Western presence, altering the shape of the American nation.
Preview Book
Golden State by Ben Winters ⭐⭐⭐
Tell a fib, a whopper, a confabulation in California, and, promises Winters (The Last Policeman, 2013, etc.), you'll wind up in a heap of trouble."Any assault on reality, any infusion of falsehood in the air can't be countenanced, no matter the source." Lying weakens trust, which damages society. It also spoils one's breakfast. Laszlo Ratesic is just tucking into his chicken and waffles as Winters' yarn opens, but then he, a noted "speculator" in the employ of the Speculative Service, happens to catch the tail end of a prevarication. "Somebody's telling lies in here," he pronounces, "and it's making it hard to eat." It's Ratesic's special skill, shared by only a few, to be able to ferret out lies as they're being hatched, in this case by a kid who's been stealing his mom's pills and takes it on the lam, to Ratesic's joy, since "it's the part I like: pure law enforcement, my feet in the boots and the boots on the ground, me breathing heavy and charging after a liar." Alas, even in the independent nation called Golden State, there are those who would adorn and adjust the truth, even when it comes close to Ratesic--say, in the matter of the deceased brother for whom he continues to mourn. And are things really all that horrific out in the country that lies beyond the Shangri-La of free California, where the vaunted "Objectively So" may differ in kind and degree? Well, the mind plays tricks, and so does the tongue, and Ratesic finds himself caught up in a web that even he couldn't foresee. In some details, Winters' story might have fallen out of a forgotten file drawer at Philip K. Dick's pad, though Winters takes a less bleak view of humankind than the master of bad-vibes future California; though somewhat less surprisingly inventive than the author's Underground Airlines (2016), it's still a skillful and swift-moving concoction.For those who like their dystopias with a dash of humor.
Preview Book
Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosley ⭐⭐⭐½
Former NYPD detective Joe King Oliver, now the owner-operator of King Detective Service, investigates two cases of gross injustice in this excellent standalone from MWA Grand Master Mosley (Charcoal Joe and 13 other Easy Rawlins novels). Thirteen years earlier, Oliver was convicted on bogus assault charges, which ended his police career and his marriage. He spent nine months in jail before the charges were dropped and he was released without explanation. Oliver now learns that a crooked cop was behind the frame. Meanwhile, he is approached by Willa Portman, an intern for the lawyer representing Leonard Compton, a militant journalist who’s on death row for the murder of two policemen three years earlier. Portman says the killings were self-defense. Oliver, who faces a corrupt world with unflinching honesty and ruthlessness, enlists the aid of Melquarth Frost, a hardened career criminal, to even the odds in both cases. The novel’s dedication—to Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin—underlines the difference that one man can make in the fight for justice.
Preview Book
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A lonely woman in New York spends her days guzzling merlot, popping pills, and spying on the neighbors--until something she sees sucks her into a vortex of terror."The Miller home across the street--abandon hope, all ye who enter here--is one of five townhouses that I can survey from the south-facing windows of my own." A new family is moving in on her Harlem street, and Dr. Anna Fox already knows their names, employment histories, how much they paid for their house, and anything else you can find out using a search engine. Following a mysterious accident, Anna is suffering from agoraphobia so severe that she hasn't left her house in months. She speaks to her husband and daughter on the phone--they've moved out because "the doctors say too much contact isn't healthy"--and conducts her relationships with her neighbors wholly through the zoom lens of her Nikon D5500. As she explains to fellow sufferers in her online support group, food and medication (not to mention cases of wine) can be delivered to your door; your housecleaner can take out the trash. Anna's psychiatrist and physical therapist make house calls; a tenant in her basement pinch-hits as a handyman. To fight boredom, she's got online chess and a huge collection of DVDs; she has most of Hitchcock memorized. Both the game of chess and noir movie plots--Rear Window, in particular--will become spookily apt metaphors for the events that unfold when the teenage son of her new neighbors knocks on her door to deliver a gift from his mother. Not long after, his mother herself shows up...and then Anna witnesses something almost too shocking to be real happening in their living room. Boredom won't be a problem any longer.Crackling with tension, and the sound of pages turning, as twist after twist sweeps away each hypothesis you come up with about what happened in Anna's past and what fresh hell is unfolding now.
Preview Book
Newcomer by Keigo Higashino ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In Higashino’s satisfying second novel featuring Kyoichiro Kaga to be published in English (after 2014’s Malice), the Columbo-like Tokyo police detective pursues loose ends in the case of the strangulation murder of Mineko Mitsui, a divorcee estranged from her only child, whose friends insisted that “she was the last person on earth to have enemies.” Kaga believes that his responsibilities as a homicide investigator extend to finding ways to comfort those traumatized by violent crime. He begins with a family that runs a store that sells rice crackers to ascertain whether an insurance salesman who claimed he was in Mineko’s apartment shortly before her death on business had an alibi. Other threads include the identity of the person who bought an assortment of pastries found at the scene of the crime, and why the dead woman purchased an expensive pair of kitchen scissors. Although the solution is less elaborate than those in the author’s Detective Galileo novels, the end result is a police procedural puzzle mystery that comes across as more realistic.
Preview Book
All-American Murder by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The rapid-fire tale of one of the most infamous true-crime stories of the past decade.As Patterson (The People vs. Alex Cross, 2017, etc.) and Abramovich (Bullies: A Friendship, 2016) demonstrate early on, Aaron Hernandez (1989-2017) appeared to have it all. A football star in Connecticut, he was recruited to play at the University of Florida, where he was a standout tight end. Although there were a few whispers of behavioral issues when he was in Gainesville that led to him dropping in the NFL draft, Hernandez was drafted by the New England Patriots. His trajectory continued to rise in the NFL, where he made the Pro Bowl and eventually earned a contract extension worth $40 million. Then it all went awry. In 2015, Hernandez was convicted of the 2013 murder of his fiancee's sister's boyfriend and later put on trial--though acquitted--for a double murder in Boston that happened before the murder for which he was convicted (and which the authors clearly believe he committed). The handsome and charming but volatile football star was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole; in 2017, he was found dead in his cell of an apparent suicide. As can be expected in any book with Patterson's name on the cover, the authors tell the Hernandez tale in page-churning fashion. The book, just over 380 pages of text, contains 97 chapters as well as a prologue, coda, and epilogue, virtually none more than five pages long, most three or four. This approach will undoubtedly keep readers moving, but it also leaves little room for depth and nuance. The book also lacks footnotes, endnotes, a bibliography, or any other sourcing.There is a reason why true crime sells, of course, especially when it involves famous people: A blend of gore, fame, and voyeurism is a compelling mixture in our violent, fame-obsessed society. There is also a reason why the genre has a reputation for gratuitousness. A middling true-crime saga that fails to answer a significant question: Why?
Preview Book
Texas Ranger by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Texas Ranger has got to be one of the very best James Patterson books that I have read in many years. I really like reading his books, especially his Women's Murder Club series and his Private series. I just couldn't put it down. Being in a law enforcement family, it was so interesting and seemed to be so real. I liked the storyline; it wasn't anything you really couldn't believe happening. He kept me wondering who-dun-it until about 1/2 way through but I still wanted to finish it to see how all the characters would end up. I was not disappointed at all! I highly recommend this book to all who love mysteries, murder and in the middle of all of it; the love of your family and friends.
Preview Book
A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay ⭐⭐⭐½
College professor Paul Davis, the protagonist of this fast-paced psychological thriller from bestseller Barclay (Parting Shot), has suffered from PTSD since the night his respected colleague and mentor, Kenneth Hoffman, attacked him outside their small town of Milford, Conn. Kenneth, who confessed to the murders of the two women whose bodies were in his car at the time, is now in prison. In order to encourage Paul, whose short-term memory has been spotty since the incident, to start work on a novel he wants to write, his wife brings home an old typewriter. Soon Paul begins hearing noises in the night coming from the typewriter, which happens to be much like the one Kenneth made his victims write their final notes on. Paul’s theory that the typewriter might be haunted has his wife and his therapist concerned that he might actually be losing his mind. But is there a more sinister answer? Barclay carefully conceals hidden motives and secret lives until the startling conclusion. Harlan Coben fans will find much to like.
Preview Book
Noir by Christopher Moore ⭐⭐⭐½
A regular joe stirs up a whole pot of trouble when he meets a damsel in distress.Renowned satirist Moore (Secondhand Souls, 2015, etc.) offers up a soft-boiled take on the hard-boiled tradition personified by the likes of Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler in this messy, comic mystery that often goes off the rails. The book does offer a fascinating setting in San Francisco circa 1947, a throwback to a city the author clearly knows and loves. Our palooka of a protagonist is Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin, a partially lame grifter who tends bar at Sal's Saloon between various schemes. Sammy gets more than he bargained for when a spectacular blonde "tasty bit of trouble" named Stilton wanders into his joint. Before you know it, Sammy has the hots for "the Cheese," a jones that brings him all manner of trouble. The book employs no end of snappy dialogue straight out of a Jimmy Cagney movie, but the device can't save it from its meandering, distracted plot. In addition to the Cheese, we meet General Remy, a conspiring bureaucrat on leave from Roswell Army Air Field; "The Kid," a profane rug rat Sammy employs from time to time; Eddie Moo Shoes, Sammy's entree into Chinatown's underworld; Lone Jones, a good-natured boxer who insists he's not black; a dirty cop named Pookie O'Hara; and an assorted mix of gangsters, cabbies, drag queens, and other denizens of San Francisco. Moore's introduction of an interrupting, semiomniscient second narrator between Sammy's first-person tale can be jarring, even if it is explained late in the book. The novel finally coalesces in its back half as Sammy invades a shady cabal called the Bohemian Club to rescue the Cheese, pretty much from herself, and they both get a surprise when they run across General Remy's secret, all while being chased by mysterious "men in black." 
Preview Book
Rocket Men by Robert Kurson ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
An exuberant history of a major turning point in early American spaceflight, possibly "the riskiest and most thrilling of all the Apollo missions."Man's first flight to the moon occurred seven months before the actual landing. While not ignored, the Apollo 8 mission has never achieved the iconic status of Apollo 11. This enthusiastic account aims to remind readers of its significance. "This is the best space story of all, I thought, and I wasn't the only one," writes journalist Kurson (Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship, 2015, etc.). He notes that after the national horror at the 1957 launch of Sputnik, everyone assumed that the Soviet Union enjoyed technical superiority and was racing to beat us to the moon. In fact, only the latter was true. Kurson opens the narrative in summer 1968 with a top-secret intelligence report that the Soviets might attempt a manned circumlunar flight by year's end. The Apollo mission was scheduled for 1969, but George Low, one official, maintained that the U.S. could match the Soviets. Some NASA leaders objected, and almost everyone agreed that "Sending Apollo 8 to the moon in December might be the boldest and riskiest and most important mission NASA ever attempted." Since beating the Soviets to the moon was Apollo's purpose, it had to be tried. The author offers biographies of those involved, a nuts-and-bolts account of four months of training and the flight itself, which was not without glitches, and digressions into events of 1968 America, torn by strife over civil rights and the Vietnam War. Most readers know how the story turned out, so Kurson strains to generate suspense, and space buffs will quickly realize that this is a journalistic account aimed at a mass audience (clue: the astronauts' courtships and family lives receive prominent attention).An overly breathless yet entertaining account of a pioneering space mission that deserves to be better known.
Preview Book
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St.Vincent ⭐⭐⭐½
A mysterious visitor from Uzbekistan forms an unlikely friendship with a stunned young woman in retreat from life in rural Pennsylvania.Four years after the car crash that killed her husband, Amos, Kathleen is still "enveloped in a haze of fear" that clearly has a source beyond the wreck she survived. Having quit college at Amos' behest, she's now marking time, working at a store in a state park visited off-season by only a few hunters, hikers--and, one day in December 2007, a walk-in named Daniil who wants to stay at the park hostel. Being the only guest suits him just fine; it emerges that people are looking for Daniil and he has good reason to hide. "I betrayed people," he tells Kathleen, but whether he was a government informant or something worse remains a question as the two tentatively bond over books (Crime and Punishment perhaps a slightly too-obvious metaphor) and chess. Around them, St. Vincent quietly paints a portrait of small-town, working-class America, hollowed out by economic insecurity, where the only way out seems to be joining the Army, like Kathleen's brother and her best friend Beth's husband, to fight wars whose purposes no one understands. "They sold us pain and said it was fine," Kathleen thinks late in the novel, as she's begun to acknowledge how deeply angry she is for many reasons. "They had such contempt for us, and they thought we didn't see it. Just because we lived where we lived and were who we were." The author's background as a human rights attorney and advocate for victims of domestic violence serves her well as she makes subtle connections between socio-economic powerlessness and male rage as the story moves toward a harrowing denouement that hauntingly suggests even evildoers can be consumed with remorse. St. Vincent closes with an image as ambivalent and resonant as the rest of her fine work: "light interrupted by darkness, darkness interrupted by light."Sensitive prose conveys both compassion and outrage in this impressive debut.
Preview Book
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ⭐⭐⭐½
Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.
Preview Book
Facts and Fears by James R. Clapper ⭐⭐⭐½
As the nation's top spymaster, former Director of National Intelligence Clapper vowed never to publish a memoir. Then he became enraged at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign on behalf of Donald Trump, and he changed his mind about writing a book.A few weeks before Trump's surprise victory, Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a public warning about Russian dirty tricks meant to influence American voters. The author felt dismay when the vast majority of Americans apparently paid no attention to the warning. In the introduction, Clapper states unambiguously that following the election, "the CIA and the FBI continued to uncover evidence of preelection Russian propaganda, all intended to undermine [Hillary] Clinton and promote Trump, and the Intelligence Community continued to find indications of Russian cyber operations to interfere with the election." The author then devotes the next 300 pages to the trajectory of his career, during which he served Republican and Democratic presidents from positions inside and outside the military. From 2010 to 2017, Clapper served as President Barack Obama's nonpartisan senior intelligence adviser. As the author's chronicle of his spy management unfolds chronologically, he offers insights into U.S. relations with North and South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and, of course, Russia, with an emphasis on Vladimir Putin's determination to damage the U.S. in any way short of nuclear warfare. In the final quarter of the text, Clapper demonstrates his increasing exasperation with the current president's lies, inability to deal rationally with other nations, utter lack of respect for worthy diplomats and politicians, and, especially, his cozying up to Putin.The book will be judged, fairly or unfairly, by what comes next. If Clapper's revelations undermine the support of an irrational Trump among voters, he will consider the book a success, however limited. However, if the book fails to contribute to the halting of Trump's widespread corruption, Clapper makes clear he will do whatever he can from his retirement to protect what is left of American democracy.
Preview Book
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles ⭐⭐⭐⭐
House arrest has never been so charming as in Towles’s second novel (following Rules of Civility), an engaging 30-year saga set almost entirely inside the Metropol, Moscow’s most luxurious hotel. To Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, the Metropol becomes both home and jail in 1922, when the Bolsheviks spare his life (on the strength of a revolutionary poem written in 1913, when the count was at university). Forbidden to venture out, Rostov explores the intricacies of the grand structure and befriends its other denizens: precocious nine-year-old Nina Kulikova, a bureaucrat’s daughter who demands instruction on how to be a princess; Emile, virtuosic chef of the Boyarsky, “the finest restaurant in Moscow”; Andrey, the Boyarsky’s French expatriate maître d’; and the beautiful actress Anna Urbanova, who becomes the count’s regular visitor and paramour. Standing in for the increasingly despotic Soviet government is the Bishop, a villainous waiter who experiences gradual professional ascent—he becomes headwaiter of the Boyarsky, finally putting his seating-chart and wine-pairing talents to use. But when the adult Nina returns to ask Rostov for a favor, his unique, precariously well-appointed life must change once more. Episodic, empathetic, and entertaining, Count Rostov’s long transformation occurs against a lightly sketched background of upheaval, repression, and war. Gently but dauntlessly, like his protagonist, Towles is determined to chart the course of the individual.
Preview Book
Becoming by Michelle Obama ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Preview Book
A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates ⭐⭐⭐½
On Nov. 2, 1999 in Muskegee Falls, Ohio, a self-described “soldier of God” named Luther Dunphy loads a shotgun, drives to an abortion clinic near his home, and guns down Dr. Augustus Voorhees as he arrives at work. In this chilling novel, bestselling author Oates (Carthage) approaches one of America’s enduringly divisive topics through the lens of a sprawling family epic. The bulk of the novel deals with the shooting’s aftermath and its impact on the daughters of Dunphy and Voorhees—two women whose lives are permanently shifted by their fathers’ legacy for opposite sides of the contentious abortion-rights debate. Divided into five sections, the book begins by delving into the lives of Dunphy (now on death row) and Voorhees before the narrative finally coalesces around Naomi Voorhees’s floundering attempts to understand her family, leading her to a career in documentary filmmaking and a surprising connection with Dawn “The Hammer of Jesus” Dunphy, whose anger and aggression propel her into a championship-level boxing career. Unfortunately, some of the emotional nuance is thinly developed, with the majority of the characters standing as archetypes of opposing worldviews. Nevertheless, Oates’s sprawling tale presents a sensitively painted portrait of the inextricable quality of grief and the weight of family legacy, showing how unexpected connections can bind people together in counterintuitive ways.
No Preview
The Long Drop by Denise Mina ⭐⭐⭐½
Hard men work their will in 1950s Glasgow.Though somewhat unlike Mina's usual thrillers in many ways, this study of a serial killer shares her persistent themes. Mina has penned three series of novels, each featuring a female protagonist (Blood, Salt, Water, 2015, etc.) struggling against both active criminals and pervasive misogyny. In this story she omits the female protagonist but remains grounded in the casual victimization of Scotland's women. William Watt's family (wife, daughter, and sister-in-law) is slaughtered, and at first Watt is charged with the crimes. Feeling the police are not investigating energetically enough, he reaches out to the Glasgow underworld--and finds Peter Manuel, who claims to know where the gun is buried and much more. In the course of a December evening he and Watt spend drinking together, much that is repellent about Manuel is slowly revealed. Then another family is murdered. Eventually Watt is exculpated, and Manuel is charged with eight counts of murder. The story alternates mostly between that December night of drinking and the subsequent trial. Manuel is delusional, possibly psychotic; but is he alone responsible for the deaths of Watt's family? Watt is a man of some substance, involved in political and real estate machinations that will transform Glasgow. He has a mistress. Do the hard men close ranks around him? Is Manuel, beyond the control of the men who rule his world, sacrificed to preserve one of them? In the end, the answer matters less than the method, as women's lives are degraded, publicly and privately, physically and spiritually, to preserve the ranks of those hard men. In more than one sense, Manuel takes the fall. A terrific exploration of crime and oppression.
Preview Book
The Gangster by Clive Cussler ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Set in 1906, bestseller Cussler’s thrilling ninth Isaac Bell adventure (after 2015’s The Assassin, also coauthored with Scott) pits Bell, an operative in the Van Dorn Detective Agency, against Antonio Branco, who’s outwardly a respectable New York City businessman but is in fact a ruthless crime boss. Branco is willing to bribe and murder to enhance his profits, and he does both to land a contract to “provision the biggest construction job in America.” Bell has his hands full working to thwart the Black Hand in New York City, a gang that exploits poor Italians and rich alike, and which benefits from the inadequate resources of the NYPD. But he gets even busier when he learns that a member of a “secret tycoon club,” who fears Teddy Roosevelt will learn that he illegally profited from the Panama Canal Treaty, wants the president dead. The fascinating and suspenseful plot compensates for thin characterizations.
Preview Book
Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan ⭐⭐⭐½
Cases don’t come much higher-profile than the potential career-maker assigned to driven British barrister Kate Woodcroft, QC: prosecuting golden boy junior Home Office minister James Whitehouse, the prime minister’s best friend since their boyhood at Eton, for raping the young parliamentary researcher with whom he recently ended a brief affair—in a lift at the House of Commons, no less. But the focus isn’t simply the he said–she said courtroom fencing match, but deeper truths about the nature of privilege and power. Skillfully interweaving the story of the unfolding scandal with James’s and his wife Sophie’s student days at Oxford—as well the drug-fueled, swept-under-the-carpet tragedy there that has informed his relationship with the PM ever since—Vaughan gradually reveals just how shockingly high the stakes are. Such is the strength of this sinewy novel from Vaughan (The Farm at the Edge of the World) that the glossy, tabloid-ready surface proves one of the less interesting facets of the engrossing, twist-filled tale that unspools. 
Preview Book
Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Yale historian Blight’s study of runaway slave-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass—a “radical patriot” and “prophet of freedom,” a “great voice of America’s terrible transformation from slavery to freedom”—benefits not only from Blight’s decadeslong immersion in the history of American slavery and abolitionism, but also from his access to privately owned sources unavailable to previous scholars. To Blight, Douglass’s character and ideology were rife with paradox, and in this huge and meticulously detailed study he unpacks apparent contradictions: Douglass’s unexpected happiness as an urban slave in Baltimore; his devotion to his wife, Anna, and their children, whom he rarely saw due to his constant travels as an abolitionist orator; his love for the promise he saw in America and hatred of how slavery had degraded it; his repeated revisions of his autobiographical writings as he reinterpreted his experiences; his second marriage to a white woman, an act both socially transgressive and opposed by his children. The Douglass who emerges from this massive work is not always heroic, or even likable, but Blight illuminates his personal struggles and achievements to emphasize what an extraordinary person he was. Though one might wonder, given Douglass’s extensive writings and the numerous works of scholarship discussing him, about the need for yet another biography, it turns out that there was much more to be learned about him.
Preview Book
The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A professional torturer on the run from her employers falls in with sexy twin brothers.You probably know Meyer as the then-27-year-old Mormon housewife who woke up from a dream about vampires and gave the world Twilight, though in addition to that series she has already published one adult thriller (The Host, 2008). In her latest, she marries the genres of spy versus spy and throbbing romance novel with good results. Meet Juliana, or Alex, or Casey, or Chris--whatever her alias of the moment is, she's an operative with a medical school background who specializes in chemically controlled torture and interrogation. Somewhere along the line, she learned too much about the secrets of her employers, and she now lives in a state of high-tech paranoia, sleeping in a bathtub wearing a gas mask in a secret location booby-trapped at every possible ingress. When her old boss calls her in for one last mission, she's not sure she isn't being double-crossed--but nonetheless proceeds with the kidnapping of Washington, D.C., schoolteacher Daniel Beach, who's purportedly part of a vile plot to release a virus that will wreak global doom. In fact, he is a man whose deep inner goodness is rivaled only by his scorching outer hotness--but our socially awkward virgin heroine won't realize this until after she's taken him to her secret lair, stripped him naked, strapped him to a table, and injected him with compounds that produce pure agony for 10 minutes at a time. The biochemical magic between them is even more powerful than the nasty drugs, and by the time his identical twin brother, a swashbuckling black-ops type, shows up to kill her and rescue him, love has bloomed in the torture chamber. As they begin to see through the layers of cross and double cross, the two agents decide to join forces and go into hiding together, with the brother of course, on a ranch in Texas with a pack of trained superdogs. A tale of skulduggery, bodice rippery, and shoot-'em-up action unfolds, complete with help from a luscious mistress of disguise who could have stepped right out of a James Bond novel. Rated B for badass.
Preview Book
We Fed an Island by Jose Andres ⭐⭐⭐½
This lovely, energizing story from Michelin-starred chef Andrés and his frequent cookbook coauthor Wolffe (Made in Spain) provides an antidote to passivity and cynicism. Having done food relief work in Haiti in 2010, Andrés was ready to help feed the people of Puerto Rico after the island was ravaged by Hurricane Maria seven year later. Andrés tells how his nonprofit organization thrived despite the fumbling incompetence of government agencies and nonprofits—and an American president who “seemed to have no idea what his role was.” In a matter of days, Andrés and his volunteers had expanded an operation run by his friend Jose Enrique, a San Juan chef, making sandwiches, paellas, and stew (Andres has contempt for the idea that disaster victims deserve only lousy food). In between fighting with red tape–tangled FEMA officials and dealing with the Red Cross’s lack of organization, Andres quickly scaled up an operation with 20,000 volunteers that produced three million meals. “We solved the problems as they popped up,” Andres writes, “as chefs do.” This is a powerful story of the impact a well-meaning group can have on the world.
Preview Book
Fear by Bob Woodward ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In a compulsively readable narrative "drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand participants and witnesses," Washington Post associate editor Woodward contends that members of the Trump administration took steps to "intentionally block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses." Woodward deems those actions "no less than an administrative coup d'etat." In the most dramatic example, Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic advisor, removed a draft letter from the Oval Office that terminated a free trade agreement with South Korea, which constituted, in Cohn's view, "a potential trigger to a national security catastrophe." As Cohn had hoped, Trump "never noticed the missing letter." Woodward also offers other sensational anecdotes unrelated to his administrative coup themeâsuch as an argument between chief of staff John Kelly and the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union that was so heated that Trump later said he thought the two were going to get into a fistfightâas well as the occasional positive comment, such as those about the First Couple's affection for each other, and Trump's newspaper-reading habits. He ends with another sensational claim: that John Dowd, Trump's lawyer for the special counsel Russia investigation, told Trump that he would end up behind bars if he agreed to be interviewed by the special counsel, and considered Trump "a fucking liar." Woodward's reporting, with its heavy reliance on "multiple deep background interviews with firsthand sources" who remain anonymous, will be problematic for some, especially those not already inclined to believe the worst about the president. But readers who trust the reporting will find this to be both entertaining and disturbing reading.
Preview Book
Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent ⭐⭐⭐½
Four days after delivering the world's first atomic bomb to the U.S. flight crew in the Pacific, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese torpedoes, with a loss of all but 317 of the 1,196 men on board. US Navy veteran Vincent, a No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, and documentary filmmaker Vladic, who's made an award-winning film on the tragedy, investigate what happened and how the decades-long struggle to vindicate the captain unfolded.
Preview Book
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton ⭐⭐⭐½
Gracious, sometimes-wonkish post-mortem of the last presidential election by its surprise loser, who still can't quite believe...well, what happened."I ran for President because I thought I'd be good at the job," writes Clinton (Hard Choices, 2014, etc.), modestly. She adds, a touch less demurely, "I thought that of all the people who might run, I had the most relevant experience, meaningful accomplishments, and ambitious but achievable proposals, as well as the temperament to get things done in Washington." Against her was arrayed a field of Republican candidates that included the one no one took seriously--but also, as the author notes in a reckoning that is remarkably measured, a whole cultural and political field of opponents, including Russian hackers and a grudge-bearing Vladimir Putin, the crew of WikiLeaks, Bernie Sanders and his devout followers, misogyny, and a few missteps that, refreshingly, Clinton's not shy about owning up to. (One takeaway: don't campaign with pneumonia. Take a day off.) Of the many enemies, writes the author, misogyny was likely the most intractable, even given James Comey, the screams about emails, voter suppression, and Donald Trump's hammering away about "lying Hillary," to say nothing about looming behind her creepily in debate. Mostly, Clinton campaigned against anger, and she could never quite get a handle on how to reckon with it. Pundits have since insisted that Clinton should have spoken more from the heart and been less managed, which isn't really how politics is done--well, until Trump came along and opened the door to a post-truth America. Of all the upshots, that truth business seems to be what bothers Clinton most, but mostly she's understandably amazed, as are so many, to have gone to bed in one America and awoken in another: "I picture future historians scratching their heads, trying to understand what happened. I'm still scratching mine, too." A touch too reserved and polite, given the circumstances, and in need of supplementing by hard-edged books like Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes' Shattered. Still, a useful book to read--and, for many, to mourn over.
Preview Book
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ⭐⭐⭐½
The jet-black comedy that ensues after the luckless Gregor Samsa turns into a gigantic bug. The story loses a bit in translation. A lot of the humor in the original comes from the way Kafka plays the story's absurdities absolutely deadpan, and the visuals oversell the joke, especially since Kuper draws all the human characters as broad caricatures. Even so, he works up a suitably creepy frisson, mostly thanks to his drawing style. Executed on scratchboard, it's a jittery, woodcut-inspired mass of sharp angles that owes a debt to both Frans Masereel (a Belgian woodcut artist who worked around Kafka's time) and MAD magazine's Will Elder. The knotty walls and floors of the Samsas' house look like they're about to dissolve into dust. In the book's best moments, Kuper lets his unerring design sense and command of visual shorthand carry the story. The jagged forms on the huge insect's belly are mirrored by folds in business clothes; thinking about the debt his parents owe his employer, Gregor imagines his insectoid body turning into money slipping through an hourglass. Every thing and person in this Metamorphosis seems silhouetted and carved, an effect that meshes neatly with Kafka's sense of nightmarish unreality.
Preview Book
The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper ⭐⭐⭐
CNN anchor and novelist Jake Tapper narrates a great summer listen as he re-creates 1950s McCarthy-era Washington in this thriller. Tapper uses his best broadcasting voice when describing the trials and tribulations of newly minted Congressman and war hero Charlie Marder as he acclimates to hardball national politics. At times, Tapper's dramatic pacing falters, and his character portrayals are weak, but his overall performance is enjoyable, especially when his characters interact with compelling historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy. At the center of the story is Charlie's relationship with his newly pregnant wife, Margaret. Tapper shines when depicting the intimacies of people who are struggling to extricate themselves from the Washington swamp. 
Preview Book
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James ⭐⭐⭐½
The book centers around a woman (the narrator) who takes a job as governess to two young children, Miles and Flora, only to encounter ghostly evils that are trying to capture their attention. The problem is that the children are not only unafraid of the ghosts, they seem to want them around. This, of course, makes them susceptible to embracing the evil that is courting them. It’s a great book to curl up with on a dark and stormy day. It’s a good, old-fashioned ghost story, complete with a sprawling estate and creepy children.
Preview Book
Last Hope Island by Lynne Olson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A "rich, intensely human story" of European cooperation during World War II.Early on during the war, government officials and many citizens of a host of conquered European nations fled to Britain. Bestselling historian Olson (Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941, 2013, etc.) writes a vivid history of the war through the eyes of the exiles and compatriots left behind. She reveals inspiring tales of heroism, suffering, and sacrifice without ignoring too many incidents of betrayal, missed opportunities, and incompetence. First to arrive were the Poles and Czechs. That Britain had betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 and remained passive while the Wehrmacht conquered Poland in 1939 did not lessen their commitment. Their military units fought with the Allies, and their prewar intelligence skills were far superior. The brilliant Bletchley Park decoders could not have succeeded without the earlier innovations of Polish codebreakers. In 1940, leaders from conquered Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland formed exile governments. Though no significant French political figures came to Britain, Winston Churchill encouraged the obscure brigadier general Charles de Gaulle. Olson reminds readers that, until late 1942, none of this activity greatly inconvenienced Hitler or his plans. Britain's victory (really a draw) in the Battle of Britain was followed by a numbing series of blunders and defeats. Joining the resistance was suicidal; even military buffs will recoil at the murderous ineptitude of early British secret operations. By 1943, however, the Allies had gotten their act together. Their armies were advancing, and the resistance was functioning efficiently. Feel-good histories of World War II have fallen out of fashion, but Britain's sole stand against Hitler remains inspiring. Despite the title, the occupied nations that she sheltered did not "turn the tide," but Olson delivers an engrossing, sometimes-disturbing account of their energetic efforts.
Preview Book
Missing by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐⭐
James Patterson’s newest Private novel entitled Missing A Private Novel revisits the Australian office of Private Investigations. Writing this novel with Kathryn Fox, the newest book in his action packed series brings a new mystery filled with twists and lots of action.The premise of this latest outing has Craig Gisto, the head of Private Sydney, embroiled in another mystery as his newest client Eliza Moss investigate the disappearance of her father. Eric Moss is the CEO of a high-profile research company with some deadly enemies and secrets of his own. If this plot line was not enough, a routine background check turns into a frantic hunt to find a stolen baby and catch a brutal killer.
Patterson and Fox brings back the characters he first introduced in his Private Down Under book adding more insight to the characters. Missing is a fast paced read, that keeps you engrossed from start to finish.
Preview Book
Poison by John Lescroart ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Back in the saddle after a brief hiatus for the stand-alone Fatal (2017), San Francisco attorney Dismas Hardy spends most of his time wishing he weren't. And he's not the only one.Half a generation ago, Hardy represented Abby Jarvis when her drunken driving got her charged with vehicular homicide. She did her time, got out of prison, and landed a job as bookkeeper with Grant Wagner, who owned Pipes & Valves plumbing supply. Now Wagner has died, and the cause wasn't the heart attack it first seemed to his family--sons Gary and Gene, daughters Grace and Gloria--but aconite poisoning, which a tox screen Gloria requested finally caught. The younger Wagners can't believe Abby could have killed the man who gave her a second chance, but neither can they believe the killer is one of their number, and somebody has to take the rap. So Abby once more calls Hardy, who takes the case for peanuts and then watches the pile of evidence against his client grow and grow. The defense's only hope, it seems, is that the case will somehow turn out to be linked to the shooting of David Chang that leads off the story but feels like an extra limb. And eventually it is, though not in an especially ingenious or revealing or persuasive way. By that time, though, Hardy's own son Vincent's friendship with Chang has Hardy's wife, Frannie, demanding that her husband walk away from the case, and when he thinks back over the times his friends and relatives have been scalded by the violent crimes he deals with (The Fall, 2015, etc.), he can see that she has a point. Now if only there were a way to get Abby off before the deadline for Hardy's decision came due....Though it lacks both the sociological scope and the double-barreled plotting of Lescroart's best, this relatively routine, expertly handled case is still well worth your time.
Preview Book
First in Line by Kate Andersen Brower ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This is an easy readable book. Brower is a journalist and writes in that style. Because she is not a historian, facts are presented but there is no historical analysis or academic documentation. The book is well written and researched. Brower tells the history of the vice presidents and how the method of choosing the VP to his role in office has changed over the history of our country. Brower states no one wants to be the vice president. Nine vice presidents have become president after the president either died, was assassinated or resigned. Of those vice presidents who became presidents, Brower states some have been poor presidents and some became significant presidents.
Preview Book
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie ⭐⭐⭐
In Rushdie’s ambitious and rewarding novel, a mysterious billionaire and his three adult sons change their names and move to New York City in an attempt to reinvent themselves after tragedy. Spanning the years from the Obama inauguration to the current political moment, the main story is narrated by René, an aspiring filmmaker who resides in the Gardens, the same fictional downtown Manhattan neighborhood as the pseudonymous “Golden” family of the book’s title. Each of the Golden sons is introduced in turn—the intellectual Petya, the artistically inclined Apu, their searching half-brother “D”—as René gradually comes to understand their origins and implicate himself in their dramas. After the patriarch, Nero, marries a much younger woman named Vasilia, her increasingly intimate relationship with René drags the Goldens’ history violently into the present. Replete with allusions to literature, film, mythology, and politics, the novel simultaneously channels the calamities of Greek drama and the information overload of the internet. The result is a distinctively rich epic of the immigrant experience in modern America, where no amount of money or self-abnegation can truly free a family from the sins of the past.
Preview Book
The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian ⭐⭐⭐½
Blackout drunk Cassie Bowden is used to waking up in strangers’ beds, but what she discovers one morning in a sumptuous Dubai hotel suite is instantly sobering—blood-soaked sheets and the dead body of the handsome American hedge fund manager she met on her flight over. Even worse for Cassie, the assassin who executed him already regrets sparing the passed-out flight attendant. It’s a killer set-up, and Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker) initially maximizes the dual plot lines: Cassie, flying on primal survival instinct, tries to stonewall investigators, testing the truth of the maxim that God looks out for fools and drunkards; hit woman Elena methodically closes in for the kill. Bohjalian’s less successful in avoiding clichés or in making an espionage subplot plausible. Then, with about 50 pages to go it’s as though the bell has rung for the final lap, with the author unceremoniously detonating a plot bombshell that triggers the frenetic, exciting, but not especially convincing sprint to the finish. Bohjalian’s fans will still have fun.
Preview Book
The President Is Missing by Bill Clinton ⭐⭐⭐½
It's textbook synergy, as the marketers say: A media-savvy ex-president teams up with the ringmaster of mass-produced pop fiction to churn out a by-the-numbers thriller.It's a telling sign of the times that the very first bit of text in this scrappy potboiler by Clinton (Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, 2011, etc.) and Patterson (NYPD Red, 2012, etc.) is a shoutout to the lawyer who brought them together "and occasionally cracked the whip." That said, Clinton lifts generous hunks of his own presidential biography in this yarn celebrating the gnarly President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan (think William Jefferson Clinton, natch), who is being assailed on every side. There are Islamic terrorists, but worse, the Congressional committees grilling him from Page 1 on, questioning Benghazi-like episodes in which the Sons of Jihad have been mowing down innocent Americans. Then there's the "tall, leggy, busty" assassin who's coming for the Prez without rancor but with clinical certainty. It doesn't help that Duncan's veep--"a parasite, living off her host"--may be plotting to take over, nor that the media is given to leaking that he intends "to try to cut a deal with the House Speaker to spare me impeachment if I agree to a single term in office." And did we mention the killer computer virus that's about to turn the switch on the information age? What's a beleaguered politico to do when the klieg lights are on and the bullets are flying? Hunker down and hit the mattresses--but then go all Jack Ryan or maybe even all Dubya ("In the coming days...we will find out who are America's friends and who are America's enemies. Nobody will want to be an enemy"), recruit a Lisbeth Salander or two, line up NATO pals and maybe even the Russkis, and go mano a mano with the assembled bad guys, foreign and domestic.Formulaic but reasonably fun provided you have no expectations concerning probability or literary quality.
Preview Book
The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's textbook synergy, as the marketers say: A media-savvy ex-president teams up with the ringmaster of mass-produced pop fiction to churn out a by-the-numbers thriller.It's a telling sign of the times that the very first bit of text in this scrappy potboiler by Clinton (Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, 2011, etc.) and Patterson (NYPD Red, 2012, etc.) is a shoutout to the lawyer who brought them together "and occasionally cracked the whip." That said, Clinton lifts generous hunks of his own presidential biography in this yarn celebrating the gnarly President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan (think William Jefferson Clinton, natch), who is being assailed on every side. There are Islamic terrorists, but worse, the Congressional committees grilling him from Page 1 on, questioning Benghazi-like episodes in which the Sons of Jihad have been mowing down innocent Americans. Then there's the "tall, leggy, busty" assassin who's coming for the Prez without rancor but with clinical certainty. It doesn't help that Duncan's veep--"a parasite, living off her host"--may be plotting to take over, nor that the media is given to leaking that he intends "to try to cut a deal with the House Speaker to spare me impeachment if I agree to a single term in office." And did we mention the killer computer virus that's about to turn the switch on the information age? What's a beleaguered politico to do when the klieg lights are on and the bullets are flying? Hunker down and hit the mattresses--but then go all Jack Ryan or maybe even all Dubya ("In the coming days...we will find out who are America's friends and who are America's enemies. Nobody will want to be an enemy"), recruit a Lisbeth Salander or two, line up NATO pals and maybe even the Russkis, and go mano a mano with the assembled bad guys, foreign and domestic.Formulaic but reasonably fun provided you have no expectations concerning probability or literary quality.
Preview Book
The Farm by Tom Rob Smith ⭐⭐⭐½
At the start of this superior psychological thriller from Thriller Award–winner Smith (Child 44), the narrator, a Londoner known only as Daniel, receives a phone call from his father, who has retired with his wife to a farm in Sweden. The father tells Daniel that his mother is in the hospital. For months, she has been “imagining things—terrible, terrible things.” Before Daniel can fly to Sweden, his father calls again to inform him that she persuaded the doctors to authorize her discharge and has disappeared. As Daniel struggles to accept that news, his mother phones to announce that she’s flying to Heathrow and that everything his father has told him “is a lie.” When she arrives, she offers a complex tale to buttress her conviction that she has been plotted against, leaving Daniel uncertain as to whom and what to believe. Smith keeps the reader guessing up to the powerfully effective resolution that’s refreshingly devoid of contrivances.
Preview Book
The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Meet David Granger, the bigoted 68-year-old Vietnam veteran and narrator of Quick’s (The Silver Linings Playbook) dark, funny, and surprisingly tender new novel. After a brain tumor is removed, Granger allows some unknown government lackey to transcribe his life story: a patriotic, often cynical, sometimes paranoid, but always engaging recitation. He shares the horrors of Vietnam and his encounter with Clayton Fire Bear, the fake name of a Native American to whom he owes an apology. He describes his family relationships: his love for his granddaughter; his semi-estrangement with Hank, his pretentious son; and his tragic marriage to Hank’s mother, Jessica, which began as an effort to save her life after being raped and impregnated and ended years later with her suicide. Granger’s life is rife with instances that either prove or belie his reputation as a xenophobic, racist homophobe. Identifying the “you” in the title proves illuminating; is it Clayton Fire Bear, Hank—who until now was ignorant about his paternity—or Granger himself, who tried and failed to keep Jessica’s demons at bay and too late realized she returned the favor with more subtlety and success?
Preview Book
The Restless Wave by John McCain ⭐⭐⭐½
In his moving final memoir, written as he battles terminal brain cancer, Arizona senator McCain reflects on his career. Topics include his 2008 presidential campaign, key points in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, legislative battles around healthcare and immigration reform, today’s fractious political climate, and American values. Known for his leadership on foreign policy issues, McCain shares his views on a range of geopolitical topics, including Vladimir Putin (“the clear and present danger... a murderer and a thug”), the Arab Spring, and President Obama’s handling of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria (“a shockingly bad mistake”). Despite flashes of the “straight talk” for which McCain has become known, this book meanders into navel-gazing detail and sometimes skirts meaningful examination. McCain lists President Trump’s moral and political failings, but hedges: “I don’t know what to make of Trump’s convictions,” he writes, and “it’s hard to know what to expect” from him. McCain is at his best when arguing that America is exceptional because of its “founding conviction” that all people deserve equal rights and because of “our conduct in the world”—the book’s most powerful chapter is devoted to rejecting torture. Rather than a response to extraordinary times, this fine memoir reads more like a requiem of a long, patriotic life.
Preview Book
Grant by Ron Chernow ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A massive biography of the Civil War general and president, who "was the single most important figure behind Reconstruction."Most Americans know the traditional story of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885): a modest but brutal general who pummeled Robert E. Lee into submission and then became a bad president. Historians changed their minds a generation ago, and acclaimed historian Chernow (Washington: A Life, 2010, etc.), winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, goes along in this doorstop of a biography, which is admiring, intensely detailed, and rarely dull. A middling West Point graduate, Grant performed well during the Mexican War but resigned his commission, enduring seven years of failure before getting lucky. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was the only West Point graduate in the area, so local leaders gave him a command. Unlike other Union commanders, he was aggressive and unfazed by setbacks. His brilliant campaign at Vicksburg made him a national hero. Taking command of the Army of the Potomac, he forced Lee's surrender, although it took a year. Easily elected in 1868, he was the only president who truly wanted Reconstruction to work. Despite achievements such as suppressing the Ku Klux Klan, he was fighting a losing battle. Historian Richard N. Current wrote, "by backing Radical Reconstruction as best he could, he made a greater effort to secure the constitutional rights of blacks than did any other President between Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson." Recounting the dreary scandals that soiled his administration, Chernow emphasizes that Grant was disastrously lacking in cynicism. Loyal to friends and susceptible to shady characters, he was an easy mark, and he was fleeced regularly throughout his life. In this sympathetic biography, the author continues the revival of Grant's reputation. At nearly 1,000 pages, Chernow delivers a deeply researched, everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know biography, but few readers will regret the experience.
Preview Book
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Excellent characterization and well-crafted tension do much to redeem the outlandish plot of this SF thriller from Crouch (the Wayward Pines trilogy). Jason Dessen, a quantum physicist, once had a brilliant research career ahead of him. But after a girlfriend’s unexpected pregnancy and the birth of a son, this future was derailed. Now Jason is a professor at a small Chicago college, content with his warm and loving family life until he’s abducted into a world in which his quantum many-worlds theory has become a fully realized technology for inter-dimensional transfer. In this world, Jason didn’t marry his girlfriend and never had a son. Jason is determined to get back to his family and his own world, but nefarious powers in the alternate reality conspire to stop him from revealing the criminal lengths they have gone to create the world-hopping technology. Crouch makes little attempt to justify the underlying science fiction MacGuffin, but a rousing and heartfelt ending will leave readers cheering.
Preview Book
Trumpocracy by David Frum ⭐⭐⭐½
Frum (The Right Man), an Atlantic senior editor, charts the erosion of democratic principles over the course of Donald Trump’s campaign and first year in office, enumerating both the president’s own improprieties and the misdeeds of his various advisers and hangers-on. Frum eloquently places the blame squarely on “the aggrandizement of one domineering man and his shamelessly grasping extended family,” whom he describes as trading in conspiracy theories and “alternative facts,” using their government positions to shill for real estate deals overseas, and engaging in borderline-treasonous conversations with Russian officials. He also shames those he deems complicit, including various Fox News hosts, short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and “brazen” political strategist Kellyanne Conway. Frum further notes that Trump has turned on the country’s most trusted international allies in favor of “the planet’s thugs, crooks, and dictators.” Frum urges readers to “aspire to a deeper citizenship and wider loyalties,” and conservatives, among whom he includes himself, to embrace a more moderate ideology. Denunciations of the current administration are ubiquitous, but Frum’s incisive prose and optimism—notably, regarding the chances of returning decency and integrity to the Republican Party—set this apart.
Preview Book
The Passenger by Lisa Lutz ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tanya Dubois, the enigmatic heroine of this enjoyable standalone from Lutz (How to Start a Fire), is the unhappy wife of the deceased Frank Dubois, who took a fatal—and unassisted—header down the basement stairs of their Waterloo, Wis., home. Since she fears the police will think she pushed Frank, Tanya decides to get out of Waterloo as fast as possible, and she holes up in a sleazy motel, the first of many she’ll stay in, to call the mysterious Mr. Oliver, who grudgingly agrees to supply her with a new identity and some starter cash: it’s clear he’s done it before. Tanya becomes Amelia Keen in Austin, Tex., where she meets the beguiling but dangerous bartender Blue. It’s soon clear that Amelia and Blue both have unsavory pasts, and the agreement the women reach sends both of them off with new names. While the pacing falters in places and some of the final reveals lack wallop, Lutz’s complex web of finely honed characters will keep readers turning the pages.
Preview Book
Defectors by Joseph Kanon ⭐⭐⭐½
In 1949, CIA agent Frank Weeks was exposed as a Communist spy and defected to the Soviet Union. A dozen years later, his brother, Simon, a publisher, gets into deep trouble when he travels to Moscow to work on Frank's memoir.A memoir from "the man who betrayed a generation" is guaranteed to be an international bestseller--even if, as approved by the KGB, it will be full of omissions, half-truths, and fabrications. A born charmer--smart, irreverent, and brilliantly persuasive--Frank has mastered the art of self-preservation. Playing on his younger sibling's love for him, he draws Simon into a dangerous scheme he swears is motivated by a desire to save his wife, Joanna, from her deepening depression. Simon was once involved with Joanna and still has feelings for her. Recruited by Frank as an OSS intelligence analyst during World War II--and forced to resign his subsequent job at the State Department after Frank's cover was blown--Simon now finds himself caught between two worlds. The deeper he's pulled into his brother's orbit, the more he's put in touch with a cold streak of his own. Most of these plot elements will be familiar to readers of John le Carre, Gerald Seymour, and other great spy novelists. But with his remarkable emotional precision and mastery of tone, Kanon transcends the form. In its subtly romanticized treatment of compromised lives, this book is even better than his terrific previous effort, Leaving Berlin (2015). A blend of Spy vs. Spy and sibling vs. sibling (not since le Carre's A Perfect Spy has there been a family of spooks to rival this one), Kanon reaffirms his status as one of the very best writers in the genre.
Preview Book
Friction by Sandra Brown ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bestseller Brown's highly recognizable brand of romantic suspense is on full display as the fates of rugged Texas Ranger Crawford Hunt and Judge Holly Spencer collide in the courtroom, in the bedroom, and in a desperate attempt to save reputations and lives. Crawford's hearing before Holly is to seek custody of his five-year-old daughter, Georgia, who's currently living with her late mother's parents, Grace and Joe Gilroy. A gunman interrupts the hearing at the Prentiss County Courthouse in Prentiss, Tex., by firing wildly, killing a bailiff. Crawford shields Holly and turns the attack into a chase that leads to the rooftop, where a sniper kills the gunman. In the aftermath, Joe warns Crawford that his "grandstanding" at the courthouse threatens his chances of winning custody, and Holly fears an enemy of hers will use the courthouse tragedy to discredit her. Things get worse for them both, complicated by their growing attraction to each other. Crawfordtries to protect Holly from those out to ruin her, but he's trapped by Sgt. Neal Lester, a senior detective, and Joe, who files a restraining order against him. Brown (Mean Streak) expertly ratchets up passion and danger as Crawford fights for his life, his daughter, and his new love.
Preview Book
The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz ⭐⭐⭐½
Korelitz (Admission) raids the current news climate for this hot-topic read about diversity, protest, and “liberal idiocy” on the campus of progressive Webster College, headed by its first female and Jewish president, Naomi Roth, a feminist academic with her own radical past. Roth’s pride in Webster’s evolution from white male homogeneity to carefully culled inclusion is tested by the denial of tenure to popular black professor Nicholas Gall, which spawns a massive student movement to protect him led by Omar Khayal, a charismatic Palestinian student. Though Roth prides herself on speaking “truth to power,” when she is the “establishment” her words fall on deaf ears. They fail to impress even her own daughter, Hannah, a member of the protest movement; best friend, Francine, the college’s admissions dean going through her own academic crisis; and the restive college board. There’s much to ponder in this dense political and social debate, and it’s as overwhelming to Naomi as it is to readers, who, though pitying her no-win situation, can see the hypocrisy that blinds her. Ultimately, it isn’t the political twist that’s so riveting in Korelitz’s morality tale, but the apolitical, ageless struggle of a mother letting go of her daughter, a fact “so very ordinary, but... everything, too.”No Book Preview
The Long Drop by Denise Mina ⭐⭐⭐½
Hard men work their will in 1950s Glasgow.Though somewhat unlike Mina's usual thrillers in many ways, this study of a serial killer shares her persistent themes. Mina has penned three series of novels, each featuring a female protagonist (Blood, Salt, Water, 2015, etc.) struggling against both active criminals and pervasive misogyny. In this story she omits the female protagonist but remains grounded in the casual victimization of Scotland's women. William Watt's family (wife, daughter, and sister-in-law) is slaughtered, and at first Watt is charged with the crimes. Feeling the police are not investigating energetically enough, he reaches out to the Glasgow underworld--and finds Peter Manuel, who claims to know where the gun is buried and much more. In the course of a December evening he and Watt spend drinking together, much that is repellent about Manuel is slowly revealed. Then another family is murdered. Eventually Watt is exculpated, and Manuel is charged with eight counts of murder. The story alternates mostly between that December night of drinking and the subsequent trial. Manuel is delusional, possibly psychotic; but is he alone responsible for the deaths of Watt's family? Watt is a man of some substance, involved in political and real estate machinations that will transform Glasgow. He has a mistress. Do the hard men close ranks around him? Is Manuel, beyond the control of the men who rule his world, sacrificed to preserve one of them? In the end, the answer matters less than the method, as women's lives are degraded, publicly and privately, physically and spiritually, to preserve the ranks of those hard men. In more than one sense, Manuel takes the fall. A terrific exploration of crime and oppression.
Preview Book
The Store by James Patterson ⭐⭐⭐½
Jacob and Megan Brandeis have gotten jobs with the mega-successful, ultra-secretive Store. Seems perfect. Seems safe. But their lives are about to become anything but perfect, anything but safe. Especially since Jacob and Megan have a dark secret of their own. They're writing a book that will expose the Store-a forbidden book, a dangerous book.And if the Store finds out, there's only one thing Jacob, Megan and their kids can do: run for their bloody lives. Which is probably impossible, because the Store is always watching....
When Jacob and Megan plan to expose a secretive and evil corporation, the fallout threatens to destroy them.
Preview Book
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Lagercrantz’s excellent second contribution to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series finds Lisbeth Salander serving a two-month sentence in Flodberga, the only maximum security women’s prison in Sweden, for unlawful use of property and reckless endangerment stemming from a murder case chronicled in 2015’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Lisbeth doesn’t mind her incarceration, since it allows her to work on her attempt to combine quantum mechanics with the theory of relativity, but she’s annoyed that her section of the prison has been taken over by gang leader Benito Andersson, who’s torturing a beautiful young Bangladeshi prisoner, Faria Kazi, a convicted murderer. Lisbeth is also troubled by a visit from her old guardian, Holger Palmgren, who informs her that he has some startling information: Lisbeth might have been part of a study dealing with twins when she was a patient at St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children. Determined to learn more about this study, Lisbeth asks her friend Mikael Blomkvist, editor of Millennium magazine, for help. After her release, Lisbeth investigates the case of the Bangladeshi prisoner, and Blomkvist delves into Lisbeth’s childhood. Eventually, these twisting plot lines tie together in this complicated, fascinating mystery. As a bonus, readers learn the meaning of the dragon tattoo on Lisbeth’s back.
Preview Book
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In this compelling hybrid of memoir and sociological analysis, Vance digs deep into his upbringing in the hills of Jackson, Ky., and the suburban enclave of Middletown, Ohio. He chronicles with affectionâand raw candorâthe foibles, shortcomings, and virtues of his family and their own attempts to live their lives as working-class people in a middle-class world. Readers get to know his tough-as-nails grandmother, Mawmaw, who almost killed a man when she was 12 in Jackson, but who has to live among the sewing circles of Middletown. Her love for children, and for her grandson in particular, fuels her dream to become a children's attorney. When Vance finishes high school, he's not ready to head off to Ohio State, so Vance joins the Marines, completes a tour of duty in Iraq, and returns home with a surer sense of what he wants out of life and how to get it. He eventually enrolls in Yale Law School and becomes a successful lawyer, doggedly reflecting on the keys to his own successâfamily and communityâand the ways they might help him understand the issues at stake in social policies today. Vance observes that hillbillies like himself are helped not by government policy but by community that empowers them and extended family who encourages them to take control of their own destinies. Vance's dynamic memoir takes a serious look at class.
Preview Book
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner ⭐⭐⭐½
One of William Faulkner's finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren's family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. Told through multiple voices, As I Lay Dying vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of literature's great invented landscapes, and is replete with the poignant, impoverished, violent, and hypnotically fascinating characters that were his trademark.
Preview Book
Chicago by David Mamet ⭐⭐½
A major bard of the Windy City returns, this time with a novel devoted to the mob era and some of its more minor players.Aside from a few questionable forays into right-wing politics, Mamet (Three War Stories, 2013, etc.) is heard from too little these days. That's unfortunate, because few writers are better at bringing the smart, charged dialogue of the theater into conventional prose. "They loved your quip, about 'he died of a broken heart, '" says Parlow, a journeyman writer on every topic of culture and commerce imaginable, to his pal Mike Hodge, a hard-boiled reporter for the Trib who is much admired and much feared. "You should have been there, they picked up the tab for dinner." "They" are one of the several crews of very bad gangsters who have just "iced" Jacob Weiss, a showman knee-deep in misbehavior. But who? Therein hangs one of several mysteries, the largest of them the identity of the fellow who iced Mike's girlfriend, Annie Walsh, as Mike and she were freshening up after a tryst. Not a good idea: Mike is a former fighter ace ("He had killed in France, in the air, which he did not mind at all; and killed strafing ground troops, which upset him") who won't be thrown off a scent--and the stench of murder and mayhem is thick. The story moves at a careening pace, drawing on a small but memorable cast of characters, with cameos by a few historical figures; the palaver isn't as snappy as, say, House of Games, but it's brisk and believable. Readers should note that there's scarcely an ethnic group that doesn't come in for a slur along the way, but that's part of the verisimilitude: these are not nice people, excepting the deceased Annie--and even she has a few dark corners. Of a piece with character studies such as E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and John Sayles' Eight Men Out, Mamet's book does Chicago--and organized crime--proud.An evocative, impressive return that Mamet fans will welcome.
Preview Book
The Fix by David Baldacci ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maverick FBI detective Amos Decker must forge an uneasy alliance with the Defense Intelligence Agency to prevent an international incident that could spell the end of the United States as we know it.Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters. A man shoots a woman execution-style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself.
Even with Decker's extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter—a family man with a successful consulting business—and his victim, a schoolteacher. Nor is there a hint of any possible motive for the attack.
Enter Harper Brown. An agent of the Defense Intelligence Agency, she orders Decker to back off the case. The murder is part of an open DIA investigation, one so classified that Decker and his team aren't cleared for it.
But they learn that the DIA believes solving the murder is now a matter of urgent national security. Critical information may have been leaked to a hostile government—or worse, an international terrorist group—and an attack may be imminent.
Decker's never been one to follow the rules, especially with the stakes so high. Forced into an uneasy alliance with Agent Brown, Decker remains laser focused on only one goal: solving the case before it's too late.
Preview Book
Camino Island by John Grisham ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A light caper turns into a multilayered game of cat and mouse in a story that, as with most of Grisham's (The Whistler, 2016, etc.) crime yarns, never gets too complex or deep but is entertaining all the same.Bruce Cable is a bon vivant-ish owner of a bookstore specializing in rarities, which ought to mean he's covered in dust instead of Florida sunshine. But he's an aging golden boy, the perfect draw for young aspiring novelist and cute thing Mercer Mann, who's attracted to books and Bruce and the literary scene he's created on formerly sleepy Camino Island. It takes us a while to get to the smooth-operating Bruce, though, because Grisham's first got to set up, with all due diligence, the misdeed to be attended to: the theft of F. Scott Fitzgerald's manuscripts from the Princeton library. Now, who wouldn't want the mojo associated with holding a piece of paper out of Fitzgerald's typewriter? Suspicion falls on Bruce, whereupon Mercer enters the picture, for a novel way has been presented to her to pay off some crushing student loans. (Always timely, Grisham is.) Eventually, Bruce and Mercer are reading between the lines and searching for clues between the sheets ("We're not talking about love; we're talking about sex," Grisham writes, with a perfectly correct semicolon). But was it Bruce who pulled off the literary crime of the century? Maybe, and maybe not; Grisham leaves us guessing even as he makes clear that literary criminals don't have to be nice guys in order to be good at their work: "He died a horrible death, Oscar, it was awful," one particularly menacing bookworm tells a quarry once the stolen manuscripts go missing a second time. "But before he died he gave me what I wanted. You." How all these little threads join up is a pleasure for Grisham fans to behold: there's nothing particularly surprising about it, but he's a skillful spinner of mayhem and payback.
Preview Book
American Heiress by Jeffery Toobin ⭐⭐⭐½
The ubiquitous legal journalist and author returns with a detailed but swiftly moving account of the 1974 kidnapping that mesmerized the nation.Readers of a certain age will be astonished that this case is more than 40 years old. So much has changed, as New Yorker staff writer Toobin (The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, 2012, etc.) effectively points out. He reminds us, for instance, that live TV feeds from crime scenes were a novelty that spread rapidly after the coverage of a shootout between some members of the Symbionese Liberation Army--the motley crew that kidnapped Patricia Hearst, the young heiress of the noted publishing family--and the federal and local authorities. Toobin begins with a quick account of the kidnapping, an introduction of the principals, and some 1970s cultural history, and then he moves into the slow conversion of Hearst into a trash-talking urban guerrilla (the term she later used to identify herself), her involvement in SLA criminal activities, and her sex life. The author occasionally shows us the doings of those left behind--principally her family and her fiance, Steven Weed, who does not come off well, then and now. (He bolted when the SLA arrived.) Toobin ably charts the bizarre inability of authorities to figure out this crew of barely competent revolutionaries. Once Patricia is caught and on trial for her SLA-related activities, the author's considerable legal knowledge propels the narrative. He shows us that both the prosecution and the defense lacked competence, especially celebrated defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, whom Toobin paints as an opportunist inebriated with alcohol and celebrity. The author ends with an update on the principals and notes that Hearst resolutely refused to contribute to his book. Despite the lack of participation from Hearst, this is a well-informed, engaging work from a highly capable author.
Preview Book
Robicheaux by James Lee Burke ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Burke (Light of the World) once again features Dave Robicheaux—detective, veteran, widower, father, alcoholic—in this enthralling yet grim novel of crime, hate, and tragedy. Robicheaux may be at home in New Iberia, La., but he’s not safe from suspicion and self-doubt when the man who killed his wife is murdered. Together with his best friend, PI Clete Purcell, Robicheaux seeks truth, no matter how incriminating, even as more bodies fall and mysteries twine together. The cast is Shakespearean in its variety: a demagogue, a novelist, the mob, good cops and bad, victims of hubris and hate, and ghosts aplenty. No one here is blameless amid white supremacy, bigotry, misogyny, child abuse, flourishing sex and drug trades, and deep socioeconomic inequity, and Robicheaux and Clete never shy away from confronting what they see as the world’s evils. But as the stakes get higher, the friends—who are more than happy to risk themselves—must decide what it will take to protect those they love and respect. Along the way, Burke investigates accusations of rape, corporate colonialism, and Southern nostalgia, not always without his own bias. The novel’s murders and lies—both committed with unsettling smiles—will captivate, start to finish.
Preview Book
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending. She writes fluidly of smalltown America, though many characters are clichés hiding secrets. Flynn, the lead TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, has already garnered blurbs from Stephen King and Harlan Coben.
Preview Book
Two Nights by Kathy Reichs ⭐⭐⭐½
A search for a missing girl resurrects traumatic memories for a woman already struggling with life.Sunday Night--not her real name--lives in seclusion on an island off the South Carolina coast while contemplating the ruins of her life. Her early childhood was a nightmare. Taken in by policeman Perry "Beau" Beaumonde, rebellious Sunday earned a choice of jail or the armed forces. Her stint in the Marines led to a job with the Charleston PD, where the accidental shooting of an unarmed man has left her wounded and pensioned off. That's when Beau suggests she take an investigative job for wealthy, well-connected Opaline Drucker, whose 15-year-old granddaughter, Stella, may have been kidnapped by a cult after she missed being killed in a Hebrew school bombing that claimed the lives of her mother and brother (though the family isn't Jewish). Accepting the job, Sunday heads to Chicago, where Drucker's connections get her first-class treatment and information from the cops handling the case. Paranoid Sunday sets up motion detectors in her room at the Ritz and moves from hotel to hotel while awaiting the results of her internet trolling. She hears from the bombers and manages to avoid one trap but gets ambushed at the Ritz, where she kills an attacker identified as one of the bombing suspects from an old security tape. Seeking help in staking out a female member of the gang, Sunday calls on her twin brother, Gus, and they chase the suspects from Chicago to California and back East. Reichs periodically interrupts this tale with the first-person narrative of a girl desperately trying to escape a cult. Is it Stella or Sunday? Are the bombers really trying to kill Jewish schoolchildren, or is their motive still deeper? Reichs' newest heroine, the polar opposite of cerebral Temperance Brennan (Speaking in Bones, 2015, etc.), is fueled by a well-nigh uncontrollable rage in her thrilling, violent search for a missing girl so much like herself.
Preview Book
Democracy by Condoleezza Rice ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Between her academic background in political science and her experience as national security advisor and secretary of state for George W. Bush, Rice could be expected to provide unique insights into the challenges currently facing democracy worldwide. Instead, she blandly avers that “the overall trajectory is worth celebrating,” despite her own description of Russia as a “failed democratic experiment.” Rice also opines that “dashed expectations that democracy’s march would be linear” account, at least in part, for fears that democratic governments are actively on the decline. Beyond such unilluminating statements, Rice traces the history of democracy across the modern world, relating familiar facts about the U.S., Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She also cannot resist blaming the Obama administration for depriving Iraq of a better future by deciding to pull American troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011, pursuant to an agreement with the Iraqi government that she had been party to. Rice’s post-Trump election epilogue is equally unsatisfying—she states that it is “stunning” that mature democracies like the U.S. have been affected by the global rise in populism, nativism, and isolationism, but concludes that it is too early to know whether the international order in place since the end of WWII will survive.
Preview Book
The Switch by Joseph Finder ⭐⭐⭐½
Boston coffee executive Michael Tanner's life is in jeopardy after he takes home the wrong laptop from the airport--one belonging to an Illinois senator containing highly classified files.The illegally uploaded files contain information about a scary government surveillance program. Fearful that the documents will be made public, torpedoing her presidential hopes, Sen. Susan Robbins assigns her overeager chief of staff, Will Abbott, to retrieve the computer. When all else fails, he resorts to hiring private operatives. Tanner discovers how desperate his situation is when a newspaper writer to whom he has shown the secret files is killed, in what is staged as a suicide. On the run, running low on cash and places to hide, Tanner is targeted not only by Abbott's hires, but also by thugs working for the National Security Agency, which deactivates all his online accounts. "Privacy?" utters one character. "Get over it. No such thing anymore." Seemingly ripped from recent headlines, Finder's latest is one of his most fiendishly plotted and eerily relevant thrillers. It involves careless security breaches by government officials, Russian spies, Edward Snowden parallels, and even an exchange of secrets in a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility like the one recently utilized by Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Finder (Guilty Minds, 2016, etc.) isn't one to waste time considering the moral implications of such quickly forgotten acts as Tanner mowing down a pursuer with his car. And he fudges plot details: wouldn't the bad guys surveil Tanner's wife and let her lead them to him? But the book whizzes by so quickly and suspensefully, why dwell on such imperfections? A master of what might be called the "man in over his head" thriller, Finder delivers a tense, uncannily relevant tale about government secrets falling into the wrong hands.
Preview Book
Three Days In January by Bret Baier ⭐⭐⭐½
A sobering return to Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address, arriving just before our own moment of uncertain presidential transition.Eisenhower was a paradox: a former supreme commander devoted to peace who managed to keep the country out of war for eight years and left a haunting warning in his final televised speech on Jan. 17, 1961, that the United States had become a "permanent war-based industry." With co-author Whitney, Fox News host Baier (Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love, 2014, etc.) brings new relevance to Eisenhower's parting message to the young, relatively inexperienced new president, John F. Kennedy. The author explores Eisenhower's last days in office, especially his sense of needing to prepare JFK for the "fate of the civilized world" and brace him against the military-driven mindset. Unlike his relations with his own predecessor, Harry Truman, which were strained and chilly, the World War II hero came around to respecting the glamorous young senator despite their vastly different backgrounds and his inglorious defeat of Richard Nixon. In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had run on the "missile gap" between the U.S. and Soviet Union--the Soviets had launched the world's first artificial satellite--which Eisenhower knew was "a clever, yet devious, tactic." It was also misleading, since both countries had enough nuclear weapons to leave the world "a moonscape of radioactive ash." This was Eisenhower's message in his parting address, which is included in its entirety in an appendix: that industry had taken over the military; that bright retiring military people had gravitated to aerospace and other related industries; and that massive federal funding outlays were being granted for scientific-military research. As Baier notes, his speech warning of "unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex" proved enormously prescient even though it was not widely reported on at the time. Kennedy would learn this lesson quickly in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A focused and timely study of Eisenhower's significant speech and the sticky transition to JFK's inherited new world.
Preview Book
The Whistler by John Grisham ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Lawyer Lacy Stolz, the heroine of this tense legal thriller from bestseller Grisham (Rogue Lawyer), investigates complaints against judges for the Florida Board on Judicial Misconduct. In her nine years on the job, there has never been any danger in her assignments; the justices are often more incompetent than corrupt. Everything changes when Stolz and a colleague, Hugo Hatch, meet with a disbarred lawyer, whoâeager to collect a whistleblower's rewardâhas evidence of corruption unlike anything they have ever handled. A judge in the pocket of the Coast Mafia has spent years skimming millions from a Native Americanâowned casino. At least three people have been murdered to cover up the graft, and an innocent man sits on death row, but few are willing to help Stolz and Hatch expose the corruption. The casino keeps the money flowing, and stepping forward could be deadly. A lead brings Stolz and Hatch onto tribal land, where they find themselves caught in a trap. A high-stakes game of gambling, greed, and murder plays out in another page-turner from a master storyteller.
Preview Book
Maestra by L. S. Hilton ⭐⭐⭐
Hilton's novel about a woman with exotic sexual appetites and a penchant for murdering those who cross her mixes blood and sex the way a bartender slaps together martinis. Judith Rashleigh works as an assistant in a large London art house known as British Pictures. While toiling under the repugnant Rupert, she finds occasional employment working in a club where gentlemen of wealth spend the evening in the company of a beautiful woman. No sex is involved, but it wouldn't bother Judith if it was: she has the sexual appetite of a 16-year-old boy and is open to any and all partners. While having detailed coitus with almost everyone she meets, Judith stumbles on a nefarious scheme to defraud a hapless art buyer with Rupert behind the wheel. At first she's not aware that it's Rupert's swindle and tries to expose it, which earns her a pink slip. She and another woman at the club accompany one of her regulars, an enormously fat married man named James, to France, where they slip some drugs into his drink so they can party, and, before they know it, James is dead. For Judith, that's when the fun begins. Hilton's character spends the bulk of the book killing people--sometimes viciously; having minutely described sex, often with total strangers and with an emphasis on overweight men; and dropping the names of rich people's playgrounds, unusual and luxurious foods, and all the designer clothes she buys and wears. Judith, it seems, likes the best of everything. Readers are promised that Judith's depraved tour of Europe will continue. Billed as erotic suspense, this is not a book for suspense fans; it's more a portrait of a sociopathic woman with a voracious appetite for sexual adventure.
Preview Book
The Devil's Bargin by Joshua Green ⭐⭐⭐½
Veteran journalist Green offers persuasive answers to questions about how Donald Trump won the presidency in this timely book that builds on the serendipitous relationship Green had developed with Trump advisor Steve Bannon since 2011. That access paid off in spades when Bannon was brought aboard a floundering Trump presidential campaign in 2016. It enabled Green to provide dramatic “you are there” scenes, as in the opening section, when, on election eve, an anonymous campaign advisor (whom Bannon guesses is Kellyanne Conway) told CNN that it would take a miracle to win. Beyond those Woodwardesque fly-on-the-wall moments, Green provides insights into Bannon, “a brilliant ideologue from the outer fringe of American politics—and an opportunistic businessman—whose unlikely path happened to intersect with Trump’s at precisely the right moment in history.” His analysis shows how the election’s outcome was shaped both by chance developments, such as Hillary Clinton’s email issue resurfacing in connection with Anthony Weiner, and strategic decisions, such as where the Trump and Clinton campaigns focused their efforts. There will be revelations even for readers who follow the news avidly, such as Trump’s onetime popularity with African-Americans and Latinos during his stint hosting Celebrity Apprentice, but the book’s primary value lies in making Trump’s surprise victory seem unsurprising, and in showing Bannon as more than a one-dimensional caricature.Preview Book
The Late Show by Michael Connelly ⭐⭐⭐⭐
An LAPD detective fighting doggedly for justice for herself and a wide array of victims.Ever since her partner, Detective Ken Chastain, failed to back up her sexual harassment claim against Lt. Robert Olivas, her supervisor at the Robbery Homicide Division, Renee Ballard has been banished to the midnight shift--the late show. She's kept her chin down and worked her cases, most of which are routinely passed on to the day shifts, without complaints or recriminations. But that all ends the night she and Detective John Jenkins, the partner who's running on empty, are called to The Dancers, a nightclub where five people have been shot dead. Three of them--a bookie, a drug dealer, and a rumored mob enforcer--are no great loss, but Ballard can't forget Cynthia Haddel, the young woman serving drinks while she waited for her acting career to take off. The case naturally falls to Olivas, who humiliatingly shunts Ballard aside. But she persists in following leads during her time off even though she'd already caught another case earlier the same night, the brutal assault on Ramona Ramone, ne Ramon Gutierrez, a trans hooker beaten nearly to death who mumbles something about "the upside-down house" before lapsing into a coma. Despite, or because of, the flak she gets from across the LAPD, Ballard soldiers on, horrified but energized when Chastain is gunned down only a few hours after she tells him off for the way he let her down two years ago. She'll run into layers of interference, get kidnapped herself, expose a leak in the department, kill a man, and find some wholly unexpected allies before she claps the cuffs on the killer in a richly satisfying conclusion. More perhaps than any of Connelly's much-honored other titles, this one reveals why his procedures are the most soulful in the business: because he finds the soul in the smallest procedural details, faithfully executed.
Preview Book
The Circle by Dave Eggers ⭐⭐⭐½
The latest offering from McSweeney's founder Eggers (A Hologram for the King) is a stunning work of terrifying plausibility, a cautionary tale of subversive power in the digital age suavely packaged as a Silicon Valley social satire. Set in the near future, it examines the inner workings of the Circle, an internet company that is both spiritual and literal successor to Facebook, Google, Twitter and more, as seen through the eyes of Mae Holland, a new hire who starts in customer service. As Mae is absorbed into the Circle's increasingly demanding multi- and social media experience, she plays an ever more pivotal role in the company's plans, which include preventing child abductions through microchips, reducing crime through omnipresent surveillance, and eliminating political corruption through transparency courtesy of personal cameras. Soon, she's not alone in asking what it will mean to "complete the Circle" as its ultimate goal comes into view; even her closest friends and family suspect the Circle is going too far in its desire to make the world a better, safer, more honest place. Eggers presents a Swiftian scenario so absurd in its logic and compelling in its motives that the worst thing possible will be for people to miss the joke. The plot moves at a casual, yet inexorable pace, sneaking up on the reader before delivering its warnings of the future, a worthy and entertaining read despite its slow burn.
Preview Book
Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land ⭐⭐⭐⭐
TLand asks if we are doomed to repeat the sins of our fathers--or, in this case, mothers--in her assured, creepy debut.Fifteen-year-old Annie has a new home in London--and a new name, Milly--now that she's turned her mother in to the police. Psychologist Mike Newmont, his troubled wife, Saskia, and their daughter, Phoebe, have taken Milly in until her mother's trial begins in 12 weeks. Only Mike and a few others know who Milly really is: the daughter of a nurse who murdered nine young children. Mike will be overseeing Milly's therapy until the trial and is eager for her to fit into his family. However, Milly, who narrates the book, senses that something isn't right between Saskia and Phoebe, and Phoebe, along with her friends, immediately starts a campaign of terror against the newcomer, whom she sees as an intruder in her family. Milly does find a friend in a younger girl, Morgan, who obviously has family problems of her own, but as the trial looms, Milly struggles to be the good person she longs to be even as the voice of her mother pushes her to give in to her darker urges. Can Milly find her own way, or is she a slave to her upbringing? Land, a mental health nurse, puts her knowledge to good use in her portrayal of Milly, who was raised by a sexually abusive monster who recruited her to play a role in her unspeakable crimes. A sense of creeping dread drives the narrative, and that most fascinating of crime-novel subjects, the female serial killer, casts a formidable shadow. Milly wages a war within herself that she may or may not win. Readers will be more than happy to go along for the ride and may be surprised how they feel about the conclusion, proving the unmistakable spell that Land has cast. Sly, unsettling, and impossible to put down.
Preview Book
The General vs. the President by H. W. Brands ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Brands (Reagan), professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, expounds on President Truman’s decision, in April 1951, to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the UN commander in Korea, after months of listening to him threaten to expand the war. The issues behind this decision might take up as much as a long magazine article, so Brands adds workmanlike dual biographies and an account of the Korean War before getting down to his main business, which will refresh readers’ memories without adding any special insights. Despite MacArthur’s assurance that they wouldn’t, Chinese forces entered the war in November 1950. During the headlong retreat that followed, MacArthur uttered increasingly shrill warnings about Armageddon unless he was permitted to attack China proper. The general’s superiors never shared the public’s adoration of him, and all supported Truman’s action in relieving him. This produced widespread but short-lived outrage, and historians now agree it was the right decision. Brands does not rock any boats. His Truman is a plainspoken leader whose reputation has risen steadily since bottoming out in 1951. His MacArthur, a military genius with an inflated ego, follows a timeworn tradition. Readers may weary of long quotations from correspondence and committee hearings, but they will encounter the definitive history of a half-forgotten yet bitter controversy.
Preview Book
Thirteen Soldiers by John McCain ⭐⭐⭐
In their sixth collaborative work, coauthors McCain and Salter (Faith of My Fathers) profile 13 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines; each from one of the 13 major conflicts in which the United States has been involved. Stories depict some aspect of wartime and combat experience, and the wide variety of characters involved makes for many fascinating accounts. Some of the subjects will be familiar to readers--Joseph Plumb Martin and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., for example. Others are not as well known, including George Roberts, an African American gunner on a War of 1812 privateer, and Mary Rhoads, an army soldier during the Gulf War. Chapters have similar structure and provide a brief introductory biography followed by descriptions of major events in that person's tale. The bulk of each section contains the history of the featured individual's engagements, pleasantly interwoven with their personal experiences. The text as a whole offers insights into life during battle; however, it comes across as a bit disjointed, seeming more a compilation of minibiographies than a work with an overriding theme.
Preview Book
The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Like luxury watchmaker Franck Muller, Olen Steinhauer is the espionage “Master of Complications.” The Cairo Affair is an elegant, elaborate clockwork of mystery and deception that should draw readers in and keep them on tenterhooks as they try to figure out what is really making it all tick.It opens in the bowels of CIA headquarters during the Arab Spring. A Libyan-American analyst thinks he sees his previously rejected secret plan to overthrow Gadhafi going operational. But why and how? And who’s behind it? Then in a restaurant in Budapest, American diplomat Emmett Kohl is gunned down by a hit man in front of wife, Sophie, just seconds after informing her that he knows all about her affair with a CIA agent last year when they were stationed in Cairo. What can the connection be? In the thick of Arab revolutions, the action toggles from the streets of Cairo to the Libyan Desert to Budapest. Then back in time to 1991, when Emmett and Sophie honeymooned in wartime Yugoslavia. There they met Zora, the mysterious Serbian spymistress, who now has her tentacles around everyone.
Steinhauer seduces with the web of falsehoods that the characters spin, in their desperate attempts to stay alive. Nothing is as it seems. “Who trusts anyone these days?” asks the Cairo CIA bureau chief. “Don’t take it personally. In a situation like this, everything should be examined, and if you’re missing some crucial piece of information, it’s best to assume you don’t know anything.” This is also good advice for the reader. It is how this writer keeps us turning the pages.
Steinhauer is often compared to John le Carré. But the comparison does not adequately serve either author. (Is there an homage to le Carré here? No fan of the master could forget his first post-cold-war novel The Night Manager—a doomed affair set in Cairo, with a woman named Sophie. Can this possibly be a coincidence?) Le Carré’s books are driven by insoluble moral quandaries. What’s more, with his breathtaking insight and economy, le Carré draws his characters from the inside out, making us feel the awful weight of their existential burdens. Steinhauer does make references to the inner lives of his characters, but to this reader they remain superficial—like tweets about their emotions sent from an iPhone.
What Steinhauer’s writing delivers is adrenalin. The Cairo Affair is the Olympics of Deception. Steinhauer’s characters are gold medalists of lying. Watching them deceive one another and themselves is riveting.
Whose lies will finally be at the bottom of this dizzying clockwork of interconnected deceits? By the time you reach the end of the book and find out, you will be exhausted and satisfied with the journey. But you will see that the novel is like a Franck Muller watch, a construct of beauty—but metallic and cold. No matter. One marvels at the intricacy of its imagination and the elegance of its maker’s craftsmanship.
Preview Book
A Special Mission by Dan Kurzman ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In 1943 Hitler attempted to kidnap Pope Pius XII so the Germans could occupy the Vatican. The Nazis were also planning to deport the Roman Jews to Auschwitz. SS General Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler's chief aide, was charged with carrying out these orders. George Wilson reads this WWII history in an even and engaged tone, effortlessly recounting each action of the convoluted plot, which Kurzman researched, in part using primary sources. The result is unexpected international intrigue as Wolff attempts to forestall both the kidnapping and the mass deportation while the Vatican tries to reign in the Reich's growing power through political and religious edicts. 
height="240" width="180" Preview Book