Palm Beach is in the news quite a bit lately – you know, the Mar-a-Lago version of Palm Beach. Well, apparently, there is another side to this town, and it is the setting for Bob Brink’s Murder in Palm Beach, a work of what is sometimes called “faction.” It is a novel that is based …
Jennifer Egan’s new book Manhattan Beach is a puzzle. I enjoyed reading it, and then felt less than positive about it…but now, a few weeks later, I realize I keep thinking about certain aspects of it, so I think that adds at least one star! The story begins in Brooklyn during the Depression, when we meet …
Caroline Leavitt’s Cruel Beautiful World sounded like a good candidate for escapist reading…a story about sisters, seduction, family, secrets. What’s not to like, right? I am pretty sure I haven’t read anything by Leavitt before, so my expectation level was at zero, and I admit this one stayed in my TBR pile for a couple …
I really enjoyed the first two novels in the Promise Falls Trilogy by Linwood Barclay, Broken Promise (2015) and Far From True (2016). There were some things left hanging at the end of the most recent one, so I was happy to have the opportunity to receive an advance copy in exchange with my honest …
I’m a long-time fan of both Ephrons, Nora and Delia…and I had heard (read, actually) good things about this book: good summer read, revelatory about marriage, secrets, deceit, etc. So I had pretty high expectations as I dove in o his one. And it really is a great story, told from alternative POVs by four …
(#6, Dublin Murder Squad series) Antoinette Conway, the (outwardly) tough detective fans of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad books met in The Secret Place (2014) is back, still on the Murder squad, but just barely. And she isn’t too happy: “I want to go home, go for a run stick something in the microwave and …
In her mid-20s, Arden Arrowood has inherited the family home on the banks of the Mississippi River in Keokuk, Iowa, where she lived as a child. When she was just eight years old, she was in the front yard of the elegant home, watching her twin sisters, Violet and Tabitha, who were almost two years …
All These Perfect Strangers by Aoife Clifford grabbed me for two reasons: first there was the teaser I read: “This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths, but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the …
I’ve been a fan of Mary Kubica’s densely plotted novels, including Pretty Baby and The Good Girl (a big hit with a book club I belong to) – so was looking forward to her latest effort, Don’t You Cry. The story unfolds along two tracks: the first involves the mysterious disappearance of Quinn Collins’s roommate …
I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley mystery series, often described as “literary mysteries.” So when a new (to me) author’s book is described as a literary mystery, I’m in! I was eager to read Susie Steiner’s Missing, Presumed, knowing nothing about her work or ability to deliver the kind of story I …
My Sister’s Grave, the first book in Robert Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite series, came out in late 2014. I loved it. I thought Tracy was a smart, strong woman with fierce determination (evidenced by her dogged pursuit of her sister’s murderer). In fall of 2015, the second book in the series, Her Final Breath, made me …
I was slightly hesitant about this novel when I read it was a story told…backwards? I still recall the vivid impression the movie Memento had on me back in 2000, and I wondered how a novelist might pull off this kind of storytelling. But I wanted to give it a fair try, and OMG I …
The first book in this series, Black Fridays, was released in 2012, and I have been recommending the author and the series ever since. The author and the protagonist, Jason Stafford, share the life experience of being Wall Street types, and the information about that whole complex way of life is interspersed throughout the series…but …
OMG. OMG. OMG. I just finished an AMAZING book! Now that I have that out of the way, let’s talk about Close Your Eyes by Michael Robotham (wish I knew how to pronounce his last name), which is the 8th in the Joe O’Loughlin series…but truly, if you haven’t read any in the series, you …
I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh For starters, I loved this book, which I was surprised to learn is Clare Mackintosh’s debut novel (can’t wait for the next one!) Secondly, I need to word this carefully, so as not to give anything away… There is a horrible hit-and-run accident, and a young boy is …
Linwood Barclay books are fun reads! He has now written seven books set in the fictional upstate New York town of Promise Falls. (The first five, in order of publication, are Too Close to Home, Fear the Worst, Never Look Away, Trust Your Eyes, and A Tap on the Window. Broken Promise and this latest …
I actually read Holly Seddon’s book Try Not to Breathe on Groundhog Day…highly appropriate, since there was so much about it, both in plot and tone as other things I have read recently (esp. Girl on the Train). There are several interesting characters in the book, especially the two women Alex and Amy, who are …
The first thing I read from Christopher Pavone was The Accident, which knocked me out (thrillers are probably my favorite genre, when they are done well). The follow-up, The Expats, convinced me that he was not a one-hit wonder, so I was happy to receive an advance copy of The Travelers (in exchange for my …
I admit it. I apparently am a name bigot. Otherwise, why was I so hesitant to dive in to Tawni O’Dell’s new book Angels Burning? I am pretty sure I read her Back Roads (2001), but I had no strong feeling about her other than that her named evoked a memory of a real-life woman …
Lisa Lutz, author of the Spellman Series, has a new novel to be released in spring 2016, a thriller about a woman who goes on the run and makes a habit of changing identities as she goes. As the story opens, right away I learned a bit about the protagonist, Tanya Dubois, that made her …