A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

 Someone is killing the prostitutes in Monterey, California, during the Gold Rush in A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley, hitting the shelves in December. After her parent-arranged marriage to an older man comes to an end with a bullet in a bar fight, Eliza’s way forward emerges with a position in a brothel.

Eliza is actually fortunate to work for Mrs. Parks who screens all potential clients and hires a bodyguard to protect her working girls. Many women of that time could not survive without a husband, but Eliza is able to attain financial security and even a certain satisfaction with her work as her clients are as varied as young boys being treated by their fathers, to lonesome sailors, to prominent citizens.

When out riding horses one day, 20-year-old Eliza and her friend Jean stumble upon a body. On another ride, the young women discover yet another body of a woman; this one Eliza identifies as Mary who disappeared from Mrs. Parks’ brothel. Mrs. Parks shares that information with the sheriff repeatedly, but other than removing the remains, he is not interested in the killer.

Inspired by short stories about C. Auguste Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe’s famous fictional character, Eliza and Jean try using Dupin’s train of thought technique to solve the mystery of the women’s deaths. Putting together the clues they gathered; Eliza strives to discover the identity of the killer by putting herself in harm’s way. What if her sleuthing actually makes her the next corpse?

Jane Smiley has a fondness for horses, and she works several into this work of historical fiction. Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear; Hollywood adapted the book into a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 27, 2022.

I would like to thank Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor as well as NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Sunshine Girls by Molly Fader

 

Imagine Clara and Abbie Beecher’s  surprise when a famous movie star shows up at their mother’s funeral in The Sunshine Girls by Molly Fader coming out in December.

In 1967, farmer’s daughter Betty Kay Allen was paired with Southerner Katherine Simon in the dormitory at St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Greensboro, Iowa. Together with Jenny Hopkins from Michigan, the three women – dubbed the “sunshine girls” by their dorm mother -- remained life-long friends.

Betts’ daughters never had a clue that their mother was friends with Kitty Devereaux, but here Kitty was paying her respects to their mother. On the other hand, Jenny had been involved with the Beecher family throughout their lives. Once over the shock of learning that their mother and father Willis Beecher knew a movie star, they are invited by Kitty to visit her in California where she would fill in the blanks for Clara and Abbie.

Over the years, the sisters had become distant as Clara picked a career path and Abbie chose being a wife and mother. During the weekend trip to Kitty’s place, the women will be overcome with all of the secrets they learn about their family. What impact will it have on the sisters when Kitty’s startling story is revealed?

Molly Fader is also the author of The McAvoy Sister’s Book of Secrets and The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season. Using the pseudonym of Molly O’Keefe, she has written more than 50 contemporary romances. She makes her home in Toronto, Ontario, with her family.