The Last Caretaker by Jessica Strawser

 

Kate’s life needs a reboot as she moves from web pages to caretaking in The Last Caretaker by Jessica Strawser that was published December 1. Recently divorced, Katie is lucky enough that her best friend Bess has recommended Kate for caretaking at the 927-acre Grove Farm Nature Preserve in Ohio. While not a big outdoor fan, Katie guesses the job would be a nice change of pace.

The job comes with a farmhouse in which to live, but it looks like the last caretaker left in such a hurry that many personal items abandoned. Katie and house cleaners pack up Grace’s things in hopes she returns for them.

When a scared and battered woman arrives at the caretaker’s farmhouse in the middle of the night, Katie is surprised the woman is expecting a safe place to hide. As Katie follows the clues, she becomes aware that Grace had been part of an underground network to move abused women to safe places.

Shall Katie fill Grace’s shoes in this endeavor? What has happened to Grace as calls to Grace’s sister go unanswered or returned? Why is the groundskeeper Jude, a police academy dropout, always finding reasons to be at the caretaker’s place? Who can be trusted: the hikers, the dog walkers, the nature photographers? Katie will have to dig deep to solve these mysteries. There is more to the job than meets the eye as Katie searches to find out about the last caretaker.

Jessica Strawser  is Editor-at-Large for Writer’s Digest and a popular speaker at writing conferences, book clubs, and book festivals. Not That I Could Tell was a Book of the Month selection, and The Next Thing You Know was a People magazine pick for 2023. She lives with her family in Ohio.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 27, 2023.

I would like to thank Lake Union Publishing  and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

The Teacher by Freida McFadden

The Teacher by Freida McFadden is a story of twisted secrets and revenge coming out in February. The teacher referred to in the title could be Eve Bennett or her husband Nate in this psychological thriller set in Caseham High School where she teaches math and he teaches English. She’s a tough-as-nails, take-charge teacher while he uses his charm and intelligence to become the most popular teacher at Caseham, especially now that Art Tuttle was fired for messing around with his student Addie Severson.

Eve believes her marriage is on the rocks as Nate’s affection for her has grown cold. To fulfill the needs that are not being met at home, she indulges in shopping for stiletto heels and having an affair with the shoe salesman. Since both are married, they confine their relationship to the shoe storeroom once a week.

While Eve loves teaching math, she does not love seeing Addie’s name on her class list. Eve knows from the Tuttle scandal that Addie cannot be trusted, she lies, she hurts people, and she destroys lives. Worse, Addie struggles in math, having engaged Mr. Tuttle for some tutoring.

Addie has not been able to live down the scandal of the previous school year, and she knows returning to Caseham is going to be tough. No one befriends her, and one student in particular bullies Addie openly. School is a living hell for Addie but when Nate encourages her poetry writing in his English class, she finds some satisfaction. She even joins the poetry magazine that Nate supervises, providing just the right circumstances for the student and her teacher to enter a forbidden relationship.

When Eve encounters Addie and Nick alone in his classroom, she snaps some photos. What if she exposes Addie’s part in a doomed student-teacher scandal? How will Nate’s career survive? His marriage?

Freida McFadden, a writer who uses this pseudonym, writes psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. A brain injury doctor, she self-published her first book on Amazon in 2013. Best known for her book The Housemaid, she lives with her family in a house overlooking an ocean.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

 Reviewing The Women by Kristin Hannah is proving to be a hard task to serve this epic tale being published in February the justice it deserves. In Part 1, Frankie McGrath decides to join the Army Nurse Corps to go to Vietnam, inspired by the enlistment of her brother into the Navy as well as the importance her father places on being a hero. The narrative follows Frankie throughout her service with the Army Nurse Corps, with Part 2 dealing with her struggle to rejoin the world she left behind for Vietnam.

Frankie, who was raised on a walled and gated estate on Coronado Island in California, is unprepared for just how primitive all the facilities are when she arrives at her post in the Thirty-Sixth Evac Mobile Hospital in Vietnam in 1967. She is soon overwhelmed by the absolute horror in the aftermath of the wounded arriving in a background of screaming injured, shouting of orders by the nurses and doctors, and the smoke, all the smoke. Two nurses, Ethel Flint and Barb Johnson, school Frankie in combat nursing, and the three build a friendship that will take them into life after the war where people keep telling them, there were no women serving in Vietnam.

The war is raging during Frankie’s first tour of duty. Often the only thing she can do for injured soldiers is to hold their hands until they die. The damage inflicted by mortar and bullets is at first overwhelming, but Frankie, like all the other military nurses, is forced to step up and do things she was never trained for like removing a spleen and closing the operation. With only three doctors assigned to her location, she learns more and more under their direction. After her time is served, she extends her tour because she realizes with the shortage of medical personnel, she is sorely needed.

Romance enters the picture when Frankie is pursued by Dr. Jamie Callahan, one of the doctors she works with. When she learns that he is one of those “war bachelors” her father had warned her about, she shuts down the relationship before it blooms. The last time she sees Jamie, his helicopter starting his pathway home has been shot down, and he becomes just another soldier with devastating injuries that will most likely claim his life.

Soon after, Frankie is assigned to the Seventy-First Evac near Pleiku, nicknamed “Rocket City,” where the fighting is even heavier than her first posting. There, Frankie reunites with one of her brother’s Navy buddies, pilot Joseph Ryerson Walsh. After Rye swears he is no longer engaged to a woman in the States, Frankie allows herself to enter into a relationship with him, spending R&R together in Hawaii.

As if life in Vietnam is not hard enough, the women start hearing about how the homeland they left behind becomes divided by war and politics, how Vietnam heroes are not given the welcome back that they deserve. Barb becomes extremely active in protesting the war once she becomes a civilian again, and as often as she can, she includes Ethel and Frankie in the activities of the group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

While waiting for Rye to return to America, Frankie learns his helicopter was shot down, and there are no remains. Between the devastation to men’s bodies, the change of the Americans’ hearts about the war, and her own heart broken not once but twice, Frankie spirals down, becoming dependent on the pills, booze, and cigarettes she was introduced to in Vietnam. When she seeks help from the Veterans Administration, she is turned down once and then twice as only the men who fought in the war were recognized as veterans.

There is so much to unpack in this historical fiction that pays tribute to those women who served and sacrificed only to be overlooked by others except for those they nurtured and those with whom they served. One day, Frankie will visit The Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., which includes the names of eight women, all of them nurses.

Kristin Hannah started her writing career solidly in women’s fiction with books like Firefly Lane but she moved to combining her women’s stories with  historical fiction, giving readers works about World War II in The Nightingale (2015) and Winter Garden (2010), and the Great Depression in The Four Winds (2018).

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 9, 2023.

I would like to thank St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

Northwoods by Amy Pease

 Northwoods, releasing January 9, is a debut novel by Amy Pease. Northwoods of Wisconsin is a vacation area near the small town of Shaky Lake with its sheriff’s department working within a too small budget. When a teenage boy is found dead in a boat, Eli North begins the investigation as he is a deputy there working under the supervision of his mother the sheriff.

Eli was once a strong, thriving young man with a job he loved and a wife and son. After deployment to Afghanistan, his powers of investigation are still sharp but his emotional wounds run deep and cloud his judgment. He copes by drinking, which is to say he is not coping well.

When it is determined the deceased was injected with opioids and suffered two head injuries, the entire sheriff’s department—all three deputies and the sheriff herself—has its hands full. Worse, during the investigation, they find that a teenage girl is missing.

Before the cases are solved, a pharmaceutical company trying to push its new drug that promises to save opioid addicts becomes entangled in the case. Eli determines that there is more going on than a dead boy and a missing girl. This case is his chance to redeem himself as the man he once was, but if he fails, he could lose everything.

Amy Pease, a nurse practitioner, is a nationally recognized HIV specialist. She lives in Wisconsin with her family. 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 21, 2023.

I would like to thank Atria Books/Emily Bestler Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

 The Heiress is none other than Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore, the much married, richest woman in North Carolina in this novel coming out January 9. She was kidnapped as a child but was later found to have been taken by a worker on her family’s estate, Ashby House of Tavistock in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

None of the marriages last for long—husbands’ death all under suspicious circumstances--but she did adopt an orphan named Camden who is in position to inherit everything after her death, including the estate and a 9-digit fortune with nothing going to Ruby’s younger sister who has always lived on the estate with her family.

Surprise, surprise, Cam does not want the house, the money, or the family. He just wants to teach English in Colorado where he had settled with his wife Jules. After 10 years away, he reluctantly returns to North Carolina to address things that need to be taken care of within the estate.

His calculating aunt and his cousins are as unpleasant as ever as they seek a way out of Cam’s inheritance to their benefit, raising questions about whether or not the Ruby who died was really the Ruby who was kidnapped nearly 7 decades ago. A rousing conclusion will settle the estate in a way that could have never been predicted. 

The Heiress is Rachel Hawkins fourth novel for adults. An Alabama author, she also writes under the pseudonym Erin Sterling. She wrote her first novel while teaching high school English. 

The Coworker by Freida McFadden

 (Did not send this out to the Scout as it came out in August. I am also concerned about some allegations that the author generously takes plot from other writers.)

The Coworker in Freida McFadden’s latest psychological thriller is Dawn Schiff, who appears to be on the autism spectrum, yet her co-workers do not seem to pick up on that, and instead they are not very nice to her. However, is this all an act on her part? 

Her arch nemesis seems to be Natalie, the top salesperson of a nutritional supplement company called Vixed, who works in the cubicle next to Dawn. Both women are driven by secrets in their lives.

Seemingly Dawn, who works at Vixed as an accountant,  lacks empathy, rarely says the right thing because she cannot judge those around her, and ultimately has no friends. Or does she?

Dawn is an early-to-the office type, maintains a strict schedule of bathroom breaks and lunch breaks. People could set a clock by her. She’s never late, and yet one day she does not show up to work at all. Natalie, who has given Dawn a ride home in the past, becomes worried because no one has heard from Dawn, and when Natalie picked up a call in Dawn’s cubicle, she hears who she thinks is Dawn say, “Help me!” 

After work, Natalie goes to Dawn’s place, where she finds a lot of blood on the floor. Natalie calls the police, but in a twist, she becomes the prime suspect. What next happens is well-planned and played out by a Dawn who has been working toward this certain moment for years. 

Freida McFadden, a brain injury trained physician, has stated that one of her favorite books is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn because of the incredible twist in that story. She writes psychological thrillers and medical humor novels.  She self-published her first book on Amazon in 2013.  McFadden is best known for her book The Housemaid. She lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking an ocean.

The Locked Door by Freida McFadden

 Did not send this out to the Scout as it came out in October, republished in paperback form. I am also concerned about some allegations that the author generously takes plot from other writers. Google it.

Nora Davis is a surgeon who is keeping a terrible secret about her father in The Locked Door by Freida McFadden. Having changed her name to dodge any link to her father, Nora is on the verge of being outed as a copycat is out there while her father remains in prison for the rest of his life.

Trouble starts when two of her patients become victims of the copycat killer, bringing the police to her office. Nora has always kept a low profile, living a solitary life with little variance. She gets reacquainted with a boyfriend from college and engages in a game of push-me, pull-me with him as she is so damaged from what happened in her childhood.

Nora constantly reassures herself she is not like her father as she works hard in the operating room  to save lives rather than to take lives. When she basically forces a vehicle into a crash, she begins to question herself. Could she be a killer like her father? She’s a surgeon saving lives! Does the apple fall not far from the tree? No, it does not, but there is the expected twist that comes with the psychological thrillers that McFadden writes.

Freida McFadden, a brain injury trained physician, writes psychological thrillers and medical humor novels.  She self-published her first book on Amazon in 2013. A New York native, she has stated in interviews that all the protagonists in her books are based on her. When McFadden was a kid, she read The Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin and Judy Blume books. She is most known for her book The Housemaid. McFadden lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking an ocean.

The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook

The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook, coming out November 7, brings back Benjamin Shreve, the narrator of Crook’s 2018 title, The Which Way Tree. This time, he is writing a book-length letter to Small Tot, a 4-year-old boy, to be read when Tot reaches 19, the age Benjamin is when he puts this story down on paper in November of 1868.

In this work of historical fiction, Benjamin, a carpenter by trade in Comfort, Texas, encounters a pregnant woman named Nell Banes and her son Henry, called Tot, when a  stagecoach stops in his town. The pair are running away from Texas to avoid revenge-seeking outlaws who are hot on their trail. Benjamin selflessly does everything he can to help Nell and Tot, at the same time, falling in love with them both.

Turns out Nell reported to the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of the gang of the Swamp Fox of the Sulfur, a group that has been harassing and committing acts of violence toward black people. Now she and Tot are on the run toward Indianola to board a ship to New Orleans to live with a cousin.

The route to safety is wrought with obstacles including Tot being bitten by a rabid coyote who he thought was a dog. It is said the madstone, a special medicinal substance that when soaked in milk will cure rabies, so Benjamin must head out to the nearest towns to try to find one. This hitch in the plans brings the outlaws that much closer and the escape that much out of reach.

Elizabeth Crook is an American novelist who specializes in historical fiction, in particular the Western. She has  written seven novels, including The Night Journal, which received The Spur Award from Western Writers of America. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.

 Mickey Haller is known for taking and winning nearly impossible cases, and this she said/he’s dead case that has Lucinda Sanz locked up now for five years is no exception. Even better, Haller’s half-brother Harry Bosch is working as an investigator for him, looking for possible cases of innocence similar to The Innocence Project in this 7^th book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, Resurrection Walk, due out November 7.

The book starts with such a walk, which is when the shackles come off and the last metal door standing between the prisoner and freedom opens like “the gates of heaven.” Haller has been able to get a ruling of “actual innocence” in court for a young man who was 14 years into a life sentence.

When Haller’s mail blows up with other inmates seeking to prove their own innocence, he has Bosch work through the letters, evaluating each one as possible wrong convictions. Bosch has narrowed it down to two, and after a little investigation in which things just don’t add up, he suggests Haller make a jailhouse call on Lucinda, who has maintained her innocence all along in the five years she’s been locked up.

However, some people do not want the case reopened. Lucinda’s ex-husband was a deputy sheriff, and his colleagues say that justice was done in arresting Lucinda for his death. Lucinda’s first lawyer does not want to be accused of poor representation. Turns out Lucinda was cornered by her lawyer into pleading nolo, or no contest, to manslaughter instead of pleading guilty or not guilty because if her case went to trial, she faced life in prison.

As Bosch digs into the case and Haller starts to plot his defense for Lucinda, they find a number of problems with the so-called evidence and see a resurrection for their client if they can disprove the gun residue test and investigate the trajectory of the bullets that killed Deputy Sanz.

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he started writing crime fiction. Fifteen books into his career, he came up with a new character The Lincoln Lawyer in 2005 in a book with the same name. The book was adapted as a 2011 film of the same name, starring Matthew McConaughey, and is currently a Netflix series in its second season.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 6, 2023.

I would like to thank the Hatchette Book Group, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

He Should Have Told the Bees by Amanda Cox

A tradition among beekeepers is to let the bees know when their owner has died as is portrayed in Amanda Cox’s latest Christian fiction, He Should Have Told the Bees, which was published August 1. George Walsh brought up his young daughter Beckett alone when her mother Lindy deserted them. George taught Beck everything he knew about beekeeping before he died, leaving the 60-acre farm to Beck but also to someone named Callie Peterson who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Beck suffers from agoraphobia so when her father dies, she has a hard time facing the outside world. She is content caring for the bees, producing honey for sale, and taking care of a horse, a donkey, and some goats. She would rather pay a teen to deliver her groceries and animal supplies rather than to go to Sweetwater, Tennessee, herself. When she learns that she is to share ownership of Walsh Farm with a stranger who leans toward selling the property rather than keeping it, Beck becomes very upset with her father, leaving half the property to a stranger.

Who is this mysterious person who now owns half of Walsh Farm? What should Callie do when she has never even heard of the man endowing her with half his farm? She would love to sell it to finance her own dreams of opening a store to sell the candles and soaps she makes. Furthermore, she has the responsibility to provide treatment for her mother who is currently in rehab dealing with her alcoholism and mental health issues.

When Beck and Callie finally sit down to hash things out, they learn there exists a web of secrets in both of their lives, one of which makes their surprising relationship clear. How can they satisfy both their needs with the Walsh Farm?

Amanda Cox, with a bachelor's degree in Bible and theology and a master's degree in professional counseling, finds she enjoys telling stories and tending her honeybees. Her two previous books--The Edge of Belonging and The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery--won the Christy Award Book of the Year in 2021 and 2022. She lives in Tennessee with her family. 

The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin

Combine one-part haunted house with one-part unreliable narrator to equal a chilling debut novel, The Stranger Upstairs, by Lisa M. Matlin, due out September 12. Sarah Slade, who works as a media influencer and a mental health counselor, decides the best way to start over with her life and her crumbling marriage is to buy and flip a house in which people were murdered because she believes she will make a ton on the investment.

Apparently, nothing fazes Sarah, an unlikable character, as she has chosen to make her bedroom the same second floor one in which a married woman was bludgeoned with a hammer, the  blood stain on the floor firmly entrenched even after decades have gone by.  Undaunted, Sarah sleeps alone there as her husband Joe Cosgrove plays video games until 3 a.m. and sleeps on the couch downstairs in the living room.

Not long after moving in, Sarah begins hearing footsteps in the attic. Then she starts finding sticky notes on places like her laptop. She already knows that the neighbors have long wanted Sarah’s house bulldozed because of the murder that happened there decades ago. In talking to one neighbor, Sarah learns that someone had purchased the home before her, and that woman was missing along with her dog.

Like those before her, Matlin has crafted a story in which the haunted house is just as much a character as Sarah and Joe. A bloody hammer in a cradle and footprints in the dust  in the top-most floor add to Sarah’s belief that there is a stranger in the attic. However, the attic is not the only thing harboring secrets as Sarah and Joe have skeletons in their past as well.

Lisa M. Matlin switched from songwriting as a guitarist in a rock band to story writing. She lives in Australia, the setting for her first novel. She offers a narrative about her own struggles with mental health at the end of the book.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting September 4, 2023.

I would like to thank Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day

 Liss Kehoe’s life changed the day her husband’s lover, Ashley Hay, dropped off their baby Callan and never returned in the page-turner mystery The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day coming out October 3. Never mind that Callan is a “love child”—Liss loved him unconditionally and raised him into the teenager he has become in a twisted tale of love, betrayal, and family secrets.

 

The plot starts 15 years later when a car is spotted in a quarry on the Kehoe family property consisting of the original home in which Liss, Link, and Callan lived until she kicked out Link  as well as the newer home where Link’s parents Patty and Rockwell live. Callan and his friends almost wind up in the quarry themselves when their driver loses control in the same area. Law enforcement arrives and begins a recovery of the submerged car, which appears to be Ashley’s vehicle.

 

Liss had always feared that Ashley would show up one day wanting to reclaim Callan, but Liss could never have guessed that Ashley might have run off the road the night she gave Callan to Liss. Will there be a body when the car is pulled out? If it turns out to be Ashley’s remains in the car, what caused her to drive into the quarry? Was she suicidal or was there something more evil going on?

After the quarry discovery and identification is complete, Liss starts receiving hangups at all times in the night and early morning. Someone paints “KILLER” in red on her white barn. Apparently, her mailbox has suffered an “accident.” She comes home one night to see a light moving around in her house so she flees and calls the police. She and Callan need not only protection but also answers that will put this seeming scandal and possible murder to rest.

 

Lori Rader-Day is also the author of Death at Greenway, a work of historical fiction about a mystery at the home of Agatha Christie where children were evacuated during World War II. Born in Indiana, she lives in Chicago, where she teaches creative writing for Northwestern University.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 23, 2023.

I would like to thank William Morrow and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Exchange: After the Firm by John Grisham

 Apparently, Mitch McDeere, the protagonist of The Firm (1991), was not finished with author John Grisham as The Exchange: After the Firm is Grisham’s latest legal thriller coming out October 17. This novel answers the question about what became of Mitch and his wife Abby after they revealed that Mitch’s law firm, Bendini, Lambert & Locke, in Memphis was corrupt.

 

The story picks up 15 years later with Mitch and his family – now including twin boys: Clark and Carter – living in Manhattan where Mitch has become a partner in the world’s largest law firm, Scully & Pershing, and Abby is a cookbook editor.

An Italian colleague in Rome, Luca Sandroni, has requested Mitch’s assistance in  dealing with a situation in Libya involving Lannak, a Turkish construction company that has not received full payment for a bridge it constructed for none other than Colonel Gaddafi. Sandroni’s health is failing, and he would like Mitch to partner with his lawyer daughter Giovanna in the London office in hopes this experience would help boost her career.

When Mitch and Giovanna go to Libya to see the bridge to determine for themselves the situation at hand, things go terribly wrong, putting Mitch right back into a situation that endangers not only himself but his family, friends, and colleagues. A kidnapping occurs requiring a hefty exchange of money  that no single entity could cover. The enemy proves to be ruthless killers with a penchant for WARNING: violence and gore.

The end of the tale leaves one to wonder, will there be a Firm volume 3?

 John Grisham made a name for himself with his very first  novel, A Time to Kill (1989), followed by other court procedural novels that made him king of the modern legal thriller. Having worked 60+ hour weeks in a Mississippi law practice, Grisham knows what he’s talking about.

Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

The Tollivers have a Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina in the holiday novella Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews due out September 26. Usually, Murphy and his father Jock haul the trees to New York City to sell starting a month before Christmas, but this year, Jock’s health is interfering with their usual plans so Murphy tells his sister Kerry that she has to step up.

 

Kerry moved back home to NC recently after being termed “redundant” in her art agency job. She is reluctant to haul the Tolliver’s small, dilapidated camper to New York to provide a place for her and Murphy to live while selling the trees. But when push comes to shove, Kerry musters up the energy to hall “Spammy” to New York with her father’s truck.

 

The Tolliver family has developed great relationships over the years with the business owners and residents in Greenwich Village where they set up a lot to sell their trees. When another tree company tries to undersell the Tollivers, arranging their business just across the street, Kerry ups their game using her artistic abilities. The competitors challenge back with theft and vandalism until Murphy stands up to them.

 

Embraced by their temporary neighbors, Kerry becomes close with Patrick and his son Austin along with an aging gentleman known as Heinz as well as the retail shop owners. Restaurant owner Claudia feeds the Tollivers and provides restroom facilities while the bakery next door to her provides plenty of coffee and pastries.

 

When Heinz goes missing, Kerry and Murphy make a wide search of the area looking for him. Turns out, there is much that the Tollivers and the residents in Greenwich Village do not know about the elderly man who they think may be homeless.

When Patrick wants to dial up the friendship to romance, Kerry is reluctant, although she isn’t immune to his charms nor those of his sweet son Austin. She and Murphy are supposed to be heading back to North Carolina to spend Christmas with their mother and father; however, a snowstorm along with icy roads threatens to delay their plans to return home for Christmas.

 

Mary Kay Andrews, the Queen of Summer Reads, has provided readers with another holiday novella following her last one, The Santa Suit. Andrews, a pseudonym for Kathy Hogan Trocheck, splits her time between Atlanta and a second home on Tybee Island.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 13, 2023.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

 The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger is a powerful novel due out September 5 about a small town in Minnesota on Decoration Day in 1958 when a wealthy and cruel man is found dead along the Alabaster River. Lots of grievances toward Jimmy Quinn over the years makes any number of people a suspect,

While the folks of Jewel have turned out for a parade honoring the sacrifices of those residents who fought in various wars of the past, one as far back as Wounded Knee in 1890, one citizen hightails it to town to report to the sheriff Brody Dern that he found Quinn’s deteriorating body.

Questions start emerging: why was he in the river in only his underwear? Did he drown while trying to swim? Why did he have a gun at his campsite where he told his family he would be fishing? War-scarred Sheriff Dern and his deputies weigh in on different leads as the investigation gains traction when the coroner surprises them with the actual cause of death.

Before the investigation gets very far, the townspeople start circulating rumors zeroing in on Noah Bluestone as Quinn just fired the Dakota from working on Quinn’s farm. Old resentments are stirred about Native Americans and land ownership in Black Earth County. Worse, Bluestone, a World War II veteran, brought home a Japanese wife, Kyoko.

As the mystery of Quinn’s death sparks anger, even though so many hated the man, various other townsfolk become involved in the story. Angie Madison, a widow, needs help finding her teenage son when he takes off with his best friend Del, a teen being abused by his mother’s lover, Tyler Creasy. Del is armed and plans to kill Creasy who had just beat Del and his mother to a pulp. Creasy  could also be  another suspect in Quinn’s death as the two did not get along.

A former sheriff and part-time deputy, Conrad Graff sees the need to protect Kyoko when her husband is arrested, partly to guard Noah, what with all the allegations flying. Both Bluestones are supported by the local newspaper editor, Sam Wicklow, and a retired female lawyer, Charlie Bauer. As the investigation develops, one of these characters learns that Jimmy Quinn was a monster while discovering who actually killed him.

William Kent Krueger, raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, makes a living as a full-time author. He writes the popular Cork O’Connor series about a sheriff in the north woods of Minnesota who is part Irish and part Ojibwe.  In addition, his stand-alone novel, Ordinary Grace, received an Edgar Award as best mystery of 2012. Krueger lives in St. Paul with his wife of 40-plus years.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 12, 2023.

I would like to thank Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 In the novel Tom Lake, releasing on August 8, Ann Patchett tells a tale of a cherry farm family in the time of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. Lara and Joe’s three daughters have sought sanctuary on their North Michigan farm.

Since many of their usual cherry pickers are confined to where they live, Lara and Joe appreciate the help from Emily, Maisie, and Nell. As they pick cherries, Lara tells them the story of her turn as an actress, her experience in summer stock at Tom Lake, and her romance with famous actor Peter Duke.

Having heard bits and pieces all their lives, Emily once was positive Duke had been her father. Now she lives in the small house on the farm after finishing her degree in horticulture, planning to take over the farm when her parents retire. Her boyfriend Benny from the neighboring farm also pitches in even though there is plenty of apple picking to be done in his orchard.

Both Maisie and Nell returned for the safety of their farm when their colleges closed in March. Maisie is studying to be a veterinarian, and in the quarantine, she is called upon among her neighbors to care for their stock and their pets. Nell pursues drama, hoping to be an actress like her mother once was.

Told on two timelines, the author reveals the account of a young Lara and Duke, who meet doing Our Town in summer stock. Lara played the role of Emily in high school and college making her a natural choice when the original actress leaves for a better opportunity. In the pandemic story line, readers learn about the family dynamics of farm families, especially this close-knit family.

Lara keeps part of her story as an actress having a romance on set a secret from even her husband. Otherwise, Joe knows most of the story, helping to tell it here and there. The daughters gain much insight into a time in the couple’s life before their birth in this engaging narrative that only hints at the pandemic here and there. In a surprise visit from someone in her acting past, a big reveal is made to Lara in the ending of the novel.

Ann Patchett’s Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Los Angeles, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, as a child and continues to live there where she and a partner own Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore.

Out of Nowhere by Sandra Brown

 If a book about a mass shooting that is also a sex-fueled thriller seems baffling, that is just what readers get in Sandra Brown’s latest, Out of Nowhere, available in August. The carnage occurs during a county fair in Texas where Elle Portman and  her two-year-old son Charlie are caught up in a logjam at the entrance/exit gate. Several people were shot, some fatally. One of the injured is Calder Hudson who is hit when he makes a flying leap to rescue Charlie whose stroller goes off course and starts to tip.

Some good police work turns up a dead shooter quickly, bringing some relief to the survivors. However, when the forensic evidence does not fully support the early findings, the detectives question Elle and Calder along with three other survivors over and over, leaving them emotionally bereft. 

Adding to the confusion, the pressure from news media for the latest tidbit, including Calder’s girlfriend, reporter Shauna Calloway, is overwhelming. A support group brings together some of the survivors including Elle and a woman named Dawn who was shot in the calf. While Elle refuses all interviews, Dawn Whitley is the first to give her story to Shauna. Calder refuses to let Shauna interview him or use his name to persuade other survivors to come forth with their perspective about the attack. Their relationship comes to a breaking point causing Calder to move out. 

The devastating circumstances of the shooting are hard to read as in any news media coverage of real mass killings. The drive to get justice for those who died is a uniting force between Elle, Calder, and Dawn. When Shauna irresponsibly reveals their names, authorities swoop in to secure the three in a safe house as already one has received a death threat. 

 

Bonded by tragedy, Elle and Calder cannot ignore a growing attraction between them, but the circumstances of their meeting make them question if being together would just be too painful to create a lasting relationship from the steamy one that has developed. When the killer finds Elle, Calder, and Dawn in the secure house, their grieving turns into a fight for survival. The twist of an ending is shocking when the killer who has been an unreliable narrator throughout is revealed.

Sandra Brown, whose first novel was published in 1981, has penned more than 70 novels. Known for romantic suspense and detailed sex scenes, she once tried her hand successfully with a book of historical fiction about the Great Depression, Rainwater (2009).  Brown, who lives in Texas, has seen four of her books adapted for film. 

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

 Hello Stranger is the new reality for portrait artist Sadie Montgomery as she suffers from a side effect of brain surgery called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces, in the latest from Katherine Center that arrived on bookshelves July 11.

 

Sadie had just placed as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition when she was ready to celebrate and start her entry only to be shot down thanks to her brain scrambling the pieces of people’s faces. She only has a few weeks to start and finish a new portrait to enter into the contest that offers a huge prize. While face blindness may be only temporary, there are no guarantees that the faces she sees will clear up.

As if suffering face blindness was not enough of a challenge, Sadie faces other problems: major family issues thanks to an evil stepsister, the failing health of her dog Peanut who her late mother had given her, and an obsession with two men, one her handsome new vet and the other a neighbor in her art studio/apartment building.

As she struggles to create a portrait for the competition when she cannot even see her subject’s face any other way but in “pieces,” her end result  tends to look like something scrambled as in a Picasso painting, an entry the Portrait Society is not likely to favor. Because this is a contemporary romance, readers will get feel-good vibes as Sadie deals with life as a face-blind person juggling potential romances with two men whose faces she cannot see.

Katherine Center is the New York Times bestselling author of nine other books, including The Bodyguard, Things You Save in a Fire, and What You Wish For. Her book The Lost Husband was made into a Netflix movie, and Happiness for Beginners will air on Netflix starting July 27 starring Luke Grimes from the TV series “Yellowstone.” Center lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her family.

 

One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris

In One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris, Sara Lancaster returns to Savannah, Georgia, after eight years living in Maine where only her family knew she delivered a baby girl, the result of  rape. This Fourth of July offering tells the tale of family, redemption, and unconditional love as Sara faces her fear of Savannah to be with her dying father, a man who speaks only in poems.

Hoping to dodge her child Alana’s paternal family, Sara hides her as best she can as she cares for her father and helps out in his bookstore. Her rapist Daniel Wyler went to trial and is near the end of serving his 10-year sentence. He has a twin named Jacob who has been helping Sara’s father by suggesting updates to the bookstore. In return, Jacob has been receiving poetry lessons from Sara’s father Hosea.

When Jacob enters the bookstore, he recognizes that Alana is part of his family: she looks and acts exactly like his late sister. At first unsure of Jacob’s motives, Sara agrees to let him work with Alana, a mathematical wizard, as long as he does not reveal to his brother and his mother that a child resulted from the assault.

How will Jacob keep his promise to make Alana a secret from his brother whose life is now complicated by cancer and from his mother who worked tirelessly to shame Sara as a whore during the trial? How can Sara make a life for herself in a town that created so much gossip about her when she left Savannah? What will it take for her to protect herself from the rich and influential Wylers who might seek custody of Alana?

This is the first novel by Terah Shelton Harris, a librarian and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in magazines including Catapult, Women’s Health, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Backpacker, and Minority Nurse. Originally from Illinois, she lives in Alabama.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 20, 2023.

I would like to thank Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review. 

Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

 Little Monsters was the pet name for widower Adam Gardner’s two children in this novel set in Cape Cod in 2016 by Adrienne Brodeur due out June 27. Ken and Abby became motherless shortly after Abby’s birth when their mother suffered a pulmonary embolism.

Adam, a recognized oceanographer, raised his children mostly by himself having tried marriage twice more but unsuccessfully. Ken and Abby became deeply committed to one another as children but as adults, their relationship has withered, partly because Ken inherited his mother’s studio where Abby now lives and works.

Abby is an artist who started with sculpture using found items but grew into painting. Ken is a businessman who has visions of becoming a member of Congress…and then, who knows? Abby has remained single while Ken has a beautiful wife and two daughters.

Despite his ability to work and care for his children, Adam has long suffered a bipolar disorder, controlled by medicine. On the cusp of his 70^th birthday, he has decided he needs to make one more scientific discovery. To think clearly, he stops taking his meds correctly, knowing his adult children will be upset as he spirals.

The Gardners are all carefully hiding a number of secrets, when one they do not know about shows up: Stephanie Murphy, a Baltimore police officer, who has a deep interest in the family. She surreptitiously lays plans to meet Abby, Ken, and Adam before she reveals a nearly four-decade-old bombshell.

How will Steph’s secret upset the Gardners’ world? What will the result be for a father who abuses and misuses his medicines as he grasps for one more achievement in his field? Is there a way for Abby and Ken to come to a point of reconciliation with each other and their father?

Little Monsters is Adrienne Brodeur’s first work of fiction having produced the memoir Wild Game in 2019 that was one of the most talked about books that year. In addition, she founded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. She has contributed essays to Glamour, The National, The New York Times, Vogue, and other publications.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 16, 2023.

I would like to thank Avid Reader Press, a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

Our Place on the Island by Erika Montgomery

 In Our Place on the Island by Erika Montgomery coming out in June, Mickey Campbell has a big secret: her Baltimore restaurant Piquant is in serious financial trouble, and she is keeping it under wraps from her partner and fellow chef Wes Isaac. Mickey thought she could handle the business side of owning a restaurant but that is proving to be untrue as overdue invoices are piling up on her desk. A couple of vendors have already stopped delivery, and Wes wonders why.

A phone call from her mother Hedy prompts her to come to the family home in Martha’s Vineyard, the Beech House. The home has been in the family for generations but unbeknownst to Mickey, her widowed grandmother is going to sell the home as she begins a new life with a new husband. Mickey barely has any time to process these changes as the wedding is in a few days.

With her restaurant in the red, this is not the best time to leave it behind to head to Martha’s Vineyard, but Mickey will do about anything for her grandmother Cora. Both Mickey and her mother are uncomfortable with the wedding plans as they lost their grandfather and father only three years ago.

As the story plays out on a 1999 timeline, chapters are interwoven with a look at Cora and her husband Harry as they start their married life in the Beech House in 1948. Turns out Cora’s fiancé is Max Dempsey, the carpenter who remodeled Cora’s kitchen back then. Both felt flickers of infatuation during the renovation, but how far did they take it?  Even neighbors noticed the amount of time Max was spending at the house when Harry was away on business back in the early days of their marriage, and the current gossip in town is that Cora is marrying “the one who got away,” which requires an explanation to both Mickey and her mother.

How will Mickey and Hedy be able to cope with this remarriage especially now with the news of a possible scandal? What will Mickey and Wes do about their restaurant? What chance is there to keep the Beech House in the family?

A native New Englander, Erika Montgomery currently lives with her family in the Mid-Atlantic. Her debut novel A Summer to Remember was published in 2021. In addition to penning books, she teaches creative writing, collects sea glass, and watches old movies.

Hotel Laguna by Nicola Harrison

 During World War II, Hazel Francis from Wichita, Kansas, heads to California to find a job that would contribute to the war effort in Nicola Harrison’s latest historical fiction Hotel Laguna due out June 20. Hazel becomes one of the “Rosie the Riveters” at Douglas Aircraft until the end of the war brings the end of her job with men returning to their places constructing airplanes. Sad because she really enjoyed her job, she hopes that some day she will once again be working on airplanes, perhaps maybe learning to fly them.

Hazel stays behind in California, winding up in the small town of Laguna Beach, home to an art crowd. She becomes an assistant to the famous artist Hanson Radcliff, a job that can mean anything from posing nude to running errands to working in a gallery he supports. Cantankerous Radcliff is beloved by the town because of his contributions to the art scene even though he lives with the anguish of a disgrace that occurred earlier in his life.

While her boss gives her constant grief, the community embraces Hazel who represents Radcliff at community meetings, finding herself becoming a key player in Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters, an actual event in which “classical and contemporary works of art are transformed by real people through costumes, makeup, headdresses, lighting, props, and backgrounds.” The annual pageant was started in 1933 interrupted only by World War II and the Covid pandemic.

As Hazel becomes more involved with the artist and the mysterious incident that keeps him home except for regular visits to the bar at Hotel Laguna, she turns to the library to find articles from 35 years ago that might shed more light on the scandal that has crippled him emotionally and driven him to drink . She learns that Radcliff had been the personal artist for fictional actress Isabella Rose, and when she died under mysterious circumstances, he and his shocking portrait of Isabella disappeared.

Was it possible that Radcliff had something to do with his benefactor’s death? Where was the famous painting that no one had seen since 1910? What can Hazel do to help her employer find peace in his declining years?

Nicola Harrison’s first book of historical fiction, Montauk, in 2019 was inspired by the many summers she visited there, and I found it to be a beautiful debut novel. A Hampshire, England, native, Harrison moved to California as a teenager and studied literature at UCLA. After spending 17 years in NYC in the magazine publishing field, she returned to California where she settled with her family.