With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson

 

When a somewhat-famous actress is being stalked in Los Angeles, she moves with her autistic daughter to Atlanta in With My Little Eye by Georgia author Joshilyn Jackson due out in April.

The stalking began with letters created with scented markers to Meribel Mills followed by an invasion of her home. Dubbed Marker Man by Meribel, he continues the letters that start taking on postmarks from cities other than LA as he makes his way across country to find her. The letters have become more frightening over time with drawings of an unclothed Meribel tied up or cut into pieces.

What to do when the police insist that stalkers rarely become violent? Because of years in front of a camera, Meribel is convinced she has a superpower that allows her to know when someone is looking at her. She gets the feeling of bees inside of her skin that alerts her to the watcher.

Could it be her ex-husband James who is doing the stalking, or Cam, a lover she broke up with when she and Honor moved to Atlanta? Even her new neighbor Cooper gives her cause to wonder. When she least expects it, Meribel comes face to face with Marker Man, and the choices she makes next could cost her life and leave Honor an orphan.

This is the twelfth novel for Joshilyn Jackson, a former actress. Reader of the audiobooks of her work, she has been nominated for awards in this medium’s categories.  Her novels have also attained accolades including the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s 2005 Novel of the Year Award for her debut novel, Gods in Alabama. Jackson won Georgia Author of the Year for her second novel, Between, Georgia.  She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 29, 2023.

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

 

Simply Lies in David Baldacci

 Con artist Arlene Robinson is telling Simply Lies in David Baldacci’s psychological thriller coming out April 18. Mickey Gibson, a former police detective and now a divorced mother of two, works at home in Williamsburg, Virginia, for ProEye, a global investigation company that locates tax and credit cheats.

Robinson, pretending to be from ProEye, contacts Mickey to assign her to conduct an inventory in a vacant home in Smithfield, Virginia, owned by an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients. When Mickey arrives at the place an hour away from her home and starts her inventory, she comes up with one dead body in one secret room.

The jig is up when Mickey learns there is no Arlene Robinson at ProEye, and the police are considering Mickey a suspect as she is on the scene of a murder. Turns out there is no arms dealer but there is a very dead Harry Lancaster who was an accountant for the mob before he squealed, and went into Witness Protection with his family including two children.

Now calling herself yet another name, Clarisse tries to pull Mickey into a complicated situation—finding the money that Lancaster  stole from the mob. At odds for a while, the two women start to work together bringing more and more details to light. While they go about searching for the fortune Lancaster claimed to have amassed, dreadful secrets come out about Lancaster and other criminals who restarted their lives in Witness Protection.

How will Mickey clear her name in the murder case when she has no way to contact the woman who assigned her to inventory Lancaster’s house? Why is Arlene-Clarisse-whatever her real name is so intent on finding the treasure? Why does the detective investigating the case have no history beyond the past 20 years as Mickey learned when she researched him?

Baldacci takes the reader into new territory with crypto currency and Non Fungible Tokens, NFTs for short, when Lancaster’s bankroll seems to be deeply hidden. Fortunately, Mickey’s search skills are cutting edge as she can dial it in when it comes to uncovering the concealed fortune.

David Baldacci has published 40+ novels for grownups since his first book Absolute Power in 1996. A Virginia native, Baldacci and his wife Michelle co-founded the Wish You Well Foundation that works to increase literacy in the United States.

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

I would like to thank Grand Central Publishing, Hatchette Book Group, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

A Likely Story by Leigh McMullan Abramson

 

Leigh McMullan Abramson, the daughter of a children's author and an illustrator, published her debut novel A Likely Story on March 14 about a young woman who is the daughter of a well-known novelist who lives in New York City. Isabelle Manning grew up feeling that to be successful in her father’s eyes that she must become a fruitful author herself.

Isabelle is talented but she struggles getting her book published although The New Yorker published a piece of her work. Her agent cannot get her novel placed with publishers, and he encourages her to try again. Her mother Olivia understands her daughter’s disappointment as Olivia knows the great effort to get published because she reworked some of her husband’s novels before he submitted them to the publisher, although Ward never gave her any credit for her help.

When Olivia dies, Isabelle is directed to a place in her Sag Harbor vacation home where Olivia saved certain items for Isabelle, including most of Olivia’s own book that only her best friend knows about.  The manuscript reveals family secrets that cause Isabelle to rethink everything she thought she knew about her parents and her upbringing.

She is devastated to find out the real reason her first book could not find a publisher. Without her mother’s support, she struggles to deal with a closed-off father who believes Isabelle needs to make it on her own without any financial support from him.

Isabelle’s account provides the frame story for excerpts from Olivia’s book that unravels so much about Isabelle’s family as Olivia’s  writing is about a demanding artist husband who relies on his wife to help with his paintings. This alter-ego Livia is soon “finding” lost art when her husband dies as she is soon secretly creating more of “his” art to sell so she can stay solvent. Isabelle realizes her only chance to find success is to continue this twisty tale where her mother left off.

Leigh McMullan Abramson had a prior career of practicing law before pursuing her interest in writing. She has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Tablet Magazine and more.  Leigh lives in New York City and Vermont with her husband and two young children.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 15, 2023.

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

The Trackers by Charles Frazier

 Asheville native son Charles Frazier’s April release, The Trackers, was sparked by a moment spent in the Boone, NC, post office where one of the Depression-generated murals remains. This led him to further research in which he found a photograph of two painters on a scaffold working on a mural being observed by a well-dressed couple. He knew there was a story there, and 10 years later this novel was born.

Valentine “Val” Welch, working on a commission from the New Deal to paint a mural in the Dawes, Wyoming, post office, becomes drawn into the lives of his hosts, John and Eve Long, a rich couple with a large spread in the Cowboy State. Over the course of time, Val finds himself a little in love with Eve who has shared that she was an itinerant worker as a teenager and a night club singer before marrying Long. The ranch foreman, a horse whisperer named Faro, befriends young Val, and offers some insight about the Longs.

Long has been pushing hard in Cheyenne with political aspirations while Eve finds herself being used as arm candy with her husband’s many supporters. Eve soon rejects this lifestyle and is on the run with a Renoir painting to fund her way out. With the mural 80% finished, Long pulls Val from painting to track Eve to find out where she has gone, why she quit the marriage, and, most importantly, who she really is as Long believes he does not know the woman he married.

Long’s research forms Val’s quest that takes him to the Great Northwest, to the Florida swamps, and finally to San Francisco. Val’s journey is not a pleasure trip as he is thwarted by people living in Hoovervilles, finds himself prisoner of a family in the swamps, and is pursued by another who is also searching for runaway Eve.

Frazier has created a complex story of several  common people struggling during the Depression contrasted with Long who represents the rich who were able to maintain their fortunes during this period.  Frazier’s extensive research provides a real feel for the time period through politics, cars, art, architecture, and even a mention of the missing Amelia Earhart.

 Charles Frazier received the North Carolina Award for literature in 2008. His first novel, Cold Mountain (1997), won the National Book Award for Fiction. His other titles include Thirteen Moons (2006), Nightwoods (2011), and Varina (2018). Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and grew up in Andrews and Franklin.  After years of raising show horses in central Florida, Frazier and his wife built a home in Asheville.

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

I would like to thank Ecco, HarperCollins, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.