The Same Bright Stars by Ethan Joella

 Jack Schmidt is a workaholic who manages the third-generation Schmidts, a beachfront restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in The Same Bright Stars by Ethan Joella coming out July 2. Jack has made the restaurant his whole life for 30 years, forsaking a family of his own, any hobbies, and time off to enjoy the beach.      

A restaurant group would like to add Schmidts to their growing list of eateries along the coast of Delaware but Jack does not think he can sell his grandmother’s and his father’s dream. If he were to sell, he would want a guarantee that the company would keep his staff and honor the family legacy.

Jack would really like a companion in his life. His former girlfriend Kitty is in town to nurse her dying mother, and his best friend Deacon is dealing with a mother in memory care who does not always remember that he is her son. Jack’s own beloved mother left him and his father years ago, and his memories of her are mostly fond ones.

Could there be “out there” someone special for Jack? How might his life change if he would sell  Schmidts? What kind of opportunities would there be for him? Would his staff and the restaurant thrive under a restaurant group?

This is Ethan Joella’s third novel following A Little Hope, a Jenna Bonus Selection, and A Quiet Life. He also teaches English and psychology at the University of Delaware. He lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, the setting of his third book, with his family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 30, 2024.

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

 

 

 

Till Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

 This book needed an LGBT tag...if it had it, I would not have requested it for review.

In the mystery Till Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn coming out August 13, June Emery is shocked when her husband Josh Kelly who drowned during their honeymoon in 2012 shows up near her natural wine bar in Brooklyn, New York, in August of 2022. Next, while perusing websites for Napa Valley wineries for honeymoon possibilities with her fiancé Kyle Parker, she finds a photo of her first husband on one of the websites. Does one plus one equal a living Josh?

Before she gets married again, June must go to Napa and confront Andrew Smith at his winery. She will be blown away by all the secrets that have been kept over the years, learning that all she knew about Josh Kelly was not the whole truth.

On a separate timeline in 1999 in Napa County, Bev and her husband David run the Golden Grape Winery, having taken it over from his family. Bev finds a restaurant receipt for two dinners at a restaurant she has not been to in quite some time. While first denying and sidestepping, David admits to a one-time “weak moment.” Bev throws him out of the house at just the worst time: the grapes are ready to be harvested. She realizes if they divorce, she will lose her home and her source of income as well as becoming a single parent of a child not yet one year old. She wishes she never found that receipt!

These two timelines will eventually come together in one twisty mystery that readers will not want to put down until the puzzles are solved.

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, a former model who lives in London, Ontario, is the author of three young adult novels. Her adult fiction debut, The Girls Are All So Nice Here, was named a USA Today Best Book of 2021. Till Death Do Us Part, is her second adult novel. 

The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Matthieu

The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Matthieu coming out July 23 provides a look into the lives of teachers, administrators, and staff who work at Baldwin High School in Houston, Texas. Basically a series of short stories told over a school year, this contemporary fiction illustrates the problems in public schools today: from book banning to high stakes, poorly written standardized tests to practice lockdowns to lack of administrative support from the Central Office to helicopter parents to overworked and underpaid teachers.

The school year starts with the story of a beloved retired teacher who has returned to Baldwin to substitute teach only to pass away while stretched out on the couch in the faculty lounge. When Principal Kendricks complies with Mr. Lehrer’s request to have his ashes spread in the courtyard of the school per his will, he comes under fire when the impromptu scattering is witnessed by some busybody parents, one of whom gets covered with ash when the wind blows. The staff taking part in the ceremony soon find themselves in mandated trauma counseling. The principal will be fighting to keep his job before the year is over.

The youngest teacher on campus starts her year by finding Mr. Lehrer’s body. An English teacher recalls it was Mr. Lehrer who offered her encouragement in her first year of teaching, always said to be the hardest year. She tells the younger teacher, “There are some days when all you can do is just make it until the last bell.” 

A veteran English teacher misfires an email response to a parent challenging his use of a book that she accuses of being an example of Critical Race Theory, with the end result that the book is pulled from all the English classes, and the teacher has a reprimand added to his permanent record. The school nurse deals with all sorts of maladies but her heart goes out to those who suspect pregnancy, and to that end, she buys test kits with her own money for them. 

A biology teacher questions his career choice, especially when he is trapped in the book room when an unscheduled lockdown is issued. An assistant principal finds herself coping with the death of her spouse by self-medicating to deal with all the problems that pop up in each school day. These are just a few of the stories in the course of a school year at Baldwin High School.

Jennifer Matthieu is  a high school English teacher and writer. Her young adult novel Moxie was adapted into a Netflix film directed by Amy Poehler. The Faculty Lounge is her first adult novel. She lives in Texas with her family. 

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

 As a teenager, Jane Flanagan discovered an abandoned Victorian house painted lavender on a cliff overlooking the ocean in fictional Awadapquit, Maine, in The Cliffs, the latest novel by J. Courtney Sullivan, coming out July 16. When she found an unlocked door, she toured the mansion finding clothes in the closets, dishes in the cabinets, and marbles and glass on the floor. Something heartbreaking had occurred to the last family who lived there.

Years later, Jane would be asked to research the history of the house by its new owner Genevieve who gave no consideration to the history of the house when she gutted it and cleared away walls for an open concept. Jane, who had worked in Harvard’s archives, was back in Awadapquit to prepare her late mother’s home for sale as she took refuge from a scandal that cost her job and possibly her marriage.

When she reported her findings to Genevieve about the history of the home and its owners, she was surprised to find out that Genevieve had reason to believe the house was haunted: her little boy Benjamin was being visited by a ghost named Eliza. Jane delved into further research that uncovered information about the original owners of the home and the heartbreak they encountered as well as stories about subsequent owners.

This is the sixth novel by J. Courtney Sullivan, a former reporter for the New York Times. She  grew up in Boston and lives in New York with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 17, 2024.

I would like to thank Alfred A. Knopf and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

 

 

 

One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day

 In One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day coming out July 16, Charley Kelley is the chambermaid for the Precipice Hotel in Jonesport, Maine. The owner has recently died, and his three daughters, Iris, Vicki, and Faith, are arriving on the weekend to claim their inheritance. On top of her cleaning duties, Charley and the front desk manager are working to put up plywood and plastic as they brace for a hurricane.

The Bishop sisters are a force to be reckoned with as they are concealing secrets that will be unveiled as the weekend goes on. Each sister wants her share, but their father’s will comes as a surprise. Vicki is a take charge person, and she wants to renovate the entire place. She has Charley take notes while they tour the property and determine the projects to be completed.

After her detailed inspection, Vicki considers tearing down the hotel and building condos which would be a low blow for Charley who has been able to live at the hotel rent free,  helping her afford the elder care her grandmother needs. Charley has already been making a practice of taking money from guests to help ends meet. Worse, she is using one of the expensive rooms to hide a woman on the run from her abusive boyfriend.

The story is told from Charley’s point of view as she tries to accommodate the sisters and their families that include a wife, a husband, and two children. In this Agatha Christie-like tale, one by one people are winding up dead. Who will be next? How will the hurricane impact the weekend? How many secrets will be revealed before the weekend comes to a close?

Jamie Day follows up her debut novel Block Party with this thriller.  She lives in a New England town. In addition to writing, she enjoys reading, yoga, the ocean, cooking, and long walks on the beach.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 15, 2024.

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

 

 

Ladykiller by Katherine Wood

 When Gia Torres’ father Hugo died, he gave his $500 million fortune to charity, but not before he provided for his wives--current and exes--and divided his properties among his children, in the thriller, Ladykiller, by Katherine Wood, due out July 9. Gia inherited her favorite property on the small island of Miteras in the Aegean Sea.

 

Twelve years ago, Gia came to the rescue of her best friend Abby when Abby was attacked by Gia’s stalker, with Gia recounting the event in a memoir. Now Gia is back on the island with Garrett, a shipping mogul, who she married after knowing him for a month. She is preparing the property to sell so she will not go broke.

 

In the meantime, Gia is planning a reunion with Abby and Gia’s brother Benny to celebrate her birthday in Sweden to see the Northern Lights. Abby and Benny arrive in Sweden, but Gia never appears, and she is not answering her phone.

 

Now it is Abby’s turn to come to Gia’s aid. She and Benny go to Miteras where they find the estate deserted and Gia’s latest manuscript that contains clues to her disappearance. Gia describes how her new husband has turned dark and threatening, and the friends staying with them have disturbing secrets. The manuscript ends abruptly leaving no clues to her fate.

 

With chapters from Abby’s point of view interwoven with chapters from Gia’s manuscript, this is a book that readers will not be able to put down until they reach the epilogue. This is a book for fans of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley who imagined his stories so “intensely that he came to believe them.”

 

Ladykiller is the powerful debut novel of Katherine Wood, a native of Mississippi. She lives in Atlanta with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 14, 2024.

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

 

Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by Kerryn Mayne

Meet Lenny Marks, a socially awkward woman, who teaches fifth grade at Selby South Primary School in Belgrave, Australia, in Lenny Marks Gets Away with Murder by Kerryn Mayne, which will be released on July 9. Lenny tries to live a small life with routines she does not break by biking home from school at 4 p.m. each day, buying the same groceries for the same meals every week, watching reruns of “Friends” every day, and collecting various editions of The Hobbit. She has a make-believe roommate named Monica, with whom she has an ongoing game of Scrabble.

 

What’s wrong with Lenny? Apparently, something tragic that she tries desperately to keep out of her mind. She only allows herself to think that her mother and step-father abandoned her to her grandmother Zanny, who also deserted her, making her a foster child of Fay and Robert Marks.

 

When she receives a letter from a parole board that arrives at her school, she starts to come undone. While she dodges reading the letter as long as she can, she soon starts receiving phone calls from the Victim Support Unit that she lets go to her answering machine and then ignores, and her schedules fall to pieces. Fortunately, some in her school community, her foster mother Fay, and Ned, the guy who fancies her, offer support as she struggles to deal with the consequences of the ruling of the parole board that shakes her to her core. Forced to face what really happened to her as a child, Lenny can crumble or emerge stronger.

                                           

Author Kerryn Mayne is a police officer. When not at work attempting to solve crimes, she writes about crime, as in her other novel, Joy Moody Is Out Of Time. She lives in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne with her family.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 12, 2024.

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

The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

There’s another story to tell in the Mrs. Parrish series as Liv Constantine has reunited Daphne and Amber Parrish in the exciting sequel to The Last Mrs. Parrish (2017) in The Next Mrs. Parrish coming out June 18.

Daphne is Jackson Parrish’s first wife and mother of his two daughters. He is a scoundrel of a husband. Amber Patterson Parrish was Jackson’s mistress, and the mother of his son. Daphne divorced Jackson and moved to California from Connecticut. Jackson has been in jail serving a term for tax evasion.

Amber has enjoyed living in the 35-room estate with her son Jax and spending money, lots of money. That is about to come to an end as Jackson is getting out of jail, while one of Amber’s schemes from the past is catching up with her.

When one of Daphne’s daughters runs away from home in an attempt to visit her father, Daphne gives in and arranges for a summer vacation in Connecticut. Swearing he is a changed man, Jackson wants to divorce Amber and win Daphne back. Daphne knows he will never change, and she has moved on.

How will Daphne deal with Jackson threatening to take her daughters away? Will she bend to his will? How likely is Amber’s getaway with Jackson’s hidden property going to turn out?

This unputdownable thriller moves quickly, and the twists are shocking, just what readers expect from these authors. Liv Constantine is the pen name for Lynne and Valerie Constantine who spend hours plotting their novels using Facebook and email as they live three states apart.

A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson

 NOTE: this was far from his best work.

Henry Kimball, teacher, turned cop, then private investigator, and Lily Kintner, a smart and complex woman, reunite in A Talent for Murder by Peter Swanson coming out June 11. This time, Lily is helping a graduate school friend, Martha Ratliff, decide if it is possible that Martha’s husband Alan Peralta is a serial killer.

Martha, an archival librarian, was happy in her singleness, and she was fine with just having a relationship with Alan, but he pushed her into marriage, saying his Catholic mother expected it. Alan was a pleasant and agreeable traveling salesman, peddling humorous T-shirts and trinkets aimed toward educators.

Martha’s suspicions about Alan began when unpacking his suitcase to do the laundry after he returned from a teachers’ conference where he had a booth. Because his white shirt had a blood stain, Martha decides to look at the news in each city he has visited, and she finds five unsolved murders of women. Martha reaches out to Lily who reaches out to Henry, and together they start investigating Alan.

In a devious twist, another murder occurs, and Lily finds herself in a precarious situation, one in which Henry needs to come through for the save. How can Henry put the pieces together in time? Is Alan the mild-mannered man Martha thought he was, or is he a serial killer?

This is Peter Swanson’s third book in the Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner series. His twisty novel The Kind Worth Killing, his first book in the series, has been optioned for a movie. Swanson lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

 Texan Emma Wheeler is a would-be screenwriter in The Rom-Commers, the latest contemporary romance from Katherine Center due out June 11. One of Emma’s romantic comedies won a Warner Brothers internship although she could not take advantage of it as she is the sole caretaker for her father. Now her friend—her manager—is offering her a chance to assist a legendary screenwriter revamp his feature film script. Turns out, she is a fangirl of the writer.

Fortunately, her sister has just returned home after graduating from college, providing Emma a chance to leave her father in her sister’s care for six weeks and take the opportunity to go to Los Angeles to work with Charlie Yates. However, she is actually on Charlie’s doorstep when she overhears him tell her manager he is not about to write with anyone, especially a screenwriter who would turn down a Warner Brothers internship.  

Nevertheless, Charlie is out of his element in writing a rom-com, which he has agreed to do in exchange for a producer turning his Mafia script into a movie. He does not even care if the rom-com gets produced; it is just a means to an end. However, Emma will only write with him if he gives the romantic comedy an honest effort.

Under Emma’s tutelage, Charlie learns all the things that are wrong with his screenplay, and they begin doing research and writing together to add all the components of a love story to the script. Recently divorced, Charlie is sour on love stories, but Emma vows she will kiss him senseless if that is what it takes to open him up to all that is needed in a rom-com.

How will Emma keep her feelings in check while working with the handsome writer, someone she has long admired? What will it take to convince him to trust her on all the basics that need to be in a rom-com script? Why is her heart suddenly thumping when she is working with Charlie?

Katherine Center is the New York Times bestselling author of ten other novels. Her books The Lost Husband and Happiness for Beginners were made into Netflix movies. Center lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her family.

Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand

 Swan Song is not only fourth in the Nantucket series by Elin Hilderbrand, but also it is her “swan song” to writing beach books, having completed 30 in total. The Chief of Police on Nantucket Island is Ed Kapenash who is on the brink of retirement in this June 11 offering. Having served 35 years, Ed can no longer take the stress, but his plans are put on hold when, with three days left to serve, he has a house fire and a missing person on his hands.

The house belongs to newcomers Bull and Leslee Richardson, a party loving couple, who are out on their sailboat when their house goes up in smoke. Their personal assistant Coco is missing and is considered a person of interest in the investigation.

The Richardsons had first been embraced by the social set on Nantucket until they went too far with their lavish parties. Leslee has the tendency to pay too much attention to other men, and she cheats at pickleball. They are also trying too hard to become members of the Field & Oar Club, and the more people get to know them, they are backing away from the couple. As things have soured with her usual guests, Leslee has taken to inviting anybody she meets to attend her latest party, which is being held on their yacht Hedonism. Coco tells a friend that the party list is nothing but strangers.

What has happened to Coco? Did she fall off the yacht or did someone push her? Why is she a suspect in the house fire? Will the Richardsons redeem themselves with the island crowd? How can Chief Kapenash solve this double case and manage his stress?

Elin Hilderbrand has said she might someday return to writing beach books but her future involves developing a half-dozen projects in Hollywood including the adaptation of her novel The Perfect Couple into a Netflix series starring Nicole Kidman and Liv Schreiber. She has been a resident of Nantucket for 30 years.

Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate

 Shelterwood offers protection for a band of children, most of them orphans, in 1909 in Oklahoma, in Lisa Wingate’s latest novel Shelterwood, coming out June 4. Alongside the 1909 story is one told in 1990 about a female park ranger, Valerie Boren-Odell, a widow who is trying to start over with her young son in the Horsethief Trail National Park, which is about to open. The two timelines grow toward one another when three children’s bones are found in one of the caves within the park.

Eleven-year-old Ollie Radley leads the children toward Shelterwood in the Winding Stair Mountains after she and a six-year-old Choctaw girl escape Olive’s predator stepfather. Along the way, more Choctaw children, the “elves“ of Oklahoma, join the two girls on their way to the haven Olive once lived in with both her parents. The children were victims of guardians who only took them in for the oil rights granted to Choctaw children at that time.

Valerie has left Yellowstone Park where her ranger husband died while trying to retrieve the body of a hiker. Former military, she is well trained and experienced in ranger work, but she finds some of the men in the ranger office reluctant to accept her, quickly chasing her away from investigating the remains found in the cave. Instead, she finds a friend in a Choctaw Tribal policeman, one who has a wealth of knowledge about the area. They partner in their search for a missing teen, which leads them to a discovery that will reveal the outcome of Ollie and the other children.

Lisa Wingate is the author of Before We Were Yours, which remained on the bestseller list for more than two years. The book was based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country. Wingate lives in Texas and Colorado with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 3, 2024.

I would like to thank Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House Publishers, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

Rednecks by Taylor Brown

 Set in the coal fields of West Virginia in the 1920s, Rednecks is a book of historical fiction recounting the Battle of Matewan and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Author Taylor Brown has mixed fictional characters--including one based on his great-grandfather Dr. Domit Simon Sphire--among those who witnessed and participated in this period of upheaval among unionized coal miners and the coal barons.

 

The Matewan Massacre occurred on May 19, 1920, in Matewan, West Virginia, when Chief of Police Sid Hatfield and union miners stood up to the cutthroat agents from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who had just turned out the miners’ families and their belongings into the mud. The penalty for joining the union was firing from the job and eviction from mine housing. Among the dead were two of the Felts brothers along with five of their detectives, two miners, and one teenage bystander. Gutshot Mayor Cabel Testerman would be dead before the day was over.

 

A year later, the surviving detectives from the Massacre were found “not guilty,” and the union miners were still on strike, living in a downtrodden canvas tent camp. In the meantime, Hatfield, a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, has had an encounter with one of the mine owners, for which he would be charged with assault.

 

Skirmishes between striking union workers and the Baldwin-Felts thugs paired with vigilantes continued, leading up to the Blair Mountain charge that is the largest labor uprising in United States history, the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Ten thousand coal miners fought the battle for miners’ rights against mine owners, state militia, and the federal government for five days from late August to early September in 1921. The miners wore red bandannas around their necks, giving origin to the term “rednecks.”

 

This May 14 release by Taylor Brown is the author’s sixth novel. His first three novels were all finalists for the Southern Book Prize: Fallen Land (2016), The River of Kings (2017), and Gods of Howl Mountain (2018). He grew up on the Georgia Coast and has lived in Western North Carolina. Currently a resident of Savannah, Georgia, he is the founder and editor-in-chief of BikeBound, one of the world's leading custom motorcycle publications.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 30, 2023.

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

 

Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

 Readers return to John Grisham’s Camino Island off the coast of southeast Georgia in his latest novel Camino Ghosts being released on May 28. Bookstore owner Bruce Cable has an idea for  writer Mercer Mann’s next book: the history of deserted Dark Isle, an island just north of Camino.

Lovely Jackson is the last living descendant of Dark Isle. When Lovely and her mother are the last inhabitants of the island, the pair moved to The Docks area of Camino. Lovely has already written a self-published book about Dark Isle; excerpts are incorporated into the novel. Bruce knows that Mercer can develop the story further.

Dark Isle’s history is marred by the slave traders who were capturing Africans and bringing them to America and by those who hunted runaway slaves who had found exile on the island. However, the actions of the people of Dark Isle have made outsiders believe the island is cursed: no white man has left the island alive! Stories were told that the occupants of the isle were cannibals. Lovely stands by the curse, and when archeologists want to explore the island, Lovely insists she needs to accompany them to remove the curse.

Going beyond Lovely’s book, Mercer would explore the court battle that is brewing as a resort developer wants to ignore Lovely’s claim that the island is her own as the only survivor in order to develop the island. With Bruce and Mercer’s help along with a lawyer friend of Bruce’s, a court case is filed to decide who owns the title to Dark Isle: Lovely or the state of Florida? The powers that be in Florida have been considering the sale of Dark Isle to the developer.

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. Camino Ghosts is the third book in the Camino Island series.

I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay

 English teacher Richard Boyle will never forget the day he saw through his classroom window a former student outside the school building bundled up in sticks of dynamite and approaching the doors in I Will Ruin You, the latest thriller from author Linwood Barclay coming out May 7. While Boyle is able to secure his classroom and run to the doors to talk the man down from entering the building, Mark LeDrew trips over his shoestring as he is turning away to wait for the police to disarm him.

Before accidentally blowing himself up, Mark accuses three school employees of driving him to this point: a teacher, a school counselor, and “the lawnmower man.” In the aftermath of this tragedy, Mark’s parents are suing Boyle, claiming he is responsible for their son’s death.

Principal Trent Wakely had started carrying a gun to school a couple of years ago for just this kind of scenario. He was coming up behind Boyle, trying to set up a shot to protect the teacher and the school. Because of Boyle’s ability to connect with Mark and disarm him of his plan to blow up his enemies, Wakely is spared making that decision, which would probably have brought some backlash about having a gun inside the school.

Boyle’s brave action has put him in the news media spotlight, but unfortunately, he comes to the attention of an extortionist. A former student formulates a plan to squeeze $10,000 from the teacher, accusing Boyle of fondling him on a school bus on the way to a wrestling match some years ago.

Does Boyle need to secure a lawyer? How can he defend himself against a molestation charge? How can he raise enough funds to pay the blackmailer so he does not lose his teaching license? What resources can protect him and his family from financial ruin in a lawsuit? What will it take to keep someone from ruining him and his family?

Linwood Barclay is the bestselling author of 27 other novels. He adapted his novel Never Saw it Coming for the 2017 movie starring Eric Roberts. Born in the United States, his family moved to Canada when he was a toddler. Prior to writing books full-time, he was a newspaper journalist and columnist. He lives with his wife in Toronto.

Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews

 Author Mary Kay Andrews has outdone herself with this seasonal offering of Summers at the Saint due out May 7. She has taken a predictable beach read and turned it on its end, incorporating crime, scandal, and family drama in this unputdownable novel.

Set on a private island off the coast of Georgia, St. Cecelia is a historic resort founded by the Eddings family. Traci, wife of the late Hoke Eddings, manages the hotel and all its amenities, while her philandering brother-in-law Ric runs the real estate side of the business.

Like most employers on the island, Traci is facing personnel issues as her chef and guest relations employees are off to higher paying positions, and she is struggling to fill their spots as well as have enough staff for the upcoming busy summer season. She decides she can solve housing for some of her staff by converting a building into a dormitory, making Ric irate about the money she is spending.

Traci is unaware of the mismanagement of hotel assets by the property’s general manager and his minions, going on right beneath her nose.  Before long, the shenanigans going on at the Saint will turn deadly as one of the employees has disappeared.

Worse, the business may hang in the balance as Ric tries to remove Traci from the Saint by creating a new will for his father Fred, who is dying from Parkinson’s. Trouble is, the last will and testament may not solve Ric’s attempt to wholly run the Saint and the real estate holdings, thanks to a scandal a couple of decades ago that his father was able to cover up by throwing lots of money at it to secure a non-disclosure agreement.

As if the in-fighting between Traci and Ric wasn’t enough, Ric’s second wife Madelyn knows about his cheating, and she has put into motion some plans of her own, hanging onto the marriage because the pre-nup would leave her with zilch.

While all these struggles are going on inside the Eddings’ world, guests enjoy a prosecco in the Saint’s ritual salute to the sunset, an elevated menu in the hotel’s restaurant, and the Saint’s signature pink beach chairs and sun umbrellas, oblivious to all that’s going on behind the scenes.

Andrews, known for using humor, twists, and insightful detail, makes this a beach read that will surpass all others this summer. Known as the Queen of Summer Reads, Andrews splits her time between Atlanta and a second home on Tybee Island.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 24, 2023.

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

Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky

 In the 22^nd volume of the V.I. Warshawski series, author Sara Paretsky hits Pay Dirt with a mystery that she traces back to the Civil War. Coming out April 16, the novel follows V.I. as she becomes involved in the search for a missing coed in Lawrence, Kansas, after having attended a basketball game there with her goddaughter Bernie. Bernie has to head back to Chicago for her classes at Northwestern University but she begs V.I. to stay and find the missing woman.

Having just come off a terrible case in which she found another missing teen only to have the irate father murder his son in cold blood then turn the gun on himself, V.I. was depressed. She had not been sleeping well, she was losing weight and muscle tone because she was not eating or working out. Telling herself she was not up to the task of finding the missing coed, she took the job on anyway, and found a drugged and injured girl in a house known for its drug parties.

When working in Chicago, V.I. has acquaintances in the police department as well as a few informants, but she has to work alone—and often in conflict—with the local police and the FBI, which has jumped in because the missing woman was thought to have been kidnapped. With no touchpoints in an unfamiliar city, V.I. doubles down and finds the local opioid distributers quickly, but the police turn a blind eye to her discovery.

V.I. turns up another dead body, this one belonging to an annoying woman from out of town who has been picketing the local school for the dismissal of a teacher accused of having a woke curriculum. The protester demanded that the real history of indigenous people and black settlers in Kansas be told. V.I. finds herself in the middle of a land-use battle over a piece of property that may still be titled to a black family in the 1860s. This tale will not end until V.I. finds herself kidnapped and beaten not once but twice.

Sara Paretsky never disappoints with her multi-layered detective fiction. Kansas raised, Paretsky has been living in Chicago since 1968. She has a Ph.D. in history and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Private investigator Warshawski is the protagonist of all but two of Paretsky's novels; the author is credited with transforming the role and image of women in the crime novel.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting March 19, 2024.

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

 

 

 

Southern Man by Greg Iles

 Fifteen fictional years have passed since readers got to peek into the life of Penn Cage, and things have changed, as told by Greg Iles in Southern Man (Penn Cage 7), which comes out May 28. Iles recently announced that he needs a stem cell transplant, just like his character Cage, saying “This should explain the multiple postponements of the release that generated so many emails and which I was unable to answer candidly at the time.”

The series started in 1999 with The Quiet Game. In 2024, Cage is a different man—no longer a hot shot attorney active in local politics—and his writing career has been set aside to tend his mother who is dying of multiple myeloma, the same disease Iles has suffered from for years and that is now escalating. Over the years, Cage has also lost his physician father in a prison riot and nearly his own life in a serious traffic accident that took part of his leg, the very same thing that happened to Iles.

Daughter Annie has grown up and is working as a civil rights lawyer in Jackson, Mississippi, while Cage is living quietly on a former cotton plantation above the Mississippi River. Before she succumbs, his mother Peggy has made a deep dive into family history, and she is encouraging her son to put off his next book until he reads all the work she has pieced together.

Meanwhile, Cage is drafted into advising local government when a police action shooting at a hip-hop concert not only injures his daughter but threatens the community structure of Bienville, Mississippi. Quick action by third-party presidential wannabe Robert E. Lee White, who moves in to re-inflate Annie’s collapsed lung, gives her some relief  before an ambulance reaches her backstage at the concert.

Besides the shooting dubbed the Mission Hill Massacre, a  radical group is setting fires to antebellum mansions in Bienville and Natchez that the black community sees as concentration camps for slaves. The city and county governments are challenged to find answers to calm the county-wide panic. Before all is said and done, Bienville is on the verge of a race war.

Cage theorizes that the fires are not historic retribution by radicals but what he calls “false flag strikes” that have triggered the chaos in the streets of Bienville. Worse, the white county police and the black city police are at odds as county leaders begin to dissolve the city government made up mostly of black citizens including the mayor.

The situation deteriorates as the black community is fuming over the assassination of one of their own and the lynching of a teenager who witnessed that bloody event. The white community in the divided town is outraged by the continuing destruction of its antebellum mansions. Before the story ends, lives will be lost as Cage and Annie find themselves in the midst of events triggered by Bobby White as he seeks a national stage for projecting himself as the man of action destined for the White House.

Chockful of local history and a family history narrative, Iles has created his magnum opus in a multi-layered story that stretches more than 900 pages. The work seems to be a culmination of everything Iles has wanted to say about politics, race relations, and civil rights as he plumbs the depths of United States history, especially the Civil War and its aftermath. The whole nation has its eyes on the unfolding events in Bienville as anarchy threatens the state of Mississippi.

Greg Iles has penned standalone books as well as his Penn Cage series. He was set for a stem cell transplant to take place before Southern Man was published, and at this time, there has been no further announcements regarding the author’s health. Born in Germany in 1960, where his father ran the US Embassy Medical Clinic during the height of the Cold War, Iles lives in Natchez, Mississippi, with his wife and children.

Love You, Mean It by Jilly Gagnon

 Caveat: All the cussing and dirty words did nothing to endear me to what was supposed to be a romance novel. The author needs to grow a better vocabulary. I would have thought she would have had a more extensive vocabulary being a Harvard graduate.

Ellie Greco may have gone too far to save her family’s historic deli in Milborough, Massachusetts, in  Love You, Mean It by Jilly Gagnon coming out April 30. She enters into a phony-bologna fling with Theo Taylor, the son of a businessman who wants to bring in a superstore that will put the Greco Deli out of business, in order for each of them to get what they want out of the ploy.

Ellie wants to save the business for her family, even though returning to Milborough means giving up on a career possibility she has been striving for in New York City. Theo, who is not a fan of his father’s, wants a free hand to develop the Taylor building in a way that will not threaten the small businesses like Ellie’s in the downtown area. The two plot a fake engagement that will push Ted Taylor to drop his plans for a gourmet food department store rather than ruin his future daughter-in-law's business.

 

What could go wrong with the pretend relationship? Will the stuck-up Taylor senior  buy into this romance between his elite son and a delicatessen owner he refers to as “a butcher”? How will Theo’s ex-fiancée favored by his father interfere with the plan when she reappears in Theo’s life? In the end, Ellie will have to decide what’s more important: her legacy business or a faux  romance that seems to be taking a different direction.

 

Jilly Gagnon,  the author of the young adult novel #famous and the suspense novel All Dressed Up, has had her work appear in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, and  The Huffington Post. A Minnesota native, she lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

Lucky by Jane Smiley

 Lucky is Jodie Rattler in Jane Smiley’s latest book of historical fiction coming out April 23. Jodie attributes the beginning of her lucky life to a horse race in St. Louis in 1955 when she was 6 in which she walked away with a roll of two-dollar bills thanks to her uncle. She keeps the roll as a good luck charm throughout her life.

The book becomes a biography of fictional Jodie as she develops an interest in folk music and finds some success as a singer-songwriter. The songs she writes earn her a steady income that her uncle invests wisely, providing a bankroll to land anywhere she wants, whether it is New York City, England, St. Thomas, or Los Angeles. Singing first with a band called the Freak-Outs, she later branches out on her own making albums, performing at gigs, and filling in for singers in other bands.

Along her journey, she becomes familiar with recording studios, backstages, and tours in a time when famous singers like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell are making a name for themselves. She witnesses firsthand how the music is changing from folk music to pop, and she adjusts her style of singing accordingly. Other names like Lyle Lovett are dropped into the story as he invites her on stage to sing a duet with him. Many of the lyrics of the songs she writes are woven into the narrative.

While her musical life is satisfying, Jodie senses that something is missing in her life, and it is not that she never became a big star. Finding true love at an early age, she finds herself leaving it behind and experiences what she thinks of as life as a feminist: being able to conduct her life like men did such as sleeping around, logging 23 affairs by the time she reaches her 30^th birthday.

As the novel draws to a close, a startling turn occurs causing readers to question what they’ve just read but no spoilers here!

Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear. Lucky is her 34^th book. Smiley has tackled a variety of topics during her long career, writing about everything from abolitionists to prostitutes, from horse racing to Hollywood, but this reader finds her farm stories to be her very best.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting February 24, 2024.

I would like to thank Alfred A. Knopf and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.