Counting Miracles by Nicholas Sparks

When a rare albino deer has been spotted in the Uwharrie National Forest in Southwest North Carolina, an elderly man becomes obsessed with protecting the animal, putting himself in peril in Nicholas Sparks’ latest, Counting Miracles, coming out September 24. Jasper has been on his own for years, living in a cabin that borders the forest. A patient of Dr. Kaitlyn Cooper’s, he is also teaching her son how to carve.

Kaitlyn’s daughter is beside herself after a confrontation with an unwanted admirer in the parking lot of a restaurant, which distracts her as she backs out of her parking space only to crash into Tanner Hughes’ brand new reproduction 1968 Shelby GT. This leads to Tanner meeting Kaitlyn as she assures him that her insurance company will take care of his car.

Tanner is in Asheboro tracking down a possible clue to his biological father, putting off his next career move in Cameroon. However, he is immediately drawn to divorcee Kaitlyn, who offers to drive him to his hotel since his car is out of commission.

While Jasper, Kaitlyn, and Tanner seem to be on separate trajectories, they will all come together as Sparks crafts a story about love, loss, and hope, as only he can do. Nicholas Sparks, one of the world’s most beloved romance-drama writers, started his career with The Notebook in 1996, and many of his novels have been made into movies. Once again he has set his latest book in North Carolina where he lives.

 

 

 

The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict

Inspired by a true story in detective novelist Dorothy Sayers’ life, Marie Benedict has written The Queens of Crime coming out February 11. In the spring of 1927, Sayers accompanied her journalist husband Mac Fleming to France to report a story about an English nurse who went on a day trip to Boulogne in October 1926, never to be seen again.

With this fact nugget, Benedict has created a story in which Sayers not only goes to France with her husband to learn more about the missing nurse case, but she also bonds with four other British crime writers to see if they can solve the crime and elevate their status with their male counterparts. These writers-turned-sleuths included Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy, the Queens of Crime along with Sayers.

May Daniels and fellow nurse Celia McCarthy were to return to England on a 5:30 p.m. ferry. While May went to the cloakroom to tidy up, Celia waited and waited for May to return but May had disappeared, never to be seen again until her body was found in a bush in a park in Boulogne months later. The Queens quickly identified the first part of the disappearance as a locked room mystery, and from there, Sayers found a way to duplicate May’s disappearance in plain sight.

Other parts of the puzzle included determining why the ground underneath the body was soaked in blood when the cause of death was determined to be strangulation and/or a drug overdose. More sleuthing by the Queens turned up a locker key and a letter penned by May. Working together, they may just solve the entire case, but getting the police to take their investigation seriously presented another problem.

Things turn ugly for Sayers when she is physically attacked by an assailant. After recovering from that, she receives a threat to expose a secret that she has concealed for years if she does not drop the search for May’s killer. Sayers and the Queens must work fast to confront suspects in May’s killing while keeping the writer’s private life just that: private.

Marie Benedict  has made her writing career by sharing the hidden stories about strong women in history including Mitza Maric the physicist wife of  Albert Einstein, mystery writer Agatha Christie, movie star Hedy Lamarr, and Clementine Hozier, the wife of Winston Churchill. Benedict lives with her family in Pittsburgh.

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

 Gail Baines is negotiating the Three Days in June that involve her daughter Debbie’s wedding in Anne Tyler’s short novel coming out February 11. Who should show up on Gail’s doorstep—with a cat no less—on the day before the nuptials but her ex-husband Max who needs a place to stay.

What an already unsettling Friday this has been for Gail:  at school the retiring headmistress tells Gail that she does not have the people skills to succeed her. Gail responds by walking out of the school, heading home. For Debbie, it was a Day of Beauty provided by her soon to be mother-in-law, an event from which Gail was excluded.

A crisis is afoot as Debbie is rattled by something she learned at the spa about her husband-to-be. She shares this with her parents, leaving them just as anxious as Debbie. The situation throws Gail into a backspin as she recalls the events leading up to the deterioration of her own marriage.

Tyler perfectly captures the tension of the parents and the bride-to-be as they face a rehearsal dinner and a wedding that may or may not come off. On top of everything else, come Monday Gail must figure out how she moves forward in the workforce as she is not ready to retire yet.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anne Tyler writes books that are witty and engaging. Born in Minneapolis, she grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating from Duke University. She lives in Baltimore, the setting of Three Days in June.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting September 9, 2024.

I would like to thank Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.