The Hollow by Michael Connelly

 For a retired LAPD cop, Harry Bosch is busy with two cases in the works in The Hollow by Michael Connelly coming out in October. One case has pulled Harry back to the 1960s after a massive class action lawsuit has netted billions in settlement for the former residents of MacLaren Children’s Center, Harry being one of those from age 11 to 16.

 

Entitled to some of that disbursement, Harry wants justice instead, calling upon his connection to Detective Renee Ballard and her cold case division. He was already working with her to finally catch the murderer in a case he had not been able to close in 2001. Using a little ingenuity and a bug hidden in a bouquet of flowers, together they are bringing a successful conclusion to the long unresolved case.

 

Now Harry could devote all his time to the children’s home that was a pit of abuse and neglect and to getting justice for a long-dead teen named Charles “Chops” Lamb. Called inmates because the center was under the jurisdiction of the state probation department, they often fought among themselves, earning time in the hollow, a cramped storage space under the staircase in the administrative wing of MacLaren’s.

 

Working a case as only Bosch can—"everybody counts or nobody counts”—he learns from old case files that Chops’ death appears to have been covered up as little investigation was done. Being Harry, he uses his skills to dig deep, finding a former probation officer who is still alive and was working at MacLaren’s at the time of the boy’s death, albeit he is in a care home with memory loss.

 

With just the right spark of a memory about an incident the day before Chops’ death at MacLaren’s, the retired guard lights the way to Harry bringing down a cruel murderer, putting Harry’s own scarred history to rest. Problem is, Harry’s hunt for justice knocks heads with the FBI’s own pursuit as the killer has a long list of crimes, one a current threat about some missing ammunitions including Hellfire missiles.

 

Note: some of the elements of the story are based on real incidents and real people, and MacLaren Hall was a real place, a house of horrors, open from 1961 until it was closed in 2003 and is being rebuilt as a city park in El Monte, California.

 

This reader is so grateful that Michael Connelly is still writing Harry Bosch stories, this one being the 26^th.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 22, 2026.

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

 

 

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

 A tear in the putting net, a line drive with a golf ball, the name “Kenny” called out, and a teen responding to his name combine to result in the death of the young man in The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian which became available August 4, 2026.

Mira Winston already lived life on the edge what with experimenting with booze, drugs, and sex with older men since she was 15 years old. Warning: this tale is told with a side of raunch! As a rebellious yet reliable narrator—she says so!—Mira tells the story of the day she killed Kenny

While her action that day resulting in the death of Kenny Foster is truly a freak accident, Mira believes that by killing him, she is deserving of the downward spiral that actually began before she ever swung her club that fateful day.

On August 3, 1978, in Talmadge, a tony suburb of New York City, temperatures are in the 90s when the 18-year-old golf prodigy shot her practice ball with a wooden club into the net while she awaited her time to tee off. First thinking the ball hit but not killed Kenny, Mira’s first reaction was to laugh at the pratfall. When she realized what had really happened, she abandoned her golf clubs, never to play again.

Not only does she give up the sport in which she excelled, but also she defers her entry to Yale and moves away from Talmadge where everyone knows she killed the caddy but also broke up another family through her affair with the much older husband.

Worse, the broken net leads to both criminal and civil liability with fingers pointing to Mira as the one who purposely caused the net to fail that fateful day by altering the net. The incident becomes a courtroom drama that is dramatically brought to a climax by a confession from one sitting in the courtroom audience that day.

Easily read in one session because of the driving force of the narrative, this novel packs a lot as it covers Mira’s life up to the point where she is writing a memoir given that she is a novelist who has written 26 books and several plays, a nod to author Bohjalian who has done exactly that. As a reader, this reviewer is amazed at how well a male writer captures the angst of a rebellious teenage girl.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 16, 2026.

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

 

 

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

 Seventeen years have passed since Kathryn Stockett wrote the blockbuster The Help, but she’s back with another book about strong-willed women facing adversity in The Calamity Club released May 5. Setting the story in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933, she uses this historical fiction to take aim at the atrocities women faced in that time period.

A law passed in 1928 made it legal to sterilize anyone deemed an “imbecile,” which was used to a large part against promiscuous women, all decided by an all-male board. This impacts 11-year-old Meg Lefleur who finds herself placed in an orphanage in Oxford run by a woman worse than Miss Hannigan in “Annie.” Meg has been singled out and is persecuted by the matron who was behind the prosecution of Meg’s mother, a victim of the 1928 state statute.

Birdie Calhoun has arrived from the Delta to visit her socialite sister Frances. Her goal is to ask for money because she and their mother and their grandmother have fallen on hard times like many during the Depression. One of the ways Frances has been working to become part of the inner circle in Oxford is by volunteering at the orphanage.

Frances asks Birdie to use her bookkeeping skills to help prepare for the upcoming audit at the orphanage. Birdie finds the office is also being used for little Meg who has been pulled out of the orphanage’s school program as a punishment for a picture she drew. Birdie clearly sees how Meg is mistreated and befriends the little girl.

All is not as it seems at the antebellum mansion when Frances and her mother-in-law find they are in dire straits when their wealth suddenly disappears due to mismanagement by Rory, Frances’ husband, who has disappeared. Birdie tries to find ways for them to cope with the possibility of losing their home and their belongings.

By happenstance, Birdie runs into Meg’s mother Charlie, a woman who has been victimized by the sterilization law. She, too, is down on her luck with little to lose but now that’s she’s been released from a prison farm, she wants her daughter back.

Putting their heads together, Birdie and Charlie concoct an audacious plan to earn money to help Frances, her mother-in-law, Birdie’s family back home on the Delta, and Charlie and Meg. Elements of the plan are against the law, and if they are caught, the earned money could be taken away. Desperate times, desperate people.

Stockett brings all these threads together in this 638-page story celebrating the strength of women in times of crisis.

 Native Kentuckian Kim Michele Richardson brings the story of Cussy Lovett, the book woman of Troublesome Creek, full circle in this final novel in the Bookwoman series, The Mountains We Call Home.

Coming out in April of 2026, this historical novel set in the 1950s takes Cussy out of the mountains into a most unexpected turn, a prison due to her marriage to a white man as “Blues” were not allowed to marry outside of their own group. Both she and her husband Jackson are imprisoned for their so-called crime.

Prison life is a whole different world for Cussy as she learns to navigate the system, finding her place within its walls as she proves her value as a woman who can keep the books for the kitchen as she makes her case to become the prison librarian. Soon she becomes valuable as a loaner to the men’s prison library as well as to a library outside the penal system that will lead to a path forward for the former packhorse librarian…and her husband.

While the third in the Bookwoman series, this book can be read as a standalone as Richardson provides plenty of background information from the two previous novels. Not only does the author connect the three stories, but she also provides a wealth of information about Kentucky, the way of life there, and some of its historical citizens.

Kim Michele Richardson, best known for The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek which is taught in many high schools and colleges, brings history to life as she is inspired by both the “blue people” of Kentucky and the brave packhorse librarians who contributed to increased literacy levels among those isolated in the hills.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting January 1, 2026.

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

 

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

 In the latest novel from Anna Quindlen, More Than Enough, she tackles dementia, mother-daughter relationships, terminal illness, identity, and infertility. Whatever narrative is active, all these issues play seamlessly in the background.

Polly Goodman is on her second—and highly improved—marriage to a gentle veterinarian who adores her. She loves her career teaching English at a private all-female high school. On the downside slope, her father is in assisted living and fading away, she and her mother struggle in their relationship, her friend is battling cancer, an unknown person reaches out claiming a blood connection through DNA testing, and she and her husband struggle with infertility.

As her father descends into a condition that may force him into a higher level of care, she holds a grudge against her mother for ever placing him into an institution. She has always felt a disconnect in her relationship with her mother.

Even though her friend has had a double mastectomy and is seemingly in good health, the latest tests say otherwise, and Polly finds herself struggling to accept the inevitable. When her friends get her a DNA test kit as a gift, she soon is contacted by a young woman claiming they are closely related even though Polly knows there are no relatives outside of her mother, father, bachelor brother, and an uncle. Who could this mystery person be?

At 42, Polly knows her biological clock is ticking down as she and her husband have gone through endless treatments and procedures without a viable pregnancy. Her students are somewhat surrogate daughters but she yearns for a baby of her own to hold just like her sister-in-law who has two daughters and a newborn son.

Polly is weighed down with the empathy that author Quindlen has trademarked. The story would be a downer if not for the wry humor that Quindlen inserts throughout the story through Polly’s husband, brother, and friends as well as an off-beat trip to an alpaca farm

Anna Quindlen, a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists, won the Pulitzer Prize as a columnist at The New York Times. She lives in Manhattan.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 29, 2025.

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

 

The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave

With The First Time I Saw Him, Laura Dave has written her first sequel featuring Hannah Hall from The Last Thing He Told Me from 2021. While readers welcomed the sequel, turns out it is not quite the sequel they expected with the introduction of two new characters who bog down the narrative. {I really did not care for this one}

Five years have passed since Hannah Hall’s husband and her step-daughter Bailey’s father Owen seemed to drop off the face of the earth. They have moved on, settling in the Los Angeles area. Over these years, they have begun a relationship with Bailey’s grandfather Nicholas, once an attorney for a crime syndicate boss.

During the latest exhibition of Hannah’s art, Owen makes an appearance, though neither she nor he acknowledge one another. She learns later that during the encounter, Owen slipped a flash drive into her pocket. A phone call comes the next day that puts Hannah and Bailey on the run for safety.

The action is interrupted repeatedly with narratives of exchanges between Nicholas and the crime boss, detracting from the way Hannah and Bailey have put into action the run-for-safety plan they developed long ago in case this day came. How can they make it to safety? What chance is there for Owen to reunite with his family.

Laura Dave’s books have been chosen by Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club, Indie Next, Book of the Month Club, The Richard and Judy Book Club, Best of Amazon, and Best of Apple Books. Goodreads readers voted The Last Thing He told Me as Mystery & Thriller of the Year for 2021. That book became a series on Apple TV+. Dave lives in California.

  

Sean Dietrich, affectionately known as “Sean of the South,” delivers a spirited and heartfelt tale with his upcoming novel Over Yonder, due October 7, 2025. Dietrich weaves together a story of redemption and reluctant kinship in the Deep South, all with his signature humor and compassionate warmth.

Defrocked priest Woody Barker is released from prison after 10 years to deal with his troubled past, his heart condition, and his uncertain future. Living on a houseboat moored along the Alabama Gulf Coast, Woody just wants a quiet, peaceful life. But his ex-wife is nagging about his diet and his unhealthy habits as she wants him to be eligible for a heart transplant, and his first ex-wife informs him in a dying request that he has a 17-year-old pregnant daughter named Caroline.

Caroline was born with birth defects stemming from her mother’s drug abuse. She’s been in and out of foster homes all her life. More recently, she had been living with a mean boyfriend who she deserts after he beats her. At her mother’s funeral, she learns Woody is her father.

Forced together by circumstances, Woody and Caroline try to figure out what the purpose is of something Caroline’s mother hid beneath the subfloor of her trailer’s bathroom cabinet. This item plunges them into a dangerous situation with unsavory men following them with a final confrontation. Soon the Federal Bureau of Investigation enters the picture.

Through a series of events, Woody and Caroline forge an unlikely family bond. In addition, she benefits from a grandfather named Major and a younger sister named Rachel.

Southern flavor is infused throughout the book with Dietrich’s dry humor and Southern colloquialisms. Over Yonder is a journey toward reconnection, forgiveness, and the accidental family people choose when the world turns its back on them. This is definitely a book for fans of Rick Bragg.

Sean Dietrich is a columnist, podcaster, speaker, and novelist, known for his commentary on life in the American South. His work has appeared in Southern Living, The Tallahassee Democrat, Good Grit, South Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Thom Magazine, and The Mobile Press Register. 

Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane

 Such a Clever Girl by Darby Kane is a gripping domestic thriller. In the prologue, Kane plunges readers into a chilling tableau: the Tanner family of four has vanished—dinner half-eaten, a bloodstain by the door, their bookstore in Sleepy Hollow, New York, on fire. Fifteen years later, the Tanner’s presumed-dead daughter, Aubrey, returns at just the moment an emergency court hearing is taking place regarding the estate of her late grandfather Xavier Tanner, sparking an unlikely alliance of three of the women in the room who hold long-buried secrets.

The courtroom scene is narrated by Stella, a psychologist whose mother Isabel is Xavier’s niece. Marni Richards is an elementary school teacher who suffers with great anxiety. Hanno Sato is the owner of the local coffee shop. In one way or another, each woman has a connection with the Tanners.

The story of what happened on the day the Tanners disappeared is rolled out with  tension-ratcheting momentum as each woman takes the stage briefly in the telling of what happened that day. However, the multiple point of view structure of the thriller with all four women telling the story is a challenge to readers trying to keep track of so many voices.

Aubrey challengers and threatens Stella, Marni, and Hanna with what she knows and what she thinks the role of each woman was on the day the Tanners disappeared. Before the story reaches its conclusions, one of the women will be questioned by the police, another will be caught up in the terror involving a son who has gone missing, and the third will be wrecked by the reveal of all the details about what happened 15 years ago.

Darby Kane is the pseudonym of HelenKay Dimon a former trial attorney and an award-winning romantic suspense author. A native of Pennsylvania, Dimon lives in California.

 

 

Dead Man Blues

 Author Silas House, writing under the pseudonym S.D. House, steps away from his usual Southern story telling to pen the book he has said he wants to read: a murder mystery called Dead Man Blues. Set in the 1950s in the fictional tiny town of Shady Grove on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, Dave Hendricks has fallen about as far as a man can fall: he has lost his wife, his best friend, his job, and his reputation.

Left with only a houseboat to call home and his loyal dog, he works odd jobs in the marina where he rents space for his boat, drinks Jameson, and listens to the blues. A scream across the lake leads him to a fishing camp where someone has been murdered. Once a sheriff for his small town, his investigative instincts kick in as he surveys the murder scene before the current sheriff, his former best friend, arrives.

Even though the sheriff has betrayed Dave, he calls on Dave to help investigate the murder for the good of the community. Dave agrees to work along with, not for, the sheriff to find the killer who slashed and stabbed his victim.

When a second body is discovered—this one floating in Cedar Lake--the townsfolk are fearful of a killer in their community. Dave begins to piece together the puzzle about the two dead men, their connection to each other, and their connection to the community, as he closes in on the murderer.

House said on his Facebook page: “I’ve always wanted to write a murder mystery and now I have, under a slight pseudonym to differentiate this commercial work from my literary writing.”

He is known throughout the South as a quintessential person of letters: a novelist, poet, music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. He served as the  Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2023-2024. His trilogy of Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo are not to be missed by fans of Southern fiction. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads, Instagram, and Facebook starting August 5, 2025.

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

 

The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly

 The eighth book in Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series, The Proving Ground pits Mickey Haller against the Artificial Intelligence industry when a teenager follows a command from a chatbot that tells him that it is okay to murder his ex-girlfriend. Leaving criminal law behind, Haller takes on the civil suit of Brenda Randolph, mother of the victim Rebecca, opposing TidalwAIv Technologies.

 

TidalwAIv has a lot at stake as it is looking for one of the bigger tech companies to gobble it up with its investors coming out billions ahead. On the other hand, Brenda wants three things from the company: accountability, action, and apology; the company just wants to offer a big payoff for a signed non-disclosure statement.

 

As the trial is about to begin, the Mason brothers, lawyers of record for TidalwAIv, have been playing loose with the discovery material offered to Haller, who believes the real evidence is hidden in all the redactions of the documents. Jack McEvoy, a journalist who wants to write a book about the case when it reaches its conclusion, signs on to work through the tons of printed discovery materials, where his research reveals a key witness who is fearful about testifying.

 

Before the trial begins, Aaron Colton’s parents, Bruce and Trisha, want to sue TidalwAIv, for turning their son into a killer. The judge allows them to join Haller’s case. The bonding of the mothers will work well for the trial but the father is easily persuaded by monetary offers. What sounded like a good idea in joining the cases may prove to be a thorn in Haller’s side as he and his team work to defeat AI gone rogue in court, the proving ground.

Set against the background of the LA fires of 2025, a personal side of the story comes forth as Haller’s first ex-wife Maggie McFierce moves in with him since her house is in the no-way in zone of the fires. This turn of events ignites a flame between the former partners.

 

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he wrote his first novel featuring Harry Bosch, The Black Echo, which he based partly on a true crime. Three of Connelly’s characters have found success on streaming platforms Amazon Prime and Netflix: Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, The Lincoln Lawyer, and Ballard.

 

 

We Were Never Friends by Kaira Rouda

 Sorority sisters Beth and Roxy’s adult children are getting married to each other, and to kick off an engagement party, Roxy has pulled out all the stops for a sorority sister reunion to celebrate Celeste Harrison and Zach Gentry in the latest from Kaira Rouda, We Were Never Friends.

Roxy has invited Beth, the mother of the bride of course, but she has also included Jamie Vale, the double-legacy pledge who is now a cardiologist. A fourth “sister,” Amelia Dell gets word about the festivities, crashing the party with her current boy toy Brett.

Gathering at Roxy’s Palm Springs vacation home, the “sisters” notice how the home refurbished by Roxy’s husband Ryan looks so much like the hotel where the last gathering of the women occurred, the Desert Sands, giving the gathering a déjà vu moment. A fifth member of the sorority sister group, Sunny Spencer, drowned at that celebration 25 years ago.

But as the title declares, these women were never friends, and the cracks in their relationships grow over a couple of days together. Rouda expertly weaves the women’s past entanglements and simmering resentments into the weekend’s escalating drama. Before the party is over, one of the revelers will not be leaving alive.

Kaira Rouda was born in Illinois but lives in Long Beach, California. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Women’s Fiction Author Association, and the International Thriller Writers. Her book Jill is Not Happy has been named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Zibby Media. 

 

I can't believe I finished this crappy book

 

What did I just read?

Author Stephanie Perkins calls Overdue a  sweet and swoony romance for adults. Riddled with pronouns, accented with unnecessary profanity, populated with an array of DEI characters including homosexuals, trending woke, and strutting king-sized liberal viewpoints, this is an over-long slog about a 29-year-old woman who has to decide if she wants to marry her long-time boyfriend by dating others for a month. Then two months. Then three months. Romance? Think again.

I thought I requested a cute little romance in a library setting. Disappointed.

Ingrid Dahl has a chance to move up and actually have a career by going to library school for FREE! She is already working at the library and turns down a remarkable chance for free education. Distracted by this game of let’s date around before getting married although we have been together for 11 years, she is decidedly immature.

I deserve a prize for sticking with this mess until the very last word.

This book is Stephanie Perkins’ departure from writing young adult romances and YA horror novels. Born in South Carolina, she lives with her husband in Asheville, North Carolina.

 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 29, 2025.

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

 

Nash Falls by David Baldacci

Walter Nash leads a comfortable, predictable life as a high‐level executive and family man who is unaccustomed to violence or intrigue in Nash Falls by David Baldacci. In this high tension thriller, his life will be turned completely upside down after a visit in the dead of night when the FBI makes contact with a damning revelation: Nash’s firm, Sybaritic Investments, is a money‑laundering scheme for a global criminal mastermind.

With little choice, Nash gives in to the FBI’s plan for him to go undercover. Once Nash begins a covert investigation into the vast workings of his company and all its divisions, everything in his reality starts to spin out of control once the evil schemer is somehow informed—a leak!-- of his pledge to the FBI. What begins as surveillance becomes survival. As Nash loses everything, he must reinvent himself from a mild‑mannered businessman into a vengeance seeker.

The cost to his personal life is devastating as a family member is kidnapped. When the captive goes online with an incriminating reveal about Nash—albeit the disclosure is one lie after another—he is forced to turn fugitive. With the help of his late father’s war buddy, Nash is able to make a daring escape to a safe retreat as he regroups in plotting how to fight back.

In this character-driven novel, Nash struggles with his conscience regarding revenge and violence and what these will cost to his personal identity and value system. His dilemma is reminiscent of Baldacci’s character Amos Decker first mentioned in Memory Man. Nash, an ordinary man being corrupted into becoming something he is not, is a frequent trope in thriller fiction.

David Baldacci, a New York Times bestselling author, has captivated readers worldwide with his gripping suspense and legal novels, many drawn from his background as an  attorney. Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Baldacci has created numerous acclaimed series including the aforementioned Amos Decker series, as well as the Camel Club series, the Atlee Pine series, and the Aloysius Archer series. His debut novel Absolute Power launched his career in 1996, and he has continued to produce bestsellers that blend legal expertise with compelling storytelling.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 27, 2025.

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

 

The Widow by John Grisham

 What if you are innocent and no one believes you? Publishing on  October 21, 2025, The Widow by John Grisham centers on Simon Latch, a small-town Virginia lawyer who must find a way to clear his name after being accused of murdering client Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow. Grisham’s longtime involvement with the Innocence Project directly informs the themes and emotional core of The Widow, even though the novel itself is a fictional “whodunit.”

Barnett comes into Latch’s office in need of a new will. Another lawyer in town gave it a try, but she is not satisfied with his work. While Latch usually charges $250 for a simple will, he sees a bigger paycheck as the widow claims to have great wealth. Greed drives him in this seemingly good fortune as he struggles to pay his bills and hold his marriage together.

Seeing a need to protect this woman’s wealth, Latch endeavors to draw up an expansive will setting up a plan for the distribution of her assets upon her death. Over a series of lunches he puts on his own tab, Latch extracts information from Barnett to create this last testament.

What Latch struggles to validate is the expanse of her wealth. He begins to wonder if she understands just how many assets she actually possesses. When it comes to the ones she can leave her fortune to, the answers to his questions make clear she has no one in her life other than two greedy stepsons with whom she has no relationship.

When the widow is involved in a car accident in which she is at fault, other legal documents become necessary, which Latch creates—at the urging of a concerned nurse--and is forced to have her sign while in the hospital where she is recovering from her injuries. Then the unthinkable happens and everything goes off the rails.

Latch’s efforts to prove himself not guilty of the widow’s murder is anguishing as he faces circumstantial evidence in the role he played in the death. Grisham uses his experience representing clients wrongly accused of crimes to illustrate how legal missteps and flawed evidence can threaten lives.

Latch finds himself on the brink of ruin as his already struggling practice nets not nearly enough to pay a highly recommended defense lawyer. Even closing his practice and selling the building will only make a dent in much needed finances. He finds it hard to believe that any jury could convict him because he is innocent of committing the murder and the evidence is only circumstantial.

The Widow, though fictional, carries forward these concerns as it portrays an innocent man racing to reclaim his reputation and prove his innocence in court. The Widow is less about who committed murder and more about how easily the wrong person can end up in the crosshairs.

Fans of Grisham’s earlier legal thrillers will find comfort in the familiar rhythm of courtroom drama, while newcomers may be surprised by the novel’s emotional resonance. Grisham is a board member of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit devoted to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals. 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.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 25, 2025.

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

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s All This Could Be Yours

 Coming out September 9, Hank Phillippi Ryan’s All This Could Be Yours is a taut, emotionally charged thriller that explores the dark undercurrents of fame, family, and the secrets from the past that keep trespassing on current lives. Blending psychological suspense with the precision of  journalistic writing, Ryan delivers an engrossing story that is both timely and chilling.

While readers might thrill at the opportunity to attend an author event at their local bookstore, it is a different story for the writer. Tessa Calloway keeps telling herself she is living the dream but the pressure of flight after flight, a different city every night, as she fulfils her contract to conduct author visits is taking its toll on her as well as on her husband and two children back home.

Not only the pace of the tour and being away from home plague Tessa but also something creepy is going on. Starting with a locket left behind in Tessa’s hotel room, a series of events is leaving her unsettled: startling messages left at her hotels, insistent questions about her private life from audience members, and people taking and leaving things in her hotel room while she is out. Tessa thinks it could all add up to something bad that happened when she was 10 years old, but it could be another thing that occurred when she was a teenager: events that caused her mother to flee with her and change their names.

Author Ryan seems to be digging into her own book tour experience as she captures the chaotic pace of the travel and the actual author events themselves. Tessa’s internal turmoil is magnified by the fact she cannot halt the pace in order to stop what sinister event seems about to occur. A thin line between having it all and what the costs may be to keep it all drives this page turner to the finish with one final twist.

Born in Indianapolis, Hank Phillippi Ryan is an American investigative reporter for Channel 7 News on WHDH-TV, a local television station in Boston, Massachusetts. She is also the author of mystery thrillers. Several of her books have been optioned for film and television.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 15, 2025.

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

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

 Following the success of the runaway best seller, A Flicker in the Dark, Stacy Willingham returns to the murky waters of Southern Gothic suspense with Forget Me Not, a story that examines how trauma reverberates across decades. Coming out August 26, the novel focuses on Claire Campbell, a journalist who has spent 22 years running from the ghosts of her past.

Haunted by the tragic murder of her sister Natalie, an event that drove their parents apart, Claire escaped her South Carolina hometown of Claxton for a fresh start in New York City at The New York Journal. She has not been back since she left 15 years ago but an unexpected call from her father brings her back home to deal with all of it again.

Now a freelance writer with her own schedule, she decides to take a job for the summer in the nearby Galloway Farm where her sister once worked before she disappeared. She will be picking grapes and doing other farm chores while staying on the farm in the guest house where she makes a surprising discovery: an old journal.

The past and present begin to be woven together as Claire uses her journalistic skills and the mysterious diary to create a narrative about the history of the farm and its people. What seems to be a tranquil atmosphere is anything but as the diary starts to reveal the story of a runaway teenage girl whose love for an older man turns into something dangerous as long-unsolved crimes are detailed in its pages. Claire believes the account holds clues to Natalie’s fate.

As things turn dark and mysterious, it is a race to the finish for readers to discover just what happened on the farm…and where the bodies are buried.

Stacy Willingham had remarkable success with her debut novel, A Flicker in the Dark. Actress Emma Stone’s production company along with HBO Max are developing a series based on the novel. Willingham lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her family.

 

The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas

 The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas is a gripping, emotionally resonant thriller that balances family drama with suspense that never slackens. Arriving on shelves August 5, the novel is a tense read filled with twists and turns as Tasha, the stay-at-home mother of twins in Chew Norton, a fictional town set near Somerset, England, and her mechanic husband Aaron embark on a” trade-life-with her successful scientist sister Alice” for a week in Venice.

Alice, a look-alike with her sister, and her husband Kyle, a successful entrepreneur, are in for a busy week in Tasha’s home as they are caring for two 3-year-olds. Tasha and Aaron enjoy a chance to reconnect after raising twins, but their holiday is colored black by a stranger who follows them on the streets of Venice, threatening them harm.

Meanwhile, the illusion of safety in quiet Chew Norton shatters when Tasha receives a devastating phone call: Alice and Kyle have been attacked during an apparent burglary leaving Kyle dead and putting Alice in intensive care. This terrible news is followed by a chilling note to Tasha shoved through her mail slot: “It was supposed to be you.”

What follows is a masterpiece of misdirection presenting a psychological puzzle that keeps readers guessing until the final pages. The story unfolds through alternating perspectives—Tasha, Alice, and their mother Jeanette weave a layered narrative of past and present that slowly reveals the family’s buried traumas and long-held secrets. A haunting subplot emerges involving a long-missing sister.

The Wrong Sister is Claire Douglas’ 10^th novel. She is a British author and former journalist. Her fiction writing career began when she won a competition in Marie Claire magazine with the submission of the first three chapters of her first novel which led to a publishing contract with HarperCollins. She lives in Bath, Somerset, England, with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting July 4, 2025.

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

 

The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline

 Author Lisa Scottoline ventures into new territory with The Unraveling of Julia, trading her familiar thrillers for a work part psychological fiction, part historical fiction with a twist of a ghost story. Hitting bookstore shelves July 15, the novel follows Julia Pritzker, a recently widowed woman grappling with the traumatic murder of her husband, when out of nowhere she inherits a Tuscan villa.

Emilia Rossi, old enough to be Julia’s grandmother if she had one, has bequeathed to Julia, a total stranger, the villa, a depleted vineyard, and a large monetary sum. Julia is adopted so she wonders how a recluse in Italy could even know her name or her contact information in Pennsylvania.

Julia journeys to Italy to unravel the mystery and is stunned by her resemblance when the caretaker shares a photograph of Emilia. Evidence that a young girl once lived in the villa stimulates Julia into imagining that she could be on the trail of her birth mother. The crumbling villa is not enough to persuade her to sell it as a local realtor keeps trying to tempt her with the offers he has been collecting.

With the introduction of paranormal elements, the novel takes a turn with Julia discovering she has a “gift,” she suffers a shock when touching a photograph of Emilia on the Rossi crypt in the cemetery, and she experiences strange occurrences at the villa, including visions of a long dead historical figure, Caterina Sforza (1463-1509),  an Italian noblewoman who lived during the Renaissance. Julia learns that Emilia had long believed that she was related to Sforza, so sure that she had a ceiling fresco created in the villa that featured the Sforza family tree.

The action picks up when Julia meets a librarian who helps her get away from people who have been following her ever since she inherited a fortune. Gianluca Moretti befriends her and becomes her companion as she tries to find answers about her inheritance and the possibility that Emilia is somehow related to her. Julia and Gianluca become attracted to each other but she pushes away her feelings as she buried her husband just a few months ago. When Gianluca has a terrible accident, Julia believes her pursuers were also chasing him. The local police are not much help, and Julia grows suspicious of them as well. With Gianluca out of the picture, Julia is on her own to unravel the Tuscan mystery.

Lisa Scottoline’s visits to Italy empower her descriptions of the Italian landscape and the various museums and architecture of the area. She has written more than two dozen novels as well as a couple of nonfiction books with her daughter. She has been drawn to writing historical fiction in recent years. She lives in Philadelphia with a menagerie of horses, dogs, and cats.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 30, 2025.

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

 

Fast Boys and Pretty Girls by Lo Patrick,

 A Haunting Return to the Heart of Georgia

“One year lasts a lifetime when it’s the year that changes everything” shares former teen model Danielle “Dani” Greer in Fast Boys and Pretty Girls by Lo Patrick, available July 8. As Dani, she saw New York City, Miami, and Paris, but after a short modeling career, Danielle moves back to Pressville, a small town modeled after Ellijay, Georgia, in a story that burns slowly and leaves deep scars.

Now married with four daughters all living in her childhood home, Danielle wakes from a nap to the excitement of the girls’ discovery of a body in the wooded ravine behind their house. While the majority of the book flashes back to Dani’s modeling years when she found herself enamored with a Georgia underage misfit, the current timeline revolves around the mystery surrounding the bones found on Danielle’s property.

As Danielle reveals that her boyfriend died in a motorcycle wreck on the curve of the road in front of her house more than a dozen years ago, she suspects that she knows the identity of the body in the woods although she has no idea how it could have ended up there. The past refuses to stay buried.

The investigation of the found remains by Cady Benson, a woman whose trajectory has been similar to Danielle’s with a brief career in New York and now settled as a police officer in Pressville, has triggered Danielle’s mental visit back to the confusing time in her life when she was a 17-year-old on her own in the Big Apple trying to carve out a modeling career.

Once again Danielle enters a puzzling phase in her life causing her to ask, could it be who I think it is buried in the woods? How much if anything do I know about the quickly identified body?

A satisfying exploration of love, loss, and the weight of secrets in small-town America, a surprising twist will devastate Danielle’s family.

Georgia native Lo Patrick is proving to be a compelling voice in Southern mystery fiction. A lawyer-turned-writer, she lives in the Atlanta suburbs with her family. Her debut novel, The Floating Girls, earned a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly in 2022, and she followed it with The Night the River Wept, another gripping Southern-crime tale.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 25, 2025.

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.