The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan

 Once upon a time there were four couples: Rob and Edie, Mark and Jayne, Toby and Ruth, and eventually Paul and Emily. Edie was the woman the men orbited around until she chose Rob, and then one by one, the others married. For some time, all four couples have had The Long Weekend at various escapes. But this weekend in Northumbria takes a different turn as Gilly Macmillan pens her latest thriller about three women, their husbands, and one vindictive widow who plans to murder one of the remaining husbands.

From the time Jayne, Ruth, and Emily arrive at Dark Fell Barn, an isolated retreat that only their hosts can drive them to, things go terribly wrong. They are already in the dumps because for various reasons, their husbands are delayed until the next day. Emily is the newest addition to the group, and she uneasy among them without her husband. The situation goes from bad to worse when the women discover a package left for them in the barn that details that one of them will lose their husband over this long weekend.

Being isolated from the world in their out-of-the-way destination, the women cannot reach their husbands to check on them and tell them about the threatening letter in the package. Ruth gets drunk, Edie decides to hike back to the farmhouse where the hosts live, and Jayne tries to first go after Edie then babysit Ruth. Before morning comes, Edie will have broken her ankle, Ruth will have disappeared, and none of the husbands have shown up as planned.

But nothing is really as it seems, and when the women get back to their homes, their lives will become completely undone in this can't-stop-until-you-finish-it novel.

Gilly Macmillan’s first novel, What She Knew, was an Edgar award nominee. With a background in art history from her studies at Bristol University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, Macmillan lives in Bristol, UK, with her family and writes full time.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting January 22, 2022.

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

 

 

 

The French Braid by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler has concocted a beautiful metaphor about just what a family is: The French Braid. The explanation comes late in the book, but it is so on target. This is a funny and a poignant novel, just what is expected in a Tyler work.

Readers meet the Garretts, and their story starts unfolding in the summer of 1959. No surprises that they live in Baltimore, but as the children grow up, they branch out to other parts of the Northeast.

The parents Robin and Mercy have similar but diverging goals in life. Robin wants a home; Mercy wants a second life after raising her family. Daughters Alice and Lily are complete opposites in personalities. Son David wants to distance himself from family for reasons the parents and sisters do not understand.

As life goes on through the decades, the shape of the Garrett family changes, grows, backs up, starts anew. Parents grow old, marriages come and go, children are added to the family, and they grow up as well.

The novel has it all: humor, heartache, success, failure…an imitation of life for sure. It has been called “classic Anne Tyler,” while I would call it Anne Tyler at her very best.

Anne Tyler won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 with the novel Breathing Lesson. Her books, always witty and engaging, never disappoint.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 22, 2021.

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

 

 

Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields

While Lorraine Hansberry lived only  34 years, her play A Raisin in The Sun has had a lasting impact on the American theatre. In Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun by Charles J. Shields, the author chronicles the life of the playwright and activist. Called “the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage,” students across America were led to believe that Hansberry based her famous play on her own life. Well, she did, kind of.

Actually, her father Carl Hansberry was a bit of a scoundrel. Yes, the Hansberrys were not welcome in a white neighborhood, but they had their real home in a black neighborhood, while they masqueraded in this second home.  This episode was part of a scheme to drive whites away so Carl could purchase property cheaply and  could start chopping up floors, turning apartments into one-room “kitchenettes” to make more money for the landlord, which eventually he became. About 10% of the book covers his moneymaking slumlord schemes, which projected the Hansberrys into the middle class. He also became so enamored with suing other folks that the Chicago branch of the NAACP began backing away from him after he threatened to sue Goldblatt’s department stores.

No doubt legitimate Raisin stories happened due to restrictive covenants designed to keep black homeowners out of white neighborhoods, but Raisin was not truly the Hansberry situation. The wealth generated with Hansberry Sr.’s property speculation schemes enabled the lifestyle that Lorraine was able to enjoy including some college attendance and a regular check from her widowed mother to help support Lorraine’s New York City lifestyle. Besides playwriting, she kept her day job writing for and performed a number of other duties for a newspaper called Freedom.

The biography broadens the scope of Lorraine’s life from the sliver as playwright that students in America learned when studying Raisin to all her activities in social causes. She campaigned for Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace and  had close Communist ties, which caused J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to keep an eye on her for fear she would become, “in the language of counterintelligence, a ‘present danger.’” By the end of her short life, Lorraine would have thousands of pages in her FBI dossier.

Regarding her personal life, Shields takes a hard look at the man Lorraine married, Bobby Nemiroff, a Jewish-Russian activist, a Communist card-carrying one. Shields described their marriage as a codependency. He was Lorraine’s best friend, her critic, and her promoter. They would remain tied even after their divorce, and he went on to manage her estate after her death.

Charles J. Shields is the author of two biographies about Harper Lee, one for adults, Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, and for young readers, I Am Scout: The Biography of Harper Lee. He is known for his well-documented biographies.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 16, 2021.

I would like to thank Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Nine Lives by Peter Swanson

 Imagine getting a list of nine names, one being your own. Just names. Nothing else. You might toss it. You might set it aside. But you might not jump to the conclusion that these are Nine Lives to be ended. The latest psychological thriller by Peter Swanson includes one FBI agent on the list, Jessica Winslow, and before long, she starts putting clues together.

The first to die is an old man who retains an aging family inn, which he uses as his personal watering hole. Once a heralded vacation spot for families, the inn is a shell of what it used to be, but it is on the beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine, which is handy for the killer who drowns the first victim.

Since the list of nine is found near the body, the investigation begins, with the FBI getting involved, deeply involved since one of their own is on the list. Meanwhile, another person on the list is shot in the back. So far, investigators have learned from the listees that none of them even  know each other.

What is the connection then? Is it a perfectly random list? Is there some connecting thread all the detectives are missing? Are they looking for a crazed serial killer? Per usual, the author keeps everyone guessing before planting the twist he has come to be known for.

Peter Swanson writes novels, short stories, poetry, and features. His work has been printed in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Atlantic Monthly, Measure, The Guardian, The Strand Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, his debut novel, is still my personal favorite. Swanson lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife and their cat.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting December 10, 2021.

I’d like to thank William Morrow and Custom House and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont

 Does The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont, refer to the actual affair Agatha Christie’s husband Archibald had with Nancy Neele, fictionalized as Nan O’Dea in the book, or does it refer to the 11-day disappearance of the crime novelist that she was never able to explain? Whichever, the book reimagines that famous vanishing from the point of view of the mistress.

Nancy/Nan wormed her way into the Christies’ lives by befriending both the wife and the husband, much like Pauline Pfeiffer did with Hadley and Ernest Hemingway...and in the same year, 1925. Both women became the mistress before being able to assert Mrs. before the famous last names. Agatha and Nancy met while working on a committee to design and organize a children's section of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition in Wembley.

The distress caused by Nancy/Nan’s luring away Agatha’s husband is thought to be the impetus for Agatha to disappear for 11 days, which was a mystery that fascinated readers of her work. Her husband was even a suspect in the possible murder of “the lady novelist,” who had not yet reached a high level of fame. On the other hand, Agatha spent little time on this episode of her life in her autobiography other than to call it a case of temporary amnesia.

While at times de Gramont seems to borrow from the movies and other stories about this time in Agatha’s life, the author takes the plot to where it has never gone before, hinted at in the opening line, “A long time ago in another country, I nearly killed a woman.” Not only is this work of historical fiction a look at what happened to Agatha during the time she seemed to have evaporated from her life, it is also a murder mystery with a subplot about poor pregnant unmarried girls in Ireland, what happened to their babies, and the thirst for revenge and resolution for these women.

Nina de Gramont is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.  The author of a collection of short stories, Of Cats and Men, she has written three adult novels as well as several YA novels under the pen name Marina Gessner.  She lives in coastal North Carolina with her daughter and her husband, the Pushcart Prize-winning writer David Gessner.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 28, 2021.

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

The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard

 “I was picking my son up at the prison gates when I spotted the mother of the girl he murdered.”

So begins The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Thea Demetriou, a college professor, must help her son Stefan reintegrate into society after he served his time in prison for the manslaughter of Belinda McCormack, the girl he loved, while finding her own way to love and forgive him after such a heinous action. Stefan had never even had so much as a speeding ticket, had never been a rebellious teen, so how can she reconcile that with a young man who could murder his girlfriend?

One thing that softens the blow for his family is that Stefan was out of his mind on drugs that night he bashed in Belinda’s head. He does not remember one thing about this episode, but he was the only one with her, and the murder weapon is covered in his fingerprints. He took full responsibility for the murder, pleading guilty. After his release from prison where he was a model prisoner, he struggles with how to go on with his life, deal with his guilt, redeem his reputation, and find a way forward when so many doors will now be closed to him, a convicted felon.

Jill, Belinda’s mother, has found her next steps by forming an activist group against domestic abuse in their town, intimating that Belinda’s relationship with Stefan was abusive. Thea knows only a loving relationship between Stefan and Belinda who met when they were five-years-old and had been best friends ever since, which makes the murder even more puzzling. Jill has campaigned steadily the past three years against Stefan and could be the force behind some of the things happening to the family, including daily protestors, a stalker, and an ugly word painted on their garage door.

While Stefan struggles with his demons, Thea and her husband Jep must deal with the fallout. People are up in arms that this young man murdered his girlfriend and is home after time served in a five-year sentence. Thea and Jep have lived through some ugly episodes while Stefan was in prison, and now they must protect him as best they can as the situation heats up with his release.

Thea is still dealing with a worrisome caller who tells her she knows what happened the night in question as she was there. Thea tries to shrug her off as just another nutcase harassing the family, but this girl is persistent. Could she really have been there at Belinda’s when this terrible incident happened? What knowledge could she have that might help or hurt Stefan? What starts off as a story of love and redemption turns into a thriller as Thea is determined to find out what happened that night.

Jacquelyn Mitchard’s first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was made into a feature film produced by and starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Mitchard writes for both adult and young adult readers. The author, who grew up in Chicago, now lives in Wisconsin.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 24, 2021.

I’d like to thank MIRA/Harper Collins and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Christmas in Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey

 

Christmas in Peachtree Bluff, fourth in the series,  by Kristy Woodson Harvey continues the story of the three Murphy daughters – Caroline, Sloane, and Emerson -- and their families along with their mother Ansley’s. All have gathered for Thanksgiving in the home Ansley shares with her second husband Jack in Peachtree Bluff, Georgia. Ansley and Jack are preparing to leave on a vacation to Australia, while the other families are going to Caroline’s place in New York.

But what if Caroline’s daughter Vivi – who is going through the terrible teens made worse by the divorce of her parents – went to Australia with her grandparents? Would that give Vivi a chance to reset her anger and get a better perspective about the divorce caused by her father’s womanizing? It sure would give Caroline a break from a disrespectful, troubled daughter for a while.

Ansley and Jack are agreeable to the plan, and Vivi is delighted…right up to the moment she has a conversation with Jack that causes her to run away, just hours before they should head for Atlanta to depart for Australia. Time is of the essence as a predicted Hurricane Pearl is headed toward Peachtree Bluff, although Ansley insists it is not likely to do anything but head out to sea. However, Grandma plans and Moms Nature laughs as they must evacuate within the next couple of hours or be confined to the island.

Where could Vivi be as most everything has been boarded up on the island? How can they find her in time to evacuate Peachtree Bluff? If they cannot leave the island, how will they shelter without having provisioned for a hurricane? How will Caroline take the news that her only daughter is missing?

Readers of the series will enjoy this next episode of this strong, loving family as they pull together to resolve these complications so they can have Christmas in Peachtree Bluff.

Kristy Woodson Harvey is a North Carolina writer of contemporary fiction. She lives with her family in Beaufort. Besides this series, she writes standalone novels, and her next one, The Wedding Veil, comes out in March, 2022.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 22, 2021.

I’d like to thank Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.