With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Simply Lies in David Baldacci

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Likely Story by Leigh McMullan Abramson

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trackers by Charles Frazier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

 

After reading the latest novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy, readers will swear the author had to have worked at “Saturday Night Live” as she nails the making of an episode in her narrative coming out in April.

Seemingly divided into thirds, the first part of the book is about how “The Night Owls” AKA “TNO” mimics “SNL”. The amount of information regarding how one show with one host is created in April of 2018 nearly makes this portion of the book lean toward tedious. On the other hand, it segues into how writer Sally Milz met–and lost–rock star Noah Brewster.

Emails between Noah and Sally begin the second part as both characters are isolated like everyone else in the pandemic. As they banter back and forth feeling each other out and working through the kinks in their relationship, they agree to a plan in which Sally travels from her family home in Missouri to Noah’s mansion in the Topanga Canyon of California.

The third and concluding part of the book deals with Sally’s firm belief that celebrity women can find meaningful relationships with regular guys, while that would never happen in reverse with a male personality falling for a regular gal like Sally. She and Noah test the rule as their relationship away from “TNO” and everyone else as they create their own pandemic pod. How could they have a happy ending when Noah is famous and good looking and she’s just Sally the writer for “TNO”?

While is seems writer Sittenfeld was shadowing the writing team at “SNL,” she admits only to immersing herself in memoirs by “SNL” comics, devouring the book Live From New York  edited by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, and  visiting  a “SNL” dress rehearsal. In addition, after hours of watching 5-years’ worth of the program with her family, she developed Sally’s theory of how often female guest stars and non-celeb males from the “SNL” staff  end up dating and in some cases marrying yet she did not observe the same with a famous man and a woman writer.

Curtis Sittenfeld has always been able to flesh out complex women on the pages of her novels. She is the New York Times bestselling author of  Prep, Eligible, American Wife, and Sisterland, as well as the collection You Think It, I'll Say It. Her books have been translated into thirty languages. She lives with her family in Minneapolis.

The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore

In The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore coming out in April, Sloane Parker is a librarian in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She decides she will engage  crotchety old Arthur McLachlan when he makes his daily visits to the library. His personality is oft putting, he scares most of the staff at the library, and he does not mind hurling unpleasant comments to Sloane or anyone else. After months of this daily taunting and teasing of Sloane, Arthur fails to visit the library.

Day after day, Arthur is a no-show, and Sloane’s anxiety increases until she decides to find Arthur at home--against the library’s rules—to learn what has happened to the old book lover. Turns out, Arthur has had some kind of health episode and is bedridden. Sloane is relieved to track him down, and in his own way, Arthur is actually pleased to see her.

Arthur is antagonized by how his body has failed him, and he shuns everybody’s help until Sloane worms her way into his life full time as she has been fired from the library for violating the rules in seeking out a patron’s home. Arthur and Sloane pretend she is just there every day to catalog his personal collection of books, which allows him to maintain his dignity while he is on the mend.

Through the guise of starting a bedside  book club, Sloane brings others into lonely Arthur’s life, including his long-lost grandson Greg, his neighbor Maisey, fellow librarian Mateo, and a former colleague of Arthur’s, Nigel. This motley crew learns much about each other through the very books they study: The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan), and Anne of Green Gables, (L.M. Montgomery).

This author writes under three pen names: Lucy Gilmore pens uplifting comedies, Tamara Berry composes cozy mysteries, and Tamara Morgan is a romance writer. She lives in Spokane, Washington, with her family.

The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict

 Marie Benedict seems to be gathering some of the strongest women who ever lived to inform readers about their stories. The Mitford Affair is her January offering, a book of historical fiction that tells about the six aristocratic Mitford sisters of England.

In their time, the 1930s onward, the sisters made their mark in England in the literary, social, and political arenas. The Mitfords could trace their origins in Northumberland, a county in Northern England that borders Scotland, back to the Norman Conquest (the 11^th century). The Times journalist Ben Macintyre dubbed the sisters as “Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover; Nancy the Novelist; Deborah the Duchess, and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur.”

The novel is mostly devoted to three of the sisters--Nancy, Diana, and Unity--with the others playing smaller roles. Diana falls out of favor with her family when she divorces her husband Bryan Guinness of the Guinness family brewing fortune to marry a fascist British leader Oswald Mosley. Her sister Unity becomes fascinated by fascism and Adolph Hitler, working her way into his personal and public life, moving to Germany to cheer him on in his endeavor to unite former lands with  Germany.

The chapters written with the points of view of Diana and Unity are unique in showing a softer side of Hitler that most readers could hardly imagine: “Sometimes it’s hard for her [Diana] to believe that this kind gentleman with the most impeccable manners is the same person who so boldly and unexpectedly violated the Munich Agreement…”

In her own way, Nancy the Novelist, tries to persuade her sisters in this explosive political climate leading up to World War II to realize that they are being used by Hitler to further his plans for bringing Great Britain into the fold. Nancy feels forced to choose between her family or her country as September 1, 1939, draws near.

Marie Benedict’s subjects do not always interest me, but her writing draws me in each time. Tiring of the glut of  world war books, I found a different perspective of the war from those who lived through it. Benedict is a lawyer with more than 10 years of experience as a commercial litigator. She lives with her family in Pittsburgh.

While New York City lawyer, Marie dreamed of unearthing the hidden historical stories about strong women. The women featured in her novels include the physicist wife of Albert Einstein in The Other Einstein, Clara Kelley, the woman who encouraged Andrew Carnegie to become a philanthropist, in Carnegie’s Maid, and Agatha Christie, mystery writer supreme, in The Mystery of Mrs. Christie. Her other books include The Only Woman in the Room about Hedy Lamarr and her invention, Lady Clementine about Winston Churchill’s wife who also happened to be related to the Mitford family, and The Personal Librarian about Belle da Costa Greene, the personal librarian to J.P. Morgan.