The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook

The Madstone by Elizabeth Crook, coming out November 7, brings back Benjamin Shreve, the narrator of Crook’s 2018 title, The Which Way Tree. This time, he is writing a book-length letter to Small Tot, a 4-year-old boy, to be read when Tot reaches 19, the age Benjamin is when he puts this story down on paper in November of 1868.

In this work of historical fiction, Benjamin, a carpenter by trade in Comfort, Texas, encounters a pregnant woman named Nell Banes and her son Henry, called Tot, when a  stagecoach stops in his town. The pair are running away from Texas to avoid revenge-seeking outlaws who are hot on their trail. Benjamin selflessly does everything he can to help Nell and Tot, at the same time, falling in love with them both.

Turns out Nell reported to the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of the gang of the Swamp Fox of the Sulfur, a group that has been harassing and committing acts of violence toward black people. Now she and Tot are on the run toward Indianola to board a ship to New Orleans to live with a cousin.

The route to safety is wrought with obstacles including Tot being bitten by a rabid coyote who he thought was a dog. It is said the madstone, a special medicinal substance that when soaked in milk will cure rabies, so Benjamin must head out to the nearest towns to try to find one. This hitch in the plans brings the outlaws that much closer and the escape that much out of reach.

Elizabeth Crook is an American novelist who specializes in historical fiction, in particular the Western. She has  written seven novels, including The Night Journal, which received The Spur Award from Western Writers of America. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.

 Mickey Haller is known for taking and winning nearly impossible cases, and this she said/he’s dead case that has Lucinda Sanz locked up now for five years is no exception. Even better, Haller’s half-brother Harry Bosch is working as an investigator for him, looking for possible cases of innocence similar to The Innocence Project in this 7^th book in the Lincoln Lawyer series, Resurrection Walk, due out November 7.

The book starts with such a walk, which is when the shackles come off and the last metal door standing between the prisoner and freedom opens like “the gates of heaven.” Haller has been able to get a ruling of “actual innocence” in court for a young man who was 14 years into a life sentence.

When Haller’s mail blows up with other inmates seeking to prove their own innocence, he has Bosch work through the letters, evaluating each one as possible wrong convictions. Bosch has narrowed it down to two, and after a little investigation in which things just don’t add up, he suggests Haller make a jailhouse call on Lucinda, who has maintained her innocence all along in the five years she’s been locked up.

However, some people do not want the case reopened. Lucinda’s ex-husband was a deputy sheriff, and his colleagues say that justice was done in arresting Lucinda for his death. Lucinda’s first lawyer does not want to be accused of poor representation. Turns out Lucinda was cornered by her lawyer into pleading nolo, or no contest, to manslaughter instead of pleading guilty or not guilty because if her case went to trial, she faced life in prison.

As Bosch digs into the case and Haller starts to plot his defense for Lucinda, they find a number of problems with the so-called evidence and see a resurrection for their client if they can disprove the gun residue test and investigate the trajectory of the bullets that killed Deputy Sanz.

After Michael Connelly spent three years covering crime in Los Angeles, he started writing crime fiction. Fifteen books into his career, he came up with a new character The Lincoln Lawyer in 2005 in a book with the same name. The book was adapted as a 2011 film of the same name, starring Matthew McConaughey, and is currently a Netflix series in its second season.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 6, 2023.

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

He Should Have Told the Bees by Amanda Cox

A tradition among beekeepers is to let the bees know when their owner has died as is portrayed in Amanda Cox’s latest Christian fiction, He Should Have Told the Bees, which was published August 1. George Walsh brought up his young daughter Beckett alone when her mother Lindy deserted them. George taught Beck everything he knew about beekeeping before he died, leaving the 60-acre farm to Beck but also to someone named Callie Peterson who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Beck suffers from agoraphobia so when her father dies, she has a hard time facing the outside world. She is content caring for the bees, producing honey for sale, and taking care of a horse, a donkey, and some goats. She would rather pay a teen to deliver her groceries and animal supplies rather than to go to Sweetwater, Tennessee, herself. When she learns that she is to share ownership of Walsh Farm with a stranger who leans toward selling the property rather than keeping it, Beck becomes very upset with her father, leaving half the property to a stranger.

Who is this mysterious person who now owns half of Walsh Farm? What should Callie do when she has never even heard of the man endowing her with half his farm? She would love to sell it to finance her own dreams of opening a store to sell the candles and soaps she makes. Furthermore, she has the responsibility to provide treatment for her mother who is currently in rehab dealing with her alcoholism and mental health issues.

When Beck and Callie finally sit down to hash things out, they learn there exists a web of secrets in both of their lives, one of which makes their surprising relationship clear. How can they satisfy both their needs with the Walsh Farm?

Amanda Cox, with a bachelor's degree in Bible and theology and a master's degree in professional counseling, finds she enjoys telling stories and tending her honeybees. Her two previous books--The Edge of Belonging and The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery--won the Christy Award Book of the Year in 2021 and 2022. She lives in Tennessee with her family. 

The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin

Combine one-part haunted house with one-part unreliable narrator to equal a chilling debut novel, The Stranger Upstairs, by Lisa M. Matlin, due out September 12. Sarah Slade, who works as a media influencer and a mental health counselor, decides the best way to start over with her life and her crumbling marriage is to buy and flip a house in which people were murdered because she believes she will make a ton on the investment.

Apparently, nothing fazes Sarah, an unlikable character, as she has chosen to make her bedroom the same second floor one in which a married woman was bludgeoned with a hammer, the  blood stain on the floor firmly entrenched even after decades have gone by.  Undaunted, Sarah sleeps alone there as her husband Joe Cosgrove plays video games until 3 a.m. and sleeps on the couch downstairs in the living room.

Not long after moving in, Sarah begins hearing footsteps in the attic. Then she starts finding sticky notes on places like her laptop. She already knows that the neighbors have long wanted Sarah’s house bulldozed because of the murder that happened there decades ago. In talking to one neighbor, Sarah learns that someone had purchased the home before her, and that woman was missing along with her dog.

Like those before her, Matlin has crafted a story in which the haunted house is just as much a character as Sarah and Joe. A bloody hammer in a cradle and footprints in the dust  in the top-most floor add to Sarah’s belief that there is a stranger in the attic. However, the attic is not the only thing harboring secrets as Sarah and Joe have skeletons in their past as well.

Lisa M. Matlin switched from songwriting as a guitarist in a rock band to story writing. She lives in Australia, the setting for her first novel. She offers a narrative about her own struggles with mental health at the end of the book.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting September 4, 2023.

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

The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day

 Liss Kehoe’s life changed the day her husband’s lover, Ashley Hay, dropped off their baby Callan and never returned in the page-turner mystery The Death of Us by Lori Rader-Day coming out October 3. Never mind that Callan is a “love child”—Liss loved him unconditionally and raised him into the teenager he has become in a twisted tale of love, betrayal, and family secrets.

 

The plot starts 15 years later when a car is spotted in a quarry on the Kehoe family property consisting of the original home in which Liss, Link, and Callan lived until she kicked out Link  as well as the newer home where Link’s parents Patty and Rockwell live. Callan and his friends almost wind up in the quarry themselves when their driver loses control in the same area. Law enforcement arrives and begins a recovery of the submerged car, which appears to be Ashley’s vehicle.

 

Liss had always feared that Ashley would show up one day wanting to reclaim Callan, but Liss could never have guessed that Ashley might have run off the road the night she gave Callan to Liss. Will there be a body when the car is pulled out? If it turns out to be Ashley’s remains in the car, what caused her to drive into the quarry? Was she suicidal or was there something more evil going on?

After the quarry discovery and identification is complete, Liss starts receiving hangups at all times in the night and early morning. Someone paints “KILLER” in red on her white barn. Apparently, her mailbox has suffered an “accident.” She comes home one night to see a light moving around in her house so she flees and calls the police. She and Callan need not only protection but also answers that will put this seeming scandal and possible murder to rest.

 

Lori Rader-Day is also the author of Death at Greenway, a work of historical fiction about a mystery at the home of Agatha Christie where children were evacuated during World War II. Born in Indiana, she lives in Chicago, where she teaches creative writing for Northwestern University.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 23, 2023.

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

 

The Exchange: After the Firm by John Grisham

 Apparently, Mitch McDeere, the protagonist of The Firm (1991), was not finished with author John Grisham as The Exchange: After the Firm is Grisham’s latest legal thriller coming out October 17. This novel answers the question about what became of Mitch and his wife Abby after they revealed that Mitch’s law firm, Bendini, Lambert & Locke, in Memphis was corrupt.

 

The story picks up 15 years later with Mitch and his family – now including twin boys: Clark and Carter – living in Manhattan where Mitch has become a partner in the world’s largest law firm, Scully & Pershing, and Abby is a cookbook editor.

An Italian colleague in Rome, Luca Sandroni, has requested Mitch’s assistance in  dealing with a situation in Libya involving Lannak, a Turkish construction company that has not received full payment for a bridge it constructed for none other than Colonel Gaddafi. Sandroni’s health is failing, and he would like Mitch to partner with his lawyer daughter Giovanna in the London office in hopes this experience would help boost her career.

When Mitch and Giovanna go to Libya to see the bridge to determine for themselves the situation at hand, things go terribly wrong, putting Mitch right back into a situation that endangers not only himself but his family, friends, and colleagues. A kidnapping occurs requiring a hefty exchange of money  that no single entity could cover. The enemy proves to be ruthless killers with a penchant for WARNING: violence and gore.

The end of the tale leaves one to wonder, will there be a Firm volume 3?

 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. Having worked 60+ hour weeks in a Mississippi law practice, Grisham knows what he’s talking about.

Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

The Tollivers have a Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina in the holiday novella Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews due out September 26. Usually, Murphy and his father Jock haul the trees to New York City to sell starting a month before Christmas, but this year, Jock’s health is interfering with their usual plans so Murphy tells his sister Kerry that she has to step up.

 

Kerry moved back home to NC recently after being termed “redundant” in her art agency job. She is reluctant to haul the Tolliver’s small, dilapidated camper to New York to provide a place for her and Murphy to live while selling the trees. But when push comes to shove, Kerry musters up the energy to hall “Spammy” to New York with her father’s truck.

 

The Tolliver family has developed great relationships over the years with the business owners and residents in Greenwich Village where they set up a lot to sell their trees. When another tree company tries to undersell the Tollivers, arranging their business just across the street, Kerry ups their game using her artistic abilities. The competitors challenge back with theft and vandalism until Murphy stands up to them.

 

Embraced by their temporary neighbors, Kerry becomes close with Patrick and his son Austin along with an aging gentleman known as Heinz as well as the retail shop owners. Restaurant owner Claudia feeds the Tollivers and provides restroom facilities while the bakery next door to her provides plenty of coffee and pastries.

 

When Heinz goes missing, Kerry and Murphy make a wide search of the area looking for him. Turns out, there is much that the Tollivers and the residents in Greenwich Village do not know about the elderly man who they think may be homeless.

When Patrick wants to dial up the friendship to romance, Kerry is reluctant, although she isn’t immune to his charms nor those of his sweet son Austin. She and Murphy are supposed to be heading back to North Carolina to spend Christmas with their mother and father; however, a snowstorm along with icy roads threatens to delay their plans to return home for Christmas.

 

Mary Kay Andrews, the Queen of Summer Reads, has provided readers with another holiday novella following her last one, The Santa Suit. Andrews, a pseudonym for Kathy Hogan Trocheck, splits her time between Atlanta and a second home on Tybee Island.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 13, 2023.

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