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Reviews

Reviews

by Tara Conklin - Fiction, Women's Fiction

When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, The Love Poem, she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through time. It begins in a big yellow house with a funeral, an iron poker, and a brief variation forever known as the Pause: a free and feral summer in a middle-class Connecticut town. The Skinner siblings emerge from the Pause staunchly loyal and deeply connected. Two decades later, they find themselves once again confronted with a family crisis that tests the strength of these bonds, forcing them to question the life choices they’ve made and ask what, exactly, they will do for love.

by Valeria Luiselli - Fiction

An artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family’s crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained --- or lost in the desert along the way.

by Jane Harper - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback. Their third brother, Cameron, lies dead at their feet. In an isolated belt of Australia, their homes a three-hour drive apart, the brothers were one another’s nearest neighbors. Cameron was the middle child, the one who ran the family homestead. But something made him head out alone under the unrelenting sun. Nathan, Bub and Nathan’s son return to Cameron’s ranch and to those left behind by his passing. While they grieve Cameron’s loss, suspicion starts to take hold, and Nathan is forced to examine secrets the family would rather leave in the past.

by Elizabeth McCracken - Fiction, Historical Fiction

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century, Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is the heir apparent to Truitt Alleys.

by Rosella Postorino - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Sauer’s parents are gone, and her husband Gregor is far away, fighting on the front lines of WWII. Impoverished and alone, she makes the fateful decision to leave war-torn Berlin to live with her in-laws in the countryside. But one morning, the SS informs her that she has been conscripted to be one of Hitler’s tasters: twice a day, she and nine other women go to his secret headquarters to eat his meals before he does. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, and the women like Rosa who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives every day for Hitler’s. As secrets and resentments grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic climax.

by Tim Johnston - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

In the dead of winter, state troopers pull two young women and their car from an icy river. One is found downriver, drowned, while the other is found at the scene --- half frozen but alive. What happened was no accident, and news of the crime awakens the community’s memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river 10 years earlier, and whose killer may still live among them. Determined to find answers, the surviving young woman soon realizes that she’s connected to the earlier unsolved case by more than just a river. The deeper she plunges into her own investigation, the closer she comes to dangerous truths, and to the violence that simmers just below the surface of her hometown.

by JoAnn Chaney - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Matt frantically tells park rangers that he and his wife, Marie, were hiking when she fell off a cliff into the raging river below. They start a search, but they aren’t hopeful: no one could have survived that fall. It was a tragic accident. But Matt’s first wife also died under suspicious circumstances. And when the police pull a body out of the river, they have a lot more questions for Matt. Detectives Loren and Spengler want to know if Matt is a grieving, twice-unlucky husband or a cold-blooded murderer. They dig into the couple’s lives to see what they can unearth. And they find that love’s got teeth, it’s got claws, and once it hitches you to a person, it’s tough to rip yourself free. So what happens when you’re done making it work?

by Katherine Arden - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers --- and for someone to blame. Vasilisa Petrovna finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, the winter-king Morozko and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

by Jessica Barry - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

When her fiancé’s private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, everyone assumes Allison Carpenter is dead. But Maggie, Allison’s mother back home in Owl Creek, Maine, refuses to believe them. Maggie knows her daughter --- or she used to, anyway. For the past two years, the two women have been estranged, and while Maggie doesn’t know anything about Allison’s life now --- not even why she was on a private plane to begin with --- she still believes in her girl’s strength, and in their love for each other. As Allison struggles across the treacherous mountain wilderness, Maggie embarks on a desperate search for answers about the world in which Allison has been involved. What was she running from? And can Maggie uncover the truth in time to save her?

by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Looking to earn some easy cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a test subject in a psychological study about ethics and morality. But as the study moves from the exam room to the real world, the line between what is real and what is one of Dr. Shields’ experiments blurs. Dr. Shields seems to know what Jess is thinking…and what she’s hiding. Jessica’s behavior will not only be monitored, but manipulated. Caught in a web of attraction, deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.