Evergreen: A Japantown Mystery by Naomi Hirahara

August 2023

I read CLARK AND DIVISION two years ago and learned so much from the story of Naomi Hirahara’s character, Aki Ito, who moved to Chicago with her parents as part of a resettlement of Japanese people during World War II. In EVERGREEN, the family moves back to Los Angeles and finds that the places they once knew changed in their absence. There is an epitaph at the start of the novel that I recommend you read to get an idea of the enormity of what happened to these people. While I often think of these books as historical fiction, they slide easily into the class of mystery as each one has a murder that must be solved.

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The Connellys of County Down by Tracey Lange

August 2023

THE CONNELLYS OF COUNTY DOWN is Tracey Lange’s second novel, and just as she did so well with WE ARE THE BRENNANS two years ago, she is bringing readers a family saga. When the book opens, Tara is getting out of jail after serving an 18-month sentence on drug charges. This conviction means that she now cannot return to her job as a schoolteacher, which she loved. In fact, the entire time she was in prison, she was drawing pictures for the other inmates and herself. She leaves jail with the oddest person driving her home --- the police officer who arrested her. He always has wondered what she really was doing the night she was arrested, and he thinks she knows more than she is saying.

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Sally H. Jacobs, author of Althea: The Life of Tennis Champion Althea Gibson

In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson, who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. But her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions. In ALTHEA, Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer --- a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century.

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John Glatt, author of Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders

Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity --- but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight. On June 7, 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside. But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light.

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Jamel Brinkley, author of Witness: Stories

In these 10 stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters --- from children to grandmothers to ghosts --- live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect, to remember, to stand up for, and to really see each other, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape not only their own futures but the legacies and prospects of their families and their city. In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief and the meaning of home, WITNESS enacts its own testimony.

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James Rollins, author of Tides of Fire

The Titan Project, an international research station off the coast of Australia, discovers a thriving zone of life in an otherwise dead sea. The area teems with a strange bioluminescent coral that defies science yet holds great promise for the future. But the loss of a military submarine in the area triggers a brutal attack and sets in motion a geological disaster that destabilizes an entire region. Massive quakes, volcanic eruptions and deadly tsunamis herald a greater cataclysm to come --- for something is stirring miles under the ocean, a threat hidden for millennia. As seas turn toxic and coastlines burn, can Sigma Force stop what has been let loose --- especially as an old adversary returns, hunting them and thwarting their every move?

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Alice Hoffman, author of The Invisible Hour

One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. THE SCARLET LETTER was written almost 200 years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community --- an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her? Through a journey of heartbreak, love and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways.

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