Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger

September 2024

While I have not read all 20 titles in the Cork O’Connor series, I have thoroughly enjoyed those that I have read. William Kent Krueger has a knack for delivering a new plot while also bringing in enough backstory that a newcomer does not feel lost. Just as importantly, he does not overwrite the backstory for longtime readers.

SPIRIT CROSSING, the latest installment, takes on an issue that I have so many thoughts on --- the marginalization of Native American women, especially when it comes to kidnapping, sex trafficking and murder. Here, the daughter of a prominent Minnesota politician has gone missing, and there is an active manhunt underway to find her. At the same time, Native American women have been disappearing, but the same tactics are not undertaken to find them.

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2024 Anthony Awards

The 2024 Anthony Awards were announced at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, which took place this year in Nashville. The award is named for the late Anthony Boucher, the distinguished mystery fiction critic, editor and author, who helped found Mystery Writers of America.

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Week of September 23, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 23rd include THE ARMOR OF LIGHT, the long-awaited sequel to Ken Follett's A COLUMN OF FIRE, which heralds a new dawn for Kingsbridge, England, where progress clashes with tradition, class struggles push into every part of society, and war in Europe engulfs the entire continent and beyond; THE NIGHT HOUSE, Jo Nesbø's first-ever horror novel, which revolves around a young man who disappears when a telephone booth sucks him into the receiver; BROOKLYN CRIME NOVEL by Jonathan Lethem, a sweeping story of community, crime and gentrification, tracing more than 50 years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood; and CHENNEVILLE, a fearless novel from Paulette Jiles about a man who, consumed with grief and driven by vengeance, undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption.

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Week of September 16, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 16th include ASTOR, an unconventional, page-turning historical biography in which Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America --- offering a window onto the making of America itself; THE LEFTOVER WOMAN by Jean Kwok, an evocative family drama and a riveting mystery about the ferocious pull of motherhood for two very different women; ABOMINATIONS, a striking collection of essays from novelist, cultural observer and social satirist Lionel Shriver; WANDERING THROUGH LIFE, an eye-opening memoir by Donna Leon, who, in a series of vignettes full of affection, irony and good humor, narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned; and COLEMAN HILL by Kim Coleman Foote, the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration.

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Week of September 9, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 9th include CLASS, Stephanie Land's gripping follow-up memoir to her New York Times bestseller, MAID, where she takes readers with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career; David Baldacci's edge-of-your-seat thriller, THE EDGE, which marks the return of the 6:20 Man, Travis Devine, who is dropped by his handlers into a small coastal town in Maine to solve the murder of a CIA agent who knew America’s dirtiest secrets; THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES, a powerful story from Thrity Umrigar about family secrets, a mother's power and the importance of forgiveness; SCATTERSHOT, the evocative, clear-eyed and revealing memoir of Bernie Taupin, the lyrical master and long-time collaborator of Elton John; and THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke, a sensational, page-turning debut novel in which a high-profile female journalist’s world is upended when her fiancé’s name turns up in a viral social media post.

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