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Editorial Content for When We Lost Our Heads

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Sarah Rachel Egelman

Heather O’Neill’s new novel, WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS, is proof positive that deadly, serious themes can be examined in a really entertaining book. Full of decadence and larger-than-life characters, fantastic reveals and exciting plot turns, it is a marvelous read that dazzles and then challenges. Read More

Teaser

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

Promo

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

About the Book

“Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive.”

Charismatic Marie Antoine is the daughter of the richest man in 19th-century Montreal. She has everything she wants, except for a best friend --- until clever, scheming Sadie Arnett moves to the neighborhood. Immediately united by their passion and intensity, Marie and Sadie attract and repel each other in ways that thrill them both. Their games soon become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity. And when a singular event brings them back together, the dizzying effects will upend the city.

Traveling from a repressive finishing school to a vibrant brothel, taking readers firsthand into the brutality of factory life and the opulent lives of Montreal’s wealthy, WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS dazzlingly explores gender, sex, desire, class and the terrifying power of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.

Audiobook available, read by Jeanna Phillips

Editorial Content for The Day He Left: A Violent Crimes Investigation Team Mystery

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

Annie Behrens and her husband, Paul, can go days without seeing each other. He is a middle school teacher, and she is a nurse working the second shift. On the day that Paul leaves for work in the morning and disappears, Annie has not seen him for nearly three days. Even though their work schedules make their lives like two ships passing in the night --- which has been taking a toll on their marriage and their two teenaged children --- Annie is still quite surprised when Paul’s principal calls to see how her husband is feeling. Read More

Teaser

Annie has fallen out of the habit of listening to her husband. She and Paul have been married for a long time; it's easy to nod as he drones on. That becomes a problem, of course, when Paul disappears and the police have questions. Was Paul having issues at work? Is there any reason to think he might harm himself? Annie doesn't know. But someone does. An unsettling photo found amongst Paul's things turns the investigation toward his job as a middle school teacher and a troubled girl who is hiding secrets of her own. But what exactly happened to Paul on the day he left for work and never made it to the classroom? Is his disappearance related to a local heroin trafficking operation?

Promo

Annie has fallen out of the habit of listening to her husband. She and Paul have been married for a long time; it's easy to nod as he drones on. That becomes a problem, of course, when Paul disappears and the police have questions. Was Paul having issues at work? Is there any reason to think he might harm himself? Annie doesn't know. But someone does. An unsettling photo found amongst Paul's things turns the investigation toward his job as a middle school teacher and a troubled girl who is hiding secrets of her own. But what exactly happened to Paul on the day he left for work and never made it to the classroom? Is his disappearance related to a local heroin trafficking operation?

About the Book

After he was gone, the only things left behind were secrets.

Annie has fallen out of the habit of listening to her husband. She and Paul have been married for a long time; it's easy to nod as he drones on, responding to his voice while completely ignoring every word he says. That becomes a problem, of course, when Paul disappears and the police have questions. Was Paul having issues at work? Is there any reason to think he might harm himself? Annie doesn't know.

But someone does.

An unsettling photo found amongst Paul's things turns the investigation toward his job as a middle school teacher and a troubled girl who is hiding secrets of her own. But what exactly happened to Paul on the day he left for work and never made it to the classroom? Is his disappearance related to a local heroin trafficking operation? As Eddie Mahler and the members of the Santa Rosa Violent Crime Investigations Team rush to find the teacher, they discover the members of his family have hidden lives of their own and that Paul may not have been running away but toward something that could ruin his career and marriage --- and even cost his life.

Audiobook available, read by Laura Jennings

Editorial Content for The Way from Here

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Pamela Kramer

A touching story filled with family secrets, THE WAY FROM HERE takes us on a journey as we witness family interactions now and decades in the past. Read More

Teaser

Growing up, the Anderson sisters could not have been more different. Susie had an adventurous life, while Camilla --- Mills --- followed a safer path. When Susie suddenly dies, Mills falls apart. Until she receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her estranged sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family. Their mother Margaret has secrets of her own. When living in Swinging Sixties London, she too made a decision about her life that not only haunts her, but will reverberate through the generations. One family, three very different women. What choices and secrets connect them?

Promo

Growing up, the Anderson sisters could not have been more different. Susie had an adventurous life, while Camilla --- Mills --- followed a safer path. When Susie suddenly dies, Mills falls apart. Until she receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her estranged sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family. Their mother Margaret has secrets of her own. When living in Swinging Sixties London, she too made a decision about her life that not only haunts her, but will reverberate through the generations. One family, three very different women. What choices and secrets connect them?

About the Book

Three generations of women. Three generations worth of secrets. Will a cache of letters from beyond the grave hold the key to unravelling them all? The answer to that question lies at the heart of this addictive and atmospheric novel from the author of THE HOUSE OF BRIDES.

Growing up, the Anderson sisters could not have been more different. Susie, the wild one, had an adventurous life while Camilla --- Mills --- followed a safer path. When Susie suddenly dies, Mills falls apart. Until she receives a bundle of mysterious letters from her estranged sister to be read in the case of her death. Each letter instructs her to visit a place special to Susie, both to spread her ashes but also to uncover some truths Susie has long kept hidden from her family.

Their mother Margaret has secrets of her own. When living in Swinging Sixties London, she too made a decision about her life that not only haunts her, but will reverberate through the generations.

One family, three very different women. What choices and secrets connect them? In this novel of truth and lies, concealment and regret, Jane Cockram flips the looking glass to expose our true face, revealing the deep lines of deception that can run through families and how the people we love the most often have the most to hide.

Audiobook available, read by Brigid Lohrey

March 4, 2022

I am thoroughly enjoying THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by Brendan Slocumb. The protagonist plays the violin and shares the challenges of being Black in the concert world. He is playing a violin that was stashed in his grandmother's attic. Now it's been found to be a prized Stradivarius, and its ownership is being questioned. When his great-great grandfather took possession of it, he was a slave. And now, right before the biggest competition of his life, the violin is stolen. Our last office was across from Carnegie Hall, and there were a number of instrument repair shops in the neighborhood, so it is interesting to read more background on being a concert player and the care and tuning of instruments. I am interviewing Brendan next week, and I want to know lots more about his career as a musician, as well as being a writer.

Which of the following fiction titles releasing in March are you planning to read? Please check all that apply.

March 4, 2022, 642 voters

March 4, 2022 - March 18, 2022

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of March 4 - March 18.

Kathryn L. Nelson

Passion is seldom the end of any story, for it cannot long endure if it is not soon supplemented with true affection and mutual respect.

Attribution

Kathryn L. Nelson, PEMBERLEY MANOR

Carl Bernstein, author of Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom

In 1960, Carl Bernstein was just a 16-year-old at considerable risk of failing to graduate high school. Inquisitive, self-taught --- and, yes, truant --- Bernstein landed a job as a copyboy at the Evening Star, the afternoon paper in Washington. By 19, he was a reporter there. In CHASING HISTORY: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. He spins a buoyant, frenetic account of educating himself in what Bob Woodward describes as “the genius of perpetual engagement.”

Interview: Joel Agee, author of The Stone World

Mar 3, 2022

Joel Agee, the son of acclaimed author James Agee, makes his fiction debut with THE STONE WORLD. This haunting novel depicts an American boy’s childhood in Mexico, ensconced in a world comprised of communist European exiles, local union activists, street children and avant-garde artists like Frida Kahlo. In this interview conducted by Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House, Agee talks about his six-year-old protagonist, Peter Vogelsang, and how he imagined him; why it took nearly 15 years for the book to get published; and the importance of revising and rewriting to ensure that your work is truly “complete.”

Bob Newhart

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

Attribution

Bob Newhart