Latest Reviews
Katelyn Thorsen, known as KT to her friends and enemies, is an independent journalist who receives a very specific death threat. Fortunately, Peter Ash has arrived in town to protect KT at the request of his girlfriend, June Cassidy. From the moment of his arrival, he’s thrown into a maelstrom of violence trying to protect KT and her daughter and discover the source of the death threat. Even after June and Peter’s best friend, Lewis, arrive in Seattle to help, this challenge may be too much for them --- with enormous consequences should they fail.
In the fall of 1974, Larry Bird dropped out of Indiana University; returned home to the tiny town of French Lick, Indiana; and got a job hauling trash. It could have ended right there for Bird were it not for two men: Bob King, an old coach with bad knees, and Bill Hodges, a man who knew what it was like to be poor and overlooked. In the spring of 1975, King and Hodges convinced Bird to play basketball at Indiana State University. Four years later, this unheralded team would put together one of the greatest seasons in American sports history. More than 50 million people would tune in to watch the Indiana State Sycamores play in the NCAA finals against Magic Johnson and Michigan State. What happened that night would change college basketball and the NBA. Perhaps more importantly, it would change the members of this hardscrabble team, binding them together forever.
Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes --- and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and now has resurfaced. But Birdie isn’t the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, Calvin’s mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers.
Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing --- doctor, scientist and madman devoted to the study of vampires --- until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that now plague Anneke every night. Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch this mysterious serial killer. There’s a trail of victims across Europe, and Anneke is certain they’re all connected. But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps crucial evidence to herself: infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to her, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola.
What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In THE IRISH GOODBYE, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences. The longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships --- with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town, for which she poses. Interspersed between these longer memoirs are sections of flash nonfiction, a form Fennelly innovated in the genre-defying HEATING & COOLING.
Glasgow, 1979: If it hadn’t been for her wee stupid dog, Sid Vicious, 12-year-old Janey Devine might never have stumbled upon the corpse of Samantha Watson. And then maybe she’d still be able to sleep at night. And maybe her nana wouldn’t be so worried all the time. And maybe Billy “The Ghost” Watson, a notorious gangster, wouldn’t be on her tail --- for it’s Billy’s daughter who was left for dead on those train tracks, and now Billy wants answers. Fear and gossip have spread through the tight-knit community of Possilpark, and while Janey swears she can’t remember the details of that morning, the cops think she’s hiding something. And indeed, there’s something she knows that she’s not quite ready to tell anyone, not even her nana, who won’t rest until this whole thing is behind them.
In a time not so far from our own, society is run by a global AI system. The Shepherd Organization oversees every medical school in the country save one in New Orleans, the renegade Hippocrates, which still insists on human-led medicine. It is the last choice school for an ambitious young New Yorker named Pok. But after his father --- himself a physician --- dies under mysterious circumstances that seem connected to “the shepherds” and their megalomaniacal young CEO, Pok finds himself on a quest for answers that leads right to Hippocrates. Once enrolled, he stumbles upon a further mystery: a strange illness is plaguing newcomers to New Orleans who grew up under shepherd rule. What is causing this fatal anomaly? And how does it relate to the mystery of Pok’s father’s death and his own mysterious past?
A woman sends postcards to a former lover from the idyllic Gold Coast. A chorus of hometown voices gossip about a wayward friend returned. A young girl discovers a hidden box of horrors. Helen Garner is best known for her frank, unsparing and intricate portraits of Australian life. Now, in STORIES, comes the collected short fiction of a singular literary voice. These stories delve into the complexities of love and longing, of the pain, darkness and joy of life, and all told with Garner's characteristic sharpness, honesty and humor. Each one is a perfect piece, but together they showcase a rare talent and a master of many literary forms.
When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of eccentric billionaire Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that --- the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward. Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him and bring his long-buried history to light. Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers.
Beverley, Elsie and Margot are wives of convicted killers. During the sun-drenched summer of 1966, they form an unlikely friendship after the discoveries of their husbands’ brutal crimes. With their exes --- some of California’s most infamous murderers --- dead or behind bars, they are attempting to forge a new future for themselves. They know people look at them and think only one thing: How could they not have known what their husbands were doing? How much are they to blame? And yet, when a string of local killings hits the news, the three women --- underestimated, overlooked, shrewd --- decide to get to work. After all, who better to catch a killer than those who have shared their lives and homes with one?
