Which means an extra day this year to read all the books coming out in February...
Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little
Film editor Marissa Dahl has had a string of less than
stellar assignments, owing, perhaps to her quirky personality and behavior; she
has a good eye for editing, though, and is hired as the replacement editor for
legendary director Tony Rees on a film depicting the unsolved murder of a young
starlet decades ago. Marissa doesn’t
learn much about the assignment other than it requires her to travel to Kickout
Island, a small island off the coast of Delaware and a long non-disclosure
agreement. Once she arrives, she doesn’t
learn much else about the production, other than it has been riddle with
accidents, firings, and more rumors than she would normally expect on a movie
set. At the hotel she meets two teenage
girls, Grace Portillo and Suzy Koh, intent on solving the murder, drawing
Marissa, who they realize can access “insider information” under the guise of
research for work, into the investigation.
Full of movie references and industry gossip, this sophomore thriller
intersperses a post-production podcast providing additional details into
Marissa’s time in on the set and subsequent film references.
Mercy House by Alena Dillon
Sister Evelyn and like-minded nuns run Mercy House in
Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section.
Once known as a very dangerous section, Bed-Sty is slowly gentrifying,
though not fast enough for some women suffering abuse. Evelyn and the other nuns, who enjoy more
freedoms since Vatican II, minister to these women, helping them in any way
they can, giving them refuge, holding daily Reiki sessions, even hand holding
through divorce and abortions, all of which are strictly forbidden by Canon
Law. When Bishop Hawkins arrives on
their doorstep as part of a country-wide audit of orders of Religious Women,
who realize they must live in the here and now if they are to truly help
people, along with Evelyn’s soul searching and need to forgive herself, and the
possibility of losing everything she has built over the year, makes this a
realistic story with with broad appeal and book group potential.
All the Best Lies by Johanna Schaffhausen
Over a decade ago, FBI agent Reed Markham rescued a
then
Now, that teenager is Ellery Hathaway, a policeman from Boston who has
been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation deeming her fit for
duty.
Reed, having just learned that the
man he thought was his adoptive father, State Senator Angus Markham, is
actually his biological father and decides it’s time to investigate his
mother’s murder, a crime that occurred over forty years ago with a young Reed,
then Joey, lying in a crib in the next bedroom.
With a clear calendar for the foreseeable future, Ellery agrees to
travel to Las Vegas, where the crime occurred, with Reed to discover what
happened to Camilla.
At first, Reed gets
a lot of cooperation from the local law enforcement, but soon gets pushback,
though he’s not sure if they don’t want their resources going to a decades old
murder, or if someone knows something they want to hide.
One thing is clear, what Reed learns along
the way is enough to destroy certain people and the lives they’ve created for
themselves, including his own.
At the
same time, Ellery’s long estranged father is reaching out to her and she must
decide if she is willing to let him back into her life, and for how long.
A growing relationship adds to tensions
between Reed and Ellery as they each struggle to overcome their pasts and shape
their futures.
This outstanding second
entry into a series with strong, complex, compelling characters will appeal to
fans of Julie Keller.
teen aged Abby Hathaway from a killer.
The Holdout by Graham Moore
Ten years ago, an LA jury acquitted Bobby Nock, an African
American teacher of killing his 15-year-old student Jessica Silver, with whom
he was having an affair. Maya Seale, now
a defense attorney was the only original not guilty vote, and was able to
convince her fellow jurors to acquit.
Now, the jurors are reassembling for a docuseries on the case and fellow
juror Rick claims to have evidence refuting their verdict, even though
Jessica’s body has never been found. Rick’s body is found in Maya’s hotel room
and she becomes the number one suspect and not investigates with all the zeal
of an attorney in order to clear her name.
Told in the present through Maya’s eyes, and in the past by each juror,
this legal thriller has plenty of twists and turns, and drawn out tension until
the very end.
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore
At the stroke of midnight each New Year’s Eve, beginning in
1982 as she is about to turn nineteen, Oona Lockhart leaps to a different age,
which she will be for one year, until she makes the next leap. Her first leap is into 2015 when she is
51…but in her mind, she knows she is still nineteen, trying to decide whether
she should go on tour with her band and boyfriend Dale, or move to London and
continue her studies. In 2015, Oona has
no idea which she chose, and spends the year of her first leap trying to settle
into her new life, a life which her mother and her friend and confidant Kenzie
have reached chronological; knowing what has happened with Oona along the way,
they try to ease her into her current reality without causing too much shock. Just as Oona is set in 2015, the ball drops
again and she leaps into another year.
Eventually, Oona gets the hang of leaping, and tries to enjoy being a
club-hopping party girl in one year, and the wife of a struggling restaurateur
the next. Each year, Oona writes herself
a note before her leap, hoping she can be her best self in the next year,
knowing it probably won’t happen. Oona
learns to handle her fate with grace and humor, and learns to lean on her
mother and Kenzie, accepting what they will and won’t tell her. Oona is a heartfelt character readers will
fall in love with as she navigates her fate; she learns to look forward to her
future, even if it is really her past.
No Bad Deed by Heather Chavez
On the way home to her family one rainy night, veterinarian
Cassie Larkin sees a man attacking a woman on the side of the road; Cassie
calls 911 and then jumps out of her car to help the woman with little disregard
for her own safety. The attacker threatens Cassie to leave the woman alone, and
then steals Cassie’s car. Cassie is
shaken as the attacker has her car and can find where she and her husband Sam
live with their two children Leo and Audrey.
The next night, Sam is trick-or-treating with Audrey, calls Cassie and
says “we need to talk” and then disappears.
It seems to Cassie Sam has been having an affair and wants out of their
marriage; but then threats begin, and someone is very close to her family, but
why and who, has something against Cassie, she cannot fathom. One thing is clear, Carver Sweet hates her:
but who is he, and why does he hate Cassie so much? Desperate, Cassie turns to her somewhat
estranged father Red who provides the answers Cassie needs to locate her
husband and children, and to unlock a past that has been kept well hidden. This well paced-plot slowly reveals the
necessary details until everything falls into place for Cassie, a strong
protagonist, who summons everything she has to save her family.
Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes by Kathleen West
Helicopter Mom Julia Abbott lives for her children in the
upscale neighborhood of Liston Heights, Minnesota; all her energies and
activities are channeled toward her children, so much so that when she pops
into school to see if her son Andrew has made the cast list for the upcoming
musical, she accidentally elbows a student which is, of courses caught on a
phone and goes viral, sending Julia into a downward spiral. English teacher Isobel Johnson is loved by
the students, but not so much by the parents; Isobel’s progressive curriculum
pushes the envelope with the conservative community as she explores social
issues such as the motherhood penalty, white savior complex, and explores queer
theory alongside The Great Gatsby. A pop-up Facebook group for parents of Liston
Heights High gives the parents an open forum to complain about teachers, and
each other, proving that it’s not just the students who can be the mean girls
in high school. West lets no one off the
hook as she explores parents, school administrators, and teachers, all profess
to have the best interests of the children at heart, but who, under a
microscope are all being pulled in many directions, not all of which align with
the students’ needs. A frank portrait of
an elite high school and its community shown through the eyes of the
adults.
The Lucky One by Lori Rader-Day
As a child, Alice Fine was kidnapped from her backyard, but
rescued within 24-hours by her policeman father who immediately moved his
family to Chicago where he joined his family construction firm; Alice hasn’t
forgotten the ordeal and feels there is something she knows about her
kidnapping that is just out of her reach and volunteers for the Doe Pages, a
site dedicated to finding missing people hoping to remember an important piece
of her past. When she recognizes the man
she believes to be her kidnapper as a recent missing person post, Alice knows
it’s time to step up her search. At the
same time, Merrily Cruz is searching
for a man she knows as her not-quite-step-father. When Alice and Merrily’s searches and paths
ross, old lies and secrets are revealed and the two must detangle a web of
deception that has been been with them almost their entire lives in this twisty
thriller, the latest from Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark winner Rader-Day.
A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler
Seventeen-year-old Juniper Whitman and her family, mother, Julie,
step-father Brad, and younger sister Lily, have moved to the Oak Knoll
neighborhood in North Carolina; they had, what the neighbors consider, an
extravagant house built on a lot they cleared, to the distress of their
backyard neighbor Valerie Alston-Holt, all the trees, and possibly have damaged
her oak tree in the process: an oak tree that becomes a metaphor for her son
Xavier. Julie, who came from a poor
background, and was a single mother for almost ten years, often seems almost
grateful to Brad for choosing her; Brad is gregarious and outgoing, the owner
of a successful HVAC company he built from the ground up, but he has an edge to
him, such as mistaking Xavier, who is half-black, as a hired hand when Brad
sees him cleaning up his yard, which his family either fails to see or
overlooks. Juniper, who has taken a
pledge of purity, and Xavier are drawn to each other, a relationship they keep
from the Whitmans; when Valerie sues Brad Whitman and the company that built
his house over her dying oak tree, things Brad’s true personality emerges, and
things spiral out of control to the point of no return. Family dynamics are
complicated, relationships with neighbors are complicated, and many social
issues are touched upon: ecology, modern day race relations, and sexual
harassment, in this first modern day novel from Fowler; back stories and
commentary is provided by a first person plural narrator, much like a Greek
chorus, claiming to represent the neighborhood.
Fans of Jodi Picoult and Southern family fiction will enjoy this; book
groups will find a lot to discuss.
Dead to Her by Sarah Pinborough
Marcie is Jason Maddox’s second wife and knows how hard it
is to be accepted into the elite social crowd of Georgia, all the while under
the scrutiny of the legacy Southern belles, yet she can’t help but feel a
little superior to Keisha when her husband, William Radford, many years her
senior, returns from London with his new bride.
Marcia begins to suspect Jason and Keisha have a mutual attraction and
befriends Keisha if for no other reason, than to keep an eye on her. Keisha has her own agenda, encouraged by a
ragtag assortment of relatives, con men and voodoo women, and very few people
are surprised when William is found near death.
The surprise comes when they learn who else is a suspect in the attack,
and who sides with whom, all leading up to a final evil twist that some readers
might think they see coming, but as with Pinborough’s earlier novels, nothing
is ever as simple as it seems.
Saint
X by Alexis Schaitkin
What
begins as a quiet story of a vacation in paradise turns deadly when a teenage
girl’s body is found in a cay and two local men arrested, but then quickly
released; years later in New York, Alison’s sister Claire searches for answers
as to what happened to her sister on the island and learns more about the
sister she realizes she never really knew as she follows one of the men
arrested in connection with her sister’s disappearance.. This family drama slowly draws readers in as
a search for the truth that turns into an obsession. This debut novel will be hard to put down,
but it deserves to be read slowly so as not to miss a thing.
Watching from the Dark by Gytha Lodge
Late one night, Aidan Poole is Skyping with his girlfriend
Zoe when he hears sounds of a struggle off screen. Aidan is desperate to learn what has happened
to Zoe, but delays in calling the police and reports the incident
anonymously. Detective Jonah Sheens is
suspicious from the very beginning and wants to find out who reported the
incident certain it will lead to a suspect.
As the police investigate, they uncover many suspects who might have
killed Zoe in a fit of passion or in a jealous rage. The months leading up to her murder are told
from her point of view, exploring the relationship between her and Aidan, her
roommate and best friend, Maeve and Angeline, and a co-worker Victor who was
carrying a torch for Zoe. As each person
and their relationship with Zoe is revealed, it becomes even more unclear who
may have murdered her. The narrative is
effective, told in alternating timelines, making a good case for several
suspects, but only one was crafty enough to almost get away with murder. This sophomore effort from Lodge is every bit
as compelling as her first thriller, She
Lies in Wait.
