The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Laurel Nicholson is sitting up in a treehouse bemoaning her teenage existence when she notices a stranger come up the walk.  Her mother exits the kitchen holding her youngest, her two year old son, and a knife to cut his birthday cake.  The man calls to her mother and reaches for her.  She reacts by stabbing him, fatally, with the cake knife.  Laurel is told to never speak of the incident after she tells the authorities what she saw.  Her siblings don’t know what happened that day in the garden and she puts it (mostly) out of her mind.  Yet when her mother is quite elderly and suffering from dementia Laurel remembers the incident because certain things her mother is saying don’t quiet make sense.  What secrets is her mother keeping?

If you are a Kate Morton fan you will not be disappointed.  I think this is her best novel yet.  While she brings in elements from her previous books (which I can’t name here because I’ll give things away) she combines them in a fresh new way to write a really intriguing family drama.

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

This book is considered Science Fiction simply because Maxon is an expert in robotics that is on his way to the moon to set his robots in motion to build an outpost there.  But what this book really is about is family.  How the perfect seeming family is never perfect and it’s the imperfections that make families and relationships so wonderful.

Sunny has the ideal suburban life.  She is slim, blonde and on all the right boards.  She has her son on all the correct medications for his Autism.  She is pregnant with her second child.  She has a wonderful husband who is an astronaut.  All is well in her universe until the car accident that knocks the wig from her head and causes her to look at her perfect life and face facts.  Perfection is highly overrated.

I loved this book.  I listened to it and found myself driving around more than necessary to listen just a little bit more.  It’s fun, funny and thought provoking.  The characters are wonderfully drawn and I really wish that I could know them all.

Containment by Christian Cantrell

Containment by Christian Cantrell

In the future humans have started a colony on the planet with gravity most like our own – Venus.  An enclosed colony has been created because of the harshness of the environment.  Only one problem baffles the colonists, how to create more oxygen so they can increase their population.  This problem is the focus of Arik’s work.  He is one of the hundred babies born to Gen V, the first group of colonists born on Venus.  The colony will not currently support more life.

The book opens with Arik recovering from an accident that occurred outside while suited up.  He has no memory of the incident that happened months previous.  But when he awakens he finds his wife is pregnant and if he doesn’t solve the air problem soon his child will not be able to survive.  He hopes that supplies can be sent from Earth to give him more time, but air can’t be sent from Earth – contact has been lost.

This is more psychological thriller than SciFi exploration.  I want to say so much more, about how I was really impressed with how the story unfolded and why…but that would give away too much.  If you want a well-crafted story with a mystery and a moral quandary to chew over through its pages give this one a try.

The Deep Zone by James M. Tabor

The Deep Zone by James M. Tabor

After listening to this book I know there is one thing I never want to try.  I never want to attempt journeying into a supercave.  Or any type of cave that requires me to go underwater for long stretches, cross areas of corrosive acid pools on teeny tiny ledges, or scuttle sideways, barely fitting through small crevasses not knowing if I can get back out.  Not my idea of fun.  However, perfectly enjoyable to listen to knowing I will NEVER find myself in a situation even slightly similar.

ACE is a highly contagious and absolutely awful infection that makes everything we already know of seem tame.  It has popped up in Afghanistan in American military hospitals and it is only a matter of time before it spreads.  No known antibiotics have much of an effect.  There was a lab that was working on a new strain of antibiotics, but their research was stopped after their lead scientist left in a cloud of impropriety.  Now they need her to continue her research and fast.  The problem is that the source of all her research, nicknamed moon milk, is depleted, and the only place on earth to find more is miles down into a supercave beneath the Mexican jungle.

The author is a renowned caver who has written non-fiction articles and a book on the subject so he knows of what he speaks.  The detail and urgency he creates makes you want to keep reading.  I have to admit that about halfway through I knew something “wrong” was going on, and I knew what it was, but there were so many layers of intrigue it was okay that I figured out one plotline before the others came to light.

Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

Only Superhuman by Christopher L. Bennett

What if superheroes were real?  In this version of our future they are.  These Troubleshooters are genetically and robotically modified humans that use their powers to patrol the non-Earth entities – foremost the asteroid belt.  Emerald Blaze is a Troubleshooter who has just lost her mentor while battling against terrorists.  Depressed and a little self-destructive, she begins to re-examine her life and the role of the Troubleshooters just in time for a new leader to change the rules and make her question everything and everyone around her.

I wanted to like this book.  I really did.  The author mentions in the afterword that he originally conceived it as a graphic novel.  It may have worked better that way.  I usually can’t tell if an author of one gender has a main character of the other, but in this book it was definitely a man trying to write as a strong woman.  She was just off.  And the writing was too in your face.  You know her moral motivations for certain actions above and beyond what you needed to know because the author kept coming back to it.  And yet other things she did, I have no clue why she did them.   

The line from Spiderman kept ringing in my ears – with great power comes great responsibility – and it was quoted a number of times in the book as well.  I just wish it came together better.

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

A man lives a solitary life tending to his orchards in the Pacific Northwest.  It is a quiet life, but one that suits him.  One day, while out tending his trees, he spies two young girls.  They are feral things not wanting to come too close.  He feels sorry for them in their obviously pregnant states and starts to feed them and care for them.  This is their story.

This novel is a wonderful character study.  Some of the most interesting characters I’ve met lately are in this book.  In many ways they style of storytelling is understated but this is also an epic in its sweeping style though it follows very few characters.  A story of family, and what that word means and feels like.  Friendship, and how far true friends are willing to go to help one another.  And hope, and how hope can at once blind a man and make him see.

Incarnation by Emma Cornwall

Incarnation by Emma Cornwall

What if the Arthurian legends were real…mostly?  What if Bram Stoker’s book was based on partial truths?  What if Lucy from Dracula was a real person, a woman who is now a vampire, and really annoyed to have her story told in such a way?  This is the alternate Victorian England in which Incarnation is set.

Lucy awakens disoriented, buried in the yard of her family’s country estate.  After clawing her way out of her coffin, and removing a stake from her chest, she goes about her solitary life eating the animals she can catch and wondering what has happened to her.  Eventually she ventures into the rooms of her family’s abandoned house and into her father’s study.  There she finds the manuscript of a book called Dracula by a man named Stoker.  Recognizing elements of herself in the story she decides to travel to England to get answers.  In England she finds others like her, some who hate her kind, and the beings who have shaped the history of her beloved England.

This novel is described as a Victorian steampunk vampire story.  While there are elements of steampunk, like police on scooters and dirigibles patrolling the skies, the steampunk part of the story is almost non-existent.  However, there is every indication that there will be a sequel and I believe that is where the machines will be much more evident.

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

Catherine knows what she is doing is irrational, but she can’t stop.  She has to check her house before leaving every day and if her routine is disturbed she can be an hour, or two, or three, late for work.  Everything has to be just so.  Catherine has OCD and only after talking with her new neighbor is she considering getting help.  Her compulsions all came about because of a former relationship.  She was in an abusive relationship with Lee, who tried to kill her the last time they were together.  He is in jail, but she knows he will be released soon.

I can’t reveal much more because the author does such a great job releasing information bit by bit to really build the story and the horror of what Catherine has gone through.  Told in alternating chapters of her past with Lee and her present we learn what Catherine has survived and marvel at how this broken woman is still able to function at all.  Besides being a great psychological thriller this book is also an empathetic look at OCD, its causes and treatments, and how difficult it is to overcome.  You’ll find yourself really liking this woman and cheering for her every step of the way.

Why haven’t more people discovered this book?!  If you enjoyed Gone Girl or Before I Go to Sleep you need to read this one.  The villains in these books have nothing on Lee. 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Harold Fry has never done anything daring, or strange, or even slightly out of the ordinary.  Yet one day, upon hearing that his former colleague Queenie is dying of cancer, rather than simply post a letter to her he decides to deliver it in person.  By walking to see her.  Across of all England.  In yachting shoes and without a toothbrush.  Because as long as he’s walking he knows Queenie will wait for him.

I was expecting quirky (which I got) but this is a lot deeper than I expected.  Harold’s rather simple life is anything but simple.  As the book develops we learn more about Harold, his relationship with his wife and with his son.  We also learn of the rather large part Queenie played in his life.  This book will surprise you in more ways than one.

Written in a matter of fact style no matter what is being related this evenly told story is a refreshing look at domestic dramas.  I especially enjoyed the observations Harold makes early on while walking on roadsides.  It’s amazing what we miss zooming by at 55mph.  This book will inspire you to walk to the nearest store rather than jump in the car the next time you need something.  At least it did for me.

A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins

A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins

For decades scientists have been trying to beat the Turing test – proving human-like intelligence in computers.  Judges have to determine if a human or a computer is answering questions based only on transcripts, if 30% of the judges think the computer is human, we have a winner!  This test has not yet been beaten. 

A start-up company in San Francisco thinks they have the answer to make computers more human, the diaries of Neill’s deceased father Dr. Bassett.  Dr. Bassett liked to write about his life: mundane things, observations about life, everything.  There is so much material here that the computer starts to sound just like Neill’s father.  Neill starts to talk to the computer as if it’s his father.  But there is one thing that Neill wants to know about, and the computer can never find out about, because no one knows how it will affect the mind that is forming there: why did Dr. Bassett commit suicide?

This is the story of a man coming to terms with his own life, getting to know himself, and getting to know his father.  A man he feels like he’s only getting to understand now that he’s dead and sort of living as a computer.  Only one thing is missing to make the computer Dr. Bassett real: a working theory of love.  An interesting look at what makes us human.