The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

Cormoran Strike is doing a steady business as a private investigator since he solved the Lula Landry murder.  He and Robin, his receptionist, have just about all casework they can handle when the distraught wife of a reasonably successful writer walks through the door.  Her husband is missing, she’s pretty sure she knows where he is, she just needs Strike to go get him and convince him to come home.  Of course nothing is ever that simple.  After searching for the missing man for a few days Strike finds him, somewhere other than where the wife thought he would be, quite dead, quite gruesomely dead.  Now Strike is trying to stay out of the way of the police while also trying to solve the murder since his client is sitting in jail and Strike is convinced she didn’t do it.

I really enjoyed the first book in the series, The Cuckoo’s Calling, and I thought Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling) would have a hard time topping it but she did.  And she did it very well.  I could not stop reading this book on the plane, time I really should have been sleeping, but I was so absorbed in the story I just kept paging through even though I was completely exhausted.  The best part to me was that I had an inkling who committed the murder, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.  When the detective started unfolding his reasoning I had my aha! moment and felt amateur sleuth-like myself.

If you like old-fashioned hardboiled detective mysteries you will enjoy Cormoran Strike.

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

This is the story of 36-year old twins Tom and Savannah Wingo.  Tom has recently lost his job and finds out that he may also be losing his wife to another man.  Already dealing with this two blows he finds out that his sister has attempted suicide again and is in a psychiatric facility in New York City.  Tom leaves his beloved South Caroline to be with his sister and help her in any way he can.  His sister’s therapist, Lowenstein, won’t allow Tom contact with his sister, yet asks Tom to sit down with her and tell her about growing up in the lowcountry so she can better help Savannah.  What follows are Tom’s memories as he tells Lowenstein, a woman he slowly falls in love with, what is was like to grow up as a Wingo.   

I wanted to read a book by Conroy and this seemed to be THE book to read.  Overall it is a sad book interspersed with times of joy, but the main character has such a lovely, witty and sarcastic voice, even the most shocking and depressing memories he relates are made bearable.  While some may assume this is a beach read it is not.  There is a lot here in telling the life of the Wingo clan and his lyrical writing style makes for a slow read because you want to catch all he’s saying.  If you ever visited the lowcountry of South Carolina and want to feel like you have returned, this is a way to recapture the ambiance wherever you may be.

Sleight of Hand by Phillip Margolin

Sleight of Hand by Phillip Margolin

This is the story of a killer lawyer with skills in magic, Charles Benedict, and the private investigator, Dana Cutler, who is unknowingly hunting him down.  Benedict accidently shoots and kills someone and spends the rest of the book killing off potential witnesses and trying to frame another for the murder.  And if Cutler didn’t start sniffing around the scene he may have gotten away with it.

This is a mystery filled with twists and turns as well as a few (we think) red herrings that turn out to be important after all.  Benedict is a sociopath and it’s unbelievable to fathom the lengths he will go to to protect himself.  A great choice on audio because it really moves.

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

Muriel Axon has been in a mental institution for a number of years and was recently released.  She takes on the personas of some of the women she meets in order to exact revenge on those she believed wronged her in the past.  When in actuality it was her abusive mother who probably did the most harm.

I finished this book right before I left on vacation two weeks ago and the only feelings I can bring up now about it is that it was quite strange.  Also, since it was written in the 80s it was interesting how technology would have changed the story.  A few times I was thinking why didn’t someone just use their cell phone?  Then I had to remember what timeframe I was in. 

I wanted to experience the writer, but not read her recent tomes on English history, and she has a very literary writing style which I enjoyed.  The story she chose to tell however was quite odd.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

It is 1686 in Amsterdam.  It is cold, damp and an alien environment to eighteen-year-old Nella who has journeyed there from the countryside to join her husband at his home.  He is nice enough, welcoming and bestowing gifts and praise upon her at their second meeting.  Yet there is something odd going on in the house.  Her sister-in-law is forbidding, the servants are nice but closemouthed and she hasn’t seen her husband for more than a few hours at a time, leaving their union unconsummated. 

To make up for his absence Nella’s new husband has a miniature house delivered and hopes she will be entertained with furnishing it.  She contacts a miniaturist she finds in the city directory and commissions a few small pieces.  The pieces she asked for arrive and so do some more; items that seem to predict events in the household before they happen.

I am still left with questions after finishing this book which is something that I like and I know others really don’t appreciate.  The book is a slow starter, I almost gave up on it, but it is a good suspense story if you can mull through the first seventy-five pages or so.  You learn a lot about the life of a high level merchant in the Dutch East India Company and his family and the lack of power that females had in this time of commerce, as well as religious oppression and the constant public scrutiny wealthy families experienced.

Sound like something you would want to read?  Place your holds now!  The book comes out on the 26th of August.

Save the Date by Mary Kay Andrews

Save the Date by Mary Kay Andrews

Cara Kryzik is busy building her floral business, the appropriately named Bloom, in Savannah when everything, and I do mean everything, seems to go wrong all at once.  She’s dealing with an intense (read: controlling and scary) mother-of-the-bride at the society wedding that could make her career when her dog runs out the door of her shop and is dog-napped.  And who happens to be the Best Man at that wedding?  The darn dog-napper.  This is just the beginning.  Add in ex-husbands, runaway brides, unscrupulous competitors and the trials and tribulations of running a small business.  I will give one thing away; it does have a happy ending.

This was a very enjoyable audiobook.  The reader did a great job with the southern accents and had a nice soothing voice.  She did an admirable job voicing Cara trying very hard to keep her voice calm when dealing with interesting (read: unbearably stressful) situations.  If you like romances that focus more on the life of the main character than the relationship, enjoy dreaming of dream weddings, or just need something light for vacation, this could be a great choice.

Rooms by Lauren Oliver

Rooms by Lauren Oliver

A man has just died.  His family gathers in his home to take care of his funeral arrangements and hear the reading of the will.  Two curious onlookers are anxious to see the family they watched grow up for many years and lost track of when the heads of the household divorced.  All three surviving family members, the matriarch, daughter and son are hot messes and the two onlookers are by turns intrigued and dismayed.  Alice and Sandra are the observers, two ghosts trapped together in the family house.  While they have never been able to really affect the physical world Alice is having some luck lately.  Can the ghosts free themselves from the house?  Who is that new voice they are hearing?  What happened to Alice and Sandra to entrap them in these rooms?

The writing style is unique.  Each chapter is told from a different point of view with most of the chapters being dedicated to the ghosts, both in flashbacks from when they were alive and in the present.  The title of the book comes from the construction.  Chapters are arranged into sections and each section is the name of a room in the house.  The past and present of each room helps shape the storytelling.

I received a pre-publication of this novel when I met the author at an event.  She seemed really cool, the book itself sounded neat when she talked about it, so I gave it a try!  This book comes out on September 23^rd so place your holds now!

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

Eleven year old Michael boards a ship to sail away from the only home he has known, Sri Lanka, to go to England to live with his single mother, a woman he hasn’t seen in four years.  On the ship he is seated at the Cat’s Table – the least desirable table in the dining area because it is the furthest from the Captain’s Table.  At his table sits a ragtag bunch including the two other unsupervised boys on the ship, a botanist and a jazz pianist with an interesting past.  While the ship makes the three week journey Michael gets involved in all sorts of adventures and makes friendships and learns lessons that shape his life.

While I enjoyed this book it didn’t stay with me very well.  I agreed with the author’s observation that the people unworthy of sitting at the Captain’s Table are much more interesting than those that sit there because they are the ones with the best stories.  There are a slew of characters and due to the book’s slim size you meet them briefly, then again many pages later and it’s difficult to remember who is who.  If you have some hours to dedicate this would be a much better read; picking it up and reading only a few pages at a time is not the best way to keep the characters clear.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

The Ice Cream Queen of OrchardStreet by Susan Jane Gilman

Malka Bialystoker is a young Russian-Jewish immigrant girl out looking for her wandering father in the early 1910s in New York when disaster strikes.  She is run over by a cart selling ices and her life takes a dramatic turn.  Severely injured she is hospitalized and abandoned by her family.  The man who hit her feels guilty and takes the young girl in making her part of the family and changing her name to Lillian Maria Dinello.  As part of this new Catholic Italian family she learns the family business, first making flavored ices, then ice cream.  Lillian later marries and helps create an ice cream empire, one that is now crashing down around her in the 1980s amid scandal.

This is the story of an enterprising woman trying to assert her authority and business acumen in a time when women were shoved to the background.  She is smart, savvy and an amazing risk taker and following her story, and the story of her ice cream empire, is a joy.  I knew right off that things aren’t going well in 1980s (the present in this tale), a trial is looming, but that is only part of the reason I kept reading, wanting to know the source of the scandal.  I just wanted to see Lillian, this scrappy, conniving and amazing young woman grow up.

After reading what the book was about I didn’t think this would be my flavor.  Then I remembered enjoying Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, a memoir by the author.  Lillian is a real character.  You love not liking her all the time, you respect her ruthlessness and she has such a refreshingly no nonsense non-apologetic voice it’s great fun to read.  I devoured this book, like my favorite cone of coffee ice cream with multi-colored sprinkles.  I did eat quite a bit of Umlaut ice cream (read the book and you’ll understand) while reading this novel so make sure you have a pint or two handy!

Moving Target by J. A. Jance

Moving Target by J. A. Jance

Two mysteries come to a head during MovingTarget.  Leland Brooks returns to England for the first time in sixty years with his employer, Ali, at his side.  Leland goes to visit his estranged family and discovers that his father’s death sixty years earlier was not due to illness or accident as he assumed, but murder.  Meanwhile in the States Ali’s betrothed B. Simpson is looking into the “accidental” burning of a teenager his company helped incarcerate for hacking his school’s server.  Turns out the burning was probably not accidental and neither were other related deaths.  The teenager reportedly made some amazing new code, and people are willing to kill and die for it.

This was my first Jance mystery and it was probably not a great place to jump in.  There was a lot about wedding planning and not having any background of the characters I didn’t really care about the wedding planning portions.  Thankfully they were very limited.  The story moved after the first disc, and I was intrigued with both storylines.  I didn’t like the voice actor though, her accents were weird.  She seemed to have issues going between American and British accents and her British sounded off, almost a little Australian, to me.