The Trespasser by Tana French
Detective Antoinette Conway and the partner Stephen Moran have been working the night shift in Murder for a while now. They keep hoping they are going to get a good case instead of the domestics they keep pulling. But one morning, as they are about the leave, they are assigned a case. At first glance it seems like a cut and dried domestic, but as they dig deeper they realize they could have finally pulled the case they have been hoping for, but it may take them places they don’t want to go.
French writes great police procedurals that are also intense character studies. You get into Detective Conway’s head, you feel the paranoia building, and you experience the case through her eyes. I really like that this is a step by step procedural including dead ends, bad leads, and fanciful thinking. Every theory, thought and interview is played out so you have the same information as the detectives and start to solve the case right along with them. This is a great choice on audiobook because the Irish accents really keep you in Dublin; and the reader just has a great voice.
Paper Girls Volumes 1 & 2 by Brian K. Vaughan
Goonies meets Back to the Future meets Total Recall. It’s 1988 and four paper girls team up on Mischief Night to deliver papers because there is safety in numbers. While this does keep them safe from egg wielding teenagers it’s not as helpful with the time traveling aliens. Or the “folding” they fall into and travel to 2016 when they meet one of their future (present?) selves.
Vaughn is the writer of Y: The Last Man (which is really good if you haven’t read it) and when this one was being compared to Goonies I figured I had to give it a try. Not sure why I didn’t blog it after the first volume, but the second was just as fun so I wanted to help get it up on people’s radar.
If you aren’t a graphic novel fan, but you want to try one to see what the fuss is about, if you lived through the 80s this is a good one to pick up. The colors of the art are vibrant (remember all the neon of the 80s?) and the style brought me back to my childhood. And watching these young girls try to wrap their heads around the oddness of the present day is fun to witness. Oh yeah, and there are other people interested in these time traveling tweens and right now I can’t figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad.
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
Alice Love is unwell. At least that is what everyone is telling her after her she hit her head during her Friday morning spin class. Alice has lost ten years of her life. The baby she remembers being pregnant with is now ten and has two siblings. Her husband, the love of her life, the man she remembers being with only the day before, seems to hate her. They are separated and going through a divorce. But how could this be? They were so much in love and she thinks they just have to get back together, but will she feel the same when her memory comes back?
I’m a fan of Liane Moriarty (I’m listening to her most recent right now) and I enjoyed this one. As usual there is a lot going on, and the memory loss, which some authors have not done well with, Moriarty makes work. You find yourself empathizing with both the old and new Alice wondering along with her how things went wrong and how, possibly, they could be made right.
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
Thomas Edison is suing George Westinghouse for patent infringement and young attorney Paul Ravath is representing Westinghouse. Ravath is trying to prove that Westinghouse is allowed to manufacture superior light bulbs because (he feels) there are issues with Edison’s patent while at the same time Westinghouse hires Tesla to improve his alternating current (as opposed to the direct current Edison is installing around New York City.) While we know how things turned out (sort of) this is the story behind the lawsuit that would change the world. We know what electricity looks like today -- but how did it start and get where it is today?
While I read historical fiction I tend to read stories about regular people living in the past. I’m not always a fan of fiction using real people, and this book had numerous real people as characters, but it was really well done. (Should have expected that from the screenwriter of The Imitation Game.) I found myself furiously reading to see what happened next when I easily could have looked up how it all played out. The author makes the story read like a legal thriller with a lot of corporate intrigue thrown in and kept it all fascinating. When you’re done reading the book be sure to check out the author’s website where he does side by side comparisons of what happened in the narrative compared to history here.
Outcast: A Darkness Surrounds Him by Robert Kirkman
In the midst of holiday shopping and to-do lists a mile long I’ve started a really long book on audio as well as started and put down a few others in print. I needed to finish something else to blog so I picked up a graphic novel from my pile and was pleasantly surprised, so much so I just checked out the next two volumes.
Kyle Barnes had a difficult childhood. His mom was a loving and wonderful mother one day, awful and mean the next. People close to Kyle have changed and he finally may know why: demonic possession. After returning to his hometown and helping the neighborhood priest with an exorcism Kyle may finally believe in demons. What he can’t believe, or start to understand, is why he seems to have the power to dismiss the demons from their hosts.
What first drew me to the series was the writer. If the name seems familiar but you can’t put your finger on it Robert Kirkman is the writer of The Walking Dead graphic novels. I wanted to see what he thought of next. Apparently I wasn’t the only one interested, or who liked it, since I just found out (I’m a little out of touch I guess) that Outcast premiered as a television series this summer on Cinemax and was renewed for another season. I’ll have to keep an eye out for it on DVD...
The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
Nina Redmond is a librarian in Birmingham, England who has just been downsized. She really doesn’t want to pursue a career free from books in the new media center but she is at a loss what to do. So meek, quiet Nina does something her friends think is very out of character, she journeys to Scotland to take a look at a bus. And buys it. And moves to the Scottish Highlands to run a mobile bookstore. And learns that while the worlds she finds within the pages of a book are grand, a life lived is so much better.
If you are a sucker for a Scottish accent you MUST listen to this book. The reader does wonderful Scottish and English accents that really make the book come alive. There are romantic elements to the book, and lots of references to books, but at the heart it is the story of a young woman finding her place in the world and working hard for what she loves.
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
It’s 1952 and Darby has just arrived in New York City at the Barbizon Hotel, a hotel for women particularly those studying at Katherine Gibbs to be secretaries like Darby or for models working for the Ford Agency. Darby feels lost stuck on a floor with glamorous models, and she really isn’t enjoying her classes very much. She becomes friends with a maid at the hotel, Esme, who is outgoing and outspoken and takes Darby under her wing. Esme introduces Darby to the jazz scene and a world Darby never knew existed. Years later, in the present day, Rose is living in a newly renovated condo same building as the Barbizon Hotel. Rose is a journalist and learns that back in the 1950s a maid fell to her death from the roof of the hotel and that some of the ladies who lived in the hotel then have never left and live in rent controlled apartments on the fourth floor. So begins the story of the past and present in a building that touches the lives of two very interesting women.
This book really makes the lives of these singles ladies from small towns trying to exist and thrive in the big city in the 50s come to life. The author is really good at breathing life into these characters and making the reader like them in spite of their flaws. Good people will make some bad and interesting decisions when life throws horrible things their way. I also liked the way she make the ladies spark as their younger AND older selves instead of making the older versions of these ladies quiet and cozy.
For fans of historical fiction as well as books in New York City and mysteries too.
The Spinster’s Guide to Scandalous Behavior by Jennifer McQuiston
Lucy is not looking forward to her debut one bit. Society and all that goes with it do not interest her at all. So when her aunt whom she only met once leaves her a cottage in Cornwall (and her diaries on how to be a great spinster) Lucy knows she has to check out the property quick before her father sells her inheritance to a greedy marquess. A handsome marquess who is not at all what she expected, which is only fair because Lucy, a lady wearing pants for their first meeting, is not what he was expecting either.
Winner of the Historical Love and Laughter award from Romantic Times this year I didn’t love this one as much as the last one RT recommended which I read. I’m not a big fan of the ‘being alone is oh so lonely so having a man in your life makes things oh so much better’ ending so that may have colored my feelings but it’s a romance so that’s what I expected. Also I wanted to smack a couple of people upside the head a few times because how could you not know that this person standing next to you was your perfect match?! Argh! The book did keep my interest and I kept turning the pages so all in all it was a fun historical romance.
