Hidden

Nonfiction by Cathy Glass

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Ten-year-old Tayo is taken into foster care right after Christmas. After several changes of address over the first school term, his mother had ditched him with friends and disappeared for two weeks over the holidays, then retrieved him without so much as a thank-you. Then she turned up drunk for court as a final straw.

As Tayo's mother seems to get more and more irresponsible, it's up to foster carer Cathy Glass to find out what's best for Tayo. But there's a further complication: Tayo was born in another country, and he and his mother seem to have come to Britain illegally.

This was a good story with a surprise ending.

I also read recently by this author: Too Scared to Tell

Dade County Death Cruise

Audible Original Fiction by Alexander Kane

https://www.audible.com

This book is the sequel to Orlando People, and I absolutely loved it! This story continues the tale of Gretch Wolgast, now 23 years old and a newly-minted agent in a newly-formed branch of the FBI that specializes in crime related to telekinesis. (It's a thing in these stories; read the first book!)

This is a super fun book!

I also listened to recently by Audible Originals: Andrea Vernon and the Big Axe Acquisition

Nowhere Girl

Nonfiction by Cheryl Diamond

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was an exciting memoir of the “harrowing ordeal childhood” variety. (See also The Glass Castle, Spilled Milk, and The Sound of Gravel for other great examples of this type of story.)

The author grew up all over the world, changing identities as her family fled from an unknown threat, which might have been Interpol, or it might have been in her father's imagination. 

This was an absorbing story!

So Long See You Tomorow

 Fiction by William Maxwell

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1921 Lloyd Wilson is shot and killed outside his barn before he has a chance to milk the cows. This happens on page one of this short novel, and the rest of the book is mostly about why the murder happened.

The story is told in a strange way; the narrator is a boy in town who befriends the son of the murderer. The identity of the killer is never in doubt; this book is in no way a mystery. It's more about a person trying to come to terms with the past and reconcile with his own regrets.

This novel was well written, short but dense. Still, I thought the story could have been told in a less convoluted way and it might have been more easily understood. This is obviously a Smart Person Book,** and the goal with this type of writing is often to make the meaning of the text so difficult that only Smart People can understand. Therefore obfuscation is probably the author's goal, but it makes for less enjoyable reading in my opinion. 

So this book was pretty good but not great.

I also read by this author: They Came Like Swallows

**For explanation of The Smart Person Book, see Imagine Me Gone. In contrast, the last book I read (See Empire Falls) actually won a Pulitzer, but it was much more readable and still had a lot of depth. So we conclude that a Smart Person Book doesn't require these annoying affectations, but the more pretentious of authors just believes that it does.

Empire Falls

 Fiction by Richard Russo

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Empire Falls is a town built around a mill that is controlled by one rich and powerful family, the Whitings. But, like many other mill towns around America, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is almost dead. The mill has long since been closed, the work outsourced to a factory in Mexico, and most of the businesses are shuttered and abandoned.

But the last Mrs. Whiting is still in control. She owns almost every piece of real estate in town and likes to believe she owns all the people too. In particular, she owns the Empire Grill restaurant, and its cook and manager Miles Roby stays at her beck and call, bound by a mixture of guilt and habit to a job he hates and a town he no longer loves.  

Will Miles break free? Or will he stay, and maybe marry Mrs. Whiting's only daughter? This is a really good story!

I also read by this author: Elsewhere

The Best of Friends

 Fiction by Lucinda Berry. 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani have been best friends since they were girls in school, and now that they are mothers their friendship is still strong. Their teenage sons are of similar age and are close friends as well; the boys are in the same soccer team and often sleeping over at each others’ houses. But when a sleepover party leaves one boy dead and one hospitalized in a coma, the friendship of the mothers is stretched to the breaking point. 

Only Dani’s son Caleb remains safe at home, and everyone is looking to him for answers as to what happened to his two friends. But Caleb hasn’t spoken since the night of the incident. What really happened between the three boys? And will their families survive this?

This was an exciting story with believable characters, and it also gave me something to think about. 

I also read recently by this author: The Perfect Child

The Stolen Daughter

 Fiction by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Jill's problems are piling up at the beginning of this story: her mom has dementia, her husband lost his job, and she has a new baby. When an older man approaches her, thinking she might be his long-lost daughter, will he have the answers to her troubles?

I started listening to this story as an audiobook, and I could not STAND the narrator! I couldn't decide if that was why I disliked the book, though. Then I ordered the book from the library and I liked reading it. So... yeah, it was the narrator...

I also read by this author: The Secret She Kept

Billy Summers

 Fiction by Stephen King

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Billy Summers is an assassin who tells himself he only kills bad people. But being paid by bad people to kill other bad people is beginning to bother his conscience, and so he plans to retire. But then he's offered one last job...

This is kind of a familiar setup, but the way Stephen Kings writes is anything but formulaic. The point of the story is the characters, and this book has some truly believable characters.

I also read recently by this author: Joyland

The Midnight Library

 Fiction by Matt Haig

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Nora Seed is having a vey bad day, after some very bad months and several very bad years. She decides to kill herself, but then something very strange happens.

Nora goes to a magical (imaginary?) place called the Midnight Library, where she gets a chance to look closely at the many things she regrets in life (in The Book of Regrets, of course) and discover what would have happened if she had made different choices.

This was an interesting story that made you think. It was less in-depth with the different-choices-different-life idea than I would have liked until near the end, although that's a relatively minor complaint.

I also read by this author: How to Stop Time

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

 Fiction by Bryn Greenwood.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book is amazingly good, and it's also awful.

I realize that doesn't make sense. Nichole Bowman in my facebook book group wrote a fabulous description:

"It made my skin crawl and my heart swell. It went against everything I believe in and challenged my conventional thoughts about love, family and interdependence. It’s one of my favorite books I have ever read for all of the above reasons. It was very difficult to read but I think I’m a better person for it."  

This author writes real characters that you can identify with and believe, and then the characters do things that you think nobody should do, and you understand why they did it.

That's some good writing right there!

So I loved this book, but I don't think everyone would. Many reviewers truly despised it.

Read at your own risk, I guess?

Not in the Heart

 Fiction by Chris Fabry

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Journalist Truman Wiley and his wife Ellen are separated and estranged, but still bound together emotionally by their children, Abby and Aiden. Aiden is eighteen and suffers from a congenital heart defect; he doesn't have much time left unless he receives a transplant. 

Terelle is a death row inmate set to be executed in thirty days who says he wants to donate his heart to Aiden, because he has found God in prison and wants to make his truncated life meaningful. Although harvesting organs from condemned prisoners is an ethical problem (to say the least), the Wileys know the state governor and feel like he just might be able to make this happen. 

But Terelle, who has always maintained his innocence, wants his story told before he dies, and he wants Truman to write it. What can Truman uncover in thirty days? If Terelle IS actually innocent, what about Aiden's heart transplant?

This story was pretty good but not great. I really disliked Truman's character, and some of the plot was too contrived.

I also read by this author: Borders of the Heart

Too Scared to Tell

 Nonfiction by Cathy Glass

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In this story, six-year-old Oskar comes into foster care because he'd been consistently turning up to school hungry and dirty. When social services investigated, they discovered that his mother had actually been out of the country for two weeks, and a few "uncles" are supposed to be taking care of him. Except, it turns out that none of the uncles are actually related to Oskar. Plus, Oskar is sporting a fresh bruise on his face.

Obviously foster carer Cathy Glass is very concerned about Oskar. And when a pair of mysterious men begin watching her as she brings the boy to and from school, men little Oskar seemed terrified of, she is even more worried. She determines to get to the bottom of all this in order to ensure the child's safety. 

This was an interesting story with some unexpected twists.

I also read recently by this author: A Long Way From Home

Anywhere But Here

 Fiction by Mona Simpson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In this story, Ann and her mother Adele travel from their family home in Wisconsin to California, so that Ann can be a child star in Hollywood.

That's pretty much all that happens in the long and kind of rambling novel that gives us the perspectives of Ann, her grandmother, her aunt, and briefly her mother. The characters are well-drawn and believable, but the timeline skips around a lot. It's confusing and nothing much seems to actually happen; then when something actually does happen it is buried in the pile of irrelevant observations. 

I read another book by this author that I liked, but this one I really did not care for.

I also read by this author: Casebook