Fiction by Agatha Christie
This was a fun story of the "intrepid young heroine" variety, like The Man in the Brown Suit.
Victoria Jones heads to Baghdad in search of adventure, and finds it when a young man stumbles into her hotel and dies!
Fiction by Hart Hanson
Ex-soldier Mickey Skelling owns a limo service that employs a couple of wounded veterans and the Afghan interpreter he smuggled into the country. At the beginning of this story, Mickey saves the life of Bismarck Avila, a rich celebrity client. Avila makes Mickey an offer he can't refuse, and Mickey ends up working for Avila exclusively. But Avila's last driver was murdered, and Mickey needs to figure out how to keep that from happening again.
This was an exciting story with interesting characters and some funny dialogue. I really liked it.
Fiction by Mary Kubica
Shelby Tebow goes for a run late one evening and never comes home. In the same neighborhood, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter vanish two weeks later. Eleven years later, Delilah is found alive. What happened to Shelby and Meredith? Where has Delilah been?
This story is told in two different time frames, and from several perspectives, keeping the reader intrigued and guessing. The twist at the end was very unexpected!
Fiction by Bryn Greenwood
Audible Original Fiction by Max Barry
Fiction by Connilyn Cossette
This book is a novelization of the Hebrew people's exodus from Egypt. It is the beginning of a trilogy.
I liked it at the beginning but had trouble staying interested as the story went on; I'm not sure if this is because I knew exactly what would happen (it's in the Bible) or because I didn't like the writing style. Maybe I'm just distracted right now, but I didn't really care what happened to the characters.
In any case, this was an okay book but I didn't love it. I'm not sure if I want to invest in the other two books or not.
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Fourteen-year-old Steven feels like an outcast in his small California farming community; he's not like the other kids, or even like the people in his own family, because he's attracted to boys and not girls. He finally finds a group of non-judgmental boys he feels accepted by and takes a camping trip into the mountains with Nick, Ollie, and Suki.
The thing is, the weekend trip begins on December 6, 1941, and Suki is Japanese. The four boys come back to a world where everything has been changed: there has been an attack on Pearl Harbor and the US has been plunged into war. Steven feels even more oppressed in his tiny hometown now that racism as well as homophobia is a problem. Plus his friends are all in trouble: Suki might be sent to an interment camp, Ollie is almost old enough to be drafted, and Nick is being accused of a crime he didn't commit.
This was good character story with a lot to think about. I did feel like the author was trying to force a contemporary issue into a historical setting, though.
I also read recently by this author: Jumpstart the World
Audible Original Fiction by Christian White
Stan Weir is left alone and devastated after the deaths of his daughter (Lucy) and wife (Joanne) in quick succession. But what Stan doesn't know is that a baby girl called Erin was born the same night that Joanne died, and that one day, eleven years later, Erin will begin to remember things about Joanne that she couldn't possibly have known.
Could Erin be the reincarnated spirit of Joanne Weir? Erin's mother Marcy has to find out!
This was a good story but not great. The characters were very good, but there is some stretching of reality in the final plot twist that can't be accounted for in fantasy terms. A reviewer on audible.com goes so far as to call this a "disservice to the reader." (Don't read the reviews on this one, by the way, unless you want annoying spoilers.)
Nonfiction by Maude Julien
This book is another example of a harrowing-ordeal-childhood story. I've read several of these lately (see Nowhere Girl).
Maude's father had a crazy goal of making a "superior" human being, and he had a detailed plan to make this idea happen. He literally purchased a six-year-old girl to bring up and educate, with the ultimate intention of using her to breed his special superhuman baby. Maude was that child, raised in complete isolation in rural France, and made to endure constant endurance tests along with severe emotional neglect.
Many of her father's crazy notions seemed based in Nazi ideas. For example, he believed strongly in Aryan superiority, and taught Maude to play several instruments because "musicians always survive concentration camps."
This story was terribly fascinating and I was really rooting for poor Maude to get away from her lunatic father.
Fiction by John Hart.
This is the sequel to The Last Child, which I read several years ago and have mostly forgotten the plot of. (I mention that to let you know that reading the first book is not necessarily required in order to enjoy this one.)
In this book, Johnny Merriman is a young man living woodsman-hermit-style on a large plot of land his family owns called the Hush. The Hush is a mixture of Carolina swamp and forest, and it is rumored to be haunted by the spirits of hanged slaves from before the Civil War. For Johnny, the Hush is a magical place whose beauty only he understands.
But now there is a billionaire hunting nut who wants the Hush for himself. How far will Johnny go to keep his beloved land? And what secrets does the Hush really hold?
This was a really good story!
Fiction by Christina Lauren
Fiction by Ted and Rachelle Dekker
Grace and her family have spent the last thirteen years as part of a religious cult who believe that the whole world has been corrupted by Satan, and that only they have been spared. Their group lives in isolation in rural Tennessee, behind a red rope that keeps the evil world at bay. They believe they are safe only as long as they remain behind the rope and carefully follow every rule set by the cult leaders, who claim to have received angelic instruction. But Grace's brother Jamie has begun to wonder if it's safe to venture beyond the rope after all...
This was an exciting story, especially at the beginning, but I felt the symbolism got too heavy-handed and made the story less appealing as it went on. Still, I definitely wanted to finish the story and find out what was really going on.
I also read by one of these authors: Forbidden
Fiction by Terry Pratchett
I also read by this author: A Hat Full of Sky
Nonfiction by Cathy Glass
I also read by this author: Hidden
Nonfiction by Cathy Glass
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
Audible Original Fiction by Alexander Kane
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!
Nonfiction by Cheryl Diamond
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!
Fiction by William Maxwell
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.
Fiction by Richard Russo
Fiction by Lucinda Berry.
I also read recently by this author: The Perfect Child
Fiction by ReShonda Tate Billingsley
I also read by this author: The Secret She Kept
Fiction by Stephen King
Fiction by Matt Haig
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
Fiction by Bryn Greenwood.
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?
Fiction by Chris Fabry
I also read by this author: Borders of the Heart