A Different Kind of Gone

 Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde

https://www.audible.com

Norma is a waitress and a horseback search-and-rescue volunteer in the small town of Sloot, Arizona.. or maybe it’s Sloot, Utah. (The town sits on the state line.) One day she goes out to search for a missing girl called Jill Moss, and she comes face to face with a situation she’s never seen and is not prepared for. Norma has to make a choice that has consequences she can’t possibly foresee. And that’s just the beginning…

This was a really good story that gave me a lot to think about. Also the audiobook performance was great!

I also read recently by this author: Heaven Adjacent 

The Paris Agent

 Fiction by Kelly Rimmer

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Eloise and Josie were agents of the British SOE in Occupied France, and this story begins after their capture by Nazi officials in 1944. Then it goes both forward and backward in time to tell their stories.

In 1943 Elois and Josie undertake separate assignments in France to undermine the Nazi regime, and in 1970 Charlotte Ainsworth tries to help her father Noah uncover the secrets of his past involvement with the British SOE. But what is it that Noah can't remember? And what happened to Josie and Eloise?

This was a good historical novel.

I also read recently by this author: Truths I Never Told You

Undone

 Fiction by Karin Slaughter

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/

At the beginning of this book, Mr. and Mrs. Coldfield are on a Georgia back road at night, driving home to Atlanta from their son's house in Conyers. Suddenly there is something in the road --is it a deer?-- and although Mr. Coldfield swerves, he hits it. It's not a deer. It's a woman who has somehow just escaped, naked and barely alive, from somewhere in the dark woods around them.

Who is this woman? Where had she been held captive? Who could be responsible for such a thing? And are there others? It's up to GBI Agent Will Trent and his partner Faith Mitchell to find out in this graphic and exciting thriller, book THREE in the series.

I also read recently in this series:  Triptych and  Fractured

Fractured

 Fiction by Karin Slaughter

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the sequel to Triptych, and the second book in the Will Trent series.

This story started off with an exciting opening scene: In an upscale Atlanta neighborhood, Abigail comes home early from her tennis lunch and finds a man with a knife standing over her teenage daughter's bloody body. A struggle ensues, and it ends when Abigail strangles the assailant, killing the man with her bare hands. Wow, huh?

Then GBI Agent Will Trent arrives, and he soon discovers that things are not quite as they appeared at first. This was an exciting (buy gory) thriller with several surprises.

Sociopath: A Memoir

 Nonfiction by Dr. Patric Gagne, PhD

https://www.audible.com

The author of this memoir is a diagnosed sociopath. From a very young age, Patric realized she didn't feel things the way other kids did; she couldn't feel some emotions at all and others seemed dulled and blunted. She worried that this meant she was irretrievably bad, and set on a lifelong journey to find out what was wrong with her and what could be done about it. She ended up with a PhD is psychology.

This was a very entertaining memoir to read. Of course, it could be all made up, since sociopaths are also liars, but I don't really think so. It was all very interesting.

Here's something that bugged me: What is up with this woman's name? Is it weirdly shortened from Patricia? Did her parents want a boy? It would have been very easy for her to explain her name in the narrative: Just have someone ask her about it! I mean, don't tell me no one has ever in your whole life asked you why you have a boy's name, Patric! Or is it a pseudonym? Why doesn't this bother anyone else?

Everyone is Beautiful

 Fiction by Katherine Center

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lainie is a stay-at-home mom with three small children who only wants to stay in Houston near her parents when her composer husband moves them all to Cambridge. For him, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but for Lainie, it's just new place to slog through motherhood without help. Will the pressure of life bring the couple closer together or push them apart? And will Lainie ever feel like a person again instead of just Mom?

This is a lovely character story about finding yourself after parenthood has changed everything.

I also read by this author: The Bright Side of Disaster

The Stillwater Girls

 Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Minka Kent

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Wren and Sage are sisters who live in a primitive cabin in Stillwater Forest. They have always felt safe and protected from the outside world that their mama told them is dangerous, although they’ve never seen it. But now Mama has gone— she took their little sister Evie to try to find a doctor because Evie was so sick— and the girls are running out of food.

In the town outside of the forest, Nicolette and her husband Brandt have just been approved to become foster parents. But Nicolette is worried; Brandt isn’t as excited as she about fostering a child, and she has a sneaking suspicion that he might be cheating on her. 

How will these two stories connect? Where are Mama and Evie? And what is Brandt hiding?

This was an exciting thriller with good characters. 

I also read recently by this author: Unmissing

I also read recently (for free!) by Amazon Prime Kindle: Thief River Falls

Summer’s Child

 Fiction by Diane Chamberlain 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

One very early morning on a North Carolina beach, eleven-year-old Daria Cato finds a newborn baby, alone and barely alive with its placenta still attached. She wraps it in a shirt and takes it directly to her mother, an action that saves the child’s life and gives Daria a baby sister named Shelley.

Twenty-two years later Shelley is all grown up and longing to find out where she came from. She sets off an investigation with the help of a local TV celebrity, but what will they be able to uncover after so long?

This was a great story with memorable characters and some amazing surprises.

I also read recently by this author: The Bay at Midnight

The Innocents

 Fiction by Michael Crummey

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In a lonely cove on Newfoundland around the turn of the nineteenth century a family lived and fished. Their only contact with the outside world was a ship called The Hope that came twice a year: once in the spring to bring supplies and once in the fall to haul away the family's summer catch of fish.

Then the parents caught sick and died, leaving twelve-year-old Evered and nine-year-old Ada alone. Knowing no other life, the children were determined to continue their lonely existence of subsistence fishing. 

Although that description seems awfully bleak, this story was surprisingly good. It wasn't exactly happy, but neither was it sorrowful.

The Idea of You

 Fiction by Robinne Lee

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

When Solene Marchand takes her twelve-year-old daughter to see the girl's favorite British boy band she doesn't expect to fall in love. But apparently one of the boys in the band is into older women....

This was a pretty good straight romance with some graphically raunchy parts I had to skim. They are making it into a Netflix movie with Anne Hathaway which should be good.

Thief River Falls

Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Brian Freeman

https://www.amazon.com

Lisa Power is a bestselling author whose new mystery/thriller Thief River Falls is causing a stir in book clubs everywhere. But when she gets caught up in a mystery of her own, will she be able to handle it like the heroine in her book?

This was a pretty good thriller, but I didn't like the ending.

I also read recently by this author: The Deep Deep Snow

I also read recently (for free!) by Amazon Kindle Prime: An Unwanted Inheritance

Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It

 Nonfiction by Greg Marshall

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Greg Marshall was born with cerebral palsy but he didn't know it until he was thirty years old.

Apparently his mother didn't want him "labelled," and just said his bad leg and weak arm were just due to "tight tendons." She felt that Greg could just act like he was normal, and then it would be so. Interestingly enough, it worked somewhat. Greg grew up with a can-do mindset that served him well in many ways. But that didn't stop him from being absolutely livid when he found out the truth.

This was an interesting set up for a memoir, but the bulk of the book was just random disconnected stories, so it's not the kind of memoir I really like.

Triptych

 Fiction by Karin Slaughter 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the first book in the Will Trent series, from which I have read a couple of books before I knew it was a series. (See Unseen, The Last Widow )

This story begins with an Atlanta police detective called Michael who starts working on the case of a dead prostitute in the projects. This wouldn’t normally garner much special attention from the Atlanta PD, but some similarities to other murders in the state catch the interest of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and Agent Will Trent enters the scene. 

Will starts out as a peripheral character but gets to main-character status by the end of the book. This was an exciting (but gory) murder mystery with several surprises.

I also read by this author recently: Girl Forgotten

An Unwanted Inheritance

Amazon Prime Kindle Fiction by Imogen Clark

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this story, Caroline Frost finds a suitcase full of money under her late father-in-law’s bed, cash adding up to over a quarter of a million pounds. 

What would you do in this situation? Keep it all? Divide it among all of the family? Report it to the police?

This was a really good story about how money can cause trouble in family relationships, and how different people’s feelings can be about money in general.

I also read recently (for free) from Amazon Prime Kindle: In the Time of Our History

Island Beneath the Sea

 Fiction by Isobel Allende

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

The island of Haiti was once called Saint-Domingue and was a colony owned by the French. In the late eighteenth century there was a bloody slave revolt, a result of the constant oppression that sugar production engendered.

The story follows one slave woman and her life, first on the island and then in New Orleans after her master’s family flees the island and ends up there.

This novel, translated from Spanish, was tough for me to read. I think it was just the heaviness of the subject matter. I’d say it was a really well written story but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. 

I also read by this author: The Japanese Lover

The Shadow Wife

 Fiction by Dorothy Eden

https://www.amazon.com

This was an old-fashioned Gothic novel: naive English girl falls in love with handsome but unscrupulous foreigner and marries him in haste, only to discover her mistake too late when she is trapped in his family mansion in the middle of nowhere.

It was a pretty good story; it reminded me of romances I read from my grandmother’s bookshelves as a kid. 

(I found this while looking for a different book of the same name; see The Shadow Wife by Diane Chamberlain.)