The Flatshare

 Fiction by Beth O'Leary

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Tiffany Moore is desperate to find a new place to live in order to get away from her terrible ex-boyfriend, but she really doesn’t have enough money for anything decent, especially in London. She ends up signing on to a strange flat sharing agreement with a man called Leon, wherein she gets the flat’s single bedroom on nights and weekends, and he occupies it on weekdays from eight am to six pm. 

Theoretically the two of them will never see each other. But the reader can guess that they definitely will …

This was a lovely little straight romance with great characters. I will look for more by this author!

ONE AND A HALF THUMBS UP

Corpies

 Fiction by Drew Hayes

https://www.audible.com

I'd call this a parallel novel in the "Super-Powered" book series. (see below for the last one of those)

In this book, Owen Daniels (whose sons Herschel and Roy are main characters in the Super-Powered novels) decides to come out of his self-imposed exile and rejoin the world of superheroes. But after so long out of the game, the only team who is willing to take him is a group of Corpies, supers who offer services for corporate hire.

As I would expect from this author, this was a really good story.

I also read recently by this author: Super Powereds Year Four

The Choice: Embrace the Possible

 Nonfiction by Dr. Edith Eva Eger

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1942 Dr. Eger was a Jewish teenager in a town on the border of Czechoslovakia and Austria. Her father was a talented tailor and her mother and two sisters were accomplished musicians. Then suddenly the Nazis were in power and the family was shipped to Auschwitz. In 1980 Dr. Eger is a respected psychologist in El Paso, Texas. This book is about what happened to her in between.

It's a very moving story and also she has practical advice about overcoming trauma.

Postern of Fate

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In this book a pair of over-seventy-year-olds try to solve a mystery almost as old as they are. They take a long time to do it, and the journey is not very interesting. It is probably the worst Agatha Christie book I have read. Still, Mrs. Christie's books are usually so good that I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

I also read recently by this author: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

The Thicket

 Fiction by Noelle Ihli

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

The Thicket is a Halloween attraction in an Iowa cornfield; they have a corn maze, carnival rides, and "haunted" cabins. But what happens if a real-life killer uses the haunted area as his hunting ground?

This is an exciting story that's basically a horror movie in book form.

 I also read by this author: Ask for Andrea

Behind Her Eyes

 Fiction by Sarah Pinborough

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Louise is a single mother and a medical receptionist who meets a cute guy in a bar one night  and feels an instant attraction. Then it turns out that the cute guy is David, the new doctor at her work, and he's married. THEN she makes friends with his wife Adele and generally gets way too involved with both of them. 

These are weird and unpleasant people, but the story is definitely exciting. There are some unexpected elements that stretch belief, but the twist ending is a real surprise!

Always Watching

 Fiction by Chevy Stevens

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

When Dr. Nadine Lavoy meets a new patient called Heather in the psychiatric ward where she works, she hopes to help the young woman heal after a failed suicide attempt. But then she discovers that Heather has been traumatized by a local "healing center" that sounds an awful lot like a cult. What's more, the cult leader sounds way too much like Aaron Quinn, a man who led a commune that Nadine's own family had briefly joined when she was a teenager. But it couldn't be the same guy, could it?

This was an exciting thriller from several years ago and I will look for more by this author.

Please Don't Lie

 Fiction by Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt

https://www.amazon.com

Hayley has experienced a lot of tragedy in the past year or so: her parents died and her younger sister Jenna subsequently killed herself. Then a "true-crime" podcaster got the story and claimed to have evidence that it was Jenna who had set the fire that killed her parents, possibly while strung out on drugs. Hayley is wracked with guilt and anxiety for not helping avoid any of this tragedy, and in this vulnerable state she meets a handsome man called Brandon.

Swept off her feet, Hayley marries Brandon and moves out to the remote mountain town of Crystal River, New York, with him to use her inheritance restoring his family property. But what does she really know about Brandon? And can she trust him?

This was a pretty good thriller with some surprises. 

It doesn't seem like the same style I've read from the first co-author before, so I think probably the second co-author did the actual writing. This is a NEW book that I got on pre-release from Amazon Prime "First Reads;" it actually releases on September 1st.

I also read from Amazon Prime "First Reads": Those Empty Eyes

I also read by (one of) these authors: The Exiles

A Mouthful of Air

 Fiction by Amy Koppelman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of his story, Julie Davis is a pretty young mother of an almost-one-year-old son. She's going about her day in 1997 New York City, trying to tell herself that everything is okay. The problem is, she's just recently emerged from a private mental hospital after a serious suicide attempt a month ago, and she is really REALLY not okay. Her mental state will not improve when she visits the gynecologist the next day and discovers she is pregnant again.

This novel is an affecting and believable portrait of a woman suffering from severe depression. It's hard to read. There was a movie starring Amanda Seyfried, and I would imagine that watching her beautiful face experiencing this much emotional pain would be particularly sad.

It's well written but way too despondently bleak. And the ending is not happy either...

Speak Softly, She Can Hear

 Fiction by Pam Lewis

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1965 Carole and her friend Naomi, a pair of private-girls'-school seniors, go on a spring break trip to Stowe, Vermont, together. They tell their parents --that is, they tell Carole's parents; Naomi's self-absorbed father and stepmother barely notice her absence-- that they are learning to ski. Really, however, they are on a mission to lose their virginities before they graduate with a guy named Eddie. YES they are planning on BOTH doing it with him. Wait, what?

This is a really weird premise to me, but since Carole is slightly overweight and insecure, and Naomi is an unconventional thrill-seeker, I guess it's possible. Then something very bad happens that will affect them forever, and Carole spends most of the rest of the book trying to get away from Naomi and Eddie in order to forget it.

This is a pretty good character story with a great ending. I don't think the title fits the book at all, however. The title suggests a completely different kind of story. It's not a creepy suspense tale, or even a mystery novel. I think I'd call it What Happened in Stowe, or something like that.

Not that anyone asked my opinion...

The Devil's Arithmetic

 Fiction by Jane Yolen

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In this classic story, Hannah, a young Jewish girl in the early 1990's, is kind of dreading Passover. She's bored by all the history her parents and grandparents seem hung up on. But then she's mysteriously transported back in time to take the place of a girl her own age in 1942 Poland...

This was a well-written story that would really help a young person understand the Holocaust.

Secrets to the Grave

 Fiction by Tami Hoag

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is book two in the "Oak Knoll Series" (see below for the first one). It begins with a woman brutally murdered in her kitchen beside her four-year-old daughter. The child is alive, but just barely. It's up to Detective Tony Mendez to find out who is responsible for this terrible crime, but this time his mentor Vince Leone has retired from the FBI and will be available to help full-time. 

This was an exciting mystery with a surprise ending.

I also read recently by this author: Deeper than the Dead

A Well-Trained Wife

 Nonfiction by Tia Levings

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I couldn't get interested in this one.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story, starring recurring characters Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (see The Secret Adversary and N or M?) was not as engrossing as most of Agatha Christie's stories. Still, there was a good mystery and a surprising ending.

I also read recently by this author: At Bertram's Hotel

With My Little Eye

 Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Mirabel is a working actress who left Georgia for Hollywood almost twenty years ago and had never planned to return. However, a recent situation with an increasingly creepy stalker and a job offer for the lead in a series filming in Atlanta has changed her mind. She moves to a nice high-rise apartment in Atlanta with her twelve-year-old daughter Honor and hopes the stalker won't follow them.

The reader can probably guess that is a vain hope; if the stalker didn't come looking for Mirabel, then how could this be a book? But this is NOT a predictable thriller. It had several surprises and great characters. I highly recommend it!

I also read by this author: gods in alabama

The Daughter's Tale

 Fiction by Armando Lucas Correa

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book begins in 2015 with Elise Duval, an eighty-year-old woman who gets a shock from reading an old letter written in German, a language she didn't remember she actually knew. It seems she had repressed some memories from her childhood in France during World War Two, and had somehow forgotten that she had originally been German. Then the story goes back to the early 1930's in Berlin and a Jewish woman called Amanda Sternberg, who gives birth to two daughters and then has to figure out how to save them from the Nazis.

This was a good story, but it seemed to skip some details and leave things unresolved. According to the book jacket, it's "based on true events," so that may be the reason for the dearth of information.

Sandwich

 Fiction by Catherine Newman

http://barnesandnoble.com

In this story a family goes to Cape Cod for week in the summer, as they have done every summer for more than twenty years. There are two grown children and two elderly grandparents. Nothing much happens over the course of the week, but the point is the relationships.

This is an emotional novel from the point of view of an empty-nest mother, which is a perspective I can definitely relate to. I liked the book, and much of it resonated with me. I did kind of wish there was more plot.

I also read by this author:  We All Want Impossible Things

( I KNOW I've read this book, as I recognize both the cover art and the synopsis, but there is no entry for it in this blog. I must have forgotten to log it; how irritating of me! )

The Book of Flora

 Fiction by Meg Elison

https://www.audible.com

This is the last book in the "Road to Nowhere" Series (see below). It was a good conclusion to the series, in that it wrapped everything up pretty well while producing some surprises at the end. Still, it was kind of sad to me; I liked the characters of Flora and Etta a lot and really wanted them to end up happier.

I suppose it's hard to have a happy ending in a post-apocalyptic world...

I also read by this author in this series: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and The Book of Etta

Fleishman is in Trouble

 Fiction by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Toby Fleishman is getting divorced, and he's just discovering the shallow world of online dating when his (almost-ex) wife Rachel brings his kids (Hannah and Solly) to his place unexpectedly. It's their scheduled weekend, but she drops them off them more than a day early and in the middle of night. Then Rachel disappears, even though she was supposed to have retrieved Hannah and Solly at the end of the weekend and taken them to the Hamptons for a vacation. Has something happened to her?

Semi-spoiler alert: Nothing happened to Rachel. That's not what the book is about. The book is about the characters (mostly Toby, but also his friends Libby and Seth, and eventually Rachel) complaining endlessly about their lives and never actually understanding how much they are contributing to their own unhappiness. Also none of them listen to each other, or even seem to try to understand what anyone else feels.

It was really a depressing book.

Saving Max

 Fiction by Antionette Van Heugten

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Danielle's teenage son Max is severely depressed, suicidal, and acting out violently. She is forced to take him to a residential mental facility where she hopes Max can get help. But Max seems to be getting worse instead of better, and he ends up accused of murdering another patient! Can Danielle prove his innocence, as she hopes to do?

This was an okay thriller, but it had a lot of unbelievable elements (especially in the courtroom scenes), and Danielle exhibited a raging case of Hell-Bent Syndrome**, which can be tiresome to read about. 

**Hell-Bent Syndrome

(See The Shape of Snakes by Minette Waters)

This is where the protagonist spends the majority of the book Hell-Bent on solving/getting to the root of whatever the problem of the story is (to the exclusion of everything else in his/her life), while EVERYONE else tells him/her to STOP IT. Many times this path involves the main character getting (or coming perilously close to being) fired, evicted, divorced, disowned, and/or bankrupted, all in pursuit of the elusive TRUTH that he/she is SURE is about to be found.

In real life, this would land our friend the protagonist straight in the looney bin. Think about it: When EVERYONE else's version of reality is the polar opposite of yours, that is called, "You're crazy, dude." (In layman's terms.) But not in the world of the Thriller Novel.

In the Thriller Novel, the sufferer of Hell-Bent syndrome is inexplicably and against all odds proven right in the end, and gets to say "I told you so!" to all the nay-sayers in his/her life who thought he/she was nuts. And then he/she magically recovers everything lost during the downward-spiral portion of the story, like the proverbial country song played backwards. ("You get your wife back, your truck back, your job back...")

Deeper than the Dead

 Fiction by Tami Hoag

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

It’s 1985, and a serial killer is stalking the small town of Oak Knoll, California. Detective Tony Mendez is sure of it, but his supervisor Sheriff Dixon is hesitant to label the murders that way and possibly bring in the FBI. But Tony has a friend in the Bureau who takes an interest in the case, and Agent Vince Leone comes to town on an unofficial basis. Will they be able to solve the case and stop the killer before he strikes again?

This is the first book in the Oak Knoll series, of which I recently read the last.(See below.) It was an exciting mystery thriller with several surprises. Now I have to find the book in between!

I also read by this author: Down the Darkest Road

gods in alabama

 Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book was published in 2005 and I have read it before, but I didn't remember exactly what had happened. Some characters in it were mentioned in the book Backseat Saints (see below), and I decided to go back and read this one again. The only thing I remembered was that the title had seemed problematic; anything referencing "gods" plural is not a great concept for Southern religious girls like me. But I also remembered that the title didn't refer to actual paganism...

Arlene Fleet begins her story by saying that there are gods in Alabama other than the God worshipped in Alabama churches, and football heroes are an example of that. But Arlene had killed one of those little-g gods, and made a deal with the big-g God in hopes of getting away with it. She promised God that she would never again lie, fornicate, or set foot in her hometown of Posset, Alabama. But then Posset, Alabama, came to her in form of her old schoolmate Rose Mae Lolley.

This was a great story with believable characters. I still think the title could use a tweak for the Southern audience though...

I also read by this author: Backseat Saints

The Secret Book of Flora Lea

 Fiction by Patti Callahan Henry

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1939 London, war is raging and bombs are falling. Parents are strongly encouraged by the British government to send their children away from the city where they will be safe. Hazel and Flora, ages fourteen and five, are sent to Oxfordshire, where they are well-treated by the Aberdeen family but still miss their mum terribly. For comfort, Hazel invents a fairytale story of the magical world of Whisperwood. Together, the girls play a secret make-believe game where they visit Whisperwood and have adventures. 

But one day Flora is left alone by the river and disappears! Hazel blames herself, and the police blame the Aberdeens, but eventually everyone concludes that poor Flora must have drowned. Twenty years later, Hazel is working in a book shop and discovers that a woman in America has published a children's book all about the magical land of Whisperwood! Could Flora be alive after all?

This was a good story with lovely characters. I didn't love it as much as I wanted to though.

I also read by this author: Once Upon a Wardrobe

The Book of Etta

 Fiction by Meg Elison

https://www.audible.com

This book is the sequel to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. It continues the story of the post-apocalyptic world where the population had been almost wiped out about a hundred years before by a plague that still threatens the human race, especially the women.

The city of Nowhere, the place where the Unnamed Midwife had taken refuge, is surviving, but there are at least ten men for every woman still. Women who have borne a living child are revered, but many still die in childbed fever. Raiders from Nowhere go out to find Old World goods, and to rescue women and girls from slave traders around the country, and Etta is one of those raiders.

This was an exciting continuation of the tale begun in the first book. The story does get darker and more brutal though. There is one more book in the series that I plan to listen to next.

I also read by this author: Find Layla

Broken Country

 Fiction by Clare Leslie Hall

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1968, Beth and her husband Frank are living in tenuous peace on their farm in England, having only partially recovered from the death of their nine-year-old son Bobby a couple of years ago. But then Beth’s first love Gabriel Wolfe returns to town, bringing his own son Leo who reminds Beth strongly of her lost Bobby. 

Beth is first drawn by the motherless boy, but it soon becomes clear that she never stopped loving Gabriel. In the clash between Beth’s love for two men, tragedy ensues, and the story slips back and forth into the past and present, and on to a murder trial in 1969. But which of the men is dead, and who is the killer?

This was an interesting historical novel with good characters.