Fiction by Agatha Christie
Fiction by Agatha Christie and Sophie Hannah
This book is one of a new series of Hercule Poirot books written by a modern author "in the style of" Agatha Christie. Sophie Hannah is apparently endorsed by the late author's estate, and she does a really good job of capturing the character of M. Poirot while coming up with her own story lines.
In this book, four strangers receive letter purporting to be from Hercule Poirot that accuse them of murdering a certain man, a man who died from what appeared to have been an accident. But M. Poirot had sent no such letters. Still, he will be enticed into investigating, of course.
This was a good story with a surprise ending.
Fiction by Sue Watson
It's been twenty years since Daisy Harrington died in her second year of university. Now her former housemates are being invited to celebrate what would have been her fortieth birthday by coming to a reunion at St. Luke's Campus, Exeter, and participating in a podcast called "The Killer Question."
And by "invited," I really mean "coerced;" each housemate receives a letter threatening to reveal the secret reason he or she wanted Daisy dead if they refuse to participate. And apparently, they ALL wanted Daisy dead. She was quite terrible, by all accounts.
This book was okay, but I didn't really like it. Every character was pretty unpleasant, and the convoluted plot stretched believability past its limits. But it WAS free.....
I also read recently by Amazon Prime Kindle: All the Lies
Fiction by Catherine Newman
This is the sequel to Sandwich, which I read fairly recently. It was shorter, but similar to that book with strong believable characters and honest emotions, but not tons of actual plot. It also made made me vaguely sad, like its predecessor.
One thing I really liked about this sequel is that it showed how the relationship between Rachel, the protagonist, and her daughter Willa had grown closer; in the other book the child had been in a sulky-teenaged-I-prefer-dad stage that was heartbreaking for the mother. I loved seeing that.
Fiction by Madeline Martin
In nineteenth-century England, women had few choices. Even highborn ladies with access to fortunes were subject to the whims of their husbands and fathers, and could be forced to obey these men. A woman could legally be bound to accept abuse, loss of autonomy, or even imprisonment, if the male in charge of her deemed it fit.
In this story, the Countess of Duxbury wants to do her small part to change that. She initiates the Secret Book Society and invites a very few close friends to join her is reading books together, book written by women like themselves.
This was a pretty good book.
Fiction by Samantha Downing
Lottie Moore is an elderly woman who just wants to take it easy and be left alone in her old age. Unfortunately, when you have a criminal past, it can be difficult to truly relax. Complications can keep arising...
This book was surprisingly great fun! (Which you wouldn't expect, given that the protagonist is an old lady who happens to be a serial killer.)
Fiction by Christina Lauren
Jess Davis is doing fine at the beginning of this book. She has her loving grandparents, her daughter Juno, her best friend Fizzy, and her work-from-home consulting job. She's not really looking for love... but then she meets River Pena.
River is a hot guy who frequents Jess's local coffee shop and happens to own a company called GenteticAlly. This company claims they have discovered how to scientifically find your true soulmate! Will Jess and River find true love? Don't answer that; it's not the point. This book is good enough to make the reader (almost!) forget the predictable nature of romance novels.
This was a fun little straight romance, something this author team does very well.
Alice Miller was a Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland as Alicja Englard and lived through the German Occupation war years under the name Alicja Rostawska in order to hide her Jewish identity. She went on to earn a doctoral degree in psychology and to write several extremely influential books on the subject. I have only read a small amount of her writing personally, but I found in amazingly insightful.
In this book, her son Martin attempts to unravel the tragic mystery of how it is possible that Alice Miller, so kind and compassionate to patients and readers for many decades, was actually a neglectful and abusive parent to him and his sister. The only answer is that, like most of us, she simply could not escape her own life experiences, regardless of her intellectual ability. Alice was not capable of being a loving mother after what she had endured, and Martin is trying desperately in writing this book to understand that fact and forgive her shortcomings.
This was not an enjoyable book to read, and it had some stylistic problem as as well. The story itself is incredibly interesting, but (like most memoir writers) the author doesn't tell it in an interesting way. He casually reveals a whopper of a twist at the end, almost as an afterthought. I think Alice's true story would make a great book in the right hands, but this memoir is really about Martin and not his mother, whatever he intended.
Nonfiction by Louise Allen
I categorized this book as nonfiction because that's what it is supposed to be; however, it is at least half fiction. I like this author and her stories, but she writes about things that she can't possibly know the truth about as if they are facts. For example, much of this particular book is from the point of view of Camila's parents. It makes a good story, but it is not nonfiction.
That being said, this is still a pretty good story...
I also read by this author: Milo's Story
Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde
In 1969, fourteen-year-old Lucas Painter discovers several new things: that he loves running, that his best friend is severely depressed, and that he (Lucas) can make a difference in the lives of others.
This was a lovely story with beautifully-drawn characters.
I also read recently by this author: Don't Let Me Go
Fiction by Diane Chamberlain
Diane Chamberlain is one of my favorite authors, and this is her VERY FIRST book. It's been renamed and re-released (originally it was called Private Relations) but the foreword assures me that the author only added an epilogue and didn't change the original manuscript. I'm taking her word for that, since I can't verify it.
In this story, a young woman named Kit takes a new job at a hospital in a new town and moves into a large house in the beach with three other people who work at the same hospital: a married couple and another woman.
There is a fourth roommate, a doctor, but he has been working abroad for a year, and Kit is decidedly nervous when he is due to come back. Everyone seems to love this guy so much, Kit knows, and she is worried that they won't hit it off. She is right to worry, because they actually hit it off a little too well and upset things in the house quite a bit.
This was a good character story, although it's not as wonderful as Diane Chamberlain's later books.
Fiction by Robert Harris
This "ghost" in the name of this book isn't a noncorporeal entity. Instead, the title refers to a ghostwriter.
In this story, former British prime minister Adam Lang has been paid an exorbitant sum for his memoirs and is running close to the deadline when his trusted-aide-tuned-ghostwriter apparently commits suicide with the book unfinished. At that point, our unnamed protagonist ("the Ghost"--get it?) gets the assignment, complete with a promise of a huge payoff if he delivers the finished work in thirty days.
But our friend the Ghost has an nearly impossible task ahead: not only is the existing manuscript terribly written, but also the subject of the memoirs is elusive, able to carry on long conversations without actually saying anything at all. Plus it's starting to look like the first ghostwriter didn't kill himself after all.
This was an interesting book with a surprise ending, but almost no sympathetic characters.
