The Calamity Club

 Fiction by Katheryn Stockett

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

I languished over six months on the library waiting list for this book, so you'd better believe that I read it right away when I finally got it! (Not to mention it's a "seven-day-book" with no renewals.) It's 656 pages, so it took me more than one day to read, but it was worth it!

This story is set in Mississippi in 1933, and follows a young single woman named Birdie (considered an "old maid" ay 24!) and a eleven-year-old girl in an orphanage called Meg. It's a lovely story with great characters and some exciting plot twists!

I also read by this author: The Help

Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose it

 Fiction by Brooke Averick

https://www.audible.com

Phoebe Berman is about to turn thirty years old, and she's never had a boyfriend. She has a good career and several close friends, but her crippling social anxiety has made it impossible for her to make any kind of romantic connections. Now she's terrified of tuning thirty when she's (gasp!) still a virgin! She's determined to "lose it" as soon as possible...

This was fun little straight romance that had a few surprises!

Her One Regret

 Fiction by Donna Freitas

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Lucy Mendoza is a young mother and a successful real estate agent who disappears from a grocery store parking lot one day, leaving behind her phone, her groceries, and her baby girl Emma!

The police immediately suspected her husband, of course, and media speculation runs wild. Lucy's best friend Michelle is devastated, but she has a tiny seed of doubt in the back of her mind: recently Lucy had expressed regret about becoming a mother, and had confided that she wished to run away from Emma. As a mother herself, Michelle had been both sympathetic and horrified; now she reasons that everyone feels like that sometimes, don't they? Lucy wouldn't really do that... would she?

This was a good mystery story that gave me something to think about as well. The characters were great!

Out of the Easy

 Fiction by Ruta Sepetys

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Josie Moraine didn't choose New Orleans; her mother Louise dragged her there in 1940 when she was just a little girl. She certainly didn't choose to grow up there in the heart of the French Quarter with everyone knowing her mother was a prostitute. But now it's 1950, Josie is turning eighteen, and she's got big plans to leave the Big Easy and start fresh. Will she be able to break out of her mother's shadow and somehow gain respectability?

This was a good story with great characters.

I also read by this author: Ashes in the Snow

Culpability

 Fiction by Bruce Holsinger

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Noah and Lorelei live in the not-so-distant future where self-driving cars are commonplace. So when they take a road trip with their three kids, they aren't too concerned about their safety. Noah is on his laptop sending work emails and Lorelei is similarly absorbed, working on her phone. Seventeen-year-old Charlie is at the wheel, letting the self-driving system do its work, while his younger sisters ride in the back. Suddenly, inexplicably, there is a collision with another car. The family is injured but mostly okay. The couple in the other car dies.

Immediately the question is: who is at fault? Is it the AI system, who was supposed to be in charge? Is it Charlie, who was at the wheel? Is it Noah, who was in the passenger seat, nominally supervising his minor son? There is a serious investigation underway, and nearly everyone in the family feels weighed down by the cloud of suspicion and guilt.

The story is called "culpability," and it is indeed about finding out who is to blame for the accident, but it is more about the family themselves and their relationships. I think it's also about the idea that culpability is not so easily assigned; there can be many levels of fault and more than one person to blame in any situation..

This was good story that made you think; it was not perhaps a completely enjoyable read, however.

Picking up the Pieces

 Fiction by Amanda Prowse.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Nora and Kiki are sisters, but they are not very close. Not only are they separated by a twelve-year age gap, they were raised almost completely apart because of their parents' tragic death when Kiki was only a baby. Nora grew up in boarding schools while Kiki was raised by their grandmother, and each sister felt that the other one had the better situation. Instead, it turns out that both girls are struggling.

Now Nora is on the brink of divorce from her Army husband in Cyprus, and Kiki is back in England fighting major depressive disorder. Can the two sisters find their way back to each other and heal the relationship?

This was a very good story by an author I had not heard of. I will definitely look for more of her books.

Hallowe'en Party

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

https://www.audible.com

Mrs. Oliver, the famous writer of detective stories, is attending a Halloween party in small British village when an adolescent girl boasts that she had once seen a murder committed. Nobody believes her, but when the same girl ends up murdered herself by the end of the evening, Mrs. Oliver wonders if perhaps she had been telling the truth. She enlists her friend Hercule Poirot to come to town and solve the mystery.

This was a good story with a surprise ending.

I also read recently by this author: Endless Night

The Mystery of Three Quarters

 Fiction by Agatha Christie and Sophie Hannah

http://barnesandnoble.com

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.

I also read by this author: The Monogram Murders

Wanting Daisy Dead

 Fiction by Sue Watson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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

Wreck

 Fiction by Catherine Newman 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.

The Secret Book Society

 Fiction by Madeline Martin

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.

Too Old For This

 Fiction by Samantha Downing

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.)

I also read by this author: My Lovely Wife

The Soulmate Equation

 Fiction by Christina Lauren

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.

I also read by this author: Something Wilder

The True Drama of the Gifted Child

Subtitled: The Phantom Alice Miller--The Real Person
Nonfiction by Martin Miller 

https://www.amazon.com

 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.

Camila's Story

 Nonfiction by Louise Allen

https://www.amazon.com

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

Stay

 Fiction by Catherine Ryan Hyde

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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

Secrets at the Beach House

 Fiction by Diane Chamberlain

https://www.amazon.com

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.

I also read by this author: Brass Ring

Ghost

 Fiction by Robert Harris

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

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.

Missing Sister

 Fiction by Joshilyn Jackson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Penny's twin sister Nix died tragically five years ago, and Penny has been floundering ever since. Now she's embarking on a new career as a police officer, hoping to bring some kind of justice into the world and at least partially assuage her guilt for not being able to save her sister. 

But then she gets her very first murder case, and the victim is not a stranger. In fact it's one of the very people Penny holds morally responsible for Nix's death. Penny didn't kill him, obviously, but neither is she particularly interested in bringing the guy's killer to justice. She also wants to keep her new job... or does she?

This was a really good book, as expected from this fabulous author.

I also read by this author: The Opposite of Everyone

Dungeon Crawler Carl

 Audible Original Fiction by Matt Dinniman

https://www.audible.com

What if aliens took over our planet and killed most of the people, and then pitted the survivors against one another in a real-life role-playing video game, broadcast all over the galaxy for their entertainment?

Then you get Dungeon Crawler Carl, a crazily entertaining story of a human and his cat trapped in an underground world and trying to survive.

This was an exciting story that kept me guessing, and it had some very funny parts too!

I also listened to from Audible Originals: Don't Let Me Go

The Knockout Queen

 Fiction by Rufi Thorpe

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This story is about Bunny Lampert, an amazing girl who is tall and strong, beautiful and rich, but also insecure and nearly friendless. But Bunny does have one real friend, a boy named Michael who lives next door, relying on the tenuous goodwill of his aunt. Michael is fascinated by Bunny and cares deeply about being a good friend to her, but he is also quite preoccupied with staying safely in the closet in order to keep his place to live.

This is an incredibly good character story that makes the reader truly invested in both Bunny and Michael. I loved it, but it also was pretty heartbreaking.

I also read by this author: Margo's Got Money Troubles

The Kept Woman

 Fiction by Karin Slaughter

https://www.amazon.com

This is number EIGHT in the Will Trent series, which merged up with Grant County series back in book four (I think) and just kept going. GBI Agent Will is still dating medical examiner Sara Linton (protagonist of the previous series) at the beginning of this story, but trouble is coming...

Will not-quite-ex-wife Angie is coming back to stir things up, and there's been a body found in an abandoned building in downtown Atlanta. Plus, Will has failed to make a rape charge stick to a famous athlete; his months of hard work failed to overcome the mountain of money thrown at the case by the athlete's management. Could all of these things end up being connected?

This was an exciting mystery with several surprises.

I also read recently by this author: Criminal

The Rest of Her Life

 Fiction by Laura Moriarty

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this book, 18-year-old Kara accidentally hits a pedestrian on her way home from the last day of her senior year of high school. The victim, a girl named Bethany who is two years behind Kara at the same school, is killed instantly. Also instantly, Kara's life is forever changed.

The story is told from the perspective of Kara's mother Leigh, and the focus is on the relationships in the family, and the relationships between the family and the small town they live in. It's a very good character story that gives the reader a lot to think about.

I also read by this author: The Chaperone

If We Make it Home

 Fiction by Christina Suzann Nelson

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This was a good story about a group of college friends who reunite after 25 years and then inexplicably go on a survival trip together in Oregon wilderness. I liked the characters a lot.

I also read by this author: What Happens Next

The Eden Pruitt Series

The Fabrication of Eden Pruitt, The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, and The Retribution of Eden Pruitt
Fiction by K.E. Ganshert

https://www.amazon.com https://www.amazon.com 

https://www.amazon.com https://www.amazon.com

This is a fast-paced thriller of a series with a lot of plot twists. Book one introduces us to Eden Pruitt, who has about to turn eighteen as has just moved from California to Iowa to start her senior year. But on her first day at her new school a bunch of weird things happen, culminating in the disappearance of her parents and her discovery that she has (sort-of) super powers. Plus she's met a hot boy named Cassian, who could be a helpful friend or a dangerous enemy...

I don't want to give away too much because things change throughout the books, and almost everything after the first few chapters of book one would be a spoiler. This is a good series from an author I had never heard of.