Demon Copperhead

 Fiction by Barbara Kingsolver

https://www.audible.com

I have never read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, but supposedly this is a modern retelling. It's not necessary to know Dickens to understand this book, however. The idea that systemic poverty negatively affects children is not new, although Dickens did more to shine a light on it than anyone before him I think. Unfortunately, as Ms. Kingsolver, points out, it's a problem that has yet to be solved.  

Demon Copperhead is a nickname for a boy named Damon who lives with a single mom in Appalachia. He is born into poverty and lives through foster care, neglect, and worse. 

I really loved the characters in this story. The narrator was amazing as well.

I also read by this author: Unsheltered

Appointment with Death

 Fiction by Agatha Christie

http://www.audible.com

This story begins when someone says, "You, see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Hercule Poirot overhears this remark one night in Jerusalem and doesn't think it particularly significant. However, when he later encounters the speaker in Petra, and when someone subsequently IS killed, he must reconsider...

This was a great story with really good characters, and a surprise at the end.

I also read recently by this author: A Caribbean Mystery

The Hike

 Fiction by Drew Magary

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Ben is away from his home in Maryland on a business trip when he takes a small hike and ends up very far from where he expected. Instead of a wooded trail in Pennsylvania, he is... Somewhere else...

This was a very strange book that leaves the reader wondering what is really happening and what Ben is imagining. It was interesting.

Company of Liars

 Fiction by Karen Maitland

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

Subtitled "a novel of the plague," this was an odd sort of book. It follows a group of people in the fourteenth century on the road and trying to get somewhere safe. There's a mystery as well, sort of.

The characters were really good and I enjoyed them. I wasn't sure about the ending.

This is How Your Marriage Ends

 Nonfiction by Matthew Fray

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book is about the author's real marriage and how it ended, or at least that's what I thought. That's what I was interested in reading, in any case. I hoped for more of a memoir than an instructional manual.

Actually it was more about marriage in genera and how to connect better with one's spouse, like a regular sort of self-help book. He was quite scant on the personal details, unless it was about his pseudonymous clients. Ah, well! What's a voyeur to do?

This was a pretty good book with some sound advice  though.

The Secret of Clouds

 Fiction by Alyson Richman

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

In 1987, Katya and Sasha are a Ukrainian couple in the USSR. Katya's recent injury has stalled her ballet career, and Sasha knows he can find work in his field of biology anywhere, so when the Soviet Union offers a chance for some Ukrainian Jews to go to the USA, they take it.

In 1999, Maggie Topper is a young fifth-grade teacher with boundless enthusiasm who takes on the task of home-tutoring their American-born son Yuri whose heart condition makes it impossible to attend school.

This was a good story; I will look for more by this author.

Code Name Verity

 Fiction by Elizabeth Wein

https://www.barnesandnoble.com

At the beginning of this story a young British girl is captured by the Nazis in Occupied France during World War Two. She tortured and starved and forced to write a confession, which she takes as an opportunity to write down her life story, in a kind of convoluted third-person way.

I didn't really like this book, although I did skim-finish it because I wanted to know what happened.