SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
ANIMAL STORIES
| Miscellaneous | Animals make us human |
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BIOGRAPHY
| Bloom, Samantha | Sam Bloom |
| Byrne, Gabriel | Walking with ghosts |
| Christofi, Alex | Dostoevsky in love |
| Kieza, Grantlee | Banks |
| Miscellaneous | Untold resilience |
| Paul, Celia | Self-portrait |
| Walliams, David | Camp David |
Dostoyevsky in love / Alex Christofi
Fiction writer and book editor Christofi provides a novelistic account of the life of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, with a focus on the Russian writer’s romantic life. Christofi traces Dostoyevsky’s miserable childhood, tempestuous adulthood, and novel-writing career, but also introduces readers to the women in Dostoyevsky’s life. They included Apollinaria Prokofievna Suslov, whom Dostoyevsky had an affair with after she submitted a short story to his literary journal, Time, and Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, who met Dostoyevsky after he advertised for a copyist for The Gambler, and married him soon after. Christofi’s approach pays off in his recreations of intimate scenes—“Deserted by language, Fyodor kissed [Anna’s] hand over and over, and they drank hot chocolate together”—and in his revelations about Dostoyevsky’s fiction, as when the novelist confesses, before writing The Brothers Karamazov, “There is a novel in my head and my heart, and it’s begging to be written.” Christofi succeeds in revealing Dostoyevsky’s personality in ways no ordinary biographical treatment could. (Publishers Weekly, March 2020)
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GENERAL FICTION
| Arafat, Zaina | You exist too much |
| Beaumont, Jack | The Frenchman |
| Berney, Lou | November Road |
| Carroll, Steven | O |
| Chase, Eve | The glass house |
| Cook, Diane | The new wilderness |
| Dean, Abigail | Girl A |
| Fisher, Tarryn | The wrong family |
| Harrison, Jamie | The center of everything |
| Hazzard, Shirley | Collected stories |
| Hopen, David | The orchard |
| Hurley, Susan | Eight lives |
| Jenner, Natalie | The Jane Austen Society |
| Jones, Robert | The prophets |
| Kadare, Ismail | The doll |
| King, Lily | Writers and lovers |
| Lim, S. L. | Revenge |
| Lloyd, Ellery | People like her |
| Matsuda, Aoko | Where the wild ladies are |
| McCausland, Vanessa | The valley of lost stories |
| McKenzie, Alecia | A million aunties |
| Menon, Catherine | Fragile monsters |
| Mildenhall, Kate | The mother fault |
| Moss, Sarah | Summerwater |
| Paris, B. A. | The therapist |
| Pomare, J. P. | Tell me lies |
| Riwoe, Mirandi | Stone sky gold mountain |
| Rous, Emma | The perfect guests |
| Thompson, Lara | One night, New York |
| Tsumura, Kikuko | There’s no such thing as an easy job |
| Wilkinson, Gina | When the apricots bloom |
| Williams, Eley | The liar’s dictionary |
| Wyld, Karen | Where the fruit falls |
| Yang, Susie | White ivy |
You exist too much / Zaina Arafat
A particularly bad breakup leads a young woman to reexamine her past and how it shapes her identity and her desires. The unnamed narrator of this novel is a “love addict.” What this means in practical terms is that she treats her partners terribly, engages in a lot of casual sex, and develops fixations on people who are unavailable and unattainable. Reading about her describe her life is a lot like being friends with someone who needs to give you every detail about their exploits in self-destruction and is incapable of heeding or even hearing the tiniest bit of reasonable advice. For some of us, it might be a treat to live vicariously. For others, it’s exhausting. How you feel about this book will largely depend on where you land on this matter. What is most interesting is the way Arafat navigates her protagonist’s complex identity. The narrator is, in addition to being a love addict, bisexual and Palestinian American. She comes from a conservative family, which made it difficult for her to understand her own sexuality when she was younger. Her queerness also complicates her already troubled relationship with her mother. At the same time, this character is living with her female lover in Brooklyn and DJ-ing at clubs where she hooks up with women and men both. This isn’t a coming-out narrative. Similarly, while her mother’s ethnic and religious backgrounds present challenges that the narrator has to overcome, she is, essentially, an American. This is to say that this isn’t an “immigrant story” if that means that acculturating to a new country and new way of life is the narrative’s central concern. Arafat’s protagonist is a messy, complicated character who doesn’t fit neatly into any single “multicultural” category, and that, all by itself, is refreshing. (Kirkus Reviews, April 2020)
The prophets
/ Robert Jones
An epic attempt to imagine a history of Black queerness from the African past to the antebellum American South. In his debut novel, Jones—perhaps better known to readers as the blogger Son of Baldwin—delivers an ambitious tale of love and beauty in the face of brutality. Samuel and Isaiah are two young men enslaved on a Mississippi plantation known as Empty. Isaiah is haunted by fragmented memories of the mother he was stripped from as a child; Samuel became Isaiah’s first friend on the plantation when he was brought there in chains, and their relationship has bloomed into a love affair that sets them apart from the other slaves and disrupts the plantation’s functioning. The plantation’s owner is Paul, a White man who forces his slaves into having sex so the women will produce new slaves. Samuel’s and Isaiah’s sexuality throws a wrench in Paul’s cruelty, and the consequences of their love send ripples through the novel’s vast cast of vividly rendered characters. There’s Essie, for instance, the female slave Isaiah can’t impregnate and who eventually is raped by Paul. She becomes pregnant with Solomon—whom she can’t bring herself to love—and this infuriates Amos, an older slave who loves her and schemes to turn the plantation against Isaiah and Samuel for what he thinks of not only as their selfishness, but their unnatural love. “There was no suitable name for whatever it was that Samuel and Isaiah were doing,” he reflects after seeing them coiled together in the barn they share. Jones spins a sprawling story of jealousy and passion that foregrounds Black queerness, asserting that queerness has always been part of the Black experience—not just in the slave past, but the African one as well. The novel stretches itself to the point of disbelief when Jones dips his toe into that African past, and there are too many balls in the air for the details of life on Empty to cohere into a satisfying plot. For all its faults, though, this is an inspired and important debut. An ambitious, imaginative, and important tale of Black queerness through history. (Kirkus Reviews, August 2020)
People like her / Ellery Lloyd
A British “Instamum” navigates the dangers of fame—and finds herself the target of a killer. Former fashion editor Emmy Jackson traded her magazine cred for Instagram fame with her first pregnancy. Now her life is more breastfeeding than brunches, and she works hard to convince her tribe of eager mamas that she’s barely keeping up—just one of the many myths she’s constantly perpetuating. In truth, she has to be savvy and tough, three steps ahead of everyone else, commiserating with the sleepless one minute, plugging one of her sponsors—perhaps a toilet paper company?—the next. Her husband begins to feel like his wife is always performing, like he barely knows her anymore, especially when she turns their 4-year-old daughter’s birthday party into a public event or ignores her best friend’s messages with a wave. But when their daughter temporarily disappears at the mall and then there’s a break-in at their flat, they begin to worry that the price of Emmy’s fame might just be too high. Someone is posting stolen pictures; someone else is watching and waiting for the opportunity to take revenge. The first half of the novel is a delicious guilty pleasure: hyperbolic descriptions of the glamorous superficiality that we all suspect lies at the heart of most Instagram lives and experiences. But the second half takes us to a darker place as Lloyd explores the pitfalls of living a life on the internet, especially when that life involves kids. How can we ever assume privacy and safety? And when does the line between persona and person no longer exist? Despite a rather melodramatic climax and rushed conclusion, this one will get under your skin. Silence your notifications and lock the doors, then indulge in this delightfully distasteful, cozily creepy thriller. (Kirkus Reviews, October 2020)
There’s no such thing as an easy job / Kikuko Tsumara
In Tsumura’s English-language debut, an easy job is hard to come by. Over the past few years, there’s been a surge of novels centered around millennial women disillusioned with the modern workplace. They’re part of a genre that’s taken the unattainable ideals of late capitalism to task with dark humor. Tsumura’s novel gingerly joins those ranks thanks to a protagonist who’s still recuperating from “burnout syndrome.” After leaving what she thought was the job she’d always wanted, the book’s narrator—a 36-year-old woman who’s left nameless—moves back in with her parents and begins to search for an “easy job.” Essentially a perma-temp, she idly floats from one uneventful gig to another—surveilling a hidden-camera feed, writing bus advertisements, punching tickets for a public park—leaving each one the moment she excels. The irony is that as much as she wants to coast through life, she can’t resist the seductive pull of its small thrills, however mundane they may be. Tsumura’s droll wit is so subtle it’s almost imperceptible. It’s the kind that challenges the reader to pay close attention to the nuances at work beneath the narrative. When strange occurrences begin to tail our hapless narrator, the book takes on an unsettling quality but also that of a cozy mystery. To say the least, it has a strange, almost calming effect, like the serenity that comes from building out a perfect spreadsheet. By the book’s end, you realize you’ve just taken a 400-page tour through the lonely world of entry-level jobs, and somehow it leaves you feeling weirdly optimistic. One thing’s for certain: You won’t have to work to enjoy this book. (Kirkus Reviews, December 2020)
When the apricots bloom / Gina Wilkinson
In Wilkinson’s vivid debut, set in early 2000s Baghdad, secrets and lies mingle as easily as the scent of apricot blossoms and nargilah smoke. Huda, a secretary to the Australian deputy ambassador to Iraq, is forced by the secret police to become an informant on Ally Wilson, the ambassador’s wife, or risk her son’s forced recruitment into the deadly fedayeen, the militia led by Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday. Meanwhile, Ally, whose presence in Iraq is motivated by a search for answers about her long-dead American mother, strikes up an acquaintance with Rania, Huda’s estranged childhood friend. When Rania’s daughter draws the attention of Uday’s cronies, Rania and Huda form a reluctant alliance and later rope in Ally, whose own safety is imperiled due to her being part American, to help protect their families. While the denouement is somewhat abrupt, Wilkinson weaves in the miasma of fear and distrust that characterized Hussein’s regime with convincing detail (“Two can keep a secret only when one of them is dead,” a character remarks sardonically). Scenes from Iraqi life—paying for work with food items, or snacking on “counterfeit ‘Keet Katts’ ”—offer a glimpse into a country crippled by economic sanctions. The richly drawn characters and high-stakes plot are enough to compensate for the minor shortcomings. (Publishers Weekly, February 2020)
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HISTORICAL FICTION
| Maine, Sarah | Alchemy and Rose |
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MYSTERY
| Bennett, S. J. | The Windsor knot |
| Bohjalian, Chris | The flight attendant |
| Bouchard, Roxanne | The coral bride |
| Carr, Mathew | Black sun rising |
| Ellis, Kate | The burial circle |
| Engberg, Katrine | The butterfly house |
| Fairfax, John | Forced confessions |
| Fields, Helen | The shadow man |
| FitzGerald, Helen | The cry |
| Goldin, Megan | The night swim |
| Granger, Ann | A matter of murder |
| Kernick, Simon | Kill a stranger |
| King, Laurie R. | Riviera Gold |
| Leyden, James Von | Last boat from Tangier |
| Lodge, Gytha | Watching from the dark |
| MacBride, Stuart | The coffinmaker’s garden |
| Masterton, Graham | The last drop of blood |
| McCourt, Kellie | Heiress on fire |
| Mina, Denise | The field of blood |
| Phillips, Polly | My best friend’s murder |
| Stabenow, Dana | No fixed line |
| Thornton, Sarah | White throat |
| Todd, Charles | A divided loyalty |
| Yokoyama, Hideo | Prefecture D |
The Windsor knot / S. J. Bennett
British children’s author Bennett (The Look as Sophia Bennett) makes her adult debut with the delightful first in a series featuring Queen Elizabeth II as sleuth. One day in the spring of 2016, the queen is hosting a gathering at Windsor Castle when a young Russian pianist is found dead in a guest bedroom. First ruled a suicide, the death turns out to be murder, and MI5 suspects it’s an inside job by a sleeper agent planted at Windsor by Vladimir Putin. But when the authorities begin questioning the queen’s staff, Her Majesty, whose loyalty to her people is as deep as theirs is to her, decides to conduct her own discreet investigation with the help of her assistant private secretary, Rozie Oshodi. Rozie is impressed with the queen’s keen observations, as well as HM’s ability to plant ideas and steer the investigation without anyone the wiser. As Rozie learns, the queen has had lots of practice. She’s been quietly solving mysteries for decades. Bennett’s depiction of the warm, wise, and witty queen and the insights into her royal life are fascinating. Fans of Netflix’s The Crown will have fun. (Publishers Weekly, October 2020)
Black sun rising / Matthew Carr
Set in 1909, this superior mystery from Carr opens with a literal bang when a bomb planted in a Barcelona, Spain, café blows up a foreigner. The victim may be Randolph Foulkes, an English explorer, who’s been missing since the blast. Mrs. Randolph Foulkes, who suspects that her husband is the dead man, wants to hire a fellow countryman to confirm it—and also to figure out why he left a bequest to an unknown woman. Henry Lawton, an English private investigator, accepts Mrs. Foulkes’s lucrative offer to travel to Barcelona to investigate. Once there, he’s able to confirm Foulkes’s death through a comparison of fingerprints. Identifying the relationship of the beneficiary to the dead man proves trickier. The reported presence in Barcelona of a blood-drinking murderer known as the Raval Monster complicates his search. Carr excels at incorporating early 20th-century Spanish political developments into a suspenseful and clever plot line. Philip Kerr fans will be pleased. (Publishers Weekly, March 2020)
The butterfly house / Katrine Engberg
When health care aide Bettina Holte is found drained of blood in Copenhagen’s oldest fountain, little does Investigator Jeppe Kørner know that he has a budding serial killer on his hands. The very next day, another body is found, similarly drained. Under increasing pressure from his superintendent, Kørner quickly deduces that the murder weapon was a scarificator, a strange bloodletting device. He also learns that both victims once worked at Butterfly House, a short-lived residential home for teens with psychiatric illnesses. The home was closed after a young girl died by suicide and a social worker was found drowned. An expert at narrative sleight of hand, Engberg strews the investigational field with multiple suspects, each shadowy enough to maintain our suspicions. Perhaps Bo Ramsgaard, the teen’s grieving father, is worth a closer look. Or perhaps one of the young people could hold a grudge against the staff, which included the ambitious psychiatrist Peter Demant and nurse Trine Bremen, who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Yet former patient Isak Brügger, diagnosed with schizophrenia, is still under nearly 24-hour surveillance at the Bispebjerg Hospital, as Simon Hartvig, his social worker, can attest. And former patient Marie Birch is now living in an insular countercultural community. Meanwhile, Kørner himself is conflicted about his relationship with Detective Sara Saidani: Is he ready to try again so soon after his divorce? And Kørner’s partner, Anette Werner, is on maternity leave but can’t resist getting involved as well. It’s her work that collides with Kørner’s for a dramatic final confrontation. A satisfying thriller that will please fans of police procedurals. (Kirkus Reviews, November 2020)
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NON FICTION
| Cooper, Becky | We keep the dead close | 364.152 COOP |
| Lowe, Keith | Prisoners of history | 940.5465 LOWE |
| Singer, Peter | The life you can save | 362.5 SING |
| Winchester, Simon | Land | 333.309 WINC |
We keep the dead close / Becky Cooper
A former New Yorker editorial staff member documents the decade she spent investigating the unsolved 1969 murder of a female Harvard graduate student. Cooper first heard rumors of Jane Britton’s murder as a junior in college in 2009, and she was immediately seized by the story, which centered around Britton’s supposed affair with a married professor who allegedly killed her when she threatened to reveal details of their relationship. The more she learned about the young woman, the more she felt “connected to her with a certainty more alchemical than rational,” but Cooper also worried about how far as “omnipotent” an institution as Harvard “[would] go to make sure the story stayed buried.” Only after she returned to New York in 2012, however, did the author begin fully investigating the details behind Jane’s grisly, quasi-ritualistic death. She returned to scouring the internet for information before going undercover that fall as a Harvard undergraduate to learn more about the married professor suspected of Britton’s murder. In the months and years that followed, Cooper covertly interviewed graduate students and Jane’s friends, joined an online group of amateur sleuths, and researched articles in newspapers including the Harvard Crimson. Details emerged that not only complicated the story, but revealed other suspects as well as a tangled web of personal secrets and systemic betrayals on the parts of Harvard and law enforcement. Jane’s story became less about the fact of a murder mystery that DNA evidence eventually solved in 2018 and more about institutional sexism, academic corruption and abuse, and the seductive power of narrative. Interspersed throughout with photos and riveting plot twists, this book succeeds as both a true-crime story and a powerful portrait of a young woman’s remarkable quest for justice. An intricately crafted and suspenseful book sure to please any fan of true crime—and plenty of readers beyond. (Kirkus Reviews, October 2020)
Land / Simon Winchester
Winchester probes “humankind’s approach to the possession of the world’s surface” in this eclectic account. Using his purchase of 123 forested acres in New York’s Berkshire Mountains as a launching point, Winchester explores the geological history of the planet (he notes that New England formed one billion years ago in the Southern Hemisphere) and the legal, cultural, and social issues related to land use and ownership. He details the decades-long creation of Flevoland, a province in the Netherlands built entirely on land reclaimed from the North Sea, attributing Dutch communalism and consensus-driven policymaking to the fact that much of the country is below sea level. Winchester also details debates over indigenous land rights in America and Australia, and notes that Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock, whose daughter, Gina Rinehart, is now the world’s largest private landowner with 29 million acres under her control, once suggested that unemployed aboriginal Australians should be sterilized. Winchester amasses a wealth of intriguing factoids and arcana, though readers looking for a comprehensive overview of the subject will be disappointed. Still, this is an entertaining and erudite roundup of humanity’s ever-evolving relationship with terra firma. (Publishers Weekly, January 2021)
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Carey, M. R. | The book of Koli |
| Cline, Ernest | Ready player one |
| Cline, Ernest | Ready player two |
The book of Koli / M. R. Carey
The first volume in Carey’s Rampart trilogy is set centuries into a future shaped by war and climate change, where the scant remains of humankind are threatened by genetically modified trees and plants. Teenager Koli Woodsmith lives in Mythen Rood, a village of about 200 people in a place called Ingland, which has other names such as “Briton and Albion and Yewkay.” He was raised to cultivate, and kill, the wood from the dangerous trees beyond Mythen Rood’s protective walls. Mythen Rood is governed by the Ramparts (made up entirely of members of one family—what a coincidence), who protect the village with ancient, solar-powered tech. After the Waiting, a time in which each child, upon turning 15, must decide their future, Koli takes the Rampart test: He must “awaken” a piece of old tech. After he inevitably fails, he steals a music player which houses a charming “manic pixie dream girl” AI named Monono, who reveals a universe of knowledge. Of course, a little bit of knowledge can threaten entire societies or, in Koli’s case, a village held in thrall to a family with unfettered access to powerful weapons. Koli attempts to use the device to become a Rampart, he becomes their greatest threat, and he’s exiled to the world beyond Mythen Rood. Luckily, the pragmatic Koli has his wits, Monono, and an ally in Ursala, a traveling doctor who strives to usher in a healthy new generation of babies before humanity dies out for good. Koli will need all the help he can get, especially when he’s captured by a fearsome group ruled by a mad messianic figure who claims to have psychic abilities. Narrator Koli’s inquisitive mind and kind heart make him the perfect guide to Carey’s (Someone Like Me, 2018, etc.) immersive, impeccably rendered world, and his speech and way of life are different enough to imagine the weight of what was lost but still achingly familiar, and as always, Carey leavens his often bleak scenarios with empathy and hope. Readers will be thrilled to know the next two books will be published in short order. A captivating start to what promises to be an epic post-apocalyptic fable. (Kirkus Reviews, February 2020)
Ready player one / Ernest Cline
This adrenaline shot of uncut geekdom, a quest through a virtual world, is loaded with enough 1980s nostalgia to please even the most devoted John Hughes fans. In a bleak but easily imagined 2044, Wade Watts, an impoverished high school student who calls a vertically stacked trailer park home, lives primarily online, alongside billions of others, via a massive online game, OASIS, where players race to unravel the puzzles OASIS creator James Halliday built into the game before his death, with the winner taking control of the virtual world’s parent company, as well as staggering wealth. When Wade stumbles on a clue, he’s plunged into high-stakes conflict with a corporation dedicated to unraveling Halliday’s riddles, which draw from Dungeons and Dragons, old Atari video games, the cinematic computer hacker ode War Games, and that wellspring of geek humor, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Of course.) The science fiction, video game, technology, and geeky musical references pile up quickly, sometimes a bit much so, but sweet, self-deprecating Wade, whose universe is an odd mix of the real past and the virtual present, is the perfect lovable/unlikely hero. (Publishers Weekly, August 2011)
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| General novels | Coleman, Elizabeth | Losing the plot |
| General novels | Ryan, Madeleine | A room called earth |
| Historical novels | Ashman, K. M. | The rise of Caratacus |
| Historical novels | Cooper, Tea | The Cartographer’s secret |
| Mystery | Brett, Simon | Guilt at the garage |
| Mystery | Flann, Elizabeth | Beware of dogs |
| Mystery | Hechtman, Betty | Murder ink |
| Mystery | Quartey, Kwei | Sleep well, my lady |
| Mystery | Thornton, Sarah | White throat |
| Mystery | Xiaolong, Qiu | Becoming Inspector Chen |
Guilt at the garage / Simon Brett
In this twentieth Fethering mystery, Brett uses the investigation of a sudden death in a service garage to expose the slow drip of casual racism that pervades the village. Brett’s two amateur sleuths, one a very regimented retired member of the Home Office, and the other a radically open-to-experience practitioner of complementary medicine, once again join forces to solve the mystery. Part of the fun of this series is seeing how the two women, thrown together by being neighbors, find it so hard to understand (or even to simply stand) each other. Carole Seddon, the Home Office retiree, is at the garage when the elderly owner is crushed by a falling transmission gearbox (he was in the inspection pit beneath a vintage Triumph at the time). Carole and her neighbor, healer Jude Nichols, use their contacts in the village to determine if the owner’s death was an accident or something more sinister. Suspects abound; there’s an inheritance at stake, with the future of the victim’s son and his family threatened by the recent marriage of the owner to a young woman from Thailand. Brett is brilliant at showing how throwaway comments and casual snubs intensify cruelty to outsiders. This is an especially incisive Fethering adventure, with a shocker of an ending. (Booklist, January 2021)
Murder ink / Betty Hechtman
Chicago freelance writer Veronica Blackstone, the narrator of this thought-provoking series launch from Hechtman, faces a sad sequel involving Rachel Parker, a former client who engaged Veronica to write wedding vows for her and her bartender fiancé, Luke Ross. Just over a year into her marriage, Rachel has died after falling off her balcony, and her snooty stepmother wants Veronica to create a memorial tribute book. During her research, Veronica uncovers tensions between Luke and his well-heeled in-laws, as well as conflicting stories from Rachel’s teacher colleagues and dance classmates about Rachel’s intense anxiety and loss of weight. Veronica begins to wonder whether Rachel’s death was really an accident, especially when she learns of Rachel’s trust fund, receives mysterious packages, and experiences strange incidents around her home. A sympathetic heroine coping with her own losses and colorful characters from a writer’s group combine nicely with an intriguing plot involving class and abuse. Readers will look forward to future installments. (Publishers Weekly, December 2020)
Sleep well, my lady / Kwei Quartey
In Quartey’s terrific sequel to 2020’s The Missing American, PI Emma Djan takes on a nearly year-old cold case—the murder of high-profile fashion icon Lady Araba in the bedroom of her lush mansion in a gated community known as the Beverly Hills of Accra, Ghana. Lady Araba’s aunt doesn’t believe her niece’s chauffeur, who was convicted for the killing, is guilty. Emma and her colleagues at the Yemo Sowah Agency assume various undercover identities—as housekeeper, cop, construction worker, professor, journalist, interested house buyer—in an effort to narrow the long list of possible culprits, including family members, several lovers, and an alcoholic TV talk show host. Stops at the morgue and a forensic lab, as well as an ongoing search for a unique murder weapon, contribute to the dark atmosphere. Along the way, Quartey skewers Ghanaian politics, religion, and the law. Smooth prose complements the well-wrought plot. This distinctive detective series deserves a long run. (Publishers Weekly, November 2020)
A room called earth / Madeleine Ryan
Australian writer Ryan’s evocative debut features an autistic narrator negotiating her social obligations on Christmas Eve in Melbourne. As the unnamed, self-possessed woman, who finds “connection with my own species has been difficult,” prepares to attend a party, her mind takes her through a series of digressions. Should she put chopsticks in her hair, or paint the chopsticks to match her outfit, or leave them in the drawer to serve their purpose as utensils? She considers the identities of the partygoers, whom she envisions as “Futuristic Shadow Beasts Without Faces,” observes the foliage, and plays with her cat. Among people, she struggles to bridge the gulf between the hive of her mind and polite conversation, which she finds suffocating, whether dealing with a clingy ex-boyfriend or weathering the labels and words that she refuses to define her (“Sometimes… I fear that change is impossible, and that persecution is inevitable for us all”). Eventually, she leaves with a man and contends with the languages of love and sex in an extended scene that begins awkwardly but turns into romance. While the dialogue is often long-winded, the interior monologues are vibrant and revealing. Ryan succeeds in capturing neurodiversity on the page. (Publishers Weekly, June 2020)
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AUDIOBOOKS
| General novels | Lee, Chang-Rae | My year abroad |
| General novels | Probst, Jennifer | Our Italian Summer |
| General novels | Richards, Natalie | Five total strangers |
| Mystery | Castle, Anne | The widows guild |
| Mystery | Harper, Karen | Under the Alaskan ice |
| Mystery | McElwain, Julie | Shadows in time |
| Mystery | Rankin, Ian | Westwind |
| Mystery | Tyson, Wendy | Rooted in deceit |
| Mystery | Walters, Alex | Snow fallen |
| Romance | Quinn, Julie | The Viscount who loved me |
My year abroad / Chang-Rae Lee
Lee’s action-packed picaresque (after On Such a Full Sea) chronicles how an ordinary New Jersey college student ended up consorting with international criminals. As the novel opens, Tiller Bardmon is living with 30-something Val and her eight-year-old son, whom he met in the Hong Kong airport after a series of adventures in Macau and Shenzhen. Val and son are both in witness protection after Val cooperated with the U.S. government to bring down her gangster husband. The story of Tiller and Val runs parallel to Tiller’s recollections of the preceding year, when a day of caddying for a colorful foursome earns him an invitation from entrepreneur Pong Lou to join him on a business jaunt to Asia. The trip is not all work, though, as Tiller discovers he can surf, sing, assume difficult yoga positions, and make mad passionate love—but the great adventure turns into a nightmare when Pong abandons Tiller outside Shenzhen. In energetic prose, Lee nests stories within stories, such as the moving tales of a family torn apart by Mao’s Cultural Revolution and an immigrant family that reinvents itself for survival in America. The frenetic roller-coaster ride is impressively structured as the naive and sometimes reckless Tiller learns about trust and betrayal from his dealings with Pong, and gains a more mature understanding of his identity, culture, and values as his bond with Val develops. This literary whirlwind has Lee running on all cylinders. (Publishers Weekly, November 2020)
Shadows in time / Julie McElwain
In McElwain’s follow-up to Betrayal in Time, time-traveling former FBI agent Kendra Donovan now lives 200 years earlier in Regency England in 1816. She’s still uncomfortable with the restrictions on women, so she’s surprised when she encounters Mrs. Horatia Gavenston, who owns and runs a brewery that has passed down from mother to daughter. Mrs. Gavenston knows Kendra found a killer once, so she asks her to find her missing business manager, Jeremy Pascoe. She has secrets, though, so even she is a suspect when Kendra finds Pascoe’s body. Kendra also has troubles closer to home. The Duke of Aldridge has made Kendra, his ward, feel as if she were his daughter, Charlotte, who was swept overboard 20 years earlier. When a woman shows up claiming to be Charlotte, Kendra has her doubts. She hires Sam Kelly, a Bow Street Runner, to assist with both cases. The fifth “Kendra Donovan” novel is an atmospheric and character-driven mystery. The time travel, intrigue, romance, and returning characters will appeal to Diana Gabaldon’s fan. (Library Journal, July 2020)
Our Italian Summer / Jennifer Probst
Probst’s delightful latest follows three generations of women on a month long tour of Italy as they attempt to repair their troubled relationships. The grandmother, Sophia Ferrari, suggests the trip as a way to postpone an imminent diagnosis for her increasing stomach pain and reconnect with her daughter and granddaughter, who are facing troubles of their own. Once on the ground, Francesca, an advertising executive suffering from panic attacks, attempts to leave work behind and repair her strained relationship with her daughter, Allegra, who believes she’s an afterthought to Francesca’s career. Allegra, too, has been at a crossroads since being arrested her back home for driving and smoking weed with her friends. In Italy, she meets someone who will listen to her, a young man studying to be a priest who’s down for a bit of romance before taking up the cloth. Meanwhile, Francesca connects with their tour guide, and Sophia meets a promising man as well. The issues within the family are established early and offer little surprises, but the novel is carried by the rich interactions between the women, as well as the lush Italian landscape, city descriptions, and culinary pleasures. Probst consistently charms. (Publishers Weekly, November 2020)
Rooted in deceit / Wendy Tyson
In Tyson’s appealing fourth Greenhouse mystery (after 2017’s Seeds of Revenge), organic farmer Megan Sawyer is preparing for the opening of her wood-fired pizza operation at Washington Acres Farm, the family homestead in Winsome, Pa., when her good-for-nothing father, Eddie Birch, and his highly demanding Italian wife, Sylvia Adriana Altamura, unexpectedly show up. Eddie declines Megan’s invitation to stay at the farm, since the couple have a reservation at a nearby yoga retreat center, where Sylvia is eager to meet elusive artist Thana Moore, who has a show at the center. When Sylvia and Thana quarrel and Thana is later murdered, suspicion falls on Sylvia. Megan, who happens to share an unhappy past with Thana, seeks to get Sylvia and Eddie out of this mess, with a little help from her grandmother, Bonnie “Bibi” Birch, but without the support of her veterinarian boyfriend, Daniel “Denver” Finn, who’s away tending to a family crisis. Lively characters, a charming setting, red herrings galore, and a satisfying denouement make this entry a winner. (Publishers Weekly, July 2018)
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