SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)
BIOGRAPHY
| Becker, Elizabeth | You don’t belong here |
| Byrne, Paula | The adventures of Miss Barbara Pym |
| Caro, Robert A. | Working |
| Dux, Monica | Lapsed |
You don’t belong here / Elizabeth Becker
An incisive history of the Vietnam War via the groundbreaking accomplishments of three remarkable women journalists. In her latest, Becker, who has covered war and foreign policy for the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times, focuses on the careers of Frances FitzGerald, Kate Webb, and Catherine Leroy, interweaving their stories as they traveled to Vietnam in the mid-1960s. As U.S. involvement was escalating and news organizations continued to send men to chronicle the war, these women paid their own ways and sought out freelance reporting opportunities. French photojournalist Leroy was already a licensed parachutist when she arrived in Saigon in 1966. A year later, she became the first journalist to join in a combat parachute jump, and she gained widespread recognition for her up-close images of soldiers in battle, many published in Life. Webb was an Australian freelance correspondent who eventually became the United Press International bureau chief in Phnom Penh. After being captured by North Vietnamese troops operating in Cambodia in 1971, Webb made international headlines when premature reports of her death led to a New York Times obituary—before she emerged from captivity several days later. FitzGerald’s arrival coincided with the Buddhist uprising in South Vietnam in 1966. Realizing the events could serve as “a window into an unsettling truth about Vietnam,” she sought to understand and write about the Vietnamese on their own terms. Her debut book, Fire in the Lake (1972), won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes. “Leroy, FitzGerald, and Webb were the three pioneers who changed how the story of war was told,” writes Becker. “They were outsiders—excluded by nature from the confines of male journalism, with all its presumptions and easy jingoism—who saw war differently and wrote about it in wholly new ways.” The author was also present as a journalist in the final years when the war shifted to Cambodia, which adds depth and a riveting personal dimension to the book. A deft, richly illuminating perspective on the Vietnam War. (Kirkus Review, January 2021)
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GENERAL FICTION
| Ahmad, Michael Mohammed | The other half of you |
| Archer, Jeffrey | Turn a blind eye |
| Arnott, Robbie | The rain heron |
| Candlish, Louise | The Heights |
| Chandler, Tania | All that I remember about Dean Cola |
| Clinton, Bill | The president’s daughter |
| Cusk, Rachel | Second place |
| Doyle, Briohny | Echolalia |
| Fitzgerald, Michael | Pieta |
| Gnuse, A. J. | Girl in the walls |
| Harris, Zakiya Dalila | The other black girl |
| Jonasson, Jonas | Sweet sweet revenge Ltd. |
| Kent, Christobel | The widower |
| Lockwood, Patricia | No one is talking about this |
| Mangan, Christine | Palace of the drowned |
| Moore, Susanna | In the cut |
| Morgan, Phoebe | The wild girls |
| Newman, T. J. | Falling |
| Ponthus, Joseph | On the line |
| Pung, Alice | One hundred days |
| Reid, Taylor Jenkins | Malibu rising |
| Saint, Jennifer | Ariadne |
| Sathian, Sanjena | Gold diggers |
| Shriver, Lionel | Should we stay or should we go |
| Simsion, Graeme C. | Two steps onward |
| Sweeney-Baird, Christina | The end of men |
| Taddeo, Lisa | Animal |
| Vidich, Paul | The mercenary |
| Williams, Tia | Seven days in June |
| Winman, Sarah | Still life |
| Wood, Tom | A quiet man |
| Wynne, Phoebe | Madam |
The rain heron / Robbie Arnot
In an unnamed land under the thrall of a mysterious coup, mountain-dweller Ren wants only to live off the grid, undisturbed by human contact. Ren’s familiarity with the natural world becomes a liability when a band of soldiers comes seeking information that only she can provide: the whereabouts of a fabled bird with the ability to make it rain. Despite a decided ambiguity about exactly where and when The Rain Heron takes place, Robbie Arnott conjures locations with a richness that belies their generic signifiers (‘the valley’, ‘the mountain’, ‘the port’, etc.). This results in a world that, while less idiosyncratic than the Tasmania of Arnott’s critically acclaimed début, Flames (2018), feels equally true to the author’s imagination and is expressive of his trademark flair for imbuing landscapes with symbolic resonance. Although shifts in setting and perspective are handled gracefully, a level of trust in the author is a prerequisite, as the thrust of the narrative is not always clear. Such trust pays off generously. One of the starkest transitions – which takes the reader from the action in the mountains to a cold seaport where a girl learns the ancient art of harvesting squid ink – is also revelatory, its significance rippling outward to inform the wider narrative. Arnott has a knack for sketching frontier communities. Often, his characters are extensions of their environments, less notable for the words they speak than the way they hold themselves and the scars they bear. It is easy to believe in the power the land has over its inhabitants, as Arnott writes it: a land where humans and squid symbiotically exchange fluids, crops flourish on the favour of ancient birds, and animal wrath determines the course of history. The Rain Heron’s environmental concerns, paired with its allegorical quality, could be didactic in less assured hands. By privileging the laws of his fictional universe without reference to contemporary debates, Arnott weaves a narrative that feels both timely and timelessly engaging. A powerful meditation on human greed and frailty, The Rain Heron also leaves room for redemption. This bracing follow-up to Flames will reinforce Arnott’s reputation for unusual, risk-taking literary fiction. (Australian Book Review, June-July 2020)
Second place / Rachel Cusk
Cusk’s intelligent, sparkling return (after Kudos) centers on a woman in crisis. The narrator, M, is a writer living on an isolated coastal marsh with her second husband, Tony. They have built a guest cabin on their property, which they call the “second place.” Through a mutual friend, M invites a painter, L, to stay in the cabin. L’s art deeply affected M 15 years earlier when she was a young mother and was struck by the work’s “freedom” and how it was “elementally and unrepentingly male down to the last brushstroke.” To her surprise, L accepts, before canceling. M’s daughter, Justine, and her new boyfriend, Kurt, who reminds M of her first husband, move into the cabin just before L shows up with a gorgeous young woman named Brett. The characters enter an uneasy equilibrium on the marsh as allusions of a global financial disaster fill in the backdrop. L paints portraits of everyone except M—which devastates her. Cusk expertly handles the logistics of the crowded setting, building tension as the characters form unexpected, temporary alliances—Kurt and L, Brett and Justine—and M’s isolation increases. There is the erudition of the author’s Outline trilogy here, but with a tightly contained dramatic narrative. It’s a novel that feels timeless, while dealing with ferocious modern questions. (Publishers Weekly, May 2021)
The other black girl /Zakiya Dalila Harris
Harris debuts with a dazzling, darkly humorous story about the publishing industry and the challenges faced by a Black employee. Nella Rogers, an overworked editorial assistant, navigates white privilege and microaggressions as the only Black person in her department at New York City trade publisher Wagner Books. That is until the arrival of chic Hazel-May McCall. Nella withstands being mistaken for Hazel, “the Other Black Girl,” and reviewing a problematic manuscript written by a bestselling white author with horribly one-dimensional depictions of a Black single mom. Many of the company’s higher-ups have the trappings of material success (Ivy League pedigrees, renovated summer homes), and their attempts to cultivate diversity fall flat, notably with the publisher’s “Diversity Town Halls” and its sheepish attempts to deal with racism (“the elephant in the room,” Harris writes, “No one really knew what the elephant was. Or where the elephant was”). When Nella receives an anonymous note reading “Leave Wagner. Now,” her hopes for a career at the company begin to crumble. Meanwhile, Hazel, seemingly undeterred by office politics, is not the ally she appears to be. While the novel overflows with witty dialogue and skillfully drawn characters, its biggest strength lies in its penetrating critique of gatekeeping in the publishing industry and the deleterious effects it can have on Black editors. This insightful, spellbinding book packs a heavy punch. (Publishers Weekly, June 2021)
Still life / Sarah Winman
This book is an act of homage to British novelist E.M. Forster, who wrote so convincingly about Tuscany and its liberating effects on the human heart, and the bright and lovely cover design is reflected in the story’s setting and mood. Forster was also a gay man for whom his network of friends and kindred spirits, rather than his family, was the thing that supported and sustained him in life, and Winman’s cast of characters reflects that kind of life and the way it might work. Set between 1944 and 1979, this intelligent, moving, intermittently funny and slightly hyper-real novel focuses on two main characters and a host of minor ones whose lives and fates, sometimes quite grim, are intertwined in a way that keeps bringing them back to the magical city of Florence, and to each other. (Spectrum, 18 June 2021)
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MYSTERY
| Belsham, Alison | The embalmer |
| Bolton, S. J. | The pact |
| Bublitz, Jacqueline | Before you knew my name |
| Buchanan, Greg, | Sixteen horses |
| Childs, Laura, | Haunted hibiscus |
| Craven, M. W. | Dead ground |
| Dahl, Kjell Ola | The assistant |
| Hart, Pamela | Digging up dirt |
| Jackson, David | The resident |
| Klingborg, Brian | City of ice |
| Lelchuk, S. A. | One got away |
| Massey, Sujata | The Bombay prince |
| McDonald, R. W. R. | Nancy business |
| McIntosh, Fiona | Mirror man |
| Michaelides, Alex | The maidens |
| Parks, Alan | The April dead |
| Parsons, Tony | Your neighbour’s wife |
| Taylor, Andrew | The king’s evil |
One that got away / S. A. Lelchuk
In Lelchuk’s rollicking sequel to 2019’s Save Me from Dangerous Men, Nikki Griffin, a Berkeley, Calif., bookstore owner and badass PI, investigates the alleged blackmail of the matriarch of a prominent San Francisco family that has made a fortune in the pharmaceutical market. The motorcycle-riding Nikki, who looks like “an extra in Sons of Anarchy,” is tasked with tracking down a smooth-talking grifter who milked more than $1 million out of the family’s coffers. But when Nikki finds the seductively manipulative con man and watches as he’s forcibly stuffed into an oversize suitcase by a group of vicious thugs, she quickly realizes that she’s stumbled across a much larger, and far more brutal, criminal enterprise. Nikki, with her brass knuckle vigilante attitude, is nicely complemented by a cast of over-the-top characters, including Buster, a giant mechanic with an anger management problem, and Mason, a kid sidekick with a penchant for note-taking. This breakneck-paced thriller—while straining the bounds of believability at times—is unapologetically bloody fun. (Publishers Weekly, April 2021)
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NON FICTION
| Burgmann, Meredith | Radicals | 994.05 BURG |
| Burke, Janine | My forests | 582.16 BURK |
| Haigh, Gideon | The momentous, uneventful day | 331.256 HAIG |
| Hoskins, Ian | Rivers | 551.48 HOSK |
| Jaivin, Linda | The shortest history of China | 951 JAIV |
The shortest history of China / Linda Jaivin
There’s a lot we don’t know about China’s epic history, and this compact survey is the perfect introduction. Novelist and non-fiction writer Linda Jaivin, who has studied Chinese language and history, not only knows her stuff but tells it with relish. She walks us through the imperial era, the dynasties in all their glory and terror – a world, by turns, of ruthless, corrupt and enlightened emperors, female warriors and power-wielding eunuchs – incorporating cultural and scientific progress and the Western incursions that spelt the end of the dynasties and the beginning of the republic. Via civil war, world wars and revolution, today’s China emerges, comparatively swiftly. Jaivin has a terrific eye for telling details and effortlessly turns a highly complex, sprawling story into a thoroughly informing and entertaining read. (Spectrum, 7 May 2021)
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
| Bardugo, Leigh | Shadow and bone |
| Gardner, John | Grendel |
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New additions to eBooks at SMSA
EBOOKS
| Biography | Crowther, Gail | Three-Martini afternoons at the Ritz |
| Biography | Brady, Tim | Three ordinary girls |
| General novels | Archer, Jeffrey | Turn a blind eye |
| General novels | Arnott, Robbie | The rain heron |
| General novels | Baldacci, David | A gambling man |
| General novels | Gemmell, Nikki | The ripping tree |
| General novels | Kepnes, Caroline | You love me |
| General novels | Maley, Jacqueline | The truth about her |
| General novels | Pippos, Andrew | Lucky’s |
| General novels | Riley, Lucinda | The missing sister |
| General novels | Stelling, Anke | Higher ground |
| Mystery | Camilleri, Andrea | The cook of the Halcyon |
| Mystery | Ellison, J. T. | Her dark lies |
| Mystery | James, Peter | Left you dead |
| Mystery | Lackberg, Camilla | Silver tears |
| Mystery | Mohlin, Peter | The bucket list |
| Mystery | Reichs, Kathy | The bone code |
| Mystery | Slaughter, Karin | False witness |
| Mystery | Stone, Lisa | The cottage |
| Mystery | Watt, Holly | The dead line |
| Non fiction | Rother, Caitlin | Death on Ocean Boulevard |
Three ordinary girls / Tim Brady
Brady has explored little-known aspects of World War II, from the life of Ted Roosevelt Jr. (His Father’s Son, 2017) to the story of a civilian freighter that aided in a critical Moroccan invasion (Twelve Desperate Miles, 2012). Now he turns his attention to the Netherlands, highlighting three young women who worked for the Dutch resistance. While Anne Frank hid nearby, teenage sisters Truus and Freddie Overgesteen joined the fight after being raised in a leftist home. Johanna Schaft, known as Hannie, came to the group after being forced out of college by Nazi regulations. The women trained as fighters, learning hand-to-hand combat and practicing their shooting. Their missions were often based on their ability to infiltrate male spaces by taking advantage of soldiers’ assumptions about femininity: that the girls were naive, stupid, and innocent when they were anything but. Relying heavily on Truus’ own observations, as well as previous works about Hannie’s life, this book will please Brady’s fans as well as those who are interested in new and different stories of WWII. (Booklist, January 2021)
The cook of Halcyon / Andrea Camilleri
Bestseller Camilleri’s charming 27th mystery featuring Insp. Salvo Montalbano (after 2020’s The Sicilian Method) begins when a factory worker in Vigàta, Sicily, angry over recent layoffs, hangs himself. That the factory’s owner, Giovanni Trincanato, shows no remorse over the layoffs angers Montalbano. In the course of his investigation, the inspector connects the arrival of two women in town purporting to be highly paid escorts to Trincanato and a large schooner called the Halcyon that’s come into port and is oddly bereft of passengers. When Trincanato is shot dead, Montalbano vows to find out who’s behind the murder. Meanwhile, officials tell Montalbano to start taking mandatory vacation days in preparation to retire, and he realizes he’s being pushed out of his job. Undaunted, Montalbano strives to figure out what links a series of seemingly unrelated yet suspicious events. Once again, Camilleri, who died in 2019, does a fine job balancing comedy and crime. Readers will hope this isn’t their last visit to Vigàta. (Publishers Weekly, December 2020)
Two martini filled afternoons at the Ritz / Gail Crowther
That two among the 20th century’s most influential poets grew up in the same town at the same time and ended up sharing a poetry workshop under a third, Robert Lowell, seems almost unbelievable. And yet here they are, two towering figures of modern American poetry: Sylvia Plath (1932-63) and Anne Sexton (1928-74), not only living strangely parallel lives, but also struggling with depression, societal expectations, gender roles, and–sadly–similar ends: suicide. In this compelling and extremely informative dual biography, feminist scholar Crowther (coauthor, Sylvia Plath in Devon) explores the sometimes-strained relations between these two writers and the forces that drove them. The focus is less on literary analysis than psychological and societal influences. Nevertheless, it is a thrilling read. Crowther skillfully walks readers through those inebriating early years when Plath and Sexton met as nervous young poets through their blossoming into major literary figures and into the darkness of their struggles with difficult marriages and depression. Offering a powerful and disturbing look into the forces that drive us to creativity and to our own destruction, with all its details of infidelities and hardships, cigarettes, and sorrows, this book leaves readers hungering for more of what these two literary comets burned with: the power of a little poetry. Deliriously fast-paced and erudite, this is highly recommended for all literature, poetry, and women’s studies collections. (Library Journal, December 2020)
Silver tears / Camilla Lackberg
In 2020’s The Golden Cage, Stockholm housewife Faye Adelheim, who sacrificed her own career for her entrepreneur husband, Jack, who belittled and humiliated her for years, succeeded in destroying his business and framing him for the apparent murder of their daughter, Julienne. Two years after, in Swedish crime queen’s Läckberg’s rip-roaring sequel, Faye, whose cosmetics company, Revenge, has made her wealthy, is living incognito in a tiny Italian village with her mother, Julienne, and Kerstin, her best friend and business associate. But soon rumors disrupt paradise. Jack and another convict escape from prison, women owning shares in Revenge are selling them and threatening a takeover, and a dogged policewoman is reexamining the case of Julienne’s supposed murder. Läckberg intersperses Faye’s struggle to preserve Revenge and her secrets with scalding scenes from Faye’s youth in the town of Fjällbacka, where she saved her mother and herself from her father’s brutal sexual abuse. In the present, Faye enjoys eye-popping sexual adventures and an appealing new lover, David Schiller, while she enlists the loyal support of former female rivals to strike back at her enemies. This tribute to lusty sisterhood is a must for Scandi noir fans. (Publishers Weekly, May 2021)
The bucket list / Peter Mohlin
Swedish authors Mohlin and Nyström’s engrossing debut and series launch opens in 2019 in a Baltimore hospital, where FBI agent John Adderley, the son of an American father and a Swedish mother, is recovering from gunshot wounds he sustained while working undercover for a drug cartel. When John receives a letter from his mother imploring him to come home to Sweden and clear his brother Billy’s name in the decade-old murder case of Emelie Bjurwall, who was the heir apparent to a clothing company, he negotiates with his superiors to go undercover in Sweden as a Swedish cop to investigate the case. Flashbacks to 2009 illuminate the strained family life of Sissela and Heimer Bjurwall, Emelie’s parents, and a mysterious “bucket list” tattoo on Emelie’s wrist proves central to Heimer’s comprehension of his daughter’s final days, as well as John’s inquiry, which explains the presence of Billy’s semen on the rock where Emily’s blood was found. Evocative questions about family and professional expectations help ground this knotty, plausible story, articulating the mistakes people make with the ones they love. Scandi noir fans will look forward to this complex lead’s further adventures. (Publishers Weekly, May 2021)
Death on Ocean Boulevard / Caitlin Rother
Dual tragedies took place in July 2011 at the Spreckels Mansion, one of the most historic locations in Coronado, California, a resort enclave on San Diego Bay. Over a two-day period, pharmaceutical industry titan Jonah Shacknai lost his six-year-old son, Max, in a tragic accident and his paramour, Rebecca Zahaus, in an apparent suicide. The two events appeared connected, but how and why? Was Max’s death caused by negligence or a previously undiagnosed medical condition? Rebecca’s death by hanging was so bizarrely staged, the absence of second-party involvement seemed improbable. As with any case in which wealth and notoriety are factors, the deaths aroused intense scrutiny and invited the involvement of a coterie of lawyers and media figures who challenged the official findings. While a civil case was adjudicated, criminal charges went unfiled and Rebecca’s death remains a tantalizing mystery. Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigative journalist Rother’s vast research catalogs the numerous, extensive, and conflicting inquiries into both deaths, focusing on an intriguing cast of characters with competing motivations. (Booklist, May 2021)
False witness / Karin Slaughter
In 1998, teen sisters Callie and Leigh, the heroines of this superb thriller from bestseller Slaughter (The Silent Wife), murder Buddy Waleski, who sexually abused them for years while they babysat his son, Trevor, in Chicago. They leave the Waleski kitchen spotless after cleaning up any evidence of the murder and hide Buddy’s body. In 2021, Callie, who became addicted to heroin after a gymnastics accident left her in constant pain, and Leigh, a defense attorney, unexpectedly confront the past after Leigh’s boss assigns the case of an alleged serial killer to her. During their first meeting, Andrew Tenant tells Leigh he’s actually the little boy she once babysat—Trevor Waleski—and implies that he knows the sisters killed his father. Callie and Leigh work urgently to determine how and what he knows. Breaking into the abandoned former Waleski house, Callie finds a crawl space with cameras aimed both at the kitchen where Buddy’s murder occurred and the living room couch where Callie was repeatedly raped as a 12-year-old by Buddy. If Leigh doesn’t secure a not guilty verdict, the pathological Andrew threatens to retaliate by releasing his father’s videos to the media and murdering her 16-year-old daughter. A shocking tragedy at the end will keep readers transfixed. Slaughter is writing at the top of her game. (Publishers Weekly, May 2021)
Higher ground / Anke Stelling
Stelling makes a blistering English-language debut with this incendiary screed about hypocrisy and privilege among a group of friends in Berlin. Resi is part of a group of friends she’s known since childhood. She is the poor one among them, and while all were leftists when they were younger, her friends have since found comfort and stability, and fail to acknowledge the class difference between themselves and Resi. Her friends all own apartments in a glitzy new co-op building, for instance, while Resi and her family sublet a cheap, decrepit flat nearby from her old friends Vera and Frank. After Resi publishes an essay about what it’s like to live in a “building without a name,” followed by a successful book, she’s served with an eviction notice and loses her friends, who can’t stomach Resi’s class critiques. Stelling frames the narrative as a long letter to Resi’s oldest child, Bea, in which Resi details her difficult childhood, her mother’s life, and the hypocrisy behind her privileged friends’ notion of self-determination. A wry warning to Bea on the first page—“Families are a hotbed of neuroses, and the ruler of this particular hotbed, our nest, is me”—suggests Resi’s version is open to interpretation. This biting class critique is hard to turn away from. (Publishers Weekly, March 2021)
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AUDIOBOOKS
| General novels | Benedict, Marie | The personal librarian |
| General novels | Brenner, Jamie | Blush |
| General novels | Friedland, Elyssa | Last Summer at the Golden Hotel |
| General novels | Hankin, Laura | A special place for women |
| General novels | Oakley, Colleen | The invisible husband of Frick Island |
| General novels | Prowse, Amanda | Will you remember me |
| General novels | Taylor, Brandon | Filthy animals |
| General novels | Winfrey, Kerry | Very sincerely yours |
| Mystery | Dawson, Mark | The house in the woods |
| Mystery | Graham, Heather | The unforgiven |
| Mystery | Macneal, Susan Elia | The Hollywood spy |
| Mystery | Martin, Kat | The perfect murder |
| Mystery | Ricciardi, David | Shadow target |
| Mystery | Parin, Sonia | House party murder rap |
| Mystery | Stabenow, Dana | Spoils of the dead |
| Mystery | Stone, Mary | Winter’s redemption |
| Mystery | Winspear, Jacqueline | The consequences of fear |
| Science fiction | Wells, Martha | Rogue protocol |
The personal librarian / Marie Benedict
Benedict (The Mystery of Mrs. Christie) and Murray (Wrath) deliver a powerful take on the accomplishments of J.P. Morgan’s librarian. In 1906, Belle da Costa Greene is hired away from Princeton University to run the Pierpont Morgan Library. There, Belle adds notable works to the library’s collection and successfully navigates a high-stakes auction. As Belle’s position requires her to attend social events with New York’s elite, she is ever cognizant of maintaining the secrecy of her Black heritage, asserting that her grandmother is Portuguese. Belle’s father, Richard Greener, an equal rights advocate, was the first Black man to graduate from Harvard University, and left the family after Belle’s mother insisted on raising her as white. Though Belle enjoys her personal success as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, which brings her significant influence in the city’s art world and rare books market, her public role increases her risk of exposure for passing as white, which she fears would cost her the job and bring an end to her family’s financial support. Benedict and Murray do a great job capturing Belle’s passion and tenacity as she carves a place for herself in a racist male-dominated society. This does fine justice to a remarkable historical figure. (Publishers Weekly, April 2021)
Blush / Jamie Brennan
Brenner’s lovely latest (after Summer Longing) begs to be read with a view and a glass of wine as three generations of Hollander women—and the men who orbit them—come together at their family’s struggling winery, each fighting their own inner battles. Vivian, the matriarch, doesn’t have faith in her son’s ability to run the business, and resents her husband’s unwillingness to include her in decisions. Leah, Vivian’s daughter, harbors anger that her father doesn’t trust her to run the winery and frustration that her usually supportive husband has lately become pushy. College student Sadie has lost her position working with a professor she idolizes and can’t find the inspiration to work on her thesis. These three women find a way to reclaim their power by starting a “trashy” book club, reading romance novels from the 1980s that they discover in the winery’s library. In the process, they learn secrets about the family and the estate that could mean the end of the winery—or new beginnings in both business and love. Brenner tackles complex issues including gender inequality and the devaluation of women’s interests with a light hand, balancing heavy topics with copious descriptions of wine, cheese, and classic romances. This is sure to please. (Publishers Weekly, April 2021)
The house in the woods / Mark Dawson
The talented and prolific Simon Vance brings his exceptional abilities to his performance of this audiobook, the first in a new series. Vance’s characters are distinct, and his pacing enjoyable. His English accent is ever so appropriate for this story of family tension and murder set in Salisbury, England. Detective Chief Inspector Mackenzie Jones is called out on Christmas Eve to respond to a quadruple killing. The trail leads to a surviving family member who is charged with the crime. The suspect’s wife hires P.I. Atticus Priest, a brilliant but cashiered cop, to help clear her husband’s name. There are interesting subplots as well, Jones’s rocky marriage and her past with Priest among them. This audiobook is engaging both in story and narration. (Audiofile, 2021)
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel / Elyssa Friedland
Friedland brings the legacy of the Catskills to life with her latest novel (after The Floating Feldmans, 2019), where two families must decide the fate of their beloved mountain getaway. When best friends Benny Goldman and Amos Weingold opened their Catskills oasis, the Golden Hotel, in the 1960s, they knew they had something special. The Golden Hotel became a legend not only for the entertainers it hosted but for the memories thousands of families created on its vast estate over the decades. But now Benny is gone and the hotel has been in shambles for years. When an offer is made to purchase the property, with the intention to bulldoze it, the Goldman and Weingold families must decide if it really will be the last summer at the Golden Hotel. Written with Friedland’s signature wit and sharp dialogue, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel is an incisive novel that touches on family legacies, nostalgia, and multigenerational dynamics. Readers not content with armchair immersion will want to book their Catskill getaway immediately. (Booklist, May 2021)
A special place for women / Laura Hankin
A journalist infiltrates a secret society in the diverting if far-fetched latest from Hankin (Happy & You Know It). Jillian Beckley tries to impress her crush, Miles, a married editor, by promising him an exposé on the secretive, influential New York City women’s social club Nevertheless, rumored to be the force behind the rise-and-fall of a recent progressive mayoral candidate. Jill ropes her friend, rising-star chef Rafael Morales, into pretending he’s her boyfriend in order to get enough cachet for an invitation to one of the club’s events, where she unexpectedly bonds with member Margot Wilding over the loss of their mothers. Meanwhile, Jill deals with her feelings for Miles, who’s having marriage woes, and Raf, who confesses his love for her. After Jill’s initiation, Margot takes Jill under her wing and reveals the truth about the club, at which point Jill questions whether the sisterhood and power of the group is worth sacrificing in order to give Miles a great article. It would break the rules of Nevertheless—and spoil the book—to dish on what’s really going on, but it’s safe to say it involves rituals that go beyond the standard fare for socialites. The narrative has a couple of nice twists, but the ending’s a bit of a stretch. Still, this should amuse anyone who keeps tabs on the tastemakers. (Publishers Weekly, April 2021)
The Hollywood spy / Susan Eli MacNeal
Set in 1943, MacNeal’s meticulously researched if overstuffed 10th Maggie Hope mystery (after 2020’s The King’s Justice) takes Maggie, an American stationed in England who works for MI5, to Los Angeles, where Gloria Hutton, the fiancée of RAF pilot John Sterling, has been found dead in a hotel swimming pool. The police are quick to label the deceased a “hophead” and rule her death an accident, but Sterling refuses to believe their assessment and asks Maggie to investigate. Maggie’s inquiry, which takes her to film sets, nightclubs, and other Hollywood locales, eventually leads her to a charismatic L.A. cop who heads the local Ku Klux Klan and is plotting to blow up a theater during the premiere of an important war film. Appearances by such real-life notables as Linus Pauling and Walt Disney serve to highlight the widespread discrimination casually perpetrated against people of color, Jews, migrants, and LGBTQ communities. Amid all this social commentary, the search for Gloria’s killer tends to recede into the background. Still, fans of golden age Hollywood will find plenty to like. (Publishers Weekly, May 2021)
The invisible husband of Frick Island / Colleen Oakley
Although Piper Parrish didn’t grow up on Frick Island, she’s lived there long enough to be accepted by the locals. So when her husband Tom’s boat capsizes during a storm, the community comes together to support her–even if it means playing along with Piper’s belief that Tom is still alive by talking to him like he’s still there. Enter Anders Caldwell, a small-town journalist who expected more from his career than a dead-end job covering the annual cakewalk on a middle-of-nowhere island. But Anders isn’t immune to Frick Island’s charms, and he quickly realizes that the quirky locals would be the ideal subject for his latest project, a podcast called “What the Frick?” What begins as a portrait of a unique place threatened by global warming turns into an exploration of Piper’s unusual way of coping with Tom’s death–a story made more complex as Anders comes to care for the community and, especially, Piper. Oakley (You Were There Too, 2020) masterfully captures small-town idiosyncrasies in this lively story about grief, friendship, and community. Fans of Josie Silver and Katherine Center will feel right at home on Frick Island. (Bookist, April 2021)
Shadow target / David Ricciardi
Ricciardi’s decently plotted if somewhat predictable fourth Jake Keller thriller (after 2020’s Black Flag) opens with the crash of a small commercial plane in the French Alps, and only Jake, a member of the CIA’s Special Activities Center, walks away. Before a rescue helicopter can whisk him to safety, Jake observes two armed men looking for something or someone—maybe him. Jake’s survival is bad news for Russian oligarch Nikolai Kozlov, who wants him dead because he might cause problems for a planned assassination of a national leader in London. Fears that someone is after him along with a suspicion that a higher than normal number of his colleagues are dying prompt Jake to investigate, which leads to a lot of international travel, some muddy intra-agency intrigue, and substantial violence as Kozlov’s team tries to neutralize Jake. Jake may not have much depth, but many will applaud his forthright patriotism (“He had seen firsthand the evil in the world and felt it was his moral obligation to eradicate as much of it as he could”). This is an action movie in book form. (Publishers Weekly, March 2021)
Filthy animals / Brandon Taylor
Taylor follows his Booker shortlisted Real Life with a sharp, surprising collection. Many of the stories cover a 24-hour period in Madison, Wis., beginning with the excellent “Pot Luck.” Lionel, an exam proctor and mathematician who is recently out of psychiatric care following a suicide attempt, goes to a dinner party and meets Charles, a dancer. A mutual attraction emerges, despite some awkwardness and the presence of Charles’s partner, Sophie. “Flesh” shifts perspective to Charles in his dance class the next morning, and delineates his complex dynamic with Sophie. “Proctoring,” a standout featuring Lionel at work, further complicates the triangle. As the sequence continues, supporting characters are linked by various circumstances. (The client of a young woman who works as a home cook and a babysitter in “Little Beast” turns out to be the doctor of one of Charles’s dance classmates.) In the marvelous “Meat,” Lionel concludes, “All of life was shifting equations.” Throughout, Taylor spins intimate narratives of fraught relationship dynamics and demonstrates a keen sensitivity to his characters’ fragile mental health. Taylor’s language sparks with the tension of beauty and cruelty, conveying a sense of desire and the pleasures of food and sex complicated by capricious behavior. The author has an impressive range, and his depictions of complex characters trapped in untenable situations are hard to forget. (Publishers Weekly, March 2021)
Rogue protocol / Martha Wells
Murderbot is back! Luckily for listeners, so is the engaging Kevin R. Free. Though it would rather be alone watching its favorite serials, the rogue Security Unit AI finds itself protecting another batch of humans who are on an ill-fated mission while also attempting to do its own research into a nefarious corporation (and not get caught). Free rockets listeners through the action and ably delivers Murderbot’s sarcasm and disdain for the humans. Free gives those pesky humans distinct voices, and listeners may wind up falling a little in love with his characterization of Miki, an innocent and endearing bot who wants to be Murderbot’s friend. Free will have listeners feeling for Murderbot as it discovers that once you start caring about stuff, it’s hard to stop. (Audiofile 2018)
Very sincerely yours / Kerry Winfrey
Winfrey (Waiting for Tom Hanks) delivers a sweet and fluffy rom-com that plays out partly through the touching email correspondence between heroine Teddy Phillips, an endearingly hapless 30-something, and hero Everett St. James, a “hot Mr. Rogers.” Both are romantically skittish: Teddy was expecting a proposal when her exploitative doctor boyfriend dumped her and kicked her out of their shared apartment, leaving her floundering. As for Everett, he’s focused all his time and energy on his work hosting a children’s TV show since his own romantic disaster. Teddy finds comfort in Everett’s program and emails him hoping for some of the same supportive guidance he’s so good at doling out to children. Everett’s enchanted by her note, kicking off a pen pal–style relationship that slowly evolves into something more. Winfrey lets their love blossom at a believable pace as they overcome emotional and professional obstacles with the help of their convincing sets of friends. With plenty of smile-worthy misadventures along the way, this light, down-to-earth romance is sure to charm. (Publishers Weekly, April 2021)
The consequences of fear / Jacqueline Winspear
Set in the fall of 1941, bestseller Winspear’s outstanding 16th Maisie Dobbs novel (after 2019’s The American Agent) initially focuses on fleet-footed 12-year-old Freddie Hackett, who earns a few bob a week running government messages across London. One night, while racing across the city to deliver a message, Freddie witnesses a murder, but no one believes him, even when a body matching his description of the victim is pulled from the Thames—until Maisie’s compassion for his plight prompts her to begin an investigation. Forensically trained Maisie has been vetting prospective agents for the Special Operations Executive to assess young recruits’ psychological fitness for dangerous overseas assignments, and in Freddie she recognizes what would now be called post-traumatic stress. Could his psychological state have led him to imagine the violent encounter? The body is eventually identified as a Frenchman, and later, when a French SOE recruit dies mysteriously, Maisie discovers a connection between the two victims that stretches back to the previous war. Maisie and her loving family of supporting characters continue to evolve and grow in ways sure to win readers’ hearts. Winspear is writing at the top of her game. (Publishers Weekly, January 2021)
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New Books – July 2021
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