"Nothing makes me happier than finding that little-known or first-time author who really deserves to make it, and selling a boatload of their books -well, that and putting just the right books into each customer's hands.." jill
Janelle Brown gained a following with Watch Me Disappear and All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, but it's Pretty Things that has wowed me.Nina has grown up with her mom - drifting from place to place as petty cons kept them in money. But once they hit Lake Tahoe, things seem different. Her mom gets a real job and Nina meets Benny - her first love. But then Benny's uber-wealthy family runs Nina and her mother out of town and smashes Nina's dreams of an Ivy League education and a way out.Benny's older sister, Vanessa, is comfortable blowing through her trust fund and becoming an Instagram influencer - ameliorating her insecurities with the adoration of her anonymous internet fans.But when Vanessa and Benny's father dies, Vanessa retreats to Stonehaven - her family's Lake Tahoe mansion - to come to terms with her life and the people she holds responsible for making it miserable - Nina and her mother.When the two women's paths cross, it gets very dark and complicated.I loved the characters Janelle Brown has drawn in Pretty Things, and I raced through this hefty psychological thriller in record time.
This is Lee Childs' 24th Jack Reacher thriller, 14 of which have hit the #1 spot on the NYT bestseller list.
In Blue Moon, Reacher is traveling by bus with no particular destination in mind, when he sees an elderly man in some distress with all the hallmarks of a victim in the making. Reacher departs the bus after the old man and sure enough, he steps in to resave the man from a mugging just blocks from the depot.
The old man has a story, though. He's carrying the last money he and his wife have to their names to pay off a loan shark. And when Reacher hears the reason the money has run dry, he's incensed.
And when Reacher gets incensed, heads generally roll. This thriller has Ukrainian and Albanian mobsters, Russian infiltrators, a pretty young woman (of course), and a motley crew of musicians and former servicemen. And a lot of retribution. Lee Child fans, come on down!
I was afraid that we'd heard the last from mother/daughter writing team P.J. Tracy as I'd heard that P.J., Tracy's mother, passed away.
So I was pleasantly surprised to read Ice Cold Heart and discover the Monkeywrench crew back and embroiled in a mystery as devious and evil as in all of their other books.
When the crew starts to piece together that a cryptocurrency heist they'd been working on has ties to the gruesome murders that their friends on the MPD are handling, the entire cast of familiar characters get in on the action of this thriller - which races from war criminals to fine artists to cyber terrorists and back.
If you're a fan of Lisa Unger or Karin Slaughter and the like, you owe it to yourself to check out the past and, thankfully, continuing thrillers of P.J. Tracy.
This Korean thriller stars a criminal psychologist who is invited to interview a killer on death row (think Silence of the Lambs).
The same day, her husband arrives home with his daughter, who was living with her maternal grandparents until their apartment burned down with them still in it; the daughter has been through some horrendous things in her young life.
This is a cat and mouse of nature vs. nurture, but the stilted translation made reading it almost comical.
I'd wait for the paperback.
Londoner Sandie Jones has found a twist for the current spate of psychological thrillers. Emily has met her dream man in Adam. But she soon discovers that she has a rival whose deep bond with Adam will lead her to do anything to push Emily away forever - Adam's mother. But of course Pammie is very clever in her psychological torture and when Emily tries to complain to Adam, she's the one who comes off as petty and a little bit crazy.
I could see the ending coming from about halfway through the novel, but that didn't impede my relishing every page. If you're liking your thrillers to have a twisty psychological bent, The Other Woman should be on your list.
A Good Neighborhood has all of the qualities of a really great novel .It's timely. The characters feel very human. The plot compels the reader to keep turning the pages. And it imparts an important truth about who we are.
The Whitmans have moved up in the world. Way up. So far up that they've moved to an older, established neighborhood and built a house the likes that the neighborhood hasn't seen before.
And the neighborhood has opinions about everything from the new man of the house (well known for his commercials touting his HVAC company) - he seems pretty friendly. To his wife - she's probably snooty. To their little daughter - cute. To Julia's teenaged daughter from before the marriage - kind of pitiful. Made to sign a "Purity Pledge" at church and overprotected. In fact, the neighborhood itself is the narrator of the book - foreshadowing the tragedy that is to befall the community and the divide the tragedy will create.
This novel is a return to the issue-driven stories that I loved so well when Therese wrote Exposure many years ago. And those of you who met her when she visited Gaylord will now be saying, 'I met her when,' as A Good Neighborhood makes her a household name.
Alice Feeney's Sometimes I Lie was a big favorite of mine, so I was anxious to see if she could do it again. Good news! I Know Who You Are is a gripping psychological thriller from beginning to end.
Aimee had a traumatic childhood that left her with some amnesia. So when her husband turns up missing and the police start showing her evidence that points to her as the suspect, she begins to doubt her sanity. But there are so many secrets in Aimee's past that she has to be careful to guard. Luckily she's a brilliant actress and even her co-stars can't see through her many personas. But she's been getting vintage postcards which say "I know who you are." And that's perhaps the thing that she's afraid of most.
This one will get ya- right up to the bitter end.
Two British girls are on Gap Year and traveling in Thailand. When they miss the call to their parent's houses to discover their A-level scores, Alex and Rosie's mothers panic. Covering the possible disappearance is Journalist Kate Waters, who both wants the exclusive and can empathize because her own son, Jake, has gone to Thailand and fallen off the radar, too.
As it begins to look as though the parents really do have cause for concern, the book begins to alternate between the investigation and the girls' narrative in Bangkok. This is a layered story with much unfolding throughout, but along with the story thrums unwritten every mother's worst nightmare- a child far away and in danger. Fiona Barton has delivered one again
Beth just can’t resist a detour on the way to her son Ben’s soccer game. A detour which takes them past her estranged friend Flora’s new house. After dropping Ben off, Beth returns, hoping for a glimpse of her ex-best friend. And she does see Flora drive up and call to her children, Thomas and Emily, to get out of the car. But when they do, the children inexplicably look exactly as they did when Beth las saw them 12 years ago.
Vowing to get to the bottom of this mystery, Beth becomes embroiled in dark secrets that might lead to her entire family’s undoing.
Once again, Sophie Hannah has penned a dark tale that twists and turns to a startling conclusion. It’s no wonder her mysteries are published in 51 countries and adapted for television. Her fans will love Perfect Little Children.
This book is the first person, nonfiction narrative of Stephanie Land, derailed from her plans to attend college by an unexpected pregnancy and living on government assistance as a maid.
The book follows her desperation to secure enough money to just make it out of the homeless shelter where her daughter, Mia, took her first steps. It explains how little of her paycheck from a cleaning company was left after she toiled in other, wealthier people’s bathrooms for twenty five hours a week when she had to pay to clean her own rags and gas up her car to go from house to house.
It explains how she couldn’t count on her own destitute family, felt alienated from all of her school friends, and didn’t trust Mia’s father.
Maid paints a portrait of a young women who has fallen from a middle- class upbringing to an impoverished adulthood with almost wide-eyed disbelief. She credits her middle class roots with always thinking her situation was temporary- even as she and Mia struggled with illness from mold growing in their studio apartment, with poor nutrition and with unreliable transportation- when a working car was so necessary to get to her paying jobs.
This is a story it might be hard to imagine if the reader has no history with poverty themselves. Land pulls no punches in telling it as she saw it, whether the reader might empathize with her or revile her for her choices.
In a time when, there has never been a greater divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” in the US and when Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash are national bestsellers, I’m sure Maid will strike a chord and take its rightful place among them as a window into the way more and more Americans are forced to live.