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Reading Roundup
January 2024 |
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Adult Fiction to Get Excited About |
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| The Curse of Penryth Hall by Jess ArmstrongIn 1922 England, Ruby Vaughn, a modern-minded American, visits Penryth Hall to catch up with an old friend. But after a murder and talk of a local curse, Ruby works to unearth the truth and keep her friend safe. This award-winning, Gothic-tinged debut offers an "intriguing and altogether enchanting mystery" (Kirkus). Read-alike: Sarah Penner's The London Séance Society. |
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| The General and Julia by Jon ClinchIn this "superb" (Booklist) biographical novel, Ulysses S. Grant, who's dying of cancer, doggedly writes his memoirs and reflects on his past, including courting his beloved wife, leading the Union Army, serving eight years as president, and losing money to a con man. Read-alikes: Varina by Charles Frazier; Black Cloud Rising by David Wright Faladé. |
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Held
by Anne Michaels
A war-wounded soldier in 1920 returns home to Yorkshire and has his past push into the present when ghosts with indecipherable messages begin to show up in his photographs, in the new novel from the author of Fugitive Pieces.
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| A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle PorterNarrated by a variety of voices, including five generations of Métis women (including one in the Afterlife) as well as a bison, the Canadian grassland, and more, this moving debut novel examines healing, connection, and family bonds. Read-alike: Mona Susan Power's A Council of Dolls. |
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Emily Wilde's map of the Otherlands : a novel
by Heather Fawcett
A professor and expert in faerie folklore sets out to map the realms of their world, still not ready to accept a marriage proposal from Wendell Bambleby, in the second novel of the series following Emily Wild's Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Illustrations.
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Come and get it
by Kiley Reid
A senior resident assistant at the University of Arkansas accepts an easy yet unusual opportunity offered by a visiting professor and things get messy when her new side-hustle is jeopardized by strange new friends and illicit and vengeful dorm antics.
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The fury
by Alex Michaelides
Spending Easter with Lana Farrar, a reclusive ex-movie star and one of the most famous women in the world, on her idyllic private Greek island, her guests, concealing hatred and desire for revenge, become trapped when the night ends in violence and murder.
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Christine Barth's Library Journal Reviews |
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Appalachian Song
by Michelle Shocklee
Five aging sisters live in a cabin off the grid, not too far from Knoxville, TN. Their rhythm of working the land and loving loving extended family is interrupted when a pregnant teenager with a gunshot wound is found near their porch. As the women hide the girl from her vengeful father, the sisters have to reconcile the risk and the reward of loving their neighbors.
Years later, in 1973, country star Walker Wylie's world implodes when he learns that he was adopted at birth. The celebrity has to slow down to find his Appalachian roots and discovers that when God closes one door, another path usually opens. The Smoky Mountain midwives are the unsung heroes of the book as they practice medicine handed down through generations and show compassion to mothers and babies in all circumstances. The themes of forgiveness and adoption into God's family, along with the beautiful setting will resonate with modern readers.
VERDICT: Shocklee (Count the Nights by Stars) delivers another powerful standalone novel for readers who love Appalachian stories in the style of Ann H. Gabhart and Kim Vogel Sawyer.
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The light on Halsey Street
by Vanessa Miller
Dana Jones is just trying to survive in 1985, which is a tough task while having a cocaine-addicted mother and a boyfriend who's a petty thief. Her best friend Lisa Whitaker lives just around the block but has a fairy-tale lie and dreams of making a difference in her predominately African American Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
One fateful night sets both young women on a path that seems unchangeable--one to prison, the other to college. Jumping ahead in time, Miller (Something Good) explores how one bad decision can change a life forever, but she also brings the main characters plenty of chances for redemption. Bedford-Stuyvesant, at once tight-knit and fractured, is practically a main character in this women's fiction offering, and many will recognize similar ebbs and flows in their own cities.
VERDICT: Friendship and the power of community are the shining stars of this novel, which doesn't shy away from tough issues but also offers a hefty dose of hope and humor. Read-alikes include Lean on Me by Pat Simmons and No One Ever Asked by Katie Ganshert.
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On Moonberry Lake : a novel
by Holly Varni
Cora's mother always had a knack for knowing when someone was going to die, but she doesn't give Cora any heads-up before she kicks the bucket herself. Instead, she leaves a cryptic note, along with the keys to a rundown lodge in Moonberry Lake, MN, that Cora's estranged grandparents used to run.
The lodge's failing plumbing and electricity, eccentric and angry neighbors, and too many rodents for comfort are overwhelming enough, but Cora also feels like she can't grow roots there until she finds out why she was ripped away from Moonberry and her grandparents as a child. It is a struggle to see the locals as friendly and welcoming, rather than unusual; after all, Cora's closest neighbor spends most of her time talking to the residents of the local cemetery and caring for the headstones.
VERDICT: Varni, host of the Moments from Moonberry Lake podcast, delivers a solid debut focusing on the stories of ordinary Midwesterners. The faith content is vague enough that general-fiction readers of Fannie Flagg, J. Ryan Stradal, and Viola Shipman will appreciate the small-town flavor and humorous anecdotes.
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The Warsaw sisters : a novel of WWII Poland
by Amanda Barratt
Sisters Antonina and Helena Dąbrowska vow to always watch out for each other as their father marches off to defend Poland from the Nazis in 1939. Neither one anticipates the depth of suffering they will face as German oppression deepens each month. Things are especially difficult for Antonina's Jewish friend Marek.
With no word from their father for years, their aunt murdered in cold blood by Nazi soldiers, and Marek's family cut off from the city in the Warsaw Ghetto, the sisters each take different paths. Unbeknownst to the other, they each wind up working for the Polish resistance in different ways. Every time they think things can't get worse, Warsaw is dealt another unimaginable blow. But this is their city, and the Dąbrowska sisters will rise and fall with her.
VERDICT Barratt (Within These Walls of Sorrow) is a superb researcher, making readers feel as if they are living in World War II Poland fighting for freedom, for life, and for love of family. This is a hard but important read that will tug on heartstrings.
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YA Books Adults Will Like |
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Oathbound
by Victoria McCombs
After avoiding anything to do with pirates, a hidden sickness leads Emme to partner with pirates to find a cure
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Belladonna
by Adalyn Grace
"Orphaned as a baby, nineteen-year-old Signa has been raised by a string of guardians, each more interested in her wealth than her well-being--and each has met an untimely end. Her remaining relatives are the elusive Hawthornes, an eccentric family living at Thorn Grove, an estate both glittering and gloomy. Its patriarch mourns his late wife through wild parties, while his son grapples for control of the family's waning reputation and his daughter suffers from a mysterious illness. But when their mother's restless spirit appears claiming she was poisoned, Signa realizes that the family she depends on could be in grave danger and enlists the help of a surly stable boy to hunt down the killer"
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What I like about you
by Marisa Kanter
When Halle Levitt arrives to spend senior year in her grandfather's small town, she meets Nash, her online best friend who thinks her online persona, Kels, is as confident and popular as he is
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