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Becky Mandelbaum is the real deal. Big thanks to Net Galley and to Simon and Schuster for the review copy. Ariel and her mother, Mona have been estranged for six years. But when she finds a news item about her mother’s sanctuary having been torched, Ariel knows it’s time to go home, to see what has been lost and what can be saved. Mandelbaum does a brilliant job of building believable, nuanced characters and complicated relationships. It isn’t a pretentious piece of writing by a long shot, and it isn’t full of florid descriptions or challenging vocabulary. Instead, we have characters that are dealing with thorny personal issues that have no obvious solutions. And my favorite aspect of it is the way the mother-daughter relationship, which is the heart of the novel, is framed. Mona has made a lot of mistakes in parenting Ariel, but she loves her daughter and is a good person. Ariel is still learning how to solve problems herself. There’s a trend in fiction writing right now to draw villainous mothers as the sources of protagonists’ problems. It’s close to becoming a cliché. Mandelbaum has steered clear of this canard and created something much deeper and more interesting. In fact, there are at least half a dozen stereotypes that she has dodged expertly. The fact that she has done this in her debut novel suggests that a great career is ahead of her. I love the way she ends this story. Don’t deprive yourself of this glorious novel.

Becky Mandelbaum is the real deal. Big thanks to Net Galley and to Simon and Schuster for the review copy. Ariel and her mother, Mona have been estranged for six years. But when she finds a news item about her mother’s sanctuary having been torched, Ariel knows it’s time to go home, to see what has been lost and what can be saved. Mandelbaum does a brilliant job of building believable, nuanced characters and complicated relationships. It isn’t a pretentious piece of writing by a long shot, and it isn’t full of florid descriptions or challenging vocabulary. Instead, we have characters that are dealing with thorny personal issues that have no obvious solutions. And my favorite aspect of it is the way the mother-daughter relationship, which is the heart of the novel, is framed. Mona has made a lot of mistakes in parenting Ariel, but she loves her daughter and is a good person. Ariel is still learning how to solve problems herself. There’s a trend in fiction writing right now to draw villainous mothers as the sources of protagonists’ problems. It’s close to becoming a cliché. Mandelbaum has steered clear of this canard and created something much deeper and more interesting. In fact, there are at least half a dozen stereotypes that she has dodged expertly. The fact that she has done this in her debut novel suggests that a great career is ahead of her. I love the way she ends this story. Don’t deprive yourself of this glorious novel.

Us Against You is the second in book in the Beartown trilogy. My thanks go to Net Galley and Atria for the invitation to read and review.Beartown is in crisis. The hockey team has been undone by the arrest of their star player for rape, and Maya, his victim, has been harassed endlessly as if she were the perpetrator. Resentments simmer. There are anonymous callers. A new coach is hired, not only a woman—but a lesbian. Chins wag. New owners roll into town, friendly and treacherous, generous and oily. Violence hums beneath the surface as the town polarizes between the hometown hockey team and that in the neighboring town, to which some Beartown citizens have decamped. Fredrik Backman, who is possibly the finest male feminist novelist in the world, is on a roll here, and although the hockey players in this story are men and boys, the best developed, most complex characters are the women. Meanwhile there are about a dozen other small threads here, and again, Backman is among the best writers when it comes to developing a large cast of town members without dropping anyone’s story or letting the pace flag. His use of repetition as figurative language is brilliant, and he is unquestionably the king of the literary head fake. If I taught creative writing to adults, I would assign my students to read his work. Recommended.

I had never read Ward’s work before, and now that I have I will follow her anywhere. Sing Unburied, Sing is a literary masterpiece, and one that fits the time in which we live. It opens up all sorts of thorny questions for examination, but like most thorns, it stings. I received my copy free and early courtesy of Scribner and Net Galley. Jojo and Kayla have been raised by their grandparents in rural Mississippi; Mam and Pop are their source of love and stability. Leonie, the mother they call by her first name as if she were a sister, drifts in and out, using copious amounts of meth and other drugs. Michael, the children’s Caucasian father, is being released from Parchman, the notorious prison where he has been sent after having killed Leonie’s brother, Given. Given comes to her when she’s high. She doesn’t know it, but Jojo and Kayla can see him, too.Leonie swoops in and after overcoming her mother’s resistance, takes the children and heads for Parchman to pick up her man. Leonie is not the swiftest deer in the forest, and then of course she’s high a lot of the time, and seems to have been solipsistic from the get-go; at one point in the story Mam tells Jojo that his mama just doesn’t have the mothering instinct.It’s the understatement of the century. On their odyssey they encounter racist cops, a Caucasian drug-dealing attorney, and a host of other beings, living and not. The narrative is told in the first person by Leonie and Jojo alternately, with a voice from Pop’s past peeking in once the adventure is underway. Although the characters are traveling physically through most of the story, it’s not about setting; it’s about character. We learn these characters so intimately that it’s almost as if we ride beneath their skins, and we also learn Pop’s terrible secret. Ward is a lion. This novel will be talked about for a long, long time.

David Joy is a writer that keeps it real;thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the DRC, which I received in exchange for this honest review. This title will be available to the public March 7, 2017. Those that cherish strong fiction should buy it and read it.The setting is Little Canada, North Carolina, a wide place in the road in the middle of nowhere. The family unit, such as it is, consists of April—the most unwilling of mothers—along with her son Thad, and his best friend, Aiden McCall, who shares thetrailer at the rear of April’s property with Thad.The plot is centered on the inadvertent death of the local meth dealer, and a small fortune that is unexpectedly left in the custody of Thad and Aiden.They are not stellar decision makers. In fact, some of the time they seem as if they are half feral.It’s gritty prose, and it features hardscrabble characters that are not entirely lovable.But I can tell you this: the settings here are stark and immediate, and the characters are well drawn and completely believable. I appreciate a story that fits the time in which we live, one in which young people have a rough time becoming independent due to economic woes and the rampant drug addiction that seems to live in the shadow of every economic downturn. I believe Aiden and Thad, and I believe Thad’s mother April as well, a woman that only became a mother because someone spit on her as she came out of an abortion clinic. It's story that resonates, and nobody can tell it like David Joy does. Highly recommended!

I rate this 4.5 stars and round it upward. Thanks go to Kensington Publishing and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received in exchange for this honest review. This courageous novel, one that takes place in the past but couldn’t be more timely, is going to create a lot of buzz. Get your marshmallows ready, because I think I smell hot tar and burning wood…or is it paper? Dixie tells us her own story. She’s born in a tiny, impoverished hamlet in Alabama in the 1960’s. Her parents are having money problems, and their relationship isn’t going well. Evie, Dixie’s mother,takes out her frustration and rage on the child that looks just like her, and that of course is Dixie.Ultimately, Evie summons her family for help, and Uncle Ray comes all the way from New Hampshire to lend assistance. Unfortunately, Uncle Ray has a whole lot of demons of his own. “Uncle Ray smelled different, not of Old Spice, but something else, something sharper.” It’s a hard, hard story to read, and yet I can’t help think of all the girls and women that will read this book and know that they aren’t so strange or terrible, and that this does happen to other girls in other families. Highly recommended; full review is at Seattle Book Mama.

James Lee Burke is a legend, a venerable and highly respected writer known for his luminous prose and quirky characters. In this, his second work of historical fiction in a planned trilogy, he demonstrates that he can still work magic better than ever. I received this DRC from Net Galley and Simon and Schuster in exchange for an honest review. There isn't space here for a full review, which can be found at Seattle Book Mama on Word Press, but here's the nutshell version: our story is set in Houston in the 1950s, and our protagonist is Aaron Holland Broussard. Aaron intercedes at a drivein when he sees the local hot shot strike his girlfriend, Valerie. Valerie and Aaron fall in love. Add to this tale a sadistic shop teacher; a best friend that stirs up trouble everywhere he goes due to a hard home life and poor impulse control; a vicious rodeo bull named Original Sin; the local Mob; and a Cadillac with a small fortune hidden in the door panels, and you are in for one hell of a ride. Spellbinding!

The Girls is a fictionalized account of the Manson Murders, a terrible killing spree that stunned the USA in the 1960s.Manson, a career criminal with a penchant for violence yet possessed of a strange sort of charisma, attracted a number of young women and girls into a cult of his own founding. Later they would commit a series of grisly murders in the hills outside Berkeley, and it is this cult and these crimes on which Cline’s story is based. Great thanks to Net Galley and Random House for the DRC.The story’s success isn’t anchored so much in the story line, a story that’s been tapped by previous writers, but in the dead-accuracy of setting; in fact, the whole story seems almost as if a shoebox of snapshots from pre-digital days had been spilled onto the floor, then arranged in order. The other key aspect that makes this story strong is the character development. Readers among the Boomer generation will love this book for its striking accuracy; those that are younger will feel as if they have traveled to a time and place they have never seen before. One way or another, Cline’s masterful storytelling weaves a powerful spell that doesn’t let go until the last page is turned. Riveting, and highly recommended. Full review is at Seattle Book Mama on Word Press.

Lambert is a brilliant writer, and his absorbing new novel, The Children’s Home, is the best literary fiction I have read in some time. Thank you to Scribner and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for an honest review. We start with Morgan, a bitter recluse rattling around in his immense family mansion, afraid to leave its walls for fear someone will see his face and ridicule him. His sister Rebecca runs the family business, and she hires Engel to serve as housekeeper and cook to him. Moira and David are two children that magically appear at his estate.Subtly, the power dynamics shift; a seismic change is in the wind. Lambert is a writer of undeniable talent. Though the allegory is a little heavy handed, The Children's Home is brilliant literary fiction.

You don’t have to enjoy football to appreciate Concussion, the riveting new biography of Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian neurological pathologist that discovered CTE, a type of permanent brain damage caused by repetitive concussions such as that experienced by football players. Not only the content, but the engaging voice with which it is told, make it worth everyone’s while. I was lucky enough to read it free, courtesy of Net Galley and Random House, but when it comes out Tuesday, November 24, I recommend you get a copy yourself. It’s information everyone really ought to have, especially those that play American football, or have family members that do. Laskas uses Omalu’s own narrative in places, a wonderful thing given his buoyancy and eloquence: "Having seen this game [football] played on satellite TV on a few occasions in Africa, all I knew was the players ran into one another a whole lot and banged their heads repeatedly like guinea pigs running around...If it hurts so much that you have to bubble-wrap your body, maybe you should play something different.” But until he examined the brain of Iron Mike, the local hero who had lost his sanity following retirement, tasering himself in the hope he would be able to sleep, trying to fix his rotting teeth back into his own mouth with crazy glue, this was a side issue. His interest was in pathology, in the stories the dead had to tell. And then he learned what the NFL said. Riveting and powerful. A must-read!

I was invited to read and review this title by my friends at Brash Books and Net Galley; it was one of half a dozen that I could check out. I appreciate the invitation, and the other books in that batch have been read by me already and happily reviewed. This one is different; it has not stood the test of time. So in other words: no, no, no, and no. Usually I say it is essential to stick with a book till at least the 20 percent mark in order to get a sense of where it's going and whether it might redeem itself, but I can't do that here. By chapter three I am ready to throw things. When this book was originally published, there was a significant portion of the book-buying USA who would have laughed at the notion that it's not okay to refer to a woman (in our case, a waitress) as having "a nice set of tits", or calling her "a piece of ass". Those same people would have told me not to be so touchy about the "N" word (applied for no special reason to the African-American cook in the restaurant.) Probably I would have heard people say that we should just face the fact that some people talk that way, and that the text therefore reflects reality. I stuck with it long enough to determine that the demeaning nature of the dialogue was not merely placed to determine the nasty nature of a single protagonist, but both the computer scientist and his adversary and potential recruiter say and think these things. And for me, that was enough. Stick a fork in me; I'm done!

Jerry Lind is missing, which is especially strange, given that he knows he is about to inherit a small fortune. It seems unlikely that he would take off for a long time without letting someone know about it. He ought to be back by now. Moreover, the next people in line to inherit his share are also wondering if he is okay. Not that they hope he isn’t. Of course not! And at this point I have to break my narrative to let you know that I was fortunate enough to get this DRC free, courtesy of Net Galley and Brash Books. It was previously published in the 1980’s and is just now being released digitally. Back to Jerry. No, never mind, forget him for a minute. Let’s talk about our assassin. Our assassin is not getting any younger, and his wife is exhausted from all the moves. Every time he carries out a contract, they have to either abandon their stuff or get a truck, and over years and years of professional killing, it wears a woman down. She wants a garden. From now on, he needs to either make do with the significant amount he’s squirreled away from his successful if messy business, or he’s going to have to goddamn hide the bodies. It’s the least he can do for her. Peter Bragg is our man. Jerry’s sister hires him to go to Barracks Cove, where Jerry was supposed to be running a professional errand, and see if he can’t track him down. And Bragg goes in prepared. If you are sick of reading wussy narratives that give flimsy reasons for the intrepid sleuth not to carry a gun and make sure he has bullets, this is your guy, and this is your story. Has he ever fired that thing? Oh yes. But not just for practice…in the line of duty? Again, oh hell yes. And it’s a good thing, as it turns out. By the time the thing is over, a great deal of action has taken place, and though I am a six-to-eight book-at-a-time reader, the urgent, taut narrative (reminiscent somewhat of the Richard Stark detective novels from about the same period) grabbed me by the front of my shirt and held me there until the last page was turned. It was nominated for an Edgar, and the clever juggling of setting and character development, along with a plot line that is unbelievably lean and compelling, will probably leave you wondering, as it did me, why he was denied and just who exactly did get it. The consolation? You can read this book right now. Just order it up. You’ll have an excellent weekend…if you can wait that long!

Jerry Lind is missing, which is especially strange, given that he knows he is about to inherit a small fortune. It seems unlikely that he would take off for a long time without letting someone know about it. He ought to be back by now. Moreover, the next people in line to inherit his share are also wondering if he is okay. Not that they hope he isn’t. Of course not! And at this point I have to break my narrative to let you know that I was fortunate enough to get this DRC free, courtesy of Net Galley and Brash Books. It was previously published in the 1980’s and is just now being released digitally. Back to Jerry. No, never mind, forget him for a minute. Let’s talk about our assassin. Our assassin is not getting any younger, and his wife is exhausted from all the moves. Every time he carries out a contract, they have to either abandon their stuff or get a truck, and over years and years of professional killing, it wears a woman down. She wants a garden. From now on, he needs to either make do with the significant amount he’s squirreled away from his successful if messy business, or he’s going to have to goddamn hide the bodies. It’s the least he can do for her. Jack Lynch is our man. Jerry’s sister hires him to go to Barracks Cove, where Jerry was supposed to be running a professional errand, and see if he can’t track him down. And Lynch goes in prepared. If you are sick of reading wussy narratives that give flimsy reasons for the intrepid sleuth not to carry a gun and make sure he has bullets, this is your guy, and this is your story. Has he ever fired that thing? Oh yes. But not just for practice…in the line of duty? Again, oh hell yes. And it’s a good thing, as it turns out. By the time the thing is over, a great deal of action has taken place, and though I am a six-to-eight book-at-a-time reader, the urgent, taut narrative (reminiscent somewhat of the Richard Stark detective novels from about the same period) grabbed me by the front of my shirt and held me there until the last page was turned. It was nominated for an Edgar, and the clever juggling of setting and character development, along with a plot line that is unbelievably lean and compelling, will probably leave you wondering, as it did me, why he was denied and just who exactly did get it. The consolation? You can read this book right now. Just order it up. You’ll have an excellent weekend…if you can wait that long!