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The most well-written book series are those that do not require the books be read in order. I’ve been reading Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series and Will Trent series out of order. And I still love both of them. FALLEN is a continuation of the Will Trent series, which grew out of the Grant County series. Sara has left Grant County (and the Grant County series) after her husband’s murder there and is now a doctor in Atlanta. She met Will Trent earlier in the Will Trent series. But FALLEN is more about Will’s partner, Faith, and her mother, Evelyn, a former captain in the Atlanta Police Department. Evelyn has been kidnapped. No one knows where she is, who took her, or even why they took her. Most of this book is about finding the answers to those questions. Will is in most of the scenes, be they working on this case or being a conundrum for Sara to figure out. But Faith and her mother are the story, with Will’s and Sara’s slow-but-sure romance being an ongoing side story. Yes, it probably would have been more fun to read both series in order. But Slaughter ensures that the reader always knows what is going on so that each book, including FALLEN, can be read as a standalone.

I admit, I did not expect to like SUCH A FUN AGE. On the basis of its description on the book's flap, I thought it concentrated on racism, which every-other book seems to be about lately. So I would have passed it by if my book club hadn't chosen it. Joke's on me. I shouldn't have read the book flap. Emira is a 25-year-old black college graduate, part-time typist, part-time babysitter, who longs to be more adult with a job more like her friends' jobs. But she loves the little girl, Briar, she takes care of three days a week. The mother, Alix, is pretty hard to figure, though. (By the way, they're white.) After Alix hired Emira, their relationship was impersonal. That changes after a late-night incident in a grocery store. Emira is there with Briar when she is stopped by a security guard. He and another customer are suspicious that she has kidnapped Briar, a little white girl. Now Alix is determined to become Emira's friend. Meanwhile, Emira begins dating Kelley, another white customer in the grocery store that night. Kelley filmed the incident with his smartphone and wants to publicize it but doesn't. Emira doesn't want to and insists he delete the video from his phone. As the story continues, we see more and more the kind of person Alix really is, especially after she meets Kelley. I won't give away more of the story, though the end might be too rushed.

What a clever book this is! Really, MAGPIE MURDERS is two books, a book within a book. And both books are MAGPIE MURDERS. The narrator of Anthony Horowitz's MAGPIE MURDERS, Susan Ryeland, describes her experience with the book within the book, MAGPIE MURDERS, written by the fictitious author Alan Conway. Ryeland is an editor for the publisher of Conway's books. MAGPIE MURDERS is the ninth in his series of who-done-its. Now we read what Ryeland reads, the MAGPIE MURDERS written by Conway. It feels like reading an Agatha Christie novel. If you own the MAGPIE MURDERS written by Horowitz, I suggest you read it with a highlighter nearby so you can mark the first occurrence of characters' names. There are so many! And, speaking of names, I will never be able to read a book again without wondering whether the names of its characters have some significance. You will understand what I mean later. Before the murders are solved in the copy of MAGPIE MURDERS that Ryeland is editing, the story ends. It is missing chapters, and Ryeland is determined to find them. But she can't just ask Conway for them. Her firm's biggest money maker, Alan Conway, is dead. It looks like he jumped from a tower, committed suicide. But, during Ryeland's search for the missing chapters, she decides that he didn't jump but was pushed. So Ryeland not only needs to find the missing chapters so that the murders in Conway's MAGPIE MURDERS are solved; she also feels she needs to solve Conway's murder.

Why don't authors of, especially, historical fiction put their "Notes" before, rather than after, the story? Most seem to follow some rule that author "Notes" go at the end. WHERE THE LOST WANDER follows that seeming rule. But I learned through experience to check the back of the book for "Notes" so learned right away that two characters in the book really did exist. Knowing this while I read it made the story more interesting. Most of WHERE THE LOST WANDER is about members of a wagon train headed west for California, told from the viewpoints of Naomi and John. Naomi is traveling with her family and one of the wagons; John, part White, part Indian, did not intend to go all the way to California but changes his mind. Naomi and John take turns telling the story of their trip, incidents that happen along the way. That is until their experiences are no longer with the wagon train. By the second half of WHERE THE LOST WANDER, Naomi and John have married. One of Naomi's little brothers accidentally kills an Indian. The Indians retaliate by attacking the wagon train and taking Naomi and her newborn baby brother prisoner. Now this book is more than just incidents. Will John be able to find Naomi? Can they get the baby back?

WHITE IVY begins when Ivy is a child. She is Chinese but wants to be white and hang out with the white crowd at school. When she spends one summer in China, at first with rich relatives, she develops a high opinion of herself and a hankering for the rich life. Back in the United States, she dates only white boys. Ivy has a crush on one boy in particular: Gideon. Ivy and Gideon are pretty much at the center of this story. But so are Ivy and Roux (pronounced Roo), a Romanian who grew up in the neighborhood where she did. As an adult, Ivy’s desires haven’t changed much. They’ve been amplified. She still wants Gideon and gets him to a point. But something isn’t right. She sees what she wants to see, and Roux is what she settles for when she can’t be with Gideon. I read WHITE IVY while I was (and still am) quarantined because my husband has COVID-19 and I might have it. I had nothing to do but read. So I read this book more quickly than usual, taking breaks only to sleep. I wonder if I would have enjoyed WHITE IVY otherwise. I came to detest Ivy. So will you. I won this book from Simon and Schuster during a Facebook Live event with Susie Yang.

Part One of THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE didn’t do much for me. If it doesn’t much excite you, either, stick it out. It will be worth your while. In the beginning, it is 1714, and Addie La Rue is running from her wedding, from the life her parents expect her to lead. She wants more to her life and mistakenly makes a deal with the devil. Now she will not be confined to her little village, but she will also live forever and no longer age, and no one will ever remember her. And that’s the way it is for 300 years. Now it’s 2014, and Addie meets Henry. Why does Henry remember her when she approaches him a second time? I did not trust Henry. Little by little his story is told, but I still was not sure I could trust him. Is he in cahoots with the devil? I just wonder why, in her long life, did Addie not think of praying to beat this devil. Heck, she spent plenty of time sleeping in churches. It should have occurred to her. But this story is so good it may choke you up a little in the end. It did me. There’s something about this book that really bugged me, though. It may not bother you, but as a technical editor, all the unnecessary commas sure did bother me. The overabundance of commas should never have gotten out the door, and whoever is responsible for this needs to go back to school.

Although James Herriot was a farm veterinarian in the English countryside and dealt mostly with large animals such as cows and sheep, he also took care of dogs and cats. He wrote a series of books popular the world over about his veterinary experiences with all the various animals he treated. But JAMES HERRIOT’S CAT STORIES is a collection of his touching stories about the cats, exclusively. This is a small, illustrated book. Each story is a selection from one of his books in the series. I love his series and so, of course, I loved these cat stories. This is another of Herriot’s feel-good books.

ROSE MADDER doesn't rate near the top of all the Stephen King books I've read. Only one part near the 300-page mark was quite a page turner, but that tense feeling it elicited didn’t last long enough. A 32-year-old woman named Rosie (not Rose Madder, a color) has been married for 14 years to an abuser, appropriately named Norman because he's also insane. And he is a police detective. One day she finally leaves their home in an unnamed state and takes a bus to an unnamed Midwestern state. There she finds help and is beginning to get her new life together. But crazy Norman uses his police training to look for her. Most of ROSE MADDER is about his search and find and Rosie's response. Stephen King is normally such a great writer, this book, with its silly boring stretches, surprised me. There is nothing wrong with the premise, but he could have made it so much better! The parts taken up with Norman's viewpoint (italicized) certainly emphasize his insanity, but they are overly long and repetitive. The rest of ROSE MADDER is better, but too much of it is spent inside a painting. While everyone knows that King can deal well with life inside a painting (or a drain or a hole in the ground, etc.), he doesn't in this case. It is too ridiculous. ROSE MADDER was published in 1995, but I had never heard of it for more than 10 years. Now I know why.

Although Marcia Clark has written several other books, FINAL JUDGMENT is the first one I read. I thought her books would be a waste of my time. I believed that Marcia Clark won a little fame, and she was now depending on her name recognition to sell books. Surprise! When I read the copy of FINAL JUDGMENT that I won through writeoncindy.com, I found that it is a well written and truly engaging mystery. This is the fourth book in a series about defense lawyer Samantha Brinkman. But it reads like a standalone. Don’t worry about reading it out of order. Samantha’s lover Niko is a murder suspect, and she is trying to find out what really happened. Her investigation leads her to secretly believe that he might, indeed, be guilty. But what bothers her even more than his possibly being a murderer is that he has been hiding so much from her. You may find that a little hard to stomach. But even worse is what you learn about Samantha halfway through the book. Or maybe you already knew this if you read the previous books in this series. I’m happy to tell you that Marcia Clark really is an author.

Like many of you, when my husband and I were dating in the 80s, we never missed an episode of “Jeopardy!” Keith even bought me a book about “Jeopardy!” for our first Christmas. But THE ANSWER IS. . ., by the host of “Jeopardy!,” Alex Trebek, isn’t really about “Jeopardy!” so much as it is about Trebek, himself. Trebek’s book is his effort to beat the tabloids. He has pancreatic cancer, but that’s not what he wants their or his book to be about. Instead, in informal language, he tells the parts of his life that made big impressions on him. We never stopped watching “Jeopardy!,” although we haven’t been watching as frequently. THE ANSWER IS . . . changed that. We’ll be watching every evening again.

Like many of you, when my husband and I were dating in the 80s, we never missed an episode of “Jeopardy!” Keith even bought me a book about “Jeopardy!” for our first Christmas. But THE ANSWER IS. . ., by the host of “Jeopardy!,” Alex Trebek, isn’t really about “Jeopardy!” so much as it is about Trebek, himself. Trebek’s book is his effort to beat the tabloids. He has pancreatic cancer, but that’s not what he wants their or his book to be about. Instead, in informal language, he tells the parts of his life that made big impressions on him. We never stopped watching “Jeopardy!,” although we haven’t been watching as frequently. THE ANSWER IS . . . changed that. We’ll be watching every evening again.

A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES by Jennifer duBois had been an unread book in my bookcase for long enough; I finally read it. But I must have expected too much. I remember all the reviews gushing over this book, but I was underwhelmed. So much has already been written about A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES, I won't summarize it here. But I will say that duBois' writing is beautiful, really beautiful. It should make you want to continue even when the story is dragging. And that is the problem: the story is slow. In my mind, I was urging duBois to get to the point the whole time I was reading the book. Also, there isn’t much depth to either of the main characters. Therefore, points that should be sad or nerve wracking aren’t.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is not what I was expecting. I expected a book about a teenager who committed a mass school shooting. But WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is also about life with an evil child. This is the mother’s tale told from the beginning—the very beginning—of that child. She writes it as a series of letters to her husband. So, throughout the book, the reader is kept guessing about where her husband is now. But the mother’s story isn’t just descriptions of life with Kevin. Each of her letters is long on psychology and philosophy, too. The mother’s big question: whose fault was it? Certainly, the reader has to wonder whether the mother’s own attitude contributed to Kevin’s evil nature. But it seems to me that the father was even more at fault. I think, as a matter of fact, he was a big part of the problem. And then there’s Celia. She doesn’t appear until later in the book, but she serves to emphasize Kevin’s God-awful evil. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is probably a five-star book. I give it only four stars, though, because the evil is so difficult to read that I had to put the book down often.

A review of this book says it is a thriller. It isn’t, although it tries to be in Part 2. First you have to get through Part 1, which is more than 100 pages. It bored me terribly. Sarah is delusional. At first her delusions are believable. Her husband spends too much time at work because he is having an affair with his secretary. Then Sarah meets Lawrence in the park. He is secretive. By the time you get to Part 2, Lawrence is not believable at first, but Sarah’s psychiatrist is. And sometimes you think Sarah’s husband loves her and sometimes you don’t. In Part 2, you won’t know what is and what isn’t believable. But it’s still better than Part 1. I cannot recommend this book. But it appears others have. Too many people judge a book on the basis of its last half, alone.

Every other chapter of UNIVERSE OF TWO is a third-person account, historical fiction about Charlie Fish (said to be based on the actual mathematician Charles Fisk) and his key contributions to building the atomic bomb. And every other chapter is the first-person account of Brenda Dubie and her romance with Charlie Fish, a story that is, as far as I can tell, fiction with some real historical details thrown in here and there. Charlie's chapters are full of true history. I have a problem, though, with how much of the real Charles Fisk is portrayed by Charlie Fish. Kiernan says that Fish's life follows the skeleton of Fisk's, that is, where he went to school and what he worked on. But what about his continual crises of conscience? That is really what the whole book is about, all the chapters. Was any of that true? We know that there really was dissent going on during the Manhattan Project. And these chapters mention some actual cases. But how did Fisk feel about the atomic bomb? Did he see it as the only way to end the war and save thousands of American lives? Or did his conscience bother him, as it did the fictional Charlie Fish, because of the many thousand Japanese lives lost? (He didn't know about the dangers of radiation exposure yet.) Brenda's chapters bored me. Charles Fisk actually was married twice. I doubt that Brenda was based on either of his wives. She was probably just a handy way for Fish to begin his work with organs, which Fisk actually did end up doing.

The highest compliment I can pay a book: I couldn’t put it down; I was up way past my bedtime so I could finish reading it. That’s what happened last night. I just had to finish THE SECOND MOTHER before I could go to sleep. Like all Jenny Milchman’s novels before, which either take place in or are about someone from Wedeskyull, a small town in the mountains of New York, THE SECOND MOTHER begins there. Julie, a niece of the disgraced ex-chief of the Wedeskyull police, is grieving the death of her baby girl. She wants to get away from Wedeskyull so decides to resume her teaching career on a small island off the coast of Maine. There is where she experiences even greater trouble. The island is full of secrets and lies. Has Julie become incarcerated in a mental institution? Disregard a job application that asks marital status and number of children. Accept the unlikely abilities of elementary-school-age children. Go with it. Then you have here a most excellent and suspenseful story.

Wilkie Collins' THE WOMAN IN WHITE is in the style of JANE EYRE and WUTHERING HEIGHTS. I loved THE WOMAN IN WHITE. This book is considered to be the first detective novel. Walter Hartright, the main character, presents both his investigation of the conspiracy crime against Laura Fairlie and testimony of various witnesses. In this way, Collins uses multiple narrators to tell his story. Fairlie is the young, innocent, and beautiful blond who marries the scoundrel, Sir Percival Glyde, even though she loves Hartright. Glyde and his friend, Count Fosco, scheme to take Fairlie's fortune. Hartright takes the law into his own hands to restore Fairlie’s name even if not her money. This is the center around which the mysteries revolve. THE WOMAN IN WHITE is not only plot driven, though. The evil Count Fosco and the brave, intelligent Marian Halcombe are especial evidence of the characterization in this novel. Remember when Collins described his characters, though, he was writing from the perspective of a male in the 1850s. So when he said, for instance, that Halcombe was masculine, he was probably referring to her qualities of bravery and outspokenness. Fairlie is a character whose description Collins probably thought was positive. Yet her innocence during the 1850s would be seen as childish today. I thought she seemed stupid as well, frankly.

Diane Setterfield's ONCE UPON A RIVER is four mysteries with the Thames River as the backdrop. The foremost mystery is that of a nearly drowned (not really "returned to life," as explained in Setterfield's "Note") four-year-old girl. No one knows who she is, and she doesn't speak. The other three mysteries are of girls who have gone missing, feared drowned in the Thames. Could the unknown, nearly drowned girl be one of the three missing girls? This book is told in the writing style of a fairytale, which turned me off for the first 60 or so pages. I almost didn't continue reading until I read in Setterfield's "Note" that one of the characters is based on an actual photographer of the Thames at the time of this story. After I read a few more pages, I got used to this writing style and found I enjoyed the mysteries. But I admit ONCE UPON A RIVER does sound as corny as a fairytale sometimes, and I even expected "and they all lived happily ever after" at the end. Sure enough, the last chapter is called "Happily Ever After." I won this book from Atria Books.

At the recommendation of Dana Perino, Fox News anchor and cohost and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, I purchased GIRLS LIKE US by Cristina Alger. It wasn't bad, but I wish I had borrowed it from the library, instead. Perino is a smart beauty with an impressive resume, but our tastes in writing style don't quite agree. Nell, an FBI agent with an office in Washington, DC, comes home to Long Island for her father's funeral. He was a police detective who died in a motorcycle accident. But Nell becomes suspicious about her father's death and of all the people he worked with. So she doesn't return to Washington as soon as she had planned. I was put off by all sorts of little details such as a sentence I could have sworn I read elsewhere and Nell's statement that prostitutes don't choose that profession. But it isn't a bad book, just not good enough to make me seek Alger's other books.

It’s title refers to a drought. The setting of THE DRY is a small farming town in Australia, and everyone is suffering because of the drought. God-awful things are going on in this small town, and often the drought is being blamed. But Federal Agent Aaron Falk knows better. He and his father left there when he was 16 years old because it was such a nasty place, with some really bad people making them miserable. So why is he back now, 20 years later? It appears that his best friend there has shot himself along with his wife and five-year-old son. But Falk and the town sheriff, Raco, are finding that all is not as it appears. So there’s that mystery. But there is another, the reason Falk and his father left the small town all those years ago. THE DRY is unputdownable. The mysteries have twists and turns on every page. But you also want to watch every page for clues. Believe it, this is a book you will be sorry to see end.

Don’t expect too much. LOST GIRLS has received so many great reviews, even a NEW YORK TIMES notable book award for 2013, I expected to be mesmerized. Don’t make the same mistake. Then you’ll more readily see what outstanding reporting Robert Kolker does with this book. Not only does Kolker investigate the mysterious deaths of five young prostitutes on Long Island, he also looks at their lives, how they grew up, who loved them, how they chose their “profession.” He provides so many details you might come to understand them. I almost did. My biggest problems with LOST GIRLS were a) too many names and b) too many details. I just couldn’t keep track of all of them. Because LOST GIRLS is nonfiction, all the names are necessary for accurate storytelling. A good reporter is accurate, above all. Fiction can concentrate more on keeping the story readable with fewer names and fewer people who share the same name. But, with LOST GIRLS, at first I was paging back to remind myself who belonged in which girl’s life. Eventually, though, I gave up. Same with all the details. They may be necessary, but I had a hard time remembering which belonged with which story, and I eventually gave up. It would have been an enormous help to have a list of names, with reminders of who is who. Then guess what I found at the end of the book: a list of names, with reminders of who is who. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT DOING AT THE END? So, while I admire Kolker’s investigative reporting, as a book, I can’t give it a high rating. At this length, it is too confusing.

In Rene Denfeld’s THE CHILD FINDER, Naomi is known for her ability to find children, sometimes dead but more often alive. She, herself, escaped something when she was a child, something she forgets, and was subsequently raised in a foster home, with her foster brother, Jerome. That is one of the mysteries: what does Naomi forget? The main mystery of THE CHILD FINDER, though, involves Madison, who was lost in the woods when she was 5-years-old. It is now three years later. Chapters alternate: mostly Denfeld concentrates on Naomi’s search for Madison and the present state of Madison. But two other stories are also going on: Naomi’s other job—finding a missing baby whose mother is in jail for her murder—and Naomi’s relationship with Jerome. There are some problems. Every character in this book is so one dimensional the reader never really knows any one of them, even Naomi. That means this is a plot-driven, rather than character-driven, story. Also, Madison is only 5- to 8-years-old in the chapters that describe her, yet most everything she does seems way beyond a child that young. Other than these two problems, though, THE CHILD FINDER is an engaging book. I stayed up late to finish it last night so, obviously, am glad I read it. As I understand, this is the first in a series, and I’ll be looking to finding out about her next case and whether, this time, she investigates alongside Jerome.

I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful SECRETS OF EDEN is. Every sentence is so well written, and the story is arranged so well. SECRETS OF EDEN begins with the first-person account of a Baptist minister, Stephen. After he baptizes one of his parishioners, Alice, she says, “There,” and Stephen forever blames himself for not realizing what she meant by that word and for not saving her from her husband. Part II is the account of the state’s attorney, Catherine. She suspects that Alice’s husband did not commit suicide. She then suspects Stephen and looks for evidence against him. Eventually Stephen meets Heather, an author of inspirational books about angels, who helps him and Alice’s daughter, Katie, with her first-hand knowledge of wife abuse, murder, and suicide. Part III of SECRETS OF EDEN, is Heather’s first-person account. The final part of the book is Katie’s first-person account. Every part of SECRETS OF EDEN sounds like it really is written by that person who narrates it. The writing and the story are mesmerizing as each part builds suspense, adds clues, and moves the story further. This is one fine literary thriller.

Many people love Mary Kubica’s books. I’m not one of them. I’m sorry to say that because I always want to love what I’m reading. However, after reading two of her books, I’ve decided she’s not for me. WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT strikes me as a book for young adults, one I would have liked when I was a teenager. So, if you’re a teenager, try it. But I’m way past YA. Three stories are going on here, all connected but in different timelines. Two are Eden’s stories, the other one Jessie’s. It’s easy to figure out how Jessie and Eden are connected long before Kubica spells it out. Eden’s stories are too soap opera-ish, too repetitious. She wants a baby and thinks she will do anything to get one. Jessie is sleepy all the time in her story. Much of it doesn’t make sense, but I decided that was because of lack of sleep. And I’m sure that is what Kubica meant for the reader to think so she would be surprised in the end. But I wasn’t just surprised; I was disappointed to put it mildly. To be honest, I was angry because I felt like all the time I spent reading Jessie’s story was wasted. If you are one of the readers who likes Kubica’s books, pick this one up. Then you’ll see what I mean. I won this book through [email protected]

Although the title of Heidi Sopinka’s THE DICTIONARY OF ANIMAL LANGUAGES and its (loose?) basis on the life of artist Leonora Carrington are intriguing, this does not read well. That is, this is a confusing book. First of all, this would have been easier to read if Sopinka had used quotation marks. What is it with some authors nowadays and their elimination of quotation marks? They are an aid to the reader so she knows when thought ends and voice begins, so she understands the author’s intended meaning. When quotation marks are missing, the author has done a disservice to her reader. Also, this book has many sentence fragments, further instances of disservice to the reader. Again, subject and predicate, along with punctuation marks (besides the period), aid understanding. Although Sopinka doesn’t need to go back to school for a basic English grammar class--many of her paragraphs and sentences are constructed correctly--she seems to think the sentence fragment is a writing device that conveys meaning. I didn’t get much of it, so the device failed. Sopinka’s use of present tense, even in flashbacks, is also confusing. THE DICTIONARY OF ANIMAL LANGUAGES begins with Ivory Frame, 92-years-old, talking with Skeet. Although Sopinka does not say who he is, it seems that he is an old friend. I have read elsewhere exactly who he is, but Sopinka doesn’t say so. However, her use of present tense here is appropriate. Then flash back to past tense, then to present, then we are suddenly in another flashback where Sopinka still uses present tense, so the reader doesn’t know she’s in the past. Maybe she rereads the last few paragraphs to find an indication of when Frame left the conversation with Skeet and landed in Paris. It seems this is a much younger Frame, so this must be a flashback. Then the same thing happens in reverse. Now the reader is in the real present. Frame wants to tell Skeet about a letter she received informing her that she has a granddaughter. So that will probably make the reader further intrigued so she will want to read more. Or perhaps all the confusion, all the work the reader will have to trade for enjoyment, will deter her. I won this book through librarything.com.

The book flap on THE THIRD HOTEL calls it “surreal” and “mystifying.” I think that is a nice way of saying “unintelligible” and “confusing.” The story made little sense to me. I read and reread paragraphs, hoping that the problem was my own inattention. Perhaps Laura van den Berg said something that I missed, which was certainly possible; she snuck details into paragraphs that seemed to have nothing to do with anything. I could be wrong when I describe this story. I can only say this is how it seemed. Clare seems to be having a nervous breakdown after her husband died. I doubt my impression about this, though, because she also didn’t seem with-it in some of her flashbacks from before he died. Clare travels to Havana, Cuba, to attend a horror film festival, a trip her husband had planned. Regardless of the number of times I reread paragraphs, I couldn't figure out why. I guess she thinks she will learn something about him. While in Havana, Clare sees her husband. For most of the rest of the book, she follows him around. Remember, he’s dead. Clare does a lot of weird, crazy things, and the people she encounters often seem unreal. Heck, everything seems unreal. This book made me feel stupid. I didn't get it.

STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY may not be what you expect. But it is such a lovely novel I give it my highest rating, and I seldom do that. The story opens with Duncan, a quadriplegic architect in his 30s, after he is first introduced to Ottoline, a small helper monkey. You may expect, then, that STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY continues the story of “life with monkey.” Yes and no. STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY is a character-driven novel that studies Duncan and the people closest to him, his wife, Laura, and his twin brother, Gordon. Ottoline is part of the story, but she’s not the story. Katharine Weber makes her characters seem so real because, as she says, she uses “real-world information,” including architecture, art conservation, Sears kit houses, infertility, quadriplegia, monkey helpers, the right to die, twins, and Chinese porcelains. And she makes it interesting as you learn more and more about Duncan, Laura, and Gordon. Author Ann Packer says that this book is “a meditation on the question of what makes life worth living.” Maybe, but I understood the opposite: what makes life worth dying. I love this book and wish I read Katharine Weber sooner.

I am tempted to give MANHATTAN BEACH five stars. It deserves five stars for its historical accuracy and writing style. But only it’s second half is both plot- and character-driven. The first half of MANHATTAN BEACH introduces its various characters, especially Eddie, Dexter, and Anna. But where’s the story, I wondered. Many character-driven novels neglect plot, and it looked like this book was going that way. But I continued because the writing was so much better than I had read in a long time. The second half of MANHATTAN BEACH made the wait worthwhile. Little by little the mystery surrounding Eddie is revealed. His relationship with Dexter causes the relationship between Dexter and Anna. And what a story! The plot is convoluted, and the book becomes unputdownable. So I want to give MANHATTAN BEACH five stars. But in all honesty I give it four. I won this book from offtheshelf.com

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR is like an Agatha Christie novel. That is, it has lots and lots of twists as one character after another is suspect, first this guy, then that guy, then that guy, then back to one of those guys, then on to another guy, etc. And more and more of the mystery is solved until the surprising reveal. Except THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR doesn't end the story there. A bit of what-comes-next follows and a not-so-surprising but, I think, funny end. It's not a bad book. But it's not so good that I'll be reading more of Shari Lapena. That's because, like the Agatha Christie novel's I've read, THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR is long on mystery but short on story. If you are an Agatha Christie fan, you may rate this higher than I do.

THE BISHOP’S WIFE is about a Mormon bishop’s wife, Linda, who gets overly involved in the lives of people living in her ward, which is the bishop’s responsibility. She is so nosy (when she should be minding her own business) that she insinuates herself right smack in the middle of two simultaneous mysteries. A man dies, leaving his second wife and two adult sons. The mystery is his first wife. How did she die? Did he kill her? Why did he take such meticulous care of his garden? At the same time Linda involves herself in that, she finds another mystery going on with another family in her ward. In this case, another wife and mother has died but more recently. And the child is just 5 years old. Her husband and father-in-law are conservative, even more conservative than the usual Mormon. So it’s easy to suspect them. Besides, her parents are sure her husband murdered her. Did he? Linda finds out. Both mysteries are good enough that I wanted to finish reading the book, although Linda is ridiculous. Partly because of Linda, THE BISHOP’S WIFE seems like a young adult novel, although it is meant to be a novel for adult readers. Also, the writing style is too YAish. For these reasons, I do not rate THE BISHOP’S WIFE highly. But readers who really are YA would rate it higher.

Every review of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW that I read was a great one. So I tried it. Although I do criticize it, I give it four out of five stars because this book, after 140 pages, is difficult to put down and, when I had to put it down, made me anxious to pick it back up. Please read the first 140 pages. This is one of those books that's worth what seems like too much buildup. The woman in THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, Anna Fox, lives alone in a great big house that she never leaves. She spends her days online or watching DVDs of old movies or keeping an eye on her neighbors from her window. I was immediately reminded of REAR WINDOW, one of the old movies in Fox’s collection. Even though THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is updated with more recent technology, Fox still uses a camera with a telephoto lens, just like Jimmy Stewart. I knew then, Fox, like Stewart in REAR WINDOW, is looking for trouble. Along with that prediction, I easily predicted a couple of other mysteries in THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. But the book is still thrilling because it contains other mysteries that I didn’t predict. For this reason, I am careful not to discuss particulars. Enjoy this book: discover the mysteries as they occur in the book rather than anticipate them because I told you to. One comment, though: A.J. Finn, the author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, uses the best device to show me how bad the bad guy is—hurt the cat.

TONY AND SUSAN is a story within a story. At least it’s supposed to be. Susan is reading a book written by her ex-husband. Most of TONY AND SUSAN is that book, the story within the story. It’s about Tony, a college professor, whose wife and child are abducted and murdered. The story starts out pretty good, although Tony is quite a wimp. But then the story degenerates; it gets tedious and dull. Worse is the end of the story within the story. It is quite a letdown. Worse than the story within the story is the story, Susan reading. I cannot figure out why these parts of TONY AND SUSAN even exist. I call it “the story,” but is it really if it makes me wonder, so what? Again, I don’t know why it’s there. And again, the end is a letdown.

The first half, approximately, of STONER reads like a summary. Therefore, it is quite dull. The second half, approximately, isn’t much better, but it IS better. At least characters do a little more talking. Essentially, this is a story of a boy, then a man who goes through life not defending himself and, with rare exceptions, choosing to do what others want rather than what he wants. It is a frustrating story that even gets disgusting when he allows his hateful wife to take over the life of their child. STONER, written in the 1960s, is praised as “the most beautiful book in the world” and “almost perfect” and, now, even has a 50th anniversary edition. Must be good, right? That’s what I thought. But I found it to be otherwise, although it might have been better if I read it with no expectations, if I had ignored that over-the-top admiration. So, beware.

Maybe you, like me, have read so many World War II novels you’re feeling “oversaturated” (did I make up that word?) with them. SONS AND SOLDIERS is different. First, it’s fact, not a novel. Second, it should make you want to turn its pages like it is your first World War II book because this is probably a story you haven’t heard before. This is a true story about the “Ritchie Boys,” six of them in particular. They were Jews who grew up in 1930s Germany when it was being changed by the Nazi party. SONS AND SOLDIERS follows these six from then to their escaping Germany for the United States to their eventual service in the U.S. Army. At Camp Ritchie in Maryland, each of them learned to interrogate German POWs (and French people in some cases). In this way, these men become heroes for the valuable information they extracted that helped us win World War II. SONS AND SOLDIERS is not just a book about war and it’s not even just a book about the injustices the Nazi party imposed on Jews. This book is also full of real incidences in the lives of each of the six Ritchie Boys from the time they entered the army to the end of the war with Germany. Read SONS AND SOLDIERS for its look into the little-known experiences of the so-called “enemy aliens,” Jewish Germans who became U.S. citizens to interrogate German POWs. I won this book through JathanandHeather.com.

Harlan Coben’s plot-driven novels are some of the few that you can always feel safe spending your money on, even preordering, because you know they’ll be unputdownable. DON’T LET GO is another safe bet. Nap, a policeman, lost his girlfriend, Maura, and twin brother, Leo, at pretty much the same time when they were all seniors in high school; Leo and his girlfriend, Diana, died, Maura disappeared. That was 15 years ago. Now Maura has resurfaced, and the circumstances of Leo’s and Diana’s deaths have come into doubt. Nap, still single, girlfriendless, and living alone, thinks the disappearance and deaths were related and strives to get to the bottom of them. Coben’s books are never a waste of time or money. So I’m happy to recommend that you do yourself a favor and pick up DON’T LET GO.

Chris Bohjalian's THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT is a riveting literary thriller. That is an understatement. It's the best kind of book: the kind you can't put down so you put off doing anything else, including sleeping. The main character, Cassandra, is the flight attendant. She sleeps around with strange men, and she is a raging alcoholic. She disgusts even hersèlf. But that isn't enough to make her stop. As a result, she wakes up one morning with a dead man. And her problems keep escalating daily from there. Although Cassandra is an unsympathetic character, she does redeem herself in my eyes . She cares for cats in an animal shelter every chance she gets. Besides that, she watches reruns of "The Big Bang Theory." I read an advanced copy of this book. It's a safe bet for preorder.

I haven’t seen the movie based on BROOKLYN. How can they do it unless they rewrite the screenplay? BROOKLYN starts in Ireland. Eilis is a young lady with no job prospects or male companionship. She moves to America (Brooklyn, specifically) when she is assured that her job prospects there, at least, will be better. What I just said in 2 sentences, Colm Tóibín says slooowly in more than 50 pages. Then he tells us about Eilis’s simple life working and going to school in Brooklyn. That’s the problem. Although BROOKLYN is well written, not much happens in it. And what does happen is slow and so-whatish. There’s nothing here that makes you anxious to turn the pages, not even the love interest. Sure, when the story is almost over and about 1/10 of it is left, you may find yourself rooting for someone, but, in the end, even that is pretty ho hum. I’m anxious to see what the movie does with BROOKLYN.

What a great book! I’m not alone in thinking this, either: since FOURTH OF JULY CREEK was published in 2014, it has won numerous awards. But, right up front, I want to say I have two issues with this book: its genre and its title. I do not agree with the genre the book is classified under (at least at my library), Mystery and Suspense. To call it that is a stretch. Although part of FOURTH OF JULY CREEK wonders what became of a family, that is only a part. The book is literature more than it is mystery and suspense. And FOURTH OF JULY CREEK is about more than Fourth of July Creek. The book centers on Pete Snow, a social worker in Montana. Fourth of July Creek has to do with one of his cases that begins with the discovery of a filthy and somewhat wild boy, Benjamin Pearl, who lives in the wilderness with his father, Jeremiah, a paranoid man, suspicious of everyone, always afraid that his freedom is threatened. Pete seeks to gain their trust so they will accept his help and, in so doing, learns the Pearl family also consists of a wife and several more children. Where are they? But that is just one of Pete’s cases featured in FOURTH OF JULY CREEK. Also, issues in his own life make up half the book, with a runaway daughter who resorts to prostitution because she thinks she is maintaining her freedom and a brother who is evading prison. All the parts of FOURTH OF JULY CREEK, Pete's social work and his personal issues, have in common the desire for freedom. Smith Henderson is an author I’ll be watching for. His writing is brilliant, a word that may be overused but, in this case, is applicable.

All of Joseph Kanon's books are intelligent literary thrillers/historical fiction, and every one is great. But his latest book, DEFECTORS, is outstanding. In 1961 a publisher, Simon, travels to the Soviet Union to edit the "memoir" of a former US citizen who defected to Russia in 1949--his brother, Frank. "Memoir" is in quotation marks because the truth of that book is suspect. The truth of anything Frank says is suspect. So, when Frank tells Simon he wants to return to the US but can only do so with his help, Simon is on his guard but cannot refuse. I will spare you further details so you can enjoy discovering them on your own. And you will. Partly, that's because every word counts in this novel. Kanon never goes on and on with unnecessary descriptions, tempting his readers to skim, as so many authors do. Kanon never wastes his readers' time. If I had to pick my favorite of all Kanon's previous books, it would probably be THE GOOD GÈRMAN. DEFECTORS ranks right up there with that book and may even surpass it.

Now I’ve read another of these selections, THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10. I’m afraid it’s just so-so, no great shakes. But others disagree with me. Many reviewers say that THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 is better than Ruth Ware’s last book, IN A DARK, DARK WOOD. That is true if you don’t count the first two thirds of CABIN 10. The last third of that book is, indeed, nailbiting. And that is good enough for most reviewer’s, I guess. All in all, though, I would say that CABIN 10 is about average. If the entire book was as good as the last third, I would give it a four out of five. I am disappointed. A journalist is spending the week on a new cruise ship in order to review it for the travel magazine she works for. She believes that the woman next door, in cabin 10, has been murdered and makes lots of trouble for herself when she insists on pursuing what she believes to be true. It’s not a bad premise, so I expected more than this book came up with.

What a pleasure to read! The writing in A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW is delightful. Sentenced in 1922 to house arrest for a poem he wrote, the gentleman, Count Alexander Rostov, may never again leave his home, a grand hotel in Moscow. But the hotel certainly is grand--the count befriends various employees there and becomes involved with so many aspects of life there. We see him make a large life for himself. This book is full of elegant language, reflecting, I assume, the language of a gentleman; stories of the count’s past and of the lives of others in the hotel; friendships to last 30 years; and plenty of sarcasm. But don’t expect that this is similar to Amor Towles’ excellent RULES OF CIVILITY. Frankly, I read A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW because I loved RULES OF CIVILITY. They aren’t alike; A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW is better. I received my copy of A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW from luxuryreading.com.

ILL WILL does not have one main character. I would say there are five: Rusty spent 25 years in jail after he was unjustly convicted of killing his adoptive parents. He’s now free, thanks to the Innocence Project. Dustin, Rusty’s adoptive brother, had testified against Rusty and even now refuses to speak to him. He is now a psychologist. Aaron, Dustin’s younger son, is a junkie. Dustin doesn’t notice. Dustin doesn’t notice a lot of things. Dennis, Dustin’s older son, is a college student. He is extremely frustrated that his brother is a junkie and his father doesn’t notice his surroundings, acts spacey, and indulges one of his patients by going along with his search for a serial killer. Aqil is that patient, later Dustin’s friend. He is a former policeman, whose quest for a serial killer appears clearly nuts. Perhaps Dustin, of all these characters, is the primary because he ties them together. ILL WILL is a very detailed psychological study of all these characters, in particular, of Dustin. How ironic that the character with the greatest psychological problems treats patients with psychological problems. This is an overly long book.It doesn't get good until around page 300, which is about halfway. That's too many pages of details to call this a good book. Until that point, about page 300, ILL WILL is, essentially, a setup of what will happen after that point. But if you can get past that setup, the book truly does redeem itself. Probably this is why a book that is only half good gets so many high ratings. I won this copy of ILL WILL through librarything.com.

Here is why I don’t trust blurbs written by authors about other authors’ books. They describe Swan Huntley’s WE COULD BE BEAUTIFUL as a thriller and a page-turning mystery. First, I would not call this book thrilling. As for mystery, sure, a little bit, but not until after about 200 pages describing a woman’s excesses with all her money, more than she knows what to do with. Speaking of “woman,” Catherine is 43 years old but sounds like a teenager for most of the book. When she doesn’t sound like a teenager, she sounds like a 5 year old. Catherine thinks it’s about time she found a husband. So she finds the ideal (at least he looks ideal) man, William, at an art show. About halfway through WE COULD BE BEAUTIFUL William says and does some unsettling things that may raise the reader’s suspicions. And Catherine’s mother (who suffers from Alzheimer’s) acts standoffish at mentions of William or his family. These are mysteries but certainly not engaging much less page turning. This story had potential. It could have been a mystery/thriller. Instead, though, WE COULD BE BEAUTIFUL is tedious and predictable.

Because THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS takes place at first in Ireland, I expected it to be about Irish people. And it seems so at first. But this is really about the mysterious foreigner, “Dr. Vlad,” who comes to a small village in Ireland. Who is he really? Why is he able to mesmerize so many of the people who live there? That’s at first. Then this book is more and more about a beautiful woman there, Fidelma, who is married to a much older man and has tried and failed to have a baby. She wants one badly and gets help from “Dr. Vlad.” By this point in the story, it is evident that THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS is not about Ireland but about the Bosnian War and its atrocities. But O’Brien just says this in bits and pieces. There is also no character development in this story, even the two main characters. O'Brien leaves too much unsaid. O'Brien seems to like to make the reader doubt her memory and deduce what she means. Therefore, THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS is difficult to describe. I didn’t enjoy reading this book because, frankly, it made me feel stupid. I still have questions I don’t know the answers to and wonder if I somehow missed them or didn’t make the correct deductions. And I wish someone would at least tell me why the heck Fidelma is referred to twice as “Jenny.”

I won NORTH OF BOSTON from MauriceonBooks.com two years before I finally read it. I didn't know what I was missing. The book begins after Pirio is in a boating accident. She, alone, survives after floating for four hours in water temperatures that would have killed most people. She learns that a much larger boat collided with the one she was on and then left the scene – – it was a hit-and-run accident. Even worse, she later realizes that this was a case of murder; someone was trying to get rid of the captain of the boat Pirio was on. Who was responsible, and what were they trying to cover up? Pirio wants to get to the bottom of it. Most of NORTH OF BOSTON is about her endeavor to do that. What a great story, with such creative characterization! If you haven't read this yet, please don't put it off any longer.

No one writes a story like Tana French. Her style is original, not like any I’ve read elsewhere. And her dialog: it’s so good I feel like I’m there—in Ireland—and she even has me feeling at home with all the Irish slang. She also doesn’t waste space or my time with paragraph upon paragraph describing the atmosphere in which her story takes place, as so many authors do. This is true for French’s books in general and for THE TRESPASSER in particular. All French's books, so far, are about different characters, detectives mostly, on the Dublin Murder Squad. In THE TRESPASSER, two of the characters, partners Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran,are main characters.Conway is the narrator.She and Moran are tired of always getting the domestic murder cases handed to them. When they are given a case involving the murder in her home of a single young woman, they are sure it’s another cut-and-dry Domestic, easy to solve, even too easy. But this turns out to be more. This may even have the rest of the Murder Squad hating them.Conway and Moran also have to deal with Detective Don Breslin, who seems to be trying to steer their case toward the victim’s new boyfriend, even after Conway learns details that point in another direction. French has another winner with THE TRESPASSER. I highly recommend it and only do not give it my highest rating because I gave that to BROKEN HARBOR. I won this book from luxuryreading.com.

Just last evening an alarm sounded on my iPhone, signaling another Amber alert of a child abduction, probably a parental kidnapping. That is the main subject of ALMOST MISSED YOU. Violet’s husband, Finn, has left her waiting on the beach while he has taken off with their 3-year-old son. She did not see the problems in their marriage that led to this because of his lies of omission. And Violet realizes that she, too, kept quiet when she should have spoken up. Meanwhile, Violet’s and Finn’s good friends, Caitlin and George, have hidden problems of their own, not to mention Caitlin’s lies of omission that contributed to Violet’s and Finn’s troubles. And, like Violet and Finn, Caitlin and George are each lying to the other by omission. Fans of women’s fiction will love ALMOST MISSED YOU. The novel explores, mostly, the two couple’s friendships, marriages, and lies of omission that threaten to tear it all apart. This subject matter is popular with so many people that the term “women’s fiction” was coined just for them. So ALMOST MISSED YOU contains lots of secrets and lies, and that is essentially it. A story like this doesn’t appeal to me. Yes, lots of people would disagree with me. I would have disagreed, too, when I was a young adult.

Although Ian Caldwell is non-Catholic, THE FIFTH GOSPEL is full of details about the Vatican and the priesthood. This is a literary mystery--who killed a religious scholar and why, is the Diatessaron really the fifth gospel and where is it, and is the Shroud of Turin really what is claimed and who does it belong to? What fine character development in this novel! In particular, two priests, brothers, one Roman Catholic, the other Greek Catholic, are the main focus. Told from the point of view of one of them, Alex, this story is his investigation of these mysteries after Ugo, the religious scholar, is found dead, apparently murdered. Ugo had been studying the Diatessaron and found allusion there to the Shroud of Turin. Is this the reason he was murdered? Catholic readers will appreciate all the research Caldwell did on the Vatican and the priests and bishops there. I'm not sure, however. if a non-Catholic would. I think THE FIFTH GOSPEL might have bored me if I were not a Catholic. Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe the reader will appreciate this novel for its character-driven mystery when so many mysteries/thrillers are simply plot driven.

Although some authors can write a novel in a series to also work as a standalone so that the reader can enjoy it, even out of order, PANTHER'S PREY is not one of them. This is the fourth in a series about Leo Maxwell, a lawyer working as a public defender, and too much of this novel depends on your understanding of previous books. Most of PANTHER'S PREY, however, can be understood. Leo has worked alongside a young woman, Jordan, defending a client who confesses to crimes he did not commit. Leo has a week-long affair with Jordan--ONE WEEK. In the majority of the book, then, Leo risks his life numerous times to learn what happened to Jordan. It would be easier to accept Leo's actions if they were on behalf of a wife of 30 years. The story drags, i.e., it is slow. It is not thrilling. I didn't much care about any of the characters, even Leo, even Jordan's father. These two characters, especially, should have more personality. Instead, they bored me. I won PANTHER'S PREY through goodreads.com.

For the most part, THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS is an excellent mystery, the kind readers will be anxious to keep reading. It is a murder mystery, yes, but as the best mysteries are, this book is much more than that. It examines lies and relationships and the possibility of miracles. Plus, the substory of a separate character in need of a miracle is placed in this story to make it even more complex. But it's a 4- out of 5-star book. THE VIRGIN OF SMALL PLAINS loses a point because its language is simple, sounding more like a young adult than an adult novel. This is especially true of the first and the last couple chapters. The book begins with silly teenage situations, which don't do much for an adult reader. The last chapters tie everything up neatly, reminding me, again, of a YA novel. Adults will still enjoy this, though, even the hard-to-please readers. It keeps you guessing, then guessing again and again.

THE MASK is not the first in a series about Vanessa Michael Munroe; rather, it is well into the series. But it passes my test: a book in a series should be understood without requiring that the previous books have been read. So that's one good point. Another is its comments about Japanese society and laws, particularly when they are compared with American society and laws. And that's what the story is about: why Munroe's boyfriend was arrested for murder, why it is practically impossible to get him out of prison, and how to investigate what really happened. Unfortunately, the majority of this book describes that investigation, and here is the problem with that: Munroe. She is superwoman and too hard to swallow. If you are familiar with Lee Child's Jack Reacher, I would say that Munroe is a female version of Reacher. Like Reacher, Munroe is successful at most anything she tries to do. And boy does she, like Reacher, kick ass. In other words, she always wins a fight, even against a man, even against three men, even against three men with pipes and guns. Just as unbelievable is Munroe's ability to be either male or female. No explanation is given about how she must have changed her voice. The reader is told only that she gets away with this because she is tall. For these reasons, the book is boring and seems too long. I won THE MASK through librarything.com.

If you've read several other Lisa Scottoline novels, you probably like her type of writing style. I don't usually. However, a few years ago I read a couple in a row that were good so have read others since then. I discovered that those first two were the exception; for most of the others, I couldn't get over the style, which I think of as immature. It's a style I used to like when I was a teenager, so my review of MOST WANTED would probably have been different then. If you like her style, for you MOST WANTED deserves a slightly higher rating than I give it. Still, though, it's missing the thrills that Scottoline books normally begin at the beginning or close to it. If you're looking for thrills, you can skip a couple hundred pages that describe the lean and muscular husband, the wonderful best friend, trips to the doctor's office, disagreements between husband and wife, and manipulation by an innocent or guilty man. After a couple hundred pages, although thrills begin during an investigation into that man's innocence or guilt, I was so sick of the stupid main character allowing herself to be manipulated, it was too late for me. Whether it turned out she was right or wrong, she did one stupid thing after another so I didn't even care by then. I won this book through goodreads.com.

Mahtob Mahmoody is the daughter in NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER, a book written in the late 1980s by her mother, Betty Mahmoody, about their escape from her Iranian father, his family, and his country. If you haven't already read that book, do it now, before you read MY NAME IS MAHTOB. Otherwise, the latter book will be dull. If you have read NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER, you will appreciate Mahtob's view of those circumstances. Betty's account of their supposed "two-week vacation" to Iran took place when Mahtob was 4 to 6 years old. And Mahtob does remember that time in flashes, as most of us do, although her flashes were, perhaps, more memorable. As an aside, I hope Mahtob somehow sees this review of her book so she can read my apology. Recently (February 2016) I went to her book event at a bookstore in Okemos, Michigan. I asked her how she could remember that far back. She explained (as she does in the book, although I had not gotten that far yet). All is believable, and I'm afraid I sounded like a skeptic when I asked that question. MY NAME IS MAHTOB continues to her adulthood because their story of terror does not end with their escape to freedom. As long as her father was alive, she and her mother had to be cautious of their every step because he never went away and neither did his threats to kill Betty and to kidnap Mahtob.

Agnes Magnusdottir was the last person to be publicly beheaded in Iceland. She had been convicted, along with two other people, of murder. BURIAL RITES is based on years of research into Agnes's life both before and after the conviction. While the book is a novel, even what Hannah Kent imagined is based on likelihood. Much is true. While this book has received many five-out-of-five-star ratings, I found the entire book to be depressing so can only give it four. Every bit of this story is sad, but the writing is excellent.

Daniel's father tells him that his mother has had a psychotic breakdown. Then Daniel's mother tells him that his father is dangerous. What follows is a four- out of five-star book. And that's generous; I considered three stars. Most of THE FARM, that is, more than 3/4 of it, is Daniel's mother's story since she and his father retired in Sweden, as she perceives it. Page after page Daniel patiently listens to her paranoia. She is so obviously paranoid, even to the point of believing she knew what people were thinking, that I didn't believe a word of it. Daniel does, though. The last bit of this book is the part I liked best, no more paranoid story. Something really happens. The story is such a surprise that I gave it four rather than three stars. Don't think that THE FARM is the book that finally measures up to Tom Rob Smith's first one, CHILD 44. Not that THE FARM is bad. Maybe it's that CHILD 44 is so excellent that we expect too much.

This is a nice story of nice girl, Sira, who grows up poor in Spain before World War II. She’s a seamstress there with her mother until, years later, she is swept off her feet by a man who takes her to Morocco only to leave her there high and dry. Now she’s alone and in debt, but all is well when she opens business there as a seamstress. But that’s not all she is. And so on. As historical fiction, Spain before and up to World War II, this book excels. But THE TIME IN BETWEEN disappointed me because it was so predictable. I could predict everything that happened. And I don’t mean just the historical facts. Everything that happened to Sira, every mess she got into, I could predict. At least, that’s the way it seemed to me. I know people who disagree.

This is an interesting book, enough that I kept reading it. While it's easy to put down, it is good enough that I also was anxious to pick it up again. The reader sees Melissa grow up with a mother who saw to Melissa’s career as an actress from the time she was an infant. Melissa also went to school, unlike other child actors. Often they are "home schooled" (Melissa's quotation marks) so they are available for auditions. One "home-schooled" third grader, Melissa observed, couldn't even sound out a three-syllable word. We read other books about poor families having their children work. Melissa did this, too. Sometimes we forget that acting is real work. As Melissa got older, competition became fiercer, and she got fewer and fewer roles. When she wasn't working, her mother got more unreasonable and lazy. So Melissa went to Harvard, far from her home in California and her mother. Other reviewers of this book say that they like it less after this point. But I think the opposite. While Melissa's life as a child actor is interesting, that part of her story isn't riveting. But it is while she is in college and after she gets married and moves to San Francisco that the reader really sees her mother’s insanity. She was descending for years and this is the finality. This explains how Melissa could write what she did, say what she said. I now respect Melissa Francis.

This is a nice story. You could call it heartwarming. "60 Minutes Australia" even did a segment on it, and it was written up in newspapers first in Australia, later all over. Little 5-year-old Saroo lived with his family in a poor neighborhood in India. One day he accompanied his big brother to a job at a railroad station, became separated and lost, and ended up living for weeks on the streets. He survived to be adopted by Australians but never forgot his other mother in India. This is Saroo's account of his search for her and the rest of his family in India. If not for the Internet (Google Earth and Facebook), it couldn't have happened. Yes, I like this story. Who wouldn't? Many paragraphs, though, go on and on about Saroo's search in unnecessary and boring detail. Skip those. Probably, the segment on "60 Minutes Australia" was long enough. I won an ARC of this book from librarything.com.

THE ORCHARDIST is a lovely book, and many people rave about it. So you might not want to pay attention to my criticism. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. But I have two problems with this book. First, the author, Amanda Coplin, never lets her readers know any character. She glosses over everything. Second, Coplin uses too many sentence fragments, and she doesn't use quotation marks. This is a device, I'm sure, but for what, I'm not sure. I only know that the result for the reader is choppy sentences that are difficult to read. Over and over, I had to reread paragraphs because I had to figure out when someone was talking and when they quit talking. There was a good reason things like punctuation and quotation marks, capitalization, and even spaces between words were invented. If a writer cares about her readers, she uses them. If she says the heck with you and doesn't that's inconsiderate I won THE ORCHARDIST through http://www.ManOfLaBook.com blog.

ACROSS MANY MOUNTAINS: A TIBETAN FAMILY’S EPIC JOURNEY FROM OPPRESSION TO FREEDOM by Yangzom Brauen is made up of descriptions of one Tibetan family’s progression through different cultures, beginning in Tibet before the Chinese invasion and ending in Sweden until they do a complete circle and return to Tibet many years later after the Chinese allow them back in. Each culture the family moves to is more technologically advanced than the last. This book is about their ability to cope in each new culture and how they view Tibet on their return. At least, that’s what I thought Brauen intended. Actually, only two members of the family, the mother and daughter, make it all the way. The daughter’s daughter, Brauen, did not make the journey as the title and cover picture imply. She was born and raised in Switzerland but likes to call both Switzerland and Tibet her countries. Although she did go to Tibet with her mother, brother, grandmother, and Swiss father many years later, their return wasn’t permanent. But the book doesn’t end there. Maybe it ought to. Instead, it continues. Notice, I say the book continues, not the story. That is because my impression was that the continuation was another story, that of Brauen’s protests against oppression of Tibet and her hope that Tibet not be forgotten. I have a problem with books that have no dialog, with unemotional, impersonal descriptions of people and things. That’s how this book is, especially in its first half. It contains so many details it drags. Details should enhance a story. But here they mostly don’t because the author tries to cover too much. This is the risk I find in most nonfiction. Although I prefer nonfiction over fiction, most nonfiction fails for me because most authors don’t know how to write it other than to state the facts. Although the second half of this book is better than the first, it, too, is made up of many impersonal descriptions. I was never made angry, sad, touched, or happy for anyone. This book has received many favorable reviews on amazon.com and goodreads.com. Maybe you should believe them and not me. Maybe you will be able to manage to keep your mind from wandering. But I think that will be a trick. I won a finished, hard cover copy of this book through luxuryreading.com. So I actually feel guilty for disagreeing with their two reviews of ACROSS MANY MOUNTAINS. But there it is.

THE WINTER PALACE: A NOVEL OF CATHERINE THE GREAT by Eva Stachniak is historical fiction. The historical part is about Catherine, so I guess that’s why Stachniak put her in the subtitle. But the story is told by one of her fictional maids, Barbara, and is very much about her. Barbara was like a Dickens character in that she began as the lowliest of lows and eventually became a great friend and confidant of Catherine. The two were together from the time Catherine was Sophie, a poor princess trying her best to marry the next Russian emperor. Barbara saw Catherine accomplish her objective but then become nothing more than a vessel to produce the next heir to the throne. And then when she did, the baby was immediately taken away from her. Barbara’s is probably a good example of a palace employee and of all the spying and deceit that went on there. But this (spying and deceit) were the subjects more than Catherine. Eventually, as we know, Catherine takes the throne. But, as with all historical fiction, it’s difficult to know what is fiction and what is fact about how that came to be. This book is a good example of historical fiction, but, honestly, it bored me for the most part. Yet, I couldn’t make myself skip paragraphs or chapters. I wanted to know what would happen next, so that’s a good sign, right?