Under my skin, by Lisa Unger

 

This is a page-turning, suspenseful thriller in which the main character is trying to figure out what happened to her husband, who was found bludgeoned to death after running in a park near their home. Poppy has been mourning Jack's death for a year, and is paranoid and anxious. It doesn't help that she's taking sleeping medicine and anti-anxiety medicine, and mixing both with alcohol. She thinks someone's following her and is experiencing daytime blackouts. Once she decides to forego the medicine and alcohol, she begins to make progress in tracking down the clues that will lead her to the truth.

Where ivy dares to grow, by Marielle Thompson

 

Saoirse travels with her fiance to his family estate in rural England to see his mother as her health is failing. Feeling unwelcome, Saoirse wanders throughout the large and imposing house, finding herself traveling through time and falling in love with one of her fiance's ancestors. Over time she comes to realize that her relationship with her fiance is broken and she is faced with the decision of whether to try to make it work or make a change. This book reminds me of the gothic mysteries that I read as a teenager. It's well written and entertaining.

Silent thunder, by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen

This is a page-turning thriller about an international search for historical antiquities aboard a decommissioned Soviet-era nuclear submarine. Entirely implausible, but entertaining.
 

The bone code, by Kathy Reichs

 

This is another satisfying mystery solved by forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan in which she manages to solve both a contemporary crime in South Carolina and a second murder from her past in Montreal. Very enjoyable!

The lion is in, by Delia Ephron

I really enjoyed this funny, yet touching, novel about three women who are all on the run from their respective pasts. They stop one night at a closed roadside bar, intending to just sleep there, but they end up staying for months. The bar has a retired circus lion that one of the women becomes attached to and she begins to work with it and do shows for the customers. The other two help with serving and management, and the bar starts to do much better financially. Each of the women begin to makes friends with the locals, but they all know that at some point they will have to make a decision about whether to stay or return home to deal with their pasts. I've never read any of Delia Ephron's books, but I've seen some of the movies that she wrote the screenplay for. Her writing is very good and I found myself completely engrossed with the story and characters.
 

Mastering the art of French murder, by Colleen Cambridge

 

This is a fun mystery set in Cold War-era Paris. Tabitha is staying with her uncle and his friend who just happen to live across the street from the apartment building where Julia Child lives with her husband. Tabitha has befriended Julia and spends a lot of her free time learning how to cook and socializing with Julia's friends and family. After one late night, one of Julia's guests turns up dead, stabbed with one of Julia's own knives. Tabitha decides to find out who murdered her, and begins to track down clues the police have missed. 

This book was entertaining and charming. It would be fun to see adapted as a TV series or movie.

The half life of Valery K, by Natasha Pulley

 

Valery K is a prisoner in a Russian labor camp who is released early in 1963 to work on a scientific study of the effects of radiation on an entire ecosystem six years after an accident blew up a nuclear reactor. As he begins to look into the flora and fauna in the region, he realizes that there’s much more going on than he’s been told; in fact, everyone in the region is being exposed to high amounts of radiation daily, although they’ve been told it’s safe, and there are unethical secret experiments on radiation’s effects on humans also taking place.

The writing in this book is top notch. The story flows well at a good pace and never falters. The characters are well-developed and believable, and the reader empathizes with their predicament. They are forced to lie constantly and speak in code, and the strain this puts on them is huge. The author writes about the research she conducted while preparing to write this book, and the fact that most of the book is based on documented facts and circumstances is truly amazing. Even though there is a lot of tragedy and sadness in this book, with characters suffering and sometimes dying from radiation sickness, there is also a lot of humor as well. Especially enjoyable is an octopus, whose sole purpose in the novel seems to be to provide a bit of comic relief. My book club has selected this book for our March read, and I can’t wait to discuss this with them. I think there’s a lot here that will be very educational to most readers (it was for me) and it would generate a lot for people to talk about. It opened my eyes to a time in history that seems to have receded to the distant past, but which is really just yesterday, and some of the concerns raised by the book about nuclear power, are still very much relevant today.

There is nothing for you here, by Fiona Hill

 

After seeing Fiona Hill's testimony before Congress and reading her earlier book about Vladimir Putin, reviewed here, I was eager to read her memoir about growing up in the northeast of England in a mining town that had experienced high unemployment after the mines were shut down in the 1980s under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. This is much more than a memoir, however; it's a deeply-researched exploration of how the economics of the U.K. and U.S. in the 1980s, and of Russia in the 1990s, decimated manufacturing and mining communities in those three countries leading to many of the same problems. Hill incorporates her own experiences to show how class discrimination is a significant barrier to personal advancement in the U.K. and the U.S., where it is exacerbated by racial discrimination as well. She closes the book with policy recommendations that could be helpful in transcending these problems.

We are the light, by Matthew Quick

 

I loved this heartbreaking novel by author Matthew Quick. Epistolary novels offer so much in the way of telling a story while also allowing for the narrator to be somewhat unreliable and drawing out the tension. The premise of this book is that in the aftermath of a mass shooting in a movie theater in this small Pennsylvania town, the narrator develops a close friendship with the brother of the shooter who has been treated like a pariah by the rest of the town’s residents. They decide to make a feature-length monster movie that will include the survivors of the shooting as cast members and debut the film in the same theater where the shooting occurred and which has been closed since; this is intended to help the town heal from its pain. The narrator tells the story through letters to his Jungian therapist who was also a victim of the shooting. The main characters are interesting, likable, and well-developed; the secondary characters are also believable.  

I think the writing is superb, and the story and plot demonstrate such humanity and empathy while also showing the real trauma and pain caused by senseless acts of violence. Given that mass shootings appear to be an almost daily occurrence now, this book is very timely and would be a great selection for book clubs or other group reads. It would generate a lot of discussion and really makes you think about the causes of violence, but also why some people survive traumatic childhoods and others go on to perpetuate the trauma. But the story mostly revolves around the victims of violence and how it can and

Mouth to mouth, by Antoine Wilson

In this book the narrator, who remains nameless, bumps into Jeff Cook, an old acquaintance from college. Back then the narrator admired Jeff, but while they had one class together, they never became close friends. This makes what happens seem so remarkable to the narrator. After they meet in an airport where their flight is delayed. Jeff invites the narrator to come to the first class lounge while they wait. They spend hours in the lounge drinking (the narrator drinks non-alcoholic beer, while Jeff drinks alcoholic beer and then mixed drinks). Jeff begins to tell the narrator a story about something that happened to him after he graduated: he saved a man from drowning at the beach. Later he became obsessed with the man and finagled his way into his life, first by getting a job at his business, then by dating his daughter. All the while, he never lets on that he was the one who saved the man on the beach and the man never lets on whether he knows that it was Jeff.

I found it interesting how the author builds tension throughout the story. The reader doesn’t know where this is going. Jeff’s intentions are never really clear, perhaps even to him at the time or even in retrospect. It felt ominous and a little nerve-wracking. The narrator queries Jeff throughout, trying to nail down his motives, but they are never really defined. All of the tension made me want to keep reading; I had a hard time putting this book down.

I like the title with its multiple meanings. Jeff saved the man by doing CPR and mouth-to-mouth, and at the same time, he’s telling this story to the narrator who is a writer. The narrator gets the impression that Jeff wants him to write about the story.

The writing is very good; it gave me a lot to think about. I think my book club would love this one. Although a small book at under 200 pages, it packs a powerful punch.

Justice is served, by Leslie Karst

 

In this engaging memoir, Karst, a retired attorney and mystery novelist known for her "Sally Solari" series, writes about the nine months she spent planning a dinner party for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG). A budding chef, Karst was thrilled yet anxious, and she used every opportunity to test menu items on her friends and family. A trip to Paris also turned into a way to sample potential dishes she might serve to RBG. Every visit to a winery became a chance to sample potential wines that could accompany each course of the meal. Readers will see when the menu began to take shape. This book also contains Karst's own story about how she became an attorney. However, she realized that while she liked her job as a legal researcher, she did not love the law the way RBG did. That led to a resolution to change careers and seek new opportunities as a writer. Interspersed throughout the book are short sections detailing RBG's career and key cases. VERDICT This is a light- hearted yet earnest account of an event that changed the author's life.

This review was published previously in Library Journal 148:3 (2023): 288.

True biz, by Sara Novic

 

True Biz is a highly original novel that takes on many issues faced by the deaf community in the United States. It has several main characters including February, the principal of a high school for deaf students; Charlie, a girl whose parents tried to keep her in mainstream school with a cochlear implant instead of allowing her to learn sign language; and Austin, a boy who comes from a multi-generation deaf family. Facing budget cuts, February decides to fill one of her staff vacancies by teaching a class about deaf history. Sections that address this history punctuate the book throughout. Charlie fights with her parents about the cochlear implant, which she insists doesn’t work. Austin is shocked when his newborn sister turns out to be hearing and is hurt by how happy his father is about it. February is struggling with a mother with Alzheimer’s, a jealous wife, and the knowledge that her school is going to be closed down at the end of the year due to budget cuts, which she must keep secret.

This book addresses many issues and injustices that just aren’t on most people’s radar. The history of how deaf people have been taught in schools, for instance, is truly shocking; for decades they were denied sign language and forced to try to manage by lip reading and learning to speak out loud. This denied many of them a functional language which had significant educational and psychological impacts on them. Early cochlear implants had significant design flaws and many of them didn’t work, but no one listened to the deaf people when they reported this. It was only after many years that they were found to be right and the implants were recalled.

In addition to bringing important issues to light, this is a well-written novel with characters that are believable. The plot unfolds at a good pace; this was a hard book to put down. I liked the way the various plot points or discussions between characters is reflected by the illustrated (with line drawings) history lessons that are placed throughout the book. The author uses typography to show which conversations are signed versus out loud. The book shows how administrators can use the budget to make poor decisions; the impact of one terrible administrator can have repercussions that last decades, something that we see in the news every day relating to higher education. The book ends without a clear resolution to this issue, avoiding a feel-good ending. While I would have preferred a feel-good ending, this is probably more realistic (unfortunately).