Finished: The Need (Phillips) This was a literal page-turner which I don't think I would recommend. I kept reading until the very end because it was suspenseful, and the chapters were short and to the point, and I really wanted to see what it all meant at the end....but the ending didn't give any answers! The book is about a young, working mother who seems to either be in a the throes of developing a split personality, or to be in the middle of a nightmare where another version of herself really exists! Molly is home alone with Viv, almost four, and Ben, oneish. Her husband is out of town on business for a week and Molly hears footsteps in the house while she's alone with the children. She has no option but to face the intruder when Viv runs out into the room where the masked intruder is holding Viv's favorite book, which has been missing. The intruder leaves the house, but also leaves a note for Molly requesting a meeting the next day. If she doesn't show up, the children will be in danger. Molly goes to the meeting the next day and comes face to face with herself! Only, it's herself from an alternate reality where both Viv and Ben have been killed in a bombing. :-( Moll, as she calls herself, is grieving terribly and tells Molly that she will have to share Viv and Ben with her from now on...that they'll take turns mothering them. Molly is stunned, scared, and in total disbelief. Molly works at an archaeological pit where she has been digging and retrieving artifacts for the past 8 years. Only recently some very strange items have turned up....a Coke bottle with the cursive writing backwards...a little green army man with the tail of a monkey....and an ancient bible where every reference to God is "She" instead of "He". Moll appears to have come from this alternate place, from a crack in the pit, where in another life she lost her/their children. Molly goes along with Moll's plan during the week that David is gone. She doesn't tell him what's going on when he calls because she doesn't want him to think she's crazy. As things escalate and it even looks like Moll might take the kids and run, Molly, Viv and Ben all get a terrible stomach virus, and Moll takes care of them all. Throughout this entire story, it's just ambiguous enough that I thought certainly this was going to end up being a case of split personality. However, one day when Molly is driving home to take her turn in the basement while Moll has the kids, Moll is out in the yard with the kids. The neighbor across the street sees Molly speed up and drive by, and later asks her how she could have been in both places! Anyway, at the end, either Molly or Moll, I'm not sure which, packs up the kids and takes them out in the fresh air and walks away with them. That's where it ends! I have no idea if it was truly an alternate reality or a split personality or just plain insanity. It was a fast read, and not a bad book, but with no resolution, I was left very unfulfilled.

Finished: Disappearing Earth (Phillips) This was a very good, page-turning book about the people on the periphery, yet very entangled in, the disappearance of two little girls, sisters, in a remote area of Russia. I was truly surprised by the ending and glad some of the characters tied together the way they did. There were a couple of characters whose stories I would have liked to see more of, or a bit more resolved, but the author is a very talented writer who I would like to read more from! I'm just going to be lazy and put the Amazon recap here because it describes the book better than I could. :-)

"One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.

Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.

In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before."