Finished: Verity (Hoover) Oh my! This was a creepy, thriller story that ended a bit differently than I thought it would! Near broke and struggling with personal issues, writer Lowen Ashleigh is hired by the husband of best-selling thriller author, Verity Crawford, to finish writing her last three books in her series after Verity is left critically injured in an automobile accident. Jeremy appears to be everything Lowen could want in a man, except he's married to his unresponsive wife who is cared for by a nurse upstairs in their mansion, paid for by Verity's successful writing career. Lowen agrees to finish the books, mainly because the paycheck is huge. When she packs her bag to spend a few days at the mansion, going through Verity's notes and outlines, what she finds instead is a chilling autobiographic manuscript written by Verity, ending just days before her recent accident. As it turns out, Jeremy has suffered more than just the tragic loss of his wife as he knew her. In the past six months he's also suffered the tragic death of one of his eight year old twin daughters, due to a peanut allergy and the tragic death of the other twin daughter in a boating accident. He's left with just himself and his five year old son, living in the house with the semi-comatose Verity. As Lowen reads a different chapter of the manuscript each night, she dives more and more into the nightmare of Verity's psychotic mind...how obsessed she was with her husband loving her more than anyone else...how she tried to abort her twins with a hanger...how she didn't love her daughters but was jealous of them....how she thought for certain that one twin daughter was responsible for giving her sister the fatal peanuts at a sleepover...how she purposely took her remaining daughter out in a canoe and tipped it over, letting her drown without helping her. It's honestly horrific! So, you do end up rooting for Lowen and Jeremy to fall in love. But when Lowen starts seeing Verity up and moving around, without proof for Jeremy to believe her, things start to really get crazy. What a book! I spent the second half of the book convinced that it was Jeremy who had written the manuscript to implicate Verity because HE was really the one who did all the evil things...but that wasn't the big twist at the end. Definitely one of those books that was hard to put down, but also incredibly creepy! 

The Evening and The Morning (Follett) The prequel to one of my favorite books, The Pillars of the Earth, this was a lovely book, with wonderful characters and vividly described towns, churches and homes of the Dark Ages, as Viking attacks on England were quite rampant and women were clearly at the mercy of men, and the poor even more so at the mercy of the rich and ennobled. The story starts in 997, about 140 years before the start of Pillars, and centers on three main characters, Edgar the intelligent young boat builder, Aldred the godly young Prior and the beautiful, smart Lady Ragna, and how they survive one power hungry family, the Ealdorman of Shiring, Wilwulf, and his loathsome step-brothers, Wigelm and Wynstan. Their lives are forever intertwined after a Viking raid on Edgar's small village leaves his father dead and his boat-building business in ruins. He and his mother and two brothers must go inland and begin farming to keep from starving. Meanwhile, young Lady Ragna from Normandy becomes smitten with the older Ealdorman Wilwulf when he comes to ask her father to quit allowing the Vikings to moor their ships off his coastline. Wilwulf becomes equally smitten with Ragna, and she soon makes the journey to England where they are married, happily so for awhile. When it comes to light that Wilwulf had actually been married and "set aside" his other wife and son so that he may marry Ragna, she is devastated. And, although she gives him three sons in quick succession, he soon finds another younger woman to spend his nights with. Aldred is a good man who is a prior at Shiring and wants only to keep his holy vows, as he's also a monk, and to grow the church according to God. Every step of the way he is thwarted by the conniving and deceptive Bishop Wynstan, the oldest of the step-brothers. Wynstan is determined not to lose any control over Shiring to his brother's new wife, but she proves a formidable foe. Ragna, Aldred and Edgar all face setbacks and devastating losses due to Wynstan's manipulations and lies, but they have also become friends who stand up for each other and share the common goal of seeing Wynstan pay for his crimes. In the end, justice is served, but not until after many years of harassment. Towards the end of the book, we realize that the bridge that Edgar had helped build in the town of Dreng's Ferry actually became the "king's bridge" and thus, the name of Dreng's Ferry was changed to Kingsbridge, which is the town at the center of the story in Pillars. After many ups and down, and 900 pages worth of other characters, things finally turn out positively for all three protagonists and I would say that all of the evil people get their due. Another great book by Follett! Now, I hope he writes one that is in between this one and Pillars!