Finished: We Have Always Lived In A Castle (Jackson) Eighteen year old Mary Katherine (Merricat) to her family, her twenty-something sister, Constance, and their Uncle Julian live in Blackwood, one of the old family estates in a small village. Six  years earlier the Blackwoods were one of the rich, upper echelon of the village with a massive estate and prestige. Until, one night the entire family was poisoned at dinner...the father, the mother, the aunt, the uncle and the 10 year old brother. The entire family died of arsenic poisoning, except for Uncle Julian, who didn't get enough of the poison, eldest daughter Constance, who cooked all the meals for the family and 12 year old Merricat, who'd been sent to bed without dinner for acting up. Six years later Merricat and Constance are town pariahs. Constance had been immediately arrested and tried, but found innocent of killing her family. Even though found innocent, though, the people of the village were all convinced she'd done it. Constance remained a recluse at home, her only joys working in her vast garden and cooking all the meals for their now small family of three. This left Merricat to walk into town once a week for the groceries and errands where she was mercilessly bullied by the children AND the adults of the town. It's truly very shameful the way all the adults treat her and other adults just laugh. No one stickes up for her. Merricat bravely makes this trip every week so that Constance doesn't have to go and face anyone in town. Merricat is very strange, with a wild imagination, beliefs that she can protect the boundaries of their home by burying different things in the ground, and she's very attached to Constance. When a cousin, Charles, comes knocking on the door, their very structured, odd existence is thrown completely out of whack, with dire consequences. And, we find out who poisoned the family. This was such an eerie book, but I couldn't put it down. I had to keep reading to see what would happen next, and when it was over, I wanted to know the backstory of what led up to the poisoning!! 

 Finished: Peter the Great (Massie) The Pulitzer Prize winning story of  Russian tsar, Peter the Great. My son gave me this 850+ page non-fiction beast several months ago and I have been reading it in between all the other books I've read, i.e., the fast reads, as this one is definitely a slow going read in order to take in all the facts, details, history, etc. It is fascinating and I've loved reading it, but so glad to be done. :-) I wouldn't even attempt to recap it, so just going to include the Amazon blurb here. 

"Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, crowned co-tsar at the age of ten. The acclaimed author of Catherine the Great, Robert K. Massie delves deep into the life of this captivating historical figure, chronicling the pivotal events that shaped a boy into a legend—including his “incognito” travels in Europe, his unquenchable curiosity about Western ways, his obsession with the sea and establishment of the stupendous Russian navy, his creation of an unbeatable army, his transformation of Russia, and his relationships with those he loved most: Catherine, the robust yet gentle peasant, his loving mistress, wife, and successor; and Menshikov, the charming, bold, unscrupulous prince who rose to wealth and power through Peter’s friendship. Impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel, tender and unforgiving, a man of enormous energy and complexity, Peter the Great is brought fully to life."

 Finished: Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone (Gabaldon). The ninth book in the Outlander series, which is one of my favorites, with my favorite book couple, Claire and Jamie! It was so very good to read this book after a seven year wait. I love that Jamie and Claire are still essential, busy, feisty, and each other's soul mates as they move towards their 60's (well, Claire is IN her 60's). From Claire's doctoring, to Jamie's being the "laird" of Fraser's Ridge and building their house and caring for his people, to Claire's gardening and beehives, to the impending battle of the American Revolution in North Carolina in which Jamie will have to fight, they remain the heart and soul of Outlander. Of course their lives and stories are intertwined with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children, Jemmy, Mandy, and now wee Davey. :-) And, with their adopted son, Fergus, his wife, Marsali, and their five children. And, my third favorite character after Claire and Jamie, young Ian, and his wife, Rachel, and baby boy. And, Jamie's sister Jenny from Scotland who now lives with Ian's family on the ridge since her own husband, big Ian, died in the last book. And, Jamie's bastard son, William, who was raised as a British lord by Lord John Grey so that he could ostensibly have a better life than that with a father who'd been a Jacobite traitor. Of course, William found out in the last book that Jamie was his real father (fathered when Claire was back in the present time and thought Jamie was dead, and he thought she was gone from him forever.) William is slowly coming to terms with Jamie being his father, and came to him for help in the last book because he knew he could count on him. In this book, we get to see the blossoming sibling relationship between Brianna and William when they meet up in Savannah and I love it! You can tell they will be protective of each other. SPOILERS AHEAD SO STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END OF BEES!! It's nice to see that William is also forgiving John Grey for deceiving him all these years. John Grey is actually kidnapped by an evil man in the current book and at the end we're left wondering what his fate will be. After a deadly battle towards the end of the book, in which Claire uses her all her strength to mend a near fatally wounded Jamie and bring him back to life, Jamie and Claire are on the porch of the big house on Fraser's Ridge with Bree, Roger, Ian, Rachel and many of the grandchildren all around when a horse comes tearing down the path and stops right at the edge of the porch. It's William!! He looks out of breath and panicked as he says to Jamie, "Sir, I need your help!" and that's where the book ends. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh! I hope it's not another seven years before Diana Galbadon publishes the tenth book, which is supposed to be the last in the series. You just know that Jamie will go to help William, though, no questions asked, most likely with Claire by his side. :-) <3

 Finished: Local Woman Missing (Kubica) Suspenseful murder mystery told from the viewpoints of just a few of the main characters as they move back and forth to when the local woman goes missing eleven years earlier and the current day. Not only does a local woman, Shelby, go missing, but another woman in the same neighborhood and her five year old daughter both go missing shortly afterwards. The story twists and turns and throws in lots of red herrings as we hear Meredith's and Delilah's stories from their viewpoints eleven years earlier (missing mom and daughter); we find out Meredith was Shelby's doula only weeks before her disappearance; we find out Shelby and her husband were set to sue the doctor who actually delivered the baby with forceps, causing brain damage; we find out Meredith and the husband of another neighborhood friend were lovers in college and the friend is insanely mad and jealous; we find out that after a girl who has been trapped in a basement returns home, giving her name as Delilah, she isn't really Delilah after all. So many twists come out of nowhere, and particularly the person who was actually responsible for the all of the tragic events. It's a good page-turner if you are into this kind of book. :-) 

 Finished: The Judge's List (Grisham) A typical, page-turning Grisham book. In this case, a petrified woman, Jerri, contacts Lacy Stotlz, who works for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, about a man who has been patiently and systematically killing people for the past twenty years. Jerri's father was his second victim. Jerri has been just as patiently gathering circumstantial evidence for the past twenty years. When Lacy tells Jerri she has no jurisdiction over matters of murder, Jerri says, you do when the suspect is a sitting judge! And so the story unfolds from there. The sitting judge is very prominent and well respected with a spotless record. We learn early on, from his own viewpoint, that he has indeed been killing all sorts of people who have crossed him in his lifetime for a variety of reasons. If they abused him or embarrassed him or made him lose anything, they went on "the list". Jerri can show Lacy all the connections, but there is no concrete proof of his actions. Plus, Jerri is terrified that the judge is so smart that he will find her and kill her as well. It's a fast-paced story that puts Jerri in danger, and threatens to put Lacy and her team in danger as well. In the end, though, the judge is caught...but he has one more surprising act up his sleeve so that only words of respect and sympathy will follow him to his grave. :-) 

 Finished: Survive the Night (Sager) I read this book in one day! It was so suspenseful, I couldn't put it down. Charlie is a student desperate to leave college and just get home when she puts her number on the campus ride board. Her roommate and best friend, Maddy, is the most recent victim of the serial killer in the area known as the Campus Killer. Charlie's too distraught and guilt-ridden to think twice that the stranger who she accepts the six hour ride home from could very well be the serial killer. Having left the very social Maddy at a bar they arrived at together, when once again, Maddy flitted off to dance with a guy, leaving the more introverted Charlie in the corner, Charlie will never forgive herself for the harsh words she spoke to Maddy in the bar parking lot before she headed home for the night leaving Maddy at the bar on her own. Of course, that was the night Maddy was killed and the harsh words spoken were the last she spoke to her. As Charlie arranges for her ride home, the first red flag should be that Josh, the stranger, doesn't want to leave until 9:00 pm, driving through the night. As the night continues on, Charlie catches Josh in several lies, including his actual name and the fact that he's not familiar with the name of the main building on campus despite claims of working there the past four years. I'll not give away any more details about this plot, but it's a really good one! I might seek out more books written by this author. :-) 

 Finished: The Lincoln Highway (Towles) A beautifully written book about two brothers in 1954, Emmett, who is 18 and has just been released from a juvenile home for accidentally causing someone's death, and Billy, who is 8, smart as a whip both intellectually and emotionally. Their father has recently died leaving them with nothing but a small bit of cash after their family farm has been repossessed by the bank. Their mother left them years ago, when Billy was just a baby....but she mailed postcards for awhile, which their father kept from them. Having found the postcards now, Billy is determined that they follow their trail, along the Lincoln Highway that will lead them from Nebraska to San Francisco from which the last post card was addressed. Uncovering his Studebaker from the barn, a car he gets to keep because it is his by title, having bought it with his own hard-earned money as a carpenter's assistant, Emmett agrees. Not because he thinks they'll find their mother, but because he wants to get as far away from the small town they grew up in and because he wants them to start over in a bigger city where he believes he can make money working on refurbishing houses. Plans don't go as expected when two of Emmett's friends from the juvenile home show up at the farm, not having completed their time, but having stowed away in the warden's trunk when he brought Emmett home. Woolly, who just wants to make his way back home to New York for reasons we find out later, and Duchess, the far more nefarious of the two, who wants to make his way with Woolly, hoping to come into some money and to exact some revenge along the way on a few people who have done him wrong. When Duchess takes Emmett's car, and the money from his father that was hidden in it, and heads for New York with Woolly, Emmett has no choice but to follow him by hitching rides on boxcar trains until he can catch up with them. He leaves Billy with their kind neighbor, who'd already looked after Billy before, and his headstrong daughter, Sally, who definitely has a thing for Emmett, and heads off. Naturally, Billy finds his way to following Emmett and all involved, Emmett, Billy, Sally, Duchess, Woolly, and a few other characters they meet along the way, end up in a beautifully written story about following your dreams, doing the right thing, being kind to other people, being heroic, reuniting with family, reliving old memories, and, of course, in the case of Duchess, causing problems that they all must overcome. I fell in love with the honorable Emmett, the effervescent Billy, the no-nonsense Sally, and the tragic Woolly. Definitely a book that is going to have to push another from my Top 100 list! :-)  

 Finished: A Slow Fire Burning (Hawkins) Another mystery murder tale from the author of The Girl on the Train. Not as suspenseful as that one, this book is still good with many twists and turns and a few well-developed characters. When, Daniel, a young man in his twenties, is brutally murdered on his house boat, a handful of people become suspects...from the damaged, down-on-her-luck young woman who goes home with him for a one night stand, only to be ridiculed by him for having a limp; to his deceased mother's sister, his Aunt Carla and her ex-husband, Theo, who hold his mother responsible for the death of their three year old son ten years earlier. In the mix of things is Miriam, a fifty year old, socially inept woman who most of the town kids call "the hobbit". She lives on the houseboat right next to Daniel and she has seen every visitor who went in and out of his houseboat on the night he was murdered, including Laura and Carla. However...Miriam is the one who discovers Daniel's body and is also in possession of Laura's bloody house key which she lost in the argument she had with Daniel before leaving the boat. Miriam has brought a lawsuit against Theo, an author, for taking the manuscript she gave him of her kidnapping as a teenager by a sexual predator, and subsequent escape, and turning it into his own successful novel. So, she's got her own reasons for wanting some kind of revenge. Reading from the point of view of all the main characters, exactly what happened to Daniel and why slowly unravels in good fashion. Another good one from Paula Hawkins. :-)

 Finished: Apples Never Fall (Moriarty) Another good book from Moriarty that kept me entertained and reading. :-) The story of Stan and Joy Delaney, tennis obsessed since meeting in college, and their four grown children, Logan, Amy, Troy and Brooke. The Delaney's have recently closed their famous tennis academy, where all their children played, up until they didn't. None of them ever made "the big time" for various reasons, though they were all very talented. Stan Delaney did have one prodigy, Harry Haddad, who he thought he would coach to Wimbeldon. He let his adoration and faith in Harry outshine his own children. However, one day, after coaching Harry for years, Harry's father pulled him away from Stan and to another coach to take him further. This, and the fact that none of his own children ever went further, is the great disappointment of Stan's life. Meanwhile, Joy, who had been a potential champion herself, gave up her own game to raise her children and help Stan run the tennis camp. The story opens with the almost 70 year old Joy having gone missing after a cryptic text sent to her grown children. When her cell phone is found under a dresser at home, the police are called and Stan becomea a suspect in her disappearance...along with a mysterious young woman who came knocking on their door for shelter one night the October before. We get to know each of the Delaney children very well, along with their significant others, most of whom have ended up leaving their respective Delaney SO's. The siblings bicker like only competitive siblings can, but also have each other's backs when push comes to shove. They all also have the common dislike and distrust of Savannah, the young woman who has ingratiated herself into their parents' lives. Add in the fact that Harry Haddad is about to release a memoir which a few of the main characters fear the truth of, and the story grows more and more intense; especially as it seems that Joy has definitely met with foul play, and Savannah is more closely linked to the Delaney's than any one of them recognizes. It's a good story with an ending not nearly as nefarious as all the characters' imaginations, and also a good lesson in family and love and what is really more important than whether your kid is good at a sport! 

 Finished: About Grace (Doerr) The first novel of Doerr, the author who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning All The Light We Cannot See (which I loved). I was curious to see what his other writing was like, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed. He still has amazing prose, but there was far too much of it. At times it seemed as if I was constantly reading the rambling thoughts of main character, David Winkler. David Winkler is a man who begins as a child seeing the future in his dreams. And the dreams are usually dark and foreboding, involving someone's imminent death. During his first dream as a child he dreams of a man on the street who gets hit by a bus and killed. He sees specific details, like the man's hat flying off, the man's clothing, what he is carrying, and hears the sound of the bus. One day when he's out with his mother, he sees the man from his dream, and sure enough the man steps out into the street in front of the bus, all details the same, even his hat landing where it did in the dream. David feels extremely guilty for not being able to do anything about it. His mother keeps him grounded and is the only person who truly understands him. He loses his mom as a teenager and as he grows older living alone with his dad, he develops an obsession with water, and in particular snow flakes. So much so that he becomes a weather analyst at the television station. The next dream with a huge impact on his life has him meeting a woman in the grocery store as she looks at a map rack. When he is at the grocery store one day and sees that woman, he approaches her and tells her they were meant to meet. Her name is Sandy, and she's married, but she had apparently also had a weird feeling that she should go to the grocery store that day. They begin an affair and fall in love. Sandy tells David all about her husband Herman and particularly how they can't have children because Herman is sterile. Naturally, Sandy gets pregnant and David begs her to run away with him and get married. So, she writes Herman a note, tells him she's divorcing him and she and David drive from Alaska to Cleveland to make a new life. Having married, they await the birth of their baby. They have a baby girl they name Grace, and are both enamored with her. David never knew what it would be like to be a father...how much he would love this little human. Then, when Grace is just a few months old, David has a horrific dream that the river near their house overflows in a storm and that the water is flooding their street and house. He goes downstairs where the water is already lapping at the stairs and finds baby Grace on top of a shelf. He takes her and begins wading through the water yelling for help. The river rushes them along and he hangs on to poles for dear life, always holding Grace above him. Much as he tries to prevent it, they do go under a few times. By the time a boat comes by to help him, the man is telling David to let go of the baby, that she's gone. Grace has drowned. This is the horrific dream he wakes up from! It's only a few days until the huge storm comes. David, who really doesn't communicate very well, decides to just get in the car and drive as far away as he can. If he gets away from Grace, that dream won't happen and she won't drown in his arms. He keeps having the dream until he gets as far away as the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean. There, he has spent all his money and he's wandering almost incoherently, but he's not having the dream anymore. He meets a very kind family who takes him in, Felix, his wife Soma, and their very young daughter, Naaliyah. They nurse him back to some kind of health and he still can't tell them exactly who he left and why. He sends a letter every day to Sandy begging her to write him and let him know if Grace is alive, but it's been so many weeks that when Sandy finally writes back, she sends him back all his letters and says to stay away and never come home. She has no idea why he left and she doesn't want to know. He is dead to her. She doesn't tell him whether Grace is alive or not. David is devastated and assumes from this that Grace is dead. He mourns and makes it day by day and eventually spends 25 years on the island with the family. He grows extremely close to Naaliyah as he teaches her all about rain and clouds, and she herself is fascinated with any and all creatures in nature. In their singular interests, they are two peas in a pod. When Naaliyah is in her early twenties, David has a dream one night that she's out in one of her trap collection boats and when she drops the boat anchor, her leg is caught in the chain and she's pulled down and drowns. He begs her not to go out in the boat any more, and she just tells him no way. He goes so far as to sabotage the boat, but she still goes. He gets her mother, Soma, to come and help him watch her and finally tells her about the dreams he's had...the bus man, Grace, and now Naaliyah. Everyone pretty much thinks he's a loon, but he doesn't give up. One day when Naaliyah is going out, he rents his own boat and follows her. He lands on a beach and watches her from afar. Sure enough, that is the day that he sees the chain catch her leg. With all his might he swims to her until his heart is about to burst. As he gets there, it appears she is drowned, but when he finally gets her in her boat, he does chest compressions and she comes back to life. After that, they believe him about his dreams. The story goes on and on as Naaliyah goes on to college in the States and ends up studying insects and the affect that cold has on them in Alaska. David finally makes his way back to Alaska to see if his daughter Grace is alive or not. As I said before, the story goes on and on with lots of David's thoughts just rambling through, so at times it was hard to just get back to the plot! After typing all that, I'd say, I probably wouldn't recommend this book to read. However, David does find out that Sandy has died two years before from cancer. He also finds out that Grace is, in fact, alive and is a single mother with a five year old son of her own. More drama ensues before they become a bit of a family unit with David caring for Christopher and taking him to visit Naaliyah and the various insects while Grace works. whew! I haven't typed that much about a book, especially one that I didn't really like so much, in awhile. :-) 

 Finished: The Huntress (Quinn) A very good WWII story about a heartless female Nazi known as the Huntress, a spitfire Russian female war pilot, a male war correspondent with an ax to grind against the Huntress, and a teenager in Boston whose widowed father may or may not have just married an escaped Nazi with a new name. Nina is born and raised by a lake in the remoteness of Siberia by just her harsh father. All her siblings have already left and she is desperately trying to figure out what to do with her life to get her out of Siberia. When she sees a small aircraft land near the lake and rushes over to question the pilot, she knows she has discovered her calling. Through determination and skill she makes her way into the all female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of Russia known by the nickname the Night Witches. She thrives in this environment, finds a family of sisters, and flies more than 600 missions before being forced to land across enemy lines in Poland. It is in her weeks of survival that she first encounters the Huntress. The Huntress is the mistress of a high ranking SS officer who is just as cruel and merciless as the male Nazi's were. One of her many atrocities...one day when she finds six escaped Jewish children on the road near her home, she takes them in and feeds them, and then takes them out by the lake and executes each one of them. When her cowardly SS officer kills himself when it becomes obvious that the war is lost, the Huntress kills a Jewish woman, takes her credentials AND the four year old daughter she had with her, and makes her way to America with false papers. Ian, the war correspondent has reported on wars in Spain, Europe, and landed in Normandy with the WWII troops. His magazine articles are very well read by followers in America. After the war he concentrates on hunting down Nazis until the Nuremberg Trials are over. After the trials, people in Europe start to lose interesting in finding the many more Nazis who have not been brought to justice. Ian loses his lust for writing after the trials and takes on the more personal mission of finding a singular Nazi who killed his U.S. soldier brother in cold blood after he escaped from a prison camp....the Huntress! Ian, along with his young partner and veteran of WWII, Tony, and Nina, who Ian shares a surprising history with, all head to Boston when they get a tiny lead on where the Huntress may be. Jordan, the daughter of antique dealer, Dan McBride, is a budding photographer and she's GOOD. She's a bit wary of meeting the woman her father has fallen for, but the woman couldn't be kinder or more accepting. They settle into an easy relationship and all is going well until Jordan accidentally finds a Nazi iron cross hidden in her soon-to-be stepmother's bouquet, after she and Dan have just said their I do's. The story goes back and forth from the viewpoints of Nina, Ian, the Huntress and Jordan and is very compelling! Needless to say, all their lives end up intertwining as the tale comes to a head. Very well written with great character development! I might search out more of Kate Quinn's books. :-)

 Finished: The Hunting Party (Foley) Another good page-turner from the author of The Guest List. A group of friends from Oxford have celebrated New Years Eve together for almost ten years, every year since graduating university together. Though friendships have waned and some relationships strained, they are always able to relive the "good times" from their past. They travel to a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands where only the lodge keeper, Heather, and the grounds keeper, Doug, live most of the year. Needless to say, one of the nine guests ends up murdered and they are snowed in, so the authorities can't get to them. It's up to Heather and Doug to figure out what happened and keep the rest of the guests safe. A tale that unfolds as we hear the first person history of each guest and what his or her relationship was and is to the rest of the group. I'm pretty sure I liked The Guest List better, but this one still had a good twist at the end. :-)

 

Finished: Words in Deep Blue (Crowley) A wonderful book about loss, and love, and books, and sometimes having to write letters to people to get your feelings across instead of saying the words out loud. A story about a 17 year old girl named Rachel, who loves her best friend, a boy named Henry, but when her brother, 16 year old Cal, dies suddenly, she's not sure if there's any good in life left anymore. I can't say how much this book means to me. I lost my little brother when he was 36, and though he wasn't 16 like Cal, he might as well have been, or 5 or 10 or 21. I lost him at all those ages when I lost him for good. This book helps me remember what I already know...that he is alive in so many ways. In my memories, in my heart, in music, in his own written words, in his last spoken words, and especially in my own children, as I see so much of him in both of them. Words in Deep Blue is full of characters who will stay with me, Rachel, Henry, Cal, George, Michael, Sophia, Frederick, Martin, who all write letters to each other and leave them in their favorite books for the others to find and respond to. The books are in Henry's family owned bookstore, in a section of books that can only be read in the store and never sold. It is a beautiful story, and heartbreaking but life affirming at the same time. And, that is the blog, There's no "more on blog" this time. Go read the book! 

 Finished: Once We Were Brothers (Balson) The story of two twelve year old boys growing up in Zamosck, Poland right as Hitler is coming on the scene. Ben Solomon is Jewish and lives with his hard-working parents and sister. Otto Piatek is not Jewish, and the son of a down-on-his-luck father and a German mother who deserted him. Desperate for work and to get his son food, Otto's father goes to Mr. Solomon to ask for a job at his factory. Mrs. Solomon immediately takes Otto for food and a bath, and the father leaves Otto with them while he gets back on his feet. Otto ends up becoming part of the family, like a brother to Ben and Becca. They all go to school together, and grow very close. When Otto is 15, his German mother shows up at the door with the father, who had also eventually abandoned Otto. His mother wanted to take him with them since she now had a good job working as a secretary for Himmler, Reich Leader of Hitler's SS. Otto refuses to leave the Solomons, who he now considers family, to go with the people who abandoned him. His mother warns that she knows things and that it is going to get dangerous for the Jewish people. Otto stays and the world goes on. Hitler does gain more and more power and the Jewish people begin to lose their privileges slowly but surely. Despite all the warning signs, the Solomons are like so many Jewish families who really can't believe that things could escalate to dangerous proportions, so they don't leave Poland when they can. By the time Otto and Ben are 17, Otto's mother returns once again and is far more insistent that Otto comes with her. She has secured him a job under Himmler and he needs to get away from the Jewish family and take his rightful place. He refuses again, but then Ben's father talks with him and says maybe he should go so that he could at least be someone they would have on their side on the inside. That is the beginning of the end for everyone involved. Otto becomes part of the SS, and though at first he tries to get the Solomon family and friends food and other supplies, he eventually falls under the "charms" of the Third Reich and becomes one of them. Ben and his beloved girlfriend Hannah, Abraham and Leah Solomon and their daughter, Becca, and all their friends in Zamosc suffer the horrors of the Holocaust as we later learn from Ben who survived. As the story opens, Ben is 83 years old in 2004 and he has dressed up to attend an opera in Chicago with an ulterior motive in mind. He has recently seen a documentary about Chicago millionaire and benefactor, Elliot Rosenzweig and knows that he will be at the opera on the same evening. When Ben comes face to face with Elliot, he pulls out an empty WWII pistol and points it at Elliot's head. He accuses him of being a former Nazi SS Officer known as the Butcher of Zamosc...Otto Pietak! What ensues is a suspenseful, painful story as Ben hires attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Otto Pietak to justice. However, Elliott denies being Otto and he has the money and power to see that Ben's accusations will never see a courtroom. Or does he? It's a heartbreaking book, as we hear every detail of what happened during the horrific time. Well written and such a compelling story, as all stories from the Holocaust are, but so horrifying to this day. It will never not be horrifying. 

 Finished: Sharks in the Time of Saviors (Washburn) Beautifully written story about a Hawaiian family who barely makes ends meet, but has a very close bond with each other and a very spiritual bond with the island they live on. Father, Augie, Mother, Kalia, oldest son, Dean, second son, Nainoa, and youngest daughter, Kaui are at a crossroads when the sugar cane factory Augie works at closes down and they must ask his uncle in the "city", Honolulu, for work. Before the life-changing move, Augie takes them on one of the tourist boats for one more day of family fun. During the boat trip seven year old Nainoa falls overboard. He is bobbing in the water as the boat gets further away, nine year old Dean struggling with his father to let him jump in, and Kalia, shoving four year old Kaui into a stranger's arms as she DOES jump in. As the captain turns the boat around, Kalia realizes she'll never get to Nainoa in time, as she watches him go under and not resurface. Suddenly, four sharks swimming together pass under her and towards Nainoa's location. Kalia is struck with fear and envisions the water turning the awful red of a shark attack, but to everyone's amazement, one of the sharks surfaces with Nainoa cradled gently in it's mouth. The shark swims past Kalia and back to the boat where Augie pulls his son aboard. The shark has saved Nainoa. Since he was a baby, animals have flocked to Nainoa, encircling him as if they are protecting him, as if he is special, but never like this. The story of the sharks and Nainoa spreads, and when Noa, as he is known, subsequently grabs the severely burned hand of one of Dean's friends and it heals, then Noa becomes a much sought after child. He is now the special one with more of a connection to the gods and land than anyone could imagine. He sees people who come for healing, but as we find out later, it rarely works again for the islanders. Dean and Kaui grow up in the extreme shadow of Noa's light, trying their hardest to be noticed by their parents. Their parents love them, but most of the family focus is on Noa's amazing abilities and his brilliance at school. Kaui excels at school as well, and Dean excels at basketball, but try as they might, they never feel as if their parents love them as much. Noa can't handle the pressure that is placed on him, especially when he feels like he's supposed to be doing more than just helping people in the neighborhood. He feels the calling so strongly, but feels that he is being called to "fix" the entire island of Hawaii, where they first lived. Fourteen years later, Noa lives in Portland as a paramedic, Dean has a scholarship to play basketball in Washington state, and Kaui has just begun studying at a university in San Diego to become an engineer. (Turns out she was truly the smartest one in the family!) They try to stay in touch by calling, but many of the old resentments between the siblings still exist. Their lives take turns that none of them expect. Noa can often feel a person's lifeblood and feel himself helping to heal them as he cares for people in emergencies. He still feels he has a much larger purpose, but doesn't know what it is. Dean has been kicked off the team for getting into partying and having an attitude, and his life goes downhill. And, Kaui, still the top of her class in everything, gets into drugs and climbing the shells of empty buildings, and discovers that she loves her female roommate. One day when Noa is called to the scene of a car accident involving a 36 weeks pregnant woman, he feels certain that by laying hands on her he can bring both the baby and the mother back, but he fails. He cannot get over the loss and gives up his job and goes back home. He's got to find out what more he is supposed to do, what the gods want of him, and how deeply he is supposed to be connected to the island. When tragedy strikes, the remaining family members, all try to find their true purpose back in Hawaii. You really grow to feel for each of these characters and to feel the essence of Hawaii. It's hard to just lay out a plot and not talk about the beautiful, spiritual sense of the book as well. It's just one you'll have to read to see what I mean. There is one passage that I really loved from the beautiful prose of this book. :-)

"How long was I stupid enough to believe we were indestructible? But that's the problem with the present, it's never the thing you're holding, only the thing you're watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight." 

 Finished: The Lamplighters (Stonex) The story of three lighthouse keepers who mysteriously go missing from their offshore lighthouse in 1972 with no sign of foul play, and no communications or calls for help. When the relief boat pulls up to the treacherous rocks of the lighthouse off the coast of England, they are alarmed when there is no one there to grab their rope and literally haul the replacement keeper up in the winch. They finally manage to get a man onto the rocks, only to find that there is not a sign of the keepers anywhere, also no sign of a struggle. Everything is spotless. The kitchen table is set for lunch for two (not three), and both clocks in the lighthouse have been purposely stopped at 8:45. The book picks up in 1992 where the author of several best-selling action novels approaches the survivors of the three men in hopes of writing a book. Over the years theories of their disappearance have ranged from everything to pirates, to aliens, to ghosts, to simply a huge wave washing them over the rails. The book flashes back and forth between 1972, where we get the viewpoints of Arthur, the primary keeper, Bill, his second in command, and Vince, the newest and youngest member of the crew; and 1992, where we get the viewpoints of Arthur's wife, Helen, Bill's wife, Jenny, and Vince's former girlfriend, Michelle. They all have their opinions about what happened, and they all also have their secrets that may have had something to do with what happened. As we flip back and forth, we eventually find out about those secrets, plus one tragic event in Arthur and Helen's lives, AND exactly what did happen on the lighthouse. It's a well-written story that kept me interested and reading til the end. :-) 

Run Me To  Earth (Yoon) Heartbreaking story of three teens in Laos in the 1960's, orphaned by the war, doing what they can to survive the constant bombings which have devastated the civilians living in the towns. Told from the perspective of each of the teens and two other main characters, the horror, uncertainty, and desperation affected me deeply, and like so many of these historical accounts, makes me ashamed that I didn't know more or empathize more with what fellow human beings were going through in those times. Even though I was a child, so were they! For Alisak, and his best friends, siblings, Prany and Noi, the bombings are a horrific double-edged sword. The bombs are either dropping and exploding on impact, killing on the spot; or they are dropping and not detonating, leaving fields of dangerous mines. Orphaned at twelve and thirteen, the tight-knit threesome survives on the street for over a year before they are recruited by a doctor, Vang, to help out at a country home that has been turned into a hospital for the injured civilians. They learn to ride motorbikes to and from cities which have medical supplies and other necessities. And, they learn how to painstakingly search fields for bombs so they can mark safe pathways. They become invaluable to the doctor and even learn to give stitches and assist in surgeries. And, they are compassionate with the various victims in the hospital, knowing when someone will most likely not survive, sitting with them, holding their hand, and talking with them. They work with Vang at the hospital until Noi, the younger sister of Prany is sixteen, and the boys, Prany and Alisak are seventeen. One day Vang tells them all that they must evacuate immediately. The helicopters are coming and he wants to ensure their safety. It's time to get them out of the country. After evacuating the patients who can travel, the helicopters are full and the teens and Vang must make haste to the town to get on the next evacuation helicopters. Prany leads the way on his motorbike, with Alisak following,Vang hanging on to him from behind and Noi follows, bringing one of the nurses. Alisak's motorbike skids at one point, and Vang is thrown off. When Alisak looks back, he sees, with horror, that Noi's motorbike has to veer off the safe path to avoid him and then a bomb explodes. Alisak searches frantically for Vang and Noi, unsuccessfully. He forces himself to get back on the motorbike and make it to the helicopter. From here, all their stories diverge. We find out what happens to each of them, how their lives take different paths, who has survived, how there is some freedom involved, but not without immense guilt over those left behind. It's just a compelling, heartbreaking story which will stay with me a long time. 

 Finished: For the Wolf (Whitten) A spellbinding fantasy tale of royal twin sisters born in the kingdom of Valleyda. The first born sister, Neverah (Neve), is marked, by tradition to carry on as the next queen. The second born sister, Redarys (Red) is known as a Second Daughter, and is promised as a sacrifice to the wolf who is one with the mystical forest known as the Wilderwood which borders Valleyda. Second Daughters of royalty have been sent to the Wilderwood for centuries on their nineteenth birthdays as sacrifices in hopes of the return of the five kings of the land who had ventured in to make their own bargains with the Wilderwood hundreds of years before, never to be seen again. Neve, desperate to save Red from her fate, begs Red to run away with, Arick, the young man who loves her, but Red feels a guilt and responsibility to go...ever since the girls, at the age of sixteen, had gone in anger to the edge of the Wilderwood and taunted it with stones after finding out their fates. Red, having fallen and cut herself with her hands landing on the side of the Wilderwood, had been suddenly infused with a bit of the magic of the forest. She had felt the pull of the Wilderwood ever since and knew it was her duty to go, especially to protect her own sister against any uprising should she refuse. After the ceremony to send her away, Red barely makes her way through the Wilderwood, as the forest is decaying in many spots and would love just a spot of her blood to help. When she makes it to the wolf's home, rather than a lair, she finds a small castle with a keep. Making her way in, she meets the wolf and finds that he is nothing more than a man! Or is he? He's actually a man whose own parents bargained long ago with the Wilderwood to give their lives to the forest to keep the dark shadow monsters away from humans forever. To do this, his parents had become one with the forest, i.e., the Wilderwood had infused itself into them both. Only their magic or their blood could heal any breaches in the forest made when the evil shadow monsters, and coincidentally, the five kings, tried to escape. Having given their lives protecting the Wilderwood, their son Eammon then became the next wolf, and had subsequently been protecting the forest all this time. (Apparently the magical words for wolf and warden were so similar that the myth was born that the wardens were wolves.)  Eammon, however, cannot hold off the dark forces for long by himself and the Wilderwood is quite happy to have Redarys there to help him. Naturally, Red and Eammon have an instant attraction, but neither wants the other to be hurt or sacrifice anymore, so a war of wills ensues. Meanwhile, in Valleyda, Neve, who wants only to figure out a way to get Red back, has put her trust in a very suspicious priestess, Kiri. Kiri insists that the only way to get Red back is to weaken the Wilderwood by stealing as many of the white sentinel trees that make up the forest as they can. Kiri doesn't tell Neve that it will be darker magic that accomplishes this AND that hurting the Wilderwood will ultimately hurt Redarys as well. To get her plan going, though, Kiri sees to the death of Neve and Red's mother, the queen, making way for Neve to be queen and under her control. So, the twins unknowingly work at cross purposes...Red helping Eammon try and stop the breaches in the Wilderwood made by the missing sentinels, and Neve helping Kiri with her magic to weaken the forest. What Neve doesn't understand is that weakening the Wilderwood to release the kings will also release all the shadow monsters who have been kept at bay for all these centuries. The book is the first in a series, apparently, and comes to a huge battle climax between Eammon, who has taken back all of the powers within red from the Wilderwood to save her, and the one king who had eeked his way out through Kiri's magic and taken over the physical body of Arick, who had tried to help Neve save Red. There is a happy ending for some, but the futures of many left up in the air which seems will be continued in the next book. I loved this book and it was so nice reading a book set in a fantasy world again. It's been awhile! Looking forward to the sequel! :-)

 Finished: The Plot (Korelitz) Another page-turner, hard to put down! Jake Bonner is a writer who has had one best-selling novel, and now floundered for the few years afterwards unable to get another best-seller penned or anything even accepted by a publisher. He now teaches a creative writing seminar every summer. When an overly cocky, very unpleasant student, Evan Parker, lays out the plot of his "sure thing" novel he intends to write, Jake completely deflates. He knows immediately that Evan's novel, when he writes it, will definitely be a best-selling, national book tour, Oprah list book that will most certainly be made into a movie by an A-list director. (All the things that Evan has bragged that it will be.) Three years after the seminar, Jake googles Evan to see if he ever wrote that book. He knows it would have been big news if it had been written. Jake finds out that Evan died just a few months after the seminar, and that he never wrote his book! It doesn't take Jake long to convince himself to write the book. The plot is too good to never be written. He doesn't use a single line from the few pages of writing sample that Evan had shown him. He writes the complete story on his own, but he does steal the exact plot. And, as Evan and Jake both predicted, the book becomes all those things...Steven Spielberg is even making the movie! Jake is now flying high on never-ending book tours and tv interviews when he gets a very simple email message one day. "You are a thief." Messages like that continue to escalate to Jake, and the mysterious sender even creates twitter and facebook accounts to accuse Jake of plagerizing Evan Parker. What ensues is a journey that Jake puts himself on to learn about how Evan died and if he'd told anyone else about the plot of his book. We learn exactly where Evan came up with his plot, a real life story he partially lived himself. And, we learn what possible family member of Evan's may still be alive that is sending the messages to Jake. Definitely a book that I had to read all the way through to the end in one day to see exactly what was going on! :-) 

Finished: The Last Thing He Told Me (Dave) The fastest I've read a book in a while! A great story between a woman and her new step-daughter that kept me reading furiously until the end. I'm going to be lazy and put the Amazon recap here. It keeps things concise and explains things better than I could. :-)  

"Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.

With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a riveting mystery, certain to shock you with its final, heartbreaking turn."

 Finished: The First Day of Spring (Tucker) Intense, heartbreaking, emotional story that begins with an eight year old neglected girl declaring that she's just killed a neighborhood toddler with her bare hands...and she liked the power that it gave her and the way it made her feel inside. Chrissie, as she is known when she's a child, is neglected by completely unloving and irresponsible parents. She's not liked by anyone in the neighborhood or at school, except for one friend, Linda. She's starving every day and must fend for herself for food. The book goes back and forth between Chrissie chapters and Julia chapters. Julia is Chrissie at 25, who now has a five year old daughter of her own. She's overprotective, unsocial, and so worried that she will turn out to be as worthless as her own mother, that she barely takes any time to have fun with her daughter. She also worries that people from her past will find her and take revenge for what she did as a child. She reports to a probationary officer every month who keeps very close tabs on Chrissie's health and mindset, as well as her daughter's. The Chrissie childhood chapters are very disturbing as we read every thought that goes through her mind. When it is finally discovered that Chrissie is the one who took the life of the toddler, she is sentenced to a home for dangerous children until she's 18. Even though it is basically a prison for kids, she has people who are actually caring for her and working with her for the first time in her life. She doesn't want to go when they release her, but they give her a name change and send her into the real world. When she gets pregnant by a coworker, she is determined to make a better life for her own daughter. Will her past and her remorse over her murderous childhood actions ever let her forgive herself and succeed? It's a heartbreaking story for sure, written in a prose that hooks you from the beginning and puts you right into Chrissie's troubled mind. 

 Finished: When The Stars Go Dark (Mclain) A compelling page-turner about Detective Anna Hart, who is separated from her younger brother and sister at the age of 8, enters the foster system, and is adopted by an amazing couple, Hap and Eden, who nurture her, love her and raise her to adulthood. It doesn't stop the guilt and responsibility she feels, though, for her younger siblings, which propels her to work in crimes involving missing and kidnapped children. She's married to her work, lives and breathes it, but also married to her husband. After a tragic accident resulting in the death of her own toddler, her husband makes her leave, since he blames her "work distraction" for the accident. Anna ends up back in the Northern California town where she was raised by Hap and Eden, just in time to help one of her oldest friends, Will, now the sheriff of the town, with the case of a missing 15 year old girl. Anna, Will and their friends, twins, Caleb and Jenny, had all been best friend as teenagers until their own world was shattered by the kidnapping and death of Jenny, a crime that has gone unsolved all these years. Now, 15 year old Cameron is missing and though still grieving the loss of her daughter and the end of her marriage, Anna dives right into the case with Will, letting it get very personal for her as she usually does. This is a very good book and the author writes very lovely prose. For me, the culprit was easy to figure out early on, but there is still enough suspense to keep you turning the pages. And, I love the relationships with both Eden and Hap that Anna flashes back on, having lost them both by the time she was 18. I may look and see what else Paula Mclain has written! :-)

 Finished: In Five Years (Serle) A fast-paced, tear-jerker which you think is going to be about the relationship between a couple, Dannie and David, but ends up being more about the relationship with Dannie and Bella, her best friend since they were seven years old. It is also the story of how Dannie learns to live life a little differently than she always has, which is very scheduled, very controlled, and very over-achieving. Dannie is a corporate lawyer whose job is definitely number one in her life. When she has a great job interview with the company she's always wanted to be a part of on the same day that her boyfriend of two years, David, proposes, she is over the moon. She's had it all planned out forever. Get engaged at 28, married by 30, make junior partner within a couple of years and move to a house in Gramercy. There just this one thing....when Dannie falls asleep after the exciting evening, she is transported five years into the future. Like most job interviews, they had asked her where she saw herself in five years. Dannie spends one hour five years into the future...but she's not with David, she's with someone named Aaron. And, she's not got the perfect engagement ring on her finger that David picked out, but one totally not her style. And, she's living in an apartment in Brooklyn with very bohemian taste...not at all her type. She has the most amazing sex of her life with Aaron, and then wakes up quite shaken. It was not a dream to her, but a definite experience she had in the future. **I would say, if you want to read this book, don't read any further because you will be spoiled** She shakes it off and goes about her busy work schedule and as the years pass, she and David remain engaged but too busy to set a wedding date. At least, she's too busy. David always seems to understand when she wants to postpone. When 4 1/2 years has gone by, Bella, her spur of the moment, live life to the fullest best friend finally falls in love. She asks Dannie and David to meet them for dinner so she can introduce the man who has finally swept her off her feet. Of course....it's Aaron!! Dannie has a near panic attack and feigns illness to leave abruptly. She goes home with David and tells him they must be married right away. She doesn't know what's going on, but she loves Bella and would never end up with the man she has fallen for. David is pleased, of course, but also a little skeptical that she suddenly wants to get married within two months. For Dannie, as long as it's before the date of her encounter with Aaron, she doesn't care. Dannie comes up extremely busy with work and barely has time to help with the wedding planning. She does become a little less awkward around Aaron when she can see that he adores Bella as much as Bella adores him. And...Bella is pregnant! She's thrilled and then Aaron is thrilled, and then it all goes to hell. :-( Now, the tears start. Bella isn't pregnant after all, but she's got stage three ovarian cancer. The story takes a left turn as you think you can see now what the future will be. David and Dannie, though seemingly perfect for each other, aren't really in love, hence never setting a firm date for the wedding. They call off their wedding and their relationship. Bella, an artist with a trust fund, buys Dannie an amazing apartment in Brooklyn that she designs herself, down to the green tile sinks, blue chairs and wall hangings. It has a perfect view and the color Bella knows Dannie needs in her life. Aaron sticks by Bella through it all and even proposes with the perfect bohemian ring. And after fighting so hard to stay alive, Bella finally dies. It's heartbreaking! After they have a celebration of life for Bella, Aaron takes Dannie home to her apartment where they both feel a certain energy to be together, and so they sleep together and have that amazing sex. Yes, it's now the exact day it was in Dannie's experience. Dannie realizes, though, that they didn't do that out of love or betrayal to Bella. They both did it out of severe grief. And, the engagement ring she saw on her hand was Bella's, but it's not on her ring finger, it's on her middle finger, something she was wearing to feel closer to Bella. They don't regret sleeping together, but they both pull back and decide to just be friends. How about lunch once a week for awhile? Dannie finally understands that the future she had been dreading wasn't how it seemed at all. She also realizes she needs to live life to the fullest, like Bella did. Her career path remains in tact, but her love life picks up with a smidgeon of hope for Dannie for the future, but not with David or Aaron. This was a page-turning story, and a good one! I thank my dear friend Marla for giving me this book for my birthday! :-) 

 Finished: Burger's Daughter (Gordimer) The story of Rosa Burger, the daughter of white South African revolutionaries in the 1960's who are trying to fight for rights for the oppressed native people. Her parents, Lionel and Cathy Burger are both imprisoned, her mother when Rosa is just fourteen. After her mother dies in prison, her father, a talented doctor and near hero to the other radicals, eventually does as well. Rosa is not allowed to leave the country. Her entire life she has been raised around the revolutionists, their ideas and their actions. Rosa, though, doesn't want to follow in her parents' footsteps. She's wants more than anything to travel to Europe. When she's 27, she finally gets permission for a one year VISA with strict rules put in place about who she can and cannot be in contact with. She knows she will be watched. She goes to stay with her father's first wife, Katya, and lives among her Bohemian acquaintances who float in and out of Katya's house. It's a close-knit group of friends who embrace Rosa. Rosa even falls in love and has an affair, thinking she can find peace and happiness going to London with the man. One night, though, she finds herself at a meeting of several former South African revolutionaries and recognizes her childhood best friend, the son of the servant of the house...a young black boy who the Burgers treated like one of their own, and she excitedly approaches him. She hasn't seen him almost 20 years. She has no idea what he's been doing all this time. When she calls him by his childhood nickname he bristles and tells her his given African name. They end up having a long conversation where he criticizes both her idealistic view of their childhood and her father's attempts at "making things better for the black people" when they should have never been suppressed in the first place and should have been given the power to help themselves. He basically gives her a good verbal slap in the face that opens her eyes to what he and his family were really going through when they were young children. This prompts Rosa to go back to Africa and help as a nurse at a rehabilitation center for children who have been born crippled, or crippled by war, and then as it happens, more recently, injured by the shootings currently (1977) being perpetrated by police on random groups of black teenagers and children. As the country revolts, they revolt against even the white people who are trying to help them. Rosa is eventually arrested and imprisoned for conspiracy because she went to the meeting in London. The book ends off with Rosa still in prison and writing to her father's second wife, Katya. Burger's Daughter, written by Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, was a compelling book, but written in a stream of conscious manner, even the dialogue. It was difficult at times to follow, and took me a long time to read, but I'm very glad I did. I enjoy expanding my exposure to events and countries that I've never really read about. 

 Finished: Tales of the South Pacific (Michener) Pulitzer Prize winner based on Michener's own experiences during World War II spent on the islands of the South Pacific. We meet a variety of characters, some who have standalone chapters, and some who have threads throughout several chapters. No matter their stories, though, the detailed telling of their stories is mesmerizing as your realize quite vividly what these men went through both waiting for endless hours on remote islands to be called up to fight, and then once they actually saw battle, the fear and devastation, and death amidst eventual victory. wow! I will always hold an immense respect for the men and women who serve this country in the military. One thing I did before reading this book was get out a map to see where I would be reading about. I realized there are so many places in history that I have no idea where they exist. It prompted me to begin an online geography lesson! I became obsessed with being able to locate and name all the countries, islands and territories in the world. It was quite and education and about time lol. 

 Finished: Win (Coben) Windsor Horne Lockwood III aka Win, is the best friend of detective Myron Bolitar, the main character of many of Harlan Coben's books. He's the rich, lethal, well-tailored, pretty boy who always has Myron's back, and has saved him several times when things looked bleak. He does so with witty repartee and cocky confidence. He's a great character who you really grow to love if you read the Myron Bolitar series. So, finally, he got his own story, and it's a great one! Win gets entangled in the mystery of what happened to the six young activists in the 60's who burned down a building that was supposed to be empty, but ended up causing some innocent bystander deaths. These activists are also tied to Win's own family when one of them is found murdered all these years later, and in his possession he's got the Vermeer painting stolen from Win's family years ago; as well as a briefcase that belongs to his cousin, Patricia, who had been kidnapped and raped while being held in what was known as the Hut of Horrors, where the remains of many other young women were found after she escaped her captors. Hints and clues take Win all over the place, particularly to his own family compound to talk to his father and see how he or his brother or their mother could have been involved in any of the mysteries. It's a page-turner that kept me reading, with a bit of a surprise ending. It left me hoping Coben writes more Win books. :-)

 Finished: The Guest List (Foley) Another page-turner that I could barely put down! Guests gather on an island off the coast of Ireland to attend the wedding of Jules, a high class magazine editor and Will, a television star with a Bear Grylls type show. The island has only the single manor in use, restored by the wedding planner and her husband. Only the wedding party stays on the island the night before, with the rest of the guests arriving by boat on the wedding day. Many stories about old school days between the groom and his friends come out, as well as a few secrets between other guests. By the time the wedding ceremony is finished the next day and all the guests have gathered in the tents for the reception, a terrifying storm has hit the island, and when the lights go out, someone is murdered. The story told from different viewpoints explains how several different people would have a motive for killing the victim, each new surprise making my head spin! The prose flows easily and lets you get to know each of the wedding party pretty well, especially the various narrators. I was glad to see the victim go, surprised at who the killer ended up being, but satisfied with who was actually blamed for the murder. :-) Obviously I don't want to give too much away on this one because it's a good read. 

Finished: Then She Was Gone (Jewell) Another page-turner about a fifteen year old girl, Ellie, who goes missing on her way to the library one day. There is no single word of her until ten years later when some evidence comes to light. In the meantime, her mother, father, older brother and older sister have all been shattered by her loss and her parents divorce. We hear the story from the viewpoints of several different characters, and as the horror of what happened unfolds, the seemingly coincidental relationship between Ellie's mother and a new man she has met takes you hurdling forward until you know yourself exactly every aspect of what happened to Ellie and how every character is involved. 

 Finished: The Gifted School (Holsinger) A book I simply could not put down because I just had to see who made it into the gifted school lol. The story of four mothers, best friends, who met eleven years earlier in an infant swimming class when their children were babies. Now, the children are all fifth-graders of varying talents and closeness and the mothers remain close friends. A new academy for gifted children, grades 6-8 for the lower school and 9-12 for the upper school is opening in Crystal, Colorado and only 1000 spots will be available for all the students in the four surrounding counties. The competition will be fierce and will also show us exactly what our mothers (their spouses) and the children are all made of, and if their relationships will survive at all after the competition to be granted entry to the school ends. To be honest, out of all the parents, there is only one who I like....who isn't some kind of helicoptering or over-achieving or living-vicariously-through parent. She's the mother of twin boys, and her ex-husband, their father, is a piece of competitive work. There is only one child I like in the entire bunch too...oh wait...no there isn't. Not a single child is unaffected by their entitlement. They talk about other school children when with each other; they are jealous and lie about their sibling (i.e. the twin boys); they are so self-involved that they don't understand how the consequences of their actions could harm other people. Mind you, these are still just fifth-graders we are talking about. Sometimes I feel like they were written a bit too old...as if they're in their teens. However, maybe the times have just changed that much! Anyway, there is one little boy I do like from the poorest county, Atik, whose mother cleans the houses of two of the four best friends. He is brilliant and eager and kind and talented. I'm so happy that he makes it into the school As for the shenanigans that some of the parents get into, well, they are jaw-dropping and you'll just have to read like I did to see whose friendships survive and who gets into the school after all is said and done...other than Atik, of course. :-)

 Finished: The Four Winds (Hannah) The story of how a farming family in the panhandle of Texas battles to make it through the Dust Bowl years of the early 1930's. Elsa Wolcott is a 25 year old, well-to-do, oldest daughter of parents who feel that she'll never have a future as a wife and mother. Unmarried at her age, they've given up on her. To finally stand up for herself, Elsa sleeps with the first young man who shows and interest in her and become pregnant. Her family disowns her, drives her to the Martinelli farm, and dumps her on their doorstep to be married. It takes awhile, but the Martinelli matriarch, Rose, finally comes to love and respect Elsa. While the farm is a thriving wheat producer, the family is happy and doing well. Elsa and her husband, Rafe, have two children, Loreda and Anthony. Rafe is never really happy, though, as he had been planning to go to college and see the world before he was forced into marriage and to stay on the farm with this parents and new wife. When the first year of the  Dust Bowl hits and devastates all the farm crops with its lack of rain and winds of dust storms, the destruction is more than Rafe can handle and he leaves his wife and children to head to California. His parents, Elsa and the children are all devastated. They remain on the farm, with Rose and her husband, Tony, refusing to leave the land, and Elsa right there with them, having come to love the land as her own, as much as her new Martinelli parents. They suffer unthinkable hardship in the next couple of years, but when 7 year old Anthony falls very ill and nearly dies from dust pneumonia, the doctor advises Elsa to get him to a climate where he can breathe more easily after he recovers enough to travel. This is when the true heartbreaking adventure begins. Tony and Rose still refuse to leave their land, so Elsa sets off in the old jalopy of a truck with her two children, very little money, very little food and very few belongings to cross the country to find a better life for her children in California. Little does she know she's heading into even worse conditions. People fleeing the Dust Bowl disaster and arriving from Texas, Oklahoma and other states were unwelcome and disdained by most native Californians. They were allowed to live nowhere but in makeshift tent cities. They begged for whatever work they could get, mostly surviving by picking cotton during cotton season. The migrant children, if they attended school, were ostracized by the other children. Medical care was denied. People were starving and dying. Elsa barely squeaked by with Loreda and Anthony, until the straw the broke the camel's back finally descended upon them...a terrible flood in the tent city that washed away all of their belongings and money except for the truck, which they were barely able to save (along with their own lives). By this time they have met "communist" union organizer, Jack, who Elsa has steered them very clear of. She wants no part of organizing against the rich landowners who are paying her barely enough to survive as a cotton picker. As conditions continue to deteriorate, as the cowardly landowners produce less cotton, and therefore pay the migrants even less, Elsa finally falls into step with Jack and realizes the only way to fight the injustice is to speak up and protest. Elsa and Jack realize they are in love, and for the first time in her life, Elsa is told that she's beautiful and strong and desired. The migrants, led by Jack and Elsa, are on the verge of having a successful second day of striking by sitting down in all the cotton fields in the area when Elsa is shot by one of the landowner's security guards. She passes away able to tell her children and Jack how she feels about them and vice versa. It's such a tragic moment. :-( Her last words to Jack are begging him to take her children back to Tony and Rosa in Texas, and he does. The book closes four years later when Loreda, now 18, is about to be the first Martinelli to head off to college. The farm has survived the Dust Bowl years and is a thriving wheat supplier again. Loreda says goodbye to her mom at the family cemetery and turns to follow the dreams her mom always wanted her to follow. A very good book, but wow did it smack me in the face with timeliness as I couldn't help but think about all the children at the borders who have been torn from their parents...people fleeing horrible situations, looking for a better life for this families. 

 Finished: The Survivors (Harper) A literal page-turner...the story of a 30 year old man who takes his wife and baby back to the beach town on Tasmania where he grew up to visit his parents, bringing back the memories of an accidental tragedy that happened 12 years before that has burdened him with guilt. Of course, the day after he's back in town, another tragedy occurs, bringing both the past and the relationships of everyone involved, past and present, right back into the limelight. A book that keeps you guessing who could be the perpetrator, and more importantly, one that smacks you in the face with the male objectification of women, starting at an early age and seemingly condoned unwittingly as "normal teenage boy" behavior. Not going to give away the plot line on this one. This is the third book I've read by Jane Harper and I've really enjoyed them all. :-) 

 Finished: What Could Be Saved (Schwarz) This the intricate story of a family who is ripped apart when the eight year old son and brother is kidnapped while the family lives in Bangkok, as the father, Robert, who secretly works for the government, is assigned a project that involves subverting North Vietnamese progress by identifying native boys that may be working as spies. While the wife and children have no idea what the father does for a living, their somewhat idyllic life in Asia moves forward as the wife, Genevieve, hosts and attends the required work parties every weekend, and the children attend school and extracurricular activities. All of the American households have Thai housekeepers, cooks and drivers who do all the manual work. The book goes back and forth in time between 1972, when little Philip Preston is kidnapped to 2019 when his youngest sister, Laura, then seven and now in her fifties, receives a phone call from a woman in Thailand telling her that her brother is alive and has been living there for decades and he now needs to come home. Laura whose father dies a few years after Philip's kidnapping and whose formidable mother is now suffering from dementia, calls her older sister, Beatrice, who was twelve at the time of the kidnapping. Bea, always taking responsibility as the oldest, refuses to believe this person could be Philip so doesn't agree to go with Laura to bring him home. Laura goes on her own, and sure enough, the man she meets is definitely her brother! We flash back to their childhood and the relationships between the siblings, and between each of the children and their parents, and between the parents themselves. All of them have their flaws, but they are, in the end, just a normal family, each taking some guilt for the disappearance of Philip, even though none are to blame. (Well, I do kind of blame the inattentive mother.) The compelling story delves into each character's feelings, their motivations for taking the actions they do, and of course, into the mystery of how and why Philip disappeared, and how far and wide everyone searched for Philip before giving up. As a reader, I was sad for all the years the sisters lost with their brother, and for all the heartache the parents suffered. As Philip ends up telling Laura, though, he went through some horrific times, but came out of them living a meditative life with a group of people led by a teacher who he grew to respect and love. He truly thought his family had been contacted and refused to pay a ransom for him (a lie he was told by an evil woman), and he ended up living an alternative life....not the happy family life Laura had imagined they should have had, but still he had lived his life. A very good read that will stay with me for a bit! 

Here's a bit of a review from Sarah McCraw Crow from BookPage that put into better words what I was feeling: 

As the novel opens, 54-year-old Laura Preston is treading water. Her art plateaued years ago, and she’s in a stagnant relationship with a lawyer named Edward. She doesn’t get along with her disapproving sister, Bea, and their mother, Genevieve, is slipping away to dementia. When Laura gets a call from a stranger who says her long-lost brother, Philip, has been found, she impulsively buys a ticket to Bangkok and sets off to find him.

This sounds like a setup for a suspense novel, and What Could Be Saved does offer suspenseful moments and surprising reversals. But two other elements make this novel uniquely satisfying: the portraits of each Preston family member, and the novel’s depiction of the unintended consequences of late 20th-century Americans abroad.

In Bangkok, Laura connects with the man who might be Philip, and from there, the narrative slips back to 1972, where it rotates through the perspectives of mother Genevieve; father Robert; young Laura and Philip; and Noi, a homesick Thai servant to the Prestons. Through their stories, readers learn what brought the Preston family to Bangkok, how the Vietnam War has spilled into other countries and the truth behind Philip’s disappearance. As the story shifts back and forth in time, the present-day Laura warily tries to make sense of Philip’s new presence, unearthing further truths about her family.

 Finished: Olive Kitteridge (Strout) Pulitzer Prize winning book compiled of several short stories about the people in a coastal community in Maine, with the main character, Olive Kitteridge, either the center of the story, or on the periphery of every one else's story. A retired school teacher, Olive taught most of the young adult people who now populate the town. Her husband, Henry, is a retired pharmacist, and their grown son, Christopher, has married and moved away. Olive doesn't understand, or take responsibility for the strained relationship  between mother and son. With an abrupt and stern nature, most people in the town tolerate Olive, but try to give her a wide berth. It took me a month to read this book because it wasn't one that compelled me to keep turning the pages. Just when I was getting to know the few people in a story, then another story would come along and I'd never read more about the people I'd just become interested in. I think this is why I've never been huge on short story compilations. The prose is lovely, and I could often identify with the emotions of Olive or other characters, but I'd rather read a single, fleshed out story from beginning to end. Still, each short story was a good lesson in human emotions, actions and consequences. 

 Finished: Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Kawaguchi) A lovely book about a coffee shop where you can go back in time to relive a moment with someone for a few minutes. There are very strict rules to be followed, such as: you must sit in a particular chair in the coffee shop and cannot leave the chair during your visit; nothing you say or do will change the future, so don't expect that; and most importantly, you must be done before your cup of coffee gets cold, so your time to say or do what you want to do is very limited. The story focuses on a few main characters as we see their stories, read their histories and see why they choose to go back in time. Most involve regret...regret of not telling someone how much you loved them when they decided to end a relationship; regret of avoiding a sibling for years, only to have that sibling die in an accident; regret of not knowing how your spouse truly felt before Alzheimer's set in; and regret of never seeing the baby you have chosen to give birth to, even though carrying her to full term will mean your certain death. All stories woven together with just a few characters, and done so in both a heart wrenching and uplifting way. Good book! 

 Finished: The Glass Hotel (St. John Mandel) Another page-turning book, and totally not what I thought it was going to be. The story begins with Vincent, a young woman working hard in the world to get by, who accepts the proposition of the uber rich investment planner, Jonathan Alkaitis, to pretend to be his wife. I really don't know how to describe the book, so I'm going to be lazy and use the recap from Amazon. :-) It was a gripping story, not only about Vincent and Jonathan, but also about her relationship with her step-brother and Jonathan's relationships with a few of his clients who he considers friends, but has no problem betraying. Amazon recap below. 

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis's billion-dollar business is really nothing more than a game of smoke and mirrors. When his scheme collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

 
In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

 Finished: The Push (Audrain) This book was so intense that I finished it in a day. The terrifying story of a young woman who gives birth to her first child, a daughter, and doesn't bond with her right away...or ever. Blythe has a history of her own horrific mother and grandmother and feels certain she is also most likely not cut out to be a mother, but her husband, Fox, convinces her she'll be a wonderful mother. When baby Violet is born, there is no connection, but as it turns out, it's not due to Blythe. Very early on in her life, Violet shows sociopathic tendencies, but only Blythe sees it. Fox is blind to anything that Violet may do wrong. As the years continue on, it becomes clear that Violet is definitely a little sociopath, as she becomes responsible for two horrific tragedies involving younger children, one her own one-year old brother when she is just six. Fox and his family think that Blythe is the crazy one when she tries to convince them that Violet pushed Sam's stroller into oncoming traffic. Blythe even comes to doubt herself...did she really see the push? But, she knows that when she gave birth to Sam, she bonded instantly with him, so she knows for certain she's capable of  having the maternal bond that a mother has with a child. Eventually, Blythe and Fox's marriage crumbles after the tragedy, and he has an affair with his assistant and begins a life with her. Violet splits her time between Blythe and Fox, but she always detests having to go to her mother's. She adores her father and wants to spend all her time there. By the time Violet is 13, she's got a new little brother from her father and Gemma (the assistant), and they've become a seemingly happy family. Blythe seeks out Gemma to actually warn her about her own daughter, to watch her around Jet (the new brother). Gemma takes her husband's word that Blythe was the crazy one and that Violet wasn't responsible for the previous accidents. Blythe goes so far as to watch their family through the front window one night, and Violet sees her. As Violet stands with her hand on Jet's shoulder, she looks at Blythe with her cold, blank stare and makes a pushing motion to Blythe, indicating that she did in fact push Sam into the traffic. Blythe again tries to warn Gemma, but she hangs up on her. Eventually she learns to let go of the responsibility and get on with her life. A year and a half later, she gets a hysterical call from Gemma...something has happened to Jet. THAT'S THE END OF THE BOOK! omg, this was such a page-turner, even if the material is so disturbing. We get to read a bit about Blythe's mother's history and her grandmother's history, and finally about how Blythe's mother left her when she was only 11, never to come back. Thankfully, an amazing neighbor lady named Mrs. Ellington becomes a surrogate mother for Blythe, cultivating a relationship that lasts a lifetime. Unfortunately, Mrs. Ellington isn't around when Blythe is going through the worst time of her life and has not a single person to believe her or support her. Heartbreaking, but very good book! 

 Finished: The Last Kingdom (Cornwell) The first book in a series of thirteen about a ten year old Saxon boy, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who goes with his father to face the Vikings attacking their land, and watches as the ferocious leader of the Danes, Ragnar, kills his father in the great battle loss. When the young boy runs to try and kill Ragnar with his wooden sword, Ragnar is so impressed with his bravery that he takes him and raises him as his own son, as a Viking and a Paegan. Uhtred lives with Ragnar and his family for years and loves them as his own. Not until he's in his late teens, and Ragnar and most of his family is killed by a rival Dane leader does Uhtred find his only choice to be to make his way to Wessex, the last remaining English stronghold that has not been defeated by the Danes. This is where Uhtred begins his love/hate relationship of service to King Alfred (as in the Great). Torn between his Sussex birthright and roots, and his deep love for his Danish family and his Paegan beliefs, Uhtred spends years as a warrior meant to fight against the Danes for King Alfred, all the while staying in touch with his "brother", Ragnar the Younger, Ragnar's oldest son. The book is very good and goes into so much more detail than the television show on which it's based. This first book ends long before the ending of the last season of the show I watched, so I don't know if I'll continue reading the series, but I think I probably will. :-)

 Finished: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (Schwab) In July of 1714, Addie LaRue is a 23 year old young woman who lives in the small French village of Villon with her parents, who are insisting that she finally get married to a young man from the town. Addie has never wanted to live the "standard" life of get married, have children and never set eyes on anything past her village. She longs to be free to do as she pleases, and not belong to anyone...to live life to the fullest. On the evening of the wedding, she runs away to the forest and prays to the gods to please intervene so that she will not have to get married. She forgets a cardinal rule about praying to the gods, though...never pray to the gods after dark, for you'll get a dark god. Sure enough, the devil himself answers her calling and materializes in the form of a handsome young man. Addie can feel his dark presence, though. She begs him to help her be free to live how she wants to, free of belonging to a man. The devil, who she calls Luc, grants her wish...but it will cost her her soul. When she's tired of living her life, she will owe the devil her soul. The deal is struck, but little does Addie know that everything is about to change dramatically. When Addie runs home to her parents, neither of them recognizes her. It's as if she was never their child. She also goes to see her best friend, who also doesn't recognize her. And it gets worse....anyone who she DOES meet, forgets her the minute they leave her company, even if just for a moment. It's as if she doesn't exist. She can live in the moment, but no one remembers her. And, she can't say her name...it won't come from her mouth, so she must always use a different name. She can't write or even draw in the sand. She can also not be hurt without healing instantly, or die. This life of Addie's goes on for 300 years. She makes her way to Paris and nearly freezes to death and starves to death, and she feels all the symptoms of those realities, but her body is just fine. Once a year on the anniversary of their deal, Luc appears and asks if she's ready to surrender and give him her soul. Stubborn Addie never agrees! The story goes back and forth between the 1700's, 1800's and 1900's, as we see Addie "meet" the same people over and over again. She finds a way to leave an impression of herself by having one night stands with artists who paint her portrait. Of course, they fall for her in that one night, and then all over again the next night, and on and on, until she finally moves on, and they've created a piece of art about a woman they think was only in their dreams. Addie manages to travel the world and survives through several wars in her 300 years. She also develops a strangely co-dependent relationship with Luc, and comes to look forward to his visits, since he's the only being who actually knows who she is and that she exists. Sometimes he tortures her and goes years, maybe decades, without visiting her, only to then come and say "surrender?" In 2014, she is living in New York in her usual style. She can't hold a job, so she steals the food she needs. She stays in people's cottages or apartments while they're gone. She can sneak into a building and a doorman will forget he saw her the next instant. One day, Addie goes into a book store and steals a book to read. All she has to do is make it around the corner running and the book store owner who is chasing her will forget why he's running. The young book seller, Henry, is exasperated when he actually catches up to her, and seeing her desperation, just tells her to keep the book and he heads back to the store. The next day Addie takes the book back to the book store, as she usually does, and she expects Henry to look at her as if he's never met her, but instead he says "You! What are you doing here? You've got some nerve returning here after stealing that book." Addie is stunned, shocked, elated, all at once. Someone actually remembers her! She can't believe it and is certain that any moment the bubble will burst, but it doesn't! Addie and Henry begin seeing each other and develop feelings for each other. He finally wants Addie to meet his friends, but she knows what will happen if one of them leaves the table and then comes back. Sure enough, it happens and the friend who leaves the table and comes back says "well, who have we got here Henry?" even though he'd just met Addie in front of the other friend. Addie flees the table and Henry chases after her. She finally has to tell Henry the whole truth, but she doesn't think Henry will believe a word. However, what Addie doesn't know is that Henry had made his own deal with the devil a few month before. He'd been experiencing severe depression on and off for years, and had been rejected in his recent marriage proposal to his girlfriend when he found himself on the rooftop of the building about to jump off and end his life. However, the long hand of the devil reached out his hand and saved him. He gave Henry what he wanted most of all. In exchange for his soul, he'd give Henry one year of being loved and cherished by everyone, instead of ridiculed and rejected. Everyone Henry meets gets foggy-eyed and sees only good in him....they see him as they want him to be. Even his disapproving family is suddenly very loving. His friends already loved him, so they aren't any different, but strangers are. When he meets Addie, though, her eyes don't cloud over either. When she tells him her story about her deal with the devil, he tells Addie about his deal as well. They can't believe they each have a deal, but now realize this is why Henry can remember Addie. Henry fails to tell Addie about the time limit on his life though. As the year anniversary of Henry's deal approaches, he finally tells Addie and she can't accept it. She calls Luc to come and begs him to cancel Henry's deal. As we've known for a long time now, Luc doesn't really want Addie's soul, because then she'll be dead. What he really wants is for Addie to be with him and only him all the time. Addie makes a deal with Luc that she'll stay with him as long as he wants her by his side if he releases Henry from his deal. When Henry's last minute ticks down, Addie tells him what she's done and she begins to fade away. He begs her not to go, but it's too late. She tells him to remember her always and she's gone. Henry goes on to write a book based on all the stories of her life that Addie told him in their months together. He'd written them all in journals for her since she couldn't write anything. A  year after they're parted, Addie sees Henry's book in the book store "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue", and it's her story. He's told her story. In the dedication line he says simply. "I remember you." As Luc comes upon Addie as she's reading, she goes with him as usual, but thinks to herself.....she learned from the master and used very careful wording in her deal. She knows there will come a time that Luc gets tired of her, even if it's just a fight in anger, and then she'll be free of their deal. Until then, she'll have all the patience she needs because she's got all the time in the world. This was a very good book, but took me awhile to read because it was pretty long and went back to the past quite a bit to show us Addie's trials and her relationship dealing with Luc. I preferred the story more when it was just Addie and Henry. A good book though! :-) 

 Finished: Where The Crawdads Sing (Owens) Beautifully written book about a young girl growing up alone in the marshland of North Carolina in the 1960's, deserted by her entire family by the time she is ten, left to fend for herself, living off the land, her only friends the birds and other animals of the marsh, and a nearby town who considers her to be dirty and feral and calls her the Marsh Girl. Kya is only six when her mother walks out on her abusive father, leaving her and her older siblings, never to return. As the siblings leave the abusive shack one by one, no one takes Kya with them, leaving her to deal with their father and eek out a living as best she can. When her father finally leaves for good as well, Kya starts driving his small boat, knowing all the ins and outs of the marshes leading to the town, figures out how to dig for mussels, and then sell them to the man who owns the gas store, Jumpin'. Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, live in the "colored" section of town and are the only town people who are kind to Kya...until she meets Tate. Tate is a boy who is 3 or 4 years older, who had been a friend of Jodie's, the brother she was closest to. Tate is a friendly, compassionate young boy who ends up teaching Kya to read and write. They are both in sync with the marshes and as they grow older, their deep friendship blossoms into first love. Before Tate goes off to college, her promises Kya that he will be back, but then he breaks that promise. In her heartbreak, Kya ends up having a relationship with the richest boy in town, the popular quarterback, Chase. Chase pursues her and charms her and eventually tells her that he wants to build her a house and marry her someday. He basically gets her to trust him before he plans a trip for them to a motel where she loses her virginity to him. Though he keeps seeing her, Kya doesn't realize that he brags about his sex with the Marsh Girl to his buddies in town, and that he has a pretty blonde girlfriend. When she eventually sees an engagement announcement for Chase and his girlfriend in the town paper, she realizes that she's been made a fool of, and worse, left once again. When he's done with college, Tate comes back to be a wildlife biologist in the area and goes to see Kya to beg her forgiveness and explain why he never came back. She won't have anything to do with him, but when he sees her detailed drawings and descriptions of the intricate marsh wildlife, he convinces her to at least let him submit some of her work to a publisher since no books exist about the coastal wildlife like what she could create. Kya agrees, and though she won't see Tate, she goes on to have more than one successful book! The money from the books allows her to update the inside of the cabin and put some money aside. As the story opens, it has advanced to the year 1969 and the body of Chase has been found disfigured on the ground near the marsh fire tower. He has seemingly been pushed from the tower floor and the small town sheriff has a murder on his hands. Eventually, Kya is put on trial for his murder, but I won't give away what happens. She does end up with Tate and her brother Jodie, who has come back, rooting for her, as well as Jumpin', Mabel and her lawyer, who comes out of retirement just to defend her. There is so much beautiful prose in the book, and such detailed descriptions of the wildlife, and poetry is smattered throughout. I could feel Kya's pain every time she was shunned and every time she was deserted by someone she loved, but I can't begin to imagine the isolation and loneliness of being left at such a young age. The ending was a very nice surprise as the murderer of Chase was revealed. :-)