Finished: The Overnight Guest (Gudenkauf) A pretty good page-turner about a triple homicide that happened on a farm twenty years earlier, leaving twelve year old Josie without her parents or brother. The story is told in the present day time and in the twenty years past time...and is also told by a third viewpoint, that of a little girl who is apparently being held captive with her mother in a basement and has been all her life. There are lots of twists and turns, while the current day crime author, Wylie, who is staying at the remote farm cabin where it all went down, is trying to finish her latest book. With a huge snow storm hitting, Wylie heads out to load up her firewood and finds a small child nearly frozen to death in the snow and takes him into the cabin to warm him up. When he wakes up, he is terribly uncommunicative and frightened and some of the twists start falling into place, but not necessarily how you think they will. :-) 

Finished: Black Cake (Wilkerson) One of those books that I truly enjoyed, whose characters I want to sit with awhile, so I'm going to be very lazy and paste the Amazon blurb here. I will say that I really loved the friendship of Covey and Bunny as they grew up on their Caribbean island, learning to long distance swim and always having each other's backs. I love that the book is really Covey's story, but we also get enough of Bunny's, Byron's, Benny's and Marble's stories to grow attached and, more importantly, attach them all together. And, of course, I'd love to taste that black cake!! :-) 

From Amazon:

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch. 

 Finished: The White Ship (Spencer) Historical non-fiction telling of the tragic sinking of the White Ship, the ship in King Henry I's royal fleet that was carrying his only legitimate son and heir to the throne, seventeen year old William, when it crashed into a rock soon after setting sail from Normandy heading back home to England, killing everyone aboard except a butcher. The story begins with William's grandfather, William the Conqueror and his successful conquest of the English crown. Having four sons among his children, Henry was the fourth son with little chance of becoming king. We read the complicated history of all the sons and the deaths and wars that finally lead to Henry's chance to grab the throne and become King Henry I. King Henry has one daughter and one son with his wife (and at least twenty illegitimate children). After suffering the trials of being one of four brothers battling for the same lands and crown all his life, he decides one legitimate son and heir is plenty, and does not press his wife to have more children. Henry prepares his son to become the king and has already announced William as the heir to the throne when the tragedy strikes. After a successful campaign in Normandy, Henry and all his noblemen and knights, along with much of the younger generation of those nobleman, peers of William's, prepare to set sail back home to England. King Henry goes ahead on the first ship, while many of his faithful noblemen and almost all of that younger generation, board a different ship, the White Ship, a few hours later in the dark. The crash is harrowing, and as told by the the surviving butcher, William was spirited off in a lifeboat by his guards, and was headed to shore when he insisted they turn back for one of his step-sisters who was screaming for his help. When the boat turned back, it was quickly overtaken by panicking people trying to climb aboard and capsized with all aboard perishing. King Henry goes into a terrible grief, but also realizes the precarious situation the future of his crown is in. Henry's wife, Matilda of Scotland, had died two years prior, so Henry marries as quickly as possible to try and produce another male heir. His attempts prove to be futile. In the last years of his life he takes oaths from all his trusted nobleman that they will support his next choice for the throne, his daughter, also called Matilda. When King Henry finally does die, the years following his death 1135-1153 become known as the Anarchy, as Matilda goes to war with Henry's nephew, Stephen of Blois, for the thrown. After years of bloody war, Stephen's unimpressive turn as king, and Matilda's various unsuccessful rallies for the thrown, a peace pact is finally reached between Stephen and Matilda assuring that Matilda's son, Henry, will become Stephen's official heir to the thrown, his own son having already died. So, with the crowning of King Henry II, the book comes to a close as the House of the Plantagenets is ushered into England. It's a very well told story if you like the historical telling of England's royal history by the piecing together of accounts from many witnesses and historians from the time. :-)

 Finished: His and Hers (Feeney) A page-turning whodunnit told in alternating chapters from the viewpoint of Anna, a reporter who lives in London and has been subbing for the anchor at her BBC station for the last two years, and the viewpoint of Jack, a detective who has gone back to his small hometown in England after a divorce two years prior. Oh, and Anna is Jack's ex-wife. They were happily married with a three month old daughter when they lost her to a tragic "cot death" while Anna's mother was babysitting. Their marriage could not survive the tragedy. When a woman is murdered in Jack's hometown, which, of course, turns out to also be Anna's hometown the story turns into a wild ride as we hear everything from their two viewpoints and as they both at one point or another become suspects. When another woman turns up dead, we begin to hear about the history between all the characters going back to high school, and it's a doozy. Oh, did I tell you that in the midst of the His and Hers chapters we also have chapters from the killer's viewpoint? We just don't know who that killer is until the very end! So many twists and turns in this book. I loved it and will say no more about it to avoid spoilers. :-)