Finished: Anxious People (Backman) A very moving book by an author I really like, who wrote both Beartown and A Man Called Ove. In this story, a group of people who are viewing an apartment for sale, a first time bankrobber, at risk of losing a custody battle, who only wants to steal enough money for one month's rent, and a father and son police officer team of the small town they all live in, are strangers who all come together in the most unlikely and poignant of ways. When the bankrobber realizes the bank to be robbed is a cashless bank with no money, the police are alerted and the bankrobber dashes across the street and barges in on the apartment viewing, gun in  hand. I really came to love each of these imperfect characters, including the bankrobber, as they went through this ordeal together, opening up to each other about life, marriage, worries and hopes. So many of the characters connected in ways we didn't know when we started the story. At the center of a couple of the character's stories was the bridge that could be seen from the apartment balcony where ten years before, a man who'd lost all his money in the real estate market crash, unable to provide for his family or keep his home, took his own life by jumping off the bridge....AFTER begging a steel-hearted bank manager for a loan and being turned down. That bank manager carried a letter from the man in her purse for ten years, feeling responsible for his death. Of course, she is one of the people looking at the apartment! I love the way all the characters are tied together either in the past, or in the future, as they develop unbreakable bonds. Great story! :-) 

 Finished: Here Is The Beehive (Crossan) Beautifully written book with stunning, unique prose and a gut-wrenching story that makes the book very hard to put down. Married mother of two and attorney, Ana, meets married father of three, Connor, when he walks into her office for some legal work. They begin a three year love affair that sends Ana spiraling, always wondering if Connor will leave his wife for her, while she slowly destroys her own marriage and puts her own desires ahead of her two very young children. We are meant to have compassion for Ana, I believe, but I simply cannot muster up feelings for a character who is so thoughtlessly ruining her family. And, there is absolutely nothing wrong with or unlikable about either of the spouses, Rebecca and Paul. As the story begins, Ana finds out that one of her clients has died in an accident and she needs to call the bereaved wife. Of course, that client is Connor and Ana is devastated. The rest of the story deals with Ana and her pain and her memories, her conversations with Connor, and her present, where she actually goes to meet Rebecca to attend to legal duties, but really to see what Connor's life was like and see if there is any hint of her there in his office. I can't imagine myself ever cheering for a character who so selfishly destroys his or her family, and that's ok. I will say that this is a beautifully written book, though, and Ana is an extremely raw character! 

 Finished: The Nickel Boys (Whitehead) As tragic as it is compelling, The Nickel Boys, set in Florida in the 1960's, tells the story of the horrific reform "school" for boys known as Nickel. Based on the real life Dozier School for Boys in Florida, the atrocities that happened at the school to, primarily, the African American boys ranged from beatings, to starvation, to rape, to torture, and even to death. The story follows Elwood Curtis, an outstanding high school student who is excited about starting college classes a couple of times a week. He makes the mistake of hitchhiking to the college early on start day to get the lay of the land, and the man he catches a ride from has just stolen the car he's driving. I don't know if it's sadder that Elwood got sent to Nickel for something he didn't do, or that he and his grandmother were helpless to put up any kind of legal fight for him. The horror of both the real life Dozier school and the fictional Nickel were uncovered over 40 years later when excavation teams uncovered a field full of unmarked graves. In The Nickel Boys, Elwood befriends a couple of other boys, and one boy, Turner, tries to teach him how to keep his head down and just do what he's told to eventually work his way out of his sentence. One of the two boys survives and goes on to tell what went on at Nickel. My heart just ached reading about the horrible treatment of these boys...some as young as five years old. I feel like this was a timely read with what's going on in the United States right now and I sadly feel as if there are some misguided, evil people who would still gladly send away young black men for no good reason. 

Finished: When You See Me (Gardner) The continuation of the previous book with Detective D.D. Warren, FBI Agent Kimberly Quincy and confidential informant/victim advocate Flora Dane all working together to uncover the previous victims of Flora's deceased kidnapper, Jacob Ness, while at the same time discovering that what they think will be all about Ness, instead becomes about the terrifying, and still ongoing, secrets of a small Georgia mountain town. Flora does discover a surprise connection to Jacob Ness, and she also finds love, which is nice to see since she spends most of her time in either defensive attack mode or extreme survivor's guilt mode. Another page-turner, with some typical Gardner twists and turns, a multitude of red herrings as the possible bad guy, and then finally, the satisfying demise of that semi-surprise bad guy. :-)

Finished: Never Tell (Gardner) Another great page-turning mystery by Lisa Gardner that brings together three of her main characters from her previous books: Detective D.D. Warren, who has a complete series all her own; FBI agent Kimberly Quincy, who is the daughter of FBI Special Agent Pierce Quincy, the character who originally got me hooked on Gardner's books; and Flora Dane, a victim of an abduction that lasted for over a year until she was finally rescued when Kimberly Quincy figured out the case! In subsequent books, D.D. has recruited Flora to be her confidential informant on a few cases that were similar to hers, and she's now become invaluable to D.D. When a young husband is shot in his own home, and the police arrive to see the wife standing at the top of the stairs with a gun in her hand, D.D. is on the case. She's shocked to see that the wife is a woman who accidentally killed her father 16 years before when D.D. was a new detective. When it looks like the case could indirectly involve the monster (now dead) who kidnapped Flora six years before, all three women work together to solve the complicated case. The nice thing about this book is that it came out last year so I literally don't have to wait for the next Gardener book...I just got it as well! And that book is a continuation of the three ladies working together again...this time to figure out of Flora's kidnapper had other victims before her. :-)