Finished: Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other (Heughan & McTavish) What a funny, informative and heartwarming book chronicling the road trip around Scotland that Outlander stars Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish took. They took to the road in a camper, taking themselves on an adventure to learn about the history of several different Scottish clans, various wars between clans, visiting iconic battle sites, and even exploring the history of whisky, all while careening around in their camper, or a tandem bike, or a motorcycle with a side car, or a rowboat, etc. They bantered back and forth the entire time, but also shared some very poignant moments together, each one also opening up and sharing a bit about his private life and what his early years of the acting business were like. They are a likable pair and the book was such a fun read. :-) 

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

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

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. :-)

Finished: Ransom (Garwood) A fast-paced tale of a Englishwoman during King John's time who travels to the Highlands of Scotland to search for a lost jewel box that she can return to her beloved uncle's captor, who ravaged her home when she was only 5 years old, killed her father, and separated her from her sister. A historical novel that is more romance novel than historical, but it was very entertaining. Full of intrigue, with two main "couples" who fall in love, but of course, are first always at stubborn odds with each other. It reminds me just a bit of Outlander, but not written in as much depth. Still, it has the gruff, warrior highlanders, who despite their intimidating appearances are loyal to women they fall for. Thank you to my dear friend Leslie for giving me this fun book for my birthday! :-)

 Finished: The God of Small Things (Roy) Beautifully written and equally tragic story of a divorced mother in India, Ammu, whose actions, and those of her seven year old twins, inadvertently lead to the tragedy that befalls them all, and in particular, the "untouchable" man, the man beneath their station, who they all love, Velutha. Orchestrated behind the scenes by Ammu's malevolent aunt, Baby Kochamma, with the telling of lies and emotional blackmail on the innocent children, the tragedy unfolds due to Baby Kochamma's hatred of Ammu for coming back home to the family after the shame of divorcing, as well as to protect herself after she lies to the police, telling them that Velutha has raped Ammu and kidnapped the children. The story goes back and forth between current times, when the twins, Estha and Rahel are now in their twenties, and completely emotionally damaged, and when they are seven and living the lives of privileged children in India whose family owns a pickle factory. Arundhati Roy's prose takes the reader into every situation and location she describes in amazing detail. Here's just a sample of her writing when the twenty-something Rahel has gone back to her hometown in India in hopes of getting through to her beloved brother, Estha, and stops in the square to listen to an old story-teller, the Kathakali Man: 

It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they HAVE no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again. 

 Lovely, lovely writing. Tragic, sympathetic characters. Manipulative, hateful antagonist (who will join my list of Least Liked Characters!) A story that unfolds in the eyes of Esta and Rahel, and from the emotions of Ammu, Velutha and Baby Kochamma. There are other integral, fleshed-out characters, but for me the heart of the story is with Ammu & her children.