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."