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!