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Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

February 2021

Sadeqa Johnson’s inspiration for YELLOW WIFE, her first historical novel, began a few years ago when she walked a slave trail in Richmond, Virginia, with her family and some friends. She found herself wondering what had happened as she read the marker notes and saw the site of the jail, and it sent her researching. From there came the story of Pheby Delores Brown, who was born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia. Her life is more pampered than many of the other slaves as her father is the Master. Her yellow skin means that she has privilege. She is now 17, and the Master has promised her mother that she will be freed on her 18th birthday, but from the start you feel there is a slim chance that will happen.

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The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict

January 2021

Marie Benedict’s THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE takes readers down the rabbit hole with the real-life adventure of Agatha Christie. Many of us are familiar with Marie’s previous works, all of which looked at the woman who was “beside the man.” Here she takes a woman who we all think we know well as a writer, and walks us through the paces of an event that many of us may not know about --- the 11 days in December 1926 when she went missing. I know this is something I was never aware of. What happened and why?

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What Could Be Saved by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

January 2021

I had heard about WHAT COULD BE SAVED by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz from bookseller friends since the summer --- and I had the pleasure of hearing Liese talk about it a few months ago.

The book opens in 2019. Laura Preston is an artist who has found some success, but also clearly is drifting. She is very different from her older sister, Bea, and her mother, who is being swept into dementia. Laura is contacted by someone claiming to know the whereabouts of her brother, Philip, who had disappeared when her family lived in Bangkok in the '70s. He was eight at the time. Against the wishes of her sister and her fiancé, Laura heads to Thailand to see what she will learn. And yes, she locates her brother. But the brother she finds is an adult, and there are lost decades between them. Just what happened to him?

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The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

January 2021

THE CHILDREN’S BLIZZARD is Melanie Benjamin’s seventh book, and I think it is her strongest thus far. It’s historical fiction set on the Great Plains against the backdrop of a major event on January 12, 1888. On that day, the temperatures on the Great Plains were unseasonably warm --- and, as a result, people went off to their chores and children headed to school less warmly dressed than usual. As a wickedly ferocious snowstorm swooped in, among those challenged by the weather were teachers in one-room schoolhouses across the Plains, many of them teenagers, who were faced with a dilemma: Do they send the children home, or do they keep them in the schoolhouse? If they chose the latter, there was not enough wood or building insulation to keep them warm, but the raging storm they would send the children out into was also an issue to consider.

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The Push by Ashley Audrain

January 2021

THE PUSH by Ashley Audrain is a debut novel that is both sharp and thought-provoking. In it, Blythe is a new mother. She and her husband, Fox, were happy newlyweds, and she was so excited about becoming a mother. However, once her daughter is born, she sees this as a lot less wonderful than what she had hoped for. Her own mother and grandmother were not role models; each harbored different strains of mental illness, and the ramifications from their issues made life difficult for her as she was growing up.

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This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear

November 2020

Jacqueline Winspear’s memoir, THIS TIME NEXT YEAR WE’LL BE LAUGHING, takes readers with her to post-War England, where she shares wonderful stories about growing up in a country recovering from war. Readers may know Winspear from her award-winning Maisie Dobbs series, but even if you do not, her storytelling here will completely captivate you. I interviewed her a few weeks ago, and I felt like I was talking to an old family friend. Her stories of her family brought them all so alive to me.

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Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent

November 2020

Liz Nugent’s LITTLE CRUELTIES opens with this line: “All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral, although one of us was in a coffin.” It goes on to say, “Three is an odd number, so there had always been two against one, although we all switched sides regularly. Nobody would ever have described us as close.” It’s a great setup, and when I reread it, I saw just how clever it was.

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Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell

October 2020

Lisa Jewell’s latest psychological thriller, INVISIBLE GIRL, is set in an upscale London neighborhood, similar to the one that Lisa was living in while her home was being remodeled. Her inspiration for the book came from a rather innocuous sighting of a “schlubby-looking” man on the street who was walking by as a group of swanky moms were waiting for their children to get out of school. Who was he?

Well, Lisa invented a story about him where he lived in his aunt’s spare bedroom. Owen is a teacher but is currently suspended for his actions with some students, which he vehemently denies. He also is caught up in the world of incels, men who are "involuntary celibates" --- members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner.

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Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy

October 2020

GOODNIGHT BEAUTIFUL definitely has Aimee Molloy living up to her moniker as “the master of clever misdirection.” Three times I found myself flipping back through pages wondering, HOW did she fool me?

The book is set in a quiet upstate town. Sam and Annie have relocated there to keep tabs on his mom, who is in an extended care facility suffering from dementia. They want to be able to spend more time with her. For Sam, he has moved back home. He grew up in this sleepy town where he was a bit of a player with the girls in high school. He has returned as a psychotherapist, and his clientele is a group of women who pour out their troubles to him. Unbeknownst to Sam, their conversations can be heard through a vent in the ceiling. And there is listening going on upstairs. Then Sam goes missing, and Annie is left to wonder what happened to him.

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The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle

October 2020

THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR is a debut thriller. Rose Carlyle lives in New Zealand, and the book was a #1 bestseller there when it came out in August. I love this description of it: “It’s a thriller with identical twins, fast yachts, tropical harbors, secrets and deceit, sex and crocodiles.” I read it floating in the pool and looked up thinking that I was on my way to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean; her descriptions were that dead-on.

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