Latest Reviews
Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. KNIFE is a gripping, intimate and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art --- and finding the strength to stand up again.
The two identical brothers seemed perfect in every way --- handsome, intelligent, popular --- until a shocking summer night when one brother killed his parents in cold blood while the other brother had an iron-clad alibi. But which twin was where during the murders? And is it possible the two of them planned the perfect crime together? Years later, the twins are long estranged, each of them claiming to be convinced that the other is responsible for the death of their parents. Married now with children of their own, they may finally be ready to clear one name at the expense of the other and turn to Laurie Moran and her team to reinvestigate their parents’ murder. But as the Under Suspicion crew gets closer to the truth, the danger that was assumed to be left in the past finds its way into the present.
It’s been two years since Nora Carleton left the job she loved at the US Attorney’s Office to become lead counsel at Saugatuck Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. The career change also meant a change of scenery, relocating her to Westport, Connecticut, 50 miles north of New York City. But it was worth it to get her daughter, Sophie, away from the city. Plus, she likes the people she works with. Especially Helen, who recruited Nora because of her skills as an investigator. Then Nora's new life falls apart when a coworker is murdered and she becomes the lead suspect. Nora calls in her old colleagues from the US Attorney’s Office, Mafia investigator Benny Dugan and attorney Carmen Garcia. To clear Nora’s name, Benny and Carmen hunt for the true killer's motive, but it seems nearly everyone at Saugatuck has secrets worth killing for.
A pair of hikers find a tarp-wrapped body in a clearing in the woods. When a search in the surrounding area yields two more, Sheriff Bree Taggert knows they’ve stumbled onto a serial killer’s dumping ground. With the help of investigator Matt Flynn, Bree works the case. They go to interview Jana, the best friend of one of the victims. But when they arrive at her apartment, it’s been ransacked and set on fire. And Jana is missing. It’s clear the killer is escalating. To make matters worse, he threatens Bree’s family and a young mother vanishes. Will Bree and Matt uncover the link between the victims before more women die?
In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations. So the arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture feels like a boon to her. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.
Adam Zantz is still driving for Lyft, struggling to make ends meet, when his beloved former piano teacher makes a deathbed request: He wants Zantz to prove his son’s innocence in a decades-earlier murder case. There doesn’t seem to be much hope of solving such a cold case --- until Zantz stumbles onto a test pressing of a never-released vinyl LP. The recording is of a high school garage band lost to the tides of the Paisley Underground, the acid-fueled early ’80s music scene that spawned the Bangles and the Three O'Clock. Down the psychedelic rabbit hole Adam falls, tracing the band's journey from the middle-class garage to the precipice of fame --- a twisted tale marked by crooked DJs, elder-scammers, wellness hucksters, a teen cult, and the woman who held the key to the band’s triumph and ruin.
Ten years before Nina was born, her mother lit herself on fire in a dual suicide attempt. During her recovery in the burn-unit, a nurse initiated her into Transcendental Meditation. From that day on, her mother's pain became intertwined with the pursuit of enlightenment. Growing up, Nina longed for a normal life; instead, she and her brother were at the whims of their mother, who chased ascension up and down the state of California, swapping out spiritual practices as often as apartments. When they finally settled at the foot of a mountain --- reputed to be cosmic --- in Northern California, Nina hoped life would stabilize. But after another fire, and a tragic fallout, she was forced to confront the shadow side of her mother's mystical narratives. With obsessive dedication, Nina began to knit together the truth that eventually would release her.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Linda Haley has no idea that her husband has been living a secret life. Now Guy is the prime suspect in a brutal murder that could derail Linda’s high-powered career and may be connected to a cold case. And Guy has disappeared. With a warrant out for her husband’s arrest, Linda sets out to prove his innocence accompanied by an ex-cop who harbors a secret affection for her. Together, they travel to the scene of a 40-year-old unsolved murder and a night of violence that shattered the serenity of a small fishing hamlet just past the Hamptons. But as the manhunt intensifies and she begins to uncover the shocking truth --- and the past Guy has buried deep --- Linda must decide if the stranger she married is innocent or guilty. And if he truly deserves to be saved.
Outside the island, there is nothing. The world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island, it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists are living in peaceful harmony. Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island --- and everyone on it. But the security system also has wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer --- and they don't even know it. And the clock is ticking.
In TABLE FOR TWO, Amor Towles shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’ novel, RULES OF CIVILITY, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself --- and others --- in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows and dive bars of Los Angeles.
