“The Last Mandarin” is a gripping, high-octane rollercoaster ride as authors Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung keep the danger on the front burner with tension that doesn’t abate until almost the last page. From the White House to Beijing, from noodle shops in Hong Kong to the necropolis of the first emperor of China, the jockeying between world superpowers is mind-bending.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde’s thought-provoking novels force readers to consider their lives and their own values and morals. They are not thrillers with fast, action-filled pages that drive the plot forward. Her newest novel, “Come Back to the World,” is one that is filled with quiet retrospection and conversations about life. It’s about a world-famous author who after her debut book rocked the publishing world, disappeared.
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“The Right to Remain” is author James Grippando”s twentieth Jack Swyteck novel and my first experience with the author and his protagonist, criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. And the very good news is that Grippando makes the reader so aware of all of the characters’ strengths, flaws, beliefs, and concerns that we get to know them well during the course of the novel and don’t for a moment miss the backgrounds provided in the first nineteen. As a stand-alone legal/suspense piece of work, it’s a riveting page-turner from beginning to end.
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“The Calamity Club” by Kathryn Stockett is many things: it’s a riveting historical fiction, it’s a powerful narrative about struggles to survive during the Depression, it’s a shocking glimpse into the treatment of women during the 1930s, and it’s about the different ways women fight to survive in a world that’s filled with oppression, denigration and condescension.
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Author Matt Witten’s new mystery novel, “51%,” is both scary and suspenseful, and it points clearly to a problem which presents a major trap for America. No, it’s not about the potential takeover of the country and the world by artificial intelligence. That subject has already been treated in numerous articles, essays, videos, and some excellent novels. But in “51%,” an equally dangerous trap for the U.S.A. is at the heart of this complex novel. This time, it’s the all-too-likely takeover of the country by the world of corporations and powerful syndicates, groups of those companies and institutions. Even as the U.S. exists right now, huge corporations are so ubiquitous and so powerful that it sometimes feels hopeless to attempt to overcome their power. And that is essentially what this novel is about.
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When we think of letters, and perhaps especially “last letters,” we think of heartfelt correspondence between people sharing ideas and emotions. We don’t usually think of the board game Scrabble and the letters we use when playing that game. The main characters in “The Last Letters of Sally and Walter” meet at an independent living community when Sally decides to try attending the Scrabble club one evening.
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“No One Knew” is a thriller that grabs you from the first page, wherein a lonely teenager finds a dead body. Author Kendra Elliot knows the central Oregon setting well, and through her capable descriptions, we feel the bitter cold of winter as main character Noelle Marshall, along with her coworkers and FBI boyfriend, try to figure out who is behind the murder of that man and two other dead bodies that appear in succession and why the FBI is getting whispers about something big being planned by domestic terrorists.
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“Mad Mabel” is a magnificent novel. Usually, after reading a story that is engrossing, that has unexpected twists, and that really packs a punch at the end, writing the review is easy. I like to say about a great novel, “The review practically writes itself.” So while I think this is a brilliant novel, and I believe it would be a fabulous choice as a book club read, the review for this complex story is not writing itself. There are so many layers to Mabel’s story that delicacy is required so as to not spoil the novel for those who have not read it.
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When one gets to a “certain age,” it’s a kick to read novels, especially murder mysteries, in which the main character is also a person of a “certain age.” And in Leonie Swann’s very clever “Miss Sharp Investigates” series, Agnes Sharp and her fellow pensioners, who all live together in Sunset Hall, her large home, prove that age is no deterrent to fighting crime.
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How can you not love a book narrated by a dog who understands a lot of what’s going on, but also — in true, believable doggy style — misses so much? Spencer Quinn has an almost supernatural ability to write like a dog. Or at least what we think our dogs really might be thinking as they go through life with us. And in his (and Chet and Bernie’s) latest story, “Cat on a Hot Tin Woof,” there’s finally a cat! Actually, as Chet might put it, “There might be two cats, but I can’t count past two.”
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Author Karsten Dusse is well-known in Germany as a lawyer, TV star, and very funny man. “Murder Mindfully” is his first novel, and it’s a doozy, This magnificently conceived novel amply demonstrates all his talents and does so in a stunning fashion that will leave many readers, including this one, with huge smiles and awe that such a humorous piece jumps off the pages of a pretty darn gory murder novel.
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Well-written, gripping historical fiction like “The Hired Man” takes us back to another place and time and allows us to experience that setting through the eyes, and usually meticulous research of the author. Sandra Dallas takes us back to Colorado in 1937, during the time of the Dust Bowl, when instead of rain falling from the sky, dirt blew in from neighboring states blanketing the ground and covering everything with layers of dirt and grit. Thanks to her careful, detailed descriptions we can almost feel the grit in our mouths and eyes as a storm blankets the town with dirt.
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