Susan Wiggs is known for novels with relatable characters and narratives that hook the reader from the start, and her newest novel, “Wayward Girls,” is historical fiction at its best. In this gripping story, we meet young girls who were forced to leave school, their homes, and their families, to work at a Catholic laundry masquerading as a charity home for wayward girls in New York.
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“Far and Away” is as large as life, as its Texas setting might imply, but it’s also filled with art and culture, as one might presume from the other setting in Berlin. Amy Poeppel is an equal opportunity author; she’s brutally frank about the Texas heat in the summer, and she’s equally upfront about culture shock an American might experience in Germany. This novel is touching and tender, but it’s also quirky and filled with misunderstandings and missed opportunities. There’s humor and there’s deception, but most of all there’s love of family.
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Readers loved the alternate world Sarah Beth Durst created in “The Spellshop,” and in her new novel, “The Enchanted Greenhouse,” she takes us back to that charming, magic-filled world where flying cats roam and miniature dragons pollinate huge sunflowers in magical greenhouses. In the first book, we learned of Terlu Perna, a lonely librarian who broke the law when she created a sentient plant to keep her company in her solitary life among the stacks of magical spell books. She was sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue forever.
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“How to Seal Your Own Fate” is a worthy sequel to Kristen Perrin’s debut novel, “How to Solve Your Own Murder.” The main character, Annie Adams, has now inherited not only the grand estate of Gravesdown Manor in the scenic, idyllic village of Castle Knoll, England, but also the millions of pounds that accompanied it. She inherited all that as a result of solving the murder in the first book. Annie now lives in the manor alone and is often lonely. But very quickly, trouble comes knocking on her door.
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Featuring main characters who are senior citizens definitely makes novels attractive to readers, shall we say, of a certain age. Like me. With Mrs. Plansky, Spencer Quinn has created a main character who is not only a senior citizen (she qualified for Medicare six years ago), but she’s got some of the same aches and pains and elder-problems that we face. However, unlike some other older main characters in recent novels, Loretta Plansky had not been an assassin nor a CIA agent.
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With “The Mystery of Locked Rooms,” author Lindsay Currie introduces us to three best friends, middle school kids who love solving escape room puzzles, and who, at the start of the novel, beat the time to escape from the second-hardest escape room. It’s a feat only a few other teams have accomplished. Sarah Greene is pretty happy, but as the end of Chapter One says, “If I didn’t have to go home, this day would be perfect.” So we know life isn’t great for Sarah.
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Rachel Howzell Hall is an accomplished author, and her newest novel, “Fog and Fury,” is the start of her first series, aptly called “Haven Thriller.” The setting is an idyllic California coastal town which some people are aiming to turn into a posh tourist destination and which has the nickname “Mayberry by the Sea.” But things are not as harmonious and peaceful as the movers and shakers in town would have people believe.
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Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida, and his novels reflect not only his love of that Everglade-filled, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean-bound state, but also his disgust for the crooked politicians and right-wing fanatics who also inhabit the state. His newest novel, “Fever Beach,” is filled with the quirky characters Hiaasen is famous for, as well as an outrageously insane plot that is so very Hiaasen. And we love every minute.
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