Shh, You’re in The Library!
OK, I admit it. I’m an indiscriminate book lover. One week I’m deep into a fabulous piece of literature, the next I’m tearing through a messy crime novel or a celebrity biography. What can I say, sometimes my brain needs a rest.
Below are some of my recent reads. My absolute favorites. Books I’ll come back to over and over. If you’re like me and you love nothing more than curling up in a comfy chair and diving into a great book - cheap wine in hand - you might enjoy them too!
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“Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
How does Barbara Kingsolver do it? How does she pen novel after fabulous novel, filling them with unforgettable, endearing characters? I don’t have the answer, but I do know that her latest, set in southwest Virginia where Kingsolver lives, is her best.
Don’t take my word for it. It just won a Pulitzer.
Damon, nicknamed Demon, is a boy born into a modern world of poverty and addiction in a single-wide trailer to a barely conscious addict mother. He ends up in a series of Dickensian foster homes but is ultimately saved by high school football.
That’s also Demon’s undoing as an injury and the prescription opioids that get him through the pain send him into a spiral of addiction.
Sounds like a bleak tale, but Kingsolver’s skill, humor and affection for the people of Appalachia - she’s one of them, remember - make this one of the best novels of the year.
It’s a modern American a retelling of Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” but dare I say it - better than the original.
“Trespasses: A Novel,” by Louise Kennedy
Wow. Louise Kennedy’s novel - a romance between a Catholic school teacher and a married Protestant man, set against the violent backdrop of The Troubles in Northern Ireland - is knock-your-reading-glasses-off good. The fact that it’s her FIRST novel is astonishing. No wonder The Washington Post named it “a best book of the year.”
Although she was only 8 in 1975, Kennedy captures the brutal nature of the British presence in Northern Ireland at the time and the uneasy relationship ordinary Irish folks had when interacting with those of a different faith.
While the illicit love affair is fraught with problems, the love of the teacher for her students, especially the kids from one impoverished family, is heartwarming.
Even if you know nothing about the civil war in Ireland, you will be captivated by Kennedy’s tale of a lonely teacher trying to find happiness against a backdrop of death and destruction.
I really loved this book. Can you tell?
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. And no author is better at it than Maggie O’Farrell. She masterfully dips into an era, plucks out an obscure figure and breathes life into that person.
She’s done it again in her recent best-selling novel.
In The Marriage Portrait O’Farrell poetically tells the tragic tale of the young Duchess Lucretia de Medici, wife of the Duke of Ferrara in 16th Century Italy.
The daughter of the powerful Duke of Florence, she is married off to her sister’s fiancée at age 15 after her sibling met an untimely death. The marriage, idyllic at first, is quickly doomed.
Her husband, a legendary patron of the arts, commissions a portrait of his teenaged bride, to immortalize her beauty. That work of art hangs today in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.
From the first pages of the novel we know Lucretia expects her husband to poison her at any moment. Yet the unexpected twist in the final pages of the tale is where O’Farrell really displays her genius.
You don’t need to know a thing about Italian history - I didn’t - to become enraptured by this gorgeous novel. Read it. Thank me later.
The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan.
Good news for fans of American-Irish crime novelist Tana French: I’ve found another Irish writer who rivals French for her amazing ability to spin a thriller.
Meet Dervla McTiernan, a native of Cork who has since moved to Australia. She sets her novels in Galway, where she once worked as a lawyer. I finished “The Ruin” earlier this week and waited about an hour before starting “The Scholar.” These are the two first installments in McTiernan’s award-winning Cormac Reilly series.
Reilly is a police detective in Galway. Twenty years earlier he was called to a squalid home where he found two children - undernourished and abused - with their dead mother. Those children haunt him for decades. Fast forward to the present and one of those grown children is found floating in a river, an apparent suicide. But all is not as it seems in McTiernan’s many-tiered tale.
That’s all I’ll tell you. Read the novel. You won’t be able to put it down.
Counterfeit, by Kristin Chen.
Some books were simply meant to get sand between the pages: beach books. Entertaining novels that can be enjoyed from under an umbrella when you’re slathered in sunscreen and dripping salt water.
You wouldn’t take “War and Peace” to the beach. At least I wouldn’t. But I would - and did - take “Counterfeit” by Kirstin Chen.
The plot is simple: An unhappy Asian-American lawyer has left her law practice after the birth of her cranky baby boy. An old roommate from Stanford - a Chinese national - comes back into her life and ensnares her into a high-end purse counterfeiting business. Big money. Big danger. I won’t reveal any spoilers but there are several twists and turns in this fast-paced novel.
The entire narrative takes place in a police interview so you know Ava Wong got caught.
How she got there and what happens next turns this clever story into a great summer page-turner.
Notes on an Execution by Danna Kukafka.
Serial killer Ansel Packer has 12 hours to live. As a reader, you wait with this condemned man as the minutes tick away. But the story is not just his and it’s not overly sympathetic to him, as stories about murderers sometimes are. Instead, it’s the tale of the women around Ansel: His mother, the female detective who doggedly followed him and his sister-in-law.
This is an exquisitely crafted novel that hooks the reader from page one and never lets up. The author refrains from romanticizing the killer and portrays the death penalty as the reward Packer gets for a life filled with bad luck and evil choices.
A page-turner. Take it to the beach!
The Pull Of The Stars, by Emma Donoghue
Don’t you just love Irish writers? Trouble is, there are SO many good ones. One of my favorites - OK, she’s an Irish-Canadian - is Emma Donoghue. Her 2020 novel, “The Pull of the Stars” is brilliant and timely. Set in Dublin during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, the story centers on Julia Power, a midwife on a fever/maternity ward. Julia, her patients and co-workers make for a lyrical and poignant tale. While the novel is fiction, one featured character is historical: Dr. Kathleen Lynn, an Irish revolutionary on the run from the authorities. Lynn went on to found a Dublin clinic to serve the poor.
The Faithful Spy, by Alex Berenson
How could it be that I never heard of author Alex Berenson until the former New York Times reporter emerged as a contrarian during the Covid pandemic? Turns out he’s also a best-selling author who’s churned out a series of riveting spy novels, featuring rogue CIA agent, Jack Wells. Start with Berenson’s first Wells novel, “The Faithful Spy” and you’ll be hungry for the rest of the series. These are perfect beach reading. I’m addicted and on “The Midnight House” now.
“A Time For Mercy,” by John Grisham
Guess who’s back? Jake Brigance, the Mississippi lawyer who got an acquittal for Carl Lee Hailey, a black man who killed two white rapists in the 1989 best seller, “A Time To Kill.” In John Grisham’s latest legal thriller, Brigance faces another daunting challenge: How to keep a teenaged boy out of the gas chamber after the kid shot a sleeping deputy in the head. It’s a Grisham novel, filled with memorable characters and a terrific plot. There’s a time to read the great works of literature and there’s a time when nothing satisfies more than a great page turner. Put “A Time For Mercy” near the top of you pandemic reading list.
“Hamnet,” by Maggie O’Farrell
You don’t have to be a Shakespeare scholar or a fan to enjoy “Hamnet,” an elegant historical novel that details the life of Shakespeare’s wife - about whom little is known - and the death of their 11-year-old son that seared her soul.
The story is timely. It’s set in the 16th century, during the time of the bubonic plague and there are uncanny parallels to modern-day attempts to control a relentless disease.
This is one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve ever read. The language is lush, the pain is achingly real. And in this work, William Shakespeare is just a bit player
“Camino Island,” John Grisham.
There is a time to read the great books of English literature and there is a time for guilty pleasure: You know, delicious page turners that beg to be read with your feet in the sand.
If ever we needed some pure escapism, now is that time.
I can’t think of a better novel to stick in your beach bag than John Grisham’s “Camino Island.” This is not another Grisham legal thriller. Instead, the author delves into the murky world of rare book collectors and sets his story on a fictitious island off the coast of Florida. The plot unfolds when a set of priceless F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts are stolen from Princeton University. Investigators come to believe that the contraband is hidden on Camino Island and they recruit a local novelist to help them solve the crime. As always with this author, the book is peppered with colorful characters and a snappy narrative. When you finish “Camino Island” - and you’ll rip through it quickly - read the sequel, “Camino Winds,” set on the same lovely island with some of the same characters. This time the islanders discover a murder that was committed under cover of a hurricane. In this offering, Grisham provides floods, floozies and most of all, fun.
“The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek,” by Kim Michele Richardson
Some books stay with you long after you read the final page. “The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek” is that kind of novel. Set in rural Kentucky in the 1930s, this is the story of Cussy Mary Carter, one of the packhorse librarians who - as a part of FDR’s Work Progress Administration - delivered books to Appalachia. Carter rides a mule to bring literacy to the hill people. She’s a coal miner’s daughter and one of Kentucky’s curious “blue” people. I loved this story.
“The Cactus League,” Emily Nemens
Missing baseball this spring? This’ll help. Here’s a quirky, delightful, amusing baseball novel set in Arizona during spring practice, 2011. The cast of characters is crazy: a coach, an agent, a superstar left-fielder with a gambling problem, a pitcher with a bum elbow, a rookie with a fat signing bonus, baseball wives, ex-wives, girlfriends and “cleat chasers.” This has been described as nine short stories strung together. Whatever it is, it’s a fun read and it’ll give baseball fans something to do till the 2020 season starts.
“In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin” by Lindsey Hilsum
You may not know who Marie Colvin is, but you should. In fact, if you followed conflicts around the world for the past 40 years much of your information came from this fearless war correspondent. Until 2012, that is, when she was killed by a rocket blast in Syria. This unblinking look at an American-born writer for The London Times reveals her brilliance, her bravery and her many, many frailties. From Libya to Kosovo to Sri Lanka (where she lost an eye from grenade shrapnel) to Chechnya, Colvin felt compelled to “bear witness” to the horrors of war - even as her obsession wrecked many of her relationships. This is a compelling story. Colvin should not be forgotten.
“The Dutch House,” by Ann Patchett
If you read “Bel Canto,” “The Magician’s Assistant” or “Commonwealth” you’re no doubt already an Ann Patchett fan. She’s a terrific storyteller and her latest novel is a wonderful read. It’s the tale of a brother and sister who form an almost mystical attachment to their childhood home after they’re banished from it by their stepmother. This is a powerful account of the bond between siblings and the longing for home.
I should confess that I didn’t actually READ this fabulous novel. I listened to it. The narrator was Tom Hanks, who was an absolutely inspired choice.
“Lady in the Lake,” by Laura Lippman.
Yes, Laura Lippman is one of my favorite authors. Whether that’s because of her prose or her history - she’s a former Baltimore Sun reporter - I don’t know. I do like her style. And her latest piece of fiction is one of her best. In an interview, Lippman said she never intended to write a newspaper novel, but that’s just how this one evolved. There’s a murder, of course. There always is. And a woman who becomes an accidental newspaper reporter. Set in the Baltimore of the 1960s and the author captures that era beautifully.
“Blackwater” by Michael McDowell
How is it possible that I never before heard of this astonishing author or the mesmerizing book he wrote as a six-part series back in 1983? That’s what I kept asking myself as I dove into this novel that’s described as Southern Gothic, but is so much more. It’s part horror/part family saga, part Stephen King/part Carson McCullers. The novel opens with a flood on Easter morning in 1919 and from the first page, you’ll be swept away by the mysterious waters of the Perdido River in Alabama. If you’re an audiobook fan, you’re in luck. The narrator is superb.
“A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts” by Therese Anne Fowler
OK, I admit it, I’m reading a lot of historical novels these days. And this is among the best. The well-behaved woman in the title is Alva Vanderbilt, who - during the Gilded Age - entered into a loveless marriage to one of Commodore Vanderbilt’s unimaginably rich grandsons. But her life did not follow the usual track. She became a suffragette, a civil rights leader and an amateur architect during her fascinating life at the heart of American high society.
“My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton,” by Laurie Kamoie and Stephanie Dray
As an accurate biography, this historical novel comes up short. Much about the life and thoughts of Eliza Hamilton, wife of Alexander, is pure conjecture. Still, it’s an interesting read, rich in American history and infused with the courtly language of the early 19th century. A few years ago I read “America’s First Daughter,” by the same authors, a biography of Patsy Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s daughter. They had more source material and it was a lovely novel. Then again, I adore Mr. Jefferson. Hamilton? Not so much.
“The Miniaturist,” by Jessie Burton
Reviews of this novel have been mixed and I didn’t expect to enjoy it when my book club settled on The Miniaturist for May. Once I jumped in, though, I found a fascinating story set in 17th century Amsterdam, a city bustling with merchants and craftsmen capitalizing on raw materials from the Dutch colonies. (A reminder that this little country was once a player on the world stage.) The tale is infused with Alice Hoffman-like mysticism, which means readers must be willing to suspend their disbelief. Predictable, yes. But mesmerizing, too.
“The Witch Elm,” by Tana French
Tana French is Ireland’s gift to the world of crime novelists. I’ve read several of her Dublin Murder Squad novels, but “The Witch Elm” is something different. It’s a leisurely, layered psychological mystery told from the point of view of a mildly brain-damaged crime victim. After he’s beaten almost to death for no apparent reason, Toby Hennessy loses chunks of his memory. That complicates matters when he’s implicated in a 10-year-old murder. The pace of this book is slow compared to others by this novelist. But I liked it. A lot.
“Educated: A Memoir,” by Tara Westover
Don’t start this stunning book unless you have hours to spare. You’ll sink into this unbelievable tale and won’t be able to breathe until it’s over. Tara Westover’s lyrical account of growing up in a survivalist Mormon family in rural Idaho - around the time of the siege at Ruby Ridge - reads like fiction. That fact that it’s not makes the story, which centers around her father’s descent into mental illness and the dangers it posed to his isolated family, absolutely harrowing. The New York Times Book Review put it on it’s Ten Best Books of 2018. For once, I agree with the Times.
“Milkman,” by Anna Burns
Finished this novel today and I’m blown away by it. The language, the cadence, the humor. No wonder it won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for fiction. Maybe I loved “Milkman” because I lived in Ireland for three years during The Troubles. Maybe I enjoyed “Milkman” because it was so unique. Then again, maybe I never wanted “Milkman” to end because Anna Burns is a helluva gifted writer. Note: I listened to this stream-of-consciousness work on Audible. The narrator was fabulous. Highly recommended.
“Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine,” by Gail Honeyman
If you’re in a book club, you’ve probably read “Eleanor” already. If you’re not and you haven’t, you should. Read it, that is. Eleanor Oliphant is a 30 year-old single Glasgow woman, living alone and she is definitely NOT fine. While Honeyman has penned a memorable novel - witty and warm with acerbic observations on modern life - this is truly a treatise about loneliness. In an uplifting way. Read it before the movie comes out later this year.
“Where The Crawdads Sing,” by Delia Owens
Delia Owens didn’t set out to be a best-selling author. She’s a PhD who spent decades in Africa studying wildlife before turning to fiction. Yet her highly acclaimed first novel, “Where The Crawdads Sing,” is compelling and lyrical. It’s the story of Kya, a feral girl abandoned by her family and surviving in the marshlands of North Carolina. The determined child learns to read and write and becomes an acclaimed naturalist despite crippling social anxiety. Oh, and there’s a murder. I never wanted this book to end.
The Romanov Sisters, by Helen Rappaport
Maybe it’s all this talk about Russia or my sudden taste for Moscow mules, but lately I find myself drawn to books about this country and its strange, rich history. The four daughters of Czar Nicholas have been described as the Kardashians of their time. This quartet of beautiful royal sisters was the subject of much speculation as they approached marriageable ages in the years leading up to the Russian revolution. Alas, there is no happy ending to their story.
American Fire, by Monica Hesse
If you’ve ever zipped down Virginia’s Eastern Shore and wondered what it would be like to live there, you owe it to yourself to read this non-fiction work. While it’s centered on the curious story of Tonya Bundick and Charlie Smith - the Eastern Shore Arsonists, who nearly burned down Accomack County about six years ago - it’s so much more than that. A poetic and poignant look at Virginia’s forgotten finger.
A Gentleman In Moscow, by Amor Towles
Have I mentioned that I belong to a book club that reads only women authors? Thought so. Yet, like most bibliophiles, we consume lots of literature that isn’t on the menu at our monthly meeting. At our last get together someone mentioned “A Gentleman in Moscow” and we all began gushing at once about this marvelous, breathtaking novel. Written by Amor Towles - a man! - this is the best book I’ve read. In years. Enjoy!
Calypso, by David Sedaris
Is there a wittier essayist in America today than David Sedaris? No, there is not. His latest book, “Calypso,” offers moments of exquisite hilarity and deep introspection. If you love your Fitbit, as I do, you will find his essay on obsessive walking riotous. On second thought, if you’ve never read Sedaris, start with “Naked” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” “Calypso” is a collection for those seriously addicted to the writer. I never wanted it to end.
Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan
Loved this sweeping novel set in 1930s and ‘40s New York City by one of my book club’s favorite authors. Egan’s richly drawn characters include gangsters, floozies, bankers and young women working at the Naval yard in jobs that had been held by men before the war. This author always does her homework. Details about diving and the critical role of merchant ships during the war are spot on.
An Innocent Client, by Scott Pratt
Because I live at the beach, I find my reading tastes change with the seasons. Don’t tell my brainy book club, but in summer, I want to read fun, engrossing novels that will eventually wind up on my book shelves with sand between the pages.
My 2018 beach reading kicked off with “An Innocent Client,” by Scott Pratt. I immediately began working my way through the rest of his addictive Joe Dillard series. Pratt, who has a BA in English and a law degree from the University of Tennessee, writes legal thrillers set in eastern Tennessee. His main character, Dillard, is a career switcher. In this novel, he’s a disillusioned criminal defense lawyer. In the later books he’s the DA.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Pratt said he wrote the series in a way that the reader could start with any novel and that's true. I’m on my third.
The Museum of Extraordinary Things, by Alice Hoffman
I love reading Alice Hoffman. She’s an elegant and quirky writer and when she turns to historical fiction, she’s both mesmerizing and meticulous. “The Museum of Extraordinary Things” is set in 1911 New York. The year of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and a time when wolves and deer roamed remote parts of Manhattan. Read this. You’ll love the prose and you’ll learn something.
Sunburn, by Laura Lippman
Former Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter Laura Lippman is one of my favorite authors. Her crime novels are always compelling, often based on real cases. “Sunburn” is something a bit different. A psychodrama with lots of twists. Enjoy!
Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate
The Tennessee Children’s Home Society was an unscrupulous adoption agency based in Memphis during the first half of the 20th century. The owners were able to kidnap poor children and place them with wealthy families for decades before they were exposed. “Before We Were Yours” is a mystery novel based on these horrific real-life events. A great read.
News Of The World, by Paulette Jiles
“News of the World” is one of those novels that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page. It’s the story of a little girl held captive by the Kiowa tribe for four years and the 70-year-old Army captain who’s taking her back to her kinfolk in San Antonio. Sweeping story set in North Texas just after the Civil War. Read this. You can thank me later.
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