Jess Lourey, UNSPEAKABLE THINGS

I read this strong thriller in a day. It's a harrowing novel based upon the true story of boys abducted in small-town Minnesota in the 1970s. What raises this book above the average thriller is the balance Lourey sustains between showing the danger outside and inside the home. For me, even more excruciating than wondering about the boys is watching 11-year-old Cassie (the first-person narrator) earnestly and futilely attempting to normalize the wild dysfunction in her family. It's as if she's trying to make a small rug cover a large floor. The erratic behavior of her drunken father, and Cassie's acute sensitivity to all its phases, felt close to the bone. For me, this was rawer and more real than most thrillers, and better written, verging on literary fiction.

Juliet Grames, THE SEVEN OR EIGHT DEATHS OF STELLA FORTUNA

This is a debut novel (that gracefully slips into almost-memoir by the end), but it doesn't read like it--probably because Grames's day job is editing for Soho Press. With a profoundly assured narrative voice, she begins her tale in the early 1900s, in a small town that clings to the rocks of a hill in Italy. Stella (based upon the author's grandmother) is the eldest daughter of the Fortuna family, which eventually emigrates to the US, where they settle in the northeast. The book is organized (ostensibly) around Stella's eight brushes with death, and at first I thought it was merely a device that served as a counterpoint to the heroine's suggestive name; by the end I realized its thematic importance. Stella is a fully-realized character, and we watch her change, grow and diminish, and warp her interpretive framework in response to the often painful events of her life. A clear-eyed, unsentimental, but compassionate view of a family rife with dysfunction, loyalty, suspicion, and love. I would recommend to fans of Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, and Mary Beth Keane.

Amanda Quick (Jayne Ann Krentz), THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

My first Amanda Quick mystery. In the 1930s, Anna Harris flees the home of her murdered employer, Helen Spencer, who bequeathed her cash and a notebook with mysterious notations. She drives across the country to restart her life as Irene Glasson in Burning Cove, California, just outside LA, but there are ruthless villains who will do anything to obtain that notebook. Very good world-building, with plenty of flapper glamour, champagne, beautiful hotels, exotic cars, and movie stars with Pasts they want to keep hidden. Light, quick, often wry prose that feels just right, and with a nice spritz of romance.

Martin Walker, BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE

A thoroughly enjoyable cozy set in the south of France. Think Agatha Christie x A Year in Provence, with some Foyle's War tossed in. The MC is a personable Sergeant who knows everyone in St. Denis and, despite some painful backstory, is a fundamentally trusting, generous man. The mystery has a dark edge, more intricate than most cozies, and thoroughly believable. And the food in this book! They're always dining on French baguettes and pate and flavorful cheese and truffles. I had to snack as I read. Will definitely read more in this series.

Nora Ephron, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON BEING A WOMAN

A thoroughly enjoyable collection of essays. Perhaps if I weren't 54 I wouldn't find them so darn funny and spot on. Each essay is short, perfect for a wry, witty nibble, or reading while in line at the grocery store. But be prepared to laugh out loud and have people try to see what you're reading. I will look for more of Ephron's books. I wish she were still with us. (She passed in 2012.)

Leif Enger, VIRGIL WANDER

I thoroughly enjoyed this quiet, rich book about characters in Greenstone, a small dying mining town not far from Lake Superior, told in first person POV by Virgil Wander, a man approaching middle age. It reminds me a bit in tone of A MAN CALLED OVE, though Virgil is more cheerful and almost childlike at times in his openness to the world and to others. One day Virgil drives his car off the road, to find himself rescued but with a concussion that has changed him. He runs the old movie theater, the Empress (made me think of that movie, *Cinema Paradiso*), where he still plays films from reels. The characters are carefully drawn, unusual and interesting--Rune, the man who flies kites and is in search of the truth about his missing son Alec; Nadine, the beauty for whom Virgil has carried a torch for years, based on a flawed memory; the teenage boys Bjorn and Galen who do the weird things we expect of teenage boys. One strong point of this book was, for me, the nuanced and delicate language, the perfect turns of phrase. Sentences are never as powerful when taken out of context, but here are a few of the many I underlined: "For more than twenty years I'd felt at home, in my home. Now I stood weirdly slack in the middle of my kitchen ... The evidence of my life lay before me, and I was unconvinced." "I moved here largely because of the inland sea ... Who could resist that wide throw of horizon, the columns of morning steam?" "He had a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders." "A scatter of sparrows surfed along in the torrent, dipped and spun, and were gone." I was sorry to have this book end.

Erik Larson, THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE

A compelling read about Churchill from his first days as Prime Minister near the beginning of WWII until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill comes off as indomitable, mythic, almost holding London and England together by force of his will, though he himself said that he merely helped Londoners *find* the courage they already had. He could feel frustration and despair--but in action he was not able to be swayed. The book includes various subplots--his daughter Mary's foolish behavior and near-engagement, the failure of his son's marriage to Pamela (later Harriman), Hess's bizarre solo flight in 1941 to try to convince Churchill to concede defeat, and various American personages' trips to England, and Goebbels' vicious wielding of the media to discourage England and plant outright lies.
To some extent I felt Larson portrayed Churchill as a "shining example" vis-a-vis the current political leadership, and I found myself aware of this as I read, beginning with the inside cover copy which concludes: "[This book] takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when--in the face of unrelenting horror--Churchill's eloquence, courage and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."
Much has been written about Churchill, in non-fiction and fiction, and I appreciated the careful research into personal letters and diaries. Larson "found" his own Churchill, different from other accounts I've read. This book is well-researched history, told with the suspense and accessible, elegant language of a good novel. Yes, it's 500 pages, but it was  a page-turner for me, in the same way his THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY was.