So in May I picked (20) books that I hoped to read this summer and, I was happy that as the summer progressed (13) of these books called my name. As always tends to happen, I was distracted by several other new releases that seemed to appeal to me more and so (7) alternate books, that I really enjoyed completed my 20 Books of Summer Challenge.
The Shell Seekers;Rosamunde Pilcher 4.5/5 stars- The Summer Place; Jennifer Weiner
Tin Camp Road;Ellen Airgood - 2.5/5 starsLife Ceremony;Sayaka Murata - 3/5 stars- The Club; Ellery Lloyd
- The Lobotomist's Wife; Samantha Green Woodruff
Metropolis;B.A. Shapiro - 4.5/5 starsThe Book Woman's Daughter; Kim Richardson - 4/5 starsSummer Love;Nancy Thayer - 2/5 starsVacationland; Meg Mitchell Moore 4.5/5 stars- The Lost Summers of Newport; Beatriz Williams
The Hotel Nantucket; Elin Hilderbrand - 4/5 starsThe House Across the Lake;Riley Sager - 3.5/5 starsIt All Comes Down to This;Therese Anne Fowler - 3/5 stars- Stay Awake; Megan Goldin
A Sister's Story; Donatella DiPetrantonio - 3.5/5 sr=tarsThe Midcoast;Adam White - 4/5 starsGodspeed; Nickolas Butler - 4.5/5 stars- Summer Guest; Justin Cronin
- The It Girl; Ruth Ware
Alternate Summer Reads not on original list
Love and Saffron; Kim Fay - 4.5/5Lucy By the Sea; Elizabeth Strout - 5/5 starsThe Foundling; Ann Leary - 4/5 starsTake My Hand; Dolen Perkins-valdez - 5/5 starsTrailed: One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders; Kathryn Miles - 4/5 starsThe Family Remains;Lisa Jewell - 4/5 starsHappy-Go-Lucky;David Sedaris - 5/5 stars
Fall Reading Picks
There are several books which caught my eye as I looked forward to some new fall releases. Here are my (5) top picks which release over the next few months that I hope to try. The first (2) appea;ed to me because they both feature senior protagonists, something we don't see that often in today's fiction.
We Spread; Iain Reid
Simon & Schuster - 2022
Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.”
Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?
At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old.
Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?
At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old.
Killers of a Cerain Age; Deanna Raybourn
Penguin Random House - 2022
Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.
They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.
When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death.
Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman--and a killer--of a certain age.
They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.
Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.
When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death.
Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman--and a killer--of a certain age.
The Last Chairlift; John Irving
Simon & Schuster - 2022
Forsaken Country; Allen Eskens
Mullholland Books - 2022
Three fathers collide far beyond the reach or safety of the aw in this breathtaking thriller from the beloved author of The Stolen Hours and The Life We Bury and "one of our best crime writers at the top of his game" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author).
Max Rupert has left his position as a Minneapolis homicide detective to live in solitude. Mourning the tragic death of his wife, he's also racked by guilt—he alone knows what happened to her killer. But then the former local sheriff, Lyle Voight, arrives with a desperate plea: Lyle’s daughter Sandy and his six-year-old grandson Pip have disappeared. Lyle’s certain Sandy's ex-husband Reed is behind it, but the new sheriff is refusing to investigate.
When Max reluctantly looks into their disappearance, he too becomes convinced something has gone very wrong. But the closer Max and Lyle get to finding proof, the more slippery Reed becomes, until he makes a break for the beautiful but formidable Boundary Waters wilderness with vulnerable Pip in tow.
Racing after the most dangerous kind of criminal—a desperate father—and with the ghosts of their own pasts never far behind, Max and Lyle go on the hunt within a treacherous landscape, determined to bring an evil man to justice, and to bring a terrified child home alive.
