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Review

The Lover of No Fixed Abode.

by Henrietta Thornton

This strange, beautiful tale wedges readers into the crowded boats and alleys of Venice while whisking them along on a three-day romance with a Roman princess and the down-at-heel tour guide she falls for. The two seem to float above the city’s watery fray even before meeting. After meeting, they withdraw completely into their own emotional realm, “literally liquefied” by their fascination and passion for each other. Time is immaterial, they agree, as they find themselves “precariously suspended between being and non-being,” contemplate “intimate perplexities on who is who, where the I ends and the you begins,” and eat “a variety of little inventions.” The love story, which as the translator’s note explains, features more robustly in the book than the crime tale related to the princess’s work as an art dealer, soon provokes questions in the reader. Where is the tour guide from? Why must he leave Venice despite his grief over losing the love he has just stumbled upon? The answer to the mystery is startling and brings up many questions about the nature of life and how the past, and past injustices, can resonate today. Try this after Danielle Trussoni’s The Puzzle Master; you’ll come back to Earth eventually

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Review

The Last True Templar

by Jeff Ayers

The brother/sister team of Boyd and Beth Morrison delivers a stellar sequel to The Lawless Land. Gerard Fox and Lady Willa are adventuring together in 1351 Italy, hoping to overcome their problematic societal pasts to marry. They stumble upon an ambush and help an older woman, Luciana, escape the attack. That act of kindness plunges them into a decade-old search for the location of the Templar treasure. It doesn’t help that Luciana’s greedy husband wants her dead and the treasure for himself. To succeed in their quest, Gerard and Willa must overcome betrayal, villainy, and deception while keeping the truth of their heritage secret. The Middle Ages comes to glorious life mixed with a plot from a Clive Cussler novel. The Last True Templar is adventure at its finest, and the pacing never slows down for a second. The story reads like the authors somehow have a time machine and are merely transcribing actual events. Readers will be anxious for the next book in the series, and hopefully a big-screen adaptation is not far behind.

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Review

American Girl

by Henrietta Thornton

This American Girl has nothing to do with dolls, and her life is anything but toy-store quaint. Pennsylvania high-school-senior Charlie is autistic, a reality she’s learned to mask by carefully studying TV characters and everyone in her life. She’s developed rules, ways for “a child like that” to understand the world, but some things remain unfathomable. People get harder or easier to look at, for example, depending on their behavior. Grandma threw Charlie and her mother out, because “whores get what whores deserve.” And making a friend is hard when adults fear that Charlie’s mom might not “[run] a home with the right values.” But she finally finds a haven in the Triple S, a sandwich store where she fits right in with the downtrodden coworkers, who are all struggling to stay afloat while avoiding the handsy, loathsome boss. When he’s found dead, and security camera footage shows Charlie witnessing something off camera that horrifies her, she’s placed firmly in the spotlight. This is an uncomfortable position and readers will root hard for her to leave, not least because MIT is waiting for this gutsy girl. Teens as well as adults will enjoy this smart kid’s inner life and Walker’s wry observations about small-town life.

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Review

Starter Villain

by Jeff Ayers

Charlie’s life is nothing special. He makes a pittance taking occasional substitute-teaching gigs and lives with his two cats in his dad’s house, to the detriment of his other siblings. When his uncle passes away, his will stipulates that Charlie oversees the funeral, and then will receive his inheritance. The only people who show up at the service are his uncle’s enemies, and they all go out of their way to ensure the body inside the coffin is dead. After the service, Charlie learns that his inheritance is a lair built inside a dormant volcano, and his uncle was a supervillain. With Charlie becoming the new head of his uncle’s business practices, he will need a crash course on being ruthless and bloodthirsty if he can stay alive long enough. James Bond villainy meets Despicable Me in this hilarious and intense journey into the other side of the battle between good and evil, featuring mostly shady characters mixed with a team that is unlike any seen anywhere before in a thriller. Starter Villain is a blast. Fans of Scalzi will consider it one of his best, and thriller fans who want humor and a different perspective into the world of criminals will treasure it.

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Review

Murder Most Royal

by Brian Kenney

When Queen Elizabeth II died this past September, some were grief-struck, others in shock, while many merely shrugged. I, however, had one thought: what would this mean for Bennett’s delightful Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series? I’m pleased to say that the third book is being released, set over the 2016/2017 holidays, picking up where the second book left off. Since it’s the holidays, the Queen and Prince Philip, along with family and hangers-on, are holed up for six weeks in Sandringham House on the Norfolk coast. As if there isn’t enough to worry about with Brexit and that new American president, a severed hand, wrapped in a plastic bag, washes up on a Norfolk beach. Its one identifying characteristic? A signet ring, although only the Queen recognizes it as belonging to the aristocratic St Cyr family. Between the lying media and the incompetent police, the Queen eventually launches her own investigation, along with the ever trustworthy Assistant Private Secretary Rozie Oshodi. While in previous books the Queen took a directive approach, here she is more actively involved in sussing out the murderer. Luckily for us, Bennett confirms that she plans to write more in the series “as there is still so much of her life to explore.”

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Review

The Second Stranger

by Brian Kenney

An incredibly taut “locked inn” suspense novel that features just a handful of characters over an intense eight hours. We’re in a small hotel in the Scottish Highlands with a blizzard raging. It’s incredibly remote, and the only other sign of life is Porterfell, a prison far in the distance. It’s Remie Yorke’s last night managing the hotel—not that there is that much to manage with just two guests, one of whom has disappeared. In the morning, Remie will be on her way to Chile with no plans to ever return to Scotland. Meanwhile, the hotel grows even more isolated as the roads shut down and phone lines and internet access die. Suddenly a police officer, Don Gaines, appears. Beat-up, he claims to have been in an accident transporting a prisoner from Porterfell—a dangerous prisoner who’s now on the loose. Gaines goes about securing the hotel, when another officer shows up claiming to be Officer Don Gaines. He’s just as convincing, with the appropriate identification. Will the real Donald Gaines please stand up? Lest it seems as though I’m sharing spoilers, be assured that this is just the beginning. There’s plenty more to be revealed in this absolute nail-biter of a thriller.

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Review

Ricochet

by Jeff Ayers

Garrett Kohl’s plan for a normal life on his Texas ranch goes awry in Moore’s latest action thriller. He learns that his adopted son’s brother might still be alive in Afghanistan, and he will have to lead the rescue operation if there is a chance of it succeeding. Doing so could cost him a chance to marry his high-school sweetheart and the peaceful life he has promised his friends and family. When Garrett learns about a possible act of sabotage with international implications that could destroy the region, he must put aside his feelings and work with both CIA allies and neighborhood enemies to stop the potential carnage. C.J. Box meets the television series Yellowstone in this wild and compelling thrill ride amidst a beautiful Texas landscape. Moore has crafted a cast of characters and a locale that feels authentic. Readers will be eager for the author’s next adventures.

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Review

The Night of the Storm

by Henrietta Thornton

The scene: Hurricane Harvey hitting affluent Sugar Land, TX, in 2017. Readers will fear the worst, knowing how bad the storm became, but Jia Shah feels she’ll be safe at her sister Seema’s sprawling, ostentatious house. Her brother-in-law, who luckily knows everything, assures all that nothing can happen to his house. Misogyny’R’Us mother-in-law and overbearing sister notwithstanding, Jia believes that once she and her son ride out the storm—and her family’s endless comments about her dire fate as a divorcee—they can get back to life as they knew it. Then Jia notices that the neighborhood seems curiously empty. Except, that is, for a neighbor who stares in the window. Soon things become far more than just creepy as the bodies start to pile up. Debut author Parekh builds tension wonderfully as the storms outside and inside the house threaten to wipe out everything Jia holds dear; she also excels at provoking exasperation at the backbiting family’s antics while crammed into an inescapable nightmare. For those who like locked-room and closed-circle dramas.

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Review

Crook Manifesto

by Henrietta Thornton

Pulitzer Prize-winner Whitehead’s second Ray Carney book begins in the 1970s, when Ray’s Harlem furniture shop is firmly established. But, given the chaos that it engendered in Harlem Shuffle, his stolen-goods—sorry, “previously owned merchandise”—sideline is no longer. Readers of the previous book will find the setup turned inside out: instead of conquering Harlem, Ray has been ground down by it. He now sits precariously atop his small empire, the relentless engine that is the city seeming to churn the ground beneath his feet. Also different: this time Ray endures the relentlessness of several decades of upheaval compared to the relatively short and, in retrospect, gentle, time when he was a striving young man in the ‘60s. The neighborhood doesn’t want to let him retire his fenced-goods work and the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army are competing for dominance, a fight Ray wants to sidestep. A crackdown on police corruption sees him dragged into worse and worse actions as his former associates get desperate. Ray’s troubles and determination mirror the fighting spirit of his neighborhood; his saga is New York City’s, with the shocking and sad tale displaying moments of hilarity alongside heartbreaking lows. Whitehead’s writing is fantastically evocative as usual, and his rebuilding of recent decades of New York City life, and of the unforgettable Ray Carney, is a treat to read.

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Review

I’m Not Done with You Yet

by Henrietta Thornton

The bitchiness we loved in Dial A for Aunties is back with a vengeance. This time, the author takes us, via flashbacks, to the nervous, early days of an American student at Oxford University. Jane Morgan’s mother has drilled into her daughter that she can’t write and can’t do anything else right either, and Oxford isn’t for the likes of her. So it’s a relief when Janemeets the confident, beautiful Thalia Ashcroft. For Jane, it’s obsession, if not love, at first sight. She’ll do anything to keep Thalia’s friendship, and is desperate to keep her from Ami, a blithely rich student who looks like competition for friendship with Thalia. It’s a struggle—everything’s so hard for Jane, who must continually remind herself that her sociopathic behaviors—“antisocial (check), hostile (check), irresponsible (check)”—must be kept under wraps if she’s to get ahead. Then everything unravels, a situation hinted at in the present-day section of the book as the time Jane left Oxford after an unnamed disaster. What happened, and how the women confront each other and the event’s aftermath all these years later, is a thrilling tale filled with twists, unreliable narrators, and absurdness of the best kind. For Dial A for Aunties fans and anyone who likes a friendship drama.

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