Sexy and perverse, deceitful and disturbing, this is one domestic thriller that doesn’t hold back. Elena and Adam are house sitting in South London when they come across the beautiful painter Sophia and her equally handsome husband, Finn. Sophia and Finn are suave and sophisticated, and dinner with the four soon evolves into casual meetings between the two women, and eventually friendship. Despite this, Elena can’t stop herself from becoming obsessed with Finn—sex with Adam leaves a lot to be desired—and Sophia recognizes Elena’s infatuation. But instead of being threatened, Sophia has a plan. Why don’t they exchange partners, with the men never the wiser? The women, physically very similar, will switch places during the night, when the men are asleep, making every possible effort—from hair to perfume—to trick their partners. Plausible? Barely. (Pro-tip: use blackout curtains). But while “switching” increases Elena’s fervor for Finn, for Sophia it opens up a whole world, one that she has been planning for ages. A fast and effortless read that never stops surprising.
Debut
In his debut novel, prizewinning short-story author Talty (a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation) brings us to just outside the border of the Penobscot reservation in Maine. Charles Lamosway lives within sight of the reservation, also within sight of a house where his daughter, Ellie, lives. Most people, including Ellie, think that her mother’s husband is Ellie’s father. Charles knows “what it [is] like to feel invisible inside the great, great dream of being,” with Talty succeeding beautifully in portraying a man who’s cut off from his own life and from the world around him, even as he cares for his mother, who is slowly slipping into dementia—a situation that brings Charles and readers some moments of dark comedy—and faces his stepfather’s violent death. Then—it seems almost inevitable, given Charles’ lot in life—his daughter goes missing, and secrets can no longer hold. The beauty of this book lies in following Charles as he tries to pierce the barriers that keep his love from mattering, a relentless struggle often mirrored in long phrases with repeated words (“and only then did the man leave and only then did the doctor come to the heavy wooden door”). There’s a satisfying ending here, and sure to be further prizes ahead for Talty.
When cousins Joshua and Nate view Joshua’s brother lying in the morgue, having been beaten, they swear that Darius won’t be “just another dead black boy.” Two years later, grief has solidified into a plan: Nate, Joshua, and friends Rachel and Isiah have taken Scott York, a white man, captive. They confront him about when his grandfather and three other white men threw a Black man off a bridge to his death. “Pawpaw? Impossible,” is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides. They’re enacting a reparations program, and Scott’s nonchalance about the crime and incredulousness that the group would care about the dead man spur them on. Tensions caused by colorism and racial differences—Rachel is Black but often taken for Latina and Isiah is Korean American–and disagreements about whom to target introduce interesting ambiguities as the audacious plan unfolds and leads to mayhem. Mayfield’s foreword explains that he was inspired by Kimberly Jones’s video How Can We Win?. Readers can learn more about reparations and the history that makes them necessary by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’sThe Case for Reparations and Bryan Stevenson’s (an author and activist who’s mentioned in the book) searing Just Mercy. A compelling and exciting debut.
Eustacia Rose, Professor of Botanical Toxicology, lives alone in London with just her extensive but exquisite collection of poisonous plants for company. She tends to her rooftop garden with meticulous care, buys the occasional rare specimen off the black market, and, Rear Window-like, follows the goings on of her neighbors through her super-powerful telescope. She even records the neighbors’ activities, giving it all the veneer of science. Until one day she hears a scream coming from across the street that is so terrifying it forces her to shift from voyeur to participant. The woman who screamed was the remarkably beautiful Simone, as Rose has named her, and days later, when Rose sees Simone being shoved into a car and driven off by a group of men, she becomes obsessed with saving the woman. But does Simone need saving? A fascinating novel that brings together the cops, friends of Rose from years ago, the use of toxins from poisonous plants, lost love, the nature of friendship, and the effects of the death of a parent. In the end, we see Rose begin to emerge from her cocoon and reenter the world around her, a transformation hugely satisfying to watch.
Gwen has tossed aside her long-term boyfriend—why she dumped him is a bit of a mystery in itself—quit her lucrative job, and is now running a failing food truck. The plan was for her and the boyfriend to head off to festivals over the U.K., dispensing coffee. Instead, Gwen is moping about, drinking too much lousy wine, helping her roommate/best friend prepare for her wedding (barf!), doing absolutely nothing to prepare for living alone, oh, and dating guys off Connector, the “dating app du jour,” at a rather rapid pace. Gwen has a bit of an addiction to Connector, and her hilarious and droll take on men and dating is reminiscent of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character Fleabag. Until the most curious thing happens: there’s a series of murders in her town, all of 30-something year old males, and all—you guessed it!—former Connector dates of Gwen. In no time, the cops are in her face (and deep into her Connector account), observing her every move, and generally acting like she’s their number-one suspect. Pluckish Gwen does the one thing she can do: try to solve the murders herself. Anyone who’s taken a dip in the world of online dating will find much to enjoy here, while everyone will appreciate Chilton’s marvelous tone, dialogue, and humor. Take this wonderful debut on a date, you won’t be disappointed.
Here’s a trend out of the U.K.: fun-loving, female serial killers. From doing away with the relatives (Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family) to offing abusive husbands (Casale’s The Best Way to Bury Your Husband) British women are ignoring old school, female solutions like poison or a tumble down the staircase and packing some heat, or, in the case of You’d Look Better as a Ghost, relying on a hammer to the back of the head. Claire, our serial killer and hero, is always planning her next kill, typically of someone who crossed her, starting back in childhood with her murder of her mother, who made Joan Crawford seem like Mother Theresa. Today the 30ish Claire is mourning (a real emotion!) her father’s death, while plotting the murder of Lucas, an arts administrator who rejected one of her paintings. But no sooner is Lucas diced and planted in the back garden—it makes you think twice about the Chelsea Flower Show—when one of the ladies in Claire’s weekly bereavement group let’s on that she knows all about Claire’s special hobby, and if she wants to live, Claire has to give in to blackmail. Is threatening a part-time, but highly successful, serial killer ever a good idea? That would be no. Witty and sophisticated, funny and fast-paced, this dark masterpiece is pure pleasure.
Subterfuge and supernatural elements infuse this dark, absorbing debut. Our protagonist is Midwestern police detective Anna Koray, who’s had a relatively staid career until she makes the mistake of confronting a violent perpetrator without backup. She kills him, but is shot herself in the process. When recovering, she’s required to undertake counseling; at the same time, she pushes herself into the investigation of a serial killer whose horrifying work resembles that of her father, who years ago was executed for his murder of multiple women as sacrifices to a forest god. Both Anna’s colleagues and the doctor she’s in a burgeoning relationship with have no idea that she spent her childhood in thrall to the Forest Strangler. Anna herself doesn’t even have all the details, which were sealed away in her subconscious by a manipulative therapist whom she now sees for the reverse process, setting in motion an emotional and dangerous roller coaster of unraveling secrets and treacherous confrontations. A cold-case podcaster adds a moral dilemma to the exciting tale—when is it better to leave the truth buried? Readers who enjoy a wilderness thriller, such as Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road or Paul Doiron’s Dead Man’s Wake, will appreciate this story.
Bridget Jones meets Thursday Murder Club in this tale of rural English women who meet in a prenatal class and learn far more than how to not kill your partner while the baby’s making its debut. The central character and narrator is Alice, who, she tells us, thought she’d surprise her boyfriend for his 30th birthday with a pregnancy. It’s a happy if slightly puzzling surprise, as Alice has little idea how to care for a baby and she’s terrified of birth. The overly chipper and hippy teacher of the class, whose clothes resemble “a chameleon caught in a kaleidoscope,” isn’t much help. Even less helpful is that one of the students gives birth during the class (would a first baby be that fast? Eh, it’s Bridget Jones with a baby. Moving on). And after that, the owner of the store downstairs from the class is found very dead. The rest of the class is still pregnant and they spend their time lumbering around the “posh hippy” town of Penton (“Population: seventeen people and a cow”) puzzling out village relationships, past scandals, and the intricacies of cloth diapers. This fun romp offers hilarious moments while taking on some real-life issues: the fear involved in becoming a first-time parent and the shadows of one’s own upbringing that can darken parenthood, all while Alice and friends undertake the whodunit. Ailes’s sequel, the perfectly named Dead Tired, meets the characters again after they’ve had their babies and will be out on the heels of this one, on June 4, 2024.
2019 bookends this murder mystery. In that year, student KC, a trans man, is the weary caretaker of a college dorm, picking up after his lazy peers and saving them from their drunken worst selves. The dorm he works in has a rumor-clad oddity: a young female student was killed there years ago, and the true-crime frenzy has made the building a magnet for professional and amateur sleuths. Their work sends us back to just before New Years Eve 1999, where we meet the victim, Karlie Richards. Karlie seems to have it all but, like everyone she meets, has dragged a weight of hopes, loves, and past mistakes to her new life in college. It’s the pre-#MeToo era as Karlie faces what turns out to be her final days, and readers will love to hate the professor who has a way too close relationship to his female students, and long to jump into the pages to warn the young women away. But there’s nothing we can do as Karlie’s doomed world comes to life and Pearson skillfully introduces several more characters who could have killed Karlie and more reasons why they would have done so. The divergent lives of the haves and have nots in college towns, and the experiences of evangelical students taking their first foray into a more secular world, are starkly painted in this dark debut novel by an author to watch.
Mark Lausson is a young English professor at an elite, liberal arts college (think of Kenyon) in Ohio. Yes, he’s incredibly fortunate to have landed the job. But that does little to lift his mid-grade depression and his raging sense of ennui. While he should be enmeshing himself in the life of the college, publishing articles, and working on his book—“cultural discourses of gay sex and murder” is his topic—instead he lets time slip away, unaccounted for. Until the third week of the fall semester, when sophomore Tyler Cunningham walks into his classroom, like some sort of louche meteor entering his atmosphere. Soon, Mark’s fascination turns to obsession, and the two become lovers, with secrecy serving to ramp up the intensity of their affair. This book builds slowly, gracefully, and we’re nearly three-quarters into it when that magical thing happens and readers begin to realize that nothing is what they thought it was. Wonderfully paced and terrifying in its conclusion, this is a book meant to be devoured, not read. I absolutely cannot wait for Willse’s next work.