A deep investigation into the lives of two women: a mistress and her maid. Maju is one of scores of the “white army,” maids and nannies in São Paulo; she cares for young Cora, whose parents pay the child little attention. Fernanda, Cora’s mother and a successful TV executive, is uniquely self-involved; even when Maju and Cora disappear one day, Fernanda can’t stop obsessing over an affair she’s having long enough to focus on her own daughter’s abduction. Dad, meanwhile, has pretty much checked out. But once Fernanda does realize her daughter is gone, her whole world begins to cave in. Maju and Cora, meanwhile, have boarded a bus for a multi-day trip that Maju barely plans—they have limited food and money—and that begins to unravel after the first day. Each woman is confronted by a harrowing series of events that forces them to confront maternal guilt, poverty, and society’s expectations.
Thrillers
Appreciate dark psychological thrillers packed with twists and turns? Then this book is for you. Clarissa Virtanen, a renowned but troubled therapist, who remains guilt-ridden over the death of a young patient, takes on Ida, another young client. Ida is one disturbing young woman: angry, damaged, messed up, full of suicidal ideations. But Clarissa believes she can help Ida, providing that Ida agrees to refrain from self-harm for six months—enough time for Clarissa to unlock her past, learn her secrets, and save her. But what Ida has in store are murderous secrets that she’s been harboring for years, and that may well be Clarissa’s undoing.
Locals call small-town Juliana, Georgia, “Gentle Juliana.” New York chef Bille Hope calls it her family’s best chance at a new start after the pandemic finished her restaurant. The offer to move to Juliana is incredibly generous: the ad Billie spots says that the family can buy any vacant home in the town—look at those Victorian mansions!—for just $100 if they open a business there. Billie; her husband, Peter; and their daughter, Mere, are Georgia residents before you know it and even purchase a fabulous house that wasn’t supposed to be available. In no time, Billie’s new restaurant is booming, but so is the family’s fear that they have made a bad mistake. The house has a malevolent feeling and Peter is exhausted and depressed by his never-ending search for a dangerous open well that a strange neighbor tells them is on the land. While Billie begins to fall for the owner of the store next to hers, she also starts to investigate what’s really going on in the town and why she and Mere have the same nightmares about trapped, crying children, a puzzle that readers know a little about from the book’s sinister opening chapter detailing an event in the town’s early years. This has just the right amount of creepiness to add a scary but not terrifying element to the promised gothic tale, and the post-pandemic what-do-I-do-now feeling is spot on. Read this alongside Sylvie Perry’s The Hawthorne School and start looking gift horses in the mouth.
Kate Myles has a lot going on. The former LAPD cop, her career ruined by a pain-pill addiction brought on by a car crash, has lost her marriage and custody of her beloved daughter, Amelia. She’s now working as a private detective, rolling her eyes at old-time movie assumptions. It’s far from glamorous, and she’s far from ready for more drama in her life. But no matter: while living at her mom’s, she discovers paperwork that leads her on a quest to find biological relatives, a plot line that includes an intriguing aspect of the use of DNA in crime cases, and that also leads her to Idlewood, a town with a sad history. Hired to clear the name of a drug addict who’s accused of killing his sister in an arson attack, she also investigates a local cold case, of a young woman who was killed years before. How all these things are related is the story of every small town, with Kenna perfectly portraying the intertwined regrets, missed opportunities, and love that make each place unique. Better again is her portrayal of Myles, a gutsy, lovable character who pushes herself to the brink and more for those she loves. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
The love surrounding a beloved neighborhood institution shines through in Swanson’s latest, in which a 1979 Denver record-store owning mom is shot dead in a robbery, her forlorn young daughter, Suzanne, left behind. But Suzanne’s hapless dad has the perfect solution. It’s all figured out! His old girlfriend, Peggy, is moving in. Peggy seems much too eager for this arrangement. She’s also far more motherly toward Suzanne’s devastated little brother, Chris, than Suzanne would like, while nasty toward Suzanne herself. But Suzanne’s mom used to call her daughter “my little seer,” and indeed, after some time, she gets visits from her mom, hearing again her “warm, round voice–like the sun speaking.” When we fast forward in alternating chapters to 2004, adult Suzanne is moving back to Denver from California with her husband, disgruntled teenage daughter, and nine-year-old son. Trying to settle in, she opens a new business in her mom’s old shop, but sinister things start cropping up–a girl is missing in town, and elements of the case are strangely familiar. Then there’s the rat left on the family’s doorstep. What it all means leads this protagonist on a frightening and gripping path to the truth about what happened in 1979, a tale that is enriched with details on the music of the time and the feeling of enduring love. For fans of T. Jefferson Parker’s A Thousand Steps, which is steeped in the same emotions, and all who love a solid mystery
The best-selling French author of psychological suspense makes her U.S. debut with an intense and heartbreaking homage to an American literary classic, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. For 16-year-old Léonard, who suffered brain damage as an infant, there is no place in the village of Granviller to escape the school bullies who torment him daily. The only people kind to the powerfully built but mentally challenged teen are his adoptive mother, Mona, who discovered the abused toddler in a ditch; his best friend, 13-year-old Victoria, the daughter of Mona’s boss; and furniture restorer Sacha. Léonard finds consolation in nature (“no animal or tree has ever made fun of him for being different”) and dreams of joining his older brother in beautiful Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands. But Jorge has not been in Scotland, as Mona had told her son; for the past 16 years, his brother has been in prison, convicted of the brutal rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, a crime he claims he didn’t commit. After Jorge is paroled, the siblings finally meet for the first time, but Jorge’s attempt to rebuild his life is hobbled by a hostile community. As the brothers endure mounting cruelties and injustices, their tentative relationship blossoms into a tender and abiding love. When both are accused of another murder, readers will cheer on Jorge and Léonard’s flight to Glen Affric. Will they make it? Giebel has written a haunting, dark, and tough read that in its emotional brutality may remind some readers of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.
Traci Beller is a popular influencer with millions of followers inspired by watching her bake. It’s been ten years since her father, Tommy, never returned home, with the local police attributing it to him abandoning his family. Now, Traci wants answers. She reaches out to the best detective to learn the truth, Elvis Cole. Elvis has his work cut out for him trying to track down someone missing for a decade, but he’s willing to give it a shot, though he’s doubtful he will uncover anything more than what the police could find. But the detective stumbles upon a mystery involving the last person who saw Tommy alive and refuses to talk about it. He starts seeing the same dark-colored vehicle following him and soon learns that people don’t want him to discover the truth and are willing to kill anyone to keep everything secret. This case started as a simple missing person case for Elvis, but becomes the one that could be his last. Crais masters compelling crime fiction by blending humor, terrific main characters, and suspense into a phenomenal package. Empty might be in the title, but this story is far from it.
Gardner Camden has found his perfect home in the FBI’s PAR, or Patterns and Recognition division. Like the department itself, Camden is thought of by other agents as weird, and it doesn’t help that he almost had PAR disbanded by making a terrible mistake that’s kept secret till near the end of the book. Still, he’s brilliant at noticing what nobody else does and relentless at finding the worst of the worst of criminals. He found one of those years before, dead in a fire. But in the case that opens this fascinating thriller, the same man is found dead at a crime scene, with numbers scrawled on his body. Next more killers are found murdered, also with messages to PAR, or maybe to Camden, at the scene. Finding out who is killing serial killers, and why, takes Camden and his lovable team on cross country treks and through psychological torture as the suspect won’t hesitate to go after all the team holds dear. Camden’s first-person narration brings readers inside the head of a steadfast but quirky man (“I’ve been called…Unconcerned. On the spectrum. A weirdo”) as he puzzles out wicked and tangled crimes and the minds behind them. McMahon’s debut novel, the first book in his P.T. Marsh series, was a New York Times Top 10 Crime Novel and a finalist for both the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award, and his other books have been lauded as well. This is more great stuff and a must for your TBR pile.
Comics-creator Segura is back with another mystery that takes a penetrating look at the comics industry, particularly its treatment of women creators. In Secret Identity, the 1975-set prequel to Alter Ego, Carmen Valdez was a struggling artist at Triumph, a small comics publisher. She was promised by a male coworker that if she wrote a new female character, the Legendary Lynx, he would pretend he was the lone creator and reveal her work once the character was successful. You can imagine how that went, only add some murder to the shadiness to get the full picture. This book is set in the present and finds another Cuban American woman artist, Annie Bustamante, going through career struggles. She’s had some success, and she longs to bring back the Lynx, even drawing the character in her spare time. When she’s approached by the son of Triumph’s previous owner to bring the character to the big screen and more, she’s nervous that he’s clueless and she has a hard time getting real details on the project. But when, like Carmen before her, she encounters far more sinister elements of the business, including messages from someone only calling themselves Apparition, things turn very scary. There’s no need to read the previous book to enjoy this one, but readers should grab both for an immersive look at this industry, the muddled ego/fear feelings it engenders, and a great set of murder mysteries.
With a shooting in her past, Liverpool Police detective Sheridan Holler is already known to new chief inspector Hill Knowles when the no-nonsense woman takes the job. Sheridan’s first assignment under the new boss is related to a cold case: Ronald Parks was accused of killing his son, but was acquitted. Now two bodies have been found on the local beach. One is tied to a statue, the other buried so that he drowned when the tide came in. Sheridan must inform the victims’ next of kin, a young bookshop owner, of the deaths, and she becomes central to the case, suffering further losses and dreading the police’s next knock on the door. Given the circumstances, but also because of her doggedness at the job, Sheridan relentlessly pursues all the tenuous clues that come up. Nevertheless it seems that this case may go unsolved. While readers soak in the rich details of life as a year-rounder in an English seaside town, and Sheridan’s loving wife who’s sometimes exasperated at her partner’s dedication to the madness that is police work, Sheridan continues to pick away at the case, leading to a shocking conclusion. Note that there is particularly awful sexual abuse here. A startling and engrossing whodunit.