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Debut

Review

The Dinner Party

by Dodie Ownes

It doesn’t take long for van de Sandt’s plot and writing to grip readers’ attention in this debut. Two timelines interweave around the circumstances of a single dinner party, set to celebrate the launch of Franca’s fiancé, Andrew’s, latest project, a canon of sorts inspired by time capsules. Franca once aspired to have a career, but it is clear that Andrew prefers a more domestic arrangement for her. Her father died while she was quite young, and her mother is distant, so her life with Andrew feels safe, initially. In his discussion with Franca over what should be served at the dinner party, Andrew throws off a mean vibe, even insisting that Franca get fresh rabbit to prepare, despite knowing she is a vegetarian. Kitchen disasters up the tension, and when one unexpected guest arrives, a friend of hers from Utrecht, the wrenching details of Franca’s relationship with Andrew are slowly revealed as the timeline shifts forward and back. Claustrophobic and thrilling at the same time, the book allows readers to follow Franca’s unwinding as she seeks revenge against the man who says he loves her, when he just wants to own her, body and soul. Readers will feel every bit of Franca’s female rage as she attempts to extricate herself from her untenable situation. At a time when “tradwife” movements are on the rise, which prioritize homemaking and caring for the husband, trusting him to provide and protect, this story is particularly relevant.

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Review

Simultaneous

by Jeff Ayers

Therapist Sarah Newcomb can’t get her fiancé to commit to a wedding date. Still, doubts about their relationship take a back seat when one of her clients reveals evidence of a potential copycat killer. Newcomb uses past-life regression to help her clients overcome trauma, but this patient unveils a time in the future, and this part of their divided soul works as a homicide detective. Trying to prove her client is making up material, she learns from that split soul of a natural gas explosion that will kill seven people in New Mexico the next day. The following morning, federal agent Grant Lukather from Homeland Security visits a site in New Mexico where seven people died in a natural gas explosion. He learns of a 911 call that came in the day before, warning of the blast. Tracing the phone number puts him in Sarah’s office. The twists and turns that follow are wild and completely unpredictable, and the story only gets better as it becomes increasingly complex. Heisserer received an Oscar nomination for screenwriting for the film Arrival, and he delivers the cinematic scope and intensity of a novel-writing pro. And the ending! It’s hard to believe this is his first novel, and readers will eagerly want more.

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Review

Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests

by Dodie Ownes

When Vivienne, an admittedly dowdy and somewhat bitter middle-aged magazine editor, receives a mysterious invitation to a dinner party, she almost throws it away. Reconsidering, she goes to the elusive address to find Serendipity, which appears to be a pop-up fine dining experience. None of the other six guests has any relation to her, or one another, it seems. Readers get to know them through their actions and words, and it would be easy to start guessing what is to come, but the highlight of the dinner is when each finds an envelope at his or her place setting. Janet, the most spontaneous (and likely most drunk) of the guests, tears hers open to find a card that states You will die age 44, and she is just weeks from her 45th birthday. Fear, accusations, and incredulity sweep across the group, and then, dismissing it as a publicity stunt, they depart. But then the words on the cards start coming true. As the guests tell their stories and admit to their sins, readers see Vivienne emerge as a caring and clever amateur sleuth who finally has a family to protect. A terrific addition to the current trend of If you knew you were going to die, how would you live your life? novels.

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Review

How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder

by Jeff Ayers

Nikki Jackson-Ramanathan and her husband, Jai, live in a tiny apartment and get by on his job as a coach for a collegiate mock-trial team and her role as a dog walker and pet behaviorist. She’s asked by rich widow Ruth Van Meer to learn why her dog, Reginald, seems to be less energetic than usual. The rest of the Van Meer family appears petty and vindictive and question why Nikki was hired in the first place. Nikki begins to spend quality time with Reginald, taking him on walks every day, while the family continues to resent her presence. When Mrs. Van Meer is discovered deceased in her bed, the family begins pointing fingers at Nikki after it’s learned that the dead widow left a sizeable amount of money to Nikki to continue caring for Reginald. With the police’s dogged determination to prove Nikki’s guilt, and the eccentric family keeping her on a tight leash, she can’t let sleeping dogs lie and has to solve the murder herself. This engaging cast of quirky characters launches a terrific story that is hopefully the beginning of a series. Readers will also be wondering if Reginald is available to adopt.

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Review

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder

by Willy Williams

“The Ayyars dipped into our lives like a tea bag into the whiteness of a porcelain cup. They muddied the water and made our house feel small….” In the summer of 1986, tween narrator Georgie Ayyar Creel; her sister, Agatha Krishna; and their amma (mother) welcome newly arrived relatives from India to their cramped home in rural Wyoming. Moving into Agatha Krishna’s bedroom are Vinny Uncle, Amma’s beloved but useless younger brother, whom she has not seen in 14 years since marrying geologist Richard Creel; Auntie Devi, Vinny’s bossy wife; and their son, Narayan. Tensions quickly arise, and so does the sexual abuse when their uncle targets Agatha and then Georgie: “Vinny Uncle made us shadow people.” Forced into silence by their abuser, the sisters decide he must die. The accidental death of a cat provides the murder weapon and sets the siblings’ deadly plot into motion. This highly original debut novel by the author of the award-winning short story collection Cowboys and East Indians is a darkly funny coming-of-age tale with a touch of murder and a haunting twist. Celebrating girlhood and sisterhood in the 1980s, it’s also a touching portrait of Indian-American teens, caught between cultures, in the American West.

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Review

The Vanishing Place

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s no horror here but plenty of scares as nine-year-old Effie must parent her siblings in her family’s freezing shack in the western New Zealand bush. With the nearest town, Koraha, six hours walk through dense forest, Mum with a new baby and Dad mostly off hunting and fishing, it’s all Effie can do to keep the little ones fed and warm. The new baby, the fourth child and named four, heralds a much harder chapter for the family, one that ultimately sees Effie living as an adult in Scotland. She’s compelled to return to New Zealand when reports reach her that a little girl—unknown to Effie but looking exactly like her—has shown up in the town, injured and starving. Who she is and what happened in the past is a twist-filled saga that drops readers right into the dangerous landscapes that are both the New Zealand wilderness (“an unforgiving thing that would eat them up”) and the off-off grid family. One to remember, and a must for fans of Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible and Alisa Alering’s Smothermoss.

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Review

Best Offer Wins

by Henrietta Thornton

Brace yourself: this tale of obsession is WILD. Our DC public relations protagonist, Margo, is worried her life isn’t going as planned, with the central problem being her lack of an acceptable (read: fancy) home. Once she and her increasingly worried husband, Ian, have that, she will allow herself to get on with the rest of the plan. But as it stands, she has “No house, no baby. No house, no family. No house, no life.” She finds the perfect place but knows they will probably be outbid for it, like always. The DC property market is no joke, but neither is Margo’s determination to have that home no matter what, and her increasingly unhinged measures to be the winning bidder will keep readers gripped. If you like a main character who takes up all the space, this one’s for you, and it’s a must for book clubs as well, as Margo’s antics beg to be dissected over wine.

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Review

Death at the White Hart

by Henrietta Thornton

A likable duo is at the center of Broadchurch-creator Chibnall’s debut: detectives Nicola Bridge and her newbie partner, Harry Ward, dubbed Westlife for his boy-band looks and first name. Small-town Fleetcombe, on England’s Dorset coast, is the setting; it’s Nicola’s hometown, and she’s back to separate her husband from an affair, a plot line that creates a realistic undercurrent of desperation that matches the bizarre crime facing the new partners. The naked body of a man is found tied to a chair on a road near town. That’s odd enough in Fleetcombe, where sharp words at the local pubs—one of them the White Hart of the book’s title—are about as violent as it gets. But there’s more: the body has a stag’s antlers affixed to its head, a sinister touch that eager Harry tries to tie to mythology and local history, only to be brought back to earth by his more practical and seasoned colleague. Work the evidence, she says, setting the two on a winding path that creates a solid procedural enjoyably filled with oddball townspeople, personal travails, the inevitable local criminal element, and one very savvy little girl, a character whom readers will want to swoop in and save. This absorbing thriller shows all the hallmarks of having been written by a master of TV drama.

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Review

The Game is Murder

by Henrietta Thornton

In Ward’s clever and unusual debut, the reader is put to work solving a murder, their task propelled by a sassy narrator who insults them throughout. The tale opens with murder-mystery dinner at which guests hear the story of a nanny who’s murdered in a case of mistaken identity; when the former man of the house, Lord Verreman, discovers that he hasn’t killed his wife, Lady Verreman is able to escape. At least, that’s what police believe. At the dinner, guests are told of various anomalies at the scene and alibis and motives for others connected to the case, and are led through the inquest after the nanny’s autopsy. Then the viewpoint switches: a detective is hired by the rich couple’s son and is required to visit the the home where the murder happened, hear the evidence—in a most unusual delivery—and reveal the culprit. These first two sections are unusual enough, but the third tops them: the reader is presented with all the evidence and must make choices step by step as to what they believe, in the end reaching a verdict of their own (a contract is in place, after all). What an intriguing start for this author!

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Review

If the Dead Belong Here

by Willy Williams

Between 1830 and 1850, the U.S. government’s forced displacement known as the Trail of Tears removed thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the Southeastern United States. But according to Native folklore, some Indigenous people evaded the Removal, sheltered by supernatural Little People. Faust’s atmospheric debut focuses on a family descended from those survivors and the generational trauma they have endured. When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes from her Wisconsin home early one morning in 1996, her devastated mother, Ayita, believes her abusive ex-husband Barron kidnapped their daughter, even though Barron had abandoned the family before Ayita realized she was pregnant. But as weeks pass by and Laurel remains missing, Nadine, her older sister, begins experiencing nightmares and hearing whispers, especially in the tree house where Laurel always played. Have the Little People taken Lauren or are other family ghosts responsible? To find answers, Nadine travels with her Aunt Rosebud to South Carolina, where her fractured family has deep roots. Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina, draws on his family history and Indigenous mythology to weave a haunting tale of loss and redemption that may remind some readers of Keith Donohue’s The Stolen Child with a touch of Poltergeist.

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