- Den of Iniquity
- Written by J.A. Jance
- ISBN #: 978-0063252585
- William Morrow (September 10, 2024)
Unexpected & Engaging
Have you ever imagined past and present mysteries colliding? Or imagined the consequences of revenge? Or wondered how an ex-homicide cop turned P.I might do if he goes back in the field? You’ll get to see both as well and watch an unretired senior couple welcome a grandson into their house in the second semester of his senior year when you read J. A. Jance’s newest novel, Den of Iniquity.
When former detective J. P. Beaumont’s grandson Kyle appears on his doorstep, the detective turned P.I. and his wife take him in. There’s trouble in Kyle’s parents’ marriage since his dad moved in with another woman who got pregnant and was coming on to another boy in Kyle’s band.
Beaumont offers to use his detective skills to learn more about the woman and finds out so much more than anyone in the family bargained for. At the same time he’s doing a favor for a friend who asks him to look into several cases involving random men who died of fentanyl overdoses. Their deaths were declared accidental, but once he starts putting deaths from fentanyl together, something doesn’t add up.
The story is made lighter and more engaging by a next door neighbor who bonds with Kyle over drums and driving a stick shift, a dog named Sarah, and daily decisions about dinner menus appropriate for two seniors and a growing boy. These moments humanize Beaumont, his wife, his grandson, and the relatives we never meet.
How do these story lines come together? With twists and turns that readers aren’t likely to suspect. With suspense that will keep you turning pages. With anticipation that will have you reading until dawn. When you find out who the vigilante killer is, you’ll be amazed. This exciting story mixing mayhem and family drama might give you a whole new perspective on what people are capable of and what motivates vengeance.
Jance’s stories are accessible, intriguing, and humane. She is the New York Times best-selling author of 46 contemporary mysteries in four different series. According to her biography, she began as a fan of The Wizard of Oz and Nancy Drew and went on to become the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and Edge of Evil. You can learn more about her books and her life at https://www.jajanceauthor.com.
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- Return to Wyldcliffe Heights: A Novel
- Written by Carol Goodman
- ISBN: 978-0063265288
- William Morrow Paperbacks (July 30, 2024)
The Past Is Not Dead
Ever gotten lost in a book, reading it over and over until it became a part of your own story? Ever blurred the line between fact and fiction? Ever wondered if the past is dead or it just keeps repeating itself?
If so, you’ll understand why Agnes Corey became obsessed with Veronica St. Clair’s novel, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. She wanted to be inside the story, though she wasn’t sure why.
Agnes Corey is a junior editor at the tiny independent publisher that earned its place in the world by publishing St. Clair’s 1993 blockbuster, The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights. When the author was blinded in a frightening fire thirty years earlier, she became a recluse, hiding inside the mansion that belonged to her psychiatrist father. He offered his services to women “in trouble,” as they called it back then, trying to get them back on the straight and narrow.
When Agnes is hired as an amanuensis to take Veronica St. Clair’s dictation of a sequel, she’s thrilled—especially when she discovers clues that explain why the first story was so terrifying. What really happened and who will be freed from haunting thoughts once the victimization is revealed?
Goodman is one of my favorite authors. Maybe it’s because we graduated from the same college or because I have fond memories of the Hudson Valley. Maybe it’s the style of her storytelling, description which seems to go deeper with each new book, and her evocative Maybe it’s the way she often blends the ways we harm each other with gothic mystery and ever-increasing suspense.
There’s an amazing surprise waiting for Agnes at the end, as you’ll see if you get yourself a copy of Return to Wyldcliffe Heights. Highly recommended for those who like mystery and psychological suspense as well as those attracted to well written stories that deal with the issues women once faced.
Author Carol Goodman has won the Hammett Prize and the Mary Higgins Clark Award and has been nominated for the Dublin/IMPAC Award and the Nero Wolfe Award. After graduating from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an MFA degree in fiction from the New School University, where she teaches writing. You can learn more about the author and her work at https://carolgoodman.com
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- SOLITO
- By Javier Zamora
- ISBN #: 978-0593498088
- Random House Publishing Group; Reissue edition (June 6, 2023)
Memories of a Nine-Year-Old Migrant
If you follow the news these days, you’ve heard lots about migrants at the southern border of the United States. In Javier Zamora’s SOLITO, you’ll hear a first-hand account of his journey from El Salvador north to “La USA.” As you read, you’ll learn why people keep crossing and you’ll also discover the challenges they face as they criss-cross the Sonoran Desert. You’ll ask yourself questions about enduring the trek, dealing with crooked and disreputable people, and hoping for a better life on the north side of the border.
Javier Zamora is only nine years old when his grandparents and aunt send him north to live with his parents in San Rafael, California. A man named Chino and a mother and daughter, Pati and Carla, become his adopted family as they trek north fighting everything from cactus needles to coyotes to thieves and American Border Patrol Offices and the lights from airplanes scouring the desert in order to stop them before they cross the border. This nine-year-old boy who cannot tie his own shoes and is afraid that a toilet might swallow him up when he leaves El Salvador makes the unbelievably hard trek, conserving water, eating whatever he can grab, and surviving parched desert heat. The trip is expensive, and the disappointments en route are enormous.
Is it worth it? Should have he waited until he could migrate legally? Before you answer, remember that he was nine and his parents wanted him with them. Keeping that in mind, you’ll have to judge the trip for yourself, but as you read this lyrical and harsh account remember that it’s composed of the memories of a nine-year-old who came to America, kept journals, explored poetry, and this is his memoir, a true story as he remembers it. Should some of the desert scenes seem long to you, consider how they felt to him.
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- What You Leave Behind
- By Wanda M. Morris
- ISBN: 9780063322219
- William Morrow Paperbacks June 18, 2024
You Can’t Make These Issues Up
Have you heard of the Heirs Property Law? When Wanda M. Morris learned that it “refers to a home or land that passes from generation to generation without a legally designated owner, resulting in fractured ownership divided among several living descendants in a family,” What You Leave Behind started forming in her mind. According to her Afterword, the Heirs Property Law means that if one of the owners sells out, the others have to either buy back that person’s share or vacate the property if it was sold to a developer. What You Leave Behind is a story about heirs, family, developers, shady behavior, and a woman’s courage to stop this atrocity.
Deena Wood’s lost her mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm—all within six months. She needs a fresh start, which the Geechee people of her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia call a “dayclean.” She’s discontent with her new job at Medallion, where she’s underemployed.
Driving towards the Georgia coast in a grief-stricken mood one afternoon, she discovers the oceanfront property of a widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. Angered, he warns her to never return, but she does one day—only to discover that his trailer and dog are gone. Where did this man who refused to leave his property go? And what happened to his sister, found dead on the road six months earlier? When Deena digs into his disappearance, she finds a family legacy at risk and exposes a deadly game of illegal land grabs taking place in poor and rural communities.
Can the man who’s always loved her help her track down the malicious property companies or does it take her daddy and uncle to resolve this? She knows she must stop the sinister forces at play before she becomes their next target. But wait—she’s already a target.
Who doesn’t like a book that shows how others correct a wrong—especially when it’s shown with mystery, dramatic tension, and characters that you’re going to love. Her delicious description may make you want to visit Brunswick, Georgia.
Wanda M. Morris combines real issues with a courageous narrator who takes matters into her own gutsy hands. Take time to read What You Leave Behind.
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- The Girl with Three Birthdays: An Adopted Daughter’s Memoir of Tiaras, Tough Truths, and Tall Tales
- By Patti Eddington
- ISBN #: 978-1647426507
- She Writes Press (May 7, 2024)
Should She Leave the Past Alone?
Families that adopt give from the heart, even though they have no biological connection to the child. But sometimes they’re reluctant to tell an adopted child about the life she was born into. What is the child to do with dreams and fragments of a past, that don’t belong in her present life? What happened and why won’t anyone tell her? These are just a few of the questions that Patti Eddington explores in her memoir, improbable tale of The Girl with Three Birthdays: An Adopted Daughter’s Memoir of Tiaras, Tough Truths, and Tall Tales.
Patti Eddington had loving parents, and she honors them in this story. She didn’t want to hurt them with her questions, but there were holes in the story of her adoption. She believed her parents when they said they’d died her hair to protect her from nosy relatives, but WHY?
When she asked her mother if she could see a copy of her birth certificate so she could get her learner’s permit she discovered a different birth date, and her mom said, “They actually redo your birth certificate when you’re adopted. We have one with your new name and our names on it.” They’d assigned her a false birth date to thwart anyone who might look for her. WHY? “I would be 58 before I realized I wasn’t born November 15th,” she wrote.
Once it was possible to research family history online, her daughter gifted her with a test that would determine her background. After she finally used it, she became curious and petitioned a family court to unseal her adoption records, which were nearly 60 years old. Her training as a journalist taught her how to investigate, and she was now looking at the most important case of her life. Who were her biological parents and why had they abandoned her?
Would it have been better to leave the past alone? You’ll form your own opinions as you read this story of love and forgiveness, written with skill by a reporter who turned her investigative skills into an exploration of where she was from, what she might have inherited from her biological parents, and the age-old nature vs. nurture question.
It’s always a challenge to write about the people we know. Relationships color impressions. She makes her characters seem real to readeers and stays within the specific story she’s telling rather than dipping into off-subject memories. As this provocative story of lies and protection developed, so did my curiosity.
When I read the intriguing title, I knew this would be a good story. It didn’t disappoint. You can’t make family up, and all things considered, why would you try? Every family comes with unique stories. This is an excellent one for anyone who’s ever felt there was a secret in their family. Probably, that’s most of us. Highly recommended.
Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist who never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughterand learning to tap dance. Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell. Lake, Michigan.
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Thank you for reading these. More will be added soon.
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