William Morrow

Katherine Hall Page: The Body in the Web

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Faith Fairchild #26

Katherine Hall Page has written the first mystery – that I have read – that has fully fleshed out the pandemic. How it hit, how weird it was, how it affected schools, including colleges, jobs, and all the ways people congregate.

Faith Fairchild is a minister’s wife, a parent of a college student and a high school senior, and the owner of a catering company. Her sister is a financial lawyer on Wall Street, and she receives early information about the forthcoming pandemic. She contacts Faith and tells her all the things she needs to stock up on, as well as telling her that Faith’s son would be sent home from college soon. read more

Summer reading: Book Club picks & dates

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Join us this summer for some reading!  In June, we’ll read S.J. Bennett’s All the Queen’s Men, meeting in person on Sunday, June 25 at 2 p.m. and on zoom on Wednesday, June 28 at 7 p.m.  In July, Allison Montclair will be joining us on zoom on Sunday, July 23 at 2 p.m. to discuss her new book, The Lady from Burma.  While it’s not necessary to have read any of Ms. Montclair’s books before the discussion, I recommend them highly!  It’s a wonderful series set in London just post WWII.  And spoiler, Allison Montclair is a pen name – tune to discover her (?) true identity.  In August, we’ll be reading the much award nominated Shutter by Ramona Emerson, meeting in person on Sunday, August 13 at 2 p.m. and on zoom on Wednesday, August 16 at 7 p.m.  Anyone is welcome – please message us on facebook or twitter or email us at store (at) auntagathas.com for more info or for a zoom link. read more

Lauren Willig: Two Wars and a Wedding

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Lauren Willig’s new novel blooms from one of her recent books, Band of Sisters (2021) which followed a group of Smith College grads as they made their intrepid way to France to lend a hand during WWI in 1917.  Willig became intrigued with their leader and this book’s central character is based on her – another Smith grad who trained in archeology, was denied “dig” time in Greece because of her sex, and turned to humanitarian work and war nursing.

Willig’s fictional creation, Betsy Hayes, has just arrived in Athens in 1896 hoping to excavate.  The classicist in charge tells her to try being a librarian; she finds lodging with a swanky titled Greek woman who knew her father, gets around town on her bicycle, and manages to get on some archaeological tours with the male students.  Along the way she encounters a dashing French Count and falls hard even though (gasp, though not a surprise) he’s inconveniently married.  Ultimately, her frustrations become so great she decides to try war nursing.  Recommended by the Queen of Greece, she heads to the front, in what was the short lived Greco-Turkish war of 1897.  Short lived, but with no shortage of horror. read more

Karin Slaughter: Girl, Forgotten

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Despite the title of Karin Slaughter’s latest work, Girl, Forgotten, it’s pretty clear that Emily Vaughn’s idyllic little hometown has never truly forgotten her. Told half in the present, where the case has been reopened by newly minted US Marshal Andrea Oliver, and half in the past, where Emily lives out the days before her own murder, her voice isn’t silenced for long. That can make the horrific things she endured – rape by someone who knew she was drugged, ostracization by former friends, loss of her future, and unexpected pregnancy – difficult to bear. It is clear throughout that Emily was a sweet, good person who intended to make the most of her situation moving forward. Unfortunately, she never gets the chance to do so. read more

Faye Kellerman: The Hunt

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The Hunt, Faye Kellerman’s latest Decker/Lazarus mystery, is barely their story at all. Instead, it revolves around the toxic, layered relationship of Chris and Terry, the biological parents of Peter and Rina’s adopted son, Gabe. Though Gabe is no longer close to either of his parents, when Terry calls him after she is seriously hurt, he turns to the powerful, mob-connected Chris for help. Terry’s younger son, Sanjay, has been kidnapped during the course of her messy second divorce. Chris seems the obvious choice to help get him back. read more

Carol Goodman: The Disinvited Guest

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Carol Goodman has been killing it.  She’s writing the kind of standalone, psychologically suspenseful novels that are incredibly popular at the moment, but she’s been doing it for twenty years.  She’s a tight storyteller and a smart one, and she’s great with character and setting – in fact, she’s the whole package.  Her new novel, The Disinvited Guest, posits that we have emerged from a worldwide pandemic, albeit briefly, and been plunged into another one.  Her book is set very slightly in an unfortunately believable future. read more

Siena Sterling: Tell Us No Secrets

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Set at a girl’s boarding school in 1970, Siena Sterling’s debut novel was immediately attractive to me, as a 1977 graduate of a girl’s boarding school myself.  There is no doubt Ms. Sterling attended boarding school as the details are pretty much spot on. Happily, I had a much better experience than the four girls in the novel, Abby, Zoey, Cassidy and Karen. Boarding school is a time of intense bonding – girls are there from the ages of 14 to 17 or 18 – and as that coincides with the surge of adolescence and self discovery, the friendships formed during that time of your life often prove to be the most indelible. read more

S.J. Bennett: All the Queen’s Men

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I am a devotee of this charming new series, where the detective is the most famous woman on the planet – Queen Elizabeth II.  She shares detecting duties (she’s quite busy of course) with Rozie Oshodi, one of her private secretaries, a London born Nigerian.  She and Rozie formed a bond in the first novel as they investigated the mysterious death of a young Russian pianist at Buckingham Palace.

There are many things to love about these books.  One is the meticulous backstage look at how an enormous household like Buckingham Palace functions. One is the author’s loving portrayal of the queen – a woman who is busy, organized, intelligent and curious.  One is the character of Rozie herself, who is almost, but not quite, a superwoman.  She’s respected by her colleagues, but Buckingham Palace appears to be very much an old boy’s club in many ways.  It’s something the author turns her observant eye on in this novel. read more

Charles Todd: A Game of Fear

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Through now 24 novels, Charles and Caroline Todd have provided their readers with excellence, pure and simple.  The first novel in the Rutledge series, A Test of Wills, is a classic, and the rest of the series, elegiac, carefully plotted, and richly characterized, have all been solid and worthy reads. Sadly, this is the last novel written in collaboration with Caroline Todd, who passed away in 2021. She leaves a huge legacy.

In this novel, set in 1921, Inspector Rutledge has been called in from Scotland Yard to look at a case in Essex.  He goes where he’s sent by his higher ups, but he is puzzled to be looking in a case that seems to involve a ghost.  No-one is better than the Todds at setting up a disturbing premise that sticks in your mind as you read, wondering what’s going on.  Twenty-four books in, I was pretty comfortable waiting to discover the solution. read more

Alice Henderson: A Blizzard of Polar Bears

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These books – two so far – are a mix of adventure, climate change despair, and appreciation and love of the natural world and the creatures that share the planet with us.  In the first book, Henderson’s protagonist, Dr. Alex Carter, left Boston to study wolverines in Montana.  As that study winds down in book two, she’s delighted to get a call from a colleague, asking her to fill in for her on a polar bear study in Churchill, Manitoba.

Thrilled, Alex jumps at the chance and hops on a plane.  She’s used to solitude and her main points of contact are a buddy who is an actor and her father.  While Churchill would be no one’s idea of the big city, to Alex, it almost is, as she’ll be working at a large center with other scientists.  She’s happy enough to be able to stay in a motel on her own instead of the center’s quarters. read more