Linda M. Castellitto

Mystery

Fierce female sleuths

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Especially ones featuring smart, savvy female detectives. Readers who want to dig in to suspenseful and compelling crime tales with inspiring (and daring!) protagonists should add these two titles to their TBR piles.

Borrowed Time, Tracy Clark’s second novel, is a follow-up to 2018’s well-received Broken Places but also stands on its own as an entertaining introduction to a new author on the mystery beat. Protagonist Cass Raines is a 34-year-old African American ex-cop-turned-PI. She’s still recovering from her previous case by lying low and delivering summonses in amusingly creative ways. She also hangs out at her favorite diner, complete with crotchety owner and no-nonsense waitress, plus a goofy 20-something delivery guy named Jung.

And that’s where the trouble begins, as Jung’s wealthy, terminally ill friend Tim Ayers has just died. The police quickly ruled it suicide, but Jung thinks it was murder and wants Cass’ help. She demurs but is reluctantly intrigued when she realizes Tim is estranged from a well-known Chicago family with enough political pull for a cover-up—and when bizarre things start happening after she asks just a few preliminary questions.

Strange goings-on escalate into dangerous ones, and Clark takes readers on a suspenseful, often wild ride as Cass pushes for truth and justice. Fans of Sue Grafton and Sarah Paretsky will delight in the snappy first-person narration and wry wit—and fans of mysteries in general will be happy to discover a writer who deftly combines clever crime-solving, stress-inducing action sequences, nail-biting suspense and lots of love for Chicago.

In fellow Chicagoan Charlie Donlea’s newest mystery, Some Choose Darkness, two highly intelligent women—both regarded as odd, both frequently underestimated—join forces across the decades in an unusual take on the serial-killer cold-case trope.

Five young women go missing in Chicago during the summer of 1979, presumed murdered by a man dubbed The Thief. Angela Mitchell battles debilitating OCD as she works to solve the case. The amateur sleuth has an unrelenting sense that she can find the truth, and she does—but alas, she goes missing before she can serve as a witness. However, thanks to her work, The Thief is jailed for her murder. Forty years later, in 2019, he is eligible for parole.

Also in 2019, we meet Rory Moore, a forensic reconstructionist, bar none, who’s taking a rest period between cold cases and focusing on restoring antique porcelain dolls. Her boss at the Chicago Police Department brings her a damaged doll that doubles as an effort to lure her back to work. It belongs to a man whose 22-year-old daughter was found dead in Grant Park in 2018.

Rory begins to restore the doll—and then learns her father has been The Thief’s lawyer all these years. This revelation kicks off a determination to solve the cold cases from 1979, including that of Angela Mitchell. Suspense builds, clues mount and danger lurks seemingly everywhere as the story nimbly toggles between then and now, revealing the indelible marks the past can leave on the present. Also worthy of note: both women’s neuroatypicality is described in often moving, always respectful detail.

As secrets are revealed and mysteries unfold, many paths are explored and seeming dead ends sprout gasp-inducing new possibilities. Wannabe detectives will enjoy feeling as if they’re investigating and risk-taking right along with Angela and Rory in Donlea’s twisty-turny mystery.

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? Especially ones featuring smart, savvy female detectives. Readers who want to dig in to suspenseful and compelling crime tales with inspiring (and daring!) protagonists should add these two titles to their TBR piles.

NonfictionGraphic Memoirs

Graphic memoirs: It all comes flooding back

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Readers who love coming-of-age tales will welcome these two graphic memoirs, both of which poignantly explore the ways childhood experiences reverberate through our lives. In these pages, there is fun and frolicking, confusion and sorrow—the bittersweet nature of life, finely drawn.

In They Called Us Enemy, pop culture icon and social activist George Takei harks back to his childhood, several years of which were spent in internment camps during World War II. He was 4 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and 120,000 Japanese Americans were subsequently removed from their homes and sent to prison camps along the West Coast.

Takei and co-writers Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott capture the terror, fear and frustration of those years, and Harmony Becker’s art masterfully conveys the harsh violence of warplanes and bombs, as well as the sweet sadness of kids playing within barbed-wire fences.

They Called Us Enemy is an important read for anyone who wants to learn the full truth of our country’s history of institutionalized racism and gain greater context for our present. A tribute to Takei’s parents, this meditation on citizenship and community will educate, challenge and inspire.

Set in 1980s Massachusetts, King of King Court is also a trip down a bumpy memory lane, one that winds through Travis Dandro’s life from age 6 to 16 and contemplates the ways in which love, anger and loneliness collide. Dandro’s art is expressive, his storylines often impressionistic.

Kinetic dream sequences feel whimsical yet enlightening, dark shadows reveal even as they conceal, and scenes of kids making mischief are unquestionably cute. Thanks to the adults who loomed large in young Dandro’s world, such contrasts (and confusion) were not uncommon, especially when it came to his biological dad, Dave. He’s macho, mustachioed, addicted to drugs and still appealing to Dandro’s mom.

Readers will sympathize when teen Dandro feels beleaguered and angry at adults’ ill-advised choices, and they’ll appreciate grown-up Dandro’s empathy. Dedicated to his mother, this moving book is a happy ending to their story—and perhaps a beginning, too.

Readers who love coming-of-age tales will welcome these two graphic memoirs, both of which poignantly explore the ways childhood experiences reverberate through our lives. In these pages, there is fun and frolicking, confusion and sorrow—the bittersweet nature of life, finely drawn.

Mystery

Mysteries for book nerds

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

These two delicious new mysteries are a book nerd’s delight! One’s a modern-day retelling of a perennially popular short story, and the other imagines the personal lives of three women we know mainly through their published work.

Holly Watt’s To the Lions is a darkly compelling tale drawn from the real-life adventures of its British investigative journalist author. It’s also the latest take on the 1924 O. Henry Award-winning short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.”

Our heroine, Casey Benedict, is an intrepid investigative reporter at a major London newspaper. She and her colleague, Miranda, are intelligent and daring women who view immense risk as just another part of the job. When Casey (in disguise, natch) overhears a disturbing conversation at a nightclub, her interest is piqued. Why did a wealthy young man named Milo commit suicide, and what did it have to do with a recent hush-hush hunting expedition?

The women soon realize that Milo’s demise merely scratches the surface of a host of grim goings-on—namely, a group of powerful, wealthy men who go to North Africa for the most horrific of hunts. As the journalists work to infiltrate the network (with the newsroom team offering clever strategy and on-the-spot saves), the reporters find themselves confronting questions they’ve long avoided answering. Why do they do this work? Are they fearless or reckless? How far will they go to get the story?

The hunters and the hunted battle for primacy in a harrowing and exciting tale that’s at once as old as time and newly illuminating thanks to Watt’s skillfully crafted, thought-provoking examination of power, corruption and morality.

Now, let’s turn back the clock with Bella Ellis’ The Vanished Bride. It’s 1845 in Yorkshire, and the Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily and Anne, not yet published writers—are shocked to learn that their neighbor, Elizabeth Chester, has gone missing. A copious quantity of blood was left behind, the police don’t seem to be very concerned, and her known-to-be-violent husband isn’t pushing for answers.

The sisters decide to join forces and investigate as a way to get justice for Elizabeth, put their prodigious imaginations to good use and do something meaningful rather than sitting at home bemoaning their spinsterhood. It’s a risky undertaking in a stiflingly patriarchal time, but the sisters are determined, and more than a bit excited, ’tis true.

The Brontës venture near and far in pursuit of the truth, becoming masters of subterfuge and subtle manipulation along the way. Readers will thrill to the chase as clues reveal themselves, witnesses step forward and fade back, and the sisters’ charming and feckless brother Branwell pops up to urge them on or throw a wrench into things.

This first book in a series is an engaging, smart and inspiring read. Ellis writes with both reverence and sly humor, skillfully blending fact and fiction. In her hands, it’s pure fun to imagine what the Brontës, themselves a bit of a mystery, were really like—and to picture them sleuthing across the moors, undeterred by sexism, mortal danger or prohibitively poufy petticoats.

These two delicious new mysteries are a book nerd’s delight! One’s a modern-day retelling of a perennially popular short story, and the other imagines the personal lives of three women we know mainly through their published work.

PhotographyMemoirLiteratureFilmArt

Gift books: For the film buff who dreams in black and white

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

A glamorous person deserves a glamorous present.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life: They usher readers behind the scenes and offer a bit of dish, a lot of insight and plenty of glam Old Hollywood fun.

The Hollywood Book Club by Steven Rea
Steven Rea’s The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars is filled with black-and-white photos of actors from Tinseltown of yore reading at home and on set, poolside and at kitchen tables. The stars’ artful poses and occasional sly grins keep things interesting, a la Gregory Peck looking up from To Kill a Mockingbird. Film critic and photo archivist Rea’s witty captions add color and context. He explains the meaning behind the featured books and offers insider details (Edward G. Robinson collected French Impressionist art; Bette Davis’ husband wanted a divorce because she read too much). This fascinating dive into Hollywood history is a splendidly starry way to add to your TBR pile.

Letters from Hollywood by Rocky Land & Barbara Hall
Rocky Lang and Barbara Hall know movies. Lang, son of a studio executive, is a producer, director and writer; Hall is a film historian and archivist. Their compendium Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking is an excellent reference and engrossing exploration of American film from the silent era through the 1970s. Letters to and from famous actors, directors and more (Bela Lugosi, Katharine Hepburn, Claudia McNeil, Irving Berlin, Tom Hanks) are augmented by photos and other ephemera. Film buffs will revel in flipping to favorite luminaries, checking out surprising pen pals, admiring vintage stationery design and pondering the vanished art of writing letters. As Peter Bogdanovich writes in the foreword, “What a great idea!”

The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Basinger
At the beginning of The Movie Musical! Jeanine Basinger writes, “I was raised on musicals, and I love them.” That affection is evident in this 650-plus-page master class and love letter to the form and its practitioners. The author, a film historian and author of 11 other film books, takes readers on an edifying journey through the evolution of Hollywood musicals, from “the arrival of sound” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer to present-day extravaganzas like Bohemian Rhapsody (and La La Land, which she Does Not Like). She offers insight on what makes a musical, reveals the ways in which art and business collide and assesses the appeal of everyone from Gene Kelly to Diana Ross to Channing Tatum. Devotees will delight in revisiting beloved films—and making a list of musicals to watch ASAP.

Home Work by Julie Andrews
In this follow-up to 2008’s Home, Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton dive into Andrews’ movie-making era, which began in 1962 when Walt Disney offered her the lead role in Mary Poppins. In Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, the authors bring us along on Andrews’ thrilling movie star journey with fascinating revelations about films like The Sound of Music, Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Andrews’ second husband Blake Edwards’ 10 and That’s Life (the latter was their final film together; he died in 2010 after a 41-year marriage). Andrews was initially insecure in front of the cameras, but that soon gave way to using stage-honed instincts to inhabit characters from the outside in—via costumes and wigs, as well as, say, giving Ms. Poppins stiffly turned-out feet “to punctuate the impression of Mary’s character when flying.” Andrews shares diary entries, too, as she muses on the perpetual tug-of-war between family and work; the depression that plagued so many colleagues, including Edwards; and memorable trips abroad. Home Work is a multifaceted and absorbing 20-year tour of Hollywood through the eyes of one of its most beloved players.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life.

Four thrillers for bleak winter nights

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Readers who believe that hell is other people will find validation in these sublimely suspenseful thrillers.

Within these books, the psychological tension mounts, the lies pile up, the gaslighting gets ever more complex and our protagonists try to figure out how to win battles of wits and wills while, y’know, staying alive. 

How Quickly She Disappears
It’s 1941, and Elisabeth Pfautz is trying to adjust to life in the isolated town of Tanacross, Alaska, in Raymond Fleischmann’s How Quickly She Disappears. Elisabeth’s husband, John, is hired to teach children of the Athabaskan tribe, and so they move with their daughter, Margaret, to Alaska for the government gig. They live in a large building that houses the school and is also the de facto accommodation for visitors to the tiny town. When a German pilot named Alfred arrives, Elisabeth offers him a room—even though John’s out of town and her instincts are pinging. Sure enough, Alfred commits murder, terrifying everyone and threatening the already strained relationship between the Pfautzes and the locals. It’s a sudden and dramatic shift, a finely tuned reminder of how quickly life can change.

The now-imprisoned Alfred claims to know about Elisabeth’s twin sister, who disappeared when she was 11. He promises information in exchange for favors, and she complies, while keeping everything secret from her family. She’s desperate for answers, and Fleischmann handily ratchets up the suspense as Elisabeth’s longing becomes obsession and Alfred becomes the center of her life. Elisabeth’s past crashes into her present in a compelling exploration of the power of unresolved grief and unanswered questions.

Good Girls Lie
Bestselling author J.T. Ellison’s newest thriller, Good Girls Lie, is set in an elite girls’ prep school in Virginia. It’s a beautiful place, rife with greenery and mountains and . . . murder? 

Ellison kicks things off with a gruesome scene: A girl’s lifeless body dangles from the school’s entrance gates as classmates look on in shock and horror. This is just the latest in a series of events plaguing the Goode School and its headmistress, Ford Westhaven, who took over when her mother resigned after a different student’s death.

The story unfolds via Ash, a sophomore from Oxford, England, who comes to Goode after her parents’ violent deaths. Confident and smart with a knack for coding, Ash attempts to keep to herself but draws the attention of queen bee senior Becca. Ash is excited when Becca taps her to join a secret society—sparking jealousy and suspicion that feels both inevitable and dangerous.

Ellison does an excellent job toggling between students and staff, past and present, U.K. and U.S., and readers will be engrossed even as they wonder how Ford will explain away each distressing new development. Good Girls Lie is an entertainingly twisted coming-of-age tale, pitting the desire for privacy against the corrosiveness of secrecy and taking an often harrowing look at how wealth and power can lull recipients into believing they’re untouchable. Schadenfreude, ho! 

The Poison Garden
Cults have long captured the popular imagination. We’re repelled yet fascinated, disturbed yet wildly curious. Alex Marwood’s fourth thriller, The Poison Garden, will slake readers’ thirst for stories about what goes on in such communities and what happens when everything falls apart—which it very much does for 100 members of the Ark, a doomsday prepper cult in North Wales. 

After members of the Ark are found poisoned to death, the few survivors are set loose in a world they’ve been taught will end at any minute. Romy, in her early 20s and pregnant, is set up in her own apartment and getting therapy, but she only wants to track down her half-siblings so they can rejoin any other remaining Arkians. Teens Eden and Ilo are placed with Romy’s aunt Sarah, an exhausted school administrator whose late sister joined the cult 20 years prior. 

Marwood does a wonderful job building exquisite tension among the players. Romy strives to seem normal and nonthreatening in a society she finds abnormal and frightening, and Sarah wants the kids to feel safe and heard even as she struggles to understand their beliefs. Flashbacks to the Ark’s pre-poison days boost the dread factor and gradually reveal the group’s complex dynamics, prompting readers to reflect on the nature of community, faith and survival.

The Better Liar
Debut author Tanen Jones takes sisterhood to a whole new level in The Better Liar. It begins in Las Vegas, where Leslie goes to find her estranged sister, Robin—not because she misses her but because their deceased father stipulated that his daughters would only receive their halves of his estate if they claimed them together. But Robin dies of an overdose just before Leslie’s arrival.

When Leslie encounters a woman named Mary who looks like Robin, she proposes that the vivacious waitress and aspiring actress temporarily leave her cares behind (including a stalker ex) and pose as Robin for a week so they can each claim $50,000. The two travel back to Albuquerque together, and Mary moves in to Leslie’s home, which she shares with her husband and baby. It’s unnerving to imagine letting a stranger just move in, which signals how desperately Leslie wants the cash. But why? 

As the days pass, the women grow more suspicious of each other. Readers will enjoy trying to discern which one is the titular better liar—or perhaps, which liar is the better “sister.” Leslie struggles to control the proceedings while Mary courts disaster by revisiting people and places from Robin’s past. The chapters alternate between three points of view, and the characters’ motivations converge, diverge and threaten to explode as the story builds to an unexpected yet gratifying conclusion. Jones has crafted a dark, twisty tribute to unreliable narrators and tenacious women.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Tanen Jones about The Better Liar.

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Readers who believe that hell is other people will find validation in these sublimely suspenseful thrillers.

YA FictionYA

These are definitely kissing books

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

There’s plenty of love to be had in this trio of romantic books. Social media plays a key role in all three, facilitating flirting, turning up the tension and making the will-they-won’t-they even more thrilling. The hopeless (and hopeful) romantic will find much to savor.

Tweet Cute
High school senior Pepper Evans misses how things used to be. Not long ago, her family lived in Nashville, her parents’ marriage was intact, and the restaurant they founded, Big League Burger, hadn’t yet grown into a megachain. Now, in debut novelist Emma Lord’s Tweet Cute, Pepper’s sister is at college, her dad’s in Nashville, and she’s attending a fancy private school in New York City. When she’s not juggling AP classes, debate club and swim team—or fretting about her parents’ divorce—she’s co-writing a baking blog and being pestered by her CEO mom to handle BLB’s social media. 

Meanwhile, Pepper’s classmate Jack Campbell has a lot on his plate, too. He works in his family’s popular East Village deli and feels pressured to someday take it over. But does he want to? He’s trying to figure it out when disaster strikes. BLB tweets about a sandwich that copies an item on his family’s deli menu, and Jack claps back, kicking off a snarky Twitter war that garners the attention of internet influencers and the media. As Pepper and Jack duke it out on Twitter, they’re also flirting on an anonymous messaging app—and getting closer in real life as well.

Lord creates delicious, funny suspense around whether the teens will finally reveal their identities and have a huge argument or, even better, a huge make-out sesh. Tweet Cute empathetically conveys the tension of feeling torn between pleasing one’s parents and planning an independent future. Lord’s characters are a likable, smart, diverse bunch, and readers will eagerly follow along as secrets explode and romance blooms online and IRL.

Yes No Maybe So
Fans of bestselling authors Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) and Aisha Saeed (Written in the Stars) will be thrilled to get their hands on their new joint effort, Yes No Maybe So, an earnest and engrossing of-the-political-moment story about Jamie and Maya, who were friends as children and reconnect a decade later when their moms volunteer them to canvass for a newbie Democratic state senate candidate. 

Jamie is deeply self-conscious about his awkwardness and trying to tread lightly around his mom and sister’s feverish bat mitzvah planning. Maya is reeling from an emotional one-two punch: Her bestie has become distant as she prepares to leave for college, and her parents just began a trial separation—in the middle of Ramadan. She’s not thrilled about canvassing, but her mom dangles the promise of a car, so she dives in, joining Jamie and his quirky, civic-minded family as they try to bring change to their city of Atlanta, Georgia. As their interest in politics and policy grows into true activism, Jamie and Maya realize they’re becoming passionate about each other, too. 

Albertalli and Saeed have created a lovely cross-cultural romance and a compassionate exploration of what’s worth fighting for, especially when the outcome is uncertain. It’s full of messages of hope, loving support and the empowerment that comes from pushing for change and taking action.

★ The Gravity of Us
Self-proclaimed space nerd Phil Stamper’s The Gravity of Us is so interesting and well crafted that it’s hard to believe it’s his first novel. He harkens back to mid-20th-century NASA, when astronauts were heroes and their seemingly perfect families served as living public-relations tools for the space program. As it turns out, things aren’t so different when it comes time for NASA’s Orpheus V mission to Mars. 

Whiz-kid Cal Lewis, a savvy 17-year-old from New York City, is shocked when his commercial airline pilot dad announces he’s been selected for Orpheus, which means their family is moving to Houston . . . in three days. Cal is devastated to be leaving his best friend, his beloved city and perhaps his budding career. An entertainment network, Star Watch, has an exclusive contract to cover the mission, which means Cal, a well-known video journalist with half a million followers on the FlashFame app, will have to give up his BuzzFeed internship. Even worse, he may not be able to report anything anymore. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read an interview with The Gravity of Us author Phil Stamper.

As his life changes at warp speed, the questions mount: Will Cal be able to survive hot, humid Houston? Will his parents ever stop arguing? How can he be a journalist without the internship and FlashFame? But isn’t it nice that the enchanting Leon, son of another astronaut, lives in Cal’s brand-new, astronaut family-packed neighborhood? 

It’s thrilling to witness Cal using his social media savvy to find a way around barriers to his reporting and his happiness. Stamper shines a light on the vagaries of reality TV and a space program dependent on tenuous government funding, while giving a platform to the nonastronauts who are also passionate about space exploration—from soil scientists to the families swept up in this all-consuming career choice. Readers will root for Cal and Leon, their budding romance, their astronaut families and, of course, the prospect of life among the stars.

There’s plenty of love to be had in this trio of romantic books. Social media plays a key role in all three, facilitating flirting, turning up the tension and making the will-they-won’t-they even more thrilling. The hopeless (and hopeful) romantic will find much to savor.

…

West Coast noir

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Shimmering sands, sparkling ocean, swaying palms . . . the West Coast beckons. But like anywhere else, the region has plenty of grit among the gorgeousness, a truth that is abundantly evident in these two striking new novels. Despite the ever-bright sunshine, there’s darkness lurking—and in these pages, savvy and smart Latinx women navigate obstacles literal and metaphorical in an effort to achieve balance and, just maybe, justice.

Untamed Shore

For 18-year-old Viridiana, life in 1979 Desengaño, a small seaside town in Baja California, Mexico, feels endless and unrelenting—like the blazing sun, like the vast ocean. The notion of play or creativity is frivolous, and planning for a different future is scoffed at. Instead, she muses in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Untamed Shore, “There was always duty. Mind-bogglingly dull duty. Duty without rhyme nor reason.”

Still, Viridiana is bright and industrious, finding purpose where she can. She works as a translator and guide for tourists, fulfills her endless duties and dreams of escape—perhaps to Mexico City, where her father fled long ago, perhaps to Hollywood to live among movie stars. For now, she bats away her mother’s disapproval, watches fishermen pile shark carcasses on the shore and plays chess with a local named Reynier, a Dutchman of great intellect and local business connections.

Reynier has a job for Viridiana with three rich Americans taking a summer rental: Ambrose is writing a book and needs a secretary; his much younger wife, Daisy, and her brother, Gregory, want a tour guide. Viridiana moves into the grand home with them, and as she plans day trips and types letters for them, she’s drawn into their daily lives and domestic dramas. Daisy’s mood swings are jarring but exciting, and Gregory’s seductive gazes and alluring promises seem genuine.

Thanks to Moreno-Garcia’s finely crafted writing, readers will find themselves lulled into the sluggish yet poetically described rhythms of Viridiana’s days—and then growing ever more tense as her naiveté and longing render her vulnerable to the tourists’ psychological games, underpinned by menace that observers can feel but the young woman cannot see. When an intoxicated Ambrose takes a deadly tumble, that danger comes into sharp relief. Who will the corrupt police favor, the wealthy tourists or the willful local girl?

Untamed Shore is a fever dream of a thriller, a coming-of-age tale set amidst disturbing and dangerous circumstances, in which doing the least worst thing today in service of a better tomorrow might just be the best option. Viridiana is a dreamer who wants to build herself a different life in this fresh, empathetic take on an unreliable, very determined narrator.

The Janes

The similarly determined Alice Vega of Louisa Luna’s The Janes is a former bounty hunter, now private investigator, known for her skills in locating missing people and her relentless drive to find answers no matter the method (which readers will remember from Luna’s first Vega novel, Two Girls Down).

When two Latinx teen girls are found dead near the Mexican border, a commander from the San Diego police department hires Vega to identify the victims and find any other girls who might be missing as part of a sex-trafficking operation. What made him think of Alice? Well, her aforementioned skills, her willingness to stay out of the spotlight—and the fact that one of the girls had a piece of paper in her hand with Vega’s name written on it.

Vega calls Max “Cap” Caplan, whom she worked with in Two Girls Down, and offers him $10,000 to help her. He’s a calm and thoughtful retired detective who trusts her completely, even when things get (more than) a little wild. Together, the two make an intelligent, innovative team that gets results, whether using the serial numbers on IUDs to track down sex-trafficking perpetrators or intuitively and masterfully improvising when interviewing wary criminals.

That’s why it’s decidedly odd that, once they go to the commander with suspects and theories about the workings of the crime ring, he tells them to back off—he’ll update the DEA and SDPD, and handle it from there. Not surprisingly, Vega and Cap do the opposite of backing off. Instead, they push even harder, diving into dangerous situations with glee (Vega) and reluctant optimism (Cap), determined to roust the bad guys and expose wrongdoing no matter where it lives.

Luna skillfully balances tragedy and humor throughout, via blood-pressure-raising fight scenes and stressful suspense, plus hints of romantic tension between Vega and Cap. She also offers a fascinating and disturbing look at how a criminal enterprise might work, pulling in various complex threads while crafting a story that’s wholly believable and sad.

The Janes is a superbly entertaining read, especially for readers who are already fans of the amazing Vega, whose Jack Reacher-esque sense of justice offers reassurance that, no matter how long it takes, no bad deed will go unpunished.

Shimmering sands, sparkling ocean, swaying palms . . . the West Coast beckons. But like anywhere else, the region has plenty of grit among the gorgeousness, a truth that is abundantly evident in these two striking new novels.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Let your imagination take flight!

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

When we’re feeling anxious or sad, sometimes we need to pause, escape reality for a moment and give ourselves time to find calm. Isn’t it wonderful just to soar above it all? In these two books, that’s exactly what the characters do, as they ride on the wings of birds and planes through the dazzling landscape of imagination.

When You Need Wings
Oh, that flittery-fluttery feeling inside! It’s the one we all get when we’re nervous. Maybe we’re too excited, or we’re afraid something won’t go well, or we just don’t want to do whatever it is we’re about to do. In When You Need Wings, author-illustrator Lita Judge’s evocative, expressive pencil-and-watercolor art shows a little girl who transforms her anxious energy from distressing to enervating, as the narrator encourages and motivates: “That isn’t your heart. It’s the sound of your very own wings, beating within.”

And so, the little girl who wordlessly resists entering the cacophonous playground at Little Dreamers Preschool takes a moment to focus inward. Ethereal white doves fly her away, and suddenly, she’s in a forest, cavorting with wild animals. The Maurice Sendak-style boogieing scenes are joyous and detailed, providing much to discover on repeat reads, from an alligator’s backward baseball cap to a squirrel’s chunky-knit sweater.

Confidence restored, the girl dashes onto the playground, where a gaggle of new friends welcome her. Attentive readers will notice that each new friend is wearing something reminiscent of the forest animals. Clever! It’s a happy, reassuring ending for a beautifully rendered tribute to the quiet kids whose imaginations help them find real-world tranquility and delight.

Paper Planes
In Jim Helmore and Richard Jones’ Paper Planes, we meet best friends and neighbors Mia and Ben, two kiddos who are really, really into making paper airplanes. They frolic with their dogs (who show adorable and assiduous interest in everything the children do), swing on tires, go sailing and plot to build an airplane that’ll make it all the way across the giant lake behind their houses.

Readers will love the kids’ bobblehead-esque proportions—all the better to showcase Mia’s red beret and Ben’s aviator goggles. Dramatic, chalk-textured sweeps of verdant landscape and fish-filled water beckon readers to contemplate what it would be like if (oh, no!) their best friend were to move far away. When it happens to her, Mia feels abandoned and angry, but then she has a wondrous dream: A flock of geese invite her and Ben to climb in planes and join them as they fly through the sky. When Mia awakens, her emotional storm has passed—and a package from Ben arrives in the mail. Won’t she help him finish the airplane he started?

It’s fun to follow Mia’s determined quest as she realizes that strong connections aren’t easily broken. After all, “not even an ocean could keep them apart.” Paper Planes is a meditative, uplifting tale about imagination, resourcefulness and new beginnings that’s sure to inspire an uptick in paper-airplane making.

When we’re feeling anxious or sad, sometimes we need to pause, escape reality for a moment and give ourselves time to find calm. Isn’t it wonderful just to soar above it all?
NonfictionParentingMemoir

These books score a perfect 10 on the romp-ometer

Feature by Amy Scribner & Jessica Wakeman & Linda M. Castellitto

Looking for a heaping dose of full-throttle fun? These three books can help.

Gatecrasher 

Society journalism—that is, the gossip pages—doesn’t carry the same gravitas as other areas of journalism. That might change with Gatecrasher. Author Ben Widdicombe, a former gossip reporter, shares lessons about the world’s wealthiest people gleaned from attending Academy Awards parties, lunches at Elaine’s and weddings at Mar-a-Lago for the past two decades.

Widdicombe worked at three of the biggest outlets in gossip: Page Six (New York Post), Rush & Malloy (New York Daily News) and TMZ. Gatecrasher could have been just a dishy memoir about the sex tapes, prison sentences and infidelities of A-listers and the upper crust. And yes, there is plenty of dirt in these pages. However, Gatecrasher’s strength is in its thoughtful cultural critique of celebrity and wealth, and the media’s symbiotic relationship to both. Widdicombe delivers some uncomfortable home truths about American cultural appetites. Take, for instance, his assertion that Paris Hilton is the “most culturally influential person in twenty-first-century America.” Surely that’s incorrect. It must be Beyoncé or Bob Dylan or Oprah or . . . well, anyone but a hotel heiress who made a sex tape.

Yet it makes perfect sense when Widdicombe spells it out: Hilton’s shameless willingness to cash in on being a wealthy person paved the way for everything from “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” to the Trumps. “A gossip culturalist understands how the trashy stuff connects to the bigger picture, and that we ignore it at our peril,” he writes.

Whether you’re a student of US Weekly or cultural studies, Gatecrasher manages to be fun, frothy and just the #inspo you need to topple the bourgeoisie.

—Jessica Wakeman

 

The Hungover Games

British writer Sophie Heawood was living her dream, working as a journalist covering the entertainment industry in LA. She wrote breezy celebrity profiles, went out every night and came home to her tiny Sunset Boulevard apartment.

Then she unexpectedly became pregnant by a man who emphatically did not want to be a father. In the hilarious and intimate The Hungover Games, she chronicles her bumpy journey from woman-about-town to single parent.

Heawood relies on her group of friends (whom she calls her “holy congregation”) and her loving yet judgmental parents as she returns to London to have her baby. She finds a funky house in a neighborhood affectionately known as Piss Alley, a home with “a bench where you could sit and inhale some of East London’s less aggressive pollution, because there was a house three doors down that had managed to plant a tree.”

Like so many new mothers, Heawood is flooded with love, hormones and responsibility. She’s a fantastically funny and unapologetic writer and is candid about the weirdly overlapping bouts of joy and boredom that come with parenting. In a just-between-us tone, she shares her birth story, the “ghost that sat on my shoulder” of the baby’s father who couldn’t commit and what it’s like to venture out in the dating world while still nursing a baby.

The Hungover Games is by and about a single mom, but Heawood’s story of finding love where you least expect it is universal.

—Amy Scribner 

Action Park

Do you think helmets are for wimps and seat belts are for suckers? Is following rules something other people do? If your answer is “Hell, yeah!” then you would’ve loved Action Park, a 35-acre New Jersey amusement park that provided dangerous entertainment for 20 crowded, wild summers beginning in 1978. Gene Mulvihill was the charismatic, impulsive, creative, law-avoiding, retail magnate, millionaire founder, and Andy Mulvihill, who wrote Action Park with journalist Jake Rossen, is his son.

When Andy was 13, his dad came up with a way to monetize his Vernon Valley/Great Gorge ski property in the warm months: He was going to be “the Walt Disney of New Jersey.” The Alpine Slide was the park’s main attraction in its debut 1978 summer, and people flocked to the mountain to try it. Speeding 2,700 feet down a winding track, riders perched in a small cart with a steering rod and iffy brakes. There were no helmets, and thrill-seekers were likely to fly off the track into the woods.

Was it dangerous? Definitely. Did people love it? Absolutely. The park hosted about a million people per year over its two decades, which saw the introduction of additional high-risk attractions like the Speed Slide (100-foot drop + 45 mph = actual enema) and the Wave Pool (25 water rescues daily). Andy recalls his years at the park—during which he went from laborer to reluctant ride tester to lifeguard to manager—with a mix of fondness and frustration, pride and disbelief. It’s indeed amazing that Gene essentially did whatever he wanted for nearly 20 years. Not even countless injuries and six deaths at the park, plus a 1980s indictment for insurance fraud, could put him out of business for long.

Action Park is a fascinating up-close portrait of an eccentric father and gonzo businessman who angered loads of people and was beloved by even more. And it’s a nostalgic chronicle of a place that was horrible or wonderful, depending on your perspective—“a place that, by all rights, should never have existed.”

—Linda M. Castellitto 

Looking for a heaping dose of full-throttle fun? These three books can help.
YA FictionYA

YA rocks the vote

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

This pair of entertaining and compelling young adult novels confirm that the political is indeed very, very personal.

In our modern era of texts and tweets, video chats and DMs, the telephone-based romance at the heart of Katie Cotugno’s You Say It First is both daring and delightful. High school senior Meg loves her part-time job at WeCount, a nonprofit voter registration center near her home in a Philadelphia suburb. Lately, the gig has also been a haven in the stressful storm of Meg’s life. Her raucously argumentative parents have finally gotten divorced, her mom is drinking way too much, and for some reason, Meg is no longer excited at the thought of going to Cornell with her best friend. It’s a confusing, upsetting time, and Meg feels like she can’t talk to anyone about it.

Then one night at work, Meg makes a fateful call to an Ohio phone number, and recent high school graduate Colby answers. He’s still reeling from his dad’s suicide and might be outgrowing his small town, and he has no idea what to do next. The teens’ first conversation doesn’t go very well. Meg’s an idealist, Colby’s a pessimist; Meg wants to change the world, while Colby thinks change is unlikely and overrated. But where there is conflict, there are also sparks, and the two progress from hourslong phone calls to in-person visits.

Their budding romance has moments of both sweetness and struggle as Meg and Colby challenge each other’s worldviews and navigate their own personal emotional minefields. There’s plenty of delicious interpersonal suspense, not only between Meg and Colby but also in reckonings with their families and friends. Cotugno has crafted some truly touching conversations about family secrets, damaging expectations and reluctant vulnerability. You Say It First is a romantic coming-of-age tale with a politics-infused backdrop that makes a heartfelt case for hope and the belief that incremental changes—just one vote, just one conversation, just one shift in perspective—can make a difference.

Mariana’s father, Florida senator Anthony Ruiz, wants to be president, and he wants Mariana to get on board. In Natalia Sylvester’s Running, 15-year-old Mari’s pleas for privacy in her dad’s increasingly bright spotlight have been dismissed for years.

Mari’s dad been a politician for as long as she can remember. He turns every family outing into a photo op and alternately emphasizes or diminishes their family’s Cuban heritage depending on the whiteness of the audience and its potential appeal to big donors. Mari is proud of her popular and accomplished dad, but she hates public speaking and would love to be anonymous for once—to post what she wants on Twitter and to not be bullied at school because of something her dad said to a reporter.

Running finds Mari hitting a breaking point. She must decide whether she’ll keep bending to her father’s relentless pressure or stand up for her right to make her own choices. And there’s no more time to waste, because the ultimate invasion of privacy is looming: a tour of their family home and an interview with the whole family, broadcast live on national TV.

Readers will be captivated as the tension builds and Sylvester convincingly and movingly plumbs the painful questions Mari is finally able to ask herself: Without her father’s scripts and rules, who is she? Are her parents oblivious to her needs, or are they deliberately ignoring them? Mari realizes that continuing to avoid these questions and accepting what her father says without fact-checking him is no longer an option, especially since the activist group at school wants to know what she thinks about his voting record, and she has no idea what to tell them. But Mari does know this: She cares about other people, she cares about the environment, and it’s looking increasingly likely that she’s sacrificed her privacy and autonomy while her father promotes political policies she disagrees with.

Running’s portrayal of a teen girl’s political and emotional awakening is an invigorating tale of a breakdown that becomes a breakthrough. It’s a timely reminder that to effectively stand up for others, we must first stand up for ourselves.

Two entertaining and compelling young adult novels confirm that the political is indeed very, very personal.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Capturing the excitement, trepidation and curiosity of the first day of school

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

Four picture books offer encouragement to youngsters as they embark on a thrilling rite of passage: the first day of school.

Give Pearl Goes to Preschool to any reader curious about trying something new but in need of a small, encouraging nudge. Pearl is a confident, energetic, tiara-loving girl who’s more than a bit skeptical when her mom raises the notion of preschool. After all, Pearl already attends daily classes at her mom’s ballet studio, and she even knows how to count (“First position! Second position! Third position!”). What could be better? Well, Mom explains, Pearl can meet kids her own age at preschool, and everyone gets to do finger painting, learn the alphabet and dress up. Pearl talks it over with her friend Violet, a plush mouse clad in a purple tutu, and the two decide that preschool’s worth a try.

Author-illustrator Julie Fortenberry’s painterly art hits the emotional mark. She masterfully conveys Pearl’s impatience, joy, nervousness and relief, as well as Pearl’s mom’s carefully concealed amusement as she negotiates with her spirited kiddo. A muted color palette makes a lovely backdrop for this engaging portrait of a strong parent-child relationship: Pearl feels safe in expressing herself, and her mom’s gentle guidance helps Pearl take ownership over big decisions. Pearl Goes to Preschool is a real treat.

A.E. Ali’s Our Favorite Day of the Year opens as Musa starts kindergarten. Despite what Musa’s teacher says, the boys at his table don’t “look like his friends. They were total strangers.” But Ms. Gupta has a plan: Throughout the year, students will share their favorite holidays as a sort of interactive show and tell (not to mention icebreaker and friendship builder). 

Skepticism melts away as months pass and students treat each other to exciting new experiences. Musa goes first, decorating the classroom for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday at the end of Ramadan, while offering a brief history and sharing delicious treats. “Everyone could see why Eid was Musa’s favorite,” Ali writes. Other students share Rosh Hashanah, Los Posadas and Pi Day, and every time, all the kids agree—they can see why this holiday is the student’s favorite.

Rahele Jomepour Bell’s joyous illustrations make each celebration delightful, and her use of color and texture is impressive, whether she’s capturing a flickering candle or a frilly piñata. Be sure to check out her quiltlike endpapers, too. Readers will revel in this openhearted look at how friendships are easy to form when everyone is willing to share and rejoice in what makes each person unique.

Where’s my classroom? I dropped my backpack! Is that a hamster? I think I know her. What’s for lunch? With spot-on snippets of poetry and illustrations steeped in primary colors, All Welcome Here captures the swirling, frenetic energy of the first day of school. Author James Preller’s linked haiku lead readers through the maze of an exciting, chaotic and often humorous new adventure. A diverse group of children clamors for fresh school supplies (“All the bright new things / Smell like sunrise, like glitter”) and the release of recess (“Can we? Is it true? / Yes, recess. Run, RUN!”). They also consider the scariness of stepping onto a giant yellow school bus for the first time (“It’s dark and noisy / and what if they aren’t nice?”). The effect is sometimes impressionistic and always empathetic. 

Fans of illustrator Mary GrandPré, Caldecott Honoree for The Noisy Paintbox, will be pleased to see her work here. Her collages and paintings, which make clever use of color and pattern, capture both the big splash of a water fountain prank and the engrossed calm of bookworms enjoying library time. Preller dedicates the book to “public school teachers everywhere” and GrandPré to “all young artists,” fitting tributes to those who inspired this spirited whirlwind of first-day jitters and delight.

Debut author-illustrator Anna Kim draws on personal experience in Danbi Leads the School Parade, a charming, moving story about a girl who’s leaping into the unknown not only at a new school but in a new country, too. Danbi and her parents immigrated to the United States from South Korea, and the time has come for Danbi to meet her new teacher, who smiles encouragingly, and a puppy-pile of classmates, who stare at her with curiosity. 

Danbi’s heartbeat is the soundtrack to her determined but unsuccessful attempts to fit in, as she tries new dances and games. She is relieved when lunchtime arrives: “That, I knew how to do!” But when the other kids pull out sandwiches and juice boxes, her crystal dumplings and rainbow drops draw more stares and a big “Wow!” from the group. Ever resourceful, Danbi attempts to teach her classmates to use chopsticks, which turns into a comedy of errors. Pivoting again, she taps her lunchbox with a chopstick and kicks off a wild music-improv session, which then transforms into the magical parade of the book’s title.

In her artwork, Kim’s incredible eye for detail and expert lines evoke the swish of the teacher’s skirt, the trajectory of an errant block and the lushness of little-kid hair. Her characters’ emotions are finely wrought as well: Danbi’s early dismay is as palpable as her eventual thrill at making a new friend. In a touching author’s note, Kim shares her “belief that bridging our differences happens one human being at a time.”

Four picture books offer encouragement to youngsters as they embark on a thrilling rite of passage: the first day of school.

Give Pearl Goes to Preschool to any reader curious about trying something new but in need of a small, encouraging nudge. Pearl is a confident,…

Secrets of the dead

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

A tangled web, indeed: These two psychological thrillers offer dramatic twists and turns, plus a hearty dose of scandal, as they explore what might happen when a seemingly perfect person is murdered—and those left behind discover the deceptions that lurked beneath the victim’s distractingly charismatic surface.

Can women have it all? Araminta Hall examines that eternally lingering question in all its darkly sexist glory via her new novel, Imperfect Women. The author puts Eleanor Meakins, Nancy Hennessy and Mary Smithson front and center. The three women have been best friends since they were at Oxford together 20 years ago. There, they intertwined their lives and excitedly shared their dreams of the future, but today, two of them are horrified and grieving.

Beautiful, wealthy, possessor-of-a-perfect-family Nancy has been murdered, and Eleanor (devoted to her job, longing for romance) and Mary (beleaguered mother of three, wife to a philanderer) are stunned. But, they wonder, how well did they actually know their friend? The women have grown apart over time; their love for one another remains, but distance and distrust have long been creeping in to their relationships.

Readers who enjoy a challenge will appreciate how deftly Hall paints nearly every character as a viable suspect. Did Nancy’s husband Robert, who pooh-poohed her depression, know she was having an affair? Could said paramour have committed the crime? Was Eleanor jealous enough to do something so terrible? Could Mary’s resentment at her decidedly imperfect life have turned deadly? Each woman takes a turn as unreliable narrator, revealing their deferred dreams and unmet desires, as well as allowing themselves the selfishness and aggravation they don’t reveal to the world. There’s a lot of anger there, too, at disrespectful and self-absorbed men who don’t listen to, appreciate or support the women they profess to love. After all, thinks Nancy, “Women in this world are expected to conform, even if it doesn’t seem like that anymore. What’s wrong with you, men ask as they push forward, why aren’t you happy back there, why isn’t it enough?”

Imperfect Women is an engrossing deep dive into the individual and shared history of a long-term friendship, an acknowledgement of the slow poison of being confined by gender roles, and an exploration of what can happen when reasonable expectations begin to seem sadly unattainable.

On the dedication page of her fourth thriller, Convince Me, author Nina Sadowsky gets right to the point: “This book is for everyone who is sick and tired of the fucking liars and their fucking lies.” Justin Childs sure is a liar—although, as the novel begins, his family and friends have no idea. Rather, they’re mourning his death in a car accident and wondering how they’re going to go on without his charismatic, intelligent, everybody’s-a-friend presence in their lives.

His mother, Carol, loves her son completely and fiercely, and is determined to preserve his legacy of near perfection. His widow, Annie, steels herself to get through the funeral even as she wonders why, after never taking any pills, Justin was found to have Valium in his system. And his best friend and business partner, Will, is left reeling at this grievous loss and its timing—just before the two men were due to launch their tech startup, Convincer Media.

It’s this business-related anxiety that soon disturbs a massive and complex hornets’ nest of lies: Something’s amiss in the financial records, and Convincer’s supposed main investor has never heard of Justin. And that, it turns out, is just for starters. As Annie and Will view their time with Justin through a newly skeptical lens, it dawns on them, inexorably, upsettingly, that they never knew him at all. As Annie muses, “Piecing Justin together is like trying to coax a clear image from a kaleidoscope.”

But they need to ferret out the truth, and fast, because people’s money is at stake and the police are taking an interest. Sadowsky does an excellent job of showing how, bit by careful bit, someone like Justin could fool so many for so long: White lies gone unchallenged lay the groundwork for larger deceptions, and declarations of devotion can be disarming and effective distractions. Convince Me’s tension is often internal, and compellingly so. Readers ride along as the characters confront their own roles in perpetuating the myth of Justin, and decide whether they’re going to succumb to rage or do their best to ensure they won’t get fooled again.

A tangled web, indeed: These two psychological thrillers offer dramatic twists and turns, plus a hearty dose of scandal, as they explore what might happen when a seemingly perfect person is murdered—and those left behind discover the deceptions that lurked beneath the victim’s distractingly charismatic…

Mother knows best?

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s no secret that motherhood isn’t all cuddles and giggles, but these two new thrillers take things a step (or several) further. They plumb the darker side of maternal instincts via unnerving, slow-burning stories of mothers, daughters and the secrets and lies that sometimes bind them.

Long-buried secrets boil up to the surface in Kate Riordan’s The Heatwave, an unsettling and claustrophobic thriller set in the south of France during a scorchingly hot summer.

Sylvie Durand has pushed her family home, La Reverie, firmly out of mind and memory for 10 years—but in 1993, when she receives a letter notifying her of arson at the empty property, she must return. She does so with great reluctance and deep dread, but her beloved 14-year-old daughter, Emma, is thrilled. She’s always been curious about the place where she was born and lived until she was 4, when her parents divorced after her older sister Elodie’s death at 14.

As Emma explores the crumbling yet grand manse, complete with sparkling pool and rickety barn, Sylvie struggles with her emotions. She’s been keeping secrets about their family for so long, she’s having a hard time feeling safe in the place that was the setting for long-ago traumas. It doesn’t help that the house feels haunted by Elodie, an arrestingly beautiful and dangerously manipulative child whom Sylvie likens to “those Manson girls . . . sloe eyes opening to reveal the void.”

Riordan moves Sylvie’s narration between past and present in the form of an apologia to Emma, slowly and ominously revealing details about the family as she invites musings on the mutability of memory and the ever-fascinating question of nature versus nurture. The novel also turns an unblinking eye on what it’s like to desperately want a mutually loving relationship with your child, and the guilt that arises when it becomes clear that’s likely impossible.

Forest fires flicker on the horizon, the threat edging closer and closer, as Sylvie attempts to sell the house and flee once again, before the truth is no longer able to be denied. The Heatwave is an excellent example of why the saying “you can’t go home again” rings so true. It’s a discomfiting, suspenseful tale that’s sure to delight fans of Lionel Shriver and Daphne du Maurier, as well as of Riordan’s previous book, 2015’s Fiercombe Manor.

Discomfiture takes a different sort of turn in Little Disasters by Sarah Vaughan, author of the bestselling Anatomy of a Scandal. In every group of mom friends, there’s always one—the mother who seems to take everything in stride, remaining endlessly unflappable and upbeat no matter what challenges come her way. Here, that woman is Jess Curtis.

Jess is a well-off stay-at-home parent of three—two school-age boys and 10-month-old baby Betsey—who’s always made motherhood look easy (especially to said mom friends Liz, Mel and Charlotte), even without much support from Ed, her workaholic husband. And so Liz, a senior hospital resident in pediatrics at St. Joseph’s Hospital in West London, is shocked when she’s called to the ER to consult on an infant with a suspicious head injury and realizes the baby is Betsey, brought in by a shifty and evasive Jess. The sequence of events Jess provides doesn’t make sense, but she’d never harm one of her children . . . right?

Vaughan’s tense, twisty drama is told from various points in time, from three points of view: Liz, Jess and sometimes Ed, all of whom realize they don’t know each other as well as they’d thought, all of them afraid of what will be revealed in the search for the truth. From the start, it’s clear that Jess has been suffering from depression and anxiety, exacerbated by sleep deprivation: “The walls push in; the heat bears down and the noise—the terrible crying that has been going on for three hours—engulfs her. . . . She does not know how much more she can bear.”

Suspicion is cast on various players as social workers and police try to separate fact from falsehood, and Liz must contend with her persistent unease as she struggles to reconcile her seemingly conflicting roles of doctor and friend. She also must deal with traumatic memories triggered by the goings-on, including the realization that her own mother, an often cruel alcoholic, may be keeping terrible secrets of her own.

Little Disasters’ slow-reveal rhythms make for a squirm-inducing and thought-provoking examination of friendship, marriage and motherhood.

It’s no secret that motherhood isn’t all cuddles and giggles, but these two new thrillers take things a step (or several) further. They plumb the darker side of maternal instincts via unnerving, slow-burning stories of mothers, daughters and the secrets and lies that sometimes bind them.

…

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