By Ruth Coker Burks

 

This is the memoir of Ruth, who, in 1986, visited a friend in the hospital and watched how an AIDs patient was being shunned.  When she bravely went to comfort him, word spread that she was willing to care for AIDs patients and she became an early advocate for AIDS patients during a time of misinformation and discrimination.  She became an advisor to then Governor Bill Clinton who looked to her for advice in handling the AIDS/HIV crisis.  An important story.

By Greer Macallister

 

This fictional novel is based on historical events.  It is 1855 and four attempts to locate ships lost in an Arctic expedition have failed.  Now the wife of the lost leader asks Virginia to lead an all female expedition to find her husband.  A year later, Virginia is on trial for the murder of one of the members of her expedition.  What really happened?  A tale of murder and intrigue.

 

 

By K.J. Dell’Antonia

 

This is a debut novel.  Two rival fried chicken joints in a small Kansas town are owned by feuding family members.  A reality TV show called Food Wars decides to pit them against each other.  Long held secrets between the families start to come out.  The author’s fond memories of her childhood in a small  Texas town help the story to ring true.

 

By Homeira Qaderi

 

Qaderi gave birth to her son in the middle of the Afghanistan conflict.  But she was not an ordinary Afghani woman-she was an activist, who risked her life to teach women in her country.  In 2015, right before she was to leave for an international conference, her husband suddenly divorced her and because of the laws in her country, she immediately lost custody of her young son and was forced to leave him behind.  This is her love letter to him.  

By Christa Parravani

 

Parravani had an abortion at age 20.  She went on to get married, have two children and struggle with her husband to provide for them financially.  At age 40, she had an unplanned pregnancy and had to make some difficult choices that were made even harder because in her home state of West Virginia in 2017, it was not easy to get an abortion. Although she feared that having this child would end her career, she ultimately chose to give birth.  She writes eloquently of the difficulties of women who choose this path, and have to struggle with being underpaid and having to deal with our healthcare system.

By Anthony Horowitz

 

This is sort of a sequel to “Magpie Murders.”  The editor of the late mystery writer,  Alan Conway, Susan Ryeland, both of whom played a part in “Magpie Murders,” is roped  into a murder investigation which leads her back into looking for clues in her late client’s book.  Horowitz is a master of mysteries within mysteries and his books are great fun.

By Jane Gardam

 

Gardam is an award winning English author, and although this book was published in 2004, I only just discovered it. Old Filth is a retired judge, living a quiet and boring life in a small English village, having retired from living in Hong Kong.  The author takes us back into his past so we discover what has made him what he is-and she has a wonderful writing style-she is a master of language and subtle plot creation.  This is the first volume of a trilogy.

By Zeyn Joukhadar

 

This novel spans three generation of  Syrian Americans.  A young trans boy, who has never felt like he belongs, finds the journal of a Syrian American artist who had disappeared 60 years before.  He finds that her past is tied to his mother’s and grandmother’s past, and discovers the history of queer and transgender people in his community that he had never before been aware of.  

By Rick Bragg

 

Bragg is  prize winning columnist and humorist who specializes in the stories about his home area, the South.  This is a collection of columns from Southern Living magazine and Garden and Gun, filled with love and humor.

By Alice Blanchard

 

This is the second in a series introducing detective Natalie Lockhart, who was introduced in the book “Trace of Evil.”  Natalie has to find the murderer of a young musician, whose body was found in a trash can during her small town’s celebration of Halloween.  As she digs to find the killer, she discovers that this case may be related to the disappearance of her best friend years ago.  This is a good way to meet a new detective in what promises to be another good detective series.

By Emma Cline

 

Ten stories about ordinary people living what first appears to be very ordinary lives, but then the stories take a switch.  The author wants us to think about what lies beneath the surface of regular people.

By Ronald Balson

 

This novel spans the course of 25 years, following the life of Eli Rosen and his quest for justice. The novel goes from Nazi occupied Poland to postwar Germany to Chicago during the Vietnam War era.

By Bill Clegg

 

Several seemingly disconnected stories all come together as Clegg intertwines the lives of multiple characters and then his story reveals their secrets going back fifty years.

 

 

By Frances Cha

 

This debut novel is set in present day Seoul and tells the story of four young women in Korea,  each with different goals and each struggling to achieve them.  Their problems are both unique to life in South Korea, but also relate to the universal problems of all women.

 

 

By Molly Aitken

 

The story of Oona is told in this debut novel.  Oona grew up on the island of Inis, a desolate island off the coast of Ireland where life had not changed in years.  Oona dreams of leaving the island, but then, she is forced to flee.  Twenty years later, she is forced to return to try to resolve the problems of her past so she can move on in her life.

 

 

By Jo Nesbo

 

Mechanic Roy is leading a simple life, when his brother, Carl, comes back to their little village with grand plans to build a hotel.  Roy, who has always protected Carl, finds it harder to do now that Carl and his plans have become problematic for him and the town.  It doesn’t help that the town authorities have suddenly started looking into the tragic deaths of their parents that happened years before.

 

 

By Rebecca Watson

 

This novel is written in a totally unique stream of consciousness form.  The  novel follows the every thought of a woman for twenty four hours.  The unnamed woman tries to go about her usual, boring day although she has recently been the victim of a sexual assault.  Her chaotic thoughts make this a challenging novel to say the least.

 

 

By Megan Goldin

 

Rachel Krall is the host of a very successful true crime podcast.  Now she is anonymously asked to investigate a crime in a small town.  Rachel’s attempts to investigate this crime start to lead to a connection to a mystery from Rachel’s past-the disappearance of her sister 25 years ago.

 

By Ellen Alpsten

 

Peter the Great is dying-and his second wife, Catherine, wants to take over his power,  She has to do a lot of plotting, which includes keeping his death secret until she is ready to make her move.  She actually ruled as empress from Peter’s death until her own.

 

 

By Rebecca James

 

A modern Gothic novel.  In 1947, Alice Miller, a Londoner, accepts a post as governess at Winterbourne, where she is to look after the two children of the owner.  Although everything seems great at first, soon strange happenings start to threaten her sanity and her life.  The scene shifts to present day New York, when art gallery curator, Rachel, is informed that she is actually related to the owner of Winterbourne and is the only heir to the estate.  She excitedly goes to Winterbourne-and of course, problems and secrets emerge.

 

 

By Richard Osman

 

This is the debut of what the author hopes to be a series.  Four retires spend Thursday afternoon in their luxury retirement residence in Kent, England, examining old crime cases-until two new ones fall into their laps.  A fun and well written book.

 

 

By Sigrid Nunez

 

This is not an escapist novel- the narrator, unnamed, as are all the characters, spends a lot of time listening to the experiences of others as she has found that most people want to talk about themselves.  Then a friend pulls her into a life crisis, where she needs to be more than just a passive reactor.  There’s a lot of stream of consciousness in this novel, but from the reviews, it sounds like another thought provoking book-a challenging read.