The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder 215 pages

This was one of those books I'd heard about, but had put way down on my list.  Only recently I read another book about challenged and banned books and it put The Egypt Game at the top of my to-read list.  It's no wonder this book is a classic and a past Newbery honor book.  It is a book that any kid can relate to, the desire to find the people who will understand you, the imagination and creativity that happen naturally when kids are left on their own for entertainment, and the excitement of creating your own world are all very engaging and inspiring.  Of course, there's a bit of mystery and suspense thrown in just for fun, too.  If you haven't read this one since you were a kid, or if you have a kid 4th grade or older, this should move to the top of your to-read list, too! 

#MurderTrending by Gretchen McNeil 352 pages

I can’t believe that I finished this book in only two days. I’m actually surprised I finished it at all. The description of this book intrigued me but when I started reading, I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. It’s intense, suspenseful, and gruesome at times. I just couldn’t stop! I would recommend to teens who are not afraid of horror movies. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart!

Dee Guerrera wakes up in a dimly lit warehouse wearing a ballgown. She has been transferred to Alcatraz 2.0, a prison island where convicted felons are hunted and killed live on the Postman app.  Dee's only goal is to stay alive long enough to clear her name. She was accused of killing her step-sister. Dee teams up with other teens on the island, where they are deemed the Death Row Breakfast Club. Will they be able to clear Dee's name or will the Postman's executioners get to them first?  

I received an Advanced Reader's Copy thanks to NetGalley. 

Where There's a Will: a Nero Wolfe Mystery by Rex Stout 258 pages

I love revisiting these books.  This one is not just an intriguing mystery, but a fun character study, too.
When strong, influential sisters, April, May and June call on Wolfe, he prepares himself for the worst.  After all, he does not play well with women.  Their main complaint is that their bother's will is bizarre.  He left his sisters a piece of fruit each, an oddly small amount to his wife and a whopping $700,000 to his mistress.  Something sure doesn't seem right in all of it.  The sisters don't care about money, they all have plenty of their own.  However, there were some legacies that were promised and it seems unlikely that their brother would have completely ignored them.  This was a tricky one that even got Wolfe not only out of his chair, but out of the house!  Read by Michael Prichard, it was a treat as always.

Over My Dead Body by Rex Stout 293 pages

When a Balkan beauty gets in trouble over some missing diamonds, to whom can she turn but the world-famous Nero Wolfe?  Especially since she claims to be Wolfe's long lost daughter!  The stakes are suddenly raised when a student at this woman's fencing school ends up dead after a 'pointed' lesson.  As Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, thrust and parry into a tangle of documents, identities and international intrigue, another student body turns up, expertly skewered through the heart.  Is Wolfe's long lost daughter the black sheep of the family, a hot-blooded mistress of murder? This is gumshoe detective fun at its best and well worth listening to again.
Another fantastic Nero Wolfe mystery read by Michael Prichard, but I've yet to meet one I didn't love!

Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout 274 pages

It is a well established fact that Nero Wolfe seldom leaves his house, and almost never for work.  So when a murder occurs while he and Archie Goodwin are visiting a fair, he's aggravated, to say the least.  If he wants to get back home to his favorite chair, he'll just have to solve the murder.  As always, the characters of Nero and Archie are vivid and fun.  This installment of the series is also the introduction of Lily Rowen, who gives Archie an opportunity to show just how witty he can be.  I listened to this read by Michael Prichard, who captures Archie's voice to perfection. 

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, 320 pages

In the 1920's the Osage Indians of Oklahoma were quite wealthy.  Their land was oil-rich and they owned the mineral rights.  All was not rosy however.  Dozens of Osage Indians were murdered and somehow those cases couldn't be solved locally.

Finally, the Bureau of Investigation stepped in and found out who was behind at least some of the murders.  The why was easy - greed. 

In the first part of the book, author David Grann explores the story of one of the families whose members were murdered.   The second part details the investigation into the murders by the Bureau of Investigation, which became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The third part details the authors own investigation into this story, the additional information he found and the closure he was able to provide to some of the families whose relatives were murdered. 

The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller 304 pages

I am not usually a non-fiction reader, however I was intrigued by this book. Everyone knows the rhyme about Lizzie Borden: 
   Lizzie Borden took an axe, 
   Gave her mother forty whacks. 
   When she saw what she had done, 
   She gave her father forty-one. 

I think it was because of that rhyme that made me pick up this book. It did take me a while to get into the book but once I finally did, I couldn't stop reading it. Once I was finished reading it, I have to ask "Did Lizzie kill her father and step-mother?" It may be a question that is never answered. 

The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews 451 pages

I highly recommend this book as a great summer beach read. Riley Griggs is following a summer tradition and coming home to Belle Isle. Her family have been residents and land owners for centuries.  But this summer will be like none other.  This is the summer when Riley and her husband will break the news to their daughter that they are divorcing.  But Riley's husband doesn't show and instead she is met by a process server.  Riley will need the support of her old friends and family.  By the time Labor Day rolls around and hurricane season blows in, old secrets will have been revealed and lives changed forever.

Famous Last Words by Katie Alender, 312 pages (2016-2017 Truman Readers Award Nominee)

In Famous Last Words, Willa is an angst filled teenage girl who has just moved to Hollywood with her recently remarried mom and her new famous movie producer stepfather.  As if starting a new school and making new friends weren't hard enough, Willa harbors a dark secret.  She killed her father.  Willa wants nothing more than to get in touch with her father and tell him how sorry she is for the fight they had and how she didn't mean to hurt him.  Though her spiritual attempts to contact her father never seem to work, Willa gets these crazy headaches and starts having visions of terribly frightening things.  There's a dead body in her swimming pool, messages on walls, and other things only she can see or hear.  Meanwhile, there's a serial killer loose in Hollywood who is targeting young actresses and reenacting famous death scenes and Willa starts to realize her hallucinations might be tied to the murders and that someone or something might be trying to send her a message. 

Of course, it's not all ghosts and murders in this story.  Willa makes a few new friends.  Marnie, a Hollywood kid like Willa, Reed, her stepfather's handsome young assistant, and Wyatt, a serious guy who is obsessed with the Hollywood Killer.  When Willa realizes the magnitude of the trouble she's in she needs someone to help her, but who?

I can't say much more without spoiling it.  I will say I never would have picked this up had it not been an award nominee.  Mysteries are fine, but ghost stories are not my cup of tea.  Fortunately for me this was creepy, but not too scary.  The story itself moved quickly and I stayed up too late finishing it last night and then stayed up even later watching something silly to counteract the creepiness.

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson, 311 pages

Lily and Ted meet on a plane and several drinks and conversations later, decide to murder Ted’s wife. Seems a simple enough plan but for a host of psychopathic characters each a bit more evil than the other but still you can’t help but root for them. This well written, fast paced tale gets you hooked fast with lots of twists, turns, betrayals and secrets. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book. 

Psychological thrilling at its best.

Memory Man by David Baldacci, 405 pages

This is the first book in the Amos Decker series by David Baldacci.  Amos Decker's life was irrevocably changed 22 years ago when he sustained a brain injury due to a hit during his one and only play and game as a professional football player.  That injury caused Amos to have a near perfect memory.

His life was changed again 16 months ago.  He returned home from his job as a police detective to discover his wife, daughter and brother-in-law murdered.  He left his job, lost his house and became homeless.  He is now a private investigator on the wrong side of town.

A man suddenly confesses to the murder of Amos' family and then a horrific mass killing happens at the local high school.

Baldacci has several series going but I hope he gets back to this one soon.  I am eagerly awaiting book #2.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore 326 pages

Someday, if my dream comes true, Christopher Moore will ask me to be his proofreader.  That way I will get first looks at all of his books and I won't have to wait until they are published!  I love his books so much. This one, like Fool was inspired by some pretty heavy Shakespearean works.  Fool was kind of a retelling of King Lear from the fool's perspective.  Serpent has Pocket (the fool from Fool) back for more crazy, witty antics (and some pretty gnarly revenge involving a man-eating sea serpent), but inspired this time by The Merchant of Venice and Othello.  Only Moore could weave two completely different stories (make that three, because there was another work that inspired him for this one) and make it not only make sense, but have you giggling at others' demise.  I have never been disappointed by Moore, I just greedily wait for the next book.  Write faster, Christopher!!!

Under Your Skin by Sabine Durrant 295 pages

Gaby Mortimer has the perfect life. She’s a talk show host of a popular morning show, owns a beautiful home, has a maid and a nanny too, a handsome husband, and a beautiful child.  And then one early predawn morning while out for her daily jog she discovers the body of a young woman left in a wooded copse and everything goes downhill from there. Fast. Gaby is eventually arrested for the crime, she loses her job, is hounded by the media. At first you don’t really care. She’s not the most likeable character with her self-deprecation, her middle class snobbishness, the passive way she seems to go through life. But there are more obvious suspects and when Gaby teams up with a journalist to investigate what really happened you find yourself rooting for her.

Under Your Skin is a fast paced, beautifully written thriller that has lots of twists and turns and a heck of a surprise ending. Excellent read!

The House on the Cliff by Charlotte Williams 338 pages

The House on the Cliff is a perfect example of the characters getting in the way of a good story. Jessica Mayhew is a practicing therapist with a cheating husband, a wayward teenage daughter, and with  a new  young client who is causing her to experience some very inappropriate thoughts. And if that’s not enough there’s also a spooky house on a cliff, a young woman who falls to her death, a famous, womanizing possible suspect, his son who experiences nightmares that put him in a depressive, perhaps suicidal state, and a long suffering wife and mother who has her own set of problems. Add to this mix, the therapist Maggie who spills info from her clients confidential sessions to both her husband and best friend, who involves herself in her clients business (the one she has inappropriate thoughts for) including flying off to Sweden on a whim to interview the victim’s mother—again over something that is none of her business, who allows her teenage daughter outrageous freedoms for no reason other than, well, who knows, and makes one sentence disclaimers like I probably shouldn’t have done that or perhaps my husband’s one night stand hit me worst that I thought as if that made all her ridiculous choices okay.

An excerpt from the book: This comes after the mother (sharp therapist) who followed her sixteen year old daughter after she told her she was going to a friend’s house but was seen with a man instead. A man who turned out to be a previous client who was fired from his job as a teacher for inappropriately touching a young female student.

Daughter: You can stop spying on me.

Mother: I’m not spying on you.

Daughter: Calm down. She spoke as if reassuring a lunatic. “Don’t call me again.”

Mother: OK. But whose house is it?

Daughter: It’s Emyr’s house. (Emyr being the previous client)

When the therapist asks her daughter when she will be back the daughter tells her she’ll keep her informed and then hangs up on her.

Really??????

Just out of curiosity. Do the people who contribute to the blurbs on the back of books actually read the books? Don’t think I’ll waste my time with the second in the series. When it comes out that is. 

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith 455 pages

Cormoran Strike has one foot (literally) in the door of financial ruin, he’s broken up with his girlfriend, living out of his office, and receiving death threats from a previous client when John Bristow hires him to prove that his supermodel sister did not commit suicide when she fell to her death from the top floor of her apartment building.  So Cormoran charges him an outrageous fee and in a very systematic and organized way begins to investigate what seems from every angle an obvious suicide. But the deeper he delves the more he comes to realize that nothing is as it seems. My first exposure to JK Rowling was Casual Vacancy and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did The Cuckoo’s Calling. I love the effort she puts into creating her characters, the time she takes to set up the plot, the English village aspect (although that’s pushing it for the London setting of The Cuckoo’s Calling) the way she writes, all of it. And the best news of all! A sequels on its way. 

The Black House by Peter May 357 pages

Edinburgh detective Fin Macleod is sent to his native Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides to investigate a killing that’s frighteningly familiar to another crime he recently investigated. Leaving behind a wife and the memory of his young son who was recently killed in an accident, Fin resolutely goes back home to face the events of the past that caused him to leave so many years ago and not return. The Black House jumps back and forth between the past and the present day in a slow but methodical way as Fin works to solve the murder and come to terms with the past.

This is a take your time kind of a read. The pace is slow, the focus is on the characters rather than the crime and sometimes it seems as if nothing is happening at all. But in the end it was all worth it.

Hard Going by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 236 Pages

I do love a good mystery. Strangely enough though I don’t care for all  the violence or gore. Just tell me there’s a body and a mystery to solve and I’m good. Which is one of the reasons why the Bill Slider series is one of my favorite police procedurals. That and the strong focus on the characters and their interactions with each other, the author’s command of the English language, the laugh out loud humor and the complex plots.

In this latest offering, DI Bill Slider of the Shepherd’s Bush Metropolitan Police has to solve the murder of Lionel Bygod a retired solicitor who spent most of his time helping others and who seemingly didn’t have an enemy in the world. But things are rarely what they seem and the deeper they dig the more suspects they uncover and the more secrets are revealed.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent 311 pages

This book was recommeded to me by a patron.  I had been looking for something new and different to read and this certainly fit the bill.  This book is based on a true story and takes place in the early 1800's in Iceland.  Agnes Magnusdottir has been condemned to death for her part in the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jonsson.  She is sent to an isolated farm on Iceland's farthest reaches to await her death.  We hear her story as told to an assistant reverend, sent to counsel her and from original letters from her trial.  Agnes has had a very tough life, eeking out a living as a housemaid or servent in the barren regions of Iceland.  Abandoned by her mother at a young age, she knows none of her family.  She has a suprisingly high intellect.  While she is at the farm, she works very hard, partaking in the chores of daily life, and uses her knowledge of herbs and healing potions, learned from Natan, to help the inhabitants of the farm and their neighbors.  There is no hope for her release or pardon, but the farmers come to see Agnes as a person, someone they care about, rather as a muderess to fear.  I read this heart breaking book on a brutally cold day with the snow falling outside.  Hannah Kent does a wonderful job describing the cold remote landscape of Iceland and I truly felt as if I were there, shivering under the blankets!  I think I will look for something warmer now.

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie 180 pages

Miss Marple is recovering from a slight illness in the Bahamas, thanks to her nephew's generosity.  She enjoys the sea and the sun, but misses the excitement that always seems to be brewing just under the surface back in her own village of St. Mary Mead.  As she usually does, she starts seeing similarities between her current companions and the folks back home.  One of her pastimes is sitting with old Major Palgrave, who loves telling stories of his adventurous life...ad nauseam.  It's not so much that people mind his stories, as that he tells the same ones again and again.  However, after telling Miss Marple the story of a murderer and announcing that he had a snapshot, he rapidly shoves the photo back in his wallet and abruptly changes the subject.  This doesn't worry Miss Marple terribly until the poor old Major shows up dead the very next morning.  People keep insisting that he had high blood pressure, but no one can remember who might have told them that.  Miss Marple fears the worst.  Why kill an old blowhard who could be laughed away, unless the murderer was really there and preparing to strike again?  If anyone can sort it out, it's Miss Jane Marple. I listened to this on audio and enjoyed it thoroughly.

The Last Alibi by David Ellis 465 pgs.

On a day when lawyer Jason Kolarich is strung out on prescription drugs, James Drinker comes into his office claiming that even though he is innocent of the murders of two women he will probably be the main suspect since he was linked to both victims. He believes he is being framed and somehow in the course of the conversation Jason tells him all the best ways one can frame a person for a crime. Imagine Jason’s surprise when it turns out he’s the one being framed and is then arrested for murder. After that it’s a race against time to discover Drinker’s true identity without violating lawyer/client confidentiality and to save himself. This is a can’t-put-it-down-no-matter-what kind of a book.