In 1956 there was plenty to worry about- the Communists and nuclear missiles, but missing children were an anomaly. In Waltham, Massachusetts, the setting for Is This Tomorrow, people didn’t even lock their doors and children moved from one house to another, playing and eating snacks until the call home for dinner. When twelve-year-old Jimmy disappears one afternoon this quiet ... Read More...
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is a New York Times Bestseller. It is out in paperback now and has already been optioned for the screen by 20th Century Fox with a film adaptation to be produced by Reese Witherspoon. It was last summer’s bestseller and somehow, with everything I was reading, I missed it. Since that moment I’ve been on library holding lists waiting for it. It ... Read More...
When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man
Those of us left behind dug in. Through the fall, through the winter, it seemed we lived on the border of a real life lived elsewhere. It seemed that the absence was ours somehow, not theirs, that we were the ones who were gone. When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man is an aptly titled debut that takes place on Loyalty Island, off of Washington State, where the ... Read More...
Swimming at Night
By page three of Swimming at Night we have already learned of the death of Katie Greene’s sister, Mia. From that point onward, there is little opportunity to stop and catch your breath, as author Lucy Clarke neatly propels the action forward in this, her debut novel, where the mysteries pile up almost immediately. Mia was in Bali, not a country she was supposed to be in, and ... Read More...
The Dinner: A Novel
Dinner out at a nice restaurant. The company is iffy- your boorish brother who, nonetheless, is the frontrunner for prime minister, and his wife. Who he is to the public is not who he is as your brother. So, it’s with trepidation that Paul Lohman and his wife Claire head out for what is likely to be an evening of pro forma conversation about jobs and kids. Neither a subject ... Read More...
The Drowning House
Clare is a tortured soul. Through one of life’s accidents and no one’s fault her precious daughter is dead and it appears likely her marriage is failing as her husband is recovering from the loss and she is not. But he had completed his task, delivered his burden to wherever it is old sorrows go. While I had barely started. I was beginning to think that grieving the loss of my ... Read More...
