The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

July 12, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Cady McClain and Grace Experience. Random House Audio, 2017. 9 hours, 38 minutes. Library copy.  When Lianna Ahlberg awakens one morning at her parents’ home in Vermont and realizes her mother, Annalee, is missing, she immediately feels the worst because Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction causes her to wander out of the house and into dangerous situations. Once, Annalee sleepwalked right on to the ledge of the bridge over Gale River, requiring Lianna to pull […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: Cady McClain, Chris Bohjalian, Grace Experience

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

May 2, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Flatiron Books, 2018. 329 pgs. Purchased.  Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, was near the very top of my list of favorite reads from 2017, and I have a feeling this novel — her second starring Australian Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk — will snag a spot on my list for 2018. The drought that plagued the events of Harper’s first novel has lifted, and readers return to find that Falk is pursuing a money laundering case against two […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Jane Harper

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

March 7, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Georgia Maguire. Macmillian Audio, 2016. 8 hours, 23 minutes. Library copy. To outsiders, Grace Angel has the perfect marriage. Her husband, Jack, is a lawyer representing victims of domestic violence, and he absolutely dotes on his wife. He takes her on spur of the moment holidays to Thailand, provides a comfortable home so that Grace does not have to work, and is committed to Grace’s promise to bring her sister Millie, who has Downs Syndrome, […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Thailand, United Kingdom • Tags: B.A. Paris, Georgia Maguire

The Media and the Massacre by Sonya Voumard

April 6, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Transit Lounge, 2016. 140 pgs. Purchased. On April 28, 1996, a twenty-eight-year-old from a suburb outside of Hobart, Tasmania murdered two individuals at a guest accommodation site that his father had wanted to purchase. The man then drove to Port Arthur, a tourist site and former convict prison colony, and murdered 33 people and wounded 23 before being captured by police the following day. The Port Arthur massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in Australian history and among the […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Crime, Nonfiction, Oceania, Stella Prize • Tags: Sonya Voumard

Murder in the Bayou by Ethan Brown

January 23, 2017 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2016. 224 pgs. Library copy. Between 2005 and 2009, the bodies of eight women were discovered dumped in the bayous and canals of Jefferson Davis parish in Louisiana. The “Jeff Davis 8” victims cross the racial divide of the county; their commonality stems from the fact that all were engaged in prostitution, addicted to drugs, and were related in some way to each other. The most important commonality, however, is that each of the eight victims was connected […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Crime, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Ethan Brown

The Cut by George Pelecanos

January 16, 2017 by Christina

Fiction — print. Reagan Arthur, 2011. 292 pgs. Purchased. After returning from serving overseas in Iraq, Spiro Lucas has built a business for himself as a “finder” in Washington D.C. Attorneys, criminals, and the occasional average citizen hire him to locate stolen possession in exchange for a substantial cut of the item’s value — forty percent. The large finder’s fee assures his clients of his Lucas’ discretion and allows the ex-Marine to avoid dealing with the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian society. […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Crime, North America, United States • Tags: George Pelecanos

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

March 5, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition.  Riverhead, 2014. 568 pgs. Purchased. In the aftermath of World War I, twenty-six year old Frances Wray and her mother are obliged to take in paying guests — a more polite term for lodgers that allows Mrs. Wray and the neighbors to ignore the family’s rather spectacular tumble in social standing. Their room for rent notice is answered by a young, married couple from the “clerk class” named Lilian and Leonard Barber, and the Wrays and Barber have […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Baileys Women's Prize, Book Club, Chunkster, Crime, Europe, Fiction, LGBTQA+, United Kingdom, Walter Scott Prize • Tags: Sarah Waters

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

January 20, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Broadway, 2010. 350 pgs. Purchased. In the 1980s, seven-year-old Libby Day’s mother and two older sisters were murdered by her brother, Ben. Each of Ben’s victims were murdered in a different manner — Michelle was strangled in her bed, Debby was cut by an axe, and their mother, Patty, was killed with a shotgun. Libby, who escaped and hid outside during January in Kansas, lost several of her fingers and toes to frostbite. The tragedy captured the imagination […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Crime, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

January 14, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Broadway, 2006. 254 pgs. Purchased. A journalist at a second-rate paper outside of Chicago, Camille Preaker’s editor sends her back to her hometown in southern Missouri to cover the disappearance of a second little girl from Wind Gap named Natalie. Nine months ago, a little girl named Ann was abducted, murdered, and found in a creek with all her teeth pulled out. The local sheriff thinks it was someone from outside the community; the detective on loan from […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Crime, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Gillian Flynn