fiction

Following The Hidden Man and Breach of Trust, The Wrong Man is third in the Jason Kolarich mystery series. To help out a colleague, Kolarich agrees to defend a homeless Iraqi war vet on a charge of murder, fully expecting he will only be going through the motions. However, the more he digs into the case, the more he thinks his client is innocent. There is plenty of legal maneuvering but it doesn’t hinder the plot from moving along. This thriller is well paced, humorous and entertaining!

Evelyn Bucknow is at the center of everything. From her vantage point, the ten year old narrator of local author Laura Moriatry’s richly nuanced novel, The Center of Everything, sees all sides. She lives smack in the center of the United States with her single mother and disabled brother in a cheap apartment outside small-town Kerrville, Kansas. As she grows into a college-bound young adult, Evelyn witnesses the battle between her compassionately rebellious but immature mother and her loyal and stable but judgmental grandmother.

Escorting her mother to sign up for food stamps, Evelyn worries

This best-selling novel by South Korean author Kyung-Sook Shin takes a piercing look at how we treat those closest to us, and what it means to be a wife and mother. Told from four perspectives, the story examines the aftermath of the disappearance of “mom”. Some of the narrators speak in the unusual voice of second person, which serves to make the narrative more personal.

The narrators’ revelations are often poignant but can be uncomfortably honest, creating a family portrait that might serve to make the reader painfully aware of his/her own family’s foibles, but also of the strength of love

Falling into Place is the story of Liz Emerson. Liz has just driven her car off an icy road and tumbled down a cliff. Everyone believes it was accidental. It wasn't. Liz planned her suicide in such a way that no one would know that she actually wanted to die. Even her best friends didn't know how unhappy she was, how much she loathed herself and her life. Liz is the pinnacle of popular at her high school. She is THE beautiful, mean girl. Liz has left immeasurable ruined reputations, relationships and lives in her wake. Some she has ruined through ignorance and self-centeredness, some she has

Molly is driving back, but she doesn't know from where. And she doesn't know to where.  All she knows is that she should be in school, but she's in her car instead. Suddenly she sees a motorcycle speeding up behind her. Somehow she knows that he is coming for her. She passes through the intersection as the light turns red. The motorcycle keeps coming; it runs the red light. A truck enters the intersection, catching the back tire of the motorcycle, sending is spinning.  The rider flies through the air, over Molly's car and lands on the asphalt right in front of her. She brakes, screaming. She

I love superheroes and I like them colorful, weird, larger than life, heroic and good, inspirational and insightful. I don't generally go for deconstructions of or dark takes on the genre. But I liked Vicious. A LOT. It strips down the idea that people with superpowers see themselves as above us mere mortals and it tears apart the whole Good vs Evil, black-and-white tradition of superheroes and supervillains, but it does it with compelling, charismatic characters and an exciting, enthralling plot.

Victor Vale and Eli Cardale are college roommates and best friends who become fascinated with

Sixteen teenagers are brought to an arena to fight to the death...sound familiar?  Well, you haven't seen it like this before.  In Avengers Arena: Kill or Die, local author Dennis Hopeless puts a superhero spin on this twenty-first century trope, pitting a group of young superheroes-in-training against one another.  The puppet master in Kill or Die is a supervillain named Arcade, who apparently favors overly elaborate ways to kill his victims, but has perfected an environment designed to coerce these teens into killing one another.  Despite valiant attempts at alliance and nobility, Arcade's

If you have enjoyed Coulter's seventeen previous FBI thrillers you will continue to do so with Power Play. Savich and Sherlock are assisted by Special Agent Davis Sullivan who, one fall morning when leaving Starbucks on his way to work, helps to stop a car jacking in progress.  Unbeknownst to him, the intended victim is U.S. Ambassador Natalie Black who is back in the U.S. following the death of her fiancé and an attempt on her life outside of London.  While Savich and Sherlock start the investigation into who is gunning for Ambassador Black, Agent Sullivan is assigned as her bodyguard.  When

A group novel? Sounds like an exercise in egos, inner-circles, and bad writing to me. But I’d heard Kevin Rabas read his poetry, and read a little bit on my own as well. So, despite my reservations, I gave Green Bike a try and was pleasantly surprised.

Rabas, Graves, and Simmons started Green Bike as a private Facebook page using a green bike as a McGuffin. Rabas and Graves tell interweaving stories of girlfriends and boyfriends, lovers and professors. It's a slice of life in a college town and it’s a wonder, really. While Simmons' story remains independent of the other two, it is no less

Continuing the story of Celia West following the death of her superhero father and the retirement of the superheroes of her beloved city, Celia continues to look out for the best interests of her city and has carefully been watching the grandchildren of the superheroes waiting to see if there is a new generation of powerful superheroes in the making.  Two of these new superheroes may be her own daughters Anna and Bethy but so far they aren't exhibiting any signs of superpowers or at least they're not sharing with her if they are developing powers. 

Meanwhile, Anna is having trouble figuring

Leonard Marnham, an engineer employed by the British post office, has lived an extraordinarily sheltered life when he arrives in 1950s Berlin to work on a collaborative project between the British and Americans to tap into Soviet phone lines. His new job and colleagues, and living on his own for the first time, open him up to a wide variety of new tastes and experiences. As befits the Cold War setting,both his work and personal lives also consist of complex webs of secrecy, fear, mistrust, and paranoia. A British scientist even convinces him to try his hand at spying on their American partners

The Kettle triplets Lyn, Cat and Gemma are celebrating their 33rd birthday as they traditionally do, with three cakes and champagne and just the three of them.  The triplets create a stir everywhere they go and this night is no different.  However, what they don't realize is that this birthday is bringing to a head many years of secrets, misunderstandings, and misguided intentions. While they may be triplets, the girls are all individuals with very different personalities and roles they play in the family.  With many flashbacks to the past and told from each of the triplet's viewpoints we see

Life hasn’t been easy for Jim Stark, the protagonist of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. His old apartment isn’t his anymore, his lover Alice has been murdered, and, oh, yeah, he’s just spent the last 11 years in hell. Returning to Los Angeles to murder the cohorts who sent him to hell, Stark finds himself in the middle of something bigger, with the fate of the world at stake. In this showdown, the bad guys are terrifying and the good guys are only good by comparison. And Stark? He’s just looking out for his own.

Even for a work of urban fantasy, Sandman Slim is particularly dark and gritty

James Swain has written a series of novels featuring Tony Valentine as the main character. Mr. Lucky is the fifth in a series that has been one enjoyable read after another. Tony is a retired Atlantic City policeman who runs his own consulting firm that assists casinos in determining if they have been victims of fraud.  There is a lot in these novels about the culture of casinos and gambling which I find interesting.  In Mr. Lucky, a new and different scam unfolds for our entertainment.  Mr. Lucky is a guy (Ricky Smith) who wins at every casino game, and Tony Valentine must figure out how he

Caitlin Moran, The Times (London that is, not New York) columnist who is known primarily for her non-fiction writing (How to Be a Woman, Moranthology), excessive eyeliner, and very big hair, has published a novel for the first time since she was 16. How to Build a Girl is the semi-autographical story of teenage rock critic Johanna Morrigan, who lives in a cramped council house with her wannabe rock star father, post-partum-depression-suffering mother, and a gaggle of siblings. Johanna dreams of ways to drag herself, and ideally her entire family, out of poverty. While deciding to become a

Morgan measures her likeability by how many Twitter followers she has. Her goal is to reach 5000 and she is getting very close. If she has 5000 followers, she has to be likeable, right? Even if she doesn't have any real life friends, even if the father she's never known didn't like her enough to stick around and help raise her. She is currently tweeting about things she thought were true. For example, that working in an amusement park would be amusing (it's not), that heart disease happens to other people (how could HER mother be in the hospital with heart problems???), that rocking out to

Mysti Murphy is not having a good 7th grade year. Her only friend, Anibal Gomez, has developed a crush on a Cheer Squad girl and has decided to change his image in an effort to be noticed. Part of Anibal's "social experiment" is to develop a hipster persona that he thinks his new crush will admire. To see if his experiment works, he needs to ditch Mysti. Anibal decides that he and Mysti can talk and text in the evenings and on weekends, but they must have NO contact during school. Mysti has no other friends, so she now sits alone at the Loser Island in the cafeteria at lunchtime. At home

Edie and Richard Middlestein have been married for over 30 years, enjoying their family life in Chicago. But as their relationship stops growing and Richard decides to leave, all Edie can seem to do is grow.  She is obsessed with food and eating.  Will the family save her from herself?  Will Richard come back and continue loving every ounce of her?  One particular scene in The Middlesteins made me realize just how much this woman is eating:  Edie's daughter-in-law follows her from the house to McDonald's, then to Burger King, and on to the Chinese restaurant, watching Edie order, eat and throw

Step into a world where princesses fight witches and knights battle dragons and prepare to become enchanted with the wonderful Pennyroyal Academy. 

M.A. Larson creates a truly imaginative world of cadets in training to become princesses and knights who will ultimately rid the world of evil. If you think princesses are just beautiful girls living in castles, then think again. The cadets have to battle each other in obstacle courses and training exercises, jump from towers onto the horsebacks of their heroes, and learn to find confidence and compassion within themselves when faced with evil

I thought this was a lovely book.  Clean and thoughtful.

Full disclosure: I've spent time as an existentialist (Camus said he was not existentialist, but others claim he was) and a nihilist and an absurdist. That's part of the reason I found this book neither shocking nor depressing. The whole middle of the book involves prison and a "why bother" attitude.  Instead, the modernist prose was a fresh breath after the musty classics and period fiction I've been reading recently, and the solitude was a relaxing diversion from my busy and loud life.

The Stranger reminded me of Saul Bellow and

Just as powerful as Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, The Farther Shore is the story of what happens to our military men and women when we send them to hostile countries for reasons no one really understands.

Joshua Stantz is monitoring the bombing of a city in Somalia when things go horribly wrong. And they continue to go wrong, for how could they go anything but wrong? As Stantz and his company make their way across the warring city, searching for the army that has abandoned them, the reader is given a clear view into the hearts and minds of men thrown into a multitude of conflicts with no

Flawed yet relatable characters in Nine Inches: Stories confess their inner thoughts and motivations as they recount the events that lead to their ultimate downfall.

What a heart wrenching, yet inspiring, read this was! I listened to the audio book and couldn't tear myself away. It's been a long time since I found myself so immersed in a story, or since I have read a story so incredibly tragic and yet, at the same time so hopeful.

The main character is Carey, who believes she is 15 years old. She suffers abuse and neglect at the hands of her meth addicted, mentally ill mother who kidnapped her away from her father when she was five.  She has been hidden away in the Obed Wild and Scenic National Park in Tennessee, along with a six year old half sister. 

Arturo and Alma Rivera lived a happy life in Mexico until their beautiful teenage daughter, Maribel, sustains a serious injury in an accident. Unsure if she'll ever be the same again, they migrate to Delaware, where Maribel will be able to attend a special school and hopefully begin her road to recovery. But America is not what the family thought it would be—Arturo’s job is brutal, Maribel doesn't seem to be making much progress in school, and Alma struggles with her new life and learning a new language.

The one bright spot is that the Riveras meet the Toro family, who came to the U.S. years

The Daylight Gate was a whim I picked up that fit neatly into my October/Halloween/Witch reading theme, and that delighted me more than I expected.  I read Winterson years ago for a post-structuralist college class and only remembered her fondly to feel smarter about myself.  This time, I picked her up for the shiny cover and, yes, the promise of witches. 

The Daylight Gate is a semi-historical novel about one of the earliest seventeenth century English witch-hunts.  It's suitably foreboding, and you watch doom circle and dive at every one of the characters.  There’s magic and politics and

Beautiful Malice by Australian author Rebecca James immediately made me think of a teenaged take on Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, except Malice came out first.  Katherine has been keeping a secret about her dark past.  Her very popular and pretty new best friend Alice has a lot of secrets, as well.  There are so many secrets that I can’t say anything else without there being major spoilers!  This quick summer read is filled with bad decisions, youthful indiscretions, and a psychotic stalker.  Fans of books by the previously mentioned Flynn or Lisa Jackson will probably enjoy this escapist

James R. Hannibal’s novel titled Shadow Catcher reads like a Clancy thriller.

Nick Baron is an Air Force Major in charge of a failed B-2 stealth bomber mission that lands the fighter jet at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Nick leads his Triple Chase team to find and dispose of the lost bomber before the enemy can get their hands on it.

Danger lurks around the corner as a US soldier sends a distress signal from the deep interior region of China, another far off country.  The only plane that can handle this mission is the Shadow Catcher, a highly-equipped, state of the art fighter plane.

This

Finn Easton is like any other epileptic teenage boy with a famous author for a father who had a horse fall on him, break his back and kill his mother. Which is to say that Finn Easton is like no one you have ever met. The eerie resemblance between himself and the main character of his father’s best-selling book, has left Finn wondering if he is even real. Measuring time by the miles traveled by earth’s rotation, Finn has a different way of looking at things than anyone around him. Finn’s senior year brings opportunities to visit broken dams, see the world outside of California, kiss a girl, go

It's 1962 and the world is watching as President Kennedy and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev face off. Tensions are rising day by day, the Cuban Missile Crisis is reaching its peak. Scott's father has built an underground bomb shelter and the family is the brunt of the neighbor's jokes. That is until the air raid sirens go off and suddenly only Scott's family has somewhere safe to go. Just as Scott's dad is about to close and lock the heavy steel door, some of the neighbors grab it and try to open it back up; they are desperate to survive. But Scott's dad has only stockpiled enough for the

High school seniors Tony and Ryan had a plan for after graduation.  They were going to get jobs and an apartment and live together—Toni to get away from her mom who favored her younger sister, and Ryan to leave behind his alcoholic and abusive father.  It all seemed so simple.  But that's not what happened.  Senior year the "mean girls" clique started harassing Toni, just to be mean.  Then, unbelievably, Toni's little sister, Nicole, starts hanging out with the clique and harassing Toni too.  Nicole has also changed a lot since starting high school; she's gotten secretive, and sullen, although