WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING by Alyssa Cole is one of the big, buzzy books of this fall, with good reason. While psychological thrillers are not my usual reading fare (because I am a scaredy cat), I adore Cole’s romances and the setting of this book — a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, from the point of…
It's the time of year that all Illinois genealogists look forward to: TryIt! Illinois time. Thanks to the Illinois State Library, we have free access for two months to hundreds of subscription databases above and beyond the ones available to Cook Memorial card holders. The initiative called TryIt! Illinois extends only until the the end…
What if it turned out that the people who are supposed to be superheroes are doing more harm than good? And what if villains aren’t entirely evil? These are the questions posed in Hench, the fabulous new book from Natalie Zina Walschots, a Canadian poet and journalist. The main character, Anna, is a temp worker…
Amanda and Clay have rented a luxury home via Airbnb in a remote spot on Long Island for a week of rest and escape for themselves and for their two teenage kids. After a day of lounging poolside and enjoying the comforts of their rental home, the doorbell rings in the middle of the night.…
I’ve never read a novel quite like 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Elif Shafak is a master storyteller. The novel opens on the moments after the death of Tequila Leila, a sex worker in Istanbul. She’s just been murdered, and her body has been tossed in the trash. The moments – and…
As long-suffering Game of Thrones readers know, sometimes the wait is excruciating for the next book in a series. I saw a recent post from GOT author George R.R. Martin that he was holed up in his isolated mountain cabin writing the sixth book, The Winds of Winter. Martin, 71, also plans to write a…
When Tillie Pembroke’s sister is murdered and tabloid reports suggest the culprit is a supernatural serial killer, Tillie sets out to discover the truth, despite the misgivings of her friends and family -- and her increasing reliance on narcotics to manage a recent injury. It’s a story that could be set anywhere in America…
At the Coopers Chase Luxury Retirement Village, four intrepid retirees have formed the Thursday Murder Club – each week they gather to discuss and solve local cold cases. But trouble is brewing in their bucolic countryside village, and soon the pensioners have not one but two current murders to solve when the owner of the…
When he doesn’t show up for school with his homemade pies for Pi Day, Adam Merkel’s middle school colleagues start worrying about their new math teacher. By third period, it’s announced that the teacher has been found dead and it was one of his 6th grade students, Sal Prentiss, who had found his burned body…
“Do you believe in time?” This question, posed by Su Lan to an attending nurse the night her daughter, Liya, is born is a question that haunts the pages of Meng Jin’s Little Gods from start to finish. Su Lan, a brilliant physicist, is obsessed with erasing her past and understanding the complexities of time.…
