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.…
I did not go looking for Fallen Mountains. Several months ago, I needed a Hoopla title for my mystery book club and wanted something different than the lighter fare we’d been reading lately — all good books, certainly, but variety is the spice of a reading life, and I was determined to find something new.…
Saving Ruby King is a powerful story about family, the pull of history, the power of friendship, and church culture in the Black community on Chicago’s South Side. Ruby King and her mother, Alice, have been beaten by their alcoholic father and husband for years. When Alice is found murdered in her home, her homegoing…
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians opens on the anxiety-inducing scene of Ricky Boss Ribs running for his life. He’s being tracked and hunted… But is it by the horde of angry men from outside the bar or does it have something to do with the mysterious herd of elk waiting in the field…
