The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Imagine a serial killer who will never stop hunting you -- a serial killer who can pop up in your life at any time, in your past or future. In The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, Kirby was attacked and almost killed by a man who left her with an antique lighter and a criss cross of scars on her stomach. Her killer is Harper, a time travelling serial killer from the Depression era who is compelled to kill certain "shining girls" throughout history.

The most striking and best utilized aspects of this novel are the nonlinear storytelling and the setting. Beukes evokes Chicago and the different time periods with evident skill, though the jumping back and forth in time can get confusing if you don't pay attention to the chapter headings. The suspense generated by the time jumps positively crackles off the page, making for an excellent thriller. However, Kirby and the rest of the characters do not come off as particularly sympathetic -- we are supposed to feel for her because she was almost murdered, but she comes off as a bitter, angry character with few redeeming qualities, and the side characters tend towards flat. Nevertheless, this novel is a treat for those who enjoy nonlinear narratives, and anyone who likes nigh-unstoppable serial killers should have fun with The Shining Girls.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

Best Beach Reads of 2014

This summer is already shaping up to be a great one for book lovers - six of your favorite bestselling authors are back with new books that are sure to be smash hits. Curl up with one these in a beach chair and you'll be on your way to an awesome summer!

Bestselling author James Patterson is back with his newest novel Invisible, in which FBI researcher Emmy Dockery must convince her colleagues that a flood of unsolved crimes are all being committed by the same person.


In Elin Hilderbrand's newest summer read, The Matchmaker, Dabney has an unbroken record of 42 matches made. But when an old flame returns, Dabney must reveal her own dark secrets.

It's another Stephanie Plum novel - need I say more? Fans of Janet Evanovich's wisecracking bounty hunter can expect her newest entry in the series on June 17 - Top Secret Twenty-One.

Stephen King makes his first foray into hard-boiled detective stories with Mr. Mercedes, about a serial killer who runs over innocents with a stolen Mercedes and a retired cop who is determined to take him down before he kills again.

Everyone's favorite professional wizard is back in Skin Game by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden's services have been traded to a group of supernatural villains, so he must help them break into a vault. Their target? The Holy Grail.

Fresh from her smash success last year with The Cuckoo's Calling, J. K. Rowling's newest effort is The Silkworm (again writing under pseudonym Robert Galbraith), in which private detective Cormoran Strike returns to catch another killer.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

'Tis the season... for reading!

Christmas is just around the corner (as I'm sure you know), so take a break from the holiday madness and check out these new Christmas-themed books from your favorite authors!

Silent Night is Robert B. Parker's last novel, finished and published posthumously by his longtime agent. When a homeless client and a local halfway house are being threatened, Spenser discovers links to a drug lord.

For fans of Debbie Macomber, Starry Night is her newest novel. Carrie follows a scoop to get an interview with bestselling, recluse author Finn Dalton. As the two warm to each other, Carrie must choose between her career and her heart.

In A Christmas Hope by Anne Perry, a murder at a holiday party with her new beau as the prime suspect means Claudine must work fast to solve the crime and save the day.

Journey to Savannah in Christmas Bliss, Mary Kay Andrews' newest Christmas outing. Weezie is getting married, but her bridesmaid reveals she is expecting - within a few days! Can Weezie get married in time for Christmas and convince her bridesmaid to settle down with the father? 

In A Seaside Christmas by Sherryl Woods, Jenny returns to her hometown, where she has always been treated as an outsider, for a music project and to see her estranged family. At the same time, an old flame tries to rekindle their stalled relationship. 

It's the perfect season for curling up with a good book. Happy holidays from us here at the Reader's Corner!

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

Joyce Carol Oates Does It Again

Joyce Carol Oates, esteemed writer of terrific fiction like Blonde and What I Lived For, is one of those timeless authors you must pay attention to.  Her fiction has won many awards, such as the O.Henry Award, National Book Award, and the National Humanities Medal.  She has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  Not a bad career!

Her latest, Evil Eye, is a collection of four novellas about the dangers of love.  In the first work, we meet Mariana, who is the fourth wife to an esteemed college professor.  The first wife, with whom the husband has a polite friendship, comes to visit and Mariana learns a secret through this encounter that rocks the foundation of her marriage.  A shy, awkward teenager meets a young man who shows an immediate interest in her in the second work.  She soon learns that his interest in her goes beyond typical teenage love, towards something far more sinister.  The third work, The Execution, follows young Bart Hansen through a vicious and unthinkable crime.  The results, thanks to the love of his mother, is not what the reader will be expecting.  Finally, the last work follows Cecelia as she tries to deal with the horrible events of her childhood that threaten to ruin her first true love.

Oates creates such atmospheric pieces in these short works of fiction.  The dread and inner turmoil each character deals with through his or her journey comes right off the page, creating a believable look at love gone wrong.  It really is nothing short of amazing.

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

The Past CAN Come Back

Everyone deserves a second chance, right?  We all make mistakes, especially in our younger years, and can make up for those mistakes.  But sometimes it's not quite that easy.  Alex Marwood shows this in his debut novel, Wicked Girls.

A series of murders in a seaside town in the UK becomes the hot news story for Kirsty, who arrives from one of the larger UK newspapers.  The latest victim, a young girl, is found by Amber, a worker at the local amusement park.  We soon find out that Kirsty and Amber know each other...as Bel and Jade.  The story moves back and forth between present day and the fateful day 25 years earlier in which Bel and Jade became involved in a horrible criminal act.  Their chance meeting during a murdering spree threatens to tear apart everything they have built in their quest for normal lives.

I really enjoyed the fact that this thriller was more about the characters.  Each is developed well and the reader really understands the struggle they go through.  Kirsty and Amber each have their own motivations for not getting involved with the other, but other reasons for finding out what the other knows.  The psychological struggle in this novel makes it one not to be missed!

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

Venice Thriller Debut by Jonathan Holt

In Venice, someone wearing priest's robes is found floating on the front steps of the Santa Maria della Salute, one of the city's most famous landmarks. The body turns out to be that of a woman shot in the head. By wearing sacred vestments, she has committed a grievous desecration in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Kat Tapo, a female Italian police captain, is tasked with solving the case. Meanwhile, Holly Boland, an American soldier from the military base in Venice, is given a Freedom of Information request dealing with a war lord in Bosnia, and what she finds may be a conspiracy decades old. The Abomination by Jonathan Holt is a tightly plotted, suspense-filled ride through the seedy underbelly of Venice.

The novel deals with themes of feminism, war crimes, loyalty, and internet privacy, so it is quite topical in terms of the recent NSA controversy. Holt shifts between a number of viewpoints during the course of the book, including Kat, Holly, and a hacker genius named Daniele Barbo, but the three viewpoints never become jumbled and are weaved together with skill. Holt also does a wonderful job of creating two strong female characters with dynamic personalities, which can be difficult for a male author. Fans of Stieg Larrson's Millennium series trilogy will be drawn in by this fast-paced, complex mystery, which is the first in a planned trilogy.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

People Don't Just Disappear

Dani Keller wakes up after late night party with her husband and some of his business associates and starts her regular Sunday morning routine.  A headache looks to be on the horizon and all she wants to do is sit outside of her husband, Ian, and her houseboat and drink some coffee.  Strange, though, that Ian is nowhere to be found.  The minutes turn into hours and, before she knows it, Dani is panicking at the thought of Ian missing.  And thus begins Deb Caletti's thrilling novel, He's Gone.

My expectations were for this work to be a classic thriller/whodunit kind of story.  I was pleasantly surprised to find more substance in Caletti's study of Ian and Dani's marriage.  Both were involved in unhappy marriages before finding each other.  Dani's ex-husband was abusive towards her and Ian's ex-wife simply took advantage of him.  Despite both feeling guilty about their infidelity, Dani and Ian feel that they are soul mates.

However, as Ian remains missing, Dani finds herself dissecting her relationship with Ian.  She quickly finds that not everything is as rosy as she previously thought and there are some unsettled things between them.  Ian's personality, his (and Dani's) relationship with his ex-wife and two children, his relationship with Dani's daughter are just some of the things Dani examines while she investigates Ian's disappearance.  She believes that people don't just disappear and starts to wonder whether Ian would have left on his own.

I flew through this character study to not only find out what happened to Ian, but to find out how he and Dani, while appearing to be soul mates on the surface, were not quite the couple everyone assumed them to be.

Chris May- Adult Services Manager

Marisha Pessl's Newest Blockbuster Thriller

If you love thrillers, horror, or mysteries, you have to read Night Film by Marisha Pessl. Scott McGrath, disgraced journalist, receives a tip about the death of the daughter of the man who ruined his career. This man is cult horror film auteur Stanislas Cordova, who has not left his backwoods estate in thirty years and holds a mythical status among his followers. Of course McGrath believes that the death was not just a suicide and investigates, digging deeper and deeper into Cordova's past. Piece by piece the web of myths, dark deeds, and shrouded history is unraveled, but who knows if he will ever find the truth.

Pessl uses fantastic, lyrical descriptions and weaves together a tapestry of websites, newspaper articles, pictures to make Cordova and his films real. The mythos behind Cordova and his night films is so tightly crafted that I began to think I could find them somewhere on the internet. Pessl skillfully builds the creepy atmosphere of her novel one piece at a time to ratchet up the tension, until something has to snap - and snap it did. I had to put down the book at one point because I was so freaked out. But aside from the horror aspect, it is an excellent mystery with pieces doled one at a time to reveal a larger picture which may never be fully explained. This hybrid of many genres is an excellent read that will keep you on the edge of your seat and haunt you for days after you finish it.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

Hypnotizing Sci-Fi Thriller by Max Barry

Wil and Emily live in a world where people can be controlled with words. Not just metaphorically - literally controlled by carefully selected strings of words. In Max Barry's Lexicon, a mysterious organization, the Academy, whose members are called Poets, determine personality type using a test of ten questions (linked here). Using the answers to these questions, they can find out the segment (personality type) of the person they are interviewing. Once a Poet discovers your segment, they can control you and command you to do anything. Wil is an outlier - he is immune to these words. Because of this, he is being hunted by a Poet named Woolf. In the second of the two storylines, Emily, sixteen and homeless, is recruited by the Academy to become one of their newest Poets.

If you want a fun summer read, this book will suck you in. A gripping thriller, the novel's fast-paced science fiction action has intriguing links to the Babel legend and other similar events. The characters of Emily and Wil are believable in that they have their own faults and act like regular people (no heroics here, at least at first). The science behind it is intriguing, even if somewhat unbelievable. The book explores the power of words and how we persuade others, even without special command words. Despite a rather slow third act, Lexicon will enthrall you from the second you see the first words on the page.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian

Chevy Stevens Thrills Us Again

Chevy Stevens' latest thriller, Always Watching, lives up to the expectations set by her previous two novels.  I first encountered Stevens through her 2010 thriller, Still Missing, which tells the story of a young woman, Annie, speaking with her psychiatrist about a harrowing abduction that lasted a year.  The book was very well done as Annie's story was laid out well and made the reader very uncomfortable at times (think Emma Donoghue's Room).  Never Knowing came out the next year and fully established Stevens as a master of the genre.  The story centers on Sara, an adopted child now a young woman, who has always wondered about her birth parents.  What she finds out about her father not only shocks her, but may come back to bite her.

And that leads us to Always Watching.  As a psychiatrist, Nadine Lavoie is used to dealing with other people's problems.  But her own demons come back to haunt her after treating a young woman who has been living in a well-known commune.  Nadine soon finds that the commune is run by the same man, Aaron Quinn, who was running a smaller commune in which Nadine and her family lived for a few months when she was young.  She continues digging and finds parallels between her past life and those of the people living in the commune's current state.  Obsessively, Nadine tries to find the answers behind mysterious gaps in her memory from during the months she lived under Quinn's watchful eye.

This title sets the same tone as Still Missing and Never Knowing.  Even though the revelations throughout can be downright disturbing, I could not put this one down until the final revelation was revealed.  Quinn's character, and his demented brother who helps run the commune, is so well done and creepy that you will genuinely fear for Nadine's safety.  Stevens has established herself as a terrific writer who knows how to create an ominous atmosphere.

If that is not enough to whet your appetite, check out the book trailer below.



Chris May- Manager of Adult Services

A Look at WWII Italy in Bohjalian's New Thriller

Chris Bohjalian is quite the prolific author.  Not only does he churn out a new book every year like clockwork, he also writes on a variety of topics.  I first encountered him when I read The Night Strangers, which is about a family moving to New Hampshire and encountering "herbalists" who slowly take control of their lives.  This was followed by The Sandcastle Girls, set in Syria during the first World War.  These two books alone show how versatile Bohjalian can be, so just imagine going through all fifteen of his titles.

His latest, The Light in the Ruins, is set to be released later this month.  I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy and devoured it in a single day.  This one is set in Italy and takes place during two different years.

1943: The Rosatis, a noble Italian family, hide away in their villa in the hope that it will protect them from the war going on near their home.  Christina, the youngest daughter, falls in love with a young German lieutenant, though finds herself in a tough spot once other Nazi soldiers take over the villa.

1955:  Serafina Bettini, a Florence detective, investigates the murders of multiple members of the Rosatis family.  She must also face her own demons as she is a former soldier who made her way through Italy a dozen years earlier.

This one has a little bit of everything: romance, mystery, thriller, history, and even some art history.  I could not put it down as each chapter set in the past set up what would happen twelve years later.  I have to admit, I did not know much about the effects of WWII on Italy, but this book gave me plenty of reason to do some research.

Pick this one up soon and you won't regret it.

Chris May- Manager of Adult Services

Sizzling Summer Beach Reads

So you finally have enough time to read this summer, but you need some suggestions for what to read while you're lounging by the pool or relaxing in that beach chair. No worries! Check out T-SPL's list of new and upcoming titles that are sure to captivate you this summer:

Not sure what to read after Gone Girl? Check out debut novel Night Film by Marisha Pessl. This creepy thriller follows a journalist investigating the death of a young girl. As he digs deeper he is drawn into the world of her recluse father, a horror film director.This highly anticipated novel comes out August 20, so don't miss it!

Another entry in Scandinavian crime thrillers, The Fire Witness by Lars Kepler garnered a starred Kirkus review. After a murder at a home for wayward girls, a medium claims that she saw a ghost. One detective listens, digging deeper into the case until he is confronted with his own past.

Funny and heartbreaking, Winger by Andrew Smith is a sure bet for teens and adults alike. 14-year-old Ryan lives at a boarding school where he navigates growing up, aided by his sense of humor. This coming of age novel received starred review in Kirkus, Booklist, and Publisher's Weekly.

A true beach read, debut novel Big Girl Panties by
Stephanie Evanovich (not the author of the Plum series!) is a love story with an unconventional protagonist. Holly gained weight after her husband's death, and it is a chance meeting with Logan, a fitness instructor, that inspires her to get fit and perhaps even fall in love.

Lastly, the new novel Beautiful Day by the author of Summerland, Elin Hilderbrand, is another perfect read for a day at the beach. Jenna and Stuart are getting married, but as the day approaches, their relatives find that their own lives are taking a turn for the worse. Fans of chick lit will love this novel that explores the meanings of love, marriage, and fidelity.

Shannon Wood, Adult Services Librarian