2020 Book Reviews

The third Under Suspicion novel: five years after bride-to-be Amanda Pierce vanished the night of her pre-wedding celebration at a luxury Palm Beach resort, television producer Laurie Moran reopens the cold case for her cold-case show - reuniting the wedding party, including the fiance who has since married one of Amanda's own bridesmaids, to find out whether the runaway bride ran or was made to disappear.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that weaves together interconnected stories about a group of characters connected to the music industry, exploring themes of time, memory, and aging through an innovative narrative structure.

In the summer of 1944, a polio epidemic sweeps through Newark's Jewish community. Playground director Bucky Cantor watches helplessly as children in his care fall ill - then flees to a mountain camp where he believes he brings the disease with him, destroying his life with guilt.

On the night a famous actor dies performing King Lear in Toronto, a deadly flu pandemic begins. Twenty years later, a traveling theater troupe performs Shakespeare for scattered survivors - and one of them carries a mysterious comic book given to her by the actor the night he died.

When high school valedictorian Brianna O'Brien is found murdered in remote Skeleton Canyon, her wealthy parents blame her forbidden Hispanic boyfriend - but Sheriff Joanna Brady suspects the family racism masks darker secrets involving smugglers using their land.

When the town veterinarian who killed a woman while driving drunk is found murdered by pitchfork in his burning barn, Sheriff Joanna Brady must prove that the obvious suspect - the victim grieving widower - is innocent while juggling multiple crises including a hostage situation involving her own daughter.

The second Under Suspicion novel and the first Mary Higgins Clark / Alafair Burke collaboration: Laurie Moran, producer of a cold-case television show, reopens the twenty-year-old murder of UCLA student Susan Dempsey - found strangled in Laurel Canyon Park missing a single shoe, the 'Cinderella Murder' of the tabloids - by reuniting the suspects on camera, from Susan's grieving mother and womanizing boyfriend to the now-famous director she was auditioning for, her former roommates, a tech billionaire who was her classmate, and the computer-science professor who taught them both.

Sheriff Joanna Brady attends the Arizona Police Officers Academy for mandatory training, but when a serial killer begins targeting women on campus and a man sits in jail wrongly accused of murder, her coursework becomes a matter of life and death.

Two months into her job as the first female sheriff of Cochise County, Joanna Brady investigates when rancher Harold Patterson is found dead at the bottom of a mine pit - along with a second, older set of remains that raises disturbing questions about long-buried family secrets.

When her deputy husband is shot and killed in the Arizona desert - then accused of being a crooked cop - Joanna Brady refuses to accept the lies and launches her own investigation to clear his name and find his killer.

FBI agents Nicholas Drummond and Mike Caine hunt a descendant of Vlad the Impaler who commands a deadly drone army - and will stop at nothing to unlock an ancient manuscript he believes holds the cure for his dying brother.

Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates when two women with no apparent connection fall to their deaths from a local peak, uncovering a web of dark secrets in this seventeenth installment of the beloved series.

LAPD Detective Renée Ballard works the graveyard shift, catching cases no one else wants. When two cases intersect dangerously, she must go rogue to find justice.

A 54-year-old advice columnist creates a TV show inspired by her grandmother's WWII story, and the cast becomes the family she didn't know she needed.

Kendra Michaels, blind for the first twenty years of her life, uses her extraordinary observational skills to hunt a brilliant serial killer in this pulse-pounding thriller.

When two wounded souls cross paths in a small Washington town, they discover that sometimes the hardest battles are fought in the heart. A heartwarming story about finding hope and love after loss.

When a mysterious diary falls into his hands on New Year's Day, a rigid businessman embarks on a life-changing journey of tasks and self-discovery that connects him with a free-spirited woman and changes both their lives forever.

Ten years after college, the Sisterhood reunites in Greece for what should be a joyful reunion. Then tragedy strikes, changing everything forever.

The summer after freshman year of college - the friends are scattered, changed, and struggling. The pants bring them together as they navigate who they're becoming.

The summer before college - the last summer of innocence, of being together, of the magic pants. Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena face their biggest transition yet.

The pants are back for a second summer as Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena face new challenges, deeper heartbreak, and the continued magic of their unbreakable friendship.

Four best friends, one pair of magical jeans, and a summer apart that brings them closer together. A heartwarming story about friendship, growth, and the bonds that hold us together.

A stunning portrait of a geisha's life in pre-war and wartime Japan. Through the eyes of Sayuri, we witness the beauty, artistry, and complex world of geisha culture.

Three lonely women living in the same apartment building form an unlikely friendship through notes, chance encounters, and the slow realization that connection is worth the risk.

A revolutionary mindset and practical action plan for when you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or lost. Marie Forleo shares her philosophy that any problem, challenge, or dream is figureoutable.

A coming-of-age story set in the Midwest after 9/11. Tassie Keltjin takes a job as a nanny and finds herself drawn into a complex family dynamic that challenges her understanding of race, identity, and belonging.

Lauren Weisberger's 2003 debut, a roman a clef drawn from her year assisting Anna Wintour: aspiring writer Andrea Sachs lands the junior-assistant job at fashion magazine Runway that 'a million girls would die for,' answering to the tyrannical editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly - and spends a year discovering exactly what that job costs.

Dean Koontz's 2008 standalone thriller: Ryan Perry, a thirty-four-year-old internet tycoon, is diagnosed with incurable cardiomyopathy, receives a heart transplant that saves his life - and a year later begins to be stalked by a mysterious woman whose gifts and messages all carry the same chilling refrain: your heart belongs to me.

Daniel Silva's fourteenth Gabriel Allon novel: when London art dealer Julian Isherwood finds his colleague Jack Bradshaw - a former British intelligence officer turned art trafficker - tortured and murdered at a villa on Lake Como, Allon, the Israeli spy and master art restorer, is pulled in by the Italian Art Squad to recover a Caravaggio stolen in 1969, and the hunt leads through the Geneva Freeport and a private Austrian bank to the looted billions that Syria's Bashar al-Assad has hidden across Europe.

The true story of the secret World War II operations between Shetland and Norway. A gripping account of courage, danger, and resistance during the Nazi occupation.

A practical guide for women looking to step into their power and pursue their ambitions. Tara Mohr offers tools to quiet your inner critic, recognize your unique calling, and take bold action.

A compelling philosophy for technology use in the modern age, arguing for a minimalist approach to digital tools. Cal Newport makes the case for being highly intentional about which technologies you allow into your life and how you use them.

A touching story about a grieving mother, a teenage runaway, and an eccentric clairvoyant who brings them together in a small Colorado mountain town. A gentle tale about loss, healing, and the bonds between mothers and children.

Tana French's 2007 Edgar-winning debut and the first book of the Dublin Murder Squad series: in 1984, a twelve-year-old boy named Adam Ryan walked out of the woods outside Knocknaree, near Dublin, with the blood of his two missing friends in his shoes and no memory of what had happened to them; twenty years later, the man he has become - Detective Rob Ryan, the same boy under a different name and with an English boarding-school accent - is assigned, with his partner and best friend Detective Cassie Maddox, to investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old ballet student named Katy Devlin whose body has been found on the stone altar of an archaeological dig in the same woods, and the case is the long return of a memory Rob has spent two decades not having.

The sixteenth Gabriel Allon novel: when an ISIS bomb in the Marais kills the Israeli intelligence officer Gabriel Allon's longtime friend Hannah Weinberg at a Paris conference on antisemitism, Allon - already on the cusp of taking over the Office, the Israeli intelligence service he has spent his life serving in the field - is pulled into a French-and-Jordanian counterterrorism operation against a shadowy ISIS architect called Saladin, who is recruiting young European women into a network of suicide bombers, and recruits Natalie Mizrahi, a French-born physician now practicing in Israel, to take a new identity as a Palestinian refugee and infiltrate the caliphate from the inside.

The first book in the epic A Song of Ice and Fire series, introducing the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros through the eyes of the Stark family as they navigate political intrigue, ancient threats, and the deadly game of thrones where you win or you die.

Catherine Steadman's 2018 debut psychological thriller opens with London documentary filmmaker Erin Roberts digging a grave alone in the woods, then flashes back to the Bora Bora honeymoon - already trimmed from three weeks to two after her banker husband Mark lost his job - where a sealed duffle bag the couple pulls from the water turns out to contain a great deal more than they were prepared to be in possession of.

A collection of eight brilliant science fiction short stories that explore the nature of consciousness, free will, language, and what it means to be human. Includes "Story of Your Life," the basis for the film Arrival.

A gripping thriller about a woman who changed her identity to protect her children after her husband's murder. When her carefully constructed new life begins to unravel, Rachel Marin must confront the past she's been hiding from.

The riveting story of Alex Honnold's historic free solo climb of El Capitan's 3,000-foot Freerider route, and the obsessive pursuit of perfection in one of the most dangerous athletic achievements ever attempted.

The extraordinary true story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian commando who survived alone in the Arctic wilderness for months after a failed sabotage mission during World War II.

The twenty-second Inspector Rebus novel: when a car is found deep in an Edinburgh wood with the body of private investigator Stuart Bloom in its boot and his ankles bound by police-issue handcuffs, a cold case more than a decade old reopens - and retired DI John Rebus, who worked the original botched investigation, finds himself implicated alongside DI Siobhan Clarke and Malcolm Fox as the rot in that first inquiry comes to light.

When Ally Anderson takes a DNA test to help diagnose her daughter Kylie's mysterious illness, she discovers she was adopted - and that her biological family has been out there all along, waiting to be found.

Twenty years ago, Tracy Crosswhite's younger sister Sarah vanished one summer night on a county road outside the small Cascade-mountain town of Cedar Grove, Washington; a recently paroled rapist named Edmund House was convicted on circumstantial and partly planted evidence and given a life sentence, Tracy and Sarah's grief-shattered father took his own life, and Tracy left Cedar Grove to become a Seattle homicide detective. When Sarah's remains are uncovered in the dam-flooded land outside town, Tracy comes home to reopen the case alongside her childhood friend Dan O'Leary - now a small-town lawyer - against the sheriff and prosecutor she has known her whole life.

Dean Graziosi argues that being an underdog is actually an advantage in achieving success, providing strategies for leveraging disadvantages and turning obstacles into opportunities.

After her sister Zoe is murdered, Echo struggles with grief and family secrets while trying to understand who her sister really was and what led to her death.

Brené Brown explores the process of getting back up after failure, heartbreak, and disappointment, providing a research-based approach to resilience and emotional recovery.

Brené Brown explores true belonging and the courage to stand alone, examining how we can maintain our authenticity and values even when it means standing apart from groups or popular opinion.

TV producer Laurie Moran - whose husband was murdered five years ago in front of their three-year-old son by a killer the boy can only describe as 'Blue Eyes' - launches a true-crime show that reopens cold cases on camera, starting with the twenty-year-old suffocation of socialite Betsy Powell after her daughter's Graduation Gala; as the four women who were under that roof reunite for filming, both unsolved murders start moving toward the same ending.

A masterful collection of mythological tales exploring themes of transformation, love, and power through the lens of Roman poetry. Ovid weaves together over 250 stories from Greek and Roman mythology into an epic narrative.

Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 debut: a love story between Henry DeTamble - a Chicago librarian with a genetic disorder she calls Chrono-Displacement that pulls him involuntarily through his own timeline and other people's, naked and out of clothes he cannot take with him - and Clare Abshire, the artist he meets in person at twenty-eight at the Newberry Library, who has known him since she was six because he has been visiting her in the meadow behind her family's South Haven house from a future version of himself for fourteen years already by the time she finally meets him in his own present.

Amy Schumer delivers brutally honest essays about relationships, body image, and growing up, combining her signature humor with surprising vulnerability and insight into modern womanhood.

The first Detective Josie Quinn novel: a seventeen-year-old named Isabelle Coleman vanishes from the small Pennsylvania town of Denton, and the suspended detective who shouldn't be working the case finds a second girl - mute, traumatized, and able to give up only one name, Ramona - whose neon tongue piercing matches Isabelle's, pulling Josie into a cold case the department had filed away as a hoax.

An exploration of the science behind habit formation and change, examining how habits work in individual lives, organizations, and societies. Duhigg combines neuroscience research with compelling case studies.

Susan Wiggs' 2001 contemporary romance about Michelle Turner, who at seventeen was sent to her Hollywood-icon father's Montana ranch, fell for the ranch hand Sam McPhee, got him fired and his family destroyed when her father found out, and fled to Seattle pregnant - and who returns to Montana seventeen years later to donate a kidney to her dying father, with the rebellious teenage son Sam doesn't know about in the passenger seat.

A psychological thriller exploring the dark secrets of a small English town where women have been drowning for centuries. When Nel Abbott dies in the same river, her sister Jules returns to uncover the truth.

A profound exploration of consciousness and spiritual awakening that guides readers toward inner freedom through understanding the nature of self, thoughts, and awareness itself.

A timeless collection of brief stories featuring animals and mythical creatures that convey moral lessons about human nature, virtue, and wisdom through simple but profound narratives.

A deeply personal memoir about one woman's year-long shopping ban and her journey toward mindful consumption and intentional living.

A modern approach to job searching that emphasizes relationship-building and personal storytelling over traditional resume-focused strategies.

The epic conclusion to the Legend trilogy, where Day and June face impossible sacrifices as a deadly plague threatens to plunge the Republic and the Colonies back into war.

The second book in the Legend trilogy, where Day and June join the rebellion against the Republic, only to discover that the Patriots may be just as dangerous as their enemies.

The first book in Marie Lu's dystopian trilogy about Day, the Republic's most wanted criminal, and June, the prodigy tasked with hunting him down.

A haunting post-apocalyptic horror novel about a world where seeing the wrong thing means certain death, and one mother's desperate journey to safety.

A psychological thriller about a woman whose perfect life is systematically stolen by someone claiming to be her, forcing her to question everything she thought she knew about her identity.

Detective Billy Harney's life is turned upside down when he's framed for a murder he didn't commit, forcing him to navigate a web of corruption within his own police department.

A high-stakes thriller involving a NASA discovery in the Arctic that could change everything, if the political conspiracy surrounding it doesn't destroy it first.

A psychological thriller about a woman who returns to her hometown to face dark secrets from her past that threaten to destroy everything she's built.

A practical guide to personal and professional development from leadership expert John C. Maxwell, exploring the habits and mindset that drive continuous growth.

A thoughtful exploration of the emotional and psychological aspects of clutter. Richardson goes beyond simple organizing tips to examine what our possessions reveal about our inner lives and relationships.

A motivational self-help book that encourages women to stop believing lies about themselves and start living authentically. Rachel Hollis shares personal stories and practical advice for overcoming self-doubt.