Books reviewed in July 2020

by Philip Roth
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.

by Emily St. John Mandel
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.

by Catherine Coulter
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.

by J.A. Jance
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.
9 books reviewed in July 2020