My Name is Lucy Barton ~ Elizabeth Strout

Strout, Elizabeth. 2016. My Name is Lucy Barton. New York: Random House.
$26.00 USD.  ISBN 978-1400067695

From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge.  In this slim volume, a young mother is recovering from a surgery gone bad in a New York hospital sometime in the 1980's in the shadow of the Chrystler Building. She is missing her husband and children, who cannot visit her.  One day, her estranged mother shows up and spends five days with her in the hospital, and from there the story begins.  The simple, almost child-like narrative is jarring at first, until one realizes that her mother's visit has caused the protagonist, Lucy Barton, to revert to the insecure, abused and abandoned child she once was, still hoping for some show of affection from her mother.  The story slips by like snapshots from the past and casts shadows on Lucy's childhood, marriage, writing career and her relationships, including those with her daughters.  It is a poignant read of "poverty and abuse," but also of love, which is so fragile, yet resilient as well.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos ~ Dominic Smith

Smith, Dominic. 2016. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. New York: Sarah Crichton Books.  ISBN 978-0374106683. $26.00 USD.

I am not usually a fan of historical fiction.  I much prefer contemporary fiction, literary suspense, mysteries and urban fantasy.  However, this rather slim volume caught my eye, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The Last Painting of Sara De Vos explores the history of one painting and the lives it impacts, from three separate time periods and locations: the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, Manhattan in the 1950's and Sydney, Australia in the year 2000.

This novel is a mesmerizing look at the lives of a fictional female Dutch painter, the owner of the painting and its forger, and how these lives intersect in history and mystery.  The author writes in alternating chapters from the perspective of each of these three characters, and wonderfully develops each one.  The novel provides voluminous details about the Dutch Golden Age of art and the intricate techniques involved in painting restoration and forgery. The details of the different eras are so exquisitely described that I felt I was entering into those time periods. I got so caught up in this story that I did not want to stop reading as it raced to a surprisingly suspenseful resolution.  I admit this novel may have changed my opinion about reading historical fiction! Very well done.

Shadow Rites ~ Faith Hunter

Hunter, Faith. 2016. Shadow Rites. New York: Roc Publishing.

Faith Hunter continues her Jane Yellowrock series with the 10th book, Shadow Rites, in which Jane and her entire crew get caught up in some extreme magical attacks enacted by two angry witches out for revenge.  The witches and vampires have hated each other for centuries and have enacted wars to rid the earth of each others' species.  In previous books, the ruling councils of witches and vampires in the U.S. have grown closer to a détente, and in this novel they are scheduled for a formal meeting to adopt new rules for dealing fairly with one another.  There are some witches with powerful magical abilities who refuse to accept the easing of tensions and embark on violent attacks on Jane and her crew throughout this book.

It’s always a good day when I get to spend time in this excellent urban fantasy world that Faith Hunter has created.  Jane has grown and allowed herself to become attached to her unusual slew of friends, which in this book now include a vampire Primo, a werewolf and a Grindylow.  My only negative comment about this latest title in the series has to do with something I’ve noticed over the past couple of books.  The descriptions of the magical workings and other paranormal situations are very complicated and, at times, difficult to follow.  I found myself skimming some of it because it was doing my head in!  The denouement also feels a little rushed, and I would have liked to have seen a final image of how Jane is settling in with the new characters, as well as a preview of the status of the upcoming visit from the European Council of Vampires, which has been alluded to in the past several books.  Other than that, as always, I enjoyed spending time in Ms. Hunter’s unique urban fantasy world with Jane Yellowrock, a skinwalker who shares a soul-home with, and can shift into "Beast," a large puma concolor.

Fire Touched ~ Patricia Briggs

Briggs, Patricia. 2016. Fire Touched: A Mercy Thompson Novel.  New York: The Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0425256763. $27.00 USD.

It’s always a good day to get to spend time in Patricia Briggs’ unique urban fantasy world set in the south-eastern area of Washington state.  In the world of Mercy Thompson, a coyote shape-shifter, you will definitely encounter werewolves, fae, vampires and ghosts, along with very creative monsters for Mercy and her friends to overcome.  In Fire Touched, the ninth full-length novel in the series, the action starts off fast and furious when a colossal troll released by some angry fae takes over a cable bridge and begins to use automobiles and their human cargo like Matchbox toys.  The troll was released to create a distraction while the unfriendly fae try to retrieve a missing and powerful “fire touched” boy who has escaped from the fae reservation.

The pace of this addition to the series is brisk and the interactions among the main characters are as enjoyable as ever.  The enchanted Walking Stick makes numerous appearances and plays a major role in the book.  However, the actions of the character Thomas Hao in this novel are based on a continuation of a short story from Shifting Shadows, (an anthology) which readers would need to have read to completely understand, and the penultimate scene in Underhill is too similar to one in a previous novel for it to be particularly interesting.  I always enjoy the books in this series and was really looking forward to the latest. However, I was a bit disappointed in this one as it did not cover much new ground.  And Mercy doesn’t shift into coyote form even once, which really surprised me in a full length novel about….a coyote shifter!  All in all, this is still one of my favorite urban fantasy series, and the books have a tremendous following.  Holds are high in my library.

The Madwoman Upstairs ~ Catherine Lowell

Lowell, Catherine. 2016. The Madwoman Upstairs. New York: Touchstone Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.  ISBN 978-1501124211. $25.99 USD


For an English major and Librarian, Catherine Lowell’s A Madwoman Upstairs is just about perfect.  A mysterious inheritance, an Oxford, England academic setting, a somewhat revisionist  history of the Bronte family, and a main character, Samantha Whipple, who is the last remaining descendent of that infamous family, all combined in a tale of literature, love, loss and lunacy.  Who could resist?

Samantha, twenty years old, has enrolled as a literature major at Oxford, hoping to move forward from the unresolved grief of losing her father, who homeschooled her, rather unconventionally, until the age of 15.  Her mother left the family when she was young, and her father, infamous for being among the last of the Bronte descendants, raised her on the literature of her historic literary relatives, when he was sober.

This novel is a mystery, as Samantha tries to figure out the location of the inheritance her father cryptically told her he left her; it’s a coming-of-age story, as Samantha learns to be her own person – separate from whom her father wanted her to be; and it’s a story of literature, as the author uses the texts written by Emily, Anne and Charlotte Bronte to create a narrative on how we understand and misunderstand authors and their intent.  Samantha is an intelligent, lonely and driven character, with a snarky voice that instills some great dialogue, especially between her and her tutor, a blatantly obvious Rochester archetype.  Ms. Lowell has hit the ball out of the park in her debut novel.  Highly recommended!

Dark Turns ~ Cate Holahan

Holahan, Cate. 2015. Dark Turns. New York: Crooked Lane Books.
ISBN 978-1629531939. $24.99 USD.

Dark Turns is another novel that was on my Christmas wish list from Amazon (thanks, wonderful family)!  I was drawn to this book because of its academic setting (love academic mysteries!) and ballet dancer main character.  Nia Washington, a talented ballerina, is recovering from a broken heart and taking a break from her ballet touring company to heal from severe tendonitis (which she is hiding from everyone).  She is hired by an elite boarding school as an assistant dance instructor and Resident Advisor for a year.  On the first day of her job, she discovers the body of a drowned student in a nearby lake, which is believed to be a suicide. Nia immediately gets caught up in the investigation by the police, the petty jealousies and mean-girl shenanigans of some of her students, and the admiration of an attractive thirty-something history teacher and advisor.  But all is not what it seems, and Nia has to decide whom to trust before another student comes to a dangerous end.  I did guess the main plot twist before the end, but it did not really dim my enjoyment of the book.  Ms. Holahan has another title coming out in August, The Widower’s Wife, and I will probably give that a try, as well.

Dark Alchemy ~ Laura Bickle

Bickle, Laura. 2016. Dark Alchemy. New York: Harper Voyager Books.
ISBN 978-0062404923.  $6.99 USD.

I am a big fan of urban fantasy, but not so much westerns, so I was a little uneasy about reading Dark Alchemy by Laura Bickle, which would be classified more as contemporary dark fantasy than urban. It ended up being so good that I immediately ordered the second book in the series, Mercury Retrograde! Dark Alchemy seems to fall into a genre all its own, with hints of Native American mythology and medieval alchemy running through the book.

Petra Dee, a geologist, travels to Temperance, Wyoming, to try to find information about her father who has been missing for many years. She is escaping memories of a deadly oil rig explosion which cost her a job and the life of her lover. What she finds in Temperance is a run-down trailer, a strange magical artifact, a drunken Native American seer, a coyote familiar, two antique guns and a whole lot of trouble brewing between the local drug dealer/alchemist and a brutal rancher with strange control over some individuals she comes to find out are called The Hanged Men.

Petra has a lot of courage, and her desire to find out about her father’s disappearance sometimes drives her to dive head-first into danger without thinking of the consequences. This excellent first book ends in a cliff-hanger, and pretty dark one at that.  However, with the sequel already published (and more books coming) I am looking forward to more of Petra’s adventures with The Hanged Men and her coyote sidekick, Sig. I recommend this one!