My September 2022 Reads

September was a busy month but it is nice being done with my master’s degree so I don’t spend every weekend doing homework. I enjoyed getting back into John Lescroart’s books with their memorable San Francisco settings. Although I rarely read memoirs, I found Funny in Farsi both amusing and poignant. I joined a group read of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; curled up with a contemporary romance that I thought was well done, The Reunion; and found a juvenile fantasy I thought was long out of print, The Ghost of Opalina. How was your September?

Suspense

Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins (2021). When a child disappears in Oxford, her nanny is immediately suspected and questioned. Are the police following the right clues? The girl’s father and stepfather have secrets too. My review.

The 6:20 Man by David Baldacci (2022). Travis takes the 6:20 commuter train every day to Manhattan, where he has a tedious job as an entry-level analyst at an investment bank. But when he is framed for his co-worker’s murder, he realizes he will have to find the real killer to prove his innocence.  I am a big Baldacci fan but this was readable rather than absorbing.

A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton (2014). I really like Bolton’s Lacey Flint mystery series and decided to reread the series so as to be ready for the new book, not yet out in the US. Here, Lacey discovers a body caught in the Thames and fears she has discovered a human trafficking situation.

When You See Me by Lisa Gardner (2020) (audio) FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective DD Warren head to a small town in Georgia in pursuit of victims of deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness.

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill (2022). Four people are sitting at the Boston Public Library when a woman screams. It turns out she is dead and one of them is a murderer. My review.

The Fall (2015) and Poison (2018) by John Lescroart (audio). Attorney Dismas Hardy is central in these two legal thrillers: in The Fall, his daughter Rebecca represents a young teacher accused of murder, and in Poison a tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown holds the key to another murder when his client is accused of killing her boss.

Fiction

Dear Hugo by Molly Clavering (1955). This is one of Furrowed Middlebrow’s recent reprints. Clavering wrote light fiction in the tradition of The Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield. This is set in Scotland after WWII. My review.

The House of the Deer by D.E. Stevenson This is a follow-up to Gerald and Elizabeth, set primarily in a Scottish hunting lodge. Review to come.

Nonfiction

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas (2003). This warm and witty memoir tells the story of an Iranian family and its enthusiastic misadventures with life in America, embracing Thanksgiving, game shows on television, and illogical English pronunciation. My review.

Romance

Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson (audio) (2022). When Savannah tries to revise a romance manuscript she keeps in a secret room at work, she starts getting editorial help from an unknown stranger. Predictable but pleasant, if not memorable.

The Reunion by Kayla Olson (2023). When a popular TV show gets back together for a one-episode reunion, will its former teen stars, now gorgeous adults, Liv and Ransom, turn their long friendship into romance? I got an early copy of this book and it was one of my favorites this month.

Children’s

The Ghost of Opalina by Peggy Bacon (1967 ). This appealing story is back in print after many years. Three children move to the country and find a mysterious cat in their playroom who regales them with stories of those who used to live in their historic house. My review.

We Didn’t Mean to Start a School by Julia Blythe. When Aunt Win and her husband inherit a small hotel, she decides to turn it into a temporary school for her nieces, whose family is moving to Japan. But soon the school is full of students who want to stay permanently! My review.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (1973). When Will turns 11, he learns he has a gift and that his destiny is to be part of a fight between darkness and light. Set in the days before Christmas, this book is permeated by cold and danger. My review.

YA

A Proper Place by Joan Lingard (1975). In the fourth book about Kevin and Sadie, they move with their baby from the Liverpool slums to a farming job in rural Cheshire that comes with a house. It is hard for outgoing Sadie to be isolated but there are more complications when Kevin’s rebellious brother moves in with them.

The Market by J.M. Steele (2008). When HS senior Kate finds out she is ranked 71 out of 140 girls in her class by a secret website, The Market, she is indignant and her friends give her a makeover so she can move higher on the list.  But soon Kate's new glamor comes between her and her friends . . .