The Eights by Joanna Miller – 3/20 Books of Summer

In this debut historical novel, which begins in October 1920, four very different young women arrive at Oxford to be part of the first female class actually allowed to matriculate. Brilliant but awkward Beatrice has always been in the shadow of her suffragette mother and yearns for friends; shy Marianne, only child of a poor minister, already wishes she hadn't come, for complicated reasons; 

The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper

Title: The Couple in the Photo
Author: Helen Cooper
Publication: Putnam, trade paper, 2023
Genre: Psychological suspense
Setting: Present-day Britain

Description: When Lucy married Adam, his two best friends from university, Cora and Scott, also became her closest companions. The two couples live just minutes apart in Leicester, their four children are inseparable, and they even bought a weekend cottage together and spend all their free time rehabbing it. But one day when Lucy casually glances at a coworker’s honeymoon photos, she sees one of Scott with another woman in the Maldives when he was supposed to be in Tokyo.

The Lost Girls by Jessica Chiarella

Title: The Lost Girls

Author: Jessica Chiarella
Publication: Putnam, trade paperback, 2021
Genre: Suspense
Setting: Chicago

Description: Marti Reese has never recovered from her sister’s disappearance – how could she when, at eight years old, she was the only witness to Maggie’s getting into a car with a man Marti did not know.

Survivor in Death, bestselling romantic suspense about ferocious but vulnerable detective Eve Dallas

Title: Survivor in Death
Author: Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb
Publication: Putnam, Audiobook, 2005
Narrator: Susan Ericksen
Genre: Romantic Suspense/Series

Plot: Lieutenant Dallas is called in to a particularly brutal murder of the Swisher family: all killed except 9-year-old Nixie who was out of bed and hid from the intruders.  Finding a terrified little girl in a crime scene brings back terrible memories of her childhood to Dallas.