nomadreader

The backstory: Stephanie Danler's debut novel, Sweetbitter , is one of my all-time favorites . The basics: Stray  is a memoir "of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction, and of one woman’s attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past." My thoughts: One of the reasons I loved  Sweetbitter  so much is that it's the rare trifecta of a novel that has a great plot/characters, great writing, and great wisdom. Stray  is filled with great writing and great wisdom, but those looking for a traditional memoir may find the book's construction a bit confusing. It's broken into three thematic sections: Mother, Father, and The Monster (the married man with whom she has an affair), but the three characters overlap across all three sections. The vignettes also move across geography and time. Stray  is a writer's memoir. I'm grateful I had the time and space to read it in twenty-four (non-consecutive) hours. Many of the vignettes or essa...

The basics:  "Two wildly different women—one a grifter, the other an heiress—are brought together by the scam of a lifetime in a page-turner from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear ."--publisher My thoughts: Two (of many) things I enjoy more than the average person: heist novels and feminist novels. So a feminist heist novel is a delight. I had the pleasure of seeing Janelle Brown speak at ALA Midwinter in January (that feels like a lifetime ago), and I was thrilled to pick up an ARC at the event too. Since then, Nicole Kidman optioned the novel and will produce and star in it for Amazon  (I am quite curious which part she will play, as she is older than both of the main characters). Often with novels like one (thrillers, buzzy, about to be adapted), I like to wait until just before the publication date to read it, so that I can share the excitement with more people. Sure, it's fun to read a novel months before everyone, but it's often more...

Last spring I read Jasmine Guillory's debut novel, The Wedding Date , mostly because the bookternet was so excited about it. I don't typically read romance, but body-positive interracial romance with smart people intrigued me. And I liked the book. When I reviewed it on Litsy, I said, "A fun, sexy, mostly smart romp. Both main characters are annoyingly insecure at times, but part of that may have been the audio performance, which was okay but distractingly breathy at times. I finished it in print and actually preferred that." Clearly my opinion about the audio performance is unpopular, as it was nominated for an Audie . Last summer, at ALA, I saw Guillory speak as part of a romance panel (that added more than one title to my TBR) and was excited to learn The Proposal  features one of the supporting character from The Wedding Date, Carlos, as a main character. (The third book, The Wedding Party , will feature Maddie and Theo, Alexa's best friends.) Despite getting...

The backstory: The Library Book  is the January 2019 pick for the Hello Sunshine book club . I started listening to it December 27th, but it was nice to be well into it when Reese announced the January pick. My thoughts:  I saw Susan Orlean speak at the American Library Association conference in New Orleans last June. I had heard she had a book coming out in the fall called The Library Book , but I didn't know anything else about it. After moving to Los Angeles, her son had an assignment to interview a city employee, and he chose a librarian. While visiting Central Library in Los Angeles, a librarian mentioned to Susan that you can still smell smoke in some of the books. She was shocked to learn there had been a major fire at the library in 1986 and she didn't know about it. The Library Book is an investigation of the fire, which was intentionally set and still unsolved, but it's also an exploration of the long history of the Los Angeles Public Library and the current sta...

The basics:   "Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition, Still Lives, features portraits in which she depicts herself as famous, murdered women—the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others—and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women. As the city's richest art patrons pour into the Rocque Museum's opening night, all the staff, including editor Maggie Richter, hope the event will be enough to save the historic institution's flailing finances. Except that Kim Lord never shows up to her own gala."--publisher My thoughts: I am perhaps the perfect audience for this novel: it's a mystery, but it's also a thoughtful examination of the contemporary Los Angeles art world, the role of women in art (as artist and subject), and how we view violence against women. I would ...

The backstory: Michael Connelly is my favorite mystery writer. I've read and reviewed all of his books . The basics: The Late Show  is the first in a new series featuring Los Angeles detective Renee Ballard. "They worked the midnight shift, the late show, moving from case to case, called to any scene where a detective was needed to take initial reports or sign off on suicides. But they kept no cases. They wrote up the initial reports and turned the cases over to the appropriate investigative units in the morning." My thoughts: One of the (many, many) things I love about Connelly's novels are that they pass in real time. Harry Bosch, the series of his I love the most, was born in 1950. The first mystery featuring Harry, The Black Echo , came out in 1992. I've wondered how and when Connelly will end that series, and what might come next. The Late Show  attempts to answer that question. As a character, Renee Ballard thinks and acts a lot like Harry Bosch in her ...

The backstory:   Moral Defense  is the second legal mystery in Marcia Clark's series featuring Samantha Brinkman, a Los Angeles defense attorney. I loved the first, Blood Defense ( my review .) I also loved Clark's first series, featuring Los Angeles prosecutor Rachel Knight . The basics: Blood Defense  ended with a lot of information, and Moral Defense picks up those storylines, while featuring the murder of a father and brother, and the attempted murder of the mother. Samantha is serving as the legal advocate for Cassie, the daughter who was not harmed in the crime. My thoughts: Moral Defense  features three  storylines, each one involving a different client. Two are holdovers from the first book, while Cassie's story is new and is the primary plot. The central mystery is who killed Cassie's family. All three storylines were interesting, and Clark is so good at incorporating expected and unexpected twists. I found myself somewhat let down by the Cassie ...

The backstory: Michael Connelly is my favorite mystery writer. I've read and reviewed all twenty-eight (and now twenty-nine) books. The basics: Harry is once again out of the LAPD and working as a private investigator. The case: discover if a very rich and powerful old man fathered a child in his youth and has an heir. At the same time, Harry is working as a volunteer detective for tiny San Fernando PD, where he's putting together pieces of what appear to be a number of crimes committed by the same perpetrator. My thoughts: When I first started reading Michael Connelly, I loved that time passed between his books in real time. Each time we see Harry Bosch, he's a year or two older. But the first Bosch book came out in 1992. It's now 2016, and part of my brain knows Harry Bosch can't live and work forever. Until then, however, I eagerly await and savor each new installment. This one certainly does not disappoint. In all the roles Bosch has served in over the ye...

The backstory: I thoroughly enjoyed Marcia Clark's prior mystery series, featuring Los Angeles prosecutor Rachel Knight: Guilt by Association , Guilt by Degrees , Killer Ambition , and The Competition . Blood Defense  is the first in a new series featuring Los Angeles defense attorney Samantha Brinkman. (It also signals a change in publishers for Clark.) And yes, as her Twitter handle says , she's that Marcia Clark, who is still most famous for prosecuting O.J. Simpson for murder. The basics: Blood Defense  introduces Samantha Brinkman, a defense attorney struggling to make a name for herself. She appears as a defense expert frequently on a new talk show, but her office is in the heart of gang territory, and she lacks high profile, paying clients. That changes when she takes the case of Dale, an LAPD detective charged in the double homicide of Chloe, a starlet and his girlfriend, and Paige, Chloe's roommate. My thoughts: The mystery at the heart of this novel is who kil...

The backstory: State of Happiness  was longlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize . The basics:  "Cindy Frier, author of a popular treatise on maps called Dis-location, meets Jack Stratton, a successful British news producer, at a party in New York City. Shortly after they become a couple, Jack receives a career-making promotion that takes him and Cindy to the beachy environs of Los Angeles."--publisher My thoughts: This book captured my attention right away. The book opens at a dinner party, and the characters and setting felt so alive. Cindy and her friendship with Kelly are beautifully real. Their friendship was so interesting to me that I was initially sad when Jack became the primary focus of Cindy's attention. But this isn't a novel about female friendship. It isn't even really a novel about Jack and Cindy's relationship. For awhile, I thought it was a novel about the rich metaphors of mapping and cartographer. Cindy 's work fascinated me. It'...

The backstory: Michael Connelly is my favorite mystery writer. Last year, I read all twenty-seven of his novels. I was thrilled to finally have a new one to read. The basics: The Crossing features both of Connelly's long-running main characters: now retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch and his half-brother, criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. When Haller's client is charged with the brutal murder of a woman, he suspects a set-up and manages to convince Bosch to solve the case as he would if he were still a homicide detective. My thoughts:  The titular crossing is meaningful on two levels. First, it comes from a piece of dialogue between Bosch and Haller: "What's the biggest problem with the prosecution's case?"  "Right now?"  "Based on what you read."  Bosch took a drink while he thought of an answer and composed it properly. "The crossing."  "Meaning?"  "Motive and opportunity." The cross...

The backstory: Robert Ellis is one of my favorite mystery writers. His Lena Gamble series ( City of Fire , The Lost Witness ,  and Murder Season ) is extraordinarily good and criminally underappreciated. I've also enjoyed his earlier stand-alone novels Access to Power  and The Murder Room  (read before this blog, which means a long  time ago.) The basics: City of Echoes  is the first in a new series featuring Los Angeles police detective Matt Jones, who catches a big case on his first night as a homicide detective. My thoughts: Sometimes I have a hard time reviewing mysteries because so many things are not as they seem that by the end, I struggle to remember where I entered the story as a reader.  City of Echoes  is one of those mysteries. I read it while my in-laws were visiting (for the nomadbaby's first birthday), and I promptly asked my mother-in-law to read it. I'd given her copies of Ellis's earlier novels for holidays over the years, and s...

The backstory: I've read and loved all of Alafair Burke's mysteries , so I was eager to read The Cinderella Murder, her first collaboration (and first in a new series) with Mary Higgins Clark, a prolific mystery author whose work I have never read. The basics: The Cinderella Murder  is the first in a new series entitled Under Suspicion. Under Suspicion is a news special focused on unsolved cold cases. Although this is the first in the series, the production crew characters were featured in Higgins Clark's previous novel, I've Got You Under My Skin . This review, and the book itself, contains spoilers from I've Got You Under My Skin. My thoughts: There are two main storylines in this mystery: the murder of Susan Dempsey twenty years ago and Laurie Moran's continued recovery after her husband's death and the death of his killer. Perhaps because I had not read I've Got You Under My Skin , I enjoyed Laurie's personal storyline much less. I didn...

narrated by Mozhan Marno The backstory: A few months ago, I listened to Chris Pavone's debut thriller, The Expats , and loved it. When I saw his follow-up was also narrated by Mozhan Marno, it moved to the top of my audiobook queue. The basics: Featuring some of the same characters as The Expats, The Accident  is the story of an anonymous manuscript of the same name. The manuscript implicates many famous people and its release could have devastating consequences. The narrative begins with a publisher receiving a copy of the manuscript. Pavone intersperses key sections of the manuscript itself as the novel's events unfold. My thoughts: As a reader, book blogger and librarian, I'm pretty tuned into the business side of publishing, but The Accident  takes the reader deep into the publishing business, and it was a fascinating subplot. It's actually hard to decide which plots are subplots in this novel. There are many characters and locations, but the narrative never...

The backstory: Station Eleven  is on the 2014 National Book Award short list. Update: it was also longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics:  "An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity." (via the publisher) My thoughts:  I had high hopes for Station Eleven  even before it was longlisted (and then short listed) for the National Book Award. Emily St. John Mandel is an author I've been meaning to read for years (and an author whose early books grace my shelves, unread), and this novel was set to be her break out hit. And it has been. But as a reader, I never connected to the work or its characters. The premise is interesting, and I typically enjoy narratives that bounce across time and whose c...

The backstory: The Burning Room is Michael Connelly's twenty-seventh novel and the nineteenth to feature Harry Bosch. See my reviews for the other twenty-six novels in my Book Review Database . The basics: There are two mysteries at the center of The Burning Room . The first is a warm cold case. A mariachi musician dies nine years after being struck by a stray bullet. After the shooting, he became a political celebrity of sorts, and his death is very big news. Harry Bosch and his new partner Lucia Soto, who has been in the news as a hero cop, have a cold case to solve but a warm body to help. The second is a cold case very personal to Detective Soto, and it lets the reader get to know her through her backstory. My thoughts: It was with some trepidation that I began reading The Burning Room . I read Michael Connelly's first novel in February and proceeded to read all of his novels this year. Beginning this one (before it was published) meant the wait for the next one was r...

this review may contain spoilers from previous Mickey Haller novels The backstory: The Gods of Guilt  is the fifth Michael Connelly mystery to feature Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. For my reviews of the previous novels (and all of Michael Connelly's novels), please see my Review Database . The basics: Mickey Haller gets called to defend a man accused of murder. The victim, Gloria, a prostitute and former client of Mickey's, told him if anything ever happened to her, he should call Mickey. Gloria's death haunts Mickey, and as he prepares to defend her accused murdered, he also investigates her death and fears his own actions defending Gloria many years ago may have played a role in her death. My thoughts: I've raced through all of Michael Connelly's novels this year. While I enjoy the Harry Bosch novels more than the Mickey Haller novels, Haller, like Bosch, is a fascinatingly flawed character. When we last left Haller, he was planning ...

The backstory: The Black Box  is the eighteenth Michael Connelly mystery to feature LAPD detective Harry Bosch. My reviews of the previous seventeen (and Connelly's other mysteries) are listed in my Book Review Database . The basics: Twenty years ago, during the L.A. riots, Harry Bosch and his then partner were called to help investigate murders during the riots, when that precinct had too many murder victims to handle alone. With only a few hours at the crime scene of Anneke Jesperson, a young Danish photojournalist, Bosch knew then the crime wouldn't be solved. Now, in 2012, a ballistics match gives a new lead to the puzzling mystery of why a young, white foreigner found herself shot execution style in South Central L.A. during the height of the L.A. riots. My thoughts: The titular black box is a powerful metaphor for Bosch's sense of justice and purpose: "He believed that every case had a black box. A piece of evidence, a person, a positioning of facts that ...

The backstory: The Drop  is the seventeenth title in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. I've read and reviewed them all. The basics: Harry Bosch has just learned he has 39 months left before being forced to retire again. Eager for a new case to throw himself into, he gets two in one morning. First, a cold hit on a 1989 rape and murder matches a then eight-year-old; is it a crime lab mistake or could this sex offender really have started so young? Then, the police chief asks Harry to look into the alleged suicide of Irvin Irving's son at the Chateau Marmont. My thoughts: The Drop  features two mysteries, and both were intriguing. Bosch juggles them well, and it never felt like one was the main storyline. This equality, however, led to a somewhat unsatisfying pacing and climax. Both storylines were set in the past and present. It was interesting to see Irving appear again, and his history with Bosch is a key part of the storyline. In quite a different way, the cold...

I've been tearing through Michael Connelly's lengthy backlist, and I often find myself with repetitive things to say about them, so I'll mostly be doing mini-reviews of his titles, unless one compels me to write more deeply. Note: these contain spoilers and references to prior Connelly books. Nine Dragons  is the fifteenth Harry Bosch mystery. When Harry and his partner catch the case of a murdered Chinese-American liquor store owner in South Los Angeles, Harry brings in the Asian Gang Unit to help. He also enlists the help of his daughter, Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong. Soon Maddie is kidnapped, and Harry's focus shifts to Hong Kong and saving her, while trying to figure out the connections between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Nine Dragons  is perhaps the most personal Harry Bosch novel yet. It's an intriguing mystery, but Maddie's kidnapping is a suspenseful thrill-ride through the chaotic streets of Hong Kong.  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Source: l...