nomadreader

The backstory: Neely Tucker's first mystery novel featuring Sully Carter, The Ways of the Dead , was one of my favorite reads last year . The basics: Murder, D.C.  picks up shortly after the events of The Ways of the Dead , and it contains some spoilers from that novel. Here, Billy Ellison, the only son of DC's most influential black family is found dead in Frenchman's Bend, an unsavory part of town with deep historical roots. Veteran journalist and former war correspondent Sully Carter uses his connections to solve the crime and write the story. My thoughts: Sully Carter is a fascinating and complicated character. Much like Harry Bosch, he's an antihero of sorts. I find myself rooting for him most of the time, but I did wince at him a few times in this novel. I appreciate his complexity because it mimics the mystery itself. A whodunit can seem simple, but murder isn't typically committed in a vaccuum. Knowing who did it is only part of the story. In Murder,...

The backstory: The Governor's Wife  is the fifth novel in Michael Harvey's series featuring Chicago ex-cop and private investigator Michael Kelly. My reviews of the first four mysteries: The Chicago Way , The Fifth Floor , The Third Rail , and We All Fall Down . The basics: Two years ago, Ray Perry, the governor of Illinois, disappeared from a federal courthouse. Chicago PI Michael Kelly has been hired to find him. He doesn't know who his client is, but he agrees to the job, even if he doesn't agree to receive the $250,000 compensation without more information. My thoughts: Michael Harvey writes smart, fast-paced mysteries that read like thrillers, and The Governor's Wife  is no exception. Once again, Chicago's political corruption   is omnipresent, as are Harvey's signature surprises. This case sounds impossible, and yet Kelly pieces together clues relatively quickly. As part of me questioned his success, I was forced to credit Harvey's intentiona...

The backstory: Laura Dave is one of my favorite novelists. I've loved all three of her novels: London is the Best City in America , The Divorce Party , and The First Husband . After four years of waiting, I was thrilled to read her latest novel. The basics: Set in Sebastopol, part of California' Sonoma County wine country, Eight Hundred Grapes  is the story of the Ford family, told from the perspective of their daughter, Georgia, who is a powerful Los Angeles attorney about to marry a British architect and move to London. Set against the grape harvest and the week before her wedding, each of the Fords, Georgia, her two brothers, and her parents, face challenges in their romantic and professional lives. My thoughts: Laura Dave is such a smart writer. This novel is part family saga, part drama, part romance, but it's all smart. Through her characters and storylines, Dave imparts immense wisdom about life and love: "Synchronization, my father would say. This was a...

The backstory: The Shore  was longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics: Stretching from 1876 to 2143, this non-linear novel is the story of generations of a poor family, principally its women, who live on the titular shore of small, isolated, Virginia islands. My thoughts: I first heard about The Shore  when it appeared on several blogger's Baileys Prize prediction lists. The UK cover is very different, and when I saw the U.S. cover, I thought The Shore  would be a family beach saga. And it is, but it's as far from WASPs as you can get. When you look closely at the house on the U.S. cover, it's clear the house is dilapidated. The novel opens in 1995, and the first chapter sets the dark tone of this novel beautifully. It's haunting. The second chapter is set in 1933, and slowly a picture of how the family we meet in 1993 came to be. The concept of this novel is great. I squealed when I saw the table of contents. I love a novel that can be historical fi...

Well, hello there! I'm still here, even if I haven't been around much on the blog (or even Twitter.) I haven't been reading much either. I've been reading lots of books, and I'm even enjoying most of them, but I haven't been spending much time reading, so I'm currently reading about eight different books and most days don't even pick one of them up.   But. I think that's about to change. It has changed the past few days, as I so miss reading and talking about books. I'm finding new ways to prioritize reading again. As I've said many times in the almost ten months I've been a mom, "you find what works for you. Then it changes, and you do it again." And we are in the midst of some major changes. Hawthorne will be ten months old this week. The last month has been quite eventful for him developmentally. He got really  good at crawling, so I spend a lot time looking at his butt: To his credit, he often looks back as though to s...

translated by William Weaver  The backstory: Invisible Cities  is one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die . It's also Mr. Nomadreader's favorite book of all time and one of the first two selections for The "Darling, but..." Book Club. The basics: Invisible Cities  is mostly a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, in which Polo describes the cities he's seen on his journey to and from Venice and the Mongol Empire. My thoughts: There's a lot of pressure when you read your favorite person's favorite book. Mr. Nomadreader and I have been discussing this book for years, as it's themes of cities and travel come up so frequently in our lives. Yet when we started watching "Marco Polo" on Netflix this winter, and I kept pausing to ask questions because I didn't know enough about that historical period to be able to follow (my world history pre-1900 is embarrassingly bad), I discovered that the plot of Invisible Cities  i...

The backstory:  The Ghost Network  is my May pick for  The "Darling, but..." Book Club . Within the first few pages, I knew I had to make Mr. Nomadreader read it. The basics:  Told in a nonfiction style, complete with frequent footnotes,  The Ghost Network  begins with the disappearance of Molly Metropolis, a famous pop singer. Through interviews with Metropolis's inner circle and journals,  The Ghost Network  reads like a mystery, a biography, a history of an anarchist fringe group or mapmaking or the city of Chicago, a work on city planning, and a work of philosophy. It is all of those things, and it is none of those things. My thoughts:  I don't think my description of  The Ghost Network  can do it justice. It's so original, and it has so many fun discoveries in it, that I'd rather keep my description vague. I knew very little going into this novel. I think the notes in my review spreadsheet called it a feminist debut mystery...