Book Reviews by vicki rock

Valerie Gillis. 42, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker, is missing about 200 miles from her final destination. She has been hiking for three months. There’s no cell phone service on that stretch of the trail.

Valerie, a nurse, writes in her journal a series of letters to her mother as she struggles to stay alive. Her trail name is Sparrow. Her husband, Gregory Bouras, reported her missing.

Lt. Beverly Miller, a Maine State Game Warden, leads the search on the ground. She’s been in the business of finding people lost in the woods for 30 years. She and Bob Cross head the incident management team for their district. Warden Cody Ouellette interviews Ruben Serrano, an overweight Black man, who uses the trail name Santo. He hiked with Valerie in Pennsylvania, but he quit his hike in Vermont.

Lena Kulcharski, 76, a birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an armchair detective. She is talking to someone in a chat room who goes by the online name Terrible Silence. He lives in Bethel, Maine. He thinks he knows what happened to Valerie.

The characters are good and the depictions of conflict between mothers and daughters are realistic. The descriptions of how searches are done fascinating. The novel does drag a bit towards the middle, but it has a good ending.

I rate it four out of five stars.

In Heppleburn, Northumberland County, England, people are getting ready for Halloween. Jack Robeson is a school governor and custodian. He is a widower and has two adult daughters, Susan and Patty.

Patty is married to Jim Atkins. Their children are Jennifer and Andrew. Patty is on the school Parents’ Association. Paul Wilcox, a stay-at-home father, is chairman of the group. Patty suggests they have a Halloween party for adults.

Harold Medburn, the headmaster, is a nasty bully. Almost everybody in Heppleburn hates or fears him. He is trying to get new teacher, Matthew Carpenter, to resign because Medburn didn’t choose him. Medburn’s wife, Kitty, is a district nurse.

When Medburn doesn’t show for the school Halloween party, Jack decides to go to his house and get him. Instead he finds Medburn’s body hanging from a noose in the playground.

Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sgt. Gordon Hunter are assigned as investigators. Ramsay is convinced the murderer was the headmaster's wife because Medburn was leaving her for Angela Brayshaw. Jack Robeson is determined to prove her innocence. With the help of his daughter, Jack digs into the secrets of Heppleburn, and uncovers lies, adultery and blackmail.

This is an older novel, but it is being published in the US for the first time. It predates the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series. It is slow-moving at first, but picks up. I liked the characters, but I thought the police should have been more involved in the investigation than the neighbors. The reason behind the murder is a surprise.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Gregory Maguire is the author of “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” and the related books that are a retelling of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum.

“Elphie” is the coming-of-age story. She is shaped by her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She has a sister Nessarose and a brother Shell. Elphie first encounters the mistreatment of the animal populations of Oz.

While I enjoyed the original “Wicked” and the resulting musical and movie, “Elphie” is a letdown. it is slow-moving and doesn’t have much of a plot. It is more of a story of Frex searching for Turtle Heart's family to atone than about Elphaba. There are long descriptions of landscapes. It is disjointed and relays on time jumps.

I recommend the original “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” instead of “Elphie.”

I rate it three out of five stars.

Annie, 35, is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA in Portland, Oregon. It is the first day of her maternity leave. Her dream was to be a playwright. Now she is the office manager at a technology company.

Her husband, Dom, 38, is a struggling actor who picks up shifts at a cafe. They had a fight the night before. She talks to the baby “Bean” in her thoughts.

Then a massive earthquake hits. Annie starts thinking back to when she and Dom met. She is trapped under debris, but another woman helps her get out. She’s lost her purse and can’t find her car keys or her phone. She and a woman named Taylor, who is trying to get to her daughter’s school, decide to walk.

As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she’s determined to change her life. Will she make it to safety before going into labor?

The timeline of the book is one day. I struggled with this novel. Both Annie and Dom are immature and self-centered and some parts are just unbelievable. The ending doesn’t resolve the big questions.

I rate it three out of five stars..

October 22, 1895 in Granville, on the coast of Normandy, Mado Pelletier, is waiting at the small railroad station. She lives in Paris with her widowed mother and traveled to Granville for her 21st birthday because she always wanted to see the ocean.

Maurice Marland, 7, will be riding the train alone. Elise Blonska, an older woman, was in Granville for her health. Henry Tanner, an American painter, is also on board as are John Synge from Dublin, several medical students and three members of Parliament.

Railroad guard Jean Le Goff gets people onto the Granville-Paris Express which is to arrive at 3:55 p.m. Leon Mariette is the senior guard. Guillaume Pellerin is the train’s engineer and Victor Garnier is his stoker. Both Pellerin and Garnier have been on the train for hours, conducting safety checks. Mariette has an alarm bell and handbrake in case he sees danger. But someone on the train is carrying a bomb.

“The Paris Express” is very intense and fast-moving with a surprise ending. The various characters are realistic. It is based on a real train derailment that was captured in a series of amazing photographs, one of which appears in the author’s note. She also details which characters are based on real people and what happened to them.

Emma Donoghue is the author of 16 novels, including the bestseller, “Room.” This is one of her best.

I rate it five out of five stars.

The Altermans are a Jewish family in Vienna in 1938. The parents send Sonja, their daughter, on the Kindertransport to Britain to keep her safe from Nazis. They stay behind with infant, Moses.

Sonja believes her family will soon follow. They don’t. Years later, she marries a symphony conductor in London. They have a daughter who dies at the age of nine.

When Arnold, the father, is 99, he submits a DNA test and is then contacted by a woman claiming to be Sonja. Fania, the mother, ends up in Montreal with a man named Hermann. She encounters a woman who could be her double. Moses is followed by a ghost. Are these people actually alive and grieving or have they all died?

Unfortunately, I had trouble getting through this novel. It has long run-on sentences and is too fragmented to follow. It was not for me.

I rate it three out of five stars.

It is September 1864 in Virginia. Libby Steadman’s husband, Peter, has been away for a long time. He is now in a Union prison camp after being wounded and captured at Gettysburg.

Libby’s days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, Jubilee, a freedman, Joseph, and his wife, Sally. All the grain they can produce is requisitioned by the Confederate Army.

Lt. Henry Morgan of the Sixth Virginia Calvary is the grandson of one of her neighbors, Leveritt Covington. When Morgan arrives to take Joseph with them, Libby points out that Joseph is over 60 and without him she will have trouble running the mill. They don’t conscript Joseph.

Union Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade, a former college professor, had enlisted. He and his men are to occupy a hilltop near Berryville. Weybridge is severely injured in the battle and one of his legs is amputated.

His unit leaves him in a confiscated house alone when they move on. Libby finds Weybridge. She hopes that her husband was humanely treated when he was wounded and she thinks she may be able to trade Weybridge for Peter. Libby and Weybridge slowly form a friendship.

This was inspired by a true story. It is a story of surviving war and depicts the best and worst of humanity. The novel accurately depicts the Civil War and medical care of the time. Chris Bohjalian is an excellent storyteller and I am a fan of everything he writes. You will root for the characters and cheer at the ending.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Dr. Henry Byrd, a New York psychiatrist, is the narrator. Jane O., 38, goes to his office for the first time and stays only 14 minutes. She tells him she is a librarian and has a one-year-old son, Caleb.

She hasn’t been sleeping well since her son was born. The only trauma she recalls is the death of an elderly neighbor named Shelia Schwartz. Jane tells Byrd that she also had a hallucination: she saw someone that she knows is dead and talked with him. His name was Nico Lombardi and he died when he was 18.

Three days later, Byrd gets a call from New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. A woman has been brought in to the emergency room. She was found unconscious in Prospect Park. She says her name is Jane and that Byrd is her doctor.

The more Byrd learns of her case, the less certain he is of its nature. At Byrd’s suggestion that she keep a journal, Jane begins to write letters to her son. Jane has an excellent memory but are her memories real? Is Byrd or Jane the reliable narrator?

The plot and the characters are interesting. Karen Thompson Walker does an excellent job of blending the two main characters’ voices. The ending is surprising.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Camilla Deschamps has been on maternity leave since the birth of her daughter, Polly. She is happy to be returning to work as a literary agent. It is June 21, 2017.

When she goes to wake her husband, Luke, he isn’t there. Luke is a ghostwriter and has a co-working space, so Cam thinks that’s where he is. They live in Pimlico, a neighborhood in London.

Then as she is leaving, she finds an odd note from Luke, but puts it out of her mind and takes Polly to daycare. While at work, she sees a breaking news report about a hostage situation at a warehouse in central London.

Detective Sergeant Steven Lambert and Constable Emma Smith come to Cam’s office and tell her that they believe Luke is holding three people hostage. Niall Thompson is the hostage negotiator. James Maidstone is the lead detective.

“Famous Last Words” is the story of a complicated crime and of a complicated marriage. It has multiple twists and the reveal is shocking. Mystery lovers don’t want to miss this one.

I rate it five out of five stars.

Hana Babic, 47, is a librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. Children call her The Sweater Lady.

But when St. Paul Detective David Claypool arrives with the news that her best friend, Amina Junuzovic, has been murdered, Hana knows that it is because of something from their mutual past. Amina was raising her grandson, Dylan Greene, 8, because his parents were killed in a boating accident.

The police know the women are from Bosnia. They don’t know that the two women were different people years ago. Thirty years before, Hana was Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia.

Serbian soldiers slaughtered Nura’s entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price. Amina left Dylan in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.

Chapters of what happened in Bosnia alternate with chapters of the current time. It is fast-paced with well-drawn characters. The story is a sad but endearing tale, with a good ending. Hana is a character you won’t soon forget.

I rate it five out of five stars.

In Los Angeles, the body of Marissa French, 25, an aspiring actress, is found dumped near a hospital emergency room. She’s been drugged and murdered.

While there is a poor security video of the body dump, she wasn’t found for six minutes. Homicide Detective Milo Sturgis is in charge of the investigation. He calls in psychologist Alex Delaware.

Then they get a call from Detective Petra Conner, who was assigned to the homicide of Paul O’Brien, 43, who was shot. Marissa’s clothes and identification are in his apartment. If he killed her, then who killed him?

The police learn that the gun that was used to kill O’Brien was used in an earlier homicide. And another before that. It’s not long before more bodies begin piling up.

The characters are believable and the plot is complex and fast-paced. The reason behind the murders is unusual and as a psychologist, Alex figures out the motive.

This is the 40th in the series.

I rate it four out of five stars.

Ebony Freeman and her brother, Baz, are close. They live with their parents, Soh and Ed, in New England. When Ebby is 10, Baz, 15, is fatally shot in their home. A 19th century stoneware jar that has been in their family for six generations was also shattered by gunfire.

The Freemans are one of the few Black families in that town. The murder is never solved. Each family member copes with grief in their way. Eighteen years later, Ebby is to be married to Henry Pepper. But he calls off the wedding on the day of the ceremony.

Because of gossip about what happened, Ebby flees to France. Her friend Hannah Pitts owns the vacation house in France where Ebby will stay. Hannah asks Ebby to welcome tourists while she is working in London. Ebby is shocked to see the guests are Henry and another woman, Avery Williams.

The story then goes back to 1803. Kandia is one of the women who makes pottery. She is kidnapped into slavery. Edward "Willis" Freeman, Ebby’s great-great-grandfather, escaped slavery by stowing away on a ship from South Carolina to Massachusetts. He took the jar with him.

There are also flashbacks into the Freeman’s lives, which to me detracted from the story because of all the characters and the changes in timeline. But the novel is basically about trauma, racism and families.

Charmaine Wilkerson is also the author of “Black Cake,” published in 2022.

I rate it four out of five stars.