The Ghostwriter

The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark, 368 pages

Ghostwriter Olivia has long been estranged from her father, Vincent, despite the fact that he's a famous horror writer and they occasionally turn up at the same writing conferences. When he was an awkward loner teen, Vincent's two siblings were found murdered in their family home, and while he was never convicted, most of the residents of their small hometown assume he killed his brother and sister. Growing up in that same small town, Olivia had to deal with more than her share of rumors and bullying based on her dad's notoriety, so it's only natural that she'd try to distance herself from it as much as possible. But when a new work offer comes along — ghostwriting her father's memoir of his siblings' death — Olivia literally can't refuse, and starts to dive into her family history.

Told in chapters that bounce back and forth in time, this thriller is good and twisty. I particularly like the way it handles difficult family relationships that are further complicated by dementia, outsized egos, and unreliable narrators (and that's all one person, at different times of his life). Definitely worth a read.

Great Big Beautiful Life

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (2025) 416 pages

Alice grew up loving music that Cosmo Sinclair, an early icon of the rock and roll scene, created. Some of Cosmo's music was written about his wife, Margaret Ives, the great-granddaughter of a publishing magnate based in California. Margaret was big on the social scene until she disappeared, not too long after Cosmo's untimely death in a car accident. 

Alice is a writer for a pop culture magazine, but would love to write something more substantial, like Margaret Ives's biography. She tracks her down to an island off of Savannah, Georgia and is eventually given an invitation to visit. However, Margaret has asked a Pulitzer-prize-winning biographer, Hayden Anderson to try out for the job as well, and gives each of the writers one month to interview her and to make proposals for how they plan to present her life. At that time, she will choose one of them to write her bio. They're required to sign non-disclosure contracts, keeping them from discussing their time with Margaret with anyone, including each other.

Alice and Hayden each have three days per week for meeting with Margaret. They run into each other often on the small island. Alice is cheerful and optimistic; Hayden tends to be much more serious. As they get to know each other, their own relationship grows. As for Margaret's life, it's like a story within a story. Starting with her grand-grandfather, who left Pennsylvania where his large family was quite poor, and found his way out west to mine ore. He started to gain wealth, and later learned that buying up newspapers was even more lucrative. The various siblings, spouses, and lovers in Margaret's family tree makes for drama.

Margaret's story, starting back in the 1800s, was fascinating, but eventually, I found myself more invested in the relationship of Alice and Hayden, and in their own backstories.

A Very Bad Thing

A Very Bad Thing by J.T. Ellison, 495 pages

Bestselling novelist Columbia Jones never gives interviews, limits public appearances to short bookstore tours when each title is released. Yet for her newest novel, she's asked a single investigative journalist to accompany on her publicity tour, offering an exclusive, in-depth interview and profile. Just as the tour wraps up and journalist Riley is getting ready for her final interview before writing and publishing the profile, Columbia is found dead in her hotel room. That's shocking enough, but when Riley learns she's been named as a beneficiary in Columbia's will, Columbia's carefully constructed personal history begins to unwind, in shocking and often confusing ways.

It's hard  to talk about this book without giving away all of the twists and turns. I'll just say that it was a propulsive story that makes you question how much you can trust the public persona of anyone famous, yet manages to do so without making the celebrity a true villain. It's twisty and kept me guessing throughout.

Loose Lips

Loose Lips by Kemper Donovan, 336 pages

After writing a book about her experience solving a murder the year before, the unnamed ghostwriter/narrator of our book gets talked into teaching a mystery-writing seminar on a cruise for aspiring female authors. And of course, this captive audience is full of crazy characters, one of whom is murdered while several others are poisoned, and the ghostwriter once again finds herself investigating.

While this is a better book than its predecessor (The Busy Body) and I loved the twist at the end, I had to suspend a lot of disbelief to get there. OK, but not great, and maybe not the book to take on a cruise.

Any Trope But You

Any Trope But You by Victoria Lavine, 336 pages

Despite being a beloved bestselling romance author, Margot has gotten burned way too easily to believe in her own happily ever after, though she certainly doesn't share that info with her readers. But when it comes to the forefront in the most scandalous way possible, Margot picks up her shattered career and heads to a remote and rustic Alaskan resort to try her hand at writing a murder mystery. But the last thing she expects to find is Dr. Forrest Wakefield, a renowned cancer doctor who has put his career on hold to care for his unwell father and keep the family business running. The more time the two spend together, the more romance tropes pop up between the two, drawing them closer together despite the ticking clock of Margot's return to L.A.

This book felt very meta, and I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The references to romance tropes aren't so much winks and nods as they are neon signs and loudspeaker announcements, which makes it bit annoying for romance fans who already know all these plot points and could catch them easily on their own. Also, I'm not sure that the inciting scandal was really that bad. Like, it could've been smoothed over with a social media post or public statement, but in this book, it's treated as if nothing could ever be worse for the romance community. So this might work for someone who's new to the genre and needs to have the tropes spelled out, but otherwise, skip it.

You Are Fatally Invited

You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego, 384 pages

The identity of bestselling author J.R. Alastor has been a well-guarded secret for 30 years, so when a handful of authors are invited to Alastor's island mansion for a writing retreat, they're all excited to go and meet the master in real life. But he's not there when they arrive, and his assistant, Mila, doesn't seem to know when he'll arrive. And before long the authors quickly learn that their host has no intention of revealing himself, as the authors start dying one by one, just like murders they wrote in their own books.

It's hard to tell if this locked-room story is a mystery (there are so many tropes!) or a thriller (there is so much suspense!), though that shouldn't prevent people from checking this book out. Yes, there are a few twists that felt a bit unnecessary or obvious, but for a debut novel, it was still a lot of fun. I'm intrigued by what Pliego will bring us in the future.

Between Friends and Lovers

Between Friends and Lovers by Shirlene Obuobi, 357 pages

Dr. Josephine Boateng has thousands of social media followers who tune in for her humor and candid attitude toward health and self-love. While she's super-confident in front of the camera, her off-screen life is much more complicated, with a long unrequited crush on her rich playboy best friend, Ezra, keeping her from dating seriously. But when Ezra takes his new girlfriend's side when Jo calls her out as her high school bully, Jo has had it and decides to plunge into a new relationship with shy novelist, Mal. Mal's dealing with his own issues (among them: impostor syndrome when his debut novel gets picked up for screen adaptation and baggage from a long-term toxic relationship), but as a longtime Instagram follower of Jo, he's willing to give this a try, especially when he finds her as charming in real life as she is online. But will Jo be able to let go of Ezra's hold on her so that her relationship with Mal can flourish?

This is a winning romance with plenty of clear communication (what?? that never happens in romance novels!) and a distinct lack of guys fighting over the girl. Honestly, my one complaint about this book is that Mal is just too perfect a guy, though that's probably not a bad thing for a romance novel. Well worth a read.

Past Lying

Past Lying by Val McDermid, 452 pages

It's late March 2020, and DCI Karen Pirie and her team at the Historic Crimes Unit are bored to tears with nothing to do during COVID lockdown when a call comes in from the National Library with a possible lead in a cold case. Late thriller author Jake Stein donated his personal archives to the library upon his death, and as archivists started to go through his belongings, they discovered an unpublished manuscript that matches very closely the details of an unsolved case of a missing woman. Now Pirie and her team must figure out how to reopen the case under the tight restrictions of lockdown.

I love the premise for this book, the seventh in McDermid's Karen Pirie series, though I was a bit surprised by how mobile the HCU team was during Scotland's strict lockdown regulations — I seriously thought they'd be doing all of the interviews via Zoom, yet they were meeting people in the park and sitting 6 feet away instead. That said, this was a remarkably quick and engaging read for 450 pages, and even though I figured out several of the twists WAY early, I still enjoyed the book, particularly the relationship between Pirie and her two teammates. I haven't read the other books in this series, but I'll probably put them on my TBR to check out at some future date.

The Murders in Great Diddling

The Murders in Great Diddling by Katarina Bivald, 432 pages

The tiny Cornwall town of Great Diddling doesn't have much to its snicker-worthy name — though that's never stopped the residents from making plenty of wild claims to fame to try to drum up some tourism. So when a much-maligned man is killed in an explosion in the library of a local manor, the residents of Great Diddling decide to make the most of it and create a book-and-murder festival to capitalize on their 15 minutes of fame. However, local author Berit Gardner and DCI Ian Ahmed are more concerned with solving the mystery of the odious man's death, though for very different reasons — Inspector Ahmed wants to mete out justice, while Berit simply wants to end her spate of writer's block.

This book plays up the stereotype of murder-filled small English towns with a wink and a nod, while creating eccentric characters and a boatload of possible murder motives that kept me guessing until the very end. I really hope this becomes the start to a series, as I'd love to read more about the residents of Great Diddling!

Around the World in 80 Books

 

Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch 412 pp.

Created as a kind of antidote to the Covid lockdown, the chair of Harvard's Comparative Literature Department evokes the travels of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg by selecting 80 books by a wide variety of authors. The books have settings that roughly follow Fogg's itinerary. Damrosch also pairs books with similar themes, settings, or authors. I read 13 of the 80, some for pleasure, others as school assignments. A couple have been summer Big Book Challenge titles including last summer's Tale of Genji and this summer's Things Fall Apart. While most of the titles can be classified as "great literature", I was excited to find a Donna Leon title from one of my favorite series in the list. While I don't expect to read the entire list, there are a number that are already in my TBR books and I will be adding a few of Damrosch's suggested titles. If you can get past the often dry, professorial tone to the book, it's an interesting read. The audiobook was read by the author.

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman

 Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Dr. Lucy Worsley  432 pp.

Dr. Lucy Worsley is a historian, well-known to watchers of British television documentaries, of which I am one. Those familiar with her will know she has a slight speech impediment. So I knew this while embarking of the audiobook version of this biography. I'll admit, it was occasionally annoying to listen to but the book itself is a very detailed account of the 85 years of Agatha Miller Christie Mallowan's life with all its ups and downs. Born in the last decade of the Victorian era, she was raised in an upper class household, not formally educated, nor expected to become a "working woman" because that "just wasn't done." With the change to the new century and then the advent of World War I, along with family financial difficulties, Agatha became a working woman. She married Archibald Christie at the beginning of the War and published her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1921. She continued her prolific writing until Postern of Fate in 1973. During that time she had a child, had her mysterious disappearance, divorced Archibald, and remarried a much younger archaeologist named Max Mallowan while continuing to write and making multiple extended stays in the Middle East. Her writings include novels, short story collections, plays and movie scripts, some under the name Mary Westmacott.. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971. Many years ago I made it a goal to read all of Christie's mysteries which I completed when in my 20s. 

Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies

Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack, 352 pages

Ten years ago, Eleanor Dash went on vacation in Rome, fell in love with charming PI/"consultant" Connor, and helped solve a string of bank robberies that ended up with the head of the local mafia behind bars. When she came home, she wrote about it, changed a few names, and unbelievably had a bestselling mystery novel.

Today, Eleanor is getting ready to write her tenth book, and is back in Italy with now-ex-boyfriend Connor (who ended up being as self-centered as he is charming), her assistant/sister Harper (who put aside her own dreams of becoming a writer to help Eleanor), a few other novelists (including Eleanor's other ex, Oliver), and 20 of Eleanor's superfans (who won the trip by winning an online contest). While this is already a recipe for discomfort and wacky hijinks, there's also someone on the trip who seems to be trying to kill Connor...and possibly Eleanor.

This was a light and somewhat silly read, full of fourth-wall-breaking footnotes (more than 200 of them, yeesh), and situations that still make no sense to me. I was able to figure out the killer WAY too early (before there was a corpse, actually), which definitely took away from my enjoyment of the book and makes it really hard to recommend. Instead, read Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone for a more interesting meta-mystery.

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson, 320 pages

This sequel to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone finds new author Ernest attending a small writing festival on a trans-Australian train. He's there with a few other crime writers, hoping to get some inspiration for a second novel — preferably one that isn't inspired by a spate of real life murders, which is how he got the idea for his first book. Unfortunately, with a train full of crime writers and their fans, these are just the sort of people to know how to creatively commit a crime, and sure enough, murder soon appears on the festival agenda.

I didn't read the first book, but that's not exactly required for this one. The characters and plot are interesting, and I honestly would have loved this book if it wasn't for the fourth-wall-breaking that kept taking me out of the story. It's very meta — a book that's from the point of view of an author who's writing a sequel to a popular debut murder mystery — and that in itself isn't unheard of or irksome. But the wink-and-nod "this is how you plot a murder mystery novel with word count markings for twists" and "this is how many times I'm going to mention the killer's name" and "hey, this is where we are on the word count and the number of times I've mentioned each character's name" breaks only served to distract from the otherwise compelling novel.

The Love Interest

The Love Interest by Victoria Walters, 328 pages

Liv is a part-time librarian who really just wants to write a romance novel. But she can't figure out how to write the leading man in her book. Enter her brother's best friend, Aiden, who has long been Liv's nemesis, but whose good looks and sexy accent make him a good starting place for a fictional love interest. I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

Enemies-to-lovers is one of my favorite romance tropes, but this book falls flat. The writing is meh, and the book-within-the-book's writing is bad enough that happy ending with the publishing deal is less believable than anything romantic in this book. And that's saying something, as the romance is a bit blah as well. I could go on, but I'll suffice it to say that I don't recommend this one. 

Revenge of the Librarians

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld, 180 pages

In this 2022 collection of cartoons, Gauld (a cartoonist for The New Yorker and The Guardian) offers up short, humorous takes on books, libraries, authors, and the COVID-19 pandemic during which most of these cartoons were created. They're smart, relatable, and funny, and I found myself cackling heartily MANY times during the short amount of time it took to devour the book. Highly recommended to fans of books, libraries, and humor.

Confessions of a Bookseller

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell 323 pp.

This book isn't so much "confessions" as it is a diary of the day-to-day goings on in the life of a man running the second largest used bookshop in a small town in Scotland. Besides a running tally of the days online orders and in person sales, Bythell relates the day to day activities, frustrations, and encounters during a year in his shop. There are a variety of characters who work in or frequent the shop, some who are serious and others perplexing. The winter months are relatively slow while the other seasons are much more active due to special events and book festivals. While I didn't find this book particularly engrossing, apparently some liked it so much there was talk of making it into a television series. There is a sequel of sorts called Diary of a Bookseller but I don't know if I'm interested in it enough to read it.

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun by Elle Cosimano, 297 pages

The third book in the Finlay Donovan series finds the titular character and her nanny/accountant/accomplice Vero yet again scrambling to get out of trouble with both some Atlantic City loan sharks and a jailed mob boss named Feliks. The sharks are coming to collect from Vero, while Feliks has tasked Finlay with discovering the identity of (and subsequently turning over to his goons) a gun-for-hire known only by their online handle: EasyClean. While these not-at-all-legal tasks are difficult enough, Finlay's close relationship with the local cops (her sister is one, and so is the guy that she's trying hard not to hook up with) has made it infinitely harder, especially when she gets roped into attending a sleepaway-camp-esque citizens police academy. Oh, and there's a dead guy and a stolen Aston Martin they have to deal with too. No biggie.

At this point in the series, it's nearly impossible to figure out what's going on without reading the previous books fairly recently...and I'll admit that it's been a while since I read the second book. Once I cottoned on to the plot, the book went quickly enough, though as the series progresses, I'm having more and more difficulty forgiving Finlay and Vero's antics, or caring about them as characters. Will I continue reading? I dunno... but if you dig madcap mysteries with mistaken identities and mafia galore, you'll probably enjoy this series.

I Didn't Do It

I Didn't Do It: Thriller Writer Conventions Can Be Murder by Jaime Lynn Hendricks  325 pp.

The title pretty much says it all. Murder mystery and thriller writers are gathered in New York City for Murderpalooza, a convention of the industry's best and brightest and those who aspire to be them. The high point of the convention is the awarding of a prize for the best thriller author of the year. But the front runner is found murdered in her hotel room. Four other authors are receiving Twitter (before it was X) messages saying they may be killed next. Whoever is sending the tweets seems to know the dirty secrets of all four. They band together to find the murderer while still suspecting one of their group may be the killer. The twist at the end is somewhat of a surprise. It's a fun ride.

The Irregulars

The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant 416 pp.

Before the U.S. entered World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was doing his best to convince President Franklin Roosevelt to join the cause against Hitler. Part of Churchill's efforts included establishing the top secret organization called British Security Coordination, a branch of the SIS/MI6. These were spies tasked with finding German spies in the U.S. and countering the influence of the anti-war "America First Committee". The fact that one of our closest allies used such a spy network is somewhat disturbing. One of the early recruits was Roald Dahl, a pilot who had suffered career ending injuries in a crash. One of Dahl's main tasks was to infiltrate the social lives of the movers and shakers in Washington, D.C. where he became a popular guest at parties, people's homes, and even the White House. Dahl, in his pre-James and the Giant Peach days, along with others in the BSC spread fake news, passed rumors through whispering campaigns, forged documents, and used every method available to vilify Nazi Germany. Dahl accomplished most of his work through wining, dining, and illicit romances with notable women, including Claire Boothe Luce, powerful Congresswoman and wife of Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines. Author Ian Fleming, also a BSC agent, later used some of these exploits as a basis for his character James Bond's way with the ladies. The last chapter of the book continues Dahl's biography through his fame as an author of popular children's books and his marriages to actress Patricia Neal and Felicity Crosland. I listened to the audiobook version because, to be honest, I probably would not have finished it otherwise.

The Woman in the Library

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, 265 pages

A mystery novelist attempting to find the muse in the Reading Room of Boston Public Library's main branch begins observing the people around her, concocting their intertwined stories. Suddenly, a woman's scream pierces the room and all of the room's occupants are ushered outside. Bound by the scream they overheard, the novelist and the three people she was observing start a fast friendship, based on discovering who screamed and what it has to do with a woman who was later found dead in the library. That's the kernel that starts the book within a book in The Woman in the Library. The rest of the book is epistolary, filled with emailed commentary on each chapter from the author's Boston-based acquaintance (the author is based in Australia, apparently).

While that description may not make sense, the book is well-structured and it's easy to tell if you're reading the book or the book within the book. Unfortunately, I felt like the structure was the most interesting element of the book. We know next to nothing about the author whose chapters we're reading, nor do we know much about her acquaintance, though we're able to pick up a bit as the book goes on. And the book within the book? It's interesting, but not deep. If you want a complex and twisty book-within-a-book mystery, stick to Anthony Horowitz. This one doesn't hold a candle to Magpie Murders, though it made me wish I was reading that again instead.