The Holdout

The Holdout by Graham Moore, 322 pages

Maya is a successful defense attorney in Los Angeles. But 10 years ago, she was an idealistic writer and a juror on the trial of the decade: Bobby Nock, a young black man, was accused of murdering Jessica Silver, the 15-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter of a billionaire real estate magnate. Maya wasn't convinced of his guilt, and over four excruciating weeks, convinced her fellow jurors to return a verdict of not guilty, to much outcry from the public. When the jurors gather for a tenth anniversary documentary, Maya's most vocal critic among her peers turns up dead, in Maya's hotel room, and she's suddenly trying to solve two murders in a race against the clock.

This is a tightly woven thriller that also manages to discuss racial, social, and judicial disparities intelligently without making it seem like a lecture. It's a gripping read.

Murder at the Mena House

Murder at the Mena House by Erica Ruth Neubauer, 281 pages

It's 1926, and war widow Jane Wunderly is on holiday with her aunt in Egypt. They're staying within sight of the pyramids at the upscale Mena House resort. In between sweating through her dresses and fending off the various eligible bachelors her aunt is thrusting at her, Jane finds herself accused of murdering a disreputable young socialite. Suddenly, she's working to clear her name, unsure of who to trust, including the mysterious and handsome Redvers.

This was a fun cozy mystery with a great setting, and excellent characters. I'd love to see how this series develops!

Sin Eater

Sin Eater by Megan Campisi, 284 pages

In 16th-Century England, it is custom for dying people to confess their sins to a woman who will then eat specified food at their funeral to take those sins upon herself. This allows the deceased to ascend to heaven unburdened of their worldly sins. The woman is called a sin eater, and as she takes on every sin committed by everyone else, she lives a cursed life, one in which she may not speak and in which no one (even family) speaks to, touches, or even looks at her for fear of being tempted into further sin. This fascinating historical novel introduces us to May, a young woman who is sentenced to becoming a sin eater and quickly becomes aware of a complex tangle of murder and intrigue among the queen's closest companions.

I was unaware of the custom of sin eating, which apparently lasted until just over 100 years ago in England, meaning there were hundreds of years of sentencing women to life as a social pariah, often for meaningless crimes. This book is fascinating, heart-wrenching, and a surprising page-turner. Highly recommended.

The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, 368 pages

In a quiet, upscale retirement community, while their neighbors knit and do crossword puzzles, four elderly residents gather weekly in the Jigsaw Room to work through police cold cases. But when the builder who was supposed to start an expansion project for the retirement community turns up dead, Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim suddenly have a timely case on their hands.

This is a light, fun, and laugh-out-loud funny mystery novel. I truly enjoyed reading it, and particularly loved the club's group dynamics and their investigative methods (one exchange: "You can get anything on the internet, the dark web. I read about it in the Lancet." "How would you even start to get to the dark web?" "Well, I'd imagine first you'd go buy a computer." "Oh! So we should start figuring out who has one of those."). I don't know if this is planned as a series, but I sure hope so. It's simply delightful.

*This book will be published Sept. 22, 2020.

How to be fine

How to be fine: what we learned from living by the rules of 50 self help books / Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer, read by the authors, 251 pgs.

I enjoyed listening to these two, who also host the podcast "By the book," talk about their successes and failures following self-help books. They break this into three parts, things that worked, things that didn't work, and things they wish more books recommended.  So, in the end, they can't stop themselves from offering their own help.  I'm a sucker for self-help books but mostly because it shows me how out of touch the authors are with my kind of life.  Sometimes, though, you get some great ideas. One of the authors here has the same skepticism which is why they make a great team. Fun listening and I added some titles onto my own "to read" list based on their comments.

Manfried saves the day

Manfried saves the day / Caitlin Major & Kelly Bastow, 224 pgs.

Manfried is a remarkable man, his "pet dad" Steve is an overworked comic artist with a demanding job and a demanding girlfriend.  Manfried can be pretty demanding too but then Steve just locks him out.  When Steve's girlfriend Henrietta is close to losing her man shelter, she enlists Steve and Manfried in a scheme to win a contest to buy the property herself.  Can Manfried triumph? Can he even perform after his injury.  No spoilers here, find a copy yourself. Ok, maybe the title is a spoiler so I don't have to hesitate to tell you it all works out in the end. A silly book that was very fun to read.

Deacon King Kong

Deacon King Kong / James McBride, read by Dominic Hoffman, 370 pages

Sportcoat is the old drunk, a deacon at the Five Ends Baptist Church.  He shots a young drug dealer in his neighborhood.  A kid he used to teach in Sunday school and coached on a baseball team. He is so drunk at the time, he has no memory of the shooting.  Deems, the young dealer, lives and puts off taking his revenge.  But Sportcoat has kicked off a chain reaction involving the church, neighborhood history, the Italian mob and the new drug trade kings.  Funny and yet serious at times, this story shows the relationships and tells the history of the neighborhood around a New York housing project. Captivating.

Beach Read

Beach Read by Emily Henry, 361 pages

January Andrews is reluctant at best to move into her late father's beach house, what with it being the location of a long extramarital affair that she only learned about at his funeral. But she needs to clean it up and sell it, and well, it would definitely be a good place to work on the romance novel her agent is nagging her to finish. Too bad January's neighbor is Augustus Everett, dreamboat literary fiction writer and January's college nemesis. When chance brings the two together, they challenge each other to write in each other's genre, with the loser being forced to promote and write a book blurb for the other.

This is a romance novel with some very serious topics to chew on between the meet-cutes and steamy makeout sessions. It's a good bridge between "regular" fiction and romance, creating a cozy spot in the Venn diagram for readers of each (and now both). The issues January and Gus experience are very real, even if the coincidences that bring them together are stereotypical romance tropes. A fun read, and a quick one too.

A Good Marriage

A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight, 390 pages

Every marriage has secrets, right? Well, in the upscale Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, there are more than average, and one of those has gotten beautiful new neighbor Amanda Grayson murdered. Initial suspicion lands on her husband, tech entrepreneur Zach, who his old law school classmate Lizzie from prison, asking her to be his defense lawyer. At first, Lizzie's convinced her old friend is innocent and begins poking around to find an alternate suspect. But digging around Park Slope is revealing way more that she anticipated.

This is a gripping psychological thriller, filled with plenty of creepy potential suspects, flashbacks to the days leading up to the murder, and deep dark secrets for every last character in the book. I was captivated, horrified, and completely satisfied with this quick read.

May totals!

Christa  17/3800
Jan  7/2087
Kara  11/3973
Karen  5/1584
Kathleen  3/1262
Linda  6/1836
Patrick  13/4576

Total:  61/18,780