A Lady in the Smoke by Karen Odden

A nice little Victorian mystery sounded right up my alley last week so I was happy to try A Lady in the Smoke by Karen Odden. The lady referenced is Lady Elizabeth who, while traveling to her country home, is involved in a terrible train crash. Injured and attempting to care for her ailing mother, Elizabeth is informally introduced to Paul, a train surgeon who has come to help the survivors. In all the bustle, Elizabeth conceals her rank and takes advantage of the chaos to do whatever she would like. With her newfound, and brief, freedom, Elizabeth chooses to help the doctor as he desperately tries to keep more people from dying and to ease the pain of as many people as he can. When Elizabeth overhears Paul talking with a friend about the suspicious nature of the train crash, she inserts herself right into the mystery, partially out of curiosity, but also because her fortune is dependent on the success of the railroad. When Elizabeth finds herself falling for Paul, she is not the least bit put off by their difference in station, but how could it ever work between them?

This book was a fun, absorbing mystery that kept my attention. Set in 1874, it is historical fiction just as I like it- the right amount of description without becoming overbearing while still making me feel like I could see the characters. Also, unlike SO many historical fiction books of late, it wasn't set during World War II, which in my opinion has been overdone. This was a quick, light read and I think you'd like it. Give it a shot and tell me what you think.

Good as Gone by Amy Gentry

I really don't usually read this much suspense, but I seem to be in a bit of a streak. Good as Gone by Amy Gentry is the book club selection for this month and I admit it wasn't the option for which I cast my vote. The premise seemed like it might be difficult to read and a little like another book I had read, Emma in the Night, but rules are rules so I borrowed it from the library and got to reading.

Julie and Jane are sisters and still little girls when Julie, at age thirteen, is taken from their home in the middle of the night. Jane, ten at the time, is frozen with fear as she witnesses a man with a knife taking away her sister. Eight years later, with an innocuous ring of the doorbell, Julie arrives on the front steps of that same home, but something just doesn't seem right. Is this really Julie? If it is, where has she been all this time?

This book was so engrossing that I read the first half in one sitting. I could have finished it all at once, but real life got in the way. The story moves quickly, flashing from one point of view to another, allowing the reader two very different perspectives of the same story. Anna, Julie's mother struggles mightily with her loss and with the reunion with her daughter:

This woman is older than twenty-one. I am not as old as she is, and I am forty-six, with lines of mourning etched all over my face that will never go away.

Good as Gone also explores the family dynamics that drastically change when a child has gone missing or dies. Jane and her mother have a terrible time relating to one another; Anna and her husband, Tom, fall apart despite staying together; and Anna is doing all she can just to keep moving from one day to another. She hopes she will continue to receive credit for...

...the not-insubstantial difficulty I have getting gout of bed every morning to face a world where the worst thing has already happened and somehow I'm still alive. 

I stayed up way past my bedtime finishing this book because there was no way I could sleep until I had all the answers. The ending did seem to drag a bit with possibly more information and description than was absolutely necessary, but that may just have been my perspective as I was trying to rush through it. 

This book does require a bit of courage to read since it deals with such awful crimes against children, but I thought it was really good. What happens is awful, but the actual description in the book isn't overly obtrusive. Give it a shot and tell me what you think.

Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh

Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh is one of those books that is so hard to describe without giving away too much. Anna is struggling with the first anniversary of her mother's suicide, one that came only a few months after that of her father. She can't understand why they would choose to leave her in this way, especially now that she is a mother herself. When she receives a card in the mail implying that her mother's death was not actually suicide, Anna latches on to the possibility that her mother didn't voluntarily leave her and is determined to solve her murder.

I keep typing and deleting my comments on this book because I really don't want to give away anything. It is so fun to read and so full of twists and turns and dark alleyways. Every character is suspect, every event seems true and false at the same time, every page turn a new clue.

Argh! I want to tell you so much more, but I just can't!

This book was fantastic and one of the best suspense novels I've ever read and I think you'll really love it, too.

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

The holidays can be a stressful time, especially for family members who aren't used to spending an extended amount of time together. Now imagine if that time were a strict seven days in which no one could visit and no one could leave. In Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak, that is the situation for Olivia, a humanitarian aid doctor, and her family as she returns from treating an epidemic in Liberia. Quarantined together for seven days, Olivia, her flighty younger sister, her restaurant critic father, and her caretaker mother must find a way to get along and hopefully enjoy the week between Christmas and New Year's together. Olivia is plagued, hopefully not with the virus she had been treating, but with frustration at her family's frivolousness and obliviousness with the rest of the world. Phoebe, her sister, is newly engaged and obsessed with wedding planning. Andrew, their father, has just received an email from a son he never knew he had and Emma, their mother, is hiding an illness of her own. With the close quarters it isn't long before secrets and old resentments can't stay bottled up any longer.

I really liked this book. We've all wondered if the old saying is true that you can't go home again and this book asks what we do when that is unavoidable. As children become adults it is necessary for relationships with their parents to change, but that change can be hard. Olivia wants so much to make a difference in the world and the things she has seen in Africa forever stain the way she sees the life in which she grew up. Phoebe, 28 and still living at home, just wants everything to be fun and happy, but Olivia doesn't make that easy:

The trouble was it had been so long since Olivia had been back for any length of time that Phoebe- who still lived at home- had come to assume undivided attention...everything was so much easier, and nicer, when Olivia wasn't around.

Hornak writes well-developed characters with their own viewpoints and as a reader it is easy to understand each of their positions. It is also easy to want to smack a few of them, just like in a real family. I liked this book and I think you will, too.