“The children are frozen, too frightened to move closer to one of the women. The sound they heard while still in the house has advanced, roaring its way above them. There is a crash against the storm door, and they all scream, ducking with their arms held over their heads. Ellis drops his candle and, in the weak light left from the candle Mae is still holding, she sees his terrified face. Ruby is crying. Lavinia has Little Homer’s face pressed into the front of her dress as if she can shield him by blocking his sight. Mae reaches out her arms and Ruby and Ellis come to her immediately. She blows out her candle and drops it so she can hold both children tight against her. In the darkness, Lavinia cries, “Dear Lord! Oh, dear Lord!” Then the roaring moves on, like a train careering over their heads. The sound recedes and, eventually, even the wind seems to subside. When there is no longer any sound except rain on the cellar doors, the children hold utterly still, waiting to see what will come next.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 5, 2014)

Falling to Earth is the kind of novel that makes me want to grab the very next person I see and urgently say, ”You MUST read this.” I read this rabidly with increasing awe and respect that Kate Southwood had the chops to create a debut novel with this degree of psychological insight, restrained power, and heartbreaking beauty.

The story centers on a tragedy of unimaginable proportions – a tornado hits the small Illinois town of March in 1925, causing devastation and grievous loss in the homes of every single resident of the town.

Except one.

That one is Paul Graves, a man of dignity and integrity, who lives with his wife Mae, his three young children and his mother, Lavinia. Incredibly, nothing in Paul’s life is touched – not his family, not his home, and not his thriving lumber business…which, in fact, is even more in demand as townsfolk order coffins for the burials of their loved ones.

As the townspeople are forced to bear up under nearly unbearable grief, their envy of Paul’s “unfair” providence reaches a fever pitch and they begin to turn on him – and against him – in droves. Paul, meanwhile, labors under extreme survivor’s guilt as Mae increasingly falls into a dark depression.

Kate Southwood writes,

“A tornado is a ravenous thing, untroubled by the distinction in tearing one man apart and gently setting another down a little distance away. It is resolute and makes its unheeding progress until, bloated and replete, it dissipates. A tornado is a dead thing and cannot acknowledge blame.. If a tornado smashes your house or takes your child, it does no good to blame it…Even after you’ve yanked up another house in the place the old one stood and planted flowers in the dirt where you laid your child, your fury remains as well your desire to lay blame.”

A parable of sorts, this magnificent novel strives to answer questions that have haunted humankind since early times: how do we comprehend the forces of nature and our own fates? How do we manage the extreme hostility and envy that result from nature’s unfairness? How do we break the cycles of revenge, vengeance, retribution and reprisal? These questions transcend this book and can easily be asked of modern tragedies – Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, for example.

The themes are universal: love and loss, family, jealousy and suspicion, guilt and survival. I will not spoil the ending but I will say this – it is masterly and seamlessly brought together all the themes of the book and literally let me gasping.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions (March 5, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kate Southwood
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another tornado-based story: Sing Them Home By Stephanie Kallos

Bibliography:

• Falling to Earth (March 2013)

“The screen creaked behind her as Elspeth pushed open the front door. The house, usually heated to bursting on an early winter’s night, offered no respite from the cold. The kerosene lamp stood unlit in the middle of the kitchen table, the matches beside it. She removed her pack, and shook the snow from her hat and shoulders, stalling. She didn’t want to see what the light would offer.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (JAN 18, 2014)

From the opening line of this striking debut novel, the mood and voice are both haunting and laced with shame.

“Elspeth Howell was a sinner.”

It is three years shy of the turn of the twentieth century, upstate New York, bitterly cold and snowy with grey, smudgy skies. Elspeth is trudging miles from the train station to her family’s isolated home, and she is carrying gifts for her five children and pious, Bible-quoting husband. She’s been gone for four months, not unusual for her midwifery practice. As she rises up the crest of the last hill, she sees her house:

“The small plateau seemed made for them, chiseled by God for their security, to hold them like a perfect secret.  She held her breath, hoping for some hint of life, and heard nothing but the far-off snap of a branch. Everything stood still. She could not make out the smoke from the chimney, and despite the late hour, no lamps shone in the windows. Elspeth began to run. She tripped, and her pack shoved her into the snow. Clawing with her hands, digging with her feet, she pushed herself upright and rushed toward home.”

Although the novel, stark and lean and elegantly written, progresses with a measured, lingering pace for most of the novel, it goes for the jugular at the outset. After a shocking tragedy that sets the premise for the rest of the story, the narrative continues languidly, but with terse prose, weaving in background information with current concerns. The momentum slows considerably, yet the writing keeps you absorbed, as the author delves into the deep-seated corners of character. Elspeth has morally wretched obsessions and impulses that underlie the events of this bleak and troubled tale. Guilt, shame, retribution, sacrifice, and the lengths we go to protect our family are mined with lyrical and somber mercy. Or is it merciless?

I’d rather not go further in describing this searing, harrowing story. As Elspeth and her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, journey by foot to search and avenge, the reader is immersed in the sense that the hunters are also the hunted. Scott’s descriptions are masterful, his extended metaphors gnawing and scorching. This is fine literature; if you don’t mind a slower-paced story, but one saturated in full characterizations, you will ride the suspense till the final, melancholy pages. I continue to contemplate this enigmatic story, its sense of deliverance like a ghost that trembles through the pages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 74 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Scott
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Bibliography:

• The Kept (January 2014)

“When I think of Nilsen now, how he came and vanished again in the one day, I don’t feel any warmer towards him in the remembering than I did when he was here.  I don’t even feel grateful for what he gave me, because he and his kind kept it from me for so long.  But I do think of the difficult journey he made, and why he made it.  What set him off, he told me, was seeing me being interviewed on television, after Khalil Khazar’s death.  He said he’d watched the interview over and over.  He’d wanted to feel what I felt.  But you cannot feel what another person feels.  You cannot even imagine it, however hard you try.  This I know.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate (DEC 28, 2014)

On December 21, 1988, almost exactly twenty-five years ago as I write, Pan American flight 103 from London to New York was brought down by a bomb and crashed over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people aboard and eleven more on the ground. Although others may have been implicated, only one man was convicted of planting the bomb, a Libyan national who was released several years later on compassionate grounds; he died of prostrate cancer in 2012. His death may well have been the trigger for Scottish author James Robertson’s imaginative and morally profound novel; it is certainly the event with which it opens. Not that Robertson mentions real names: the airline, places, and foreign countries involved are left anonymous, and the convicted bomber, his presumed accomplice, and the chief witness are given pseudonyms. But as every detail that Robertson does give — even down to the date, time, and 38-minute duration of the flight — are precisely the same as the Pan Am crash, he is clearly not trying to disguise his intended subject.

Or rather, not his subject. For although he goes into the crash and subsequent investigation in detail, his focus is on aspects of such a story that are not put to rest by a simple verdict. Do law enforcement agencies ever bend the facts to fit a politically expedient narrative? Can vengeance be exacted against a scapegoat who may not in fact be guilty? Is there such a thing as true closure? What happens when a man’s grief turns to an obsession that prevents him from leading a meaningful life? When truth is found, will it stand out like a pristine shining object, or will it be a tarnished affair of accident and compromise?

Alan Tealing is a Lecturer in English at a new university in an old Scottish town (I imagine Stirling). After losing his American wife and six-year-old daughter in the bombing, he devotes his research skills to following the case in every aspect. But some things at the trial convince him that they have got the wrong man, and he takes his doubts public. As the book opens, he is giving a television interview proclaiming that the death of the convicted bomber will change nothing. But it does change something. It brings to his door a former CIA/FBI operative named Nielsen who needs to make peace with his own conscience before dying. What he tells Alan will send him off to Australia, where the novel reaches its climax in the midst of a series of devastating bush fires. The antipodean leap from the first part, entitled “Ice,” to the second, “Fire,” is the one weak point in an otherwise superb novel, requiring that the reader shares Alan’s obsession enough to follow even the slimmest of clues. But his encounters with the two principal people he meets there will propel the story into new depths, and open him to disasters other than his own. The action climax is magnificently handled, but even more magnificent is the quiet settling that follows it, so much more meaningful than a pat solution to some mystery or conspiracy theory. A truly fine book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Other Press (September 10, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on James Robertson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another real event fiction: An Accident in August by Laurence Cosse The Submission by Amy Waldman

Bibliography:

• Close: Stories (1991)
• Ragged Man’s Complaint: Stories (1993)
• Scottish Ghost Stories (1996)
• The Fanatic (2000)
• Joseph Knight (2003)
• The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006)
• And the Land Lay Still (2010)
• Republics of the Mind (2012)
• The Professor of Truth (2013)

“She frightened me at every dawn the summer I stayed with her. She’d sit on the edge of her bed, long hair down, down to the floor and shaking as she brushed and brushed, shadows ebbing from the room and early light flowing in through both windows. Her hair was as long as her story and she couldn’t walk when her hair was not woven into dense braids and pinned around and atop her head. Otherwise her hair dragged the floor like the train of a medieval gown and she had to gather it into a sheaf and coil it about her forearm several times to walk the floor without stepping on herself. She’d been born a farm girl, then served as a maid for half a century, so she couldn’t sleep past dawn to win a bet…”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 21, 2013)

The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief. Many of the town’s most wealthy citizens want to put the truth of the explosion to the side and no one has ever been apprehended for the crime. They look at Alma’s ramblings about the explosion as words from a crazy person. The magnitude of the explosion was enormous.

“Just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to the ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone in the town limits.”

One summer in 1965, Alma’s young grandson Alec comes to visit her. It is to him that she spills the story of the dance hall and her theory about what happened that night. Going back and forth in time, the novel gives the reader vignettes about those who were killed in the dance hall explosion along with the story of Ruby, Alma’s sister. Ruby was a great flirt and what was called in those days a loose woman. She would love them and leave them until she found a real love with the banker, Arthur Glencross. Glencross was married and Alma worked as a maid for the Glencross family. She worked very hard to hide Arthur’s affair from his wife Corrine by carefully washing his clothing to get out smells and stains that would serve as evidence of his affair with Ruby. After Ruby’s death, Alma hated Arthur and this was evident in her actions.

Was Arthur responsible for the explosion? Or, could it have been the preacher Isaiah Willard who spoke of death and damnation to those who danced? He believed that “the easiest portals to the soul through which demons might enter was that opened by dancing feet. Evil music, evil feet, salacious sliding and the disgusting embraces dancing excused provided an avenue of damnation that could readily be seen and blockaded” He was heard to say of the Arbor Dance Hall during that summer, “I’ll blow this place to Kingdom soon and drop those sinners into the boiling patch – see how they dance then.” What about the hobos hanging around town? Those passing through with bad intentions? Someone with a grudge against one of the dancers? Who was it? Alma thinks she knows and tells her story to Alec.

Of the forty-two killed in the explosion, only twenty-eight were whole enough so that graves could be made for them. Most of them were not identified. The rest were parts buried in a pit. Alma’s grief was such that she “touched all twenty-eight and kissed them each, kneeling to kiss the fresh black paint between her spread aching fingers, said the same words to accompany every kiss because there was no way to know which box of wood held Ruby, or if she rested in only one, had not been separated into parts by crushing or flames and interred in two or three, so she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last.”

Woodrell’s style of writing is unique, sounding like I’d imagine the tenor of speech spoken in the Ozarks. At times it’s a difficult book because of the writing style and the subject matter. It is, however, stunning and has left me with a deep and abiding appreciation for this author’s work. I thank him for sharing his talent and vision with readers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 117 readers
PUBLISHER:	Little, Brown and Company (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Daniell Woodrell
EXTRAS:	Interview  and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Outlaw Album The Bayou Trilogy

Bibliography:

• Under the Bright Lights (1986) *
• Woe to Live On (1987; 2012)
• Muscle for the Wing (1988) *
• The Ones You Do (1992) *
• Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir (1996; 2012)
• Tomato Red (1998; 2012)
• The Death of Sweet Mister (2001; 2012)
• Winter’s Bone (2006)
• The Outlaw Album: Stories (2011)
• The Maid’s Version (September 2013)

*The Bayou Trilogy (April 2011)

Movies from Books:

• Ride with the Devil (1999) (adapted from Woe to Live On)
• Winter’s Bone (2010)

“Violence leaves a mark, a psychic stain that can never be scrubbed away with mere soap and bleach. In a neighborhood as insular as Chinatown, everyone would remember what had happened…. Even if this building were torn down and another erected in its place, this bloodied ground would remain forever haunted in the minds of those who knew its ugly past.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JUL 5, 2011)

Forensic pathologist Dr. Maura Isles angers the members of the Boston Police Department when she testifies against Officer Wayne Graff. Dr. Isles maintains that Graff’s savage beating of alleged cop killer Fabian Dixon led to the suspect’s death. Although Maura knows that she will be ostracized because of her testimony, she tells the truth as she sees it: “I only concern myself with the facts…wherever they may lead,” she says. Her attitude irritates her good friend, Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli, who can understand why Graff “lost it.”

Tess Gerritsen’s The Silent Girl is about the evil that men do, the grieving relatives who are left behind to mourn their dead, and the thirst for vengeance. The main plot centers around a tragedy that occurred nineteen years earlier, leaving five people dead, including the alleged perpetrator, a Chinese cook named Wu Weimin. The incident was known as the Red Phoenix massacre, named after the restaurant in Chinatown where the carnage took place. The police close the case, after deciding that Wu shot the others and then turned the gun on himself. However, the widow of one of the victims defends Wu; she insists that he was a kind and unaggressive man who would never hurt anyone.

Dr. Isles, Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli, and Jane’s partner, Barry Frost, find themselves in the thick of a complex case that begins when the unidentified corpse of a beautiful woman is found on a roof. Her neck is slashed and her hand is severed by a very sharp implement. Who was she, and why was she murdered this way? As the investigation proceeds, it eventually becomes clear that there is some connection between this killing and those that were blamed almost two decades ago on Wu Weimin.

The Silent Girl is sharply written, engrossing, fast-paced, and suspenseful. The author skillfully incorporates intriguing information about Chinese history, martial arts, and forensics into her story. The well-defined characters include Iris Fang, fifty-five, who runs a martial arts academy and serves as an occasional first person narrator; her talented and loyal associate, Bella Li; Johnny Tam an ambitious young Chinese detective; and Patrick Dion, the grieving father of a seventeen-year-old girl, Charlotte, who disappeared a month after her mother was gunned down in the Red Phoenix restaurant.

As the investigation proceeds, Rizzoli and her colleagues become increasingly baffled. No matter how much information they uncover, the most important facts remain stubbornly elusive. It is almost as if the detectives are chasing ghosts. Gerritsen skillfully wraps everything up with an electrifying conclusion that raises a provocative question: Is taking the law into one’s own hands ever justified?

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 161 readers
PUBLISHER:	Ballantine Books (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tess Gerritsen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Ice Cold Vanish Body Double The Apprentice

Bibliography:

Medical Thrillers:

• Harvest (1996)
• Life Support (1997)
• Bloodstream (1998)
• Gravity (1999)
• Presumed Guilty (2009)
• Stolen (2011)

Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles Series:

• The Surgeon (2001)
• The Apprentice (2002)
• The Sinner (2003)
• Body Double (2004)
• Vanish (2005)
• The Mephisto Club (2006)
• The Bone Garden (2007)
• The Keepsake (2008)
• Ice Cold (2010) (Published in the UK as The Killing Place)
• The Silent Girl (2011)
• Last to Die (August 2012)

Romance Novels:

• Call After Midnight (1987) **
• Whistleblower (1992) **
• In Their Footsteps (1994) *
• Peggy Sue Got Murdered (1994)
• Under the Knife (1987) **
• Keeper of the Bride (1996) **

* Originally published as the Tavistock Series

** Originally published as an Harlequin Intrique

“I’m writing to say good-bye. My decision has been made and by the time you read this, there will be no turning back. I have tried….But the war changed me, it changed my family, it changed everything, and finding my way again to what I knew before isn’t possible.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (JAN 23, 2011)

A Lonely Death, by Charles Todd, is one of the most haunting mysteries in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. The year is 1920 and the First World War has taken an enormous toll on the young Englishmen who naively went off to battle, expecting excitement and adventure. What they found, instead, was terror and violent death. Those who returned were often shell-shocked and/or physically maimed; their families suffered along with the damaged soldiers.

Rutledge barely made it through the war. He was nearly buried alive, and at times, wishes that he had never been rescued. He was severely traumatized by his horrific experiences and bears boundless guilt for his role in sending his men to their deaths. One deceased Scottish soldier named Hamish MacLeod still gives Ian no peace. Rutledge walks around with the young Highlander’s voice, “relentless and unforgiving,” resounding in his head, chiding him, giving advice, and reminding Rutledge that he does not deserve to live a normal life.

At least his work gives Rutledge some respite from his despondency. After he sees off Chief Inspector Cummins, who is retiring, Rutledge is called to Eastfield, Sussex, where a series of deaths by garroting have left three men dead in nine days. This case will prove to be a crucible that will test Rutledge’s determination and strength of character. He, along with Constable Walker and others, must determine why these particular men were targeted. Did the murders have something to do with events that occurred during the war? The evidence points in a number of different directions and the answers are far from obvious. In addition, Rutledge looks into a cold case that Cummins had always wanted to solve, but could not. This subplot is not particularly realistic, but it is intriguing nevertheless.

The mother and son who collaborate under the name Charles Todd have created a complex novel of psychological suspense with a large cast of memorable characters, evocative descriptive writing, and meticulous attention to historical detail. A Lonely Death is a wrenching story of revenge and sorrow. Charles Todd’s fine work of fiction is not only a commentary on the hellish price of war, but it is also an incisive look at the battles we wage each day–with our acquaintances, relatives, employers, and even with ourselves. Few emerge from these encounters unscathed. Inspector Ian Rutledge, alas, still has a great deal of healing to do before he can face the future with equanimity.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (January 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Charles Todd
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our reviews of: A Duty to the Dead A Pale Horse A Test of Wills

Bibliography:

Inspector Ian Rutledge series:

• A Test of Wills (1996)
• Wings of Fire (1998)
• Search the Dark (1999)
• Legacy of the Dead (2000)
• Watchers of Time (2001)
• A Fearsome Doubt (2002)
• A Cold Treachery (2005)
• A Long Shadow (2006)
• A False Mirror (2007)
• A Pale Horse (December 2007)
• A Matter of Justice (December 2008)
• The Red Door (December 2009)
• A Lonely Death (January 2011)

Francesca Hatton series:

• The Murder Stone (2003)

Bess Crawford, British army nurse:

• A Duty to the Dead (August 2009)
• An Impartial Witness (August 2010)

“Hunger and revenge are not desires that human beings usually experience at the same time, but these primordial drives appeared to merge in the mind and body of this tiger such that one evolved almost seamlessly into the other. The killing and consumption of Markov may have accidentally satisfied two unrelated impulses: the neutralizing of a threat and competitor and an easy meal. But tigers are quick studies and they are, in their way, analytical: there is no doubt that they absorb and remember relevant data and learn from their experiences, accidental or otherwise. If they produce successful results, the tiger will seek to re-recreate those circumstances as closely as possible. Humans, this tiger had discovered (or perhaps had always known), were as easy as dogs to locate and kill. If the wind was wrong and the tiger couldn’t smell them, he could still hear them, and that sound carried a compelling new message. Now, a person stepping outside to split a few sticks of kindling might as well be ringing a dinner bell.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (DEC 10, 2010)

John Vaillant, author of The Golden Spruce, has written another exciting, page-turning book. For those of you not familiar with The Golden Spruce, it is about a tree worshipped by the Haida Indians in British Columbia. A mutant golden color, this tree had religious and spiritual significance for the Haida people. A renegade man with super physical abilities decided, in his disturbed thinking, that this tree must come down. How the townspeople and Haida Indians dealt with this loss, along with the history of this man’s life, is the subject of this book. Mr. Vaillant also examines the socio-cultural, economic, and history of British Columbia as it pertains to the felling of this tree.

In The Tiger, Mr. Vaillant’s latest book, he tells the story of a rogue tiger in southeast Russia that, in 1997, turns to man-eating. He also relates the stories of the men the tiger kills and those who hunt the tiger down. In the background of the tiger adventure, is the story of the socio-cultural milieu of Russia before and following Perestroika. Because Primorye, the area in Russia where tigers are found, is so close to China and Korea, we get to learn a lot about the interactions of these countries and their roles in poaching, hunting, and conservation efforts.

The story is a compelling, adventurous page-turner. It starts off with a tiger who is hunting a man named Markov. Markov is one of a few hundred settlers in this very rural Taiga area whose central town is Sobolonye. Once a thriving settlement based on coal production, the coal production is now shut down. Most people resettled to other areas of Russia but a few, mostly hunters, end-of-the-roaders, poachers, and those who loved the land, remained. Markov is a bit of all of these. He is known for his large presence, sense of humor, and charisma. He lived in Sobolonye but kept a cabin deep in the Taiga where he hunted and poached. One day, as Markov and his dog were approaching his cabin, he was attacked by an Amur tiger and killed. He managed to get off one shot, injuring the tiger’s paw. The only parts of Markov left were a “hand without an arm and a head without a face.”

To give you a bit of background information, Primorye, the name for the Taiga area, gets to forty-five degrees below zero in the winter. “In Primorye, the seasons collide with equal intensity: winter can bring blizzards and paralyzing cold, and summers will retaliate with typhoons and monsoon rains; three quarters of the region’s rainfall occur during the summer. This tendency toward extremes allows for unlikely juxtapositions and may explain why there is no satisfactory name for the region’s peculiar ecosystem – one that happens to coincide with the northern limit of the tiger’s pan-hemispheric range.” The Amur tiger is the only one of its species that is able to exist in these arctic conditions. Thousands of species abound here, including the leopard, but the Amur tiger reigns supreme.

The Amur tiger is so big that some want to reclassify it as a completely different species than tiger. It also is able to thrive in areas and conditions that would kill most other tigers. Some Amur tigers grow to nine hundred pounds and are as long as sixteen feet. They are wanderers, looking for sustenance and food wherever it can be found. Because of its size, “Amur tigers must occupy far larger territories than other subspecies in order to meet their need for prey.”

It is not unusual for animal attacks to occur in Primorye. However, these attacks are usually impulsive, when for instance a hunter and a tiger accidentally cross paths. The difference with Markov’s killing is that the tiger was lying in wait for him at his cabin and when Markov returned, instead of running away which would have been the natural thing for the tiger to do, it attacked him. According to the legends of the indigenous people in the area, Markov must have done something to alienate this tiger. Even the Russian people had never heard of an attack like this and believed that Markov had done something specific to harm this tiger or its offspring. Because of the ferocity of the attack, and its conditions, the Inspection Tiger team was called in.

Russia has a special team of men called Inspection Tiger.  They are used to investigate, and if necessary, hunt rogue tigers that are man-eaters. A man named Trush is the head of the inspection team that was called to Primorye after Markov’s killing. He determined that the tiger had acted in an organized way and that this was not an impulse killing. It was the Inspection Tiger ’s duty to find this tiger and kill it. This is one angry and vindictive tiger.

During the course of their hunt, this particular tiger kills two more victims. In one instance it brutalizes the cabin of the victim, ruining all his possessions and dragging a mattress fifty feet in the snow to lie on and await the man’s return. The tiger lays on the torn mattress three days waiting for the man’s return. There is no chance for the man to even get a shot off. The tiger leaps in the air and tears the man to pieces. All that is left of him is his clothing. The town of Sobolonye is now in a state of terror and its residents are instructed not to leave their homes.

This book carefully details the hunt, the hunters and the victims. It reads like a novel with lots of thrilling adventure and wonderful characterizations. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Krakauer’s books. However, Vaillant does a lot with the surrounding issues that relate to the adventure at hand. We learn, for instance, that the Inspection Tiger  team is funded by conservation groups in the United States. We are told about the medicinal needs that China has for all parts of the tiger, thus encouraging poaching. They will pay $20,000 U.S. for one tiger. In an area where people live a subsistence lifestyle, this is a windfall. “The brandname Viagra is derived from vyaaghra, the Sanskrit word for tiger.” All in all, this is a book for the adventurer in all of us.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 70 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (August 24, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	John Vaillant
EXTRAS:	Excerpt The New Yorker interview with John Vaillant
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More non-fiction: Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakaurer Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

• The Golden Spruce (May 2006)
• The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (August 2010)

“She’s there inside me somewhere, but I don’t want her there. I want her here, so badly I can taste it, the acid tang of need sickeningly fresh and surprising every time. The face in the mirror is blurring before me and suddenly it doesn’t look like either of us. It doesn’t look like anyone I know. I blink the tears away. I whisper my own name to myself, wanting to hear it as she used to say it. Louise. It’s not the same, never the same.

I step back from the mirror, addressing myself in my head. You thought that this would be enough – to see him, to satisfy your curiosity. You were wrong. Nothing you can do will bring her back, but you have the right to know. This man murdered your mother. You need to understand why.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 01, 2010)

Rebecca Connell has written a finely fraught literary thriller and romance in her debut novel, The Art of Losing. It examines the legacy of loss and betrayal and the extent to which a person will go to seek out the truth.

Louise was ten years old when her mother died in a horrible automobile accident. She believes that Nicholas, her mother’s lover, is responsible for her death. Louise decides to infiltrate Nicholas’ life in order to find out the truth. When she is in her twenties, she changes her name to Lydia, her mother’s name, and heads off to Cambridge to find Nicholas who is a lecturer in a college there. Her first plan is to sit in on one of his lectures in order to get a feel for who he is. Serendipitously, at the lecture she meets his son, Adam, and he takes a liking to her. They begin to see each other and party together. She also goes to a cafe that she knows Nicholas frequents. She meets him for a brief moment and ends up crying.

Adam is a college student but “Lydia” is not. She is wholly involved in finding Nicholas and learning about her mother’s death and their relationship. When the college term ends, Adam invites “Lydia” to stay with his family during the break. How much more convenient a setting can that be for her! She notices, when introduced to Adam’s parents, that they cringe when they hear her name. They comment that it’s an unusual name but their reactions are like it’s a frightening and sorrowful memory from the past. “Lydia” keeps a straight face, not divulging any emotions. She and Adam share a room and she proceeds to infiltrate the family.

The novel is told in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of Nicholas and Louise. The chapters are also from different times in the relationship between Nicholas and Lydia. The reader finds out that Lydia was married to Martin when she met Nicholas but that they began their affair anyway. Their affair was passionate and on-going for several months. Nicholas wants Lydia to leave her husband, Martin, and be with him. She, however, decides to stay with Martin. Lydia and Martin move away and it is several years before Nicholas and Lydia cross paths again. Meanwhile, Lydia has a child, Louise, and she and Martin settle in Cambridge where Martin teaches. Nicholas also marries but he can’t let go of Lydia’s memory. He and his wife Naomi have a son, Adam. Ironically, they also live in Cambridge where Nicholas lectures.

On a casual walk in Cambridge, Nicolas runs into Adam and the two couples meet for dinner. The affair recommences with disastrous impact for the two families. Nicholas and Lydia respond to to one another like moths to a flame. Martin and Naomi are two innocents caught up in their partners’ frenzy.

As the novel takes up with “Lydia” in Nicholas’ home, Nicholas chooses to tell her the whole story of the affair, not realizing that she is Lydia’s daughter. He feels comfortable opening up to a perceived stranger. The story takes all kinds of twists and turns, making it eerie and unsettling. It has a gothic feel to it.

The book is a real page-turner and an excellent read. It is hard to put down because the thrill of what’s next beckons with each page. Connell has the knack for holding the reader’s interest and it’s hard to believe this is a debut novel. I look forward to more of her work.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions; Reprint edition (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Rebecca Connell
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt An interview with Rebecca Connell His Futile Preoccupations review of The Art of Losing
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More psychological thrillers: Matala by Craig Holden The Point of Fracture by Frank Turner Hollon The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah

Bibliography:

• The Art of Losing (2009; September 2010 in US)

“Good stories. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? That’s why we’re doing this.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (SEP 12, 2010)

Elizabeth Brundage’s third novel A Stranger Like You is her darkest to date. Her first novel The Doctor’s Wife is a tale of a woman married to a doctor who works a women’s clinic and performs abortions. The couple runs foul of anti-abortion activists in this tale which examines marital obligations against the backdrop of larger social issues. Someone Else’s Daughter is set in an exclusive school for the children of the wealthy, but when the protected, elite environment is breeched, various ugly realities seep in. A Stranger Like You is a post-9-11 tale: unrelentingly bleak and merciless in its examination of a decaying society of damaged people.

The novel begins with Hugh Waters, a man who walks out of his life in upstate New York to seek vengeance against Hedda Chase, the Gladiator Film studio executive who rejected his screenplay due to its violence and its implausibility. Hugh kidnaps the woman, and in a bizarre reenactment of the rejected screenplay, he stuffs Hedda in the boot of her car, drives the car to the airport, and dumps it there. The novel follows several threads going back and forth in time through its various characters. One plot line follows Hugh’s actions post kidnapping while another thread picks up what happens to Hedda. Another subplot involves Danny, a damaged Iraqi war veteran and a homeless girl named Daisy. All these characters are set in a collision course of violence through a trick of fate.

Given the plot, the novel is arguably a thriller, but since this isn’t a novel about a bank heist or an international conspiracy, we are left with a story of a crime and what led up to it. This lands us in character-driven territory. Part of the difficulty with the novel is that all the characters are extremely unappealing. That isn’t usually a problem as nasty people tend to spice up the action. But in A Stranger Like You, the characters never get beyond cliché. Even Hedda, the so-called victim and the most developed character in the novel is the abrasive and bitchy Hollywood executive who at one point tells Hugh “you’ll never work in this town.” Danny, the damaged veteran is a bother at home to his aunt who would have preferred he’d died a hero in Iraq so that at least she has bragging rights with her neighbours. Then there’s a young Iraqi woman, an exchange student, who wants to tell her story no matter the price. PTSD, homeless children, and Iraqi women who are appalled at their culture’s treatment of women are all very real, but the characters do not develop beyond labels. Part of the problem is that there is simply too much going on here.

The novel is at its best when exploring Hedda’s relationship to her part-time beau, Tom. Their relationship underscores the novel’s theme of exploitation and is balanced by Hugh’s marriage–yet another relationship based on exploitation. Hugh’s rare tenderness is directed to the have-nots of society while his violence & alienation which seems to be partly emanating from suppressed homosexuality is directed to everyone else. Another issue undeniably connected to the theme of exploitation is violence. Hedda finds it increasingly difficult to work for Gladiator films–a thrill factory of machismo and cheap thuggery, and yet the book dissolves down to the very elements it seems to argue against.

In Brundage’s other two novels (which I enjoyed very much, by the way), the characters are well-developed and entirely believable. They have full lives and multiple relationships while they struggle to cope with hostile social situations. In A Stranger Like You, the social dictates of the characters (their place in time) holds sway, and they seem created just for the moment. Yes they have pasts and they may, in some cases have futures, but in the novel they are cardboard cut-outs moved in rather like chess pieces to support the plot.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 31 readers
PUBLISHER:	Viking Adult (August 5, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Elizabeth Brundage
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:Somebody Else’s Daughter The Doctor’s Wife Our interview with Elizabeth Brundage

Bibliography:

• The Doctor’s Wife (2004)
• Somebody Else’s Daughter (July 2008)
• A Stranger Like You (August 2010)

“I saw a therapist for years. I stopped when I realized there was no fixing the broken bits…. When your world falls apart and everything’s ruined, you lose part of yourself. Not all, inconveniently. One half, the best half, dies. The other half lives.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (JUN 4, 2010)

Sophie Hannah’s The Dead Lie Down is a multi-faceted psychological thriller about guilt, revenge, self-destruction, and redemption. All of the major characters have something to hide and they reveal their secrets reluctantly. Aiden Seed, who frames pictures for a living, has decided that he and the woman he loves, Ruth Bussey, should be open with one another before they become intimate. Ruth hesitantly admits that she did something shameful and was punished excessively for her actions. Aiden is sympathetic, saying, “The worst things stow away in the hold, follow you wherever you go.” It is then his turn to confess: “Years ago, I killed someone.” “Her name was Mary. Mary Trelease.”

When Aiden makes his startling admission, Ruth is appalled. She cannot say to Aiden that it doesn’t matter. Instead, she confides in someone she admires, Sergeant Charlotte Zailer, who is part of the community policing team for the town of Spilling. The catch is that the woman Aiden claims to have killed is not dead. Mary Trelease lives at 15 Megson Crescent on the Winstanley Estate, a rough neighborhood whose residents are steeped in squalor and hopelessness. Trelease is a painter who jealously guards her work from prying eyes. Aiden shows no obvious signs of mental illness, so why is he confessing to a murder that he did not commit?

Sophie Hannah goes back and forth in time, and shifts point of view frequently. In addition, the author teases us with bits of information that, by themselves, mean very little. Eventually, the puzzle pieces come together to form a ghastly and unutterably depressing whole.

Sophie Hannah is a fine descriptive writer with a strong eye for detail. Her depiction of a party during which Charlie and her fiancé, DC Simon Waterhouse, celebrate their engagement at “a dingy room in a pub,” along with family and friends, is excruciating, embarrassing, funny, yet also unutterably sad. Simon and Charlie are a wounded pair and people say cruel things about them behind their backs. What should have been a festive occasion turns into a cringe-worthy fiasco. Simon’s boss, DI Proust, known as the Snowman, is creepy, cold-blooded, sarcastic, and completely unreasonable. He and Simon loathe one another, and their interactions are painful to observe.

The problem with this book is not the characterizations, which are heartbreakingly authentic, but the plot, which is byzantine and as far over the top as one can get. If an author requires more than one or two pages of exposition to explain everything that has gone before, this is a clue that something may be amiss. The Dead Lie Down concludes with such a lengthy explanation, intended to clarify the muddy narrative, that a scorecard would have been welcome to keep track of who did what to whom. How much more satisfying this novel would have been had the story been less dense and more grounded in reality.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 39 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Sophie Hannah
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Orphan Choir Other unusual mysteries: Death of a Writer by Michael Collins Something Might Happen by Jule Myerson Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy

Bibliography:

• Gripless (1999)
• Cordial and Corrosive: an unfairy tale (2000)
• The Superpower of Love (2002)
• The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets : Stories (2008)
• The Orphan Choir (January 2014)

Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries:

• Little Face (2006)
• The Wrong Mother (2008 UK; 2009 US) ( Published as The Point of Rescue) in the UK
• The Dead Lie Down (2009 UK; 2010 US) (Published as The Other Half Livesin the UK)
• The Truth Teller’s Lie (2010 UK; 2010 US) (Published as Hurting Distance in the UK)
• The Cradle in the Grave (2011) (Published as A Room Swept White in the UK)
• The Other Woman’s House (2012)  (Published as Lasting Damage in the UK)
• Kind of Cruel (2012 UK; 2013)
• The Carrier (2014 in UK)

Note: Sophie Hannah is also an accomplished poet, see her website for more information on her poetry books.