July 9, 2021
New Fiction
The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell – They are the families considered worthy of a listing in the exclusive Green Book – a discriminative diary created by the niece of Edith Roosevelt’s social secretary. Their old money and manners lurk in the cobblestone streets of Georgetown, Kalorama, and Capitol Hill. They socialize only within their inner circle, turning a blind eye to those who come and go on the political merry-go-round. Parents and their children live lives free of consequences in gilded existences of power and privilege. But what they have failed to understand is that the world is changing. And when the family of one of their own is found brutally murdered in their colonial mansion, everything about their legacies is suddenly called into question. One teenager – finding her values at odds with her inheritance – will light a fire in the darkness, but will her fellow Cave Dwellers be able to see the writing on the wall?
Dream Girl by Laura Lippman – Injured in a freak fall, novelist Gerry Andersen is confined to a hospital bed in his glamorous high-rise apartment, dependant on two women he barely knows: his incurious young assistant and a dull, slow-witted night nurse. Then, late one night, the phone rings. The caller claims to be the “real” Aubrey, the alluring title character from Gerry’s most successful novel, Dream Girl. But there is no real Aubrey. She’s a figment born of a writer’s imagination, despite what many believe or claim to know. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life? And why does no one believe that the call even happened? Isolated from the world, drowsy from medication, Gerry slips between reality and a dreamlike state in which he is haunted by his own past: his faithless father, his devoted mother, the women who loved him, the women he loved. And now here is Aubrey, threatening to visit him, suggesting that she is owed something. Is the threat real or is it a sign of dementia? Which scenario would he prefer? Gerry has never been so alone, confused – or so terrified.
People we meet on vacation by Emily Henry – Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart – she’s in New York City and he’s in their small hometown – but every summer for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since. Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows without a doubt that it was on that ill-fated final trip with Alex. And so she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together – lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees. Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides - Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike – particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as the Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on the Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld? When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything – including her own life.