September 29, 2023

New Fiction 

Wild Hope by Joan Thomas – Isla, a chef and co-owner of a farm-to-table restaurant on the brink of closing, and Jake, a visual artist tormented by the oil-and-gas legacy of his late father, are a couple drifting apart.  A looming figure in both their lives in Reg Bevaqua, Jake’s childhood friend turned enemy turned bottled-water baron.  Reg is a demanding regular at Isla’s restaurant and a man with a seething resentment toward Jake.  With good reason for the feeling is mutual, but Jake keeps their past from Isla as he follows a devastating trail to the source of Reg’s wealth.  When Jake disappears following a winter camping trip, Isla starts to connect the dots, with all roads leading to Reg and his magnificent property on Georgian Bay.   

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong – Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers.  The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, which is the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce.  But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who’ve fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out…and failed.  When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenage niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and Laney’s former best friend.  Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters a boat over with her brother, who’s now a cop.  There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and, before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth…then the body that goes with it.  But by that time someone has taken their only means of transportation off the island, and they’re trapped with someone – or something – that doesn’t want them to leave the island alive. 

All You Have To Do Is Call by Kerri Maher -   The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground women’s health organization composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to live lives free from the expectations of society by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions.  Veronica, Jane’s founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others’ freedom is that she leads a double life.  When she’s not Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife – a juggling act that becomes ever more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy.  Two more women in Veronica’s neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects.  Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at Jane as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her.  Patty, who’s long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life.  When her runway younger sister, Eliza, shows up unexpectedly.  Patty is forced to come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister. In this historic moment, when the personal was nothing if not political, when television, movies, and commercials told women they’d “come a long way, baby,” Veronica, Margaret, and Patty must make choices that will change the courses of their lives forever. 

North Woods by Daniel Mason – When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike.  An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples.  A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire.  A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave – only to discover that the earth refuses to give up its secrets.  A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.