You Should Have Known

A deeply thought-provoking, intimately drawn psychological thriller about an elderly woman who sets out to avenge her granddaughter’s death.

A sharp, sensitive, self-aware 72-year-old intimately narrates You Should Have Known, a beautifully drawn psychological literary thriller--and an accomplished first novel--by Rebecca A. Keller.

 

Francine “Frannie” Greene is a widowed wife and grandmother. This retired nurse still grieves for her husband and a teenaged granddaughter who was killed by a drunk driver years before. The girl’s shattering death deeply affected--and reshaped the lives of--everyone in the family.

 

After sustaining a few falls, Frannie’s adult children convince her to move into a high-end assisted living facility. Frannie is pleasantly surprised by her new living arrangement—she sparks an instant friendship with a woman in the library, Katherine, discovering they share affinities for books, pie and soap operas. Frannie, however, later learns that Katherine’s husband, Nathaniel, is the “reprehensible” judge who accepted a bribe and let off her granddaughter’s killer from serving prison time. Angered Frannie secretly plots revenge on the judge, but her actions go awry. When another resident dies suddenly and an investigation plays out--implicating others in the sudden death--Frannie is forced to face her own evils. Can she stand by and watch another injustice play out?  

 

The suspense of this complex thriller is heightened by Frannie’s wise, introspective narrative voice. Her anger and resentments contrasted against flaring bouts of conscience and self-questioning, make for an immensely thought-provoking psychological portrait that explores themes of what it is right and what is just.

 

You Should Have Known by Rebecca A. Keller

Crooked Lane Books, $29.99 hardcover, 9781639102600, 320 pages

Publishing Date: April 4, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 7, 2023), link HERE

Out of Her Depth

A gripping romantic thriller about an idyllic summer of young love and friendship in Italy that surprisingly turned deadly.

 

Florence, Italy and the hills of Tuscany serve as the backdrop for Out of Her Depth, a menacing psychological thriller from Lizzy Barber.

 

The novel is told via the intimate, first-person narrative voice of Rachel, a Brit. At 21-years-old, Rachel travels to Italy for the summer, working as a maid in a quaint Villa in Florence. Hoping to brush up on her Italian-language skills before setting off to Cambridge in the fall, working class Rachel falls in with—and falls under the spell of—a wealthy gal, Diana, who is shrewd and manipulative…especially when it comes to Sebastian, the rich and very handsome godson of the Villa's owner, and Valentina, a new recruit to the hotel staff.  A fun, exciting summer filled with budding friendships--lust and love--suddenly shifts into dark power-plays, resentments and jealousies.

 

The story then cuts to twenty years later: Rachel, now 41-years-old, is a teacher at an exclusive, private school in England who remains traumatized and haunted by secrets from that one life-changing Italian holiday. Readers learn that the foursome never again saw each other, and Sebastian has spent 20 years in prison for a murder that played out that fateful, tragic summer. What exactly happened? What went wrong?

 

Barber (A Girl Named Anna) suspensefully rolls out details of a surprising friends-to-enemies story that probes themes of guilt and shame, secrets and regrets. Barber’s skillful storytelling elevates a traditional beach read into a stunningly deep page-turner.

Out of Her Depth: A Novel by Lizzy Barber

Mira Books (Original Edition), $16.99 paperback, 9780778386445, 400 pages

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Truth and Other Lies

A provocative, fast-paced novel about a down on her luck reporter who returns home only to face startling, dangerous truths that upend her life.

In Truth and Other Lies, debut author Maggie Smith has written a provocative, fast-paced novel of Women’s Fiction about Megan Barnes, a lovelorn, financially broke 25-year-old investigative journalist who is forced to return home to Chicago, where she moves in with her mother, Helen. Intent on regrouping and strategizing the next chapter of her life, Megan’s plans are short-lived when she learns that her pro-life mother--once a housewife--has surprisingly decided to run for U.S. Congress. As conservative mother and liberal-leaning daughter lock horns, not seeing the world and issues in it in the same light, Megan is offered a PR job to help launch a new memoir by Jocelyn Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whom Megan has always looked up to. Jones dangles a carrot in front of Megan: if Megan can make her book launch a success, Jones will use her connections and get Megan a job at the prestigious Chicago Tribune. However, in the midst of the book launch, dark secrets--with tentacles--about Jones emerge on social media, which ultimately ensnare Megan and test her mettle. She is forced to question herself, the meaning of truth and her loyalties.

 

Smith’s propulsive, enthralling first novel is tightly plotted with political intrigue and features three, disparate female characters who each face thought-provoking, hot-button contemporary issues that will entice readers with ratcheting romance and suspense--and a heart-racing conclusion.

 

Truth and Lies: A Novel by Maggie Smith

Ten16Press, $18.99 paperback, 9781645382624, 360 pages

Publication Date: March 8, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

The Ex-Husband

A cruise ship event planner is haunted by her past in this grippingly evocative, psychological thriller.

It’s not all smooth sailing in The Ex-Husband, a heart-pounding crime thriller by Karen Hamilton set mostly aboard the Cleobella, a private luxury cruise ship traveling from Cornwall to the Caribbean.

Charlotte works as an event planner on the ship. She’s determined to leave her sordid past behind. She married and later divorced, Sam, a charming swindler--a cruise-ship card dealer--who roped Charlotte into cons that once usurped wealthy passengers out of their fortunes. But that was then. Charlotte is determined to get her life back on track now that Sam--and their tricks--are behind them. But with Sam missing and Charlotte suddenly receiving anonymous messages regarding her once criminal behavior, the past and its haunting sends her into panic. Who’s behind the black-mailing mind games that could do Charlotte in?

As in The Perfect Girlfriend and The Last Wife, Hamilton presents deeply flawed characters readers can root for. A well-researched setting enhances the suspense that unspools through exotic ports of call from the Bahamas to Tobago. Dark, psychological undercurrents of deceit and lies--how the past braids in with the present--create surprising shifts amid the course of this turbulent, juicy story.

 

The Ex-Husband by Karen Hamilton

Graydon House, $16.99 paperback, 9780369717030, 352 pages

Publication Date: January 18, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

The Sleepwalker

A mother's sleepwalking leads to her eerie disappearance and a family's search for her--and for answers.

Domestic situations that go awry are common in the psychological suspense novels of Chris Bohjalian. In The Sleepwalker, Bohjalian examines sleepwalking (or parasomnia) and the devastating impact it has on a Burlington, Vt., family.

Narrator Lianna Ahlberg deconstructs events that took place when she was a 21-year-old college senior during the autumn of 2000. When her father, Warren, a professor, went away to a conference, she tended to her 12-year-old sister, Paige, and her mother, Annalee, who had a history of sleepwalking that included benign destructive behaviors--especially when Warren was gone. Annalee had been undergoing treatment at a sleep clinic, and it had been four years since she took a nocturnal journey. Therefore, Lianna's caretaking was merely a precautionary measure. Believing her mother was past the "witching hour" (the first three hours of sleep) and out of harm's way, she dozed off, only to wake the next morning and discover Annalee missing. As the family rallies to search for her, a piece of her nightshirt is found near a riverbank, and the mystery deepens when a detective working the case seems privy to eerie, intimate details about Annalee.

Bohjalian (The Guest Room) has written an absorbing, cerebral story that probes a family's haunted emotional response to the mother's disappearance, and how each copes with confusion and grief. As they plumb the depths of Annalee's life, they uncover secrets that ultimately reveal a startling truth. 

The Sleepwalker: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, $26.95 Hardcover, 978038558916, 304 pages

Publication Date: January 10, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (January 27, 2017), link HERE 

First Pages in Fiction: Scents and Sensibility

The first paragraphs of a novel can set the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn:

Home at last! We'd been away so long, first in swampy country, then in a big city--maybe called Foggy Bottom--that confused me from the get-go. Is there time to mention the air in both those places before we really get started? Soggy and heavy: that sums it up.

Where were we? Was it possibly . . . home? Yes! Home! Home at last! Our home--mine and Bernie's--is on Mesquite Road. Mesquite Road's in the Valley. Quite recently I might have heard that the Valley's in Arizona, but don't count on that. What matters is that right now I was inhaling a nice big noseful of Valley air. Light and dry, with a hint of greasewood and just plain grease: perfect. I felt tip-top. Bernie opened our door, kicked aside a huge pile of mail, and we went in.

"Ah," said Bernie, dropping our duffel bag on the floor. I did the first thing that came to mind--just about always my MO--which in this case meant sniffing my way from room to room to room, zigzagging back and forth, nose to floor. Front hall, our bedroom, Charlie's bedroom--mattress bare on account of Charlie not being around much since the divorce--office, with the circus-elephant-pattern rug, where I actually picked up the faint whiff of elephant, even though no elephant had ever been in the office. I'd had some experience with elephants, specifically an elephant name of Peanut, no time to go into that now...

Do you get the idea the narrator isn't a person? Can you tell the voice leading you into the story is that of a dog? How? The speaker seems conflicted, yet what person do you know who sniffs his way from room to room? And the setting? It's telling that the speaker doesn't really know where "the Valley" is located, but as he inhales a "big, noseful of Valley air," he finds it light and dry, so we can gather this scene is set in the desert. And what's with the elephant rug? Well, that's what makes the reader keep reading...

If you're not familiar with the Chet and Bernie mystery-thriller series, you're missing out. Each book, there are eight in all, is narrated by Chet, a hyperactive dog, who works with his laid-back master and partner, Bernie Little of the Little Detective Agency.

In Scents and Sensibility, the duo have returned home from visiting Bernie's girlfriend in Washington D.C. and realize they've been robbed. The safe in Bernie's office has been pried out of a wall and stolen—complete with a prized watch that belonged to Bernie's grandfather. Then they realize their neighbor has an adult son (one they never knew he had, who is now residing next door) and also has a mature Saguaro Cactus suddenly growing on his front lawn. Where did it come from? How did it get there? It's against the law to move a cactus of this variety. Knowing the neighbor had a key to Chet and Bernie's house in case of emergency, is it possible the neighbor's son is the thief and the cactus transporter? What begins as a simple welcome home set-up evolves into another case—another dangerous, crime-solving adventure—for Chet and Bernie involving cactus thieves, murder and a kidnapping.

This clever, funny and riveting series is perfect for fans of crime/mystery fiction and animal/pet lovers.

Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn

Atria Books, $25.00 Hardcover, 9781476703428, 320 pp
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

The Means

Douglas Brunt (Ghosts of Manhattan) brings readers deep into the competitive world of multimedia journalism as it intersects with the hard-boiled grit of politics. Spanning four years and various U.S. locales, The Means braids together three distinct points of view to form a compelling, complex plot that unspools gradually, deepening the mystery at the center of the book.

Samantha Davis, a former child actress, is smart, beautiful and ambitious. Now a lawyer, she's hired as a national TV news reporter. As she learns the ropes, often the hard way, she pursues an evolving news story concerning the upcoming presidential election that raises her profile and tests her integrity.

Tom Pauley is a handsome, North Carolina defense attorney. After he wins a controversial trial, the well-liked, middle-class fiscal conservative is tapped by the GOP to make a run for governor. Might his popularity and appealing poll numbers encourage him to set his sights on the White House?

Mitchell Mason is a study in personal and professional contradiction: ruthless one minute, caring and sensitive the next. He's a brash, headstrong Democrat serving as president in a post-Obama America. A scandal from his past, however, suddenly threatens to put his re-election bid in peril.

Brunt is meticulous and detailed-oriented. His finely tuned novel is crafted via cinematic scenes, rich in dialogue, that authentically reveal the trappings and snares of power, ambition and human nature. The corrosion of the U.S. political system--on both sides of the aisle--is at the heart of this engrossing, seductive political thriller served with a twist.

The Means by Douglas Brunt

Touchstone, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781476772578, 352 pp

Publication Date: September 16, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (9/23/14), click HERE

The Girl on the Train

Rachel is a "soon-to-be-homeless alcoholic" who exists on the periphery of life since her divorce. She pines for and stalks Tom, who lives with his new family in the house he and Rachel used to share. Every day, Rachel rides a train past her old neighborhood, snatching a momentary glimpse into other lives. From this vantage point, she fixates on one couple she often sees, idolizing them: "They're what I lost, they're everything I want to be."

One day, as the train passes the house, Rachel spies the woman kissing a strange man in her backyard. This discovery shatters Rachel's illusions about the "happy" couple, so she binge drinks to the point of blacking out. The following day, when the news reports the woman is missing, Rachel vaguely recalls having exited the train in her old neighborhood that night and subsequently convinces herself that she may be involved. Unfortunately, Rachel can't remember much else--including where and how she received cuts on her hand. Determined to reconstruct the night in question and solve the mystery, she soon becomes entangled in the police investigation.

Paula Hawkins fashions The Girl on the Train from a staggered timeline and three female narrators. Rachel is the anchor, though she's not always understandable or trustworthy; Hawkins fills in the missing pieces via flashbacks and passages narrated by the missing woman and Rachel's ex's new wife. En route to a terrorizing, twisted conclusion, all three women--and the men with whom they share their lives--are forced to dismantle their delusions about others and themselves, their choices and their respective relationships.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Riverhead Books, $26.95 Hardcover, 9781594633669, 336 pp

Publication Date: January 13, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (1/13/15), click HERE

This review was also featured (in a longer form) on Shelf Awareness: Book Trade (1/5/15). To read the longer review click HERE

The Objects of Her Affection

An ordinary woman becomes a thief of Renaissance art in order to pay the bills in The Objects of Her Affection, an engrossing novel by Sonya Cobb that focuses on themes of want and need.

The Porters are a young, seemingly idyllic Philadelphia family. Beneath the surface, however, Sophie Porter and her husband Brian want different things. Brian, a workaholic curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is focused mainly on his career, constantly traveling. Sophie, feeling neglected and at a professional standstill as a web developer, thinks being approved for a hefty mortgage on a 150-year-old fixer-upper house will empower her life and give the couple's two children the childhood she herself never had.

Brian sees all the problems with the house, while Sophie sees a perfect future. When their approved adjustable-rate mortgage suddenly skyrockets and the Porters can't pay the bills, Sophie panics, yet she keeps the financial anxieties a secret. While visiting Brian at the museum one day, she discovers a trove of small, poorly stored, valuable works of art. Sophie 'accidentally' makes off with a Renaissance decorative mirror. Fearful of having to return it and thinking it might pay off some debt, she sells it to an art dealer who befriends Sophie while pulling her into a life of crime.

"She only wanted what was best for her family," Cobb writes about her deeply flawed, risk-taking protagonist with whom some readers will empathize. The thought-provoking, suspenseful plot will also hold crossover appeal for fans of thrillers as well as those intrigued by the lives of ordinary people misguided by their decisions and desires.

The Objects of Her Affection: A Novel by Sonya Cobb

Sourcebooks Landmark, $14.99 Trade Paper, 9781402294242, 337 pp

Publication Date: August 1, 2014

To order via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (8/1/14), click HERE

Before We Met

Middle-aged Brits, Hannah and Mark Reilly have enjoyed an idyllic marriage for eight months when Hannah eagerly drives to Heathrow Airport to pick up her husband, who was away on a business trip in New York City. But when Mark doesn't return on his scheduled flight, and Hannah cannot track him down by phone, she begins to worry. Days later Mark re-surfaces, claiming plausible, yet rather questionable excuses, which plant a seed of suspicion in Hannah, who grew up with a cheating father and a chronically skeptical mother. Hannah tries to convince herself that she has no real reason not to trust Mark, but her doubts cannot be diverted when she learns that Mark's whereabouts in New York City cannot be confirmed and coworkers in Mark's office—a lucrative software company, which he founded—cannot corroborate his story, either. Hannah stitches together other unexpected revelations including Mark's contact with a mysterious woman doctor, funds withdrawn from Hannah's bank account and the return of Mark's long lost brother. At every turn, Mark seems to have answers to explain everything, but can Hannah believe them?

Doubts, secrets and lies drive the engrossing suspense of the narrative. Author Lucie Whitehouse (The Bed I Made) effectively employs flashbacks in examining the before and after of Hannah and Mark—their single lives, their working lives, the influences of their dysfunctional families and the life they created together. This well-written and well-plotted psychological thriller peels back layers of information, deepening implications that will keep readers guessing through chilling twists and turns.

Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse

Bloombury USA,  $25.00 hardcover, 9781620402757, 288 pp

Publication Date: January 21, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (1/28/14), click HERE

The Devil's Garden

Author Brady Christianson cures writer's block by target practicing with his knives. "I can spend hours throwing them," he says. "Focusing on the target helps focus my thoughts." 

It's no wonder this former Marine, who served in the Reconnaissance Division, has centered his first novel, The Devil's Playground, around a retired Recon Marine who thinks he is enjoying a quiet, civilian life but who has his world suddenly turned upside-down when heavily armed Arab terrorists break into his house and try to kill him and his family. It is clear that his former military "secret identity" has been compromised and ghosts from the past have come back to settle old scores. 

 

This action-packed mystery/thriller was inspired by true events, after Christianson learned that a laptop was stolen from the Department of Veterans Affairs. "It contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers of every veteran who served this country since the Vietnam conflict. The missing laptop was not recovered until about a month later, which was an eternity for someone to copy the information and sell it...Considering these events and weighing them against the fact that there are those in the military services whose identities are protected—and they are protected for good reasons—the potential for disaster becomes painfully apparent...The story almost wrote itself."

I am pleased to welcome Brady Christianson to Reading Between the Lines to share his thoughts, in his own words, about The Devil's Garden:

The fog of war is a place where confusion rules, innocence dies and demons are born. Sometimes these demons come back to haunt a man and other times they simply come back to kill him. Few men would welcome the fight, which is to say, a proud and terrible few. The Devil’s Garden twists a Recon Marine’s worst nightmare into a deadly reality.

There is a saying in Recon: There is no life after Force. The lack of adrenaline and ensuing boredom will kill a warrior’s spirit. However, former Recon Marine Brandon Colson has a different kind of death to fear. After years spent in remote deserts and jungles on the other side of the planet dreaming of a quiet, civilian, family life, he finally has it. The problem is he has a large price on his head that even his family doesn’t know about: He is wanted by terrorists he worked to bring down.  With revenge in their hearts and murder on their minds, Colson’s enemies plan to revisit his sins upon him, his wife and his children. When a heavily armed squad of assassins arrives at his home in the middle of the night, he quickly dispatches the men, but knows the identity he buried deep in his past is no longer a secret. With his family in hiding, he makes it his personal mission to eliminate the threat to his family and reclaim the life he’s made.

The Devil’s Garden captures the irreconcilable thoughts and trepidation of a military man turned family man who must now fight to protect his family. As Colson’s crucial mission leads him to the Devil’s Garden of Florida, a forgotten wasteland of swamps, collapsed shacks, and lost souls, he finds that the midnight attack on his home was simply an omen of what is to come. With his fate in the balance until the last second, Colson must navigate a trail littered with bloodshed and revenge.

To learn more about The Devil's Garden and Brady Christianson (and read excerpts from the novel), link HERE

Follow the book blog tour for this novel at Tribute Books 

The Devil's Garden by Brady Christianson
Two Harbors Press, Trade Paper, 9781938690167, 392 pp
Publication Date: November 11, 2012
To order this book via AMAZON link HERE