Multiple Exposure by Ellen Crosby MYS Cro

Photojournalist Sophie Medina returns to her home in London from an overseas assignment to find that her husband Nick has been violently abducted.  Nick worked for a British oil company as a geologist but was also an undercover agent for the CIA.  Days later his boss and owner of the oil company he worked for is found dead in the Danube River in Vienna.

Sophie stays in London, where she and Nick had been so happy, to deal with her grief.  Three months after his abduction a friend in the British government tells her that Nick might not be dead after all.  Nick has shown up in recent pictures taken in Moscow.

Not sure who to believe and wondering why Nick hasn't contacted her, Sophie returns to Washington, D.C. to be with family and friends.  While taking pictures of a Faberge egg exhibit for her new job she is threatened by a Russian oil tycoon who implicates Nick in an international energy scheme.

Sophie isn't sure who to trust but as she tries to solve the puzzle of Nick's disappearance she relies on her knowledge of Washington, D.C. and her close-knit circle of friends from her childhood as well as her wealthy and influential step-father.  What she finds out has national and international implications.

I first read Ellen Crosby's series of mysteries set in the Virginia wine country which is located just outside Washington, D.C.  She has a wonderful ability to create a sense of place.  After reading those mysteries I wanted to visit Loudon County in Virgina and ride a horse or two, go from winery to winery and do some antique shopping.

This mystery, the first in a series, had the same effect.  I've been to Washington, D.C. several times but the author described parts of the city I have never seen.  I wanted to hop on the next plane to experience it through Sophie's eyes.

"First in a series" books can sometimes be difficult to work through.  The author has to set up characters and personalities and sometimes plot can take a backseat.  This book still managed to keep the pace moving and provide an intricate mystery that isn't resolved until the very end.  I enjoyed it and look forward to the next book in the series.

Benediction by Kent Haruf FIC Har

First of all, if you haven’t read Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, drop everything and go do that right now. It’s okay; I’ll wait. When you’re done, don’t be embarrassed if you want to hug the book. I did.

Good. Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about Haruf’s latest novel, Benediction. Set in the small eastern-Colorado town of Holt, which we have come to know through Haruf’s previous books, Benediction focuses on the final days of Dad Lewis. Dad is the owner of the local hardware store, and the story opens with him learning that he has terminal cancer, with only a few weeks left to live. The book follows Dad, his wife and daughter, his neighbors, friends, and employees, and his church pastor as they cope with the end of one life, while giving the reader the spectrum of lives being lived – a young girl on her first bicycle; teenaged “love”; married couples, widows, spinsters; all navigating the perils of life with and without each other.

Benediction is another fine example of what Haruf does best: character studies, of people we know doing things we recognize in places that feel like home. His prose isn’t flowery or noticeably complex; in fact, it’s simple and direct – much like his main characters.

I love Kent Haruf. His books are comfortable, even as the stories he tells are not.

The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison FIC Har

I had heard good things about this book and was hoping that I had found a new author to read.  Sadly this was Harrison's debut novel and it turns out to be her final one because she died of cancer while writing her second one.  This novel has been compared to  Gone Girl which I just loved.  There were similarities and I enjoyed this one too.  It is told from the viewpoints of Jodi and Todd - and they have rather different points of view!  They have been together for more than two decades.  They live in a beautiful condo in Chicago.  Todd has been cheating on Jodi since the beginning.  Jodi is the "queen of denial".  She is perfectly happy keeping a clean house, fixing gourmet meals, walking their dog and working part-time.  When their happy arrangement begins to crumble it gets nasty.  Remember that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".  No truer words were ever written.  It isn't a very long book - I started it in the afternoon and finished it that night.  If you like books that don't end "happily ever after"  this would be a book for you!

The Good Children by Kate Wilhelm FIC Wil

I ran across this 1998 book while I was shelving....and then I read the jacket and decided it would join the large pile of books I have at my house.  It didn't take long to read and was a nice interlude to the audio book of FDR that I was listening to.  Warden and Lee have four kids.  When Lee was young she was shuffled among foster homes.  When she married Warden she knew that she didn't want to be separated from him because they were a family.  So she and the children followed him as he went from assignment to assignment.  Warden decides it is time to let his children grow some roots in a community so he buys a big old house for his family.  Lee loves gardening and taking care of the house.  Life was good until a tragedy strikes.  After listening to their mom's stories of foster care and the state, the four kids come up with a bold and risky idea to hold onto their family.  They would do whatever was necessary to protect each other.  But eventually the circumstances and lies start to become too much.  It is a good psychological suspense book!

Sum It Up by Pat Summitt with Sally Jenkins 796.323 Sum

  

To be honest, I could not have told you who Pat Summitt was until a few years ago.  I don't follow Women's Basketball so her story of determination, hard work, failures and outstanding successes would never have reached me - except for the fact that she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2011.  That caught my attention because she is just a few years younger than I am.  Although the book talks about changes that led Pat to the doctor and eventually to give up the job she loved, mostly it's just about Pat's life - and it was a fascinating read.  She is incredible.  I would have lasted about 10 minutes in her family - the physical work they did is remarkable.  The demands put on her by her father made her into a strong competitor who never ran into a barrier that stopped her.  The way she fought for women's basketball is unbelievable - she had to do it all in the beginning.  She did the laundry for the team,  set up the chairs and bleachers and swept the floor so that her girls could play in a sub-par gym.  When they traveled she was in charge of driving them and they had no budget so they slept on gym floors the night before a game.  You don't have to love sports to love this woman and her story.  It is one that will stay with me for a long, long time.

The Longings of Wayward Girls by Karen Brown FIC Bro

   

This was an entertaining book.  The main character is Sadie and the narration goes back and forth between her childhood and her life as a wife and mother.  Sadie's childhood was not a happy one due to an alcoholic mother and a father who didn't pay much attention to her.  One of the most traumatic incidents of that time was when a young girl from her neighborhood disappeared without a trace.  As an adult Sadie should be happy as a married women and a stay-at-home mom.  When she loses a baby she can not recover.  Her depression deepens.  Enter Ray, her crush from long ago.  After the death of his father he is back in town - single, looking good and with his eye on Sadie.  Nothing good is going to come of this!  It is well-written but the characters were not all that likeable! 

Bones of the Lost by Kathy Reichs MYS Rei

Dr. Temperance Brennan is having a bad day, and she hasn't even gotten to work at the Medical Examiner's office yet.  And when Detective Erskine "Skinny" Slidell swings by to pick her up in the
courthouse parking ramp, where she's locked her keys, purse and shoes in her car, the day just gets worse. Slidell was at the ME's office with the body of a hit-and-run victim.  Brennan gets dragged in to that case, even though she had a few others on her roster.  The victim, female in her teens, has no ID, and examination shows she was most likely raped and murdered. Brennan's specialty is forensic anthropology, so she shouldn't even be working this case, but the outrage she develops at the fate of the victim will not let her leave the case unsolved.
At the same time she's been asked to determine whether three mummy-wrapped packages confiscated by customs at the local airport do, indeed, contain bones of dogs, or if the importer is smuggling valuable Peruvian artifacts.
As if she doesn't have enough to keep her busy, her almost-ex husband asks her, as a favor to him and a good friend, to be the expert on site during an exhumation of two Afghani locals who were killed under questionable circumstances a year previously.  Brennan's examination and testimony could clear the friend's nephew, a Marine accused of shooting the unarmed men in the back.
Phew!
The good news is that this is a good read.  The pace never lags, the story lines work together in a tightly-woven plot and there are enough little twists thrown in to keep the reader second-guessing the outcome.  Is it great literature?  Well, no, but that's okay.  It is well-written and entertaining.  Oh, and be sure to read the last few pages of the book "From the Forensic Files of Dr. Kathy Reichs" -- but not until you've finished the story.