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One of my
favorite books
of all time.
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Silver Bay, Oregon, a small coastal resort town with nearly a thousand residents, is home to three generations of women: Marnie, the long-widowed owner of a small gift shop; Van, her granddaughter who is about to graduate medical school; and Stef, mercurial, difficult, and a brilliant artist who refuses to sell her work.
When Stef discovers that Dale Oliver—the latest husband/paramour in a very long line—is trying to sell her work behind her back, she puts a stop to it and threatens to do the same to him.
Shortly thereafter, Stef dies in an accident in her studio, and Dale shows up with a signed contract granting him the right to sell her work.
Convinced that Stef was murdered in order to steal her artwork, Marnie and Van—grandmother and granddaughter—decide to do whatever is necessary to see that Dale doesn’t get away with any of it.
This includes enlisting the help of the new stranger in town, Tony, a former New York City cop, who might be the only one who can prove it was murder and bring the killer to justice.
"Heaven is High"
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Another top
of my list of
great novels.
A real page-
turner.
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But while trying to sort out her own future, two people, desperate for help, show up on her doorstep: former pro football player Martin Owens and his wife Binnie.
Binnie, who is mute, met her husband when she snuck aboard his boat while it was docked in Haiti and smuggled herself into the U. S. Now Immigration is seeking to deport her back to Haiti, which would be a death sentence.
Born to a woman from Belize who was kidnapped and enslaved by pirates, Binnie’s only hope is to prove her and her mother’s real identity. With only days to find the truth and protect Binnie, Holloway sets off for Belize.
But what she knows is only the tip of the iceberg in what turns out to be one of her most complex, compelling and dangerous cases yet.
“The Good Children”
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Wow! What
a great book.
I want to
read more of
this author.
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“When you’ve got family, you don’t need anything else,” Lee McNair tells her children. After an industrial accident kills her husband, the distraught McNair makes the four children promise they’ll never let strangers touch her when she dies.
The children find themselves called on to honor that promise when McNair is killed in a freakish backyard accident. Afraid of disobeying their mother and equally afraid that they’ll be sent away to foster homes, the children bury her in the backyard and are forced to lie to neighbors and pretend that she is still alive.
Their attempts to keep up the ruse are eerily successful except that the youngest of the children begins to lose his sanity. Eventually, the McNairs call the authorities to report their mother’s sudden disappearance. The youngest child’s troubles deepen and a new piece of information about their mother’s accident threatens to break up their carefully unified front.
A young society lawyer, charged with looking in on the “abandoned” McNair children, creates another kind of complication when he falls in love with the engaging teenage narrator (and third McNair). Liz. Wilhelm’s spare, unsentimental style contributes nicely to the mood of this well-told gothic tale.
Read more about Kate here
