Willa Jackson is descended from Walls of Water, North Carolina's founding family. Her great-great-grandfather got rich by harvesting trees and selling lumber. He built 'The Blue Ridge Madam' once the area's finest mansion. But when the government purchased the remaining forests and turned the area into a national park, the Jackson family lost everything. Willa's grandmother was raised in the family home until she was seventeen. After that, the house fell into disrepair. Now Willa's old classmate - do-gooder Paxton Osgood, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam with plans to open it as an inn.
When a skeleton is unearthed beneath the property's lone peach tree, long kept secrets come to light. Ms. Addison Allen's books resonate with themes of friendship, love and tradition.
The Burying Place is another of Brian Freeman's psychological thrillers set in the Duluth, MN area. Lt. Jonathan Stride is still on leave recovering from injuries received in a fall from a bridge over Superior Bay. Physically, he is mostly recovered; mentally, he keeps having flashbacks to the night he almost died. He tries to hide the panic attacks which immobilize him.
When a call comes in that a baby is missing from her bedroom in the quiet town of Grand Rapids, Stride goes back to work. Was the baby abducted as the father says, or does he have a terrible secret to hide? And does this case have anything to do with several missing women in the same area?
Freeman is a masterful writer of strong narrative, suspense, well-crafted characters and relationships. You may think you have everything figured out, but there's always a surprise or two at the end.
As I read this book, I could not help but think of the little girl missing from her bedroom in Kansas City - the parallels between the father being suspected in the novel and the mother in the real life situation. I also thought of all the isolated farm houses I have lived in as those were the kind of locations from which the women in his novel were missing.
I first began reading Louise Erdrich when Kari was at Macalester College in St. Paul and told me about her. She has won many awards and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. So, I was expecting another excellent read from her in Shadow Tag. I have to admit being disappointed through the first 246 pages of the book. I got tired of reading about Gil and Irene's failing marriage, his possessiveness, her game playing. It was only in the last eight pages that Erdrich's brilliance surfaced. Or maybe it was there all along and it took the summation to make me appreciate it.
Numbers four and five of Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries - Murder on Washington Square and Murder on Mulberry Bend - were just as good and entertaining as her first three. The next in the series is the one our library does not have. I may try to find it elsewhere in order to keep reading them in sequence.
Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth is the book I have been trying to listen to. It is a sequel to True North which I read and loved. My problem listening to this book is partly keeping all the characters straight. But it is mostly that Harrison's writing is so poetic. I want to stop and re-read passages and think about them - that's pretty hard to do with an audio book. Harrison's themes of the healing power of nature and the deep connection between the sensual and the spiritual need to be read slowly and thoughtfully - at least I think so.
Nights In Rodanthe is another of Nicholas Sparks' best selling love stories. When we were on the Outer Banks of North Carolina three years ago, I wanted to drive down to Rodanthe and see the inn where the movie version was filmed. We didn't find it. I finally decided we just didn't drive quite far enough before turning around and heading back to Nags Head. But I can still remember walking along the ocean shore under a full moon and could feel that magic again as I read the book. What books I have read of Sparks seem to be about lost love. Maybe that is what makes them best sellers.
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