Island Follies: Romantic Homes of the Bahamas by Alastair Gordon

 Gordon, who’s written regularly for magazines about architecture and design, wonderfully showcases the architectural impact Henry Melich made in the Bahamas, where he spent 30 years. 

Melich favored follies, ornate structures that are mostly decorative: Xanadu’s sphinxes, obelisk, and breezeway; Waterloo’s half-round portico; and La Feuillie’s faux Roman ruins are exquisite examples. 

Readers who love design will devour this book’s sumptuous photographs. Loggias, terraces, and plantation shutters appear in tropical colors—coral pink, parchment yellow, leaf green, and hibiscus. 

Some of his more creative follies include the secret writing room he devised for Rosanna Todd and the turrets for Ferguson Castle. Some of his structures served a practical purpose too. Tivoli’s classical pavilions adorned with cloisonné horses hid its pool’s maintenance mechanisms. 

This book also mentions Melich’s clients, most of them heirs and heiresses, who craved a curious hybrid of Roman antiquity and Bahamian flair. Delightful anecdotes about Doris Duke, Pamela Woolworth, and Sibilla O’Donnell abound.

The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You by Karla McLaren

 

In the first version of The Language of Emotions, released in 2010, McClaren showed how the emotional realm is a dynamic system that are part of every decision we make. The updated version continues to show while also revealing that anxiety is a distinct emotion from fear.

McClaren also includes four key models for understanding emotions that she developed in The Art of Empathy. 

In the first part she explains why repressing emotions, as people are taught to do, can be harmful. She shares the four keys for effectively working with or channeling one’s emotions. 

She defines a family of four elements that inhabit the psyche--air, earth, body, and water—and explains that emotions should flow like water. McClaren continues to assert that all emotions—even anger and jealousy--convey valuable information. 

Emotions only become problematic when they become stuck in a loop. She offers recommendations for an imbalanced psyche. In the second half, she explores emotions more fully giving each emotion gets its own chapter. 

McClaren gives readers additional resources to explore topics in greater depth and advises how to honor each emotion in others. Though friends can offer some help, she advises when to refer a friend to a professional.

 

The Book of Cold Cases by SImone St. James

Having been kidnapped as a child, Shea develops an obsession with crime stories. Though she works as a medical receptionist, her true passion is blogging about true crime. Thus, she recognizes Beth Greer, who almost has celebrity status, when she comes in for an appointment. 

Like The Sun Down Motel, Simone St. James gives The Book of Cold Cases a dual timeline, deftly interweaving the recent past--the 1960s and the 1970s with the present.

St. James' characters, however, are more complex in The Book of Cold Cases. Beth Greer appears to be the quintessential femme fatale. But there is more at play. A lot more. 

St James returns repeatedly to the moment when Beth is arrested. The young Beth is red-haired, extremely wealthy, and wearing a form-fitting trench coat. A witness claims the suspect was red-haired and wore a trench coat. 

Flash forward to the present. The sixty-some woman who stands before Shea is the "Lady Killer" who was indicted but never charged for two murders. She is the recluse who lives frozen in time, the moment the murders were committed. 

Though it's dangerous to consort with a serial killer, Shea knows she has to interview the woman for her cold case blog. Reclusive and secretive, Beth Greer has famously eschewed interviews, but Shea is determined. 

As in all of St James' novels, readers can detect a supernatural subtext. 

Films that explore similar concepts, paranormal events and podcasting, are Ia Tuason's Undertone (2025). 

By adding a  supernatural element to her mysteries, St. James gives readers an additional layer to an already riveting mystery. 

Someone Else's Husband by Kimberly McCreight

 

Dive into July's Katie Couric's Book Club pick, which is also a perfect summer read. 

Wealthy couple, Richard and Gretchen, face a legal battle when Richard is accused of murdering his travel companion, Frankie, an artist with a dark secret. 

Richard, a financier, has humble origins. His upward career trajectory is largely due to his wife's family and their connections. Gretchen, in the meantime, gave up law school to become a full-time mother.

The novel explores how a single incident can shatter the ostentatiously perfect life. More than just a murder story, the novel investigates the base instincts that underlie a couple's perfect facade.

More than one mystery swirls around this rich couple. Gretchen wonder if Richard had a flirtation or an affair with Frankie. She wonders if her whole marriage has been a lie. 

After Frankie is found dead, police investigate the texts she received--some were from Richard and some from an unknown person who was stalking Frankie.  Police examine videotape and interview Richard who makes questionable statements. 

McCreight includes police interviews and other primary sources making readers feel like detectives on the case.   

 McCreight's debut novel was Reconstructing Amelia, has won numerous awards. Her breakout novel has been optioned for TV by HBO.

Kimberly McCreight – New York Times bestselling author

Design Happy: Colorful Homes for the Modern Family by Betsy Wentz

 

Design Happy: Colorful Homes for the Modern Family by Betsy Wentz.

In Design Happy, Wentz gives readers valuable professional tips and design lessons while detailing renovations of twelve homes. Many of the houses are from an affluent area in Pennsylvania but some are vacation homes. In each of these homes Wentz brings vibrant colors e.g., fuchsia, kiwi, turquoise, and citron. The colors, however, flow naturally from a carefully orchestrated plan she makes with clients.

Though she loves bold colors Wentz always starts with something the client loves—a color, a rug, or a piece of art. In the Rabbit Hill house, for instance, she chooses design palette from the colors of the client’s existing art collection. In the Bunker Hill home, she uses a client’s album collection for inspiration.

In addition to beauty, Wentz’s designs are functional. She chooses vinyl wall coverings in colorful patterns or grass textures for their durability. Vintage rugs provide softness and color, especially when she has them vegetable dyed for a startling effect. She employs pops of color except for bedrooms where colors tend to me more muted. Walking space is an important part of her designs as well.

Readers can learn much from Wentz’s book even if these homes and renovations are beyond their budget. A complete list of sources for furnishings and textiles is included.

Start Here: Draw: 50 Ways to be an Artist Without Really Trying. by Moira Clinch.

 Start Here: Draw gives beginning artists prompts and easy, non-intimidating exercises that help beginners build skills. Using a variety of strokes and shapes, Clinch covers the basics while also giving tips on using various types of media. Many of the exercises are experimental and fun like fingerprint characters, pixel pets, print collages, mug and mouse pad designs. 

Moira explains how to use different mediums, even digital formats, for different effects.  Stressing that quirkiness and imperfection add to the character of a piece, Clinch offers timeless advice. 

When layering colored paper in a collage, for instance, she advises to let some of the original background show. Tips for achieving two-point and three-point point perspectives are presented clearly and concisely. 

In the last part of the book Moira covers drawing figures and portraits. She even offers advice on how to get family and friends to sit for portraits. 

Filled with valuable takeaways, Start Here: Draw shines in the last portion of the book where readers learn how to make projects for friends or keepsakes for the home.

Flowers for All by Susan McCleary

 

Susan McCleary presents thirty accessible flower projects that can spread joy. The simplest projects involve gathering flowers from your own yard, farmer’s market, grocery store, or flower farms. Since she eschews floral foam and uses reusable materials her designs are environment friendly. The tools she recommends are practical and simple e.g. floral frogs, floral wire, and snipping tools. The projects described in “Flowers for Me,” are the simplest and grow progressively more complex in “Flowers for Friends” and “Flowers for All.”

In the latter half of the book McCleary, an expert on wearable florals, presents semi-advanced projects. For instance, there is a bridal bouquet that can also be worn as a headpiece and earrings made of fresh daffodils and floral wire. Unlike many floral designers, McLeary uses herbs and the occasional fruit and vegetable in her design. Even more advanced projects instruct readers how to create impressive centerpieces, flower canopies, and towers.

What is great about McCleary’s book is that it stresses the benefits of flower arrangements in a clear, approachable way. Designs are welcoming, accessible, and mindful of the environment. From the simple to moderately complex, these projects offer something for everyone.

History of Bees by Maja Lunde

 

Divided into three sections, this dystopian novel looks at beekeeping from three different vantage points–Victorian England, America circa 2007, and China circa 2098.

 While ostensibly focusing on bees, the novel examines the tensions that exist between family members, especially fathers and sons. This is true for the Victorian-century beekeeper, William, and his son, Edmund, and in his American descendants, George and his son, Tom, circa 2007.

 The sons
in each case want nothing to do with father’s dream of harvesting honey and raising bees. William Savage is not only estranged from his son but also becomes more and more alienated from his mentor, Rahm. The only child who understands William’s dream is Charlotte yet he coldly dismisses her achievements. She is the wrong gender.

In the last time period, which takes place in China, bees and other pollinators are extinct. Their absence which leaves a void in the world further alienates family members. Without bees, everyone is undernourished and forced to work long hours hand painting pollen onto flowers.

In this horrific time, parents can only see their children one day a week. Children are forced to leave school and work as pollinators at younger and younger ages. Tao and Kuan can barely speak to each other, especially after their son disappears. Tao leaves her husband and goes off into unsafe areas of Beijing in search of her child, Wei-Wen.

Tied into all three stories is The History of the Bees, a book written by Thomas Savage who is distantly related to the Victorian bee keeper. Tao read the book and insists that the leader of the Committee, Li Xiara, read it as well.

The army and Chinese government finds a new colony of bees near the site where Wei-Wen goes missing. Knowing and acknowledging the past, however, is necessary before they can move forward. Tao’s boy becomes a symbol of hope.

What is fascinating is the way Lunde compares the disappearance of bees, also known as colony collapse disorder, with the disintegration of family and natural bonds. This is a chilling speculative novel about what may happen if red flags about pollinators and the climate are ignored.

Liz Moore's Long Bright River

 

Mickey, a police officer, narrates the Long Bright River, a compelling story of two sisters on opposite sides of the law. Both Mickey and Kacey come from the same hardscrabble neighborhood in Philadelphia. They were raised by their taciturn grandmother, Gee. 

This part of the story is easily recognizable. Since their mother died of an overdose and their father abandoned them, they are raised by a bitter grandmother. She bitterly laments the death of her daughter who overdosed and left her to two children to raise.

Gee raised the girls without much joy or hope. The only bright spot in the girls' lives is their fierce bond and a secret hiding place where their girls share their favorite knick knacks and correspondence

The community Moore describes, Kensington, is a real community carefully researched by the author. Kensington is a working class district known for poverty, homelessness, and drug use.

What is the long, bright river? The reader does not know at first. Moore is writing about the "invisible people", the homeless and vulnerable, that most ignore.

Mickey has become a police officer whose job compels her to interact with this drug using crowd. Meanwhile, her younger sister, Kacey, has become one more of the nameless and invisible.

One of the working girls alerts Mickey that her sister has disappeared. Though she has a young son, Mickey does some investigating. At this point, the novel shifts into high gear and becomes a thriller. 

Mickey's choice to investigate her sister puts her in danger especially as there is a serial killer on the loose, one who is specifically targeting the ladies of the evening. 

Rumors circulate that the perpetrator may be one of Philadelphia's own PD. This puts Mickey in even more danger. She never knows who may be observing her or who may be hostile to her unendorsed investigation. 

The killer could be anyone on the force. She even suspects her ex and her former partner who frequent Kensington at odd times. To top it all, someone has been bothering her landlady and asking questions about her. 

Moore deliver a first-rate thriller while also drawing attention to poverty, drug abuse, prostitution and other social problems in the Philadephia community.

Long Bright River has recently been adapted into a miniseries on Peacock starring Amanda Seyfried.

 

 

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

 

Even if you’ve read this classic novel of mystery and suspense before, by re-reading it you will find new facets and nuances to admire. 

Ten people come to an island for different purposes but find themselves fighting for their lives. Among them is a murderer who wants his or her own type of justice. After each death, the adversary meticulously removes a porcelain figure from the dining room table.

A gramophone recording relates that each of these guests have committed an unpardonable sin and have been as of yet beyond the reaches of law. One of them has invited them all here, produced the recording, and eliminating them but who could it be? 

Could it be the young reckless Marston, the well-respected doctor, or the elderly Emily Brent? Could it be General McArthur, the reptilian judge Wargrave, the prim Vera Claythorne, or the callous Philip Lombard? 

This one of Christie's darkest and most intricate mystery. 

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone by Felicity McLean

This debut by Australian author, Felicity McClean, is a tantalizing page-turner. This exciting novel is a mystery and coming-of-age story in one. Tikka remembers her childhood--she grew up in a small Australian river valley.

One incident irrevocably changed the Tikka's life: the summer of 1992. Her neighbors, Corrie, Hannah, and Ruth, disappeared one fateful day. The police assume its a missing case but Tikka and her sister are withholding information. Tikka knows that the Van Apfel girls were planning to runaway, a fact she kept from police. Years later, as an adult, she wonders if she made the right choice.

She dwells on the Apfel girls' disappearance to the point where it begins to affect her mental health. As Corrie's memory consumes Tikka, she begins to see Corrie everywhere, or at least people who that look like Corrie.

McLean has a delightful sardonic wit. She frames the story with the Lindy Chamberlain case, a woman whose baby girl disappears while on a camping trip.

Tikka stages a skit based on the case for a school event the evening of the Van Apfel girls' disappearance. Just as it had in the Chamberlain case, the Van Apfel case causes many tongues to wag. Characters jump to conclusions about a male teacher.

Many novels focus on missing girls. Julia Phillips' Disappearing Earth focuses on how a Siberian community reacts to the disappearance of two of their own. 

Though it addresses the self-help industry and single motherhood,  Jaclyn Moriarty Gravity Is The Thing, is also about missing persons. 

Other titles about missing persons:
Lippman, Lauran. Lady in the Lake. 
Miranda, Megan. All the Missing Girls.
O'Nan, Stewart. Songs for the Missing. 

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (part 2)

The next stage is hunting. Macdonald loses, she says, her humanity while watching Mabel hunt. Although she has been an animal lover all her life, she enjoys the hawk's triumphs. 

Ironically, Macdonald says she regains her humanity by mercifully killing the prey that Mabel would have eaten live.

Macdonald's success in training her goshawk is punctuated by White's unsuccessful attempts to train his.

Then, one day, the hawk inexplicably attacks Helen. 

The injuries gives Helen several key realizations that are further affirmed when she speaks at her father's memorial service.

She had been losing herself--her humanity--while training the goshawk. 

What I liked best about this memoir is the honest description of  a tense human-animal relationship. The literary analyses, the historical asides, and Macdonald's astute discussion of depression and grieving process make this work even more significant.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (part 1)

Though she is an expert who has trained many raptors, MacDonald feels compelled to train a goshawk after her father's death. Known to be the most difficult of all to train, the goshawk is a suitable challenge that allows her to grieve and escape from the world.

MacDonald's father, a photojournalist, viewed the world through his camera lens. He taught Helen to be a watcher and that is what she does while training hawks. 

For the first few weeks she "watches" them; she allows herself to become invisible while feeding them from gloved hands.

The next stage is "manning" the hawk. Manning the hawk means uncovering its head in public. Up to this point, the hawk wear a hood in public.

In this wildly original work of non-fiction, MacDonald also confronts her younger self and her disdain for fellow hawk-trainer and legendary author, T.H. White.

His loneliness mirrors her own though she does not appear to recognize this. As an adult, MacDonald comprehends White's troubled soul and his loneliness. 

MacDonald is an academic so much of the writing comes across an a beautifully-written academic essay. She is also a poet which explains the work's formidable imagery: "The hawk was a fire that burned my hurts away."

Since she is also historian, MacDonald often engages in interesting asides, like her discussion of the Pastoral movement that occurred in Britain in the 1930s. 

Mostly, though, she shares her triumphs and failures as an austringer. Though she trains Mabel to land on her fist, inexplicably, her goshawk stops doing it consistently. MacDonald feels she has failed her hawk.

Much of this non-fiction treatise reads like feral therapy. MacDonald is afraid to let Mabel loose of the creance as she is supposed to do: "I'm convinced that Mabel will rocket away from me and disappear for ever." 

This isn't a bond she takes lightly. During her time of grief, she has frequent angry outbursts. She finds it particularly hard to learn to trust again:

 "Flying a hawk free is always scary. It is where you test these lines. And it's not a thing that's easy to do when you've lost trust in the world, and your heart is turned to dust." 

(continued)

Magician's Lie by Greer McAllister

One night in Waterloo, Iowa, the Amazing Arden, completes a magic trick she has done many times before. She is famous for her half man trick in which she saws a man in half. This time, however, she innovates and uses a fire ax. 

The man, presumably her husband, is later found under the stage--killed by an ax wound to the chest. Virgil Holt, a Deputy Sheriff, apprehends her but Arden claims to be innocent. 

Along with the Sheriff, readers must decide whether her story is believable. Parts of her story are difficult for the sheriff to believe. Ray a maniac that she meets while still a young girl living in Tennessee, has healing powers. He is a healer and a destroyer-in-one, yet its hard to believe no one detects his treachery.

Arden, then named Ava, teaches herself ballet via the Cecchetti method, in order to escape from Ray's abuse. This plan fails when Ray breaks her leg. Ava run away from home and becomes a servant in the Vanderbilt household. 

At Biltmore, Ava falls for Clyde who has considerable talents. He is a gardener who can also turn a profit scouting talent in New York. Ava, still running from Ray, takes off with Clyde where she takes a small part in the legendary Adelaide Hermann's magic act.

Magic and performing becomes Ava's new life. Her business manager, which by coincidence is Clyde, renames her The Amazing Arden. Her show is successful and she is happy for a time until tragedy strikes. 


Macallister includes many accurate details in this historical fiction, including the Iroquois Theater fire in 1903 and details from the life of Adelaide Hermann. 

Arden is a fascinating character as are Virgil and Ray. The one flaw in the novel is Clyde who is almost too versatile. He is a rake, a hero, a gardener, and a business manager. The ending is, thus. only partly satisfying. 

If you like The Magician's Lie, you may like Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants or Chrysler Szalan's The Hawley Book of the Dead.

Other books with circus acts, magic tricks, or performing arts as their main themes are Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation and Leslie Parry's Church of Marvels. 

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Horrifying on multiple levels, Child 44 is a standout thriller.

In the so-called perfect Stalinist state, crime doesn't exist. To admit that it exists is almost an act of treason. 

So when a member of the MGB claims that his child Arkady has been murdered, Leo Demidov is told to quiet the family. He does this and more, even threatening eye-witnesses. 

He never examines the body of Arkady as the family asks. None of this is unusual. MGB do not normally detect violent crime. That task belongs to a much lower class, the militia. 

Soon, however, new circumstances come to light. Leo Demidov's communist beliefs are shaken to the core when he sees an innocent man tortured. 

He also learns that wife, Raisa, is a stranger. She married him because she feared turning his marriage proposal down. 

He was an agent of the state and she was keen on surviving. Years ago she had watched the Soviets destroy her town and all of her relatives, including her parents, for political purposes.

In Stalinist Russia, agents could be promoted one afternoon and denounced the next. When someone denounces Leo and Raisa, they barely escape with their lives. Demoted to a mill town, Leo and Raisa must start life anew.

Leo is demoted to the lowest rank in the militia, the agency responsible for handling violent crime. Recently, two children have been murdered in the woods near the railroad tracks and there may be more. 

Smith has set up the perfect conundrum for his hero to face. A disgraced MGB officer can do little to investigate the murders without risking his life. Leo Demidov must decide if  justice is more important than survival.


Plenty of riveting twists and turns, betrayals, repressed memories, mind games, and nail-biting escapes make this a first-rate thriller. Unsurprisingly, this novel has been turned into a 2015 feature film. 


Tom Rob Smith followed Child 44 with two other novels, The Secret Speech and Agent 6.

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth is an enchanting read. Forsyth mixes characters based on historical people with fable.

In the novel, readers meet Charlotte-Rose de La Force after she has been banished from Louis XIV's court and sent to a nunnery. 

The real life Charlotte-Rose de La Force wrote the Rapunzel or "Persinette" story which was adapted by the brothers Grimm.

In this fictionalized version of events, Charlotte hears the tale from Soeur Seraphina, her only friend at the convent where she is imprisoned.

Like a master tapestry weaver, Forsyth weaves the stories of the three women: Charlotte, Margherita, and  and Maria, the "strega bella," who renames herself Selena.

Most readers are familiar with the Rapunzel story but Forsyth revitalizes it. Selena kidnaps Margherita from her home in Venice and entraps her in a high watchtower in Manerba.

In this is a multi-faceted story, Forsyth also gives us the witch's story. When her mother is horribly mistreated, Maria learns what injustice feels like and it marks the beginning of her transformation into wickedness. 

Maria who renames herself Selena acquires a lover, Tiziano, whose paintings immortalize her. Forsyth has some fun here with Titian, imagining that Selena is Titian's Venus. 

Selena stays young because she drinks the blood of the young red-headed girls she has kept in the tower. Tizano, on the other hand, sinks into old age.

Forsyth switches back and forth easily from Margherita and Selena's story in Italy to Charlotte de la Force's adventures in France during the reign of the sun King.

After losing the King's favor, Charlotte determines to marry a Marquis and pays a witch for a love spell. She lands in prison, but upon release, she chooses to marry for love.

What is remarkable is the way all of the women's lives parallel each other. All face terrible choices and are forced to choose between their happiness or safety. 

A sweeping and sensual drama, Bitter Greens is one of the best historical novels of 2014. 

For more information about this novel and about Kate Forsyth, see Sarah Johnson's interview of Forsyth in Johnson's blog, Reading the Past.

http://readingthepast.blogspot.com/2012/05/interview-with-kate-forsyth-author-of.html

Isle of Youth: Stories by Laura Van Den Berg

Laura Van Den Berg's stories have a quirky feel much like  Rivka Galchen's stories. Characters are "at sea," weathering one emotional disturbances or another. All of the stories feature disappearances or marital break-ups.

In "Opa-Locka" a pair of sisters form a detective agency but seriously undermine their business when they act recklessly. They track and then lose a client's husband. The incident weirdly mirrors their own childhood when their father disappears.

In "Lessons," a group of outlaws runaway from their sheltered existence.Dana takes her younger brother, who has Asperger-like symptoms, with her on a crime spree and later regrets the decision. 

In "Antarctica," a troubled young wife has left her husband without explanation. Her scientist husband dies in an explosion in Antarctica. 

The daughter of a magician in "The Great Escape," has always believed that her father had disappeared during a magic trick. The truth is far worst and more ordinary. Facing theft charges, the girl tries a disappearing trick of her own. 

Clearly, Van Den Berg's primarily deal with is  abandonment. Dana in "Lessons" is afraid the "gorillas" will leave Pinky behind. In "Opa-Locka," the sisters are still recovering from their father's disappearance.

A second motif is a crumbling marriage. The women in "Acrobat," "Isle of Youth" are each in a failed marriage; in its disintegration they come to a moment of enlightenment.

Laura Van Den Berg's latest work is a novel called Find Me. 

Lost and Found by Brooke Davis

Brooke Davis is a vibrant new voice in fiction. She gives the viewpoints of three characters--a lonely old man, a crochety old woman and a seven-year-old girl who contemplates death. Her father has just died and her mother has abandoned her in a department store. 

Davis mixes just the right amount of pathos and humor when she gives voices Milly. When her mother does not return for her, she imagines that one of the manikins is her friend. She record dead things in her dead things journal. She leaves notes that will supposedly help her Mum find her: "In here Mum."

She also befriends Karl, a touch typist who writes messages to his deceased wife in the air. By accident, Karl joins Milly and Agatha on a bus journey to Kalgoorlie. 

The bus trip is followed by an outlandish train trip through Nullarbor Plain. The three of them are determined to find Milly's Mum or, at least, a relative to take care of her.

Lost and Found is completely different from anything else I've read. Very few novels, after all, feature a seven-year-old who run away with two octogenarians. Very few novels features a seven-year-old who is obsessed with death. 

What makes Milly so unique, however, is her ironic innocence and intelligence.She nearly meets her match though on the train when she meets another little boy who calls himself "Captain Everything."

She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

This young adult novel tackles the slippery nature of coincidence. While researching a non-fiction book about coincidences, a disabled girl's father he mysteriously disappears.

Laureth, a blind teenager, leads an unofficial investigation into her father's disappearance. Her mother refuses to help her and seems on the verge of splitting up with her father. 

Readers can immediately identify with Laureth, not because of her blindness, but because they recognize her plight. She is in real trouble--the starting point for any great narrative.

Convinced someone on the Internet has her Dad's notebook and may know his whereabouts, she books a plane to New York. She has told no one and her only guide to the seeing world is her seven-year-old brother. 

She had no idea where her father may be staying; she has no idea where she and her brother will stay. She only goes on a hunch that her father is in trouble and needs her help. 

Wearing dark glasses, she must also keep up the pretense that she is not blind. She needs to be seen as the one caring for her brother instead of the other way around or someone may call authorities or notify her mother in England.

Every encounter--from navigating the airport to New York's public transportation--carries the risk that Laureth will be uncovered as a blind, and, thus, invisible person.  Laureth's ability to find her way in New York and find her father proves the title. 

The Boxtrolls by Elizabeth Kimmell

The Boxtrolls is a wonderful children's story that, among other things, show kids how awful it is to stereotype and scapegoat others. 

Boxtrolls starts with a  scenario that sounds a lot like many other dystopias. The above ground society, the Cheese Bits, are terrified of the underground society, the Boxtrolls. 

The Boxtrolls literally live underground; They eat insects and use odds and ends from the world above them to make things like a music maker. A manhole is a portal to and from worlds.

Because they are terrified of the Boxtrolls, the Cheese bits and their secret police, the Red Hats, hunt the Boxtrolls as monsters. The White Hats, who govern the Cheese bits, support the Boxtrolls hunts. One of the Cheese bit, a baby, was kidnapped and killed by the Boxtrolls. But was the Trubshaw baby really taken?

Eggs doesn't think so. He knows the Boxtrolls aren't monsters. Eggs knows this because he lives with them, They are his friends who assure him his peach skin is fine even though theirs is green or grey.

Eggs feels ok about his appearance until a girl who lives above ground, Winne Portley-Rind, calls him a name he never heard before, "boy."