Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

The fact that Ree says, "Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered," tells a lot about her character. Hungry, her two brothers has just said they would ask a relative for meat. Kin are supposed to help each other. 

Ree knows otherwise. She's had a hard life and is used to bitter disappointments. Yet she also exploits the fact that she's kin to many of the Ozark crank dealers.

Since her mother is enfeebled, Ree knows it's "all on her." She goes on an perilous pursuit to find the man that owes her family something--her own father.  

Woodrell invented the term country noir. Though it initially seems gritty and dark, this novel draws you into Ree's world. Though its not a pretty world, it's a taut, compelling narrative. 

"Writing fiction is the strangest of professions. Here is a job in which your task each day is to listen to the voices of the people who don't exist and describe events that never were. It's the adult version of Let's Pretend."

Lisa Wingate, in the acknowledgements, The Sea Keeper's Daughters.

Seduction by M.J. Rose

M.J. Rose's novel, Seduction, superbly moves back and forth in time on a remote island, Jersey Island, where Celtic artifacts are plentiful.

Half of the story is focuses on Victor Hugo's self-imposed exile to Jersey Island after his daughter's death. The other half of the story focuses on a present day woman, Jac L'Etoile, who is shooting a documentary on myths, Mythmakers.

Jac has suffered from hallucinations, mostly olfactory-driven, since she was a teenager. Jac finds herself reuniting with Theo, a man who had a dangerous hold over her. 

While it starts off in a promising way, Seduction quickly becomes  mired by numerous contemporary subplots.

There's a love triangle involving Theo, Ash, and Naomi that becomes more intricate when Jac visits Jersey Island. Then there's a subplot about a grandfather's strange obsession with a ouija board and his two grandchildren, Eva and Minera. The Celtic family who haunts Jac complicates matters still further.

While the subplots set in the present can be confusing, the subplots set in the nineteenth century are much more intriguing.

Rose's Victor Hugo storyline, which, as the author says in an end note, is partly true and partly fictionalized is the richest of the subplots. Hugo and is tempted to make a deal with a figure he calls the Shadow of Sepulchre.

Hugo's story is cleverly used to illuminate the present-day struggles of the Gaspards and the L'Etoiles. Some may disagree but I wish Rose had written solely about Victor Hugo and his circle.

Seduction was listed as Suspense Magazine's Book of the Year in 2013.

Suspense Magazine can be found at www.suspensemagazine.com

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

In Karen Joy Fowler's We Are Completely Beside Ourselves, the narrator begins in media res.

Rosemary is a well-educated, unreliable narrator. She tells readers she is in mourning because her sister disappeared seventeen years ago and her brother disappeared ten years ago.

In no way is We Are Completely Beside Ourselves a typical missing person story. There's a lot more at play. Rosemary's brother is a domestic terrorist and Rosemary's sister is a chimpanzee for starters. Her father is a psychologist who is keen on treating his children like the psychological subjects he is studying.

Tragic and compelling, this novel explores many tantalizing subjects such as the fallibility of memory, the notion of humanity, and the debilitating effect of family secrets.

For another book about a family's misadventures in animal experimentation, try We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge.  

All The Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Two young people's live  intersect when American bombers head for St. Malo, the last German stronghold.

Only a rare writer can develop such nuanced characters or create such beautiful moral complexities.

Wherever he goes, Werner hears his sister Jutta's sad question reverberating in his head: Is it right to do something only because everyone else is doing it?

Marie-Laure who is involved in the resistance with her Uncle Etienne wonders if they are the "good guys."

Neither knows the meaning of the numbers Etienne recites into the clandestine radio transmitter.

Tension builds as both Marie-Laure and Werner become trapped. Werner is trapped under a hotel, L'Abeille, when it is hit by Allied bombs. Marie-Laure is trapped in her great Uncle Etienne's secret room in the attic.

Sergeant Major Von Rumpel frantically searches the house for the gem, The Sea of Flames, the one Marie-Laure's father has sworn to protect. 

Tired of hiding, Marie-Laure nearly gives herself away. Werner, who has managed to escape from his own ruin, decides to make things right in the only way he has left.


All the Light We Cannot See is a contemplative, well-researched novel. 

Recently, All The Light You Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal For Excellence in Fiction.

Wool by Hugh Howey

In this trenchant debut novel, Hugh Howey describes a highly-stratified, post-apocalyptic society. To escape toxins, human beings have at some point crept into an underground silo of immense size. 

Some live in the up tops, some live in the mids, and some live in the deepest deep, Mechanical. Those at the top rarely know what is happening at the deepest levels. 

Criminals or "cleaners" are forced outside to clean the silo's only window situated at the top of the silo. Dust storms keep this window cloudy. Residents can only see a clear view after a doomed silo resident cleans the window with a steel wool pad.

Something , however, is amiss in this highly mechanized, highly stratified world. Children in nurseries are given children's books but they are told the children's books tell lies. They believe green grass and blue skies are fairy tales.

But what if everything you thought you knew about your society was a lie?

No one knows who built the silo or who erased the servers data about the uprisings. Alison, Sheriff Holston's wife, believes IT is hiding something. Holston never gets to know what his wife learns. She self-destructs and leaves the silo voluntarily.

When a new sheriff is chosen, Juliette, she is quickly ousted by IT and forced to become a cleaner. She expects to die but she discovers something that takes the novel in a whole new direction.

Jules is a wonderful character--strong and smart--whose act of defiance--entering silo 17--makes all the silo 18 residents rethink what they know. 

Wool is one of three exciting novels that form a trilogy. If you like Wool, you may like Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, or Andrew Weir's The Martian.

City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte

As in most thrillers, there is danger, intrigue, romance in City of Dark Magic, but there are also elements of spy fiction and literary suspense novels. A subplot involves a CIA operative and her KGB lover.

The main plot focuses on doctoral student, Sarah Weston, who music career hits a new height when she is invited to catalog the Lobkowicz's Beethoven artifacts.

Since its a literary novel, it has a plethora of arcane codes and messages. Sarah Weston finds a strange symbol on her ceiling of her Boston area apartment. This marks the beginning of a series of strange events that turn stranger and darker once she arrives in Prague.

Even though Sarah Weston was hired to do archival work, she finds herself investigating the death of her mentor, Absalom Sherbatsky. Professor Sherbatsky was working at the Lobkowicz Palace Museum shortly before he threw himself out of  a window. 

Sarah doesn't believe it was suicide and suspicious events at the Palace hint she may be right. While doing archival work at the Lobkowicz, one of the other researchers is killed in a bizarre way. In spite of the dangerous surroundings, she finds herself falling for the heir of the Lobokowicz collection, Prince Max. 

Several of the characters embarks on a quest to find something of historical or magical importance. Sarah not only wants to understand the mysterious death of her mentor, she also wants to find the identity Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved." Prince Max wants to find the Golden Fleece.


This novel, written as a collaborative novel, has overreached on a few ocasions. Some aspects of the novel were hard to believe. The messages Max leaves to Sarah are pretty undecipherable, yet she understands them. 

If readers enjoy a literary mystery with a dose of the supernatural, they will enjoy at this novel which boasts two sets of arcane letters, alchemical symbols, a key to portal, time travel, hidden rooms, and secret tunnels. 

Some situation are sexual and there is mild language. 

Though everyone enjoys a book for different reasons, the discussion of Beethoven and his patrons, the Lobkowiczes, was, for the most part, accurate and enjoyable. 

If you enjoy this title, you might like Graham Moore's The Sherlockian, Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale or Emily Croy Barker's The Thinking Woman's Guide to Magic. 

Oneworld's Rock the Boat

OneWorld Publication will launch Rock the Boat, an imprint for young adults, on July 14.

OneWorld's U.S. YA Imprint will put more outstanding foreign authors in the hands of young adults. Topics will be moral dilemmas or self-discovery.

The first title to be released is Minus Me

by Norway's Ingelin Rossland. 

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

In Kitchens of the Great Midwest a series of interlinked short stories tell a rising young chef life story.

Each short story is a chapter that is named for an ingredient or recipe that is somehow pertinent to her life. "Lutefisk, "a dish most readers probably haven't heard of, introduces us to Eva and her parents. 

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

In "Chocolate Habanero" Eva gets revenge against schoolyard bullies with her extra-hot, home-grown, habaneros. Since she can tolerate extremely hot flavors, Eva and an older cousin, Braque, enter into an ill-fated money-making scheme. 

"Sweet Pepper Jelly," continues the spicy flavor theme as Eva and Braque's plans unravel.  In "Walleye" Eva meets a boy and continues her culinary education.

Later, in "Golden Bantam" Eva meets other chefs who host social dinner parties. The dinner parties are her entrance into the culinary big leagues and vital to her later success.

Two other stories, "Venison" and "Bars," introduce readers to more quirky characters.

The final chapter "The Dinner" comes full circle. In a fantastic finale people who have known Eva are inadvertently thrown together to taste one of her high-priced dinners. 

Ironic and darkly humorous, this novel is a wonderful read. Book clubs and anyone looking for quirky, yet delightful story will enjoy this book.

I received this book gratis from Penguin Debut Authors "first flight"  program in exchange for an honest review. 



For more information about this author,
http://www.jryanstradal.com/