Let’s walk and chat about books.

Sarah Pekkanen is one of my tried-and-true mystery authors and I was intrigued to see her latest book, The Women in White, incorporate a historical fiction plotline. This novel followed four women in the 1960s who were part of a university research study on parapsychology experiments. All four women abruptly disappeared, and the study ended, leaving a mystery behind.

I’ll cut right to it; this book will not be for everyone. It parks itself in grief and does not leave. I grew quite attached to the main character and thought the author did an incredible job finding the balance between letting her be enveloped by loss and pushing her forward with life.

This story and its characters absolutely stole my attention, and I loved reading this book. In Wild Dark Shore we meet Dominic and his three children, who are living on a tiny island near Antarctica that houses a world seed bank.

If you haven’t gotten into the Eddie Flynn series by Steve Cavanagh, you might be missing out. Eddie is a criminal defense attorney who uses his con artist background to his advantage in the courtroom. There are already nine primary books in the series and the 10^th, One of Us Is Guilty, comes out in March 2027.

Sarah Addison Allen continues to put out magical realism that feels ethereal and gently mysterious. Paper Ghosts is her most recent novel and has the same general feeling of her prior novel Other Birds, which I loved. The story centers on a family in North Carolina told through the lens of multi-generational women who have a mysterious pull to their home coupled with witchy reputations in their small town.

Sadeqa Johnson has done it again with Keeper of Lost Children. I don’t typically gravitate towards historical fiction, but with this author I will always say yes. Her research is DEEP and I am always blown away at how many books she reads to prepare for writing her own. The way she finds lesser-known women who had a big impact on history and brings their story to life is a gift.

Emiko Jean has become such a reliable author for me and Before You Were Anne was no exception. It’s the sequel to The Return of Ellie Black and the second in the detective Chelsey Calhoun series. As she unfolds the case we get to see the story from three perspectives, giving voice to the main women in the novel.

This is a memoir that delves into the relationship between child and parent, daughter and mother, through life and death.  Michelle’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when Michelle was twenty-five, bringing their family to an incredibly hard period in their lives. 

I was thinking about Zorah Sharaf for a few days after I turned the last page. The publisher described it as a “literary game of ping pong” and that is exactly what it felt like.