By Marjorie Preston
This week’s lineup includes a heart-thumping cold-case mystery; a comic take on a Shakespearean tragedy; a great new entry in women’s fiction; the newest thriller from Fern Michaels; and an inside look at those wacky royals. See you on the beach!
Good Half Gone
By Tarryn Fisher
HarperCollins
Teenage twins Piper and Iris couldn’t be more different. Piper is a natural leader, the pretty one who has to fend off all the boys. Iris is the fifth wheel, envious of her sister’s beauty and popularity.
Abandoned by their mother and living with their grandmother, each girl is trying to navigate the difficult passage from girlhood to adulthood. But one of them won’t make it.
On a weekend movie trip, as Iris looks on, three men force Piper into a car and speed off. Police dismiss the incident as a runaway, and Iris becomes obsessed with solving the crime. Over the years, as she and Gran raise Piper’s young son, she conducts an investigation of her own, while badgering law enforcement to stay on the case.
At last, Iris finds evidence that one of the culprits is at a psychiatric hospital on an island off the coast of Washington, and wrangles a job there. In this strange otherworld, full of troubled patients and hardened staffers, she finds an ally in a brilliant, compassionate doctor.
Will Iris solve the mystery? Will she end up with the good doctor? This nail-biting thriller has a literal bombshell ending.
A Daughter of Fair Verona
By Christina Dodd
Kensington
Despite what you’ve heard, Romeo and Juliet did not die.
Sure, Romeo downed all that poison. But then he threw it all up. And his young bride? She only nicked herself with that dagger.
History’s most famous lovers recovered, went on to raise seven kids, became respectable citizens of Verona, and lived happily ever after—almost.
The Montagues are mortified that their eldest daughter, Rosaline, is still unwed at the creaky age of 20. So they arrange a marriage to powerful Duke Stephano, who has lost three other young wives under mysterious circumstances
Rebellious Rosie thinks love is melodramatic idiocy (and who can blame her, with those parents?). She doesn’t want to marry the duke or anyone—until she meets Lysander, a young swain who wins her with a single glance.
Told from Rosie’s point of view, “A Daughter of Fair Verona” has all the florid drama of the Bard, plus the nudge-wink antics of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
The Summer Book Club
By Susan Mallery
Canary Street Press
For a group of book-club members in California, finding romance is pure fiction.
Each of the women is going it alone in life: Paris, whose past traumas and hot temper drove off the man she loved; Laurel, whose husband’s abandonment left her and their daughters chronically mistrustful of men; and Cassie, whose personal weakness is rescuing jerky guys who then dump her.
Over the course of the summer, the women revisit the great romance novels of the past. Inspired by heroines who risked all for love, they find themselves attracting men who are not only not-jerks (yay!), but handsome, available, and caring (jackpot!). Could this be the happy ending the friends have been hoping for?
“The Summer Book Club” is a lighter-than-air fairytale—fun, engaging, and perfect for your summer reading list.
The Wild Side
By Fern Michaels
Kensington
Melanie Drake leads a double life—make that a triple or quadruple life.
As an undercover agent for the federal Office of Special Investigations, she once spent her days cracking heads and capturing serial killers. Then she did an about-face, becoming a school guidance counselor outside Washington, D.C., and living quietly with two retired service dogs.
Melanie’s new sedate life is turned upside down when her former boss asks her to take one more assignment: infiltrating a group of crooked billionaires and money launderers. It’s an offer Melanie can’t refuse, and she goes deep undercover as a high-priced call girl, in multiple disguises under multiple assumed names. Will she foil the bad guys in time for the school Christmas pageant?
“The Wild Side” is divided into three acts: Melanie’s childhood, her career in covert ops, and her post-OSI stint as guidance-counselor-slash-crime buster. While the plot strains credulity at times, and Part III wraps up a bit too suddenly and neatly, Melanie is a likeable character, and time spent with her isn’t wasted.
Power and Glory
By Alexander Larman
St. Martin’s Press
“Power and Glory” takes an unvarnished look at the British royal family over a 20-year span that started with the abdication of Edward VIII; continued through the Second World War; and concluded with death of King George VI and the coronation of his daughter, Elizabeth.
While it’s Elizabeth and her father on the cover, this book focuses mainly on the Duke of Windsor, a Nazi sympathizer who spent less than a year on the throne before walking away for the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. The duke comes across as a spiteful man who shirked his duty, then idled his way around the world, grasping for ways to make money, and complaining that his estranged family wouldn’t support him.
After his niece became queen, he even angled to be appointed regent, a gambit that basically would have reclaimed the power he had surrendered. When that didn’t happen, he rejected his family as “vultures” and a “seedy, worn-out bunch of old hags.” (Maybe it sounds better with the accent.)
This down-and-dishy view of castle life also includes a warm portrait of Elizabeth, from sheltered girl to model princess to monarch, and recalls her strong bonds of affection with Churchill, her first prime minister. I loved every page.
Marjorie Preston is a business writer, editor, ghostwriter and compulsive reader, who gobbles up books like potato chips. For more information (and more book reviews), visit marjorieprestonwriting.com.
