Our Quiet Growing Time

Twenty-two years ago Detective Frank Mackey's heart was broken on the night that he thought he was going to run off to England with his childhood sweetheart. But Rosie never showed. Instead, she left a 'Dear John' letter for him and disappeared out of his life forever. Frank never went back to his home on Faithful Place, unwilling to face his dysfunctional family without Rosie just a few houses away. Now Rosie's suitcase has been found in a derelict house on Faithful Place and 41-year-old Frank is on the trail to discover what happened, finally, to the love of his youthful life. His trail leads him back to Faithful Place, the street so filled with memories and demons that he hoped he'd never have to return.  Faithful Place shows Tana French at her best, back in the groove after the somewhat disappointing The Likeness . Frank was introduced in The Likeness as Cassie's boss from Undercover. He is a renegade. His moral code as a cop is pretty skewed; he...

Rob Ryan has finally attained his dream job as detective on the Dublin Murder Squad. He's got the wardrobe, the loyal partner, and the sarcastic attitude that all say that he's made it... until the day that he and his partner, Cassie Maddox, randomly get assigned to a case that may destroy the life that Rob has created. It's the rape/murder case of Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl found in the Dublin suburb of Knocknaree. Twenty years previous, there was another criminal case in that same neighborhood, in that same wood. Twenty years ago, three children went into the wood to play, as per their usual routine. Two--Peter and Jamie--were never seen again, and the third child, Adam Robert Ryan, was found clinging to a tree in terror, unable to remember what had happened to his friends. The case had been closed for years, no leads were found, Adam became Rob, moved away and grew up, and no one but his trusted partner knows the secret trauma of his past. Will Katy's murder ...

There is so much to love about this book that I don't know where to start.  Thisby is a tiny island somewhere off of the coast of Scotland or Ireland or England. This is where the water horses--the capaill uisce* --live. And every October they emerge from the ocean onto Thisby’s shores and they prowl, carnivorous and hungry. And every November first, the very brave or the very foolish run these savage horses across the beach in a bloody and dangerous race. They are man-eaters. They are magic. Their magic may dim after years spent on land, but every November 1 st , the magic of the sea pulls at them as they race on the beach. The depths call to the monsters within them, and these horses would just as soon dismember and eat their riders than carry them safely across the finish line. Sean Kendrick is the four-time Scorpio Races champion and is something of a water-horse whisperer. He’s a quiet boy, a loner, and he feels most comfortable on the back of Corr, the water-h...

Reading is kind of like dating. You said 'yes' to dinner, you bought a book. You think: " Looks good." You sniff, (or inhale deeply) and think: " Smells even better." You open the book, you go on the date. You wonder "Will this one be THE ONE ?"   By the end of the date, by the end of the first few chapters, you probably have an idea whether this is the beginning of something special. Or you will donate the book to the Salvation Army's used book sale and give him a bogus phone number and dodge his good-night kiss. All the King's Men was a blind date for me. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I walked in to the restaurant, saw the guy looking expectantly at the door and thought "Dang. This doesn't look good." I sat down, planning an early escape to the restroom and out the back way, when he pleasantly surprised me. He made me laugh. He held my interest. He made me feel. ...

I thought that I was tired of the whole paranormal young adult novel thing. I loved the Twilight series, but since then, it seems that everything is werewolves and vampires all the time. So when Sara loaned me this series against my will, I thought, I’ll just read 5 or 6 pages, tell her I tried it and that it wasn’t for me. Ahem, 900 pages later…. Sam is a boy who turns into a wolf every winter; the cold makes him shed his human body. Grace has always been fascinated by the wolves living in the woods beyond her backyard… one yellow-eyed wolf in particular. When a wounded boy shows up on her back deck, naked and bleeding, with the same yellow eyes as her beloved wolf, it doesn’t take long for Grace to realize the truth. And because these two have shared a connection for years, ever since Sam-as-wolf saved Grace from a wolf attack, they jump right into a heated romance. I’ve gotten so sick of the whole supernatural element in literature lately, bec...

The Last Letter from Your Lover has a similar premise to a Sophie Kinsella novel I read earlier this year: Remember Me?. In both of these novels, a London woman wakes up from a terrible accident with amnesia to find that she is trapped in a loveless marriage, but harboring a secret lover on the side. At first, I was disgruntled by the obvious similarities, but then two things from my college classes came to mind. The first: that there are a defined number of plots into which all stories--movies, TV shows, or books—fall. These “universal plots” or “master stories” have been catalogued in number anywhere from 7 to 36. Thirty-six seems a bit too many. But I generally liked this list of 7, compiled by Christopher Booker: 1. Tragedy 2. Comedy 3. Overcoming the Monster 4. The Quest 5. Voyage and Return 6. Rebirth 7. Rags to Riches I’m having fun thinking of different books and movies an...

I don't know much about World War I. This is what comes to mind: poison gas Ottoman empire Austro-Hungary Archduke Ferdinand That is the extent of the contents of the catalog in my brain under the heading "World War I." I bet a lot of people know that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was one of the events that led to WWI, but I bet most don't know why. Similarly, I think 99% of American schoolchildren can name Eli Whitney as the inventor of the cotton gin, but few can explain what a cotton gin is . All I know is that it was a machine that revolutionized the cotton industry. I'm envisioning a massive robotic machine with many metal arms, propelling itself through cotton fields plucking cotton bolls at breakneck speed. But that can't be right. And I can’t explain the significance that the death of Archduke Ferdinand had on the world, either. One of the most famous books to come out of World War I wa...

When I studied in Paris during the summer of 2004, I read Ernest Hemingway's beautiful memoir of his life in Paris in the 1920s as an expatriate. One line from A Moveable Feast that I will always remember is from the very last page: "I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her." I'm not sure if I've ever read a sadder sentence. The ending of love is always sad, but what is more sad is his yearning tone... as if he really wished that he had always loved only Hadley. So why didn't he? Some books stick with you after you finish them so that it almost seems disrespectful to begin another when the words and the voices from the last one are still living in your head and your heart.* AMF was like that for me, as was The Paris Wife. Going into it, knowing what I did about ole Ernest, my loyalties were with Hadley, the wronged-wife-to-be. Hemingway was, admittedly, and in his own words, a "bastard" and I wholeheartedly agree with his a...