Summer Reading Recs, Part 4
A historical mystery set in rural Vermont in 1965 and a twisty psychological thriller set in the American South. Both are out Aug 5!
Hunter’s Heart Ridge by Sarah Stewart Taylor
Sarah Stewart Taylor’s follow up to Agony Hill (which I highly recommend) finds Vermont State Police Detective Franklin Warren investigating the shooting death of a disgraced diplomat at a hunting club. Warren, still feeling the need to prove himself in his new hometown, wants very much to solve this suspicious death. He and his protege, Pinky Goodrich, head out to the exclusive, and remote, hunting club to interview the witnesses. It quickly becomes clear that the victim, Bill Moulton, an ambassador who had been fired under a cloud of suspicion, had many enemies. And everyone at the club has secrets, both present and past, that they want to keep buried.
Meanwhile, an old friend of Alice’s, Warren’s neighbor with some secrets of her own, pays her a visit and makes a small request of her, but she suspects that there is more to his reappearance than he will admit.
As an early snowstorm sets in, lives are in danger, both from the storm and from the secrets. Both Alice and Warren find themselves in dangerous situations, and both must grapple with trauma from their pasts to make sure no one else dies.
As always, Taylor has written a lovely and evocative novel, that just happens to have a crackling mystery at its heart. Stewart deftly injects the weight of world events into this small-town, with its reticent New Englanders and the people “from away” who crash into their lives. And reading about a snowstorm is a nice antidote to the current heatwave!
Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the opportunity to read an advance copy.
Hunter’s Heart Ridge is out August 5.
The Locked Ward by Sarah Pekkanen
Imagine finding out you had a twin. Then imagine that twin had just been accused of murdering her adopted sister. In a family everyone knows. It’s a crime that everyone is talking about.
For Amanda, the news about her twin is deeply unsettling in many ways. She wonders if she’s always known she was missing someone. But she doesn’t trust Georgia, locked in a psychiatric ward for dangerous patients, who has not spoken since her sister was discovered, except to ask for Amanda’s help.
This twisty psychological thriller, told from both Amanda’s and Georgia’s points of view, is full of family secrets and breakneck storytelling that leaves you gasping. You will love it. And if you haven’t read Pekkanen’s House of Glass, you should pick that up too! You won’t be sorry.
And isn’t that cover perfectly creepy?!
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy.
The Locked Ward is out August 5, as well.