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| New York Times Bestsellers |  | | Miss Wolcott's Ghost
by Louise Penny
Kirkus Penny, who’s never met a story idea big enough to daunt her, unspools the endless puzzles surrounding a corpse whose identity isn’t known but whose status as a murder victim is clear. “There’s a body in Lost Nation,” a dead-of-night telephone call informs Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide division at the Sûreté du Québec. Why is the informant calling Gamache’s personal line, and how did they get his number? For that matter, who placed the call? It certainly wasn’t Clara Morrow, the Gamaches’ neighbor and friend, whose phone seems to have been used by someone who visited her home. And where is Lost Nation? This last question, at least, yields an answer: It’s an Indigenous burial ground that’s been overgrown with trees and, more recently, a corpse too badly decomposed to be readily identified. An autopsy reveals that the victim was beaten to death. In the absence of further clues to his identity, Gamache and his colleagues focus on May 29, 1914, the date engraved on the otherwise unreadable headstone over the gravesite where the body was found. The trail to the killer leads back to a 1967 interview genealogist Jeannette Bouchard conducted with local historian Flossy Fuller the day before they were both killed in a car crash, and still further back to the real-life sinking of theEmpress of Ireland, an ocean liner as unfamiliar to Penny’s characters as it will be to most of her readers. Even after Gamache has arrested the responsible parties, the biggest riddle remains: the secret of the balefully ugly plant known as Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. A superpowered mystery shrouded in mysticism and history whose power endures past its closing revelations. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. Publishers Weekly Penny’s exceptional latest case for Armand Gamache (after The Black Wolf) sees the Québécois homicide inspector unravel a historical tragedy while investigating a contemporary murder. Gamache is disturbed by an anonymous call to his home phone from a familiar-sounding male voice, who informs him that “there’s a body in Lost Nation.” The questions multiply after Gamache learns the call came from a number belonging to artist Clara Morrow, one of his friends and neighbors in the small community of Three Pines, who insists she has no idea who called him. Gamache and his team learn that the Lost Nation is an abandoned cemetery, and arrive there to find a victim who’s been bludgeoned to death and left near a plant long believed to be extinct. The twisting trail of clues includes a forgotten shipwreck, a pioneering female botanist, and a lucrative firm specializing in genealogical research. While readers will be entranced by the wide circle of suspects, Penny gives this entry its power through her empathic exploration of her characters’ humanity, with many key plot points hinging on thorny questions of individual morality. The author’s combination of tight plotting and psychological depth continues to place her in a class of her own. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved Book list It is a muddy spring in Three Pines. Armand Gamache is awakened by a 3:17 a.m. ghostly anonymous call on his personal line. “There’s a body in Lost Nation.” A man’s voice. Vaguely familiar. He phones Sûreté HQ to have the number traced, and it seems that the point of origin was the line of one C. Morrow. Clara? Clara Morrow, their friend and neighbor? Of course not. The townsfolk are assembled and, to a one, can’t or won’t say what or where Lost Nation is or was. Gamache perseveres and finally learns that it’s a ghost town set in a clearing in a dense old-growth forest, and up on a slope is an odd little cemetery. The body is there, several months decomposed and wearing an 80-year-old tweed suit from London. Thus opens the twenty-first Chief Inspector Gamache mystery, an intriguing puzzle offered in elegant golden-age detective-fiction prose. Gamache and his team grapple with ghosts of their own as Penney characteristically delivers a grim and determined investigation with charm—“not much seemed to happen in Three Pines. Though when it did, it was often quite shocking and took some telling.” As always, this Gamache tale is fueled by the offerings of the Bistro. Readers should savor every bite and every word. HIGH DEMAND From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. |
| Oprah's Book Club |  | | Drowning Ruth
by Christina Schwarz
Library Journal: Why did Ruth's mother, Mathilda, drown on that fateful night in 1919 and Ruth survive? That is the central question that this novel sets out to answer. Mathilda's sister, Amanda, who has been nursing soldiers in Milwaukee (it is right after World War I), has returned to the family farm in rural Wisconsin. Mathilda and Ruth are there to help her return to a normal life. Yet a year later, Mathilda's husband returns from the war to find his wife drowned and his sister-in-law raising his daughter. So continues the tale through 1941, as we watch Ruth grow up and try to remember what happened that winter night. Along the way, Ruth befriends Imogene, who has a closer connection to the family than Ruth can imagine. The story is recounted partly through flashback and moves from first-person to third-person narrative. What results is a gripping tale of sisterly rivalry, family loyalty, and secret histories. Already optioned for a film by Miramax, to be directed by Wes Craven, this first novel is an engrossing read. Recommended for all public libraries. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
Publishers Weekly: "Ruth remembered drowning." The first sentence of this brilliantly understated psychological thriller leaps off the page and captures the reader's imagination. In Schwarz's debut novel, brutal Wisconsin weather and WWI drama color a tale of family rivalry, madness, secrets and obsessive love. By March 1919, Nurse Amanda Starkey has come undone. She convinces herself that her daily exposure to the wounded soldiers in the Milwaukee hospital where she works is the cause of her hallucinations, fainting spells and accidents. Amanda journeys home to the family farm in Nagawaukee, where her sister, Mathilda (Mattie), lives with her three-year-old daughter Ruth, awaiting the return of her war-injured husband, Carl Neumann. Mattie's ebullient welcome convinces Amanda she can mend there. But then Mattie drowns in the lake that surrounds the sisters' island house and, in a rush of confusion and anguish, Amanda assumes care of Ruth. After Carl comes home, Amanda and he manage to work together on the farm and parent Ruth, but their arrangement is strained: Amanda has a breakdown and recuperates at a sanatorium. As time passes, Ruth grows into an odd, guarded child who clings to perplexing memories of the night her mother drowned. Why does Amanda have that little circle of scars on her hand? What is Amanda's connection to Ruth's friend Imogene and why does she fear Imogene's marriage to Clement Owen's son? Schwarz deftly uses first-person narration to heighten the drama. Her prose is spare but bewitching, and she juggles the speakers and time periods with the surety of a seasoned novelist. Rather than attempting a trumped-up suspenseful finale, Schwarz ends her novel gently, underscoring the delicate power of her tale. Agent, Jennifer R. Walsh at the Writers Shop. Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Teen People and Mango Book Club main selections; film rights optioned by Miramax, Wes Craven to direct; foreign rights sold in Germany, France, the U.K., Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
School Library Journal: YA-A wonderfully constructed gothic suspense novel set on a stark Wisconsin farm in 1919. The story goes backward and forward in time and is told by Amanda, her niece Ruth, and an omniscient narrator. The ties that bind the two women are as fragile as they are fierce and have their origin in the relationship of two sisters, Amanda and her sister Mattie, Ruth's mother. The narrative begins with Amanda as she recounts her childhood and the responsibility she came to feel for her younger sister and the parents who favored her younger sibling. Amanda finally wrests herself away from home to become a nurse, but her independence is short-lived. Overwhelmed and sickened by the care of the wounded, and heartsick over the love of a married man, she suffers a nervous breakdown and seeks solace by returning to the farm to help Mattie care for her tiny daughter as they await the return of Mattie's husband from World War I. But tragedy follows with Mattie's mysterious drowning during a winter blizzard and guilty lies soon engulf Amanda and threaten to change the lives of several others in the small rural community. A compelling complex tale of psychological mystery and maddeningly destructive provincial attitudes.-Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Fairfax, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
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