Tantalizing Tales — November 2024 — Part Two

It has been one of those fortnights where time ceases to have meaning, dear readers. I can scarcely believe that it’s the middle of November already. And even at the rate of covering one book almost every work day, I’m still working my way through October, woof.

It’s actually an October title that leads this mid-month reading round-up, as I’ve somehow managed to lose it from my email, argh. I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve mislaid in this way, and am deeply sorry that I missed the opportunity to cover its truly fascinating subject.

The children’s book in question is Sharon Mentyka & Shelley Couvillion’s A Flash of Color and Light: A Biography of Dale Chihuly. Aimed at young readers, this picture book features watercolor illustrations that chronicle the renowned glass artist’s history, from the challenges that beset him from a young age — including losing the sight in one eye — through a lifetime of resilience, hard work and optimism to become who he is today. The backmatter includes additional biographical information as well as a brief history of the evolution of glassmaking. I love reading and writing about art and artists, so hope to eventually snag a hard copy of this gorgeous book for my home library.

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Another book I’m really looking forward to — to what may be the surprise of some — is Joyce Carol Oates’ Flint Kill Creek. Her long form works can be so hit or miss for me, but her shorter non-Tweet stuff often resonates. I’m eager to see whether that’s the case in this latest collection of hers.

A dozen new, recent and reformulated stories of mystery and suspense by the inimitable JCO are collected together for the first time in a volume that showcases the depth and breadth of both crime fiction and psychological suspense. In the title story, an insecure woman grows increasingly dependent on a man who likes to take her on long walks beside a dangerously roaring creek. In another tale, a man is so forgetful that his wife panics, fearing that he has lost their infant daughter. Unspoken horrors are suspected beneath the appearance of marital bliss. A careerist is driven mad by professional jealousy. A passing romantic fling takes a perilous turn. Each story charts its own unpredictable path into darkness, resulting in an unsettling collection that could only spring from the mind of the author fondly and iconically known nowadays by her initials.

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Our next featured work is a posthumous novel, completed just before the bestselling author’s death in 2021. Leila Meacham’s April Storm is a spine-tingling thriller that follows a seemingly perfect suburban housewife who notices a strange figure lurking in all the places she frequents. Convinced she’s just being paranoid, she tries to dismiss the gut feeling that someone is stalking her — until her suspicions are confirmed, and she can longer deny the reality that she is being targeted.

To onlookers, Kathryn Walker has the perfect life. Her husband is an accomplished doctor, her children are bright college students, and she is a generous community leader who devotes herself to charity work. Settling into a new year, her life couldn’t be better… until April. For Katherine, April has always rained trouble — but this time may be even stormier than the fraught past she’s trying to overcome. Already distraught over the child she miscarried in this same cursed month many years ago, the emotionally fragile woman isn’t ready to consider the overwhelming evidence that someone may be trying to take her husband — and her life.

Told over the span of a month, April Storm’s fast-paced narrative will leave readers on the edge of their seats as they, along with Kathryn, attempt to decode Meacham’s cryptic clues. Ultimately a celebration of love and ambition, about women claiming their place in the world and going after their dreams (something Meacham knew a bit about,) April Storm caps a remarkable career.

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Carin Gerhardsen’s The Saint is the fourth in the highly acclaimed Hammarby police series. In this internationally bestselling Nordic noir, the investigation into the murder of a beloved soccer coach in a quiet Stockholm neighborhood reveals a dark truth, told through multiple perspectives.

Local girls’ soccer coach Sven-Gunnar Erlandsson is practically a saint in the community, known for his good works and volunteering. So when his body is found in Stockholm’s beautiful Herräng forest, shot at close range in the back of the neck while walking home from a late-night poker game, the police struggle to find a motive. Nothing has been taken from his pockets except his cell phone, and the only other clues left behind are a cryptic handwritten note and a handful of playing cards.

The Hammarby murder squad takes the case, splitting up the leads between their eclectic mix of officers. Led by Detective Chief Inspector Conny Sjöberb, the team also includes a veteran inspector who balances his career with caring for his disabled daughter, a widow who has returned to police work after several decades spent as a homemaker and pursuing a law degree, a new transplant who recently achieved minor celebrity status as an Idol contestant, and a young police assistant struggling with trauma she can’t share with her colleagues.

Each member of the team pursues a different lead and, as they interview Erlandsson’s friends and family, discovers a disturbing web of secrets, including a possible link to the cases of two missing girls. Could Erlandsson have been less of a saint than everyone thinks?

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Finally, for those of you who aren’t sick of politics and the absolute clown show going on in Washington DC right now, we have Daniel Debs Nossiter’s Devil Take It, an ironic moral fable and uproarious political satire set during 45’s first administration.

Satan visits Washington in the guise of Dr. Grippin Fall, a psychiatrist. He diagnoses Eustace Bogges, editor of the letters page of the Washington Oracle, with a condition he calls mortality. As the Devil guides Bogges through a series of bizarre therapy sessions, he entices him with a doctrine of laughter and mirth inspired by the 16th-century writer François Rabelais.

Meanwhile, Bogges mischievously contributes a pseudonymous letter to his own page suggesting that we’d be a hell of a lot better off if everybody would simply mind their own business. To Bogges’ astonishment and dismay, the president himself embraces the notion — but, unsurprisingly, for his own political and financial gain. The result is an absurd spiral of civil unrest that momentarily brings history to a halt.

With biting wit and resonant themes, Devil Take It skewers the political and social landscape in a way that is reminiscent of the great masters of satire from Mark Twain to Mihkail Bulgakov and John Kennedy Toole.

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Let me know if you’re able to get to any of these books before I do, dear readers! I’d love to hear your opinions, and see if that will help spur me to push any of them higher up the mountain range that is my To Be Read pile.

And, as always, you can check out the list of my favorite books this year so far in my Bookshop storefront linked below!