June 3, 2015
Carol's Latest Picks
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The Stolen Ones 
by Owen Laukkanen
The author returns with his fourth novel teaming Carla Windermere and Kirk Stevens who have now partnered in the new Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. In this fast-paced thriller a deputy sheriff is gunned down on the street on a hot summer day. When Stevens arrives at the scene he finds that the local authorities already have a suspect in custody: a hysterical woman who was found sitting by the body holding the deputy's gun. She speaks no English and has no ID: a mystery woman. Carla and Kirk soon find themselves on the trail of an international kidnapping and prostitution operation which will have them covering half the country and coming face-to-face with a most vicious man and two very courageous women: sisters who have been stolen. Suspense fans will enjoy following the author's series featuring this crime-chasing team. Readers can find the duo tracking down killers in The Professionals, Criminal Enterprise, and Killer Fee (all now in paperback). G. P. Putnam's Sons, $26.95). Reviewed by Carol
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Last Bookaneer 
by Matthew Pearl
A bookaneer, by definition, is a literary pirate, and in Pearl's novel he "drops" his readers into the golden age of publishing when for a hundred years loose copyright laws allowed books to be published without permission from the author. Many authors, such as Dickens, Twain, and Robert Louis Stevenson gained fame but suffered financial loss while their publishers reaped profits as readers bought "cheap" novels. At the beginning of the twentieth century an international treaty was signed to protect authors to bring this literary underground to a halt making "bookaneers" extinct. In The Last Bookaneer, Pearl takes you into the world of an incredible heist of one last book from the dying R. L. Stevenson, as a criminal genius in his final quest to steal the author's manuscript hopes to make a fortune for himself before the treaty puts an end to the bookaneers' trade forever. Pearl describes his novel's storytelling "as research-based fiction--plus plenty of imagination". Readers will enter a page-turning journey into the hours of this forgotten literary era and learn of the last days of Stevenson's life. Another and more extensive look into Stevenson's personal life can be enjoyed in Nancy Horan's novel Under the Wide and Starry Sky (in paperback). Both highly recommended for fans of historical fiction. (Penguin Press, $27.95). Reviewed by Carol
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That Night 
by Chevy Stevens
What really happened that night when Toni Murphy, her boyfriend Ryan Walker, and her younger sister Nicole drove to the lake woods near Campbell River on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada? Ir was supposed to be a casual "sneak-away" from home but turned into a nightmare for Toni and Ryan when Nicole was found brutally murdered. The two teenagers were found guilty of the murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Life behind bars changed and hardened both Toni and Ryan while still claiming their innocence. Upon their parole release, and trying to find the truth behind who murdered Nicole and destroyed the future they had planned, they find themselves in danger facing the lies and threats that originally convicted them for the crime. Stevens delivers a compelling thriller to suspense fans that enjoy a tense and twisting page-turning mystery. If you haven't read this author before, I highly recommend Still Missing, Never Knowing, and Always Watching, stand-alone novels all now in paperback. Also watch for my review of the author's newest suspense novel which will be out later this summer. (St. Martin's Griffin, $15.99).
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The Wright Brothers 
by David McCullough
We look at the technological world of aviation today: super-sized passenger and cargo planes, military war planes and helicopters, and even unmanned drones...and now space flight only depicted in comic strips decades ago. What would two brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, say now, more than a century later, about their realized dream in the 1890s when they finally lifted a hand-crafted airplane from the ground for a short flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903? I'm sure Will and Orv would never have envisioned what their dream would eventually put in place. Historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author McCullough brings to readers this well-researched biography of the Wright brothers and what led up to them achieving their dream and becoming the "conquerors of the air". This saga of the lives of two men who left their footprint on our modern age by accomplishing one of the most astonishing feats during a gold era of innovation will prove to be good reading for fans of history and biography.
(Simon & Schuster, $30.00).
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