The Glass Rainbow, by James Lee Burke. A Dave Robicheaux novel. Simon & Schuster. Print length: 384 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...the venerable author still writes with the same intensity, and moral avidity, that energizes his equally aged hero..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Detective Dave Robicheaux [is] back in New Iberia, Louisiana, and embroiled in the most harrowing and dangerous case of his career. Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn’t fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalized victim psychopaths usually prey upon. Robicheaux and his best friend, Clete Purcel, confront Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating by Purcel, in front of numerous witnesses, the case takes a nasty turn..." - www.jamesleeburke.com/
Less expensive alternative: Crusader's Cross, another peek into the violent and complex world of the New Iberia, Louisiana sheriff's deputy.
Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. Random House. Print length: 352 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...funny, on-target, and ultimately sad..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (14 reviews). Kindle edition $14.30. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"In a very near future—oh, let’s say next Tuesday—a functionally illiterate America is about to collapse. But don’t that tell that to poor Lenny Abramov, the thirty-nine-year-old son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, proud author of what may well be the world’s last diary, and less-proud owner of a bald spot shaped like the great state of Ohio. Despite his job at an outfit called Post-Human Services, which attempts to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele, death is clearly stalking this cholesterol-rich morsel of a man. And why shouldn’t it? Lenny’s from a different century—he totally loves books (or “printed, bound media artifacts,” as they’re now known), even though most of his peers find them smelly and annoying. But even more than books, Lenny loves Eunice Park, an impossibly cute and impossibly cruel twenty-four-year-old Korean American woman who just graduated from Elderbird College with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness." - www.randomhouse.com/
$9.99 or less alternative: Shteyngart's earlier comic novel Absurdistan.
03, by Jean-Christophe Valtat. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Print length: 96 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...inner monologue, which takes place entirely in a single moment at a bus stop [and] manages to ring true..." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"A precocious teenager in a French suburb finds himself powerfully, troublingly drawn to the girl he sees every day on the way to school. As he watches and thinks about her, his daydreams - full of lyrics from Joy Division and the Smiths, fairy tales, Flowers for Algernon, sexual desire and fear, loneliness, rage for escape, impatience to grow up - reveal an entire adolescence. And this fleeting erotic obsession, remembered years later, blossoms into a meditation on what it means to be a smart kid, what it means to be dumb, and what it means to be in love with another person." - Amazon.
Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour, by Rachel Shukert. Harper Collins. Print length: 336 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...lurking beneath the jabs and one-liners is an affecting - and pretty unforgettable - coming-of-age tale." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When she lands a coveted nonpaying, nonspeaking role in a play going on a European tour, Rachel Shukert - with a brand-new degree in acting from NYU and no money - finally scores her big break. And, after a fluke at customs in Vienna, she gets her golden ticket: an unstamped passport, giving her free rein to 'find herself' on a grand tour of Europe. Traveling from Vienna to Zurich to Amsterdam, Rachel bounces through complicated relationships, drunken mishaps, miscommunication, and the reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate 'the real world' - whatever that may be." - Amazon.
THRILLERS FOR SUMMER READING MENTIONED IN THIS ISSUE
Crashers, by Dana Haynes. Minotaur Books. Print length: 352 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (21 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"When a passenger plane, a Vermeer One Eleven, slams into the ground outside Portland, Oregon, a team is quickly assembled to investigate the cause. Usually the team has months to determine the cause of a crash. But this time it's different. This time, the plane was brought down deliberately, without leaving a trace, and this was only a trial run. In LA, Daria Gibron - a former Shin Bet agent, now under the protection of the FBI - spots a group of suspicious-looking men. Missing her former life of action, she attaches herself to them only to learn that, somehow, they were responsbie for the plane crash and are preparing for another action. While her FBI handler tries to find her and save her, Daria risks her life to try to get close enough to learn what's going on and thwart the coming terrorist action. But time is running out and her cover story is running thin." - Amazon.
$9.99 or less alternative: the two novel collection Whistleblower and Never Say Die. In Never Say Die, a woman travels to Asia to search for the truth about her father's mysterious death in a plane crash twenty years earlier.
Galveston, by Nic Pizzolatto. Scribner. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $11.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"...a taut first novel suffused with a strong noir sensibility. Roy Cady is working as a strong-arm man for a low-level New Orleans gangster when two events change his life: he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his boss puts out a hit on him. Soon enough, Roy and a young prostitute, Rocky - thrown together after a blood-spattered encounter with the would-be hit men - are on the run, traveling from New Orleans to Galveston. ....Pizzolatto builds tension by moving back and forth in time: we know it all goes bad, but we don’t know how. Add to that a writer with a real feel for the special poetry of noir, and you have a fine crime-fiction debut. - Bill Ott for Booklist.
$9.99 or less alternative: Pizzolatto's earlier collection of short stories, Between Here and the Yellow Sea.
House Justice, by Mike Lawson. Atlantic Monthly Press. Print length: 384 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"An American spy in Iran is exposed by a female journalist, and the spy is tortured, then executed. Enraged, the director of Central Intelligence blames the leak on Congress. Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney isn’t sure who leaked the information, but he’s certain the journalist, jailed for refusing to name her source, will spill the beans about their one-night stand 20 years earlier. Mahoney summons Joe DeMarco, his personal gumshoe and fixer, to identify the leaker and keep the journalist from embarrassing him. Lawson’s tight, high-energy prose drives a plot with more turns than the Burma Road, as DeMarco finds himself surrounded by sleazy legislators, CIA spooks, Russian gangsters, FBI agents, assorted hit men, a misanthropic billionaire, a SoCal surfer/computer-gamer/millionaire, and a mysterious Iranian florist hell-bent on avenging the murdered spy..." - Thomas Gaughan for Booklist.
This is Lawson's fifth political thriller to feature Joe DeMarco. All are available in Kindle editions starting with The Inside Ring.
Rock Paper Tiger, by Lisa Brackmann. Soho Press. Print length: 368 p. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (16 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"American Iraq War veteran Ellie Cooper is down and out in Beijing when a chance encounter with a Uighur - a member of a Chinese Muslim minority - at the home of her sort-of boyfriend Lao Zhang turns her life upside down. Lao Zhang disappears, and suddenly multiple security organizations are hounding her for information. They say the Uighur is a terrorist. Ellie doesn’t know what’s going on, but she must decide whom to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors, and operatives claiming to be on her side - in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online role-playing game." - Amazon.The Taken, by Inger Ash Wolfe. Houghton Mifflin. Print length: 432 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she has no real option but to move into her ex-husband's basement and suffer the humiliation of his new wife bringing her meals down on a tray. As if that weren't enough, Hazel's octogenarian mother secretly flushes Hazel's stash of painkillers down the toilet. It's almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body fished up by tourists in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of Micallef 's neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario." - Amazon.
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