'Turn of Mind' by LaPlante is a fascinating book. Dr. Jennifer White is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease and this book is told mainly from her perspective in the first person. She is deteriorating rapidly and is having trouble remembering anything recent or even recognizing her children. She was an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hand surgery before she retired. Complicating matters is the fact that her best friend has been found murdered with four digits of her hand cut off. Jennifer is the prime suspect. The book is very well written and gets the reader deeply into the mind of a person with dementia. The book was so interesting that I had trouble putting it down. I highly recommend it.

' "Snowdrop" said Steve. "Your friend is a snowdrop".
That's what they call them, he told me - that's what they call the bodies that come to light with the thaw. Drunks mostly, and homeless people who give up and lie down in the snow, and the odd vanished murder victim. Snowdrops.'

A. D. Miller has written a compelling noir novel of love, lust, and betrayal in Moscow, where nothing is as it seems. Nick is an attorney currently working in London and this book takes the form of his remembrances of his time in Moscow as he tells them to his English fiancee. It is about how he meets Masha and Katya on the metro and how their lives become intertwined. It is about deals involving oil rigs and selling apartments. The novel is about many things but, ultimately, it is about how far will a man go in deceiving himself that he is doing good when he knows that he is taking part in deceptive and harmful acts.

I could not put the book down. It is a literary page-turner that grabbed me from the get-go. It would be a shame if this does not have a wide readership. It is THAT good.

Hellenga is the author of one of my favorite books, The 16 Pleasures. While this book does not come up to this, it has its definite merits. It is about a college professor named Jackson who is dealing with an existential crisis - should he return to Mbutu where he had done anthropological work and has a Mbutu lover and child, or should he remain in Illinois, continue teaching and get married. He meets Sunny, a woman recently released from jail after shooting her husband when he tried to push her hand into a can of squirming rattlesnakes. Sunny's church believes in snake-handling and drinking strychnine which is not that unusual for churches in S. Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. Jackson and Sunny begin a love affair and Jackson, the penultimate anthropologist becomes interested in Sunny's church. He visits the church and gets to know its members, including Sunny's husband.

This mystery is part of the Detective Banks series. However, it is by far not one of the best. The story is about a 'bad boy' who tries to pull a heist on a conglomerate of 'badder boys'. Tracy Banks, Detective Alan Banks' daughter has been involved with Jaff, the bad boy, and gets herself into a situation where she becomes his hostage. Banks and his team work to find Jaff and free Tracy. The writing, as usual is quite good. However, the plot has a lot of holes in it and the characterizations and motives are weak.

I read Mr. Peanut and was quite disappointed. The book was disjointed, it seemed to try and go too many places and the ultimate feeling I had was boredom. It is about a man whose wife dies from choking on a peanut. Did he kill her or was it an accident? The book also goes into the lives of the detectives on the case. It does have an interesting premise but it panned out poorly.

Mary Sutter wants to be a surgeon. The main problem for her attaining this goal is that the book takes place during the civil war time and there are no female surgeons. Mary packs her bags and travels from New York to Washington, D.C. to help with the war effort. There she mentors with a wonderful physician and nurses many of the injured to health. This is a novel with spirit, hope and suspense. It is also a great page turner. Though I'm usually not a fan of historical novels, this one caught me from page one.

Learning to Lose has an interesting narrative but I feel like the novel was blunted somewhat by the translation. I believe that it would read more fluently in Spanish. The story is about an inter-generational family. There is Sylvia, 16 years old, who gets run over by Ariel, a 20 year-old soccer player from Argentina. They begin an intense relationship. Lorenzo, Sylvia's father, is raising Sylvia primarily by himself as his wife left him for another man. He is also dealing with the after-effects of murdering his ex-business partner. Then there is Leandro, Sylvia's grandfather, who is caught up in a web of sexual addiction. He loves his wife but can't stop himself from spending all of his money on a Nigerian prostitute. The chapters are told from the perspectives of different characters, a technique I enjoy. Soccer enthusiasts will especially enjoy this novel.

The Bears lost their 6 week old son to meningitis early on in their marriage. Since then, they both have turned inwards and do not communicate about their feelings with each other or anyone else. This is ironic because Emily is a public relations specialist dealing with spin and how to get large corporations out of trouble. Simon is a doctor with a large practice and a loyal patient following. His specialty is pain relief and he believes in prescribing magnanimous doses of opioids for chronic pain sufferers. He knows this is the best relief and that it is the only thing that will work for some of his patients. As both of the Bears are lost in their professional concerns, their daughter Jamie struggles alone to find herself. Friendless and floundering, she is either oppositional or silent with her parents. This is a wonderful book, one that I highly recommend.

Set in Rome, this wonderful novel is about the lives of journalists who all work for the same newspaper. Each chapter can stand on its own in much the same way as Olive Kitteridge.

Many of the journalists hate their jobs, may be misanthropes, have their own personal problems, and are struggling day-to-day. Many of the chapters end with a surprising twist. The reader peeks into their lives as if they think no one is watching, but we are!

Rachman is a writer with a quick wit, great turns of phrase and I would never have guessed this was a debut novel. It is a real winner!

This beautiful and transformative novel is told from the vantage points of four individuals - - Rafe, Billy, Leslie and Sam. Each have experienced severe loss. Billy lost her lover, Gus in the tragedy of 9/11. Billy's lover was Leslie's younger brother. Sam's first wife died of breast cancer when his children were young. Rafe's wife has ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.

All four characters are connected by one degree of separation and as we are privy to their lives, we are also privy to the play that Billy wrote, also called 'The Lake Shore Limited'. The play gives insights into Billy's relationship with Gus and the way that people may deal with dire tragedy.

In this book by Sue Miller, no one takes a day for granted and waking up in the morning may just be a miracle in itself. Filled with metaphor, insight, and the ambivalence of human nature, this book is a wonderful read.

Lowboy is one of the best books I have ever read. It is about Lowboy, so named because he likes to ride the subways of New York City and be underground. He has disappeared from his psychiatric hospital and both his mother and a police detective are looking for him in tandem. The book is beautifully written, the plot never stops going, and the character development is fascinating.

Part mystery, part science fiction and part fantasy, this book is a genre buster. It is about a group of ex-addicts and street people, all black, who have been chosen to be a group of Unlikely Scholars. Their job is to read newspaper articles looking for sightings of the Voice, an other-worldly voice that spoke to their ancestral founder. When not reading newspapers, they go on dangerous missions around and under the earth to preserve their heritage.

This is a story of two families, each with secrets. Callie and Jed are brother and sister who have lived with sorrow. Their mother, Betsy, was murdered and their father, Cecil, died shortly thereafter. At the time of Betsy's death, Cecil was having an affair with Marcella. When the book opens, Jed visits Marcella to ask her some questions about his parents. They end up having an affair. The book is written in beautiful language but the plot is prosaic and does not seem worthy of the 300 pages. I look forward to further books by this author because of her beautiful writing.

This is a wonderful book. John Coetzee writes a 'biography' of himself that supposedly has been written after his death. The biographer interviews family members, old lovers and colleagues of Coetzee. What comes out repeatedly is that Coetzee was a bland man, asexual and seemingly without ambition. The big question that comes to mind while reading this book is how can it be possible to evaluate the artist separately from his art? I truly loved this book and give it my highest recommendation.

This memoir is about family - love, death, perseverance. When the author's 38 year-old daughter dies suddenly, leaving three young children and a husband, the author and his wife move in with their son-in-law and grandchildren to help preserve the family as their daughter would have wanted it. This is a poignant and subtly brutal story of the impact of sudden death on those left behind.

My own husband dealt with a similar situation. When he was 24 years old, his wife died, leaving him to care for a two week old daughter on his own. Reading this story brought tears to my eyes, not only for the losses, but for the love and endurance of this family. They are blessed to have one another.

This is a book of philosophy as much as it is a book of fiction. It is about personal identity and how easily one's identity can be shifted into something else. How real are we? Who are we? Through alternating chapters about three different people, this book asks this question. This book will appeal to people who like plots within plots. It requires patience as the book goes back and forth in time. I enjoyed it as it was like unraveling a favorite skein of yarn.