This 9th installment of the Inspector Gamache series is Penny's best yet, and I could not put it down. We are back in the magical Quebec village of Three Pines, and the eccentric characters we've come to love there are given even more room to grow and move in this book. We're given a clue early on in the book from Matthew 10:36 -- "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household" and the brilliant Penny plays it nimbly for both of her running plots. While the mystery of a murdered quintuplet rivets us, the on-going machinations of Gamache's enemies within his own Surete de Quebec comes to a compelling conclusion.

This book is satisfying on every level, but readers new to the Inspector Gamache series should start at the beginning (or at least with her last three books) before diving into this 9th episode. You will be the richer for it!

We take to the water with debut novelist Amber Dermont in The Starboard Sea, a coming-of-age novel that treats us to both the beauty of sailing and the dark side of privilege. I never tired of Dermont’s lovely homages to the wind; her protagonist Prosper reads it like prose: “You never sail with one wind. Always with three. The true, the created, and the apparent wind; the father, son, and Holy Ghost. The true wind is the one that can’t be trusted.” Indeed, as Dermont plays out the metaphor, we watch Prosper continually trim his sails to fit his new situation: he has been kicked out of one prep school (acting out after his best friend’s suicide), and is shifted to another for his senior year of high school. A few mysteries -- one of which may be murder -- keep us turning pages.

I grew weary, however, of the stereotypes; it seems every “prep school novel” comes ready-made with a cast of profligate, spoiled, rudderless rich kids. Prosper tells us, early on, “I felt myself becoming a cliché. The boy in trouble. The wealthy father. The school in need and willing to offer refuge.” Indeed, these rich boys commit horrendous acts with no conscience. The girls are glamour queens, naked beneath fur coats. (“It’s tanuki, silly. Japanese raccoon dog. Very rare. I should probably be arrested for wearing it.”) All are dissolute heirs to fortune (“…Yazid had a killer British accent, a closet full of bespoke Savile Row suits and a well-heeled cannabis habit.”) They have “prep school nicknames” (Taze, Kriffo, Race, Cakes). When the boys go to The Head of the Charles Regatta, they first cruise through a party in the penthouse of The Charles Hotel, grab Bloody Mary’s and speak to the president of Harvard, who begs one of the boys to “ditch Princeton and come to Cambridge.” They party in houses with famous paintings and sculptures, and with girls like Fernanda and Flavia, who “looked like the results of the world’s most successful genetic experiment. Each girl had caramel skin, full lips, bright blue eyes…” and “ …went to Le Rosey in Switzerland. The school of actual kings.” But even if you live in the rarefied air of East Coast and international prep schools, you will find it difficult to believe the sardonic, snappy repartee between characters is from the lips of teens. (When a white Mercedes and a driver show up for the boys, courtesy of Kriffo’s parents, Taze complains. “Thought your dad was sending a BMW. Not this pimpmobile.” Later, when the Mercedes is swapped for a black BMW, Cakes says “Nice car. Are we doing a drive-by shooting later?”)

In this episodic novel, we sail quickly from scene to scene, experiencing vandalism, awkward attempts at sex, shady Wall Street goings-on in the stock market crash of 1987, even a murder and its cover-up. I loved Dermont’s beautiful passages of wind, weather, and celestial navigation but lamented the overdrawn characters at the prep school. (Of course the dean is corrupt. Of course the local police can be bought off.) But there is enough here that is deft and skillful that when I see her name on another novel … I’ll bite.

Though at an ebb-tide moment in life, attorney John Kralik commits to focusing on things for which he can be thankful. The result is“365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life”, a book that encourages “pass it on” acts of kindness. This is a book you can digest in small bites – each short chapter recounts how a particular thank-you note resonated through the author’s life (and often, the recipient’s).
Though I am already an adequate thank-you writer, the book has inspired me to stock up on cards and reinvigorate my own Daily Gratitude campaign, and I suspect it will spark everyone who reads it to do the same. It’s a 200-page paean to the thank you note … a celebration of the way gratitude transforms us.