“And I didn’t ask any questions,” the narrator of Nicola Solvinic’s debut mystery-thriller The Hunter’s Daughter (Berkley ), says in her first-person account of what it’s like having been raised by a serial killer. “I truly didn’t want to know the answers. When the rifle went off, did I kill my dad? Or Agent Parkes? Did I miss them both, and did they fight it out? Did Dad get arrested, or did he kill Agent Parkes and run.”
These obviously are not the typical questions most children have regarding interactions with their fathers. But police officer Anna Koray is the daughter of a notorious serial killer, a fact she keeps hidden with the use of a different name, a move far from home, and estrangement from her mother who did little to protect her.
It works for a while until a traumatic incident triggers long-repressed memories and Anna’s past, sealed off by her therapist in a controversial and experimental hypnosis treatment, begins to emerge. Her father, known as the Forest Strangler, murdered more than a dozen women, their bodies decorated and left as sacrifices to the god of the forest. But he also taught Anna to love the woods, to be one with the forest and nature. The dark dense woods with rustling trees that line the perimeter of her yard call out to her, beckoning her forward. In many ways, it’s where she feels most at home—the feel of dirt between her toes, the smell of the rotting leaves. But as much as it entices her, that forest also harbors secrets and possibly malignant forces that may harm or even destroy her.
There are many questions confronting Anna as she deals with her surfacing memories. Can she trust her lover who may be hiding his own addictions? Is her father, who is supposedly dead, really alive? And is Anna herself a killer—someone who has her father’s propensity as well as his genetics to do evil? She has killed, supposedly in self-defense. But is that true? Or does she enjoy killing just as he did? And will she do it again?
When her psychiatrist, the woman who hypnotized her into forgetting her past, is found murdered, Anna has to wonder if she played a part in the death. After all, she had broken into her office to steal her file folder before the police, who are closing in, can locate it and discover her true identity. Did she do more than take the file? Did she destroy the woman who can reveal her past?
Desperate to keep people from realizing that she is the daughter of the Forest Strangler, Anna also has to try to determine that even though she became a police officer to help others, she may be as evil as her dad.
A tense psychological thriller, terse plotting, and Anna’s own uncertainty about who she is, what acts she’s committed, and whether she can trust her own thoughts, feelings, and actions, keeps this book a page-turner.
About the Author
Nicola Solvinic has a master’s degree in criminology and has worked in and around criminal justice for more than a decade at local, state, and federal levels. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and cats, where she is surrounded by a secret garden full of beehives.
“Moxie Castlin was easy to underestimate, but only on first impression. He was overweight by the equivalent of a small child, didn’t use one word in public when five others were loitering nearby with nothing better to do, and had a taste for the reminiscent of the markings of poisonous insects or the nightmares of LSD survivors. He subsisted largely on fried food, coffee, and the Maine soda that had given him a nickname, now long since passed into common usage: since he had been christened Oleg. Moxie sounded better to him. He lost cases, but not many, and his friends far outnumbered his enemies.”
And so, in the first chapter of The Instruments of Darkness(Atria/Emily Bestler Books), the 21st book in the Charlie Parker series by international and New York Times bestselling author, John Connolly, we meet Moxie who is defending Colleen Clark, a mother accused of abducting and possibly murdering her two-year-old son Henry. It’s a heinous case and everyone, the police and general public, and especially the politicians who have an election coming up, think Colleen is guilty. After all, she was home, supposedly asleep when Henry disappeared. Her husband, Henry’s father, had been away on a business trip.
But it doesn’t matter if the world is against you when you have Moxie and Charlie Parker, a private investigator
Everyone does seem to be against Colleen, including Henry’s father, Stephen Clark, who stirs the pot. Because of his outspoken concerns, the police search Colleen’s car and discover a blanket soaked in Henry’s blood in the wheel well of her car. Rumors about Colleen begin to circulate and as Parker, who narrates the story, wryly says they were unfounded, but that is no obstacle as unfounded rumors are the best kind.
The book lives up to its title, there is definitely darkness surrounding the case and the community. Others have disappeared without a trace. And there’s a touch of the supernatural to give the readers a few shivers as Parker tries to help Moxie take on a case where even before the trial a guilty verdict has been decided.
Connolly, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, has written more than 30 books, is the author of several series including the Samuel Johnson trilogy, the Lost Things stories, and (with @JennieRidyard), the Chronicles of the Invaders. He writes long, weaving a complex mystery-thriller full of twists and turns, and peopled with intriguing characters, some benign and eccentric, others scary including a gang of fascists who are readying for war; and a psychic who says that the dead, including a woman named Verona Walter, frequently appeal to help from Walter, who, it seems, is dead and buried but still in contact with the living.
But there’s more to deal with than fascists and a psychic that talks to the dead, there’s the house, seemingly in ruins, deep in the dark Maine woods and exerting an unnatural and dangerous force.
As Connolly describes an interaction between two people as they approach the isolated home.
“Pinnette tried to tear his gaze away from the house but found he could not. While it might have looked abandoned, he was not convinced it was quite empty. Certain structures, while appearing uninhabited, retained about them a sense of occupation, as though a latent presence had infused the very boards. As he and Unger observed the house, Pinette could not help but feel that the house was observing them in turn: not someone in the house but the house itself.”
It will take all of Parker’s detective skills to overcome the obstacles he faces to help Moxie with his client, all the while trying to stay safe.
This award recognizes books with recipes focused on the art and craft of baking, pastries, and desserts, both sweet and savory items, including ingredients, techniques, equipment, and traditions.
This year, submissions to the Bread category were included for consideration within the Baking and Desserts category.
This award recognizes books without recipes that focus on beverages, such as cocktails, beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, or juices; or books that cover these subject areas where recipes are not the focus of cooking, not just a single topic, technique, or region.
Henry Jeffreys (Atlantic) Food Issues and Advocacy:
This award recognizes books that focus on investigative journalism, food policy, food advocacy, deep dives, and critical analysis of the changing social landscape around food.
José Andrés and Sam Chapple-Sokol (Clarkson Potter)
Literary Writing:
This award recognizes narrative nonfiction books, including memoirs, culinary travel, culinary tourism, biography, reflections on food in a cultural context, and personal essays.
This award recognizes books written by a culinary professional or restaurant chef with recipes that may include advanced cooking techniques, the use of specialty ingredients and professional equipment, including culinary arts textbooks.
Jessica Battilana and Sylvan Mishima Brackett (Hardie Grant North America)
Single Subject:
This award recognizes books with recipes focused on a single ingredient, dish, or method of cooking. Examples include seafood, grains, pasta, burgers, or canning. Exceptions are baking and desserts books, vegetable-focused books, restaurant and professional books, and beverage books— which would be entered in their respective categories.
Kelly Marshall and Sarah Madden (HarperCollins) Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South
Kate Medley with Dave Whitling (BS Publishing)
Cookbook Hall of Fame:
This award is given to either a cookbook that has significantly influenced the way we think about food, honoring authors who possess an exceptional ability to communicate their gastronomic vision via the printed page, or an author whose cookbooks and other culinary books and work, taken together, make a difference in the world of food and cooking.
The Book Awards Subcommittee selects the winner for this category. The Cookbook Hall of Fame winner will be announced at the Media Awards ceremony on June 8.
“It sounds like the opening of a joke: Four lawyers die in a plane crash.
“But no one is laughing inside the brand-new 1985 Cessna careening toward the dark icy Atlantic waters. One engine is already on fire and the other about to blow.
“On the manifest: three men, one woman, and a screaming pilot.
“’MAYDAY MAYDAY’
“All four partners. The only partners. The foundation of the firm. This group has never traveled together before. It’s like the virgin who gets knocked up on her wedding night: It was just one time. But once is enough to end it all.”
Four award-winning mystery writers, Vanessa Lillie, Layne Fargo, Cate Holahan, Kimberly Belle have teamed up to write Young Rich Widows (Soucebooks), set in 1980s (for those who weren’t around think big hair and big shoulder pads, ostentatious living like that seen on such shows as Dallas and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous thriller about four rich widows who have not only lost their partners in a mysterious plane crash but also are realizing four million dollars is missing as well.
And to make it worse. That’s mob money and they want it back. Not next week, but right now.
The women don’t like each other. Indeed, one, Camille, a former saleslady and now a much younger second wife, is having an affair with Peter, one of the partners who was married to Justine, a former fashion model, while another, Meredith is a stripper who was in a passionate relationship with the only female partner.
Complicated? Well, it gets even more so, in this comedy/mystery written by Lillie (Blood Sisters), Fargo (They Never Learn), Holahan (Lies She Told), and Belle (The Personal Assistant).
For one, there’s the long-simmering romantic spark between Crystal and the mobster who is threatening them. He happens to own the strip club where Meredith works. And is Camille more than a homewrecker? Is she a thief like her former employer claims? And then there’s the land deal if they can make it happen, will restore their fortunes—but is that handsome developer who is chasing after Camille to be trusted? Is anyone?
When you’re in danger, you have to work together or die alone and that’s what these women do, bonding in a way that never would have happened before the crash, and they learn to trust one another as they fight to stay alive.
“I liked my husband well enough . . . but I like him even better dead,” says Duchess Valencia Dedham.
Now a Dowager Duchess following the death of her husband (no great loss there) and the discovery of the nearest male heir means Valencia Dedham must move out of the mansion that has been her home since she married at a young age and into a dower house far away in Yorkshire. It’s all part of primogeniture, the English way of assuring that property passes down through the male line.
But for Valencia it means she loses not only the house but also access to London and the glittering Regency-era society to which she belongs. As she starts to pack for her journey to a home and location she has never known, she doesn’t even know what is hers to take. The beautiful writing desk she bought? The jewels she wore? Her beautiful gowns? Or are the all part of the estate that belongs to the new duke?
And so, Valencia, in The Duchess: Scandalous Ladies of London (HarperCollins) by Sophie Jordan, is faced with a situation common to many wives back in those days.
But the new duke, the brooding and handsome Rhain has six sisters he wants to marry off and he quickly realizes that their wild ways from growing up in Wales under less-than-strict guidance need a lot of polish before they can hope to land suitable husbands. After all, what gentleman would want to make a match with a woman such as Isolde, the duke’s sister who carries her stuffed dog with her even though it died years ago?
Who better than Valencia with her knowledge of manners and social mores to whip the sisters into marriageable material with dance and singing lessons, the right coiffures and gowns, and entry into the best of homes? And besides, the duke has more than a passing interest in the beautiful young widow and she in him as well.
Of course, this being a romance novel there are many issues to overcome. Rhain is sure he wants to return to Wales and doesn’t need the impediment of a wife, and Valencia was abused by her husband and also complicit in the way he died. She’s afraid of falling in love again as much as she wants a man’s touch.
Sensual looks and sizzling attraction abound. Of course, we know it will all turn out well in the end but the fun of these books—if they’re well-written and this one certainly is—is how the author keeps our attention until all the plot lines are tied together into a happy ending.
This is the second book in the Scandalous Ladies of London, a new series from New York Times bestselling author Sophie Jordan, a prolific writer with over 50 books to her credit. Each chronicles the machinations of women at the highest level of society making their way in the world where their best chance of getting ahead is marrying well.
About the author.
Sophie Jordan grew up in the Texas hill country, where she wove fantasies of dragons, warriors, and princesses. A former high school English teacher, she’s the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of more than fifty novels. She now lives in Houston with her family. When she’s not writing, she spends her time overloading on caffeine (lattes preferred), talking plotlines with anyone who will listen (including her kids), and streaming anything that has a happily ever after.
The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) on Thursday, April 18 at 6:30 pm is presenting a program with author Libby Fischer Hellman featuring her new book, Max’s War: The Story of a Ritchie Boy. This suspenseful coming-of-age war story is Libby Hellmann’s tribute to her late father-in-law who was active with the OSS and interrogated dozens of German POWs. To register for this free event, please visit their website or CLICK HERE.
More About the Book: As the Nazis sweep across Europe, Jewish teen Max and his parents flee German persecution to Holland, where Max finds friends and romance. But when Hitler invades in 1940, Max escapes to Chicago, leaving his parents and friends behind. When he learns of his parents’ murder, Max immediately enlists in the US Army. After basic training he is sent to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, where he is trained in interrogation and counterintelligence.
Deployed to the OSS, Max carries out dangerous missions in Occupied countries. He also interrogates German POWs, especially after D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, where, despite life-threatening conditions, he elicits critical information about German troop movements.
Post-war, he works for the Americans in the German denazification program, bringing him back to his Bavarian childhood home of Regensburg. Though the city avoided large-scale destruction, the Jewish community was decimated. Max roams familiar yet strange streets, replaying memories of lives lost to unspeakable tragedy. While there he reunites with someone from his past, who, like him, sought refuge abroad. Can they rebuild their lives together?
More About the Author: Libby Fischer Hellmannleft a career in broadcast news to write gritty crime fiction and historical fiction. She has written eighteen novels and twenty-five short stories and has been nominated for many awards in the mystery and crime writing community. She has been a finalist twice for the Anthony and the Shamus; and four times for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. She has also been nominated for the Agatha, the Daphne, and she won the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year in 2021. Her novels include the Ellie Foreman series, the Georgia Davis PI series, and five stand-alone historical thrillers.
Her short stories have been published in anthologies, the Saturday Evening Post, and Ed Gorman’s 25 Criminally Good Short Stories collection. In 2006 she was the National President of Sisters in Crime, a 4000-member organization committed to the advancement of female crime fiction authors.
he Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is delighted to host mystery author Susan Van Dusen on Wednesday, April 17 at 6:30 pm for an in-store discussion featuring her new book, Poisoned Passover, the second book in the Torah Mystery Series.With no experience except watching TV detective shows, Julia Donnelly, the wife of the mayor, and her Torah group leader, Rabbi Avrum Fine, have been pressed into service to solve the town’s mysteries.
This event is free with registration. To register, please visit their website or CLICK HERE.
More About the Book: Who’s poisoning Passover guests in Crestfall, Illinois? When Julia Donnelly brings chopped liver to her Torah group friend Devorah’s seder, she has no idea it will result in mass poisoning, murder, and a connection to past arson. Julia, wife of Crestfall’s mayor, and Rabbi Fine, Torah study group leader, become involved in a mystery surrounding Sophie’s Kosher Deli. Someone is trying to put her out of business. Is it Lester Pintner, a developer who wants to put up a building, her good-for-nothing son Milton who wants to transform the store into a pool parlor, Sweet Cheeks, a mysterious woman who has attached herself to Milton, or perhaps Nate, another deli owner who wants to buy Sophie’s store.
Meanwhile, Julia must also deal with challenges on the home front when her son Sammy refuses to go to school. She has a full plate! How does she cope with everything? By teaming up with the Rabbi, using powers of observation, and logic from Jewish tradition to solve a confusing puzzle of danger and greed!
More About the Author: Susan Van Dusen is an international award-winning writer of books, editorials, magazine and newspaper articles. She was the Communications Director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and Associate Director of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. Susan created “The Read In” project at the University of Illinois in Chicago and “Coming Together in Skokie and Niles Township,” acknowledging the diversity of those communities. In Israel and in Chicago’s Uptown area, while teaching English to non-English speakers, she wrote songs and plays to stimulate interest in language. Susan was the editor of a neighborhood weekly newspaper, then became the award-winning editorial director of WBBM-AM Newsradio as well as writing for newspapers and magazines. While studying with a Torah group for ten years, she realized it was the perfect vehicle for a series of books, with the first book in the series being The Missing Hand. Currently she is retired, a normal human being, a mayor’s wife, a mother and grandmother, and participant in several civic and writing groups.
The Book Stall(811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is thrilled to welcome award-winning authorLeif Engerto the store on Sunday, April 7 at 2:00 pm for a discussion featuring his new book,I Cheerfully Refuse (Grove Atlantic). A career defining tour-de-force from the New York Times bestselling author of Peace Like a River, Enger’s latest novel is set in a not-too-distant America and epitomizes the “musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling” (Los Angeles Times) for which Leif Enger is cherished. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, I Cheerfully Refuse is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.
This event is free with registration. To register, please visit The Book Stall’s website or CLICK HERE.
More About the Book: I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, a bereaved and pursued musician, embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, Rainy seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society.
Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.
More About the Author: Leif Enger grew up in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio before writing his bestselling debut novel Peace Like a River, which won the Booksense Award for Fiction and was named one of the Year’s Best Books by Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, was also a national bestseller. It was a Midwest Booksellers Honor Book, and won the High Plains Book Award for Fiction. His third novel, Virgil Wander, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was named a best book of the year by Library Journal, Bookpage, and Chicago Public Library. He lives with his wife in Duluth, MN.
The Book Stall(811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is thrilled to host historian Hampton Sides on Monday, April 15 at 6:30 pm for a discussion featuring his new book, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. (Doubleday). From the New York Times bestselling author, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day.
At once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration, The Wide Wide Sea is a major work from one of our finest narrative nonfiction writers.
This event is free with registration. To register, please visit The Book Stall’s website or CLICK HERE.
More About the Book: Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration in the 1700s. Cook was renowned for his peerless seamanship, his humane leadership, and his dedication to science. He was also deeply interested in the native people he encountered. On previous expeditions, Cook mapped huge swaths of the Pacific, including the east coast of Australia, and initiated first European contact with numerous peoples. He treated his crew well and endeavored to learn about the societies he encountered with curiosity and without judgment.
Yet something was different on this last voyage. Cook became mercurial, resorting to the lash to enforce discipline, and led his two vessels into danger time and again. Uncharacteristically, he ordered violent retaliation for perceived theft on the part of native peoples. This may have had something to do with his secret orders, which were to chart and claim lands before Britain’s imperial rivals could, and to discover the fabled Northwest Passage. Whatever Cook’s intentions, his scientific efforts were the sharp edge of the colonial sword, and the ultimate effects of first contact were catastrophic for Indigenous people around the world.
The tensions between Cook’s overt and covert missions came to a head on the shores of Hawaii. His first landing there was harmonious, but when Cook returned after mapping the coast of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, his exploitative treatment of the Hawaiians led to the fatal encounter.
Kirkus Reviews,in a starred review, says,“An acclaimed historian takes to the sea in this rousing tale of exploration … Sides draws on numerous contemporaneous sources to create a fascinating, immersive adventure story featuring just the right amount of historical context … Lusciously detailed and insightful history, masterfully told.”
More About the Author: Hampton Sides is an award-winning editor of Outside and the author of the bestselling historiesHellhound on his Trial, Blood and Thunder,andGhost Soldiers. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Anne, and their three sons.
Shelf Life 