If I Can't Have You by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris (2014)

Subtitled Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance and the Murder of Her Children, this true crime book starts when the Powell family fails to drop off their children at day care. Their day care provider becomes worried, and a search for the family ensues.

Eventually the husband and children show up, but without the mother and the husband is acting most suspicious.  The characters in this book (particularly the husband's family) are as chilling and creepy as in any good suspense thriller. It's also a fascinating look at the complexity of marriage, the Mormon faith, and the tenacious struggle for Susan's family to find out what happened to her.

Despite the spoilery subtitle, this book is incredibly gripping, and one of the best true crime books I've ever read. I still get the creeps when I look at that book cover photo.

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham (2014)

Most actress's memoirs--particularly if they are comic in tone--I find a bit facile and uneven. They tend to be loosely strung together collections of anecdotes.

However, you have to hand it to Dunham:  She tells it like it is.  I love the subtitle: A young woman tells you what she's "learned". She tells it warts and all, no writerly airbrushing or image enhancement to make her sound better.  

She's amazingly insightful but also amazingly self-aware. I can't help but like and admire her. This was a wonderfully enjoyable book.  Also, there are little sketchings in the book that give it the feel of a midcentury book on etiquette or relationships--and at the end, you find out the artist is her good friend that she refers to through the book.  And it's funny:  

"When I was born I was very fat for a baby--eleven pounds (which sounds thin to me now).  I had three chins and a stomach that drooped to one side of my stroller.  I never crawled, just rolled, an early sign that I was going to be resistant to most exercise and any sexual position that didn't allow me to relax my back." 

How can you not love that?

The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff (2006)

My bar for horror novels is pretty low.  But I can't resist a good ghost story/haunted house novel, so when this crossed by desk, I gave it a try.

Five students are left alone in their college dorm over the holidays, they get in touch with some scary spirits, and mysterious and spooky things begin to occur.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Sokoloff created rich and complex characters, and I like that the backstory and mythology was quite in-depth.  I have the attention span of a distracted gnat, but even after reading it six months ago, I can still picture some of the characters and settings.  

Must check out more of her work!  Yay, excellent horror novels by female authors!

What We See What We Read by Peter Mendelsund (2014)

Utterly loved this nonfiction book which deconstructs 'what we see when we read': the physical and emotional act of reading. 

Absolutely fascinating, marvelously designed. So many keeper quotes. Like:

"One should watch a film adaptation of a favorite book only after considering, very carefully, the fact that the casting of the film may very well become the permanent casting of the book in one's mind. This is a very real hazard."  

"When I read, my retirement from the phenomenal world is undertaken too quickly to notice. The world is in front of me and the world "inside" me are not merely adjacent, but overlapping; superimposed. A book feels like the intersection of these two domains--or like a conduit; a bride; a passage between them." 

This is a book to buy and refer to often.  Fascinating.

The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie (1996)

Another utter love. Picked this up at a used bookstore out of a remembered fondness for Jennifer Crusie and she did not disappoint. 

Daisy is a scattered, free spirit artist trying to make her living through her art. Her neighbor, Linc, is a straitlaced English professor who is angling for a job at a prestigious school but needs a fiancee to complete the picture. 

Crusie creates a charming story out of this familiar premise, thanks to her vivid and realistic characters, her humor and her ability to create real chemistry and believable romance for her characters. Beautifully done as always.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (2013)

Oh my gosh, I LOVED this book. I have no idea where it came from, why I requested it but it's marvelous.

Li Lin lives in colonial Malaya with her opium-addicted father and her beloved Amah. All is satisfactory pretty much until she receives a marriage proposal from the son of an influential neighbor. However, the son is dead and the proposal is for Li Lin to be his ghost bride. When her intended haunts her in her dreams and she falls in love with the new (live) heir to the family, Li Lin embarks on a fantastical voyage among the dead. 

Choo creates a marvelously rich and detailed world of the dead, from paper funeral offerings and hell money, to the Plains of the Dead and the afterworld bureaucracy. Along the way, she meets Er Lang, a guardian spirit who is not at all what he appears to be. 

This novel is utterly original and impossible to label in a particular genre. It's historical fiction, and fantasy, and a bit of horror, and a bit of romance as well as being wonderfully suspenseful and beautifully written. Much of the mythology is based on Chinese folklore, and Choo's notes section outlines the original stories and her own creations. CRIPES, I loved this book.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen (2013)

Aw, I adore Sarah Dessen. Although the plots are fairly conventional, her relationships and characters are so wonderfully complex.

This one is about a girl recently graduated from high school, working her butt off at her family's realty company in her coastal tourist town, and her relationships with her longtime boyfriend, an attractive new guy in town who is the assistant on a documentary about a reclusive artist AND her relationship with her semi-estranged father and her new half-brother. Whew! 

 But all you need to know is this: Great characters, even the most minor characters and realistic, well drawn relationships. Just lovely. Oh, and funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but gently, dryly funny.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott (2008)

"Alice" was kidnapped by Ray when she was about 10 and has been living with (and abused by him) ever since. She barely remembers her former life, and her only hope for escaping him is to find her replacement and she thinks she's found her at a local park.

 Chilling, genuinely upsetting, but well and simply told.

The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco (2014)

This young adult horror novel is narrated by Okiku, a 300-year old ghost who avenges murdered children by killing their murderers and freeing their spirits.

Some excellent imagery--very much as if you were reading a novelization of The Ring (but well done) and quite interesting back story and info on Japanese ghost stories. I love the imagery of the ghosts of the murdered children clinging to the murderers, as well as the occasional people who can see Okiku and other spirits.

Quite a well-done and original young adult horror novel.

Son of a Gun by Justin St. Germain (2013)

After watching Tombstone (in a spate of Michael Biehn movie binge-watching), I wanted to read more about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Biehn's character, Johnny Ringo.  In one of those serendipitous coincidences, St. Germain's book popped up in my catalog searches. 

St. Germain lived in (or just outside) of Tombstone with his mother and brother with a succession of his mother's boyfriends.  When he is just 20, his mother is shot to death, likely by her current husband (her fifth).  

In this book, St. Germain chronicles his attempts to make sense of his mother's death as he tries to answer the unanswered questions of her death.  

He wanders back and forth in time as he recalls his own troubled childhood with his mother, and along the way, the story of his hometown and the famous shootouts that took place there.  Simply and sparely written, St. Germain weaves together all of these elements beautifully in a very emotional, suspenseful and touching book.  A good pairing with After Visiting Friends by Michael Hanley.