Force of Nature by Jane Harper (2018)

Five women and five men go out into the Australian bushland on a corporate adventure team-building retreat, but only four of the women return. 

A couple of detectives with a vested interest in the missing woman join the search and investigation. Everyone has something to hide and what happened to the missing woman is complicated on a Who Shot Mr. Burns level (basically everybody). Very readable and enjoyable, though.

And apparently, it's the second in a series that starts with Dry and features investigator Aaron Falk. So I'll be requesting that one now!

Prince in Disguise by Stephanie Kate Strohm (2017)

Dusty, her mom, and her sister are in Scotland where her sister is preparing to marry a Scottish aristocrat that she met on a reality tv show. The wedding preparations are also being filmed for a future television show. Dusty meets adorable groomsman Jamie and the sparks fly. But Jamie has a secret, of course. 

The charm in this novel is in the quippy but realistic dialogue, and in the fully realized relationships between Dusty's family, the new in-laws, and Heaven, Dusty's best friend who the producers of the show brought over from America to add a little 'color' to the show.

The Singing Bone by Beth Hahn (2016)

A convicted killer's imminent parole forces a woman to confront the nightmarish past she's spent twenty years escaping.

Alice is a professor in present-day 1999, but when she was a teenager in 1979, she and her friends got involved with a mysterious group headed by the charismatic Jack Wyck. Things ended badly and most of the people involved with Wyck are either in jail or dead. A documentary filmmaker is trying to get in touch with her and other survivors to make a film about the situation and things begin stirring again. 

Very atmospheric, and the story skillfully moves between the time settings. Creepy and good.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018)

Subtitled: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. 

McNamara, who passed away a few years ago at age 46 and was married to Patton Oswalt, was obsessed with her DIY search to find the identity of the East Area Rapist in California. Very absorbing until the very end, where her assistants tried to piece together the remainder of her search after her death. She was a terrific writer, and it's a chilling story. Perfect for the myriad fans of true crime podcasts and amateur sleuthing. 

Meet Me at Beachcomber Bay by Jill Mansell (2017)

I always adore Jill Mansell and sometimes you just need to read a book about charming people falling in love, despite a few hiccups, in a beautiful British location. 

Let's see: There's a girl with a weird name, who has a contentious relationship with her stepsister, who meets a man on a plane, but loses contact, then he shows up as her stepsister's boyfriend but there's still attraction. So girl with weird name pretends to be dating her boss. who has his own hopeless (seeming!) love affair, PLUS a whole thing with his birth mom. Everything turns out beautifully, sigh.

CLEMENCY! The name is Clemency. Well, yeah.

The Stars In Our Eyes by Julie Klam (2017)

Subtitled: The Famous, the Infamous and Why We Care Too Much About Them. 

Pretty fun look at our obsession with celebrities. I think I've read an embarrassing number of books about celebrity culture, but Klam's stories about her own personal celebrity worship are relatable and enjoyable. Although this book gets a bit name-droppy, with celebrity friends describing their own brushes with fame. Dishy, fun,  and light vacation reading.

See also: But Enough About Me by Jancee Dunn (2006)

The Woman Who Wasn't There by Robin Fisher Gaby, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. (2012)

Subtitled: The True Story of an Incredible Deception

There a million stories that came out of the World Trade Center attacks--and not all are true. Tania Head's story of surviving the 9/11 attacks was gripping and horrifying and led to her becoming a celebrity in the survivors' rights movement. Only problem with her story? It wasn't true.

Gaby and Guglielmo tease out this compelling tale with fascinating inside detail. Intriguing, satisfying, and a very fast read. 

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc (2017)

Julie and James have recently bought a beautiful old home in the suburbs for an amazing price. But there's a few mysterious things they discover about the house--a strange sound they can't identify, mysterious secret compartments, their very unfriendly neighbor. And then things get even worse. 

Jemc does a beautiful job of establishing a truly creepy atmosphere and ramping things up without taking things too far. Very vivid and compelling. Also, this is one of the best horror covers ever. Matches the story perfectly! 

You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein (2016)

Memoir in short essay form by comedy writer and comedian Jessi Klein. Very funny essays on a range of topics from getting older, dating, Anthropologie, The Bachelor, infertility and becoming a stand-up comedian. 

This list makes it sound a bit vapid, but it's quite funny and truthy and clear-eyed. Delightful, really!

From the (Dating) Types essay: 

"Noses are of key importance. I need a large nose. Something with a bump. I cannot abide a small nose on anyone, really--men or women. I need the kind of nose that suggests some sort of Jewish/Italian/Greek/African influence. The kind of nose that says, 'At some point in the history of my people, we were forced to flee.'" (p. 94)

LOVE it.

The Real Thing by Ellen McCarthy (2015)

Subtitled: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter's Notebook.

McCarthy had the wedding beat at the Washington Post, and shares what she's learned from heaps and heaps of couples over the years. Divided into Dating, Commitment and Breakups, and including stories from her own life, this is a charming collection that includes gentle dating and love advice with tons of real-world examples (and a few schadenfreudeish examples too--which are the best!) This is a very sweet, sensible, and a little inspirational addition to the love and marriage section.