25. Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain

listened to the eAudio borrowed from Bosler
narrated by Susan Bennett
Unabridged audio (13:19)
2020 St. Martin's Press
400 pgs.
Adult Historical Fiction/Present time Back & Forth
Finished 2/6/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.25 - 4671 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: 1940 & 2019 Rural North Carolina

First line/s:  "The children knew it was finally spring, so although the air still held the nip of winter and the grass and weeds crunched beneath their feet, they ran through the field  and woods, yipping with the anticipation of warmer weather."

My comments:  I very much enjoyed this enthralling narrative, weaving the dialogue of two women almost 80 years apart in the same small town of Edenton, NC.  short chapters switched back and forth effortlessly, spending just enough time in each time period.  Art, mystery, racism, prison life, alcoholism, prejudice, and long-kept secrets wind together to  create a believable story that I couldn't put down and didn't want to end.

Goodreads synopsis:  North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold—until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.
          North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
          What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?

DNF - Echoes Among the Stones by Jaime Jo Wright

listened on Audible - my purchase
narrated  by Pilar Witherspoon
Unabridged audio (12:34)
2019 Recorded Books
324 pgs.
Adult Time Shift:  1946/Present
Stopped reading on Jan. 4, 2020
Goodreads rating: 4.58 - 209 ratings
My rating: boring, but didn't finish so won't rate
Setting:  somewhere in Wisconsin both in 1946 and current time

First line/s:  Imogene Grayson, Mill Creek Wisconsin, July, 1946.  "She should have paid more attention to her longtime neighbor, Oliver Schneider, when she passed him on the road at dawn."

My comments:  I made it - forcing myself - through the first third of this book, but it was too boring, oh so boring!  S L O W.  Didn't really care for the reader either.  It's the beginning of a new year, so I'm not going to force myself to finish!  (Note:  I didn't care for either of the protagonists in either time period, either!, just couldn't engage with either of them at all.)

Goodreads synopsis:    After Aggie Dunkirk's career is unceremoniously ended by her own mistakes, she finds herself traveling to Wisconsin, where her grandmother, Mumsie, lives alone in her vintage, though very outdated, home. Aggie didn't plan for how eccentric Mumsie has become, obsessing over an old, unsolved crime scene--even going so far as to re-create it in a dollhouse.
          Mystery seems to follow Aggie when she finds work as a secretary helping to restore the flooded historical part of the town's cemetery. Forced to work with a puzzling yet attractive archaeologist, she exhumes the past's secrets and unwittingly uncovers a crime that some will go to any length to keep hidden--even if that means silencing Aggie.
           In 1946, Imogene Grayson works in a beauty salon but has her sights set on Hollywood. But coming home to discover her younger sister's body in the attic changes everything. Unfamiliar with the burgeoning world of forensic science and, as a woman, not particularly welcomed into the investigation, Imogene is nonetheless determined to stay involved. As her sister's case grows cold, Imogene vows to find justice . . . no matter the cost.

33. Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

listened on Audible
read by the author in her wonderful, lilting southern style
Unabridged audio (12:03)
2013 William Morrow
320 pgs.
CRF
Finished 3/28/2019
Goodreads rating:  3.66 - 12,164 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  Contemporary Atlanta

First line/s:  "I fell in love with William Ashe at gunpoint, in a Circle K."

My comments:  I could listen to Joshilyn Jackson read forever.  The story seemed particularly long and drawn out, but I didn't care because of that.  It's an intricate story that winds in and out and around itself, with its own little histories and pleasures and treasures peeking out every so often.  Many love stories are touched upon in this novel - right down, in a way, to the robber's as well.  told from two points of view, one even allows us a chance to climb inside the brain of someone with Asbergers.  Jackson has written tighter novels, but this is good nonetheless.

Goodreads synopsis:  At twenty-one, Shandi Pierce is juggling finishing college, raising her delightful three-year-old genius son Natty, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced Catholic mother and Jewish father. She’s got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up in a gas station mini-mart and falling in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who willingly steps between the armed robber and her son.
          Shandi doesn’t know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him is about choice.
           Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head on, in a funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness,; about a virgin birth, a sacrifice, and a resurrection; about falling in love, and learning that things aren’t always what they seem—or what we hope they will be. It’s a novel about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need. 

15. The Disappearances by Emily Bain Murphy

read on my iPhone
2017, HMH Books for Young Readers
388 pgs.
YA Dystopia/ 1942 America
Finished 2/5/2018
Goodreads rating: 4.13 - 1609 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  1942 Sterling, an east coast American community

First line/s:  "I want something of hers.  There's a teacup downstairs, the last one she used before she died."

My comments:  This is one of those books that just keeps getting better and better as it goes along  Lots of fantasy mixed with mystery and a lovely, small-town 1942 setting.  There was one major thing that was a little too unbelievable to make this five-worthy, and I will write it here invisibly because it is definitely the biggest spoiler of the book:
How are we to believe that Shakespeare's bones were stolen from England and brought to the United States?  There's nothing in Steffen's stories to even hint at this that I can remember...if the book was set in England it would be so much more believable.  Also, some of the variants -- magic potions -- made sense, but the hows and whys behind the invention of others were really unclear and frustrating.
      This was a clever book with a few flaws, an enjoyable read, and recommended.

Goodreads synopsis: What if the ordinary things in life suddenly…disappeared?
          Aila Quinn’s mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery: vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila’s reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother Miles are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town far from home--and the place where Juliet grew up.
          Sterling is a place with mysteries of its own. A place where the experiences that weave life together--scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream--vanish every seven years.
          No one knows what caused these “Disappearances,” or what will slip away next. But Sterling always suspected that Juliet Quinn was somehow responsible--and Aila must bear the brunt of their blame while she follows the chain of literary clues her mother left behind.
          As the next Disappearance nears, Aila begins to unravel the dual mystery of why the Disappearances happen and who her mother truly was. One thing is clear: Sterling isn’t going to hold on to anyone's secrets for long before it starts giving them up. 

PICTURE BOOK - Shanghai Sukkah by Heidi Smith Hyde

Illustrated by Jing Jing Tsong

2015, Kar-Ben Publishing

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.07 - 29 ratings

My rating: 4

Endpapers: front:  Berline/ back: Shanghai streets

1^st line/s: "On his tenth birthday, Marcus found himself on an ocean liner, headed for Shanghai."

My comments:  Here's another wonderful picture book that sheds light on yet another aspect of history that I was totally unaware of.  It leaves me with many questions....are there still Jewish communities in Shanghai?  I'll have to research farther.  This was a book celebrating history, friendship, traditions, and cultures.  Wonderful!

Goodreads:  Fleeing the Holocaust in Europe, Marcus moves with his family from Berlin to Shanghai. With help from his new friend Liang, Marcus sets out to build a unique sukkah in time for the harvest festival of Sukkot.

13. Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

listened to an unabridged cd in the car
read by Emily Rankin - superb
6 unabridged cds, 7 hrs.
2016, Dutton Book for Young Readers
304 pgs.
Historical fiction for upper middle grades (and up)
Finished 3-2-17
Goodreads rating: 4.3 - 4695 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: rural Pennsylvania, just after World War II
Newbery Honor Award

First line/s:  "The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie.  I don't mean the small fibs that children tell.  I mean real lies fed by real fears - things I said and did that took me out of the life I'd always known and put me down hard in a new one."

My comments:  Well.  This was an exceptionally heavy story, particularly for middle grade students of younger ages. That's not bad at all, though I think it might be a little tough for third or fourth graders until they're a little older - why force kids to grow up earlier than need be? It is an exceptionally well written story that will stay with me for a long, long while.  More and more in my life I wonder why people enjoy being mean, why a bully becomes a bully, and how easy it is for some people to lie.  Rural Pennsylvania in the after-World War II years is the perfect setting for this extraordinary story.

Goodreads synopsis:  Growing up in the shadows cast by two world wars, Annabelle has lived a mostly quiet, steady life in her small Pennsylvania town. Until the day new student Betty Glengarry walks into her class. Betty quickly reveals herself to be cruel and manipulative, and while her bullying seems isolated at first, things quickly escalate, and reclusive World War I veteran Toby becomes a target of her attacks. While others have always seen Toby’s strangeness, Annabelle knows only kindness. She will soon need to find the courage to stand as a lone voice of justice as tensions mount.
          Brilliantly crafted, Wolf Hollow is a haunting tale of America at a crossroads and a time when one girl’s resilience, strength, and compassion help to illuminate the darkest corners of our history.