32, My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni

Tracy Crosswhite #1
read on my iPhone
2014 Thomas & Mercer
416 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 6/10/17
Goodreads rating:  3.99 - 53,305 ratings
My rating:  3
Setting: Contemporary mountains of Washington state

First line/s:  "Her tactical instructor at the police academy liked taunting them during early morning drills.  'Sleep is overrated,' he would say.  'You'll learn to do without.'  He lied."

My comments:  Set in a small town where everyone knows and likes your family, throw in a somewhat likable heroine who's lived with 20 years of a mystery that has stilted her life, just for the heck-of-it sprinkle with a sideline of romance with a "perfect" guy and layer on lots of secrets....that's what this book is all about!

Goodreads synopsis:  Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.
          When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past — and open the door to deadly danger.

17. Lyrebird Hill

read by Eloise Oxer, gorgeously!
listened to on Audible
2015 Simon & Schuster Australia
416 pgs.
14 hrs. 11 minutes
Adult CRF / Historical (flipping back and forth)
Finished 3-19-17
Goodreads rating: 4.0 (584 ratings)
My rating: 4.5
Setting: 1898 and 2013 New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia

First line/s: (Prologue, August, 1898) "It is midnight.  I am hunched on the cold floor of the library, scratching these words."

My comments:  4.5 I couldn't wait to get back to this each time I had to leave it.  The story, though a little drawn out in places, was for the most part believable and excellently told.  It flipped back and forth between 1898 and 2013.  Eloise Oxer, the reader, was fantastic.  Her lilting voice and Australian accent put me right there in the bush, at Lyrebird Hill, or in Tasmania, immediately.  Unfolding are two different stories, of great-granddaughter and great-grandmother, more than a century apart.  In a way, perhaps because of the setting and alternating chapters back and forth, it reminded me of one of my favorite books, also set in Australia, The Forgotten Garden.  Delicious storytelling.

Goodreads synopsis:  When all that you know comes crashing down, do you run? Or face the truth?
          Ruby Cardel has the semblance of a normal life – a loving boyfriend, a fulfilling career – but in one terrible moment, her life unravels. The discovery that the death of her sister, Jamie, was not an accident makes her question all she’s known about herself and her past.
          Traveling back home to Lyrebird Hill, Ruby begins to remember the year that has been forever blocked in her memory . . . Snatches of her childhood with beautiful Jamie, and Ruby’s only friendship with the boy from the next property, a troubled foster kid.
          Then Ruby uncovers a cache of ancient letters from a long-lost relative, Brenna Magavin, written from her cell in a Tasmanian gaol where she is imprisoned for murder. As she reads, Ruby discovers that her family line is littered with tragedy and violence.
          Slowly, the gaps in Ruby’s memory come to her. And as she pieces together the shards of truth, what she finally discovers will shock her to the core – about what happened to Jamie that fateful day, and how she died.
          A thrilling tale about family secrets and trusting yourself...

4. One Came Home - Amy Timberlake

2013, Alfred A. Knopf

258 pgs.

Middle Grades Historical Fiction and Mystery

Finished 1/10/15

Goodreads rating: 3.85

My rating:   (2) It was okay 

1871 Wisconsin (Placid - where current day Wisconsin Dells stands)

1st sentence/s:  "So it comes to this, I remember thinking on Wednesday, June 7, 1871.  The date sticks in my mind  because it was the day of mys sister's first funeral and I knew it wasn't her last - which is why I left.  That's the long and short of it."

My comments:  This really was an okay story - and I'm not sure why I'm not more excited about it.  I like that it was a mystery and historical fiction.  Probably I'm so used to my adult mysteries that I wanted more in that department?  The setting was excellent, a dusty town in Wisconsin in 1871.  Time was tough to follow..people dying and marrying and the pigeons arriving all happened more closely together than the story made them seem.  And I liked that the 13-year-old protagonist really did seem 13.  Random thoughts, I know....

Goodreads book summary:  In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871, Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle and her habit of speaking her mind plainly.

     But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn't, her older sister Agatha flees, running off with a pack of "pigeoners" trailing the passenger pigeon migration. And when the sheriff returns to town with an unidentifiable body—wearing Agatha's blue-green ball gown—everyone assumes the worst. Except Georgie. Refusing to believe the facts that are laid down (and coffined) before her, Georgie sets out on a journey to find her sister. She will track every last clue and shred of evidence to bring Agatha home. Yet even with resolute determination and her trusty Springfield single-shot, Georgie is not prepared for what she faces on the western frontier.