books you may love: September 2024

Following a period in which I was unable to read after having returned from visiting family in India, I turned to my usual favourite author.

Charles Todd! Originally a mother-son writing duo, now the mother has passed away, and the son carries on the legacy.

Their Bess Crawford and Ian Rutledge mysteries, set in the period of WWI, have always been comforting reads for me, so I turned to the former, not quite ready to face the inner demons of the latter.

Crawford is a nurse who served in WWI, but one of the tales - The Cliff's Edge - is actually set in the aftermath of the war. I've been reading this series out of order and realized belatedly that The Cliff's Edge is the last book so far, although Todd does have plans for another book to come out in the next year or so!

Once I read these two books, my heart and mind were wide open to reading fiction once more.

Next I picked up The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore, and was blown away! A historical fiction based on real characters and incidents, The Wealth Of Shadows tells the story of a clandestine team in the US Treasury Department and their attempts to thwart the Nazis in WWII using the one weapon they could wield: money!

The Americans are in talks with the Brits on how to stop the Nazi juggernaut by economic means, and Ansel Luxford, the protagonist, has the following conversation with Keynes (yes, the economist, Joseph Maynard Keynes!).

"You asked what value really is," Keynes continued. "And I am telling you: It is Good. The Good life. Good health. A Good time. Happiness and human flourishing—that is value. Our lives are so short."

He paused for a moment, as if pondering the frailty of his body. The state of the bacteria that he'd said was filling his heart.

"Immortality is unattainable and God is, at best, indifferent to our suffering. We have these few days above the ground, and how we spend them—in joy or pain, in miserable toil or in the fulfillment of meaningful work, surrounded by people we loathe"—he glanced to White—"or enveloped in the warmth of people who love us"—he glanced in the direction of Lydia's bedroom—"is the only thing that matters. That's value. The function of the economy is not to make a bunch of numbers add up to x or to y, to make some line on some graph achieve a neat curve. It is to produce as much Good as possible. The job of economists—we dismal scientists, as they say—is to study how me might create the most Good."

~ An excerpt from The Wealth of Shadows by Graham Moore

After reading this amazing book, my luck continued unabated as I managed to lay my hands on a copy of Irish mystery writer, Tana French's latest work, The Hunter. Set in the Irish countryside, it picks up from where her previous book, The Searcher, left off, but is not necessarily a sequel and can be read on its own.

I've read every single one of French's books; the way she portrays her characters, sketching them tantalizingly, slowly, deliberately, is sheer genius. It makes them come alive, and when the story is over, I miss them terribly!

Next came Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver, which is a light but not at all frivolous attempt at encouraging us to get out of own heads and allow life to unfold for us on its own. I'm not sure how I chanced upon this gem of a book, but its short chapters make for lovely, brief reminders to not hold on so tightly to events and situations, to let go and see what ensues.

And then I slipped into the utterly insane brain-space of Riley Sager (a pseudonym), who writes thrillers with a strong hint of the paranormal.

I first read Middle Of The Night in which the protagonist, now in his 40s, returns to his family home in a North American suburb from where his friend disappeared after a night out camping in the backyard when they were barely 10 years old. The story unfolds in dual timeline, which makes it even more gripping.

But the protagonist's view of life in the suburbs was so hilariously described at one point that I have no option but to quote it here!

Most suburbs run with the precision of a Rolex, and Hemlock Circle is no different. Mondays are trash day, during which everyone wheels their hulking bins of garbage to the curb in the morning and drags them back to the garage in the evening. The same is done with the recycling every other Friday.

Tuesdays are when the landscaping crews arrive, swarming the cul-de-sac in ear-splitting cacophony. Lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers. Especially leaf blowers. If suburbia had an official sound, it would be the agitated whir of compressed air blasting across patios and driveways, clearing them of any cut grass blades or stray leaves that dare to rest on their surfaces. When the leaf blowers cease, the resulting silence feels momentarily unnerving. Too quiet. Too abrupt.

~ An excerpt from Middle Of The Night by Riley Sager

As soon as I finished this book, I needed to read another of Sager's works, and I picked up Home Before Dark. And wow! This one was even more mind-blowing.

The protagonist, Maggie Holt, comes to live in a haunted house she inherits when her father dies. She intends to renovate it and sell the place.

But it so happens that her father had written a horror memoir called 'House of Horrors' recounting the family's encounters with malevolent spirits in the house.

All throughout her life, Maggie has held on to the firm belief that the book was all based on fiction. But her experiences at the haunted mansion begin to unfold in ways eerily similar to the story in the book, and eventually all hell breaks loose.

This riveting book is written from the point of view of Maggie and is interspersed with chapters from her father's memoir! I absolutely loved the book, and now I have to, have to, have to read the other works of Riley Sager!

Here's a YouTube video in which the narrator dissects and ranks her Riley Sager favourites! Sager has quite the fan following! And rightly so!

So, all this has made September one lucky month for me when it came to getting back into reading fiction! In fact, I've been taking a book to read when I go to pick up little D from school! A book in my hand, always!

Do any of these works interest you? Have you read any of them? Write to me and let me know!