Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

Arcadia Falls is the latest release from Carol Goodman. I've read all of her books, sometimes for better or for worse. This is one of her better ones. In previous novels the resolution of the present day mystery sometimes came out of left field because more time was spent developing the historical mystery to the neglect of the present day mystery. This was not the case with Arcadia Falls in which the sixty year old historical mystery is so intertwined with the present day mystery that solving the historical mystery is prerequisite to understanding the present day mystery. Granted the twist at the end is highly improbable, but it still gives the reader a good feeling because ultimately everyone turns out to be where it is that they belong.

This book has similarities in superficial details of the narrator's life and setting with Goodman's first novel, The Lake of Dead Languages. Meg, the narrator, flees the city to the rural New York campus of an eccentric, arts based private school steeped in pagan lore and the traditions of its founders who were the original inhabitants of the arts colony from which the school was born. Meg and her moody teenage daughter Sally are still mourning the loss of husband and father respectively after his sudden death a year ago. Left in dire financial debt by her husband, Meg is forced to sell off most of their possessions and their house to pay the bills; she's also forced to take a job as an English teacher at a rural, exclusive private school. The position is perfect for her because it also offers housing for her and her daughter, and it was founded in the 1930's by two female artists, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt, whose folklore collections are the subject of Meg's doctoral thesis.

Soon after Meg and Sally's arrival on campus the school holds its fall, pagan flavored festival to kick off the school year. When one of the female students is discovered to be missing and then later found dead close to the spot where Lily Eberhardt fell to her death the entire student body is shaken. As the school year progresses and Meg dives back into her research the story of the school's founding women emerges from a long lost journal uncovered one night by Meg. The events of the past parallel current events on campus, and it becomes clear those long past events' ripples continue to capsize those in their wake today. While Meg struggles to piece together what happened that long ago winter night when Lily died, she copes with the ever widening emotional distance between herself and her daughter.

Astute readers will piece together and guess the implications and outcomes of this story in which jealousy and tensions between mothers and daughters plays a central, disturbing theme. But don't think once you've guessed the solution to the mystery that the story's done because it still has a few twists to throw out before the close of the novel. This is a must read for Goodman fans and those who enjoy folklore and fairy tales. I recommend you check out this book the next time you're in the library.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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