Sometimes crime fiction is all about the whodunit. But great crime fiction is also about the whydunit. So while this book series is dedicated to contemporary literary fiction, when fiction in another genre comes along that delves into character, it deserves to be shared. Such is the case with tonight’s novel.
A young woman in disguise checks into an exclusive Dorset coastal resort on its opening weekend in the latest Lucy Foley thriller, The Midnight Feast. Bella has been here before, but not for years, and is determined to right the wrongs of the past.
Francesca is the lady of the manor. She has converted her late grandparents' mansion and its grounds into a world-class resort for those with plenty of money and fans of New Age ideas. She will do whatever it takes to keep bad feelings or the past at bay.
Owen is her husband, a famous architect responsible for some of the most distinctive changes to the property. But is the seemingly calm man, entranced by his wife, all that he seems?
Eddie is a teenager working as a dishwasher. He's one of the few locals hired on, partly because Francesca doesn't like the locals. And partly because the locals don't like her. That's especially true because she has blocked the pathway through the grounds, wants to shut down the old, rundown caravan park that has been a longtime tenant, and would love to have the aging farmer and his family removed as the mansion's closest neighbors. That aging farmer is Eddie's father.
These and other characters are at The Manor for an opening weekend Francesca has convinced herself, and others, will make this former residence the It destination for years to come. She will not take no for an answer. In The Midnight Feast, Francesca's attitude and strong belief in herself are not that different from what the teenage Frankie was like 15 years ago.
What Francesca doesn't know is that Frankie's sins of that long-ago summer are coming home to roost. As the various characters interact and try to move their own interests forward, it becomes clear that what happened one summer during Frankie's teen years mattered a great deal to many involved. The waves of events from that summer are building as they rush toward the celebrations of The Manor's opening weekend.
Foley is accomplished at writing a narrative that propels toward a solution that can be surprising. But the story plays fair with the reader all along the way. In The Midnight Feast, Foley also creates a Gothic atmosphere that recalls Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, except on the Dorset coast instead of Cornwall.
This latest novel, like earlier ones, includes a cast of characters brought together for what should be a fun weekend but is instead murderous. The Midnight Feast also builds on character development that matters to the plot and provides a thoroughly rewarding reading experience.
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New fiction out this week includes the following, with links to The Literate Lizard, online bookstore of Readers and Book Lovers colleague DebtorsPrison, and, as usual, blurbs from the publishers.
After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.
In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding relief in the corner of New York City he can call his own, even as the queer community is still being ravaged by HIV. But when his birthday celebration brings Artie and his friends to his favorite bar, a chance encounter with Abe, an uptight lawyer and Artie’s opposite in almost every way, pushes Artie to want, and to ask for, more for himself.
Thirty years later, Artie is stunned when Halle and Vanessa, Abe’s daughter and ex-wife, announce they are moving across the country. Artie has built a lovely, if small, life, but their departure makes Artie realize that he might be lonelier than he previously thought. When a surprising injury pushes Artie into the hands of GALS, the local center for queer seniors, a rambunctious group of elders insist on taking him under their wing.
Years and Years opens with the elderly Yi Sunil, devoted housewife and mother of three, making her annual pilgrimage to a remote village in South Korea to visit her grandfather’s grave—likely for the final time. What follows is a multigenerational exploration of desires thwarted by societal obligations and mores for the women in this family.
Living Things follows four recent graduates – Munir, G, Ernesto, and Álex – who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don't go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living in a campground, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist’s thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling.
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things. (Note: Her earlier novel, The Most Fun We Ever Had, is one of the loveliest I've ever read.)
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
Do you ever feel like your life doesn’t measure up to everyone else’s—and wonder if you just didn’t get the memo helping you make the right choices?
Jenny Green dreads her upcoming college reunion. Once top of her class, the thirty-five-year-old finds herself stuck in a life that isn’t the one she expected. Her promising career has flamed out (literally) and her deadbeat boyfriend is cheating on her (again). All her friends seem to have it all figured it out, enjoying glittering lives and careers that she can only envy from the sidelines. Did she just not get the memo they all did?
As it turns out, she didn’t!
From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family summer vacation full of secrets, lunch, and learning to let go.
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging—and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
Abbas is just seventeen years old when his gifts as a woodcarver come to the attention of Tipu Sultan, and he is drawn into service at the palace in order to build a giant tiger automaton for Tipu’s sons, a gift to commemorate their return from British captivity. His fate—and the fate of the wooden tiger he helps create—will mirror the vicissitudes of nations and dynasties ravaged by war across India and Europe.
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