The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm listening to Nadia Hashimi's story of a young woman in Afghanistan during the communist coup of 1978, Sparks Like Stars; I'm reading Lisa Gardner's recently published mystery set in the forest, One Step Too Far; and I'm reading Donna Everhart's recent historical fiction novel set during the Depression, The Saints of Swallow Hill.
What are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms?
01 Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hashimi
Young Sitara is living a comfortable life in Kabul in 1978. Her father has a prominent position in the government, and the family has plenty of love and laughter.
But when the military soldiers she's always known turn against those in charge, the men stop protecting her family and help enact a bloody massacre that sweeps up much of the current government administration and their families.
Sparks Like Stars follows Sitara through unlikely alliances, a desperate plan to escape her fiery homeland, and a life with twists and turns that ultimately lead her back to the beginning of it all.
I'm listening to Sparks Like Stars as an audiobook.
02 One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin #2) by Lisa Gardner
Lisa Gardner's recent mystery One Step Too Far is the second in her Frankie Elkin series (the first was Before She Disappeared, which I thought was great).
Frankie Elkin isn't a cop and she isn't a private investigator. She's an unassuming middle-aged woman and a recovering alcoholic who has a compulsion: to locate missing people the authorities haven't been able to find. She also has ghosts in her past that she's trying to outrun.
In One Step Too Far, she turns her attention to a cold case in Wyoming: a man went missing in a national forest while on a pre-wedding camping trip with his best friends. Frankie joins the group's annual search of a remote area where Tim might have ended up. But members of the group are keeping enormous secrets, and Frankie fears they may not all make it out of the wilderness alive.
I received a prepublication digital copy of this recently published book courtesy of NetGalley and Dutton Books.
03 The Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart
The Saints of Swallow Hill traces the paths of Rae Lynn and Del, disparate characters in Depression-era Georgia who have two important things in common: each of their searches for food, shelter, and survival is becoming more desperate; and each of them is running from dark secrets that threaten to destroy them.
Their hardscrabble stories intersect at a turpentine camp in Georgia. There, workers struggle to flip the pattern of owing more money to the camp than they can earn; try to avoid the unwelcome notice of the cruel boss; and aim to escape before meeting untimely deaths in the dangerous woods.
I received a prepublication digital copy of this recently published book courtesy of NetGalley and Kensington Books.