The Maidens: A Novel by Alex Michaelides

 

  The Maidens: A Novel by Alex Michaelides. Celadon Books(Macmillan), 2021. Adult fiction, suspense.

Mariana's niece, Zoe, is a student at Cambridge. One of her friends is murdered. Mariana is a group therapist still grieving for her husband who drowned in her homeland, Greece. When Mariana goes back to her own campus to comfort Zoe, she becomes entangled in the mystery. Is the dazzling American professor involved? What about the troubled patients Mariana is treating? And, then, can the handful of beautiful young women be connected? Just as the plot thickens, another young student is killed. Can Mariana help find the killer before she is a victim herself?

The tale is fast paced with relatively short chapters. There are lots of characters, but the author keeps them all delineated well. While there is some Greek mythology central to the plot, readers do not have to be experts to figure out the allusions. This is Michaelides' second novel following his highly successful The Silent Patient.

Murder on an Irish Farm by Carlene O'Connor

 

Murder on an Irish Farm by Carlene O'Connor. Book 8 in An Irish Village Mystery series. Kensington Books, 2022. Adult fiction.

Thanks to a prepublication copy, I was able to totally enjoy this story! The long engaged policewoman, Siobhan O'Sullivan is finally to marry fellow garda Macdara Flannery in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland. Ah, but true love does not run smoothly as the ceremony itself is paused and postphoned after a skeleton is found nearby. Apparently, the skeleton is that of a groom whose own ceremony many years before was also interrupted on the very same day! 

The large family of the O'Sullivans are an appealing lot. With a definite Irish setting and interesting characters, readers may feel they have been transported to the Emerald Isle itself! They certainly will be rushing to find the other mysteries in this warm and welcoming series. 

The Au Pair by Emma Rous

The Au Pair by Emma Rous. Berkley (an imprint of Penguin Random House), 2019. Adult fiction.

The tale is told in alternating voices by Laura, the au pair, and Seraphine, one of a set of twins born at Summerbourne, an estate on the coast of Norfolk, England. Laura comes to work for the family in 1991.  In 2017, after their father dies, Seraphine finds a photo taken on the day she was born that shows her mother holding only one baby. In the hours after the twins' births, Seraphine's mother had killed herself. Now their father has died. Who can answer the many questions Seraphine has now? 

Well plotted and with enough action to keep readers guessing, this mystery is a winner. Who's who and what's what keeps shifting as we root for Seraphine to find out the truth about her heritage and to plan her future.