Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

 

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. HarperCollins, 2023. Adult fiction.

As the pandemic rages in 2020, Lara and her husband cocoon as their three adult daughters return home to wait it out and help harvest cherries on their farm in Michigan. The girls beg their mother to tell them of her brush with fame in Hollywood and with actor Peter Duke before she was married. Lara's starring role was always as Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town and that role has captured the magic of her whole life.  

The story unspools quietly and there is none better than Ann Patchett at telling a tale. Each of the daughters is distinct and well drawn. The alternate chapters of past and present are well presented and easy to follow. Settle back and enjoy this one!

The Exchange by John Grisham

 

 The Exchange: A Novel by John Grisham. Doubleday, 2023.                                                 Adult fiction.

    Mitch McDeere and his wife Abby are back! In The Firm, the young couple started out with a Memphis law firm that almost derailed both Mitch's career and their lives.  Now, it's fifteen years later, and Mitch is still a high powered lawyer, but with an international firm in New York City. His friend and colleague, Luca, has a grown daughter, also a lawyer with connections to Mitch's firm, who has been kidnapped and is in danger. From Rome to Tripoli to Istanbul to Marrakech and Maine and New York, the action involves the McDeeres and their young twin sons. Time is running out for Giovanna. Can the McDeeres help?

The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon

 

The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon. Doubleday, a division of Random House, 2014. Adult fiction.

  When Judge Crater disappears in 1930, no one seems to know what happened to him. His wife is in Maine at the summer house. The maid, Maria, and her Detective husband, Jude, want a child, but she works as a maid in the mornings and a seamtress later and cannot seem to conceive. The showgirl, his mistress Ritzi, knows a lot more about the judge and the underbelly of old New York than would be good for anybody. The twisty action follows what the author imagines might really have happened. It begins and ends in 1969 with an ailing Mrs. Crater. The novel has a noir feel and a helpful list of real and imagined characters at the end tells who is who and what happened to them.