Demon of Unrest

Sadly, I didn't love this one as much as the last few by Larson. It was still good, just a little disappointing. It felt like he was really reaching at times. 

Larson looks back at Fort Sumter and how the Civil War officially began. He describes events leading up to Lincoln's election, how the North and South started splitting apart long before 1860. President Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln, had a few opportunities to do something and instead decided to ignore the turmoil and let the new guy deal with it. Which he did, of course, and quite well. The most striking figure in the story is Major Anderson, who held the fort against all odds. It was, without a doubt, one of the saddest stories I've read, knowing the outcome and how many lives were lost. It was a shame that the South couldn't be persuaded to peaceably free the ones they'd enslaved. 
 

Mecca

 

I heard author Susan Straight speak at an event and was intrigued by the excerpt of this book that she read out loud. It sounded very interesting, so I checked it out. It was pretty good. 

Motorcycle CHP officer Johnny Frias rescued a woman who was being assaulted back in 1999. He ended up killing the abuser, but the woman took off before he could say anything to her. He buried the body and discovered the woman left behind her purse. He tried a few times to deliver it to her, only to be thwarted. 

Twenty-one years later, it's 2020 and the pandemic hits. Johnny is still with the CHP, helping his dad out in the canyons of Southern California, where he and all his friends grew up. There were a lot of threads woven together in this story, including the woman who Johnny rescued. I really like Straight's writing style, she's very descriptive without being repetitive. She is coming out with a sequel to this book, so something to look forward to!

Princess of Las Vegas

 

I enjoyed Bohjalian's latest, the "Princess of Las Vegas". Crissy is an impersonator at an off-strip hotel called the Buckingham Palace, and as you might have guessed, she recreates Princess Diana. Her younger sister, Betsy, is a social worker in Vermont who just adopted a thirteen year old foster kid named Marisa. Betsy's new boyfriend, Frankie, is into cryptocurrency and convinces Betsy to move to Las Vegas with him. 

Betsy and Crissy aren't exactly close, despite the fact that they look alike (this fact was overemphasized, so I knew it would come into play later on in the book, and it did). Frankie is in deep with some dangerous people and he needs Betsy's help to stay out of it.  Unfortunately that means framing Crissy. It was interesting, didn't delve too much into the nitty-gritty of crypto (which I have no desire to know more about), and had a satisfying ending. 
   

First Lie Wins; House of Lincoln

 

Two excellent fiction books. "First Lie Wins" was a twisty thriller about a woman named Evie--only Evie isn't her real name. Her real name is Lucca, and she works for a man she's only spoken to on the phone named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith sends her to steal things from people, and she's very good at it. Her latest mark is a man named Ryan. Ryan is good looking and charming and has a big secret of his own--he deals in blackmarket goods through his trucking company. 

Evie is doing well with Ryan, they've moved in together and she's trying not to develop real feelings for him when a woman who could be her twin shows up in town and introduces herself as Lucca. She has Evie's backstory. Evie quickly realizes that Mr. Smith is setting her up to take a major fall and she has to act and think quickly to beat him at his own game. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it. 

"House of Lincoln" was told from the point of view of a young lady named Ana, who is a Portuguese immigrant in Springfield, Illinois, in the 1850s. She works for Mary Lincoln and gets to know Abraham and admires him greatly. She has a front row seat for the presidential election in 1860 and is heartbroken when he's assassinated. 

The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer, since it was more about Ana and continues after both Mary and Abraham are gone. She and her husband, Owen, live in Springfield. After Owen dies, she's left alone to witness the challenges that black people still experience in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including a riot in 1909, where an elderly black man was lynched. It was well told and interesting. 

Death Comes Too Late

 

A book of short stories. Some were pretty good, others were just meh. One of the stories that really stuck out to me was about two high schoolers who love to play arcade games at a local pizza place. One of the boys was very poor, so his friend comes up with a way to give him $10 in quarters for his birthday without the other boy knowing it came from him. It backfires, unfortunately, when the owner of the pizza place jokes that he must have robbed someone to get all that money. One of the workers sees the young man angrily flinging quarters all over the street and decides to rob the arcade games and pin it on him. It had a really tragic ending. Well, to be fair, most of them did. 

Bless Your Heart

 

This was a really fun one!

The Evanses have operated a funeral parlor in a small Texas town for generations. Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and Luna bury the dead with dignity, but they also have another role: putting down the "restless dead".

The restless dead are a zombie/vampire hybrid type of monster. When someone is killed by a restless dead, they rise again, and the Evans women stake them through the heart and burn the bodies. 

People are starting to die at an alarming rate and in horrific ways, and the Evans ladies realize something bad is coming. They need to find it and dispatch of it quickly before it wipes out more of the town. 

It was great and super gory, reminding me of Bentley Little. I'm looking forward to Ryan's next book!

Once a King; Close to Death

 

I was really excited for this book: a memoir of King Edward VIII, in his own words, written during his time in Paris after WWII. But jeez, was it boring. I think he was so concerned with not saying too much that he really didn't say anything at all. There was a little bit of interviews with Wallis, and she was a little more forthcoming but not by much. It was honestly pretty disappointing and didn't give us any new information about Edward. 

On the other hand, Anthony Horowitz never disappoints. The fifth Hawthorne book find Anthony writing about an old murder, since Hawthorne isn't working on anything new. 

In 2014, a man was murdered in a small community by a crossbow. There was no shortage of suspects: every one of the neighbors hated him. His kids were terrors, he blocked access to the shared driveway, and he was planning on putting in a swimming pool, ruining a shared garden space. The neighbors call a meeting to air their grievances, only Giles (the pain in the butt neighbor) doesn't show up. 

Six weeks later Giles is found dead, a bolt from a crossbow in his neck. Two days after that, the neighbor who owned the crossbow is found dead in his car from an apparent suicide. The police decide that the neighbor killed Giles, then himself out of guilt. Hawthorne isn't so sure. Turns out he's right, of course. It was very twisty and had a lot of good red herrings as well as a terrific ending. I couldn't put it down.