Bookish suspense...

Title & Author:  The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen

The Characters:
ELLERY HATHAWAY-- Fourteen years ago she was abducted by a serial killer. She was his seventeenth victim.  She survived. Now she's a police officer in the small town of Woodbury, Massachusetts, where three people have gone missing in three years, all disappearing in the same week of July. She thinks there's a serial killer in town, only her boss doesn't believe her. Neither does anyone else.  Except Agent Reed Markham.

REED MARKHAM--Fourteen years ago he was the FBI agent who found Ellery and saved her life. Now he's in the middle of a divorce and on a temporary "stress leave" from the BAU. He's also drinking too much. But when Ellery calls asking for his help, he heads to Woodbury to help track down this mysterious killer that seems to know more about Ellery's past than anyone else in town. 

My thoughts:
Both of these characters are flawed and imperfect. In fact, when I first started reading this book I wasn't sure I was going to like either one of them. But while each has their own faults, neither is stupid or frustratingly stubborn, and I ended up liking them both. (I really liked Ellie's basset hound, Bump, too!)

As for the mystery, it's interesting without being predictable; the author had me suspecting a couple of different characters along the way. And while this book won't change anyone's life, it is a compelling and enjoyable mystery of psychological suspense. I'm looking forward to reading the next book that Schaffhausen writes....especially if it's as a good as this one. (And it has Ellie and Reed in it again.)

Happy Reading!

Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome drove in silence ... he seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight ... but had in it the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

As much as I love Edith Wharton's writing is how much I didn't love Ethan Frome the first time I read it. Which is why I felt the need to give it a second chance. It's not a long novel, and there are really only three main characters:  Ethan Frome, Zeena, his grim and ailing wife whose "fault-finding was of the silent kind", and Mattie Silver, his wife's younger cousin whose coming to their house to help Zeena out brought "a bit of hopeful life (that) was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth" to Ethan's dreary existence. The harsh Massachusetts winter also plays an important role in this tragic tale.

Ethan's life is a series of misfortune, struggle, and bad luck. Even his marriage is a disappointing mistake. Only in Mattie does he glimpse a sympathetic companion and the hope of some future happiness. But Zeena's penchant for "complaints and troubles" makes even that dream impossible. And that leads to tragedy. As I reread this book last week, I felt only sympathy for Ethan Frome. He deserved better than what he got, but life can be hard and unfair. This is such a sad novel, but it's so beautifully written. And while it will never be my favorite, I do like it more than I did. Mostly because of Wharton's artistry and skill--her writing is so stylish and elegant--but also because this second time reading Ethan Frome helped me to appreciate it, and him, a little bit more.

Happy Rereading!

Nobody's Secret

Title: Nobody's Secret by Michaela MacColl
Setting: Amherst, Massachusetts, 1846
Main character: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, age 15
Excerpt:
        "And whom do I have the pleasure of thanking for my gift?"
         He started to introduce himself, then seemed to think better of it. "I'm nobody important." He grinned. "Who are you?"
        Emily paused. She was the oldest daughter of one of the town fathers and everyone knew her name. ... How dreary to be somebody all the time, she thought. Feeling very mischievous, she said, "I'm nobody too."

Mystery: Emily's young and handsome 'Mr. Nobody' is in town on some unpleasant family business, but he won't tell her what it, or who he, is. Then he turns up dead in her family's pond. Unknown and unnamed, everyone assumes he drowned accidentally. But not Emily. She suspects he was murdered, and she's determined to learn who her Mr. Nobody was, who killed him, and why.

My thoughts: I wish this book were longer; I would have liked to spend more time with this intelligent, fiercely determined, slightly odd, and independent Emily Dickinson. She's always scheming ways to get out of laundry and baking, and scribbling notes and bits of poetry in her notebooks. And she's a pretty good amateur detective, too. With a little help from Vinnie, her younger sister, and despite her mother's objections and overprotectiveness, she manages to piece together the clues of this engaging mystery. I liked her and her poems more after reading this YA novel than I ever have before. In fact, this book makes me want to read more about her life. The author recommends My Wars Are Laid Away: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger, but since it's over 700 pages, I think I might start with something a little shorter first.

Happy Reading!

(This would be an excellent book to read for Lory's Reading New England 2016 challenge. In fact, I wish I had read it as my Massachusetts book because I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did The Wolves of Andover.)

The Wolves of Andover

"Blowing out the candle, Martha pulled both of the blankets close under her chin and lay in the dark. Here I am, she thought, traded like a kettle to yet another family. She knew it was not just for the wages ... it was to find a husband."

 It is 1673 and Martha Allen has been sent to Billerica, Massachusetts to help her pregnant cousin, Prudence, while her husband, Daniel Taylor, is away. Martha is a hard worker, but at nineteen, she's already considered a spinster. One of the hired men working on the farm, a tall Welshman named Thomas Carrier, soon catches her eyes. But he's older. And he is hiding a secret from his past, a secret that goes back to Oliver Cromwell and the execution of Charles I. He is also aloof and taciturn; not that Martha is a paragon.

"She had seen her reflection in a bucket of water often enough to know she had a kind of beauty, mirthless though it was; her skin was clear and unspotted, her forehead high and sloping. Her black hair ... was no doubt her glory, but she knew her brows knitted together too often to be pleasing, causing a deep well to form between them. But beyond all of that, she feared she had too much force, too much animal vitality, to be winning; at least to any civil, unprotesting sort of man."

The other story line running through this historical fiction novel concerns the five mercenaries sent by Charles II to Massachusetts to hunt down the regicides, those men who brought about the death of Charles I, especially the one called Thomas Morgan. The chapters alternate between Martha's story and that of these five men, although I would have preferred it if Kathleen Kent had focused solely on Martha and Thomas. (I found myself skimming the other chapters.) Kent includes a lot of interesting historical details; and I was also glad that at the end of the novel she explains which parts of her story are based on fact, and which are based on legend, rumor and supposition. Martha's a strong character, but I found her to be a bit prickly and not always likeable. And I while I liked Thomas, I wish his character had been fleshed out a little more. As for the rest of the novel, I liked it, but I didn't love it. Still, it's set in Massachusetts, which means I've filled another category in Lory's Reading New England Challenge. I only have two more states to go!

Happy Reading!