While You Wait for Gone Girl

I just finished Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, the plotty thriller that everyone and their brother has a hold on this summer. No spoilers: it's as good as they say it is, keep it on your list! Here are some lesser-known titles to tide you over until your hold arrives.

Last year's must-read plot twist novel was Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson. Reminiscent of Memento, the main character wakes up every morning missing most of her memory. She sees a forty-something in the mirror, but the last thing she remembers is being a twenty-something college student. This is not her beautiful house, and certainly not her beautiful husband. If you haven't read it yet, now is the perfect chance to peer into her diary as she tries to piece together the missing years. Read on for more ominous thrillers!

Silent in the Grave

As I sat down to write this post, I had to think. What have I read recently that was fantastic, amazing, really rave worthy? I won't tell you how long I sat thinking, but finally it came to me.  Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn. First, allow me to share the first sentence.

"To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor."

I love that first line! Anyway, Silent in the Grave is the first of the "Lady Julia Grey" series. With a gothic Victorian setting, the series follows the eccentric March family, but especially Julia, as she dares social mores and protocols in discovering a new side to herself after the death of her husband leaves her a widow. The characters are outrageous but believable, the pace is just right, and the ending shocking. What more could you want?

Homer and Langley

My teenage daughter keeps me up to date on the weirdness of cable TV's offerings, and one of the weirdest offerings has to be Hoarders, based on the bizarre lives of compulsive pack rats. But before reality TV took hoarding mainstream, America had the Collyers, reclusive brothers who filled their Fifth Avenue brownstone with newspapers, books, old machines, musical instruments, umbrellas, boxes, bales, baby buggies, a Model T Ford--you name it, they likely had it. When they died, rescuers trying to get to them ultimately removed 130 tons of, well, stuff from their building.

E. L. Doctorow takes the unknowable life of the Collyers and goes to town. He tells their imagined story from the viewpoint of Homer, who is musical, intuitive and blind, and therefore subject to the random madness of his brother, Langley. Doctorow takes plenty of liberties to make his story work. In actuality, the brothers died in 1947, but Doctorow realigns their timeline by several decades, allowing the progress of time, in the form of a constant stream of visitors, to intrude on the lives of the brothers. For recluses they have a pretty full dance card, and each era--from the jazz age through the Woodstock Generation, impacts on them despite their barricades of junk. Read this book for its setting, in Manhattan’s poshest landfill--it's mesmerizing.

--Helene

Find it at the library!