Once again I am running late. However, I have some great books for February. I must admit that I have been dealing with staying at home by reading mysteries. Right now, they seem to be doing a great job of bringing me to another place.
We will start with a trip to Ireland. The Searcher by Tana French Will take you away and pass those long virus days. A Chicago policeman retires to a small village in Ireland buying a true fixer upper of a cottage. He is drawn into solving a local mystery by a child who works her way into his life by helping with his projects. This book has been a best seller. It lives up to its reputation.
Next, we will travel to Scotland and enjoy a book from a series I have discovered by Ann Cleeves. There are lots of books in this series that I will continue to enjoy. At a Shetland Island art show, a man breaks down while looking at a painting. The next day he is found dead under strange circumstances. Our hero struggles to solve this mystery that keeps on growing. This is part of Scotland I would really like to visit so I am going to enjoy all this series. I believe this is a series on PBS although I have not seen it.
The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta is an older book from 2011. I have always been just a little afraid to read it. Although this is not a mystery in the usual sense, it is a page turner. Millions disappear in a rapture like event. The people who are left handle this experience in different ways. The book is not actually scary at all, but it does make you wonder, where did those people go?
The Kidnapping Club by Jonathan Daniel Wells is my representative from the nonfiction category. Both before and after slavery was banned in the United States, the city of New York played a far to active part in kidnapping both free and escaped slaves and selling them back to plantations in the south. Wall Street needed to maintain the cotton industry any way they could. This is a shocking piece of our history that is extremely well written and will hold your attention from start to finish.