Books: What We're Reading Edit page

Here's a listing of books our residents are reading that you might enjoy, also.  Send your favorite book (just the title, author, and brief note as to why you like it) to [email protected] or go to the CONTACT US page of the website and submit from there.  We look forward to sharing your recommendations!  

The next Book Club meeting is Tuesday, September 9 @ 2:00  Call or text Shirley Ritchie 803-331-3168 for more details.  Newcomers are welcome!

Here are two current mysteries from Louise Penny to try…

A WORLD OF CURIOSITIES by Louise Penny

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's beloved series.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.  But something has.

As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.  But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.  As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.  In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.

THE GREY WOLF by Louise Penny

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list―and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.

Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.  Including Three Pines.

A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles

This second novel by Towles tells the story of fictional Russian Count Alexander Illyich Rostov ordered to spend the rest of his life in a luxury hotel, The Metropol, in Moscow.  Set against the backdrop of the 1917 Russian revolution which saw the Bolsheviks overthrow and murder Tsar Nicolas II and his family, this novel weaves history with an engaging set of characters whose lives entwine with the Count's.  His life is anything but luxurious; but the Count manages his circumstances quite cleverly through the Russian roaring 20's, the depressive 30's, World War II, and into the beginnings of the Cold War.  The overarching themes of parental duty, family, friendship, romance, and the call of home run deeper than mere sociopolitical commentary.  Does a life sentence of house arrest make Count Rostov the luckiest man alive?  This novel was recently made into a streaming television series starring Ewan McGregor.  A Gentleman in Moscow was a finalist for the 2016 Kirkus Prize in Fiction & Literature and a nominee for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.  Additionally, Queen Camilla recommended the book to those in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amor Towles is the author of Rules of Civility, The Lincoln Highway, Table for Two, Eve in Hollywood, and other works.

The Long Flight Home by Alan Hlad

Hulon Greene's Cup & Chaucer Book Club is reading The Long Flight Home by Alan Hlad in April.  According to The USA Today, it's the story inspired by fascinating, true, yet little-known events during WW II; and is a testament to the power of courage, love and sacrifice in our darkest hours.  The novel brings together an orphaned young woman living with her grandfather in the Epping Forest near London, England and a crop-duster pilot from Buxton, Maine named Ollie Evans who decides to join Britain's Royal Air Force.

Alan Hlad is an author who divides his time between Ohio and Portugal.  His internationally bestselling novels of historical fiction include:  The Book Spy, Churchill's Secret Messenger, and A Light Beyond the Trenches.  Hlad is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Literary Cleveland, Novelitics, and the Akron Writers' Group.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

Submitted by Wayne Smalley - “This is one of my top 10 books.  The over-arching theme of man's inhumanity to man never ceases to astonish.”

Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in June 1940, this book tells the story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control.  As Parisians flee the city, human folly and hubris surface in every imaginable way…forever altering the lives of each of the novel's characters.

Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1903 (formerly part of Russia known as Yiddishland where Jews were confined).  In 1914 just before the start of World War I, the family moved to St Petersburg, Russia.  At the start of the Russian Revolution in October 1917, her family fled to Finland, then to Sweden, and then to Paris in 1919 where she attended the Sorbonne.  When the author began working on this book, she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris - married, with two daughters:  Denise and Elisabeth.  But they were also Jewish; and Irene was arrested on July 16, 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she died August 17, 1942.  Her husband Michel met the same fate on November 6, 1942.  It was their very young daughter Denise who had the presence of mind to stash the unfinished Suite Francaise into her suitcase and flee with Elisabeth and their nanny - hiding from the Nazis until the war ended on May 8, 1945.  For 64 years, this novel remained hidden and unknown until 2006. 

Nemirovsky's other books include:  David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, Dogs and Wolves, The Courilof Affair, The Wine of Solitude, Dimanche, and Fire in the Blood.  Wayne is currently reading The Wine of Solitude which is a novel based on Nemirovsky's life from Kiev to Paris.