Cascade Killer:  A Luke McCain Novel by Rob Phillips

Reviewed by Susan Richmond

I met Rob Phllips a few weeks ago.  He had on a mask.   So, I might not be able to recognize him on the street after Covid-19.  I have, however, read his Yakima Herald Republic column for years.  I love the comfortable way he writes, never exuding the expert outdoorsman vibe that keeps others from wanting to participate in woodsy exploration.  His writing is inviting and includes the reader in his adventures.  He loves dogs, too, a fine character quality if you ask me.  Rob wondered if Inklings might be willing to stock his book and he left our staff a reading copy of his book.  When I told him we would be honored to stock it, he brought in an armful of books and a nice display to get us started.   We’ve refilled the display four times and I’ve made another order for 30 more.  

Rob is a guy who has made the most of this hunker-down time.  He wrote a book!  What did you do?  I played Words with Friends, cooked and ate things.  Rob redeemed the time with turning out a clever mystery firmly set in the mountains and valleys near Yakima, a region he knows very well.  

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

by Sue Domis

I've always enjoyed reading Agatha Christie mysteries.  They are gems in the mystery world that have remained very popular over the decades.  A recent British author has been receiving deserved praise lately.  Lucy Foley is a young English author who lives in England.  She studied English literature at Durham University and University College London.  She worked several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry before becoming an author.  She has a solid background and practical experience in British literature and knows how to create suspense and surprise in interesting contemporary plots.  Foley's early books are The Book of Lost and Found, The Invitation, and The Hunting Party.  Foley's newest mystery novel is The Guest List.

The plot of The Guest List follows a successful formula for British mysteries.  A group of people, usually family and friends, are invited to a social event that is happening at an isolated location.  In this case, the location is a small rocky island off of the Irish coast.  The occasion is the wedding of a famous couple.   The groom is the handsome star of a famous british television survival show.  The bride is the publisher of a popular online magazine called the Download.   The groom's guests are mainly lifelong friends he went to school with.  The bride's guests are a few of her magazine's staff and some of her family.

Suffice it to say that Halloween is going to look a little different this year. Why not make Halloween 2020 an out-of-the-box experience?  The crisp autumn weather makes the perfect time for a cozy family read along. Choose a ghost story, pop some corn or make some hot chocolate, and settle in for a spooky middle grades chapter book. These books are written at the 5th-6th grade reading level and would be perfect to read aloud to your upper elementary aged youngsters. Each is scary, but not too scary, and captivatingly suspenseful.

Trace, by Pat Cummings. This story’s most exciting events take place on Halloween in New York City.  Trace's parents were recently killed in a tragic car accident and he has been sent to Brooklyn to live with his eccentric Auntie Lea. While working on a school project at the New York Public Library  he finds himself wandering lost in a remote part of the vast basement. There he meets the ghost of a little orphan boy from 1863. It’s a terrific ghost story about grief, family, acceptance, and self-confidence.

If you were a middle grader in the nineties you may remember Wait Till Helen Comes, by the first lady of middle grades suspense, Mary Downing Hahn. In Wait Till Helen Comes  three siblings deal with an entity who tries to lure the children into the pond behind their home in order to see them drown. Many consider Wait Till Helen Comes the flagship of children’s chapter suspense. Your audience will be in the palm of your hand!

Also by Mary Downing Hahn is Took: A Ghost Story. In this one, 13 year old Daniel moves from posh Connecticut to rural West Virginia.  His new classmates tell him the mountain tale of the Ghost Witch who steals children, especially little girls. Daniel is pretty sure he is getting the “new kid treatment” until his little sister goes missing. Was she “took”?

Here are other recommended ghostly titles we have in the shop this week:

“Hench” by Natalie Zina Walschots

If you and I have talked about books in the past 3 months, you’ve heard me mention Hench.  I’ve hand-sold it to countless friends, reviewed it on Libro.fm, and even wrote a short blurb about it for last week’s Scene.  What’s so great about this book (I hear you asking)?  Hench is one of the most exciting, fun, and thought-provoking books that I’ve read so far this year, and it provides a wonderful escape from the doldrums of daily life.

Hench follows the trials and tribulations of Anna, a millennial woman trying to make ends meet in a gig economy by taking temp jobs. It’s a familiar situation, but Anna’s industry is special: she’s a hench-for-hire, providing her talent for data analysis to villains, as needed.  When Anna gets a permanent position working for mid-level villain the Electric Eel, it seems like things are looking up (even though she hates her coworkers and office, and isn’t too sure about Electric Eel, who asks people how they feel a little too often and ends every interaction with “namaste”).  All of her hard-won progress falls apart, however, when Electric Eel brings her along to a press conference where things go terribly, terribly wrong.  Anna is caught in the crossfire and suffers a gruesome injury at the hands of hero Supercollider.

And so, laid off from her job with a “thank you for your service” letter, and facing a long and painful recovery, Anna struggles to find meaning in her life.  She discovers it in an unexpected place: in spreadsheets and algorithms, mapping out the true costs, in money and lives, of Supercollider’s “heroics”.  As she digs deeper into Supercollider’s past, uncovering the myriad innocent lives he’s ended or ruined, she attracts the notice of the notorious supervillain Leviathan.  A former ally of Supercollider, he understands, better than anyone, what an unchecked superhero is capable of.  In Leviathan’s employ, Anna finds the things that her life has been missing: purpose, camaraderie, stability, and more.  And together, Anna and Leviathan will change the way the world sees superheroes, forever.

Now, if you haven’t spent the past year living under a rock (and if you HAVE, may I join you there?), you’ll probably notice some similarities between the comic book series/show The Boys, another franchise that focuses on the dark side of heroism.  And while the similarities are certainly there, Hench is a wholly original and enjoyable novel, and stands up well against comparison.  Anna is an achingly relatable character, and you’ll cheer for her as she emerges from her shroud of self-doubt and unresolved trauma and becomes the anti-hero she was meant to be.  Tackling issues like feminism, moral-ambiguity and office politics in the most exciting way possible, Hench is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of escapist literature.  And right now, who doesn’t want to escape from the world, one chapter at a time?

Reviewed by Emily Ring

1. The Searcher
Tana French, Viking, $27, 9780735224650

2. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab, Tor, $26.99, 9780765387561
*signed copies available

3. Leave the World Behind
Rumaan Alam, Ecco, $27.99, 9780062667632

                    4. The Evening and the Morning
                    Ken Follett, Viking, $36, 9780525954989

5. Jack
Marilynne Robinson, FSG, $27, 9780374279301

6. A Deadly Education
Naomi Novik, Del Rey, $28, 9780593128480

7. The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, $27, 9780525536291

8. All the Devils Are Here
Louise Penny, Minotaur, $28.99, 9781250145239

9. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Christopher Paolini, Tor, $29.99, 9781250762849

10. Transcendent Kingdom
Yaa Gyasi, Knopf, $27.95, 9780525658184

11. One by One
Ruth Ware, Gallery/Scout Press, $27.99, 9781501188817

12. Anxious People
Fredrik Backman, Atria, $28, 9781501160837

13. Magic Lessons
Alice Hoffman, S&S, $27.99, 9781982108847


14. The Book of Two Ways
Jodi Picoult, Ballantine, $28.99, 9781984818355

                    15. Piranesi
                    Susanna Clarke, Bloomsbury Publishing, $27, 9781635575637

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

October, the month to read mysteries, horror, and suspense... but how about a fantasy novel with a little bit of all of the above? That is definitely my preference and New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Rebecca Roanhorse, wrote just the right book. Inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas, full of magic, intrigue, and prophecies, Black Sun will keep you on your toes. 

The very first few pages of Black Sun will certainly give you Halloween vibes. A mother that carves out her own son's eyes? ouch. But if that is a little too much for you don't let it deter you from reading it, not many scenes are that gory and there is a much bigger reason and purpose for it. And the boy, Serapio, grows up to become fearless, a vessel for the gods, and easily the most powerful character in the book.

Hardcover

1. The Searcher Tana French, Viking, $27

2. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue V.E. Schwab, Tor, $26.99

3. Leave the World Behind Rumaan Alam, Ecco, $27.99

4. The Vanishing Half Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, $27

5. Anxious People Fredrik Backman, Atria, $28

6. The Evening and the Morning Ken Follett, Viking, $36

Two wondrous books for kids

What is it like to be a child in 2020? Summer camp was canceled and school is on a screen. The family reunions were postponed until a better year. Playgrounds are closed and everyone seems nervous. There is talk among adults of masks, distancing and sickness.