The Bitterroots

The Bitterroots

The Bitterroots by C.J. Box
Published by Macmillan Audio on August 13, 2019
Series: Cassie Dewell, #4
Format: audiobook
Genres: Mystery, Western
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Synopsis

Former police officer Cassie Dewell is trying to start over with her own private investigation firm. Guilty about not seeing her son and exhausted by the nights on stakeout, Cassie is nonetheless managing...until an old friend calls in a favor: she wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young girl from an influential family.

Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out in the Big Sky Country of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against the ghosts of her own past that threaten to pull her back under.

With The Bitterroots, master storyteller C.J. Box delivers another novel that will keep you turning pages, featuring fan favorite Cassie Dewell from the Highway Quartet.

Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short

Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short

Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short by William D. Cohan
Published by Flatiron Books on July 9, 2019
Pages: 384
Format: ebook
Genres: Memior, Nonfiction
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Synopsis

A powerful portrait of the lives of four boarding school graduates who died too young, John F. Kennedy, Jr. among them, by their fellow Andover classmate, New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan.

In his masterful pieces for Vanity Fair and in his bestselling books, William D. Cohan has proven to be one of the most meticulous and intrepid journalists covering the world of Wall Street and high finance. In his utterly original new book, Four Friends, he brings all of his brilliant reportorial skills to a subject much closer to home: four friends of his who died young. All four attended Andover, the most elite of American boarding schools, before spinning out into very different orbits. Indelibly, using copious interviews from wives, girlfriends, colleagues, and friends, Cohan brings these men to life on the page.

Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, uses his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence. Will Daniel, Harry Truman's grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, does everything possible to escape the burdens of a family legacy he's ultimately trapped by. Harry Bull builds the life of a careful, successful Chicago lawyer and heir to his family's fortune...before taking an inexplicable and devastating risk on a beautiful summer day. And the life and death of John F. Kennedy, Jr.--a story we think we know--is told here with surprising new details that cast it in an entirely different light. Four Friends is an immersive, wide-ranging, tragic, and ultimately inspiring account of promising lives cut short, written with compassion, honesty, and insight. It not only captures the fragility of life but also its poignant, magisterial, and pivotal moments.

There is something off-kilter with this book. Cohan writes about his time at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. Andover is rated the top prep-school in the country where it’s graduates go on to Havard or Yale, becoming the cream of the crop in American society.

Cohan, taken with the death of four of his contemporaries; they were not friends, just four young men attending Andover at the same time as Cohan, that he decided to write about their deaths. While singing the praises for Andover, Cohan, in a tabloid fashion, describes their years at Andover and goes to reveal how they met their end. I am not sure of the purpose of this book, other than Cohan survived, and his four very privileged contemporaries did not.

The Better Sister

The Better Sister

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke
Published by Harper on April 16, 2019
Pages: 311
Format: ebook
Genres: Mystery, Psychological Thriller
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Synopsis

From Alafair Burke—New York Times bestselling author of the runaway hit, The Wife—comes another twisty tale of domestic noir. When a prominent Manhattan lawyer is murdered, two estranged sisters—one the dead man’s widow, the other his ex—must set aside mistrust and old resentments . . . but can they escape their past?

Though Chloe was the younger of the two Taylor sisters, she always seemed to be in charge. She was the honor roll student with big dreams and an even bigger work ethic. Nicky was always restless . . . and more than a little reckless—the opposite of her ambitious little sister. She floated from job to job and man to man, and stayed close to home in Cleveland.

For a while, it seemed like both sisters had found happiness. Chloe earned a scholarship to an Ivy League school and moved to New York City, where she landed a coveted publishing job. Nicky married promising young attorney Adam Macintosh, and gave birth to a baby boy they named Ethan. The Taylor sisters became virtual strangers.

Now, more than fifteen years later, their lives are drastically different—and Chloe is married to Adam. When he’s murdered by an intruder at the couple’s East Hampton beach house, Chloe reluctantly allows her teenaged stepson’s biological mother—her estranged sister, Nicky—back into her life. But when the police begin to treat Ethan as a suspect in his father’s death, the two sisters are forced to unite . . . and to confront the truth behind family secrets they have tried to bury in the past

Paper Son

Paper Son

Paper Son by S.J. Rozan
Published by Blackstone Publishing on July 2, 2019
Series: Lydia Chin & Bill Smith #12
Format: audiobook
Genres: Mystery, Suspense
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Synopsis

The latest Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery takes the acclaimed detective duo into the Deep South to investigate a murder within the Chinese community.

The Most Southern Place on Earth: that's what they call the Mississippi Delta. It's not a place Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, New York City, ever thought she'd have reason to go. But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn't know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi-and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out-Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind the wheel.

From the river levees to the refinement of Oxford, from old cotton gins to new computer scams, Lydia soon finds that nothing in Mississippi is as she expected it to be, including her cousin's legal troubles-or possibly even his innocence. Can she uncover the truth in a place more foreign to her than any she's ever seen?