2020 Book List - Fiction

The Dutch House by Anne Patchett. “After Cyril Connolly purchases a large estate in Elkins Park, Pa, his wife, Elna decides to leave him and their two children, Maeve and Danny, to work with indigent people in India.  Cyril remarries a woman named Andrea who has two young girls.  After his death, Andrea expels Maeve & Danny, who must now survive on their own. A modern fairy tale and coming of age story from the author of States ofWonder and Commonwealth.” “Gillian Anderson, JoJo Moyes, Nigella Lawson are all fans of her work. A beautifully written work over decades of a family that’s more human and flawed and comical and poignant than real life - but it feels like it could be a story someone is telling me back home. Characters well written and the sibling power struggle is incisively portrayed. Very easy, captivating read.”

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. “The novel opens when a flight attendant wakes up in Dubai next to a dead body after a night filled with alcohol and sex.   Perfect summer thriller with scenes in Dubai, New York and Rome.   It keeps the reader guessing until the very end.”

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger. From Goodreads: “Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. It's a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.”

Girls of Summer by Nancy Thayer. "Another frothy, enjoyable beach read by Nantucket-based Thayer, whose novels (along with Elin Hilderbrand's) pretty much epitomize beach reads.  Lisa is in her fifties.  Her husband left her and abandoned their two children many years earlier, and while she's shied away from romance, she's built a life for herself and her children, Juliet and Theo.  Then there's Mack, a widower ten years her junior, whose wife died when their daughter Beth was three. Mack restores old houses, and when he starts working on Lisa's, a spark is ignited.  Their budding romance is complicated, however, when their grown kids, all for different reasons, and all with their own romantic challenges, end up back on the island. Quick read. Fun.  And if you like it, Thayer has written many more novels for you to enjoy."

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. “The new release from the author of Station Eleven, and a very different but equally unusual (and absorbing) novel. From an eerie, isolated hotel made of glass on Vancouver Island to the glass skyscrapers of Wall Street, from a far-reaching Ponzi scheme to a woman who has gone missing on a container ship at sea, this novel takes the reader down a twisting, winding path.”

Heretics by Leonardo Padura. “I highly recommend it for this year's reading list. (His book, The Man Who Loved Dogs, was on the 2019 list.) The mystery surrounding a Rembrant painting and the historical journey of a Polish-American family that immigrated to Cuba in 1930 is an epic novel. This Cuban author brilliantly weaves two stories and Jewish, Cuban, Dutch, and Polish history”

How to Walk Away by Katherine Center.  From Goodreads: “Margaret Jacobsen has a bright future ahead of her: a fiancé she adores, her dream job, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in one tumultuous moment. In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing long-held family secrets, devastating heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.”

A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe. “A transporting historical novel with a dash of suspense, set in 1930s Indochine. A young American woman, Jessie Lesage, journeys to Vietnam with her French husband, a Michelin heir, so that he can run the rubber plantations that fuel the family business. While there, she is swept up in the exotic glamour of expat life––as well as the darker sides of colonialism.”

If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane.  “McFarlane does good beach.  If you haven't read any of her novels, start with one of her earlier ones, which are a bit better, but this is good, too.  It's a fake relationship story, a chick lit device that always makes for a good read.”

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle. “Dannie Kohan likes things pinned down, certain.  Her best friend Bella is just the opposite, bohemian and wild.  Dannie's life is on track - rising star lawyer and a perfect fiance.  Then she wakes up one morning to find it's five years later, and she is in a different apartment, lying next to a different man.  She spends an hour in this five-years-hence place, and then falls back asleep and awakens back in real-time.  A dream?  So she thinks, until Bella introduces her to her new boyfriend, and Dannie realizes it's the man from her hour in the future.  So what did this vision mean?  What follows is a far more emotionally-involved story than this description - this novel is beachy but not chick lit.  Definitely kept me engaged."