The Twelve Dogs of Christmas (An Andy Carpenter Mystery 15)
David Rosenfelt, 2018
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250106766
Summary
Defense lawyer Andy Carpenter usually tries to avoid taking on new cases at all costs. But this time, he’s happy—eager, even—to take the case that’s just come his way.
Andy’s long-time friend Martha "Pups" Boyer takes in stray puppies and then finds good homes for them. Not everyone admires her work.
With Christmas just around the corner, one of her neighbors has just reported Pups to the city for having more than the legal number of pets in her home under the local zoning laws.
Andy happily takes Pups’s case. Who could punish someone for rescuing puppies, after all, especially at Christmas time?
But things get a lot more complicated when Randy Hennessey, the neighbor who registered the complaint against Pups, turns up dead. All the evidence seems to point to Pups as the killer, and suddenly Andy has a murder case on his hands.
As he starts digging deeper into the truth behind Hennessey’s murder, Andy may find himself facing a killer more dangerous than he ever imagined. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1949
• Where—Paterson, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., New York University
• Awards—Shamus Award
• Currently—lives on Damariscotta Lake in Maine
David Rosenfelt is an author who has written nineteen novels and three TV movies. His main character in most of his mystery books is Andy Carpenter, attorney and dog lover.
Rosenfelt graduated from New York University and then decided to work in the movie business. After being interviewed by his uncle, who was the President of United Artists, he was hired and worked his way up the corporate culture. Rosenfelt eventually became the marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures. He married and had two children during this period.
Rosenfelt left the corporate industry and wrote screenplays for movies and television. He turned to writing novels and has become quite successful in that genre. In 1995, he and his wife started the "Tara Foundation" which has saved almost 4,000 dogs. He is a dog lover and supports more than two dozen dogs.
Rosenfelt, a dog lover and who worked with many lawyers in his occupation, created a character, Andy Carpenter, an attorney who faces corporate cultures and who is a dog lover. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2019.)
Book Reviews
Rosenfelt’s entertaining 15th legal thriller featuring Patterson, N.J., attorney Andy Carpenter…. Rosenfelt integrates Andy’s vocation of finding rescued dogs permanent homes—which the author shares with his character—without overwhelming the story.
Publishers Weekly
The wisecracking, dog-loving attorney still has plenty of appeal in this fast-paced Christmas mystery that avoids any holiday sentimentality.
Library Journal
Rosenfelt…continues to write some of the best hooks in the genre…. [His] canine-loving hero is always good company—especially when he deals with someone who’s gone to the dogs even more completely than him.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Many thanks to Shelley Holley, M.L.S., of the Southington (CT) Public Library for creating THE TWELVE DOGS OF CHRISTMAS questions … and sharing them with us:
1. What did you think of the book?
2. Does this story make you want to read his other stories in the series?
3. What did you think of the setting and the community in this book?
4. Did you like that the dogs had a big part of the story?
5. Did you find it easy to relate to Andy because he was very open about his manner in helping Pups?
6. Did you find it odd that Pups and Jake never wanted to sell the land?
7. Did you ever believe that Pups was the killer?
8. Did you find Linda Devereux a credible witness?
9. Did Linda’s testimony make you think that Jake was cheating on Pups?
10. How long did it take you to figure out the mystery?
11. Were you surprised that Hank Boyer was an imposter?
12. Did you think that Rosenfelt kept the suspense going throughout the book?
(Questions submitted to LitLovers by Shelley Holley of the Southington Public Library. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution to both. Thanks.)
The Adults
Caroline Hulse, 2018
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525511748
Summary
A couple (now separated), plus their daughter, plus their new partners, all on an epic Christmas vacation. What could go wrong? This razor-sharp novel puts a darkly comic twist on seasonal favorites like Love Actually and The Holiday.
Claire and Matt are no longer together but decide that it would be best for their daughter, Scarlett, to have a "normal" family Christmas.
They can’t agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest holiday park, or who said they should bring their new partners. But someone did—and it’s too late to pull the plug.
Claire brings her new boyfriend, Patrick (never Pat), a seemingly sensible, eligible from a distance Ironman in Waiting. Matt brings the new love of his life, Alex, funny, smart, and extremely patient. Scarlett, who is seven, brings her imaginary friend Posey. He’s a giant rabbit.
Together the five (or six?) of them grit their teeth over Forced Fun Activities, drink a little too much after Scarlett’s bedtime, overshare classified secrets about their pasts … and before you know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends where this novel begins—with a tearful, frightened call to the police.
What happened? They said they’d all be adults about this…. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1976-77
• Where—UK
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Manchester, England
Caroline Hulse spends most of her days writing, having fulfilled her dream of having a job she could do in pajamas. She also works in human resources sometimes. She is openly competitive and loves playing board and card games. She can often be found in casino poker rooms.
In fact, Hulse is a professional poker player, translating her powers of observation at the card table to her fictional characters. As she told NPR's Robin Young (Here and Now), when playing poker…
[Y]ou just spend a lot of time observing people in competitive environments where they are feeling quite emotional and not necessarily at their best…. It's also a feeling like other people might be taking advantage of you, which often doesn't bring the best out of people. So I think poker has definitely been a really big influence on my writing, even though I don't actually write about poker.
Hulse lives with her husband in Manchester, England. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and WBUR.)
Book Reviews
Brilliantly funny.
Good Housekeeping (UK)
Razor-sharp comedy.
Sunday Mirror (UK)
(Starred Review) Hulse does an excellent job building…. This debut is the whole package: realistic, flawed characters placed in an increasingly tense situation, resulting in a surprising, suspenseful novel.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review) A snappy writing style and changing viewpoints make the pages of this debut fly by as readers will want to know what happens next
Library Journal
[D]eteriorating relationships are interspersed with police interviews and excerpts from Happy Forest brochures as the narrative gradually reveals who shot whom under what circumstances. An entertaining, tongue-in-cheek tale of people who are the adults, after all. —Michele Leber
Booklist
A very bad idea for a holiday vacation turns out even worse than expected for a bunch of Brits.… A bit too heavily staged, but with good dialogue and some nice farcical moments.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE ADULTS … then take off on your own:
1. How would you classify this novel: as a comedy of manners, a bedroom farce, a suspense novel, or a domestic drama? All of the above, none of the above, or something else entirely?
2. Author Caroline Hulse has said that she draws inspiration for her characters by watching how professional poker players (she is one) react under pressure. (See the Author Bio above). Where in The Adults do you find evidence of people behaving when they're not at their best?
3. Why has Matt not been forthright with Alex regarding the breakup of his and Claire's marriage? What do you think of his lack of honesty? How do you see Alex's reaction?
4. Is there one character out of the bunch (let's exclude Scarlett for now) that you approve of—one more sympathetic than others? Who, in your opinion, behaves worse than the others—someone whom you have little or no sympathy for?
5. What do Claire and Patrick see in one another? Same question for Alex and Matt.
6. (Follow-up to Question 5) What are the fault lines exposed in the novel's relationships? When do you begin to detect them?
7. (Follow-up to Question 4) Consider Scarlett. What is her role in all of this? And what about Posey?
8. Discuss, of course, the delicious irony of the book's title. Same goes for the name of the park, Happy Forest.
9. What are your predictions for the characters? What do you think will happen to them, say, in the fairly near future?
10. The book's narrative is interspersed with police interviews and excerpts from the Happy Forest brochure. How did that interruptive technique affect your reading? Did it enhance or detract from your experience?
11. Does anything good result from the holiday?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Watching You
Lisa Jewell, 2018
Atria Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501190070
Summary
A suspenseful page-turner about a shocking murder in a picturesque and well-to-do English town.
Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Bristol, England; home to doctors and lawyers and old-money academics. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens.
But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you.
As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man.
Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.
One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.
Meanwhile, twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, charting her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam...
In Lisa Jewell’s latest brilliant "bone-chilling suspense" (People) no one is who they seem—and everyone is hiding something.
Who has been murdered—and who would have wanted one of their neighbors dead? As "Jewell teases out her twisty plot at just the right pace" (Booklist, starred review), you will be kept guessing until the startling revelation on the very last page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 19, 1968
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Epsom School of Art & Design
• Awards—Melissa Nathan Award For Comedy Romance
• Currently—lives in London, England
Lisa Jewell is a British author of popular fiction. Her books number some 15, including most recently The House We Grew Up In (2013), The Third Wife (2014), The Girls in the Garden (U.S. title of 2016), I found You (2016), and Watching You (2018).
She was educated at St. Michael's Catholic Grammar School in Finchley, north London, leaving school after one day in the sixth form to do an art foundation course at Barnet College followed by a diploma in fashion illustration at Epsom School of Art & Design.
She worked in fashion retail for several years, namely Warehouse and Thomas Pink.
After being made redundant, Jewell accepted a challenge from her friend to write three chapters of a novel in exchange for dinner at her favourite restaurant. Those three chapters were eventually developed into Jewell's debut novel Ralph's Party, which then became the UK's bestselling debut novel in 1999.
Jewell is one of the most popular authors writing in the UK today, and in 2008 was awarded the Melissa Nathan Award For Comedy Romance for her novel 31 Dream Street.
She currently lives in Swiss Cottage, London with her husband Jascha and two daughters. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/22/2016.)
Book Reviews
[A] spine-tingling thriller… Lisa Jewell’s gripping novel Watching You unravels a tangled web of rumors—and a shocking twist.
Real Simple
Big Little Lies-esque small town drama with stakes as high as Amy from Gone Girl's IQ, Lisa Jewell's latest thriller is not to be missed.
InStyle
This suspense is going to have you turning the pages all night long.
Bustle
Eerie and bone-chilling…this page turner surprises and stuns.
Woman's World Magazine
[T]he people watching Tom… [are] the novel’s weakest link, since their respective obsessions remain baffling and at times border on the tedious. That said, prepare to be blindsided…. Jewell does a masterly job of maintaining suspense.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review)The novel… alternates between the past leading up to the killing and the ongoing police investigation.… Jewell weaves a taut multiperspective, domestic/community suspense story that is sure to please fans of Ruth Ware and A.J. Finn. —Susan Moritz, Silver Spring, MD
Library Journal
(Starred Review) Jewell teases out her twisty plot at just the right pace, leaving readers on the edge of their seats.… Her multilayered characters are sheer perfection, and even the most astute thriller reader won’t see where everything is going until the final threads are unknotted.
Booklist
Jewell adeptly weaves together a complex array of characters… and deftly maintains its intensity and brisk pace.… [A] third-person narration allows her to explore each family's anxieties and… makes the ending all the more unsettling.… Engrossing and haunting.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Watching You begins with a diary excerpt from 1996. How does this passage set the tone for the novel? Now that you’ve finished reading, who do you think wrote it?
2. Lisa Jewell includes a number of red herrings that lead the reader to one suspicion and then another. What were some of the red herrings you noticed in the book? Did you fall for them?
3. Early on, we see how Freddie thinks about his surveillance "project": "Freddie was not a voyeur. Voyeurism was a form of control.… He watched girls in order to understand them. He was just trying to work it all out" (p. 38). Do you agree that his intent and motivation in spying is what’s most important? And in our privacy-deprived world (where our information, photos, and even thoughts are often available online), what kind of watching is too much? How do we define an invasion of privacy?
4. Jenna Tripp describes the chat rooms her mother frequents as somewhere "she could go to have her craziness validated" (p. 130). Many people use online communities to form connections and feel less isolated, particularly if they feel misunderstood by those around them. Yet Jenna observes that her mother’s delusions are being exacerbated by talking to people with similar issues. Discuss what makes an insular community (like a chat room) supportive or detrimental. Can it be both?
5. Freddie recollects that his parents taught him not to embrace the diagnosis his doctors had given him because he would "always be so much more than a label" (p. 234). Do you think claiming an identity label, like the one Freddie eventually reclaims, is limiting? Why, or why not?
6. On page 239, Freddie tells Jenna about how his mother accommodates all of his father’s desires, from the food in the house to the temperature on the thermostat. Looking back at this passage with what you now know about their relationship, do you see this in a different light? Why do you think Nicola went to these lengths to bend to Tom’s wishes?
7. The complexities of the marital abuse described in Watching You undermine some of the assumptions we often make about what gives someone power in a relationship. What power dynamics do we see in the various marriages in the novel? How do these fit or defy our expectations?
8. A cult of personality builds around Tom Fitzwilliam, although once disillusioned, Joey wonders what she saw in him. What do you think enables someone to have such a widespread draw? Have you known anyone who amassed that type of adoration in your own life? Are there other examples from popular culture who Tom reminded you of?
9. Considering what the men in her life have told her, Joey wonders if, "while most women spent their lives searching for the perfect man, men sat around waiting to be chosen and then made the best of it" (p. 313). Do you think this is true? Why, or why not?
10. While it is normal for people, and particularly for schoolgirls, to get crushes on someone they shouldn’t become involved with, in Watching You some of these "crushes" appear to be unhealthy. Where is the line between infatuation and obsession? Who are some characters that you think fell on the infatuation side of that line? Who became dangerously obsessed? Looking at examples, what do you think distinguishes them?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Dreamers
Karen Thompson Walker, 2019
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812994162
Summary
An ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep in this mesmerizing novel from the bestselling author of The Age of Miracles.
One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up.
She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.
When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.
Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?
Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life—if only we are awakened to them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—San Diego, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Los Angeles; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Portland, Oregon
Karen Thompson Walker was born and raised in San Diego, California. She is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. In 2011 she received Sirenland Fellowship, as well as a Bomb magazine fiction prize.
A former editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work. Her debut was published in 2012. Her second novel, The Dreamers came out in 2019.
Walker lives with her husband, the novelist Casey Walker, and their two daughters in Portland, Oregon. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon. (Adapated from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred Review) [R]ichly imaginative and quietly devastating.… Walker jolts the narrative with surprising twists, ensuring it keeps its energy until the end. This is a skillful, complex, and thoroughly satisfying novel about a community in peril.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review) [A] science-fiction fairy tale about a mysterious epidemic putting [people] to sleep.… What is the nature of consciousness. What mix of loyalty and love binds individuals…: a few of the questions Walker raises in her provocative, hypnotic tale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. A contagious disease, a quarantined town—the characters in The Dreamers are facing an extreme situation. Our culture is dominated by two opposing narratives about how people respond to disasters: Some believe they bring out the worst in people, others that they bring out the best. How do these possibilities play out in The Dreamers?
2. What do you think of Matthew’s character? Are his actions heroic or heartless? Selfless or self-aggrandizing? Or some combination? Is it ethical to privilege the lives of one’s loved ones over the lives of strangers?
3. How does The Dreamers differ from other books about disaster and dystopia? What does it have in common with those stories?
4. Some of the sick dream of extraordinarily vivid alternate lives. Consider Rebecca, who dreams of an entire lifetime, including a son. Do you think her dreamed-of life is somehow real? Or just a delusion? What about Nathaniel’s extended dream of Henry?
5. Why do you think Karen Thompson Walker chose to feature a large cast of characters instead of focusing on just one person’s experience? How did this choice affect your reading of the book? Did one character resonate with you more than the others?
6. One of the main characters is a college freshman named Mei. How would you describe her personality? How does she change over the course of the novel?
7. The Dreamers includes many parent/child relationships. What do you think of the book’s portrayal of these bonds? How does the crisis affect these relationships?
8. The Dreamers involves a fictitious disease in a fictitious town, but what parallels do you see in today’s real world? How do you think the government would respond to a situation like this if it happened today?
9. How do you feel about the ending of the book? How do you imagine the lives of the surviving characters will look five years into the future? How do you think their experiences during the outbreak will affect the rest of their lives?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Far Field
Madhuri Vijay, 2019
Grove/Atlantic
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802128409
Summary
Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present.
In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir.
Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him.
But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in.
And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.
With rare acumen and evocative prose, in The Far Field Madhuri Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca 1987 ?
• Where—Bangalore, India
• Education—B.A., Lawrence University; M.F.A., Iowa Writer's Workshop
• Awards—Pushcart Prize
• Currently—N/A
Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bangalore, India. She is a graduate of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she majored in English and psychology. Nearly ready to accept her admission to a psych graduate program at the Northwestern University, she changed her mind and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and a recipient of the Henfield Prize.
Vijay’s writing has received a Pushcart Prize (for her short story "Lorry Raja,") as well as a 30-Below Prize from Narrative Magazine, and has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative, and Salon, among other publications. (Bio adapted from various onsite sources.)
Book Reviews
In Madhuri Vijay’s exquisite debut novel, grief propels a young woman to northern India, where she seeks answers about her mother’s past. She meets people and communities constantly on the brink of political violence, upending her assumptions about herself and her country.
Elle
Vijay provides that alchemical mix of political examination with personal journey that deepens all great novels. The Far Field plays out along the Indian/Kashmir border and follows a young woman's awakening into the dark realities of her family and her country. As an added bonus, her mother is one of the most memorable characters in contemporary literature. At times brutal, but always tuned to the desperately sweet longing for human connection, Vijay has created a necessary and lovely work that transcends 2018!
Brian Lampkin - Southern Living
A ghastly secret lies at the heart of Madhuri Vijay’s stunning debut, The Far Field, and every chapter beckons us closer to discovering it.… The Far Field chafes against the useless pity of outsiders and instead encourages a much more difficult solution: cross-cultural empathy.
Madeline Day - Paris Review
(Starred Review) Vijay’s remarkable debut novel is an engrossing narrative of individual angst played out against political turmoil in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state in the late 2000s.… [This] stunning debut novel expertly intertwines the personal and political.
Publishers Weekly
[A] young woman in search of herself.… Narrating Shalini's journey in chapters that alternate between past and present and utilizing strong characterizations throughout, Vijay has crafted an engaging, suspenseful, and impressive debut. —Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
Library Journal
(Starred Review) Vijay intertwines her story's threads with dazzling skill. Dense, layered, impossible to pin—or put—down, her first novel is an engrossing tale of love and grief, politics and morality.… [A] triumphant, transporting debut.
Booklist
[The] epic length sets up expectations of equally immersive political history, and here the storytelling is cloudier, staffed with cliched characters.… [Still,] the author's elegant, calm prose and intense evocations of people and places come into their own. A striking debut.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE FAR FIELD ... then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Shalini? She is often oblivious to the injustices around her: is she uncaring or naive… or what?
2. What role does Shalini's privileged position play in how she behaves and reacts to life's events?
3. Shalini's mother seems to suffer from mental illness: any thoughts as to a diagnosis? Talk about the way that she shaped Shalini's life? At what point does Shalini come to realize the impact her mother has had on her? How does that realization affect her?
4. Although never explained, why do you think Shalini is so intent on finding Bashir Ahmed? What does he represent to Shalini? What was Ahmed's relationship with her mother… and, perhaps, with Shalini herself?
5. During her time in Kishtwar, Shalini savors her life with the Muslim couple who takes her in. She feels at east with the family and "amongst the objects of their life," even pretending "they were mine." Why is she so smitten with the family? How is she so blind to the devastating consequences of her actions?
6. Amina is a vital character in this novel. How would you describe her. What do you make of her treatment at the hands of those around her?
7. (Follow-up to Question 6) Amina offers genuine friendship to Shalini; how does Shalini respond to Amina's offer?
8. Talk about the novel's portrait of the ongoing political/ethnic conflict? Is one faction more responsible for the violence, or are both sides equally culpable? What hope, if any, exists for a solution: what would a solution require?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)