The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

In a return to modern Salem, Brunonia Barry's latest starts with a Halloween death, which sets afire rumors and speculation about witchcraft and occult. Callie, the daughter of a woman murdered 25 years earlier, returns to town amidst the media coverage connecting the tragedies.

Everybody's obsessed all over again with the "Goddess Murders" from 25 years ago: Three women died violently, a child was orphaned, and a respected local scholar required institutionalization for years due to mental upset. The crime was never solved, and it seems to be related to the current death.

Add in a love story or two, some strong personal demons to conquer, and a maybe-mystical-or-maybe-bunk storyline and this is a rich, complex story.

You don't have to have read Barry's other books to enjoy this one - although if you've read The Lace Reader or The Map of True Places you'll recognize the local citizenry.

My Brother's Husband (Volume 1) by Gengoroh Tagame

A Japanese father is forced to deal with his emotions about his twin brother when a large Canadian man arrives at his door, introducing himself as the now-deceased brother's husband.

This was a quick, fun book that dealt lightly with some heavy emotions. Through his young daughter's enthusiasm for life, Yaichi gradually comes to terms with his memories of Ryoji's coming out and his feelings about his gay brother-in-law Mike. 

Traditional Japanese social rigidity limits any adult show of emotion, and Ryoji is sometimes jealous of Mike's ability to hug Kana at will and to openly cry and express his grief. Kana's buoyant excitement in discovering she has an uncle to introduce to her friends and show around town acts as a catalyst for the two men's friendship.

There's obviously more to the story, and I'll be interested to read more about these complex characters. 

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

After meeting in a college art class, Sharon and Mel(ody) become inseparable, their lives absolutely intertwined as they start their own animation company, drink and smoke, work, and even live together in the studio. Just as they're becoming legitimate stars, an unexpected emergency derails everything.

The book's about creative energy and inspiration, and it's about friendship and how close two people can be and still not really see one another. These women mine their personal lives to make intimate, biographical films, but not everyone is estatic to find themselves part of the movies.

I loved this book - they're self-absorbed, self-destructive artists in the prime of their lives. But they're forced into a delayed adulthood that ultimately expands their perspective and their work. It's sometimes hard to watch them sleepwalk through life with such oblivion - hard to watch because it's easy to recognize yourself in these characters.

Old Records Never Die: One Man's Quest for His Vinyl and His Past by Eric Spitznagel

Sure, it's crazy. But Eric Spitznagel decided he didn't just want to recreate his long-gone vinyl music collection - he wanted the EXACT records back. The one with his first girlfriend's phone number on the cover, and the one sporting his brother's threatening note about not borrowing it. The ones will all the familiar, unique pops, skips and scratches.

It's really nuts. But also a little understandable - it's a modern midlife crisis, right?

Spitznagel is funny and that's what makes this doomed quest bearable. He's got a real way with words, and there were times I laughed out loud at his descriptions. And yet there were other times I was physically uncomfortable with his mania - I got embarrassed for him when he was too blinded to realize how dumb he was acting.

There's some language in this book (you were warned), but it's the way guys this age really talk when they're telling you their best stories. It's really a good book, and the audiobook narration by Ramiz Monsef was spot-on.

The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire

Working in the sea deep below a Canadian oil rig, welder Jack Joseph knows his job: focus on the weld, hold a steady hand. But one day he sees something from the corner of his mask and everything begins to unravel.

He's brought up to the surface, revived, and sent home early from his stint aboard the rig. Going home should be a blessing because Jack's wife Susie is on the verge of giving birth, but Jack's restless to discover what he saw in the deep water outweighs his impending fatherhood.

This black-and-white graphic novel shows through flashbacks and some time travel trickery how Jack's grief for his missing father is affecting his joy for the birth of his own son. In the introduction there's reference to the TV show the Twilight Zone - which is really how this story feels.

It's bleak and sad, but also told very well.

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

Inside and outside his urban Washington, D.C. grocery store, an Ethiopian refugee watches the neighborhood shift and change around him. Sepha is haunted by his past and frozen in place, unable to move or act in his ill-fitting, lonely American life.

In this literary novel by an Ethiopian-born American author, the themes of loss, friendship, and the American dream make for a rather sad, yearning tale. Nonetheless, it's beautifully done - filled with thoughtful characters and gorgeous prose.

Sepha's life, the store, and, in fact the whole city decay before his wise, analytical gaze, but he takes no actions to forestall their decline. He awkwardly makes friends with a young new neighbor and there's romantic tension with her mother, but again these interactions require actions - enthusiasm, even - that Sepha can't muster.

This would be an awesome book for discussion, and the more diverse the group, the richer: There's a lot to discuss in the way Sepha wanders his neighborhood and ponders its residents, and his African immigrant friends and their war-themed mind games could be quite a conversation in itself.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The Cooke family was irretrievably broken by something that happened years ago. And while Rosemary would like to tell you about what happened when she was five years old, she's going to have to come at it in her own way - from the middle out, and perhaps with the beginning at the end.

The story begins in the middle with Rosemary in college, the only child left in her family and anonymous at a school far from her hometown. She's proud that no one here knows about her sister or her brother, and she's decided to purposefully not speak about her family. See, the Cookes were a close-knit family until Fern left: but the FBI is hunting older brother Lowell as a domestic terrorist, dad drinks too much, and their mother's psyche is full of fissures. What happened to Fern?

Rosemary's memory is spotty (she was just a child), and we'll learn the story as she remembers it, one bit, one crisis, and one discomfort at a time.

I loved this book, and sometimes forgot it's fiction - it reads like the kind of pain-filled autobiography that is popular to press.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

In this twisty mystery, a suburban London neighborhood churns with private dramas after a woman goes missing. Three women - and two timelines - converge into one unexpected climax.

Every day, the train stops or slows at the same signal - right behind the house where Rachel lived with her now-ex-husband. Her life's not so great, and it's a small pleasure to make up domestic stories in her head about one set of neighbors who she glimpses almost every day. Then one day she sees the woman kissing another man. The next day, the headlines indicate that same woman is now missing without a trace.

Critics love to say a book is hard to put down, but that really is the case sometimes; this story hooked me early with a narrative peek into the private lives of these women. Chapters alternate between Rachel, her ex's new wife Anna, and the missing woman (from a year prior). I consumed the book over a weekend, and will be recommending it to fans of domestic suspense.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Without fail, Cadence Sinclair Easton spends every summer on her grandfather's island off Martha's Vineyard with her aunts and cousins. There are four big kids alike in age: Cadence, Johnny, Mirren, and family friend Gat. They swim, read, flirt, canoe, avoid the "littles," explore, and talk the summers away.

But something happened on the island the summer the big kids were 15, Cadence was instead sent to Europe for summer 16, and only after a tantrum is she allowed a short 4-week island stay in this summer 17. She's got mega-migraines, complete amnesia of summer 15, and everyone is under strict orders to not answer her questions or tell her anything about what happened.

So what happened? From the start we know we've got an unreliable narrator - the book is named "We Were Liars," she's got holes in her memory, and it sometimes takes a while to determine when Cadence's stories shift into elaborately embroidered metaphor. I spent the whole book looking for answers and hidden meanings and lies - and yet, I still was blindsided when the truth was revealed.

I finished the audiobook today, and I'm starting right back over again from the beginning tomorrow with the paper copy of the book; I have to go back and do it all over again, now that I KNOW.

And I have NEVER said that before! Amazing.

The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

One day on the beach in San Francisco, a six-year-old child disappears. Her watcher, the father's fiance and our narrator, looks away from Emma for a moment, and the girl simply vanishes.

Abby spends every moment of the next months trying to remember, trying to find a clue, and trying to find Emma. When hope is lost, Abby soldiers on. When Jake gives up and holds a funeral, Abby attends but then continues looking. But in constantly searching for Emma is Abby losing herself?

This book is agonizing at times - Abby really does lose it for a while. Her continual looping of the city, the count of days missing, the fliers and the questions all wear you down as a reader until it's easy to see the claustrophobic emotions of losing a child.

I listened to the audiobook version read by Carrington MacDuffie, and I sometimes found it hard to listen to - it's a heartbreaking scenario. But I also understand that dragging you through Abby's hell (and every parent's nightmare) makes the emotional journey more real to us as readers.

In the end, I enjoyed the book, which was recommended to me by members of our book discussion. They each raved about the writing and the story. And you do certainly learn a bit about memory, photography, and surfing through Abby's quest!

Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Is love enough, or does it take more to make a marriage work?

When a chance at her dream job interferes with Christmas, sitcom-writer Georgie's husband and kids go on to Omaha without her. That leaves her free to work - or does it mean that Neal just left her? Everybody's got their own theory.

Which all leaves Georgie a bit out-of-sorts. Neal's not answering his phone, her battery's gone kaput, and her Mom wants her to come over for a sympathy dinner. Georgie finally reaches Neal's mother's house in Omaha from her old bedroom at her mom's house, but something seems ... off.

This adult novel by YA wundkind Rowell is a fluffy bit of fiction with the kind of real-world, flawed and relatable characters she does so well. Georgie's certainly not perfect - but do you have to be perfect to deserve love?

Rainbow Rowell's books make me want to curl up in a quilted cloud and get lost, uninterrupted until I've turned the final page. 2013 was certainly the year her star exploded, but I think so far we've only seen the tip of her talent's enormous iceburg.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

If you have a book club, you should read this book; it's very powerful, a quick read, and you CERTAINLY want to talk about it when you're done.

Alice is a professional at the prime of her life when she starts noticing memory lapses. She's concerned enough to seek out her doctor - but not concerned enough to tell her husband. After a battery of questions, tests, and scans the diagnosis is early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice is 50, and her life is about to change.

The book is told from Alice's point of view, but the reader acts as an omniscient observer. This means you see Alice innocently repeat herself or make mistakes - and you understands the progression of her disease better than she does - even though you're inside her head.

The book gives a fresh perspective (the victim's) on Alzheimer's disease, plus it's beautifully written and extremely thought-provoking. What would I do in the same situation? What would I do if this was my spouse/child/friend/coworker? How is my forgetting where I left my keys different from Alzheimer's?

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

Told as memories of an old man tying up loose ends in preparation for the end of his life, this book is a story of friendship, loyalty, pride, and honor.

Mixed-race teen Philip Hutton doesn't feel he fits in anywhere - with his full-English siblings and father, with his full-Chinese relatives, or anywhere else on the island of Penang. Then, a raw, strong connection forms with the Japanese diplomat who's renting land from Philip's father; a friendship that will define the rest of his life.

Similar in tone to "Memoirs of a Geisha" or "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," the book is written with poetic language and florid descriptions of a culture, sites, and lifestyle that are truly foreign to most westerners. The author works hard to illustrate the traditions of honor and face that are so important to the characters, to show how they influence every decision they make.

I enjoyed the book, but it's not a fast read. Several times I went to the internet to look up maps, objects and even words for a better, more thorough understanding of the book. (Book club is discussing this one tonight, and I'm curious to see what they thought.)

Life Sentences by Laura Lippman

Cassandra Fallows has made a career of mining her own life for nonfiction book subjects. Unfortunately, she's run out of stories - and her first attempt at fiction was a bomb. So when she discovers that a childhood acquaintance was at the center of a major crime drama in her hometown, she decides that her own tangental relationship to this woman would make a GREAT BOOK!

Calliope plead the fifth, and went to jail for it - she's never spoken a word about what happened to her baby. But Cassandra is sure that she'll be able to root out the truth for her next bestseller. But in researching, interviewing, and attempting to rekindle old relationships, Cassandra finds much more than Calliope's story; she may actually find her own.

I thought this book was interesting, but a little weak at times. Earlier this year I read another mystery about an writer (The Truth Hurts), and sometimes these books had too much in common for me. There wasn't much suspense - the revelation was a bit anticlimactic - but overall it was a decent read.