Kris: I’ve been off traveling recently.

Betty: Me, too!

K: Let me be clear. I was in a car.

B: Let me be clear, too. I was on my couch. Where did you go?

K: I had a fantastic time touring the south-central United States, including Memphis, Jackson, Vicksburg, and Little Rock.

B: Awesome, but did you read?

K: Of course. In fact, I read “Desperation Road” by Mississippi author Michael Farris Smith.

B: When in Rome …

K: Exactly! And the atmosphere of “Desperation Road” was hot and humid – just as the actual weather was in Mississippi. Russell Gaines has been paroled after serving 11 years in a drunk-driving accident that killed a teen boy. He’s met at the bus stop and beaten up by the boy’s brothers, and Russell knows that at least one of the brothers isn’t going to rest until Russell or he dies. The other storyline features Maben, who has walked back to her hometown with her young daughter in tow. Life hasn’t dealt Maben any favors, and then things get worse: She is kidnapped by a deputy sheriff, and she ends up killing him in order to save herself. Russell and Maben have a connection, and together they try to surmount the violence that has defined their lives.

B: That sounds really gripping.

K: Yes, and the ending brought tears to my eyes. Getting back to our travel theme, you certainly can go places in a book.

B: Thank you. Close your eyes. No, open them and keep reading. There’s an ivy-covered English manor house overlooking topiary gardens and apple orchards; there’s a pool. Summertime: hot, with the humming sounds of insects, dragonflies, and butterflies aloft in the breeze. And four sisters are dragging a body across the lawn.

K: Wait. What?!

B: I know! I can’t recommend “The Wildling Sisters” by Eve Chase highly enough. I loved her “Black Rabbit Hall” last year. This is her newest: first loves, sisters, a missing cousin, more. I guess the only fault I’d pick is that it flashed back to the good old days of the ’50s. Seriously? Now that’s the good old days?

K: Perspective. It’s all perspective. And speaking of perspective, I loved the narrator’s viewpoint in “Goodbye, Vitamin” by Rachel Khong. As the book begins, Ruth has returned home for the holidays because her boyfriend broke up with her and her father has dementia. Her mother asks her to stay and help for a year, and the reader follows the story through Ruth’s diary entries. Ruth’s memories are funny and touching, and this family drama has taken the lead for the best book I’ve read so far this year.

B: Best book. That is a high recommendation. So I started this book, “Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore” by Matthew Sullivan, thinking it was going to be cool, a mystery set in a Denver bookstore. It opened in the bookstore (awesome already), and there’s a sudden death, so OK, that’s what I signed on for. Then. Then there are a couple of lines about a hammer (a really scary hammer), and suddenly this is a whole new thing. You remember when you were a kid, playing outside, and you flipped over a rock not realizing that something multi-legged might run out, making you apprehensive and also fascinated? Well, I just got a chill when I read that and knew there was another layer going on with this mystery and it was going to be good – a little scary but good. 

K: Now I got a chill. And …

B: There isn’t just one death.

K: Still chilling here.

B: Lydia has been hiding in plain sight all her life because of something that happened when she was a child. She works in a bookstore. She and the staff and the regulars are a kind of family. When one of the regular patrons dies in the first chapter, it sets her on a search for why, which leads her to examine her own life. For a first novel, I thought it was a very clever mystery.

K: That sounds good.

B: I thought so. That being said, it also was sad. I’ve been noticing that book reviewers are warning readers of possible triggers. So: possible triggers.

K: Anywhere else that you want to talk about?

B: Oh, um, Norway?

K: Come on!

B: My couch goes many places. And it makes time shifts, too.

K: Norway, really?

B: Not kidding.

K: Well, let’s see where our reading takes us next.