Permission to Enjoy the Guilty Pleasure of Addictive Late-Night Reads

Book Reviews by Sharon L. Shervington

One of the best things about the beach-reading months of July and August is the guilt-free pleasure of reading thrillers far into the night.

One of the best new thrillers this season is The Never List. It’s about two best friends, Sarah and Jennifer, who, after a tragedy in their childhoods, do everything possible to decrease the probability of a recurrence of disaster. To assist them, they create a never list, a list of things they must never do in order to stay safe in the world. But one night while at college, after a party, they break the cardinal rule – never get in the car.

They wake up chained in a dungeon which will be their home for the next three-and-a-half years with two other young women who share their fate, as others have before. One of the girls dies while imprisoned by the sadistic monster holding them captive, who is at the same time outwardly maintaining a semblance of an ordinary life.

Fast forward to the present day where the surviving woman finds the strength to hunt down her tormentor, uncovering a conspiracy that has depth she never could have imagined, and healing relationships that once appeared beyond redemption.

The Never List; Koethi Zan; Viking; $27.95; 303 pages

My favorite new heroine is Vanessa Michael Munroe, a damaged, gender-bending, enthralling protagonist with a unique and deadly skill set: think black ops meets a female Jason Bourne. She has created a niche for herself when the job requires both delicacy and deadly force.

In The Doll, she is kidnapped and tortured and then forced to bring a rising star of the big screen to a client who targets high profile young women to be sold to sex traffickers. Luckily she has a small cadre of dear friends who almost instantly realize she has been taken and pull out all the stops to find her.

From there, the action goes international, uncovering a debauched ring of international sex traffickers. The author’s previous novels in the series, The Informationist and The Innocent, both in paperback, are also highly recommended.

The Doll; Taylor Stevens; Crown; $24; 335 pages

Although the action, pacing, and story lines of Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery make it read like a novel, this is the real life story of a serial killer believed to be still active on Long Island, and his victims, four women from states as far away as Maine and North Carolina who came to New York to make money in online prostitution.

The book opens a window into modern-day prostitution, which uses sites such as Craigslist and Backdoor, to instantly connect service providers and clients in lucrative yet potentially deadly business relationships.

With a compassionate eye for detail, the author explores the fractured lives of the murdered women including childhood abandonment, abuse, molestation, and parental addictions that ultimately led to their own. This sad tale looks at the disposable lives of too many young women, as well as a culture that makes sex for sale ever more easily available, while its anonymity exponentially increases the odds of extreme injury and death for these troubled women.

The second part of the book looks at the discovery of the women’s bones in shallow graves on Long Island and the criminal investigation that still remains open.

Lost Girls: an Unsolved American Mystery;  Robert Kolker; Harper; $25.99; 398 pages

There are also several excellent young adult thrillers this month. Maid of Secrets is one that is highly entertaining. Set primarily at the court of Elizabeth I, the story follows the adventures of one Meg Fellows, an orphan and pick-pocketing actress who is recruited under duress to spy for Queen Elizabeth.

The Spanish court is visiting, and Sir Francis Walsingham and William Cecil are convinced that they are behind a plot to assassinate the queen. Meg is one of five young women chosen to be part of the spy ring shadowing the Spaniards, and each girl has a singular gift.

For Meg that gift is instantly memorizing everything that she sees and hears even to the subtlest shades of intonation and languages that she doesn’t understand. Walsingham and Cecil see her as a talented but disposable tool. Fortunately Meg wins her monarch’s trust, and they save each other. With its romantic underpinnings and cliff-hanger ending, a sequel is likely.

Maid of Secrets; Jennifer McGowan; Simon and Schuster; $16.99; 406 pages

Also highly recommended in a similar vein is The Queen’s Secret, a unique mystery in which the protagonist, Lucy Morgan, is a young black woman whose divided loyalties between Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth nearly prove fatal.

While there were not large numbers of blacks in 16th century England, there was a significant presence, described in books such as Black London, a nonfiction account of a country where slavery was outlawed long before it was in the United States — and without a war.

Tarnish, another young-adult title, is about the early days of Elizabeth I’s mother Anne Boleyn. Though of course we know how it will end, this young Anne, so hungry for love, is hard not to root for. Her father, Thomas Boleyn, has always been a repellent yet fascinating character, willing to pimp his daughters for money, power, and familial gain. In fact, he coldly pits his three children against each other, endangering them all. But when Thomas Wyatt and her brother George hatch a plan to promote the gauche young Anne as a darling of the court, the result is a mixed blessing.

An original retelling of Anne Boleyn’s most hopeful years, this is a delightful read, as is the author’s earlier Gilt.

Tarnish; Katherine Longshore; Viking Children’s; $17.99; 442 pages

Royal Mistress is the story of Jane Lambert, the daughter of a silk merchant during the reign of Edward IV who catches the king’s eye and becomes his longtime mistress.

Because of her generosity to her fellow Londoners, she remains popular even after the king’s demise. Anne Easter Smith has written extensively on the women of both the Houses of Lancaster and York, A Rose for the Crown and Daughter of York are both especially fine.

Royal Mistress; Anne Easter Smith; Touchstone; $16; 486 pages

For an in-depth look at one of the most powerful women of the 20th century, try Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, from Grantham to the Falklands. This extremely detailed and well-researched look at a widely respected and at times vilified female icon and contemporary of Ronald Reagan will appeal to history buffs and anyone interested in those wielding power on the world stage.

Margaret Thatcher: the Authorized Biography, from Grantham to the Falklands; Charles Moore; Knopf; $35; 859 pages

For lovers of magic, and especially those eagerly awaiting the final book in the Discovery of Witches trilogy (which will not be available until next year), The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic is much more than just a placeholder. It tells a story of Nora, a modern woman whose dissertation is stalled and who is having severe romantic problems.

She is on her way to a friend’s wedding when she is thrust into an alternate reality and finds herself enthralled by a magical woman who grants her every wish and who, along with her son, ultimately seems too good to be true. That is a lesson she learns the hard way, and she must build a new life for herself, becoming a magician in her own right, at the same time that she wonders if she will ever see home again.

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker; Viking; $27.95; 563 pages

A unique magical fable can be found in The Golem and the Jinni. The former is a woman of clay brought to life by a magician in the old country while the Jinni, a being of fire from the Syrian Desert, finds his way to New York in an ancient copper flask. The two meet in New York in 1899 and form an unlikely friendship that illuminates a time of poverty-stricken immigrants and robber baron wealth. The book itself is a beautifully designed example of why the tactile stimulation of books in their original state will never go out of style.

The Golem and Jinni; Helene Wecker; Harper; $26.99; 486 pages