Rodrigues, Carmen. The Universal Laws of Marco.

NY: Simon & Schuster, 2-19.

This isn’t an especially long young adult novel, only a bit more than 300 pages, yet it feels two or three times longer than that. And not because it’s boring or difficult but simply because there’s just so much story stuffed in there. The setting is a blue-collar neighborhood in Miami (where everyone has a gravel driveway) and the young characters are all various combinations of Caribbean, Black, and Hispanic, except for one girl was was adopted from China by a Jewish couple. There are four of them, two guys and two girls, and they make up “the squad,” and they behave like a second family for each other/ (And for a couple of them, its really their only functioning family.)

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Le Carré, John. Silverview.

NY: Viking, 2021.

Le Carré (whose real name was David Cornwell) published more than two dozen novels in his long career, most of them having to do with spies and the activities of the British Secret Service during the Cold War and after, and I’ve read every one of them, beginning with the publication of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, when I was in college in 1964. He has been one of my “automatic” authors ever since, and this is his last book, completed just before his death less than a year ago at the age of 89. He grew up in the space between the elite gentleman’s world of public schools and the University of Bern and the London underworld (his father was a con man and an associate of the Kray twins), and all those experiences came out in his books, aided by his absolute mastery of English prose.

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Lippmn, Laura. After I’m Gone.

NY: Morrow, 2014.

Lippmann is a very capable and reliable purveyor of mystery thrillers, all of them set in and around her native Baltimore. She began twenty years ago with the “Tess Monaghan” series, which runs to a dozen volumes about a journalist turned private investigator, but in recent years she seems to have switched to standalone novels in the subgenre known as “tart noir” and has won a number of awards doing it. Her twentieth novel is based pretty closely on a real-life Baltimore gambling entrepreneur convicted of fraud in the 1970s who disappeared while his case was on appeal, never to be seen hide nor hair of again, and who left behind his wife (here called Bambi) and three young daughters.

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Silvera, Adam. They Both Die at the End.

NY: HarperCollins, 2017.

Okay. Imagine a world that’s just like the one we live in now, except that there’s an app you can download to your phone that will send you you a very loud alert just after midnight on the day you will die — and with 100% accuracy. Death-Cast doesn’t know exactly when that will be, or under what circumstances — doesn’t matter whether you’re dying slowly of cancer at an advanced age or whether you’re a toddler about to be hit by a meteor — but they know you won’t be alive twenty-four hours from now. And imagine the effect such knowledge would have on society — especially in the lives of teenagers, who haven’t really had the chance to live much yet.

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Hornby, Nick. Juliet, Naked.

NY: Riverhead Books, 2009.

“They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.” That’s the sort of eye-raising opening sentence one comes to expect of Nick Hornby, but to be fair, the author goes back to his musical roots with this engaging novel and the public toilet in question has an important place in the history of modern music. Sort of. It’s important to those few fans who care about the life and art of Tucker Crowe, a rock musician who never quite made the big time — only a couple of his songs are still remembered by anyone, really — and who abruptly quit the business without explanation (publicly, anyway) and vanished in 1986 after a brief visit to that toilet while on tour.

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Hoang, Helen. The Bride Test.

NY: Berkley/Jove, 2019.

This is actually the middle volume of the sort-of trilogy that began with Hoang’s first novel, The Kiss Quotient, so I’ve read the second and third volumes out of order — but it hardly matters. Each volume stands alone, though all three are so very similar in character and plot, it’s difficult to remember which incidents belong to which book. The male protagonist this time is Khai, the younger brother of Quan (who is the featured character in the third book). He’s twenty-six, Vietnamese-American, a very successful Bay Area tax accountant, and he’s autistic. The female lead is My, who makes ends meet as a hotel cleaner in Ho Chi Minh City, helping to support her young daughter, mother, and grandmother. Then Khai’s mother, who owns a restaurant back in San Francisco, turns up to interview potential wives for Khai. She takes a fancy to My and offers her a paid summer in America and the opportunity to convince her younger son that she’s the one for him. And My accepts, changing her name to “Esme” in the process.

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Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway.

NY: Viking, 2021.

Towles has made quite a name for himself with his first two novels and this new one is certain to further enhance his reputation. All three are quite different sorts of stories, too, the only thing they have in common being that they’re set at earlier periods in the 20th century. Rules of Civility was about a young woman coming to adulthood in the late ‘30s in New York City, while A Gentleman in Moscow told the story of an old man under house arrest in a hotel following the Bolshevik Revolution, but this one covers a much broader swath of territory.

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Osman, Richard. The Man Who Died Twice.

NY: Viking, 2021.

Osman’s first novel, The Thursday Murder Club, was hugely popular, and justifiably so. I’m happy to say this second account of the Club’s adventures may be even better. The four members of the Club, which meets in the Jigsaw Puzzle Room of the upscale Coopers Chase retirement community in Kent, include Elizabeth, ex-MI-5, and the ringleader of the group; Ron, a gruff but softhearted labor organizer who revels in pissing off anyone in authority; Ibrahim, an Egyptian-born psychotherapist and general nerd who has always lived a very careful life and now rather regrets it; and Joyce, a grandmotherly but very astute retired nurse whose diary entries are a hoot and a half.

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Hoang, Helen. The Heart Principle.

NY: Berkley/Jove, ,2021.

This is one of the two sequels to the author’s debut novel, The Kiss Quotient, and it’s very similar to that one in characters types and plotline — too much so, really. Of the two main characters, it’s obvious to the reader that Anna Sun is on the autistic spectrum, though it takes her a while to discover that for herself, and Quan Diep (the best friend and business partner of the male lead in the first book) is a lovable hunk. Except this time, Anna is a concert violinist instead of a near-genius econometrician, and she’s having problems with her music.

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Parker, K. J. Colours in the Steel.

NY: Little, Brown, 1998.

I first discovered Parker a (which is Tom Holt’s nom de fantasy) with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, which was both a hoot and a beautifully thought-out and fascinatingly detailed adventure. Then I found his “Two of Swords” trilogy, which was even better. This one is the first volume of the “Fencer” trilogy, one of his earlier works, and it’s also very good. And when I say “fantasy,” don’t think Tolkien, think Joe Abercrombie, because Parker doesn’t do magic or elves or any of that. His stories involve only humans but are set in a somewhat different sort of world. (His trilogies, of which there are several others, are also rather long, more than 1,500 pages each, so be sure you set aside the time.)

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