design for dying renee patrick
It’s no account that the Seattle breadth is a axis of accomplished abomination writers. Here are some new offerings:
Candace Robb, best accepted for her books about medieval spy Owen Archer, is aback with addition adventure set in beforehand times: “The Service of the Dead”(Pegasus, 256 pp., $25.95). Kate Clifford is a added in York, England, that axis of 14th-century-style political intrigue. She’s bent to accomplish her way, admitting dangers and obstacles that accommodate annihilation at her guesthouse.
As with Robb’s added books, “Service” is affluent in accurate actual detail and active characters. The annihilation at Kate’s guesthouse, and the aspersion that threatens to appear from it, are set adjoin agitation pitting the supporters of Richard II adjoin Henry Bolingbroke for England’s throne. (Spoiler alert: I’d bet on Henry.)
Author appearance: Candace Robb will apprehend from and assurance “The Service of the Dead” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 24, at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park; chargeless (206-366-3333 or thirdplacebooks.com).
Ashley Ream’s “The 100 Year Miracle” (Flatiron, 320 pp., $26.99) is an arresting adventure with an arresting premise. For six canicule every century, the amnion about a baby San Juan island afterglow eerily. Biochemist Rachel Bell, belief the microorganisms that actualize the phenomenon, discovers article continued accepted to anyone steeped in Native-American folklore: that the afterglow cures abrasion and illness.
Bell sees this immediate — it relieves the acute affliction she’s had back childhood, as able-bodied as the degenerative affection of a disabled bounded man. But astriction mounts as Bell hits a deadline: she has alone a few canicule to assay the abstruse force afore it disappears for addition century.
Author appearance: Ashley Ream will apprehend from and assurance “The 100 Year Miracle” at 7 p.m. Monday, May 23, at the Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., Seattle; chargeless (206- 624-6600 or elliottbaybook.com).
Mary Daheim never met a pun she didn’t like — attestant “Here Comes the Bribe” (Morrow, 304 pp., $23.99), the latest in her alternation about innkeeper Judith McMonigle Flynn.
Daheim is a accoutrement for funny names, too. Take the new guests, Rodney and Millie Schmuck. Rodney seems like an OK guy until he makes a abruptness announcement: he’s Judith’s long-lost son. This is big account to Judith, who — as far as she recalls — has never accustomed birth. As in all of Daheim’s books, actively funny aerial jinks ensue.
“Design for Dying”(Forge, 318 pp., $24.99) is a absorbing and communicative tale, set in 1930s-era Hollywood, by Renee Patrick (a pseudonym for Rosemarie and Vince Keenan). Lillian Frost is a boutique salesgirl and ambitious extra whose ex-roommate has been murdered. The victim was begin cutting a clothes created by apparel artist Edith Head, who in this book has yet to become the Hollywood figure she was in absolute life.
Lillian is a suspect, and for the account of her career Edith wants to avoid any awful scandal, so the two aggregation up to break the crime. Along the way, affluence of added real-life abstracts pop up. Paging Miss Stanwyck and Mr. Hope!
Gregg Olsen’s“The Girl on the Run” (Polis, 288 pp., $18.95) is the abounding author’s aboriginal young-adult novel, and it’s a alarming doozy of a story. Rylee is a jailbait who grew up on the move and off the grid. Her ancestors has been ambuscade beneath assorted affected identities for years, acknowledgment to article absolutely bad that happened in her mom’s past.
This invented activity seems appealing accustomed to Rylee — until her stepfather is atrociously murdered and her mother has disappeared. Rylee flees the arena with her adolescent brother in tow, proving to be scarily advanced about accepting out of a assumption of jams — she’s been lying all her life, afterwards all — and about award her mom.
When Rylee discovers the alarming acumen abaft her family’s lifestyle, the annihilation and the disappearance, it’s not for the squeamish. Olsen doesn’t punch bottomward the akin of abandon and alarm that permeates his books for grown-ups.
