MURDER IN G MAJOR

Name: MURDER IN G MAJOR
Author: Alexia Gordon
ISBN: 978-1-635-11057-9

by Alexia Gordon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2016

Readers of Gordon’s charming debut can rest easy about the outcome of the All-County competition. But there’s more honest...

bookshelf

An African-American violinist suddenly stranded in Ireland faces two daunting tasks: preparing the village school’s orchestra for a high-stakes competition they can’t possibly win and solving a pair of murders now celebrating their 25th anniversaries.

Dr. Gethsemane Brown gave it all up—her Dallas apartment, her furniture, her fiance—for a promised appointment as assistant conductor of the Cork Philharmonic. But when the job was given to the music director’s mistress, she settled for a teaching post in tiny Dunmullach, where everyone knows she’s an outsider and everyone knows that Eamon McCarthy, the gifted composer who lived in Carraigfaire Cottage with Orla, his poet wife, threw her off a cliff and took poison himself a generation ago. No sooner has Gethsemane arrived at the cottage, however, than the ghost of Eamon appears to assure her that he got a bad rap and beg her to reopen the case. Since her nominal job is to make her musical charges competitive in the All-County competition, a contest they haven’t won since Eamon died, Gethsemane, eager to curry favor with both a wealthy donor to the school and a high-profile musical judge visiting from Boston, suddenly has plenty on her plate. And that’s even before she begins to make the rounds of villagers as aggressively quaint as Sister Siobhan Moloney, the self-styled village psychic; Jimmy Lynch, the hostile witness who placed Eamon at the murder scene; and magician Nuala Sullivan, who claims to be in contact with Orla (and why not? acknowledges Gethsemane, who knows whereof she speaks).

Readers of Gordon’s charming debut can rest easy about the outcome of the All-County competition. But there’s more honest detection here than you’d expect, even if the murderer, whose career continues into the present, is a disappointingly marginal presence.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-635-11057-9

Page Count: 280

Publisher: Henery Press

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.