Readers who can accept the wildly improbable explanation behind the carnival of crime in Little Compton will find Burgess’...
When his Rhode Island Catholic college realizes he’s transgender, a history professor gets fired from his job just in time to respond to the grandmother who cried wolf once too often.
Maggie Hazard’s phoned her grandson so many times to report imagined emergencies that he lets her latest call go to voicemail. This time the message turns out to be about her discovery of a bloody corpse in the kitchen. After he finally listens to it, David Hazard, who’s just been let go because a required medical form revealed his birth name as Rosalie, packs his overnight kit and heads for Little Compton, the end-of-the-line spit of New England shoreline where his widowed grandmother lives with encroaching dementia. She shows no more signs of wear and tear than usual, but Emma Godfrey, the next-door neighbor who lavished her with care, has been killed by a collision with a frying pan. It looks like an accident caused by the collapse of a shelf full of cookware in Emma’s kitchen, but it’s actually murder, announces Sheriff Billy Dyer. David’s complicated relationship with Billy, who dated and proposed to him before he transitioned, guarantees some initial awkwardness, but soon the two are working together to figure out who killed Emma—and what happened to local celebrity Marcus Rhinegold, who disappeared aboard his yacht shortly after propositioning David and inadvertently revealing that he and his wife, Alicia, nee Crystal Gronkowski, were hiding from the murderous Molinari gang. Even though you’d think that nothing ever happens in Little Compton, David observes tellingly that “The secret to village life is concealment,” and pretty much every single member of the cast turns out to be hiding some remarkably dirty laundry.
Readers who can accept the wildly improbable explanation behind the carnival of crime in Little Compton will find Burgess’ debut strongly evocative of a distinctive place, presented in a compelling first-person voice that manages to be beyond illusions but never cynical.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4642-1022-8
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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