Peachy Reads

Things aren’t always as they seem in this thriller that starts out with the gruesome discovery of a murdered teen in Bath, England.   Police begin an investigation into what they think may be a serial killing, but then things take a different turn.  Many of the characters in this novel harbor secrets—secrets about their childhood, secrets about how they make their living, secrets about money, secrets about what they do in private.   At first there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the seemingly divergent plotlines in the narrative, but in the end it all comes together in a rather clever way.   And the last chapter is a bit of a shocker.   This is not your typical psychopath-run-amok Mo Hayder novel.  Some may not like its pacing and the different directions the investigation seems to take, with lots of deadends, but I thought it gave it more realism.

Jeannette Walls’s gritty memoir The Glass Castle , an account of her wacky childhood, captured people’s imagination as evidenced by its sustained popularity.  The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 100 weeks and was in constant demand in the library and has been a popular choice for book clubs.  Now a movie is in the works, with Hollywood darling Jennifer Lawrence rumored to head the cast. The glass castle of the title is the fantasy house father Rex Walls promises his family he will build for them one day when luck turns his way.  Luck never does turn his way.  Certainly no glass castle, the reality of what he provides for his family is quite different—a transient life, food shortages,  living in tumbledown houses until the authorities start to sniff around, their father loses his job, or conditions otherwise become so unbearable that the family must move on.  Throughout their childhood of degradation, the Walls children seem to r...