• Mon. Jun 5th, 2023

The best books of the week

Jul 20, 2019

The Other Mrs. Miller
Allison Dickson (fiction, GP Putnam’s Sons)
Phoebe Miller has new neighbors — a welcome distraction for the heiress, who’s been drowning her marital and familial sorrows in ice cream and alcohol. She becomes fast friends with Vicki, who loves a good chat over a glass of wine. But the story behind Vicki’s move doesn’t really add up; there’s something ominous about her husband, and to make matters more complicated, Phoebe finds herself attracted to their Stanford-bound son.

The Expectations
Alexander Tilney (fiction, Little, Brown)
Ben Weeks has just arrived at St. James, the exclusive boarding school his ancestors helped found (it doesn’t hurt that his brother, an alum, was a social legend). Ben’s roommate is Ahmed, son of a rich Emirati sheik, who’s trying to navigate the ins and outs of New England school life.

Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe
Heather Webber (fiction, Forge Books)
Anna Kate has come to Wicklow, Ala., to bury her grandmother, owner of the Blackbird Cafe, and to settle her estate. She’s not interested in getting to know her relatives or spending much time there at all. But despite her best intentions, she is drawn to the place her mother left behind many years ago.

Very Nice
Marcy Dermansky (fiction, Knopf)
Rachel Klein slept with her writing professor at the end of the school year and ends up taking care of his poodle over the summer. Her mother, Becca, is alone in their Connecticut home, having been recently left by Rachel’s father. When the writing professor returns to collect his dog, he winds up becoming their strange new roommate.

Knife (Harry Hole series)
Jo Nesbø (fiction, Knopf)
Harry Hole is not doing well. His girlfriend has ended it with him, and he’s been relegated to the Cold Case division of the Oslo Police Force. When Finne, a serial rapist/murderer Harry helped put behind bars, gets out of prison, Harry is convinced he’s going to take up where he left off.

The Liberation of Paris: How Eisenhower, de Gaulle, and von Choltitz Saved the City of Light
Jean Edward Smith (nonfiction, Simon & Schuster)
In June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France, intending to bypass Paris. Charles de Gaulle urged Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to send forces to liberate Paris, something his staff did not recommend. Concerned about partisan conflict and a potential Communist uprising, Eisenhower decided to help de Gaulle. Meanwhile, German commandant von Choltitz, convinced the war was lost, schemed to leave the city to the Allies intact, defying Hitler’s orders to burn it to the ground.

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