This Is Where I Leave You

This Is Where I Leave You (2009) by Jonathan Tropper. With genuine insight into human emotions, Tropper writes about the dysfunctional Foxman family. Judd Foxman has just found his wife in bed with another man, and his father has recently died. He goes home to sit Shiva with his mother and three siblings, and they find themselves in a pressure-cooker of old resentments and new problems. It's a wise, wonderfully well-written book, and I enjoyed it immensely. Grade: A

A Bad Day for Sorry

A Bad Day for Sorry (2009) by Sophie Littlefield. Grrrl-power chick lit, except the grrrl in question is a fifty-something woman from a rural Missouri town. Her name is Stella Hardesty, and she dispenses rough justice to wife-beaters and woman-mistreaters everywhere -- but especially in her corner of the Midwest. She operates outside of the law, which makes her crush on Sheriff Goat Jones a little problematic. In this book, she finds herself clashing with organized crime as she tries to help a young lady retrieve her dad-napped baby. It's fairly entertaining to read, but it does strain the bounds of credulity. Grade: B

Blame

Blame (2009) by Michelle Huneven. Patsy MacLemoore, a young, vibrant alcoholic, wakes up in jail after a two-day blackout. She can't remember what happened, but the evidence is strong: Pulling into her driveway, her car has run over and killed a mother and child. Because Patsy has a prior record of driving while intoxicated, and because her license is revoked, the judge sentences her to state prison. This book tells the riveting account of her life during and after prison, of becoming sober, finding a husband, and making a life for herself while living with the guilt of having killed two people. But there is more to the book than that; the story takes an unexpected twist that changes everything, and calls into question all the assumptions she has made. It's a well told tale, one which grabs and holds the reader's interest throughout. I liked it a lot. Grade: A

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2006) by Stieg Larsson. Lisbeth Salander from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" returns, this time as a free agent, self-employed, who gets accused of murder because she's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is also back, but he's not the central character in the book this time. Larsson's take on the thriller, Sweden-style, has just about everything you could ask for -- action, intrigue, duplicity, sex, corruption. It's fast-moving, and even at 500 pages is a relatively quick read. I look forward to reading the third book in the trilogy. Grade: A-