The Survivors by Jane Harper - A thriller set in a coastal town in Australia,
The Survivors is about a man who returns along with his family to the town he grew up in. When he was in his teens, a tragic accident took his brother's life, while around the same time, another teen goes missing. Now, years later, a body washes up on the shore...what happened? And is it connected to what happened decades earlier in the small town? I thought this was a good read, with slightly slow but still decent pacing and plenty of good twists and turns. I was guessing right up till the end but the ending was *slightly* disappointing for me because of...reasons (I don't want to spoil anything here, so I can't say more). Still a decent read; I give it a solid B+ and would read more by this author.
The Forgotten Girl by David Bell - A man's estranged sister shows up on his doorstep one day with her teenage daughter in tow and asks him to watch over the girl for 48 hours while she "takes care of some business". But the sister fails to return. What happened...and could it be related to the sister's wild, drink and drug filled youth? Another decent thriller with a slightly better payoff than The Survivors, but I thought the characters in The Survivors were a bit better developed. Same grade: a solid B+ and again, I would read this author again.
Selected Stories of Eudora Welty - Published by Modern Library, this is actually two books in one; the stories here were featured in A Curtain of Green and The Wide Net. I didn't really love ANY of these stories. Ms. Welty writes with a determination to set a scene; plots are nearly non-existent. And...I get it. In a short story, you're not going to have time to develop complex plots and rich backgrounds for multiple characters. But c'mon...a 17 page story about a man in a bus station who drops a key and another man who picks it up? Ms. Welty might have been an "important voice" in American story-telling in the mid 1900s, but her stories aren't my cup of tea. No grade, for that reason, but an amusing story...my 7th grade English teacher was Miss Welty, and for the longest time while reading the short stories of Eudora Welty, I wondered if maybe I was taught by a famous author. But then I dug out my old junior high yearbooks (yes, I still have most of my yearbooks) and saw that, while no first name was given for my former teacher, the "Miss Welty" who taught us was considerably younger than Eudora Welty. Strange...I remember her as a sour old lady <g>. Also strange...there are people who signed my yearbooks with "friends forever!" and I don't even remember them.
