North of Here by Laurel Saville

The sounds of unexpected tragedies—a roll of thunder, the crash of metal on metal—leave Miranda in shock amid the ruins of her broken family.

As she searches for new meaning in her life, Miranda finds quiet refuge with her family’s handyman, Dix, in his cabin in the dark forests of the Adirondack Mountains. Dix is kind, dependable, and good with an ax—the right man to help the sheltered Miranda heal—but ultimately, her sadness creates a void even Dix can’t fill.

When a man from her distant past turns up, the handsome idealist now known as Darius, he offers Miranda a chance to do meaningful work at The Source, a secluded property filled with his nature worshipers. Miranda feels this charismatic guru is the key to remaking her life, but her grief and desire for love also create an opportunity for his deception. And in her desperate quest to find herself after losing almost everything, Miranda and Dix could pay a higher price than they ever imagined.

REVIEW: North of Here by Laurel Saville is an entrancing but unpredictable mystery and suspense thriller set in the enigmatic and perplexing mountains of the Adirondack Park and its environs in upstate New York, which is roughly more than six million acres. Indeed, this stunning beauty of 10,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers, huge tracts of dark forests, countless wetlands, mysterious wildlife, struggling farms, dramatic weather and 46 mountains over 4000 feet is an ideal setting for a story that explores the intertwined lives of four different people from diverse backgrounds who are examining their lives in their quest for meaning, family and love.

Miranda is an immature, self-indulgent young woman from a wealthy Connecticut family with a summer home in the mountains. When her brother and father met with an untimely death, her world turned upside down. Her cup of grief runneth over when her mother died of stroke, leaving her forlorn and broken. She sought refuge in the arms of Dix, who is a dependable local handy-man. Dix encountered problems he was unprepared for. Then there is the self-styled guru, Darius, who runs The Source and who seemingly have finally found his true calling when everything else failed. Miranda is irresistibly drawn to him. The social worker Sally also plays a pivotal role as others are entangled in a web of lies and deceit.

North of Here by Laurel Saville is a captivating story of people searching for healing and redemption in their own different ways. The main characters are well-conceived, and readers will easily empathize these characters who are full of flaws. The central character Miranda’s woes never seemed to end. In her desperation to fill the void in her life Miranda has placed herself in an unenviable situation. I love Dix! Kind and understanding, he was willing to be there for Miranda when she needed him most although he knew her needs were much deeper. In the end, he falls for her, hard and truly. Author Laurel Saville’s story of the fragility and emptiness of life without purpose and meaning, and how people are not quite what they seem, will stay with readers long after the book is shelved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Laurel Saville is the award-winning author of "Henry and Rachel," the memoir "Unraveling Anne" and several other books, as well as numerous articles, essays, and short stories, which have appeared in The Bark, The Bennington Review, House Beautiful, the LA Times Magazine, NYTimes.com, Room and many other publications. Laurel has an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College.

AMAZON PRE-ORDER

Two Exciting Books to Watch Out!

The Hundred-Year Flood

by Matthew Salesses

In the shadow of a looming flood that comes every one hundred years, Tee tries to convince himself that living in a new place will mean a new identity and a chance to shed the parallels between him and his adopted father. This beautiful and dreamlike story follows Tee, a twenty-two-year-old Korean-American, as he escapes to Prague in the wake of his uncle’s suicide and the aftermath of 9/11. His life intertwines with Pavel, a painter famous for revolution; Katka, his equally alluring wife; and Pavel's partner—a giant of a man with an American name. As the flood slowly makes its way into the old city, Tee contemplates his own place in life as both mixed and adopted and as an American in a strange land full of heroes, myths, and ghosts. In the tradition of Native Speaker and The Family Fang, the Good Men Project’s Matthew Salesses weaves together the tangled threads of identity, love, growing up, and relationships in his stunning first novel, The Hundred-Year Flood.

City of Echoes

by Robert Ellis

 

On Detective Matt Jones’s first night working Homicide in LA, he’s called to investigate a particularly violent murder case: a man has been gunned down in a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting the Strip for months. Driven by the grisliness of the killing, Jones and his hot-tempered partner, Denny Cabrera, jump headfirst into the investigation. But as Jones uncovers evidence that links the crime to a brutal, ritualized murder that occurred eighteen months prior, he begins to suspect that there’s more going on beneath the surface. When Jones discovers shocking, deep-seated corruption; a high-level cover-up; and his own personal ties to the rising body count, he’s no longer sure he can trust anyone, even himself.

The Girl at Rosewood Hall by Annis Bell

A Lady Jane Mystery

On his death bed, Lord Pembroke took great care to try to ensure the future of his beautiful, unconventional niece, Lady Jane. Her debutante ball featured the most eligible bachelors of London society. But when the night of the dance arrives, things do not go as planned.

To escape the superficial drama of the party, Jane seeks refuge in the garden of Rosewood Hall, where she discovers a gravely injured girl. With her last breath, the child beseeches Jane to find another girl, Mary, and to save her from the same fate she has suffered. Lady Jane vows to fulfill this final wish, a promise that will entangle her in a dangerous intrigue and take her from the safety of home to the hard streets of London. With the faded inscription in a tattered novel as her only physical clue, Jane sets out to investigate the region’s orphanages and infiltrate London’s most elegant homes. Can she save young Mary from a swiftly approaching doom?

AMAZON LINK

The Good Neighbor by A.J. Banner

From a phenomenal new voice in suspense fiction comes a book that will forever change the way you look at the people closest to you…

Shadow Cove, Washington, is the kind of town everyone dreams about—quaint streets, lush forests, good neighbors. That’s what Sarah thinks as she settles into life with her new husband, Dr. Johnny McDonald. But all too soon she discovers an undercurrent of deception. And one October evening when Johnny is away, sudden tragedy destroys Sarah’s happiness.

Dazed and stricken with grief, she and Johnny begin to rebuild their shattered lives. As she picks up the pieces of her broken home, Sarah discovers a shocking secret that forces her to doubt everything she thought was true—about her neighbors, her friends, and even her marriage. With each stunning revelation, Sarah must ask herself, Can we ever really know the ones we love?

AMAZON LINK

Young Babylon by Lu Nei, Poppy Toland

Knowing nothing more than the working-class life he is born into, headstrong Lu Xiaolu reluctantly starts down the path he is expected to follow. At age nineteen in 1990s China, he feels pressure to follow suit with those around him and takes a job at the town’s saccharin factory. Slowly, he adjusts to the bureaucratic factory routine, making the best of the situation by bonding with coworkers, flirting with girls, and refusing to give in completely to the expectations of those around him.

As Lu Xiaolu finds his way, a startling portrait of an economically expanding China comes into view; the propaganda of a common goal gives way to a bottom-line system that he sees as indifferent to individual happiness. But thanks to the relationships he develops, Lu Xiaolu decides to fight for the life he wants.

AMAZON LINK

Pretty Dead (Elise Sandburg Series Book 3) by Anne Frasier

A serial killer stalks the streets of Savannah...
Homicide detective Elise Sandburg and her partner, profiler David Gould, are all too familiar with the terrible costs of chasing evil. Despite their wounded psyches, the detectives delve into the deranged killer’s twisted mind, determined to unravel the clues in the taunts he leaves behind.

A city gripped by fear...
When his daughter becomes the killer’s next victim, a grief-stricken mayor comes down hard on the police, demanding that they catch the psychopath—now. Feeling the pressure, department officials enlist the aid of both Elise’s estranged father and an FBI profiler who has unresolved business with David.

A cunning and elusive madman...
In a heart-pounding race to stop the next homicide, the detectives uncover their own role in the madman’s deadly game. Will they outsmart the killer before another horrific murder takes place in their beautiful city? Or have Elise and David finally met their match?

AMAZON LINK

About That Fling by Tawna Fenske

As the top PR person for the Belmont Health System, bright, beautiful Jenna McArthur knows how to spin bad news and make it sound good. But when her adorable Aunt Gertie—a secret romance writer—urges Jenna to embrace her wild side, Jenna tumbles into bed with Adam Thomas, a guy she’s just met, for a fun and fantastic one-night stand. Too bad Adam is the one guy who’s totally off-limits. There aren’t enough clever words in the world to spin the story in a way that won’t wreck Jenna’s closest friendship or destroy her job.

With the irresistible Adam always around her at work, wearing an aura of temptation like a fabulous cologne, Jenna has to hold tight to her senses to avoid falling for him. Will he take her to the heights of pleasure again—or will their attraction destroy everything she’s worked for?

AMAZON LINK

The Girl from Krakow by Alex Rosenberg

It’s 1935. Rita Feuerstahl comes to the university in Krakow intent on enjoying her freedom. But life has other things in store—marriage, a love affair, a child, all in the shadows of the oncoming war. When the war arrives, Rita is armed with a secret so enormous that it could cost the Allies everything, even as it gives her the will to live. She must find a way both to keep her secret and to survive amid the chaos of Europe at war. Living by her wits among the Germans as their conquests turn to defeat, she seeks a way to prevent the inevitable doom of Nazism from making her one of its last victims. Can her passion and resolve outlast the most powerful evil that Europe has ever seen?

In an epic saga that spans from Paris in the ’30s and Spain’s Civil War to Moscow, Warsaw, and the heart of Nazi Germany, The Girl from Krakow follows one woman’s battle for survival as entire nations are torn apart, never to be the same.

AMAZON LINK