Fit Lit Walking Book Club: Quilt City Murders
Recommended Reads
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Your Presence Is Mandatory
A riveting debut novel, based on real events, about a World War II veteran with a secret that could land him in the Gulag, and his family who are forced to live in the shadow of all he has not told them.
Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.
In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family.
Spanning seven decades between World War II and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, Your Presence Is Mandatory traces the effect Yefim's coverup had on the lives of Nina, their two children and grandchildren. In the process, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light on one family caught between two totalitarian regimes, and the grace they find in the course of their survival. -
Walking on Hidden Wings
"A tangled web, a sleuthing adventure, a rekindled romance . . . Walking on Hidden Wings has it all." --Rachel Fordham, author of The Letter Tree
Geneva Ashcroft Hayes's marriage to a newspaper mogul might have been arranged, but the New York socialite is devastated when her husband's plane crashes a few short months after their nuptials. When the authorities suspect murder, Geneva sets out on a wild mission to find his killer--and to prove it wasn't her!
When mysterious notes surface pointing to Geneva's guilt in his death, they only strengthen her resolve. She has little to go on except for a detective friend's cryptic list of locations connected to her dead spouse. When the friend also disappears, she trades her sparkling gowns for coveralls and pilot goggles.
Armed with a new name and career as a wingwalker and barnstormer, she travels from town to town in hopes of unearthing clues and locating her missing friend. But Geneva discovers that her past may not belong to her . . . what she once believed as truth may be nothing more than lies and deception.
"Fans of intelligent mysteries, butterfly-inducing romance, and the Roaring Twenties, prepare yourselves--Walking on Hidden Wings will sweep you away to the skies! McDaniel's lyrical prose is a delight, and readers will be fascinated by the daring beginnings of aviation. A true gem." --Joanna Barker, author of A Heart Worth Stealing -
Love You, Mean It
A playful romantic comedy featuring dueling delis, fake dating, a shockingly awesome ex, and just the right amount of amnesia
“[A] delightfully tropey rom-com . . . This is a sweet confection.”—Publishers Weekly
Ellie Greco wishes she weren’t stuck in Milborough. For a few brief, shining years, she escaped her hometown to pursue her dream career—designing beautiful, elaborate costumes for theater—until her father's death five years ago called her home to run the family's decades-old deli. Yes, she loves the place, but she’d always thought she was meant for more exciting things than stocking the right tinned fish. But when Ellie hears that a local landlord is planning to rent to Mangia, the glitzy gourmet food department store, the very existence of Greco’s Deli is suddenly in jeopardy.
She tries to plead her case to Theo Taylor, scion of the property management firm that is about to put her out of business, but their meeting goes from bad (it’s not her fault he’s infuriating) to worse (no one expects the ceiling to literally fall in).
With Theo out cold, Ellie panics and claims to be his fiancée . . . and almost passes out herself when amnesia means Theo seems to actually believe her. Soon, the effects of the head injury wear off, but Theo proposes that their “engagement” stick around. If they manage to convince enough people, they might both get what they want: an end to the Mangia deal. Ellie doesn’t trust him (after all, if Theo Taylor wants it, how can it be good for her?) but seeing no other option, she reluctantly agrees.
And miraculously, the fake engagement seems to be working—even Ted, Theo’s shrewd, cold father seems convinced—that is, until Sam, Theo’s ex-fiancée, reappears on the scene. Not only does she see through their ruse, but she proposes an arrangement of her own, forcing Ellie to decide between a blossoming friendship, her family legacy, and the burgeoning romance she frankly never asked for. -
Death in the Details
Inspired by the real-life mother of forensic science, Frances Glessner Lee, and featuring a whip-smart, intrepid sleuth in post-WWII Vermont, this debut historical mystery will appeal to fans of Victoria Thompson and Rhys Bowen.
Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple realizes she could lose her Vermont home next and sets out to make money the only way she knows how: by selling her intricately crafted dollhouses. Business is off to a good start—until Maple discovers her first customer dead, his body hanging precariously in his own barn.
Something about the supposed suicide rubs Maple the wrong way, but local authorities brush off her concerns. Determined to help them see “what’s big in what’s small,” Maple turns to what she knows best, painstakingly recreating the gruesome scene in miniature: death in a nutshell.
With the help of a rookie officer named Kenny, Maple uses her macabre miniature to dig into the dark undercurrents of her sleepy town, where everyone seems to have a secret—and a grudge. But when her nosy neighbor goes missing and she herself becomes a suspect, it’ll be up to Maple to find the devil in the details—and put him behind bars.
Drawing inspiration from true crime and offering readers a smartly plotted puzzle of a mystery, Death in the Details is a stunning series debut. -
Long Time Dead
A cold case that's no longer cold. A suspect who's been murdered. A silenced witness.
"A brilliant debut." --Steve Cavanagh
"True fans of Val McDermid will love Payne's writing." --A. J. West
"One of the most exciting new voices in crime fiction." --Kia Abdullah
DI Sheridan Holler is used to solving crimes on Liverpool's streets, but after a decayed corpse turns up in a cemetery, she finds herself reopening not one but two cold cases. Seven years earlier, two women were gunned down and the only suspect, small-time drug dealer John Lively, was never seen again. Case closed. Until the body in the cemetery is identified as his.
Holler needs to work out if Lively was killed out of revenge, or was just a victim of the criminal world he inhabited. When shocking evidence is revealed about the murder weapon, Holler's cold case starts to look hopeless once more.
But defeat is not an option. Driven by the unsolved and traumatic murder of her brother when they were children, DI Holler's pursuit of justice is relentless. As old wounds are reopened, the police close in on the killer, but the threat of them striking again is all too real. Can DI Holler put the pieces of the puzzle together before anyone else winds up dead?
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Nosy Neighbors
Nothing brings neighbors together like someone else’s secrets… At Shelley House, the walls have ears, and they’re attached to a ragtag duo of busybodies ready to pry, snoop, and generally annoy their neighbors into solving a crime.
Seventy-seven-year-old Dorothy Darling has lived in Shelley House longer than any of the other residents, and if you take their word for it, she’s as cantankerous as they come. But Dorothy has her reasons for spying. And none of them require justifying herself to Kat Bennett.
Twenty-five-year-old Kat has never known a place where she felt truly at home, and crumbling Shelley House is no different. Her neighbors find her prickly and unapproachable, but beneath her tough exterior, Kat’s plagued by a guilty secret from her past.
When their apartments face demolition, sworn enemies Kat and Dorothy agree on just one thing: they must save their historic building. But when someone plays dirty—and one of the residents is viciously taken down—Dorothy and Kat seek justice. The police close the investigation too soon, leaving it up to the unlikely amateur sleuths—with a playful Jack Russell terrier at their side—to restore peace in their community. -
Miss Morgan's Book Brigade
The New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the “captivating, richly drawn” (Woman’s World) The Paris Library returns with a brilliant new novel based on the true story of Jessie Carson—the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France.
1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild destroyed French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.
1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. In her obsessive research, she discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.
Based on the extraordinary little-known history of the women who received the Croix de Guerre medal for courage under fire, Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, the power of literature, and ultimately the courage it takes to make a change. -
Home Fires
Fans of Steven F. Havill's Posadas County and Lisa Regan's Josie Quinn series will enjoy this fascinating and complex story set in small-town Missouri.
"An outstanding police procedural that plunges readers into a community's nightmare. Readers of Steven F. Havill and Bill Crider will appreciate the novel's focus on small-town life and a local police force" Library Journal Starred Review
Branson Sheriff Hank Worth is one of the first on the scene of a mass casualty incident - a local fireworks warehouse has exploded, killing everyone inside. As over a dozen victims are pulled from the smoldering ruins, the painstaking identification process begins.
Chief Deputy Sheila Turley returns early from medical leave to assist in the office, while Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated situation at the morgue. He discovers that the previous forensic pathologist was hasty at best and negligent at worst. What starts as an offhand request to look into the errors turns into a discovery that shakes Hank's world off its axis . . .
With Hank secretly investigating his discovery at the morgue, his short-handed team is stretched to the brink as it investigates the cause of the explosion. Then a shocking revelation leaves Sheila and her fellow deputies scrambling for answers to an unexpected crime. Just what happened in the warehouse in the moments before the blast? Can they unravel the mysteries in time to save Branson from yet more heartbreak? And can Hank, adrift and alone, figure out what happened before it destroys everything he holds dear?
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The Good Deed
Set in 2018 against the ironic backdrop of an overcrowded, fetid refugee camp on the beautiful, Homeric island of Samos in Greece, The Good Deed follows the stories of five women: Amina, who is nineteen and has just been released from one of Bashar al-Assad's secret and torture-ridden prisons in Syria; Leila, a Syrian widow with two little sons, who has lost her daughter and granddaughter to smugglers on a Turkish beach; Nafisa, who survived civil war and gang rape in Sudan only to see her entire family murdered, save for one daughter; Farah, Leila's lost daughter; and finally, an American named Hilma, who came from New York to Samos to escape her own dark secret, only to become entangled in conflict with the very people she wishes to help.
Drawing from four years of interviews with refugees on Samos, along with twelve previous years of work on the Iraq War, Benedict has written The Good Deed as a series of lyrical, intensely felt alternating voices, following these women's everyday lives in the camp, as well each of their backstories--stories of families, love, secrets, violence, war, and flight. When Hilma, the American, unwittingly does a "good deed," she triggers a crisis that brings her and the refugee women into a conflict that escalates dramatically as each character struggles for what she needs.
In essence, The Good Deed is about the struggle never to lose hope, even in the face of war and the world's hostility to refugees; the complexities that arise out of trying to help others; the healing power of friendship; and the everlasting bonds between mothers and children.
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Grey Dog
"Gish's prose is as sharp as a scalpel." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Grey Dog is a bewitching tale of the horrors of spinsterhood in the early 1900s, with madness and magic threaded through every sentence." -- Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads and Lullabies for Little Criminals
A subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women's historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd -- spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist -- accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past -- riddled with grief and shame -- has never seemed so far away.
But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly -- which she calls Grey Dog -- is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away. In the end, she is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?
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Nothing But the Bones
With lyrical prose and hard-hitting depictions of the hardscrabble life in the rural south, Brian Panowich, author of Bull Mountain, Like Lions, and Hard Cash Valley, delivers a gripping new chapter in his tales of McFalls County in Nothing But the Bones.
In McFalls County, local crime boss Gareth Burroughs runs everything on the mountain. And Nelson “Nails” McKenna has been his enforcer since he was a teenager, though his heart's not really in the dirty work. Then one night in a local roadhouse, Nails goes too far, defending a woman, and even Burroughs’s reach can’t get him out of this one. With a dead body and countless witnesses, Nails and the woman become fugitives on the run, and unlikely partners.
But on the road to Jacksonville, where a possible escape awaits, there’s more than one interested party on the pair’s trail, and the glimpse they had of getting away scot free suddenly seems elusive. In the end, Nails must make one final stand for his freedom—or pay with both of their lives. -
The Garden
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LA TMES AND LIT HUB
The discovery of a secret garden with unknown powers fuels this page-turning and psychologically thrilling tale of women yearning to become mothers and the ways the female body has always been policed and manipulated, from the award-winning author of The Illness Lesson ("A masterpiece" - Elizabeth Gilbert)
In 1948, Irene Willard, who's had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for her condition. Warily, she enlists herself in the efforts of the Doctors Hall to "rectify the maternal environment," both physical and psychological. In the meantime, she also discovers a long-forgotten walled garden on the spacious grounds, a place imbued with its own powers and pulls. As the doctors' plans begin to crumble, Irene and her fellow patients make a desperate bid to harness the power of the garden for themselves--and must face the incalculable risks associated with such incalculable rewards.
With shades of Shirley Jackson and Rosemary's Baby, The Garden delves into the territory of motherhood, childbirth, the mysteries of the female body, and the ways it has always been controlled and corralled. -
Wild Love
She's been driving him wild for years.
The good kind of wild. The bad kind of wild.
But mostly, the kind of wild that comes with wanting your best friend's little sister and knowing you can't have her.
Forbes may have labeled Ford Grant the World's Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he's her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend's sister, Rosie Belmont.
After living in the city, Rosie came blasting back into town like a storm. Beautiful, messy, and chaotic. And one wide-eyed, desperate plea for a job is all it takes for Ford to hire her. He vows to keep her at arm's length. Tries to stick to scowls and grumpy one-liners. But with her, verbal sparring is a type of foreplay--friction that soon turns to blistering heat.
Ford knows damn well he shouldn't cross this line. But shouldn't and can't are two very different things.
And the only thing he truly can't do is resist her.
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Thorn Tree
A beautifully wrought novel on the aftershocks of the heady but dangerous late 1960s and the relationship between trauma and the creative impulse.
Now in his late-sixties, Daniel lives in quiet anonymity in a converted guest cottage in the Hollywood Hills. A legendary artist, he’s known for one seminal work—Thorn Tree—a hulking, welded, scrap metal sculpture that he built in the Mojave desert in the 1970s. The work emerged from tragedy, but building it kept Daniel alive and catapulted him to brief, reluctant fame in the art world.
Daniel is neighbors with Celia, a charismatic but fragile actress. She too experienced youthful fame, hers in a popular television series, but saw her life nearly collapse after a series of bad decisions. Now, a new movie with a notorious director might reignite her career.
A single mother, Celia leaves her young son Dean for weeks at a time with her father, Jack, who stays at her house while she’s on location. Jack and Daniel strike up a tentative friendship as Dean takes to visiting Daniel’s cottage--but something about Jack seems off. Discomfiting, strangely intimate, with flashes of anger balanced by an almost philosophical bent, Jack is not the harmless grandparent he pretends to be.
Weaving the idealism and the darkness of the late 1960s, the glossy surfaces of Los Angeles celebrity today, and thrumming with the sound of the Grateful Dead, the mania of Charles Manson and other cults, and the secrets that both Jack and Daniel have harbored for fifty years, Thorn Tree by Max Ludington is an utterly-compelling novel. -
Old Flames and New Fortunes
Fibs and squabbles and spells . . . oh my!
A small, magical town tucked away in rural Ohio, Moonville is the perfect place for floral witch Romina Tempest to use the language of flowers to help the hopeful manifest love in their lives. After giving up on her own big romance eleven years ago, at least she can bask in others' happily ever afters.
When the shop’s potential financier shares news of his wedding, Romina jumps at the opportunity to discuss the business . . . even if it means she has to fake-date her chaotic colleague Trevor to get an invitation. But all hell breaks loose when she discovers Trevor’s soon-to-be stepbrother is none other than Alex King: her high school sweetheart. Her greatest love. The boy who broke her heart.
What starts as an innocent misunderstanding becomes a weeklong fake-dating scheme, as Romina quickly finds out she can’t deny her connection with Alex. Caught between her livelihood and her heart, Romina must decide if taking a second chance on first love is worth the risk. -
The Audacity
A bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionaires’ “philanthropy summit,” for fans of Hari Kunzru and The White Lotus.
In 72 hours, a blockbuster exposé will reveal Victoria Stevens’s multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband, Guy Sarvananthan, to face the fallout— and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Opting for the latter, he takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world’s biggest problems to “eradicate forever.” Guy drinks and drugs his way into oblivion, through manicured jungles and aboard superyachts, amid captains of industry, legions of staff, and unlikely saboteurs.
Meanwhile, Victoria narrates her side of the story from an off-the-grid location in the California desert. In scribbled diary entries shot through with cultish self-help mantras, she plots her comeback, confident she’ll prove everyone wrong. Again.
Ryan Chapman’s incisive novel is a swan dive into the abyss and “Martin Amis’s Money for really late, late capitalism” (Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time). -
Matterhorn
A sudden family death and an old nemesis bring retired agent Mac Dekker in from the cold in this alpine thriller from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Reich.
Robbie Steinhardt lives a peaceful life. A fixture of his small alpine village, he tends cattle, minds his own business, and doesn't dwell on his former life and the family and lover he left behind--back when he was Mac Dekker, CIA.
But when he learns his son Will died following in his footsteps, he needs answers. What mission took Will up into the alpine heights, and why is Ilya Ivashka on the same trail? Ilya--his close friend, his rival in love. Ilya, who framed Mac for treason and sent him into hiding.
Wiping away the years, Mac returns to the field to find the secrets Will hid and finds himself facing the Herculean task of stopping a terrorist plot that threatens thousands. But in a field of double agents, who can he trust?
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The Songbird of Hope Hill
A young woman sings of God’s love—even if she doesn’t believe He can forgive her—in this heartwarming novel inspired by historical events, from the bestselling author of A Tapestry of Grace.
“An unforgettable story of God’s grace and redemption.”—Kathleen Y’Barbo, author of The Black Midnight
Driven by survival to a life at a house of ill repute, Birdie Clarkson now longs only for escape. So when Reverend Isaiah Overly and his son, Ephraim, appear and offer a better life, she jumps at the chance. Ignoring the furious raging of the madam, Birdie climbs into the back of the preacher’s wagon.
The men take her to Hope Hill, the haven the reverend and his wife, Ophelia, founded so women like Birdie can be taught skills to help them rise above their pasts. Soon a resistant Birdie finds herself singing in the choir Ephraim leads at revival meetings, even though she’s certain she’s the last person who should be representing God.
Reverend Overly teaches that no one is irredeemable, but even as Ephraim is falling in love with her, Birdie remains convinced that she’s past saving. After all she’s been through, can she ever believe that God’s redemption wipes every soul clean? And can Ephraim convince her that God loves her more than she can grasp—and that he does, too? -
Circle in the Water
In this twisting mystery in a New York Times bestselling series, pranks escalate into a deadly scheme that Private Investigator Sharon McCone must unravel--before they claim her life.
San Francisco is home to more than 200 privately owned streets. Most are alleyways, but a select few look torn straight from the pages of a magazine. Lined with mansions and elaborate gardens, the properties are luxurious and perfectly maintained; security guards patrol the grounds to keep the curious at bay. Few know of these exclusive enclaves, but those who do prowl for availability, ready to make a grab for the precious real estate if opportunity strikes.
When several such streets are targeted in a series of so-called pranks, Sharon is hired by a coalition of concerned owners to investigate. But as things escalate--an attempt on Sharon's life, an explosion at a meth lab, and a shocking murder--Sharon realizes far more is at play than a few misdemeanors gone wrong.
The case takes a sudden turn when one of McCone & Ripinsky's most trusted employees is implicated, and Sharon will have to dig deep to save her agency--and her life.
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Patchwork Quilt Murder
During a heatwave in Tinker’s Cove, Maine, part-time reporter Lucy Stone becomes unseasonably entangled in handmade quilts—and a twisted case of murder . . .
When a community center opens in town, many embrace it as a space where locals of all ages can gather and create. Others view it as a waste of taxpayer dollars. The director, Darleen Busby-Platt, is no less controversial. Intense and showy, Darleen has huge plans for her new role. But Lucy believes the woman isn’t exactly as warm hearted—or qualified—as she seems. That hunch deepens when Darleen and a young employee vanish . . . and dismembered remains appear!
With lots of clues and few concrete answers, Lucy rushes to connect loose ends. First there’s the disappearance of Tim Stillings, a troubled twenty-something who endured harsh treatment on the job. Next there’s Darleen herself, who made fast enemies as the highest-paid resident in Tinker’s Cove. Finally, there’s Darleen’s rich ancestry and ties to heirlooms worth either a fortune or nothing at all.
The closer Lucy gets to the facts, the more she realizes that solving this murder depends on the lies. Because the truth rests somewhere between wild rumors, a trusted friend’s emotional new sewing project, and the authenticity of a mysterious three-hundred-year-old patchwork quilt. And Lucy must piece together the big picture—before she becomes part of crafty killer’s deadly design . . .