BEAR IS BROKEN by Lachlan Smith

Brand-new San Francisco attorney Leo Maxwell begins his career by trying to find out who shot his big brother.  If you like this mystery, try the sequel:  LION PLAYS ROUGH.

A PAIR OF PUZZLES: mysteries by Eleanor Kuhns

Here are two mysteries featuring an interesting protagonist:  Will Rees is an itinerant weaver and a veteran of the American Revolution.  Good stories, great character.

HEADING OUT TO WONDERFUL by Robert Goolrick

A small American town, after World War II:  Charlie Beale arrives with a set of butcher knives and a suitcase full of cash.  When he sees the young wife of the town's richest man, things start to go very wrong.  Dark and fascinating.

GILLESPIE AND I by Jane Harris

Harriet Baxter, spinster, is the unreliable narrator of the story of her relationship with artist Ned Gillespie and his family.  She met them at the 1888 Glasgow Exhibition. ( Harris also wrote THE OBSERVATIONS, another pageturner set in Victorian Scotland.)

MARY COIN by Marisa Silver

Silver reimagines photographer Dorothea Lange and her iconic subject (“Migrant Mother”) in this harrowing tale of Depression-era America.

THE LIFEBOAT by Charlotte Rogan

The year is 1914:  Grace, age 22, survives three weeks in an overcrowded lifeboat and then goes on trial for murder.  Great suspense and fascinating moral questions.

THE ABSOLUTIST by John Boyne

 

At the end of World War I,  a young soldier travels to return a packet of letters to the sister of a fellow soldier who was killed in the war.  This is a sorrowful, beautiful meditation on war, love, and shame.