Burn After Reading – Catherine Ryan Howard SPOILERS
A ghostwriter is tasked with capturing the memoirs of a celebrity widely suspected of murder; now she’s locked in an interview room with a killer and he’s ready to confess…
The night Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their burning home, he was, tragically, too late – but hailed a hero. Until it emerged that Kate was dead long before the fire began.
Suspicion has stalked him ever since. After all, there’s no smoke without fire.
A year on, he’s signed a book deal. He wants to tell his side of the story, to prove his own innocence in print. He just needs someone to help him write it.
Emily has never ghostwritten anything before, but she knows what it’s like to live with a guilty secret. And she’s about to learn that there are some stories that should never be told…
This is her eighth book and is better than her last, The Trap, which had a crap shit ending I don’t think anyone liked. The Trap was worse than the one before, Run Time, and that was after her best book, book 4, The Nothing Man, which was her peak. Rewind, number 3, was on the same level as Run Time, and Burn After Reading was slightly better than both. And yes, it is also the name of a movie with George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
It was pretty easy to guess that he’d done it, and even once it was suggested he’d killed others that’s the thought you got in your head and it was vindicated with the possibility at the end of the book, which wasn’t great, but wrapped up the story.
Jack got his comeuppance, Emily, hopefully, grew a brain because once again we had a woman wallowing in her self-pitying bullshit who prefers to drink her problems away. If it wasn’t for alcohol in all of the books I’ve been reading, bad shit wouldn’t happen.
I gave it 7/10
The Author’s Guide to Murder: A Novel – Beatriz Williams Lauren Willig, Karen White
There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead―under bizarre circumstances―in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death
A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance―this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!
Three authors finding a body and being the prime suspects got me wanting to read this book. The opening passage was interesting, and probably the best bit of the entire book, but it was all you saw of Brett Saffron Presley.
The mystery slowly unwinds and you figure out pretty quickly what’s going on until the last couple of pages when you suspect that a fourth person had done more than what one thought.
There were a few things that didn’t make sense, but overall it was a decent read if you’re bored.
I gave this 7/10
Now into some non-fiction that was pretty interesting.
ASTOR – Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story―of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.
From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.
The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.
In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America―offering a window onto the making of America itself.
Quite interesting, the wealth of New York in the 1800s to the early 1900s. I don’t give scores for non-fic, but if you love stories of the rich and pwerful, espeially since The Gilded Age is so big, then give this a go.
Next we move onto…
Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies – Laura Thompson
Laura Thompson explores the phenomenon of the heiress from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Take Mary Davies, a child bride at the age of twelve, and her thousand-acre dowry of today’s Mayfair and Belgravia, which gave the Grosvenors their stupendous wealth. Or Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, whose American railroad fortune helped sustain Blenheim Palace. Winnaretta Singer showcased the work of Debussy in her Parisian salon; Daisy Fellowes enjoyed parties, fashion and other people’s husbands without shame or conscience. Alice de Janze shot one of her lovers and was suspected of murdering a second; Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, married seven times.
Money should mean power and opportunity, but in the hands of these women it was so often absent. Why did so many struggle to live with so much? Did the removal of need render their life meaningless? Were they riven with guilt at all they had, knowing they really should be happy? With her signature intelligence and wit, Laura Thompson tells these women’s stories glittering and fascinating but often sad and scandalous on a gripping search for the answer.
Several of the heiresses in this book were also talked about in Astor, which is understandable. It’s sad how money and building businesses were the only thing that concerned the men who made the money. They didn’t raise their daughters and granddaughters, or even their sons and grandsons, with any common sense when it came to spending. They spent until they were broke. Sad.
And last, but not least, money comes into play once again, but this time in the field of publishing.
Literature for the People: How The Pioneering Macmillan Brothers Built a Publishing Powerhouse – Sarah Harkness
From an impoverished childhood in the Scottish highlands to Victorian London, this is the inspiring story of two brothers – Daniel and Alexander Macmillan – who built a publishing empire – and brought Alice in Wonderland to the world. Their remarkable achievements are revealed in this entertaining, superbly researched biography.
Daniel and Alexander arrived in London in the 1830s at a crucial moment of social change. These two idealistic brothers, working-class sons of a Scottish crofter, went on to set up a publishing house that spread radical ideas on equality, science and education across the world. They also brought authors like Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy and Charles Kingsley, and poets like Matthew Arnold and Christina Rossetti, to a mass audience. No longer would books be just for the upper classes.
In Literature for the People Sarah Harkness brings to life these two warm-hearted men. Daniel was driven by the knowledge that he was living on borrowed time, his body ravaged by tuberculosis. Alexander took on responsibility for the company as well as Daniel’s family and turned a small business into an international powerhouse. He cultivated the literary greats of the time, weathered controversy and tragedy, and fostered a dynasty that would include future prime minister Harold Macmillan.
Including fascinating insights about the great, the good and the sometimes wayward writers of the Victorian era, with feuds, friendships and passionate debate, this vibrant book is bursting with all the energy of that exciting period in history.
A thoroughly researched book which is incredibly boring at the beginning but slowly moved into being interesting. The story starts with their family in the Scottish Highlands to the gritty streets of London and New York. The rise and rise of what we know now as Pan Macmillan publishing house and Macmillan Dictionary, and how money does not save all.
If you love books, and reading about books and authors, give this book a go.
And that’s it for the year where reading books are concerned. I do have an upcoming post about the books I’ve bought this year, but my reviews are over.
What books have you read this year, and what did you think of them?