A Medley

What I've been reading, and a quick note about my summer plans

Happy Thursday, friends. We’re back from our trip to New England to celebrate my sister’s retirement—it was good to be there with her, and it feels good to be back home.

Before I share what I’ve been reading lately, I want to let you know that over the summer, I’m planning to take a break from writing weekly letters here on Substack. It’s time for me to slow down a bit.

I’m looking forward to extra reading time, to writing words no one will ever see, and to spending time with my people.

And I’m looking forward to resting.

A special note for those of you who are paid subscribers: thank you. I appreciate your generous support of my writing work. Effective today, I have paused your payments for the next three months; I’ll restart them this fall when I start writing over here again.

Now, on to the books.

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📚 What I’m Reading

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

January Scaller lives in a mansion filled with unusual treasures. One afternoon, she stumbles upon an old book and begins to read it. The book is filled with tales of adventure and danger, and stories of mysterious doorways that usher people into other worlds. January is fascinated. Soon, she begins to suspect that this story is somehow intertwined with her family’s history, and she embarks on a quest to learn more.

If you love words, stories, and storytellers, this book is for you. It is gorgeous. This is Alix Harrow’s debut novel; she has written several more since then, and I’m looking forward to reading more from her.

Words I’m Remembering:

“Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges.”

Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashley Elston ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Camille Bayliss—daughter of a wealthy Louisiana couple and wife of attorney Ben Bayliss—suspects that her husband has been hiding something for years.

Aubrey Price believes Ben Bayliss was involved in the tragedy that altered the course of her life ten years earlier, and she is determined to figure out exactly how.

Together, the two women devise a plan to ascertain exactly what Ben is hiding. The plan and its implementation feel simple—until Ben is found murdered in his home, and both women become prime suspects.

I didn’t love this book. I found it confusing to keep track of who was speaking, and this made the details of the plot feel complicated.

Long Time Gone by Charlie Donlea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thirty years ago, a baby named Charlotte disappeared in Nevada.

On the first day of Sloan Hastings’ prestigious fellowship, working under the renowned Chief Medical Officer Dr. Livia Cutty, she learns she must undertake a two-year research project in forensic genealogy. Sloan decides to submit her DNA to an online genealogy site, in order to better understand how these sites work. A few weeks later, Sloan is stunned to learn that her results link her to long-lost baby Charlotte.

Sloan’s investigation takes her to Cedar Creek, Nevada, where it becomes apparent that not everyone—including her own birth family—is eager for Sloan to uncover what truly happened to Baby Charlotte and her parents.

Long Time Gone is a fast-paced, twisty mystery, and I really liked it. (You’ll see below that I finished two more Charlie Donlea novels this month!)

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One morning in springtime, Theo—we don’t know his last name—arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. When he stops for coffee, he notices pencil portraits of the people of Golden hanging on the wall of the local coffeeshop. Each portrait has been drawn by the same local artist. Theo begins to purchase the drawings; then, one at a time, he gives each person their portrait. The only thing he asks for in return is a conversation with the recipient.

I read most of this book at my sister’s home in Maine. As I neared the end, I tucked myself away in their guest room, because I could just tell I was going to cry. I was right. This was a beautiful book from start to finish—one of my top five favorite novels, ever. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Words I’m Remembering:

“But God, in His sublime goodness, has always sent others, mysterious others, to walk with us — prophets, preachers, friends, teachers, artists, storytellers, wives and husbands, children, songbirds and rivers, even hardship and loss — to help us see clearly. They are ones who make our hearts burn within us, who call us out of our indifference, our lethargy, our death and defeat. They call us to be fully alive, or at least more alive than we were before we met them.”

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book takes place in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933.

Meg’s mother, Charlie, abandoned her on Christmas Eve; now, eleven-year-old Meg finds herself one of the “unadoptable ones” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum.

Birdie Calhoun has come to Oxford to ask her wealthy sister, Frances, for money to help her and her mother and grandmother survive.

When Birdie meets Charlie, she reluctantly links arms with her in an outrageous plan to earn enough money to keep Frances’ home in the family, to send back home to their mother and grandmother, and to allow Charlie to bring her daughter back home.

This is Kathryn Stockett’s first book since she wrote The Help, and it’s a stunner.

Summit Lake by Charlie Donlea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Summit Lake is a small, quaint town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Not much happens there—until someone murders law school student Becca Eckersley in her parents’ home.

When her boss dispatches her to Summit Lake to investigate Becca’s murder, reporter Kelsey Castle think he’s simply sending her on an easy assignment in a beautiful part of the country. But as Kelsey’s investigation proceeds, she learns that Becca was hiding her own secrets—and that whoever killed Becca had a vested interest in ensuring those secrets stayed hidden.

Don’t Believe It by Charlie Donlea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Filmmaker Sidney Ryan has produced three documentaries about people wrongfully convicted of a crime. Each documentary resulted in their acquittal and subsequent release from prison.

Now, Sidney is investigating the murder of Julian Crist. Ten years earlier, Julian’s girlfriend Grace Sebold was convicted of murdering him while they were on Spring Break together in St. Lucia. During her research, Sidney unearths new evidence overlooked—or possibly ignored—during the original investigation. This case, though, proceeds very differently from the previous three, and Sidney finds herself in danger as she races to finish her investigation in time for the airing of her documentary’s final episode.

I’m officially a Charlie Donlea fan.

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Happy summer, friends, and happy reading. I’ll see you back here in the fall.

Warmly,

Deb 🤍