BOOK NEWS and REVIEWS

NEW BOOK COMING DECEMBER 2023!!

I'm so excited to tell you about my upcoming new novel from Severn House Publishers (a division of Canongate Books). It's called THE NIGHT SIDE and is coming out in hardback and and all major digital platforms on December 5th 2023. You can pre-order it now at Waterstones, Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon, Apple Books and Kobo. The Trade Paperback will follow in the late spring. Here's a synopsis: 

  TWENTY YEARS OF SECRETS. ONE DEADLY TRUTH 

 

When Ruby Carlson was eighteen, she ran away from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana, and vowed she'd never return. Never return to life under the control of her manipulative mother, Ida, a self-styled medium and psychic scammer who made a career out of ruining people's lives. Never return to the small town where enemies lurk at every turn. But now, twenty years later, Ruby is back. Her mother is missing, presumed dead, and Ruby reluctantly returns to a home filled with chilling memories to settle Ida's affairs. Did she really commit suicide by drowning, or is this another dark scheme? Ruby thought she knew everything about her mother, but finds herself unraveling a web of lies and secrets to reveal a story more twisted than anyone could have imagined . . .

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts with more information about the inspiration behind the novel!

AUDIO BOOK NEWS

New audiobook versions of THE PERFECT FAMILY MAN and THE SECRET SISTER are now available on Amazon and the Audible store. I was so stoked to learn that THE PERFECT FAMILY MAN is narrated by the wonderful Helen Laser who also narrated the amazing smash hit, YELLOWFACE, July's Reese's Bookclub pick. I'll be reviewing it next blog post. Check the books out. They're amazing to hear on audio.

NEW COVER

Check out the new cover for my popular romantic suspense novel, LILAH, available on all Amazon platforms. This one really captures the snowy winter setting of Silver Narrows, North Dakota.

BOOK REVIEW

WHITE IVY by Susie Yang

 

Right from the get-go in Susie Yang’s twisty novel, we understand the protagonist, Ivy, is a morally ambivalent character trained by her immigrant grandmother at an early age to use her unassuming appearance for cover to steal items from second-hand shops and yard sales. Ivy continues this trend into her adolescence, blithely shoplifting anywhere and everywhere in order to acquire all the trappings necessary to be accepted into the ‘in-crowd’ at her exclusive private high school and, more importantly, attract the attention of her idol, ‘golden boy’, Gideon Speyer. 

Gideon becomes her perfect ideal of a man, but her darker side prefers loner and social outcast, Roux with whom she embarks on a torrid sexual relationship. When her hardworking parents discover her crimes, she’s sent back to China to ‘learn a life lesson’ but instead lands at her wealthy aunt’s home and continues to enjoy the excesses of materialism and learn everything she can about good taste and shopping. A short stay with the ‘poorer’ side of her parents’ family only confirms her determination to enjoy ‘the good life’ and become part of what she perceives as society’s ‘upper, privileged echelons’.

Interestingly, Ivy doesn’t conform to stereotype or to her parents' expectations, with her unspectacular college career that lands her a job as an elementary school teacher. But when she runs into Gideon’s sister and re-establishes contact it seems her plan to insert herself into his ‘privileged existence’ is back on track again as she pretends to prepare for law school entrance and continue a relationship with Gideon. Too bad it’s threatened by an unwelcome ghost from her past.

Ivy is an incredibly complex character. Vulnerable one minute, ruthless the next. Yang captures her internal struggle as she attempts to negotiate a society that values white privilege and all the trapping of their perceived socio-economic superiority, yet somehow causes her to devalue the financial success of her hardworking parents who turn out to be much more business-savvy and financially stable than their white counterparts.

What follows is a chain of unexpected events and a totally unpredictable ending where Ivy realizes she’s not so different from her mother in that she’s prepared to do anything to achieve her dream. Written in gorgeous razor-sharp prose, this is a remarkably subversive debut that introduces one of the most complex but compelling characters in recent fiction and cleverly shines a light on the alienation and forced ‘otherness’ of the immigrant experience.