Mystery
Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an aging Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner Julia. It's picturesque, but there's something darker lurking behind the scenes.
Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, is fairly standard-issue, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network -- and back across the path of his old friend Reggie. Old secrets and new lies intersect in this breathtaking novel by one of the most dazzling and surprising writers at work today.
"Thank goodness the long Jackson Brodie hiatus is over." --Janet Maslin, New York Times
The Bayou is a unique place to live and it provides a grit and passion to any who hail from it, including Cain Lemaire, an ex-Secret Service agent from New Orleans. Cain had the dream job he had always wanted, protecting the President, until a single night resulted in a scandal that lost him his post.
Needing a new direction for his life and with help from his sister who works in Japan, Cain takes a job in Tokyo as head of security detail for a very successful and important CEO. What he thought was a simple security post unravels a tangled web of corruption, greed, and extortion, but now Cain is on his own and without the wealth of resources he had with the Secret Service. Years of training and international missions kick in as he races to find justice that only way a born and raised Cajun can do.
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism--until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. He quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what's at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial. Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for all. She enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era. Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution's deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice. Over a decade in the making, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.
"Bestor-Siegal switches perspective among a group of characters with tenderness and intimacy. . . . The writing is smooth as honey. . . It's utterly absorbing." -- NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"Thrilling and deeply moving, gorgeously written and intricately plotted . . . bold and brilliant." -ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN
Recommended by New York Times Book Review - USA Today - Glamour - Business Insider - Popsugar - CrimeReads - The Millions - BookRiot - and more!
Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, an emotionally riveting debut told from the point of view of six women, and centered around a group of au pairs, one of whom is arrested after a sudden and suspicious tragedy strikes her host family--a dramatic exploration of identity, class, and caregiving from a profoundly talented new writer.
Paris, 2015. A crowd gathers outside the Chauvet home in the affluent suburban community of Maisons-Larue, watching as the family's American au pair is led away in handcuffs after the sudden death of her young charge. The grieving mother believes the caretaker is to blame, and the neighborhood is thrown into chaos, unsure who is at fault--the enigmatic, young foreigner or the mother herself, who has never seemed an active participant in the lives of her children.
The truth lies with six women: Géraldine, a heartbroken French teacher struggling to support her vulnerable young students; Lou, an incompetent au pair who was recently fired by the family next door; Charlotte, a chilly socialite and reluctant mother; Nathalie, an isolated French teenager desperate for her mother's attention; Holly, a socially anxious au pair yearning to belong in her adopted country; and finally, Alena, the one accused of the crime, who has gone to great lengths to avoid emotional connection, and now finds herself caught in the turbulent power dynamics of her host family's household.
Set during the weeks leading up to the event, The Caretakers is a poignant and suspenseful drama featuring complicated women. It's a sensitive exploration of the weight of secrets, the pressures of country, community, and family--and miscommunications and misunderstandings that can have fatal consequences.
"A deep, enthralling pleasure, as wise as it is lovely. I read it voraciously, desperate to discover the fates of its unforgettable characters . . . Magnificent." - ROBIN WASSERMAN
In 1878 a teenage Jew, the Hessex Kid, kills an Irish thug in a Five Point's bar fight in front of hundreds of drugged and drunken killers, all members of the Whyo Gang, which controls all crime in Manhattan under the aegis of the corrupt Irish politicians at Tammany Hall.
The boy is then grabbed by the rabble and murdered.
By 1900, the Irish mob has gained control of the police departments, the gangs, and crime in every major American city, and from 1900 to 1910, a political operative named James Monaghan has risen to the pinnacle of power at Tammany, which is the head of the nationwide snake.
In 1910, a gambler from Chicago named Billy McGuinness, haunted by the legend of the Hessex Kid, arrives in New York. He is connected to mid-west political powers and to gangsters Max and Moses Annenberg, Big Jim Colisimo, and Johnny Torrio, his sole objective: to destroy Monaghan and the Irish political and criminal machine,
And McGuinness begins his torturous maneuvers through real historic events and within the confines of New York's Bowery ghetto and its Tenderloin District, a.k.a Satan's Circus, manipulating the real politicians and gangsters who marked the period, now long-forgotten.
In the end, McGuinness becomes the inadvertent moving force behind prohibition booze smuggling, Murder Inc. and the Cosa Nostra until he is ultimately embraced by the hand of God.