Jan Bobbett

Happy traveling to our part-time Sun Lakers. If you’re heading back to (another) home before the heat gets uncomfortable for you, just know we will welcome you back when you return.

We are adding four new books to our Best Sellers cabinet this month. Two are (no surprise) by James Patterson—usually a popular writer, even if we seem to have too many of his books. So, here are some teasers about one of his newer books, Holmes, Marple & Poe. At 341 pages (in 118 short chapters), you might consider talking yourself out of reading another Patterson book, but this one is different. You probably know a bit about the three recognizable names in the title, and if you’re like most readers, you probably reach back mentally to an old work by the original Holmes, Marple, or Poe. I’ll leave you to it, but don’t expect the new Holmes, Marple, and Poe to be the originals. You might enjoy pondering the comparisons.

The second Patterson thriller is Lion and Lamb.

Another new book I’ll mention is a domestic thriller by Shari Lapena. The center of Everyone Here Is Lying is a missing nine-year-old girl “who is different.” Complete with neighborhood suspicions, such as what the father is all about, this “perfectly plotted thriller” gets high reviews from those who like psychological thrillers.

You might also enjoy Save What’s Left, by Elizabeth Castellano. This seems like a good summer read, but keep in mind that not everything is as it seems.

Last month we added J.A. Jance’s Blessing of the Lost Girls to the Best Sellers cabinet. Like most Jance novels, it fits into one of her series. This is the sixth book in the Walker series and intertwines to an extent with the Brady family—a favorite series of many readers. Warning: Be ready for serial killings. For the depth of the plot, I think you will like the Jance book as much as I did. In a bio piece I happened upon, Jance made an insightful clarification I had never considered: “In mysteries, the reader doesn’t know who the killer is until the end. In thrillers, the reader knows who the bad guy is from the beginning. The only question is how much damage he’s going to do before he gets caught.”

If you aren’t sure whether a book you want is merely checked out or is no longer among our Best Sellers in the cabinet, you can always check the Best Sellers list on the library desk to see whether it’s still listed as one of our Best Sellers. If it is on the current list but you can’t see it in the cabinet, someone has borrowed it, and you can work with a librarian to reserve it. FYI, I’m never certain how long a book will remain among the Best Sellers.