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April Showers Means Staying Inside with a Good Book

Friday, April 1st, 2022

April is here, readers! With Spring springing (or just around the corner, depending on where you’re reading from), there is a lot to look forward to this month here at Beaufort Books. The biggest being the publication of our newest suspense novel, Lacie’s Secrets! The cinematic and psychological thriller publishes April 12th, 2022.

While April showers bring May flowers, Beau Weasley has compiled a list of similar thrilling novels to read on a rainy day to prep for the dark twists Lacie’s Secrets will enthrall you with.

To set the scene, reminiscent of classic suspense novels, Lacie’s Secrets is the latest psychological thriller from writing duo Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist. 

For the past 18 years, Kate Williams has tried to forget that fateful summer, the summer that ripped her family apart. But when her estranged mother unexpectedly dies and Kate inherits Villa Magda, the family’s summer home on the Maine coast, Kate decides that enough time has passed. With the help of her husband, her son, and their close group of friends, Kate decides to face the past and go back to Villa Magda for one last trip.

But the sprawling, ocean-side house isn’t as picturesque as it seems, and as the week goes on, inexplicable incidents and suspicious visitors begin to torment Kate, threatening to expose her deepest secrets.

The closer Kate gets to learning the truth about what happened that summer, the faster she realizes the house might be holding more secrets than she can handle.

As tensions run high and friendships unravel, Kate starts to question her decision to return to Villa Magda. But when tragedy strikes and a body is found floating in the pool, questions arise that demand answers: What really happened at Villa Magda 18 years ago? How much did Kate know? And how can the house be stopped from claiming its next victim?
Set on a remote and gorgeous Maine estate, Lacie’s Secrets is an exciting and cinematic psychological thriller with surprising twists that will keep the reader guessing until the very last page.

The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist

When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children. But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police. With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence. A thriller that questions what is real-with its shocking twists, secrets, and lies—The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children. But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police. With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence. A thriller that questions what is real-with its shocking twists, secrets, and lies—The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children. But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police. With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence. A thriller that questions what is real-with its shocking twists, secrets, and lies—The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.

Red Hotel by Gary Grossman and Ed Fuller

When a bomb rips the façade off the Kensington Hotel in Tokyo, dozens are killed and injured while one man walks calmly away from the wreckage, a coy smile playing on his lips. Former Army intelligence officer Dan Reilly, now an international hotel executive with high-level access to the CIA, makes it his mission to track him down. He begins a jet-setting search for answers as the clock ticks down to a climactic event that threatens NATO and the very security of member nations. Reilly begins mining old contacts and resources in an effort to delve deeper into the motive behind these attacks and fast. Through his connections, he learns that the Tokyo bomber is not acting alone. But the organization behind the perpetrator is not who they expect. Facilitated by the official government from a fearsome global superpower, the implications and reasons for these attacks are well beyond anything Reilly or his sources in the CIA and State Department could have imagined, and point not to random acts of terror, but calculated acts of war. RED Hotel is an incredibly timely globe-trotting thriller that’s fiction on the edge of reality. The second book in the series, Red Deception, was released in 2021!

Seeking Hyde by Thomas Reed

Seeking Hyde sticks closely to the biographical record as Robert Louis Stevenson struggles to write another book to be the successor to Treasure Island. After the infamous two characters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, take form in a dream, Stevenson writes passionately for three days, convinced that he has crafted his masterpiece. His wife Fanny, a willful and demanding gypsy, offers a scathing critique, obliging him to start over from the beginning. While the revised tale is published to great acclaim, it is ultimately blamed for inspiring a gruesome series of murders in London’s East End. From that tragic historical irony, Seeking Hyde moves beyond the actual story of how Jekyll and Hyde came to be to explore the realm of “what if?” Desperate to address his own guilt, Stevenson enters the dark underworld of Victorian London. As he follows a twisted path through this midnight landscape, the author-turned-detective wrestles with the social demons of prostitution, police corruption, and the hypocrisy of powerful men—ultimately coming face-to-face with Jack the Ripper himself.

The Stranger by Harlan Coben

A secret destroys a man’s perfect life and sends him on a collision course with a deadly conspiracy in this shocking thriller. The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. Their identity is unknown. Their motives are unclear. Their information is undeniable. Then they whisper a few words in your ear and disappear, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world… Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life.

Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne’s deception, and realizes that if he doesn’t make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives–it will end them.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. If he’s lucky, he’ll get a job at the hospital cafeteria. If he’s extra lucky, he’ll earn more than minimum wage. But Ray has a gift and a dream–he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition–the Olympics of classical music–the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad … before it’s too late. With the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray’s great-great-grandfather asserting that the instrument is rightfully theirs, and with his family staking their own claim, Ray doesn’t know who he can trust—or whether he will ever see his beloved violin again.

May flowers can’t come fast enough, and neither can Lacie’s Secrets, but there’s nothing better than a good book while we wait.

Beau Weasley, signing off!

Garth Williams: The Unsung Hero of my Childhood

Monday, June 20th, 2016

On June 3rd, The New Yorker published an article on Beaufort’s new biography of Garth Williams, the largely unknown hand behind the illustrations of many children’s classics. You might not know Williams’ name (I didn’t) but you undoubtedly know the stories he helped give us, including Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and Little House on the Prairie. In Garth Williams, American Illustrator: A Life, Elizabeth K Wallace and James D. Wallace tackle what Williams himself struggled to do: to write the story of a life that spanned seven countries, four marriages, and several professions, but has remained undiscovered by the public.

gw 1

The New Yorker article highlights the depth of Williams’ commitment to the integrity and nuance of the stories he illustrated, and his desire to convey a sense of truth. In his rendering of Stuart Little, the article remarks, “Stuart was both mouselike and dapper, anthropomorphized in a way that expressed the dignity and absurdity of the human condition and the animal condition alike”. What more can we ask for from a glimpse of truth than dignity and absurdity?gw2

With animal characters serving as human analogues, Williams gave them life in a way that was never reductive; these characters felt real sorrow, real joy, and allowed us as readers to do the same. Even as children, we have keen eyes for cheap shots, and no young reader is going to be moved by some dopey, grinning caricature. “No way José,” they would think, “that mouse is nothing like me! He’s not real, he’s a dumb rodent meant to teach me to behave.” But in Williams’ subtle hands, the likes of Wilbur, Stuart, Charlotte, and countless others are transformed into complicated, achingly real characters that seem more like friends.gw3

Williams’ drawings elicit a nostalgia that spans generations—his art passed down from its original young audience to their eventual children, preserved in that special medium of the bedtime story. I found myself shockingly moved by the drawings presented in Garth Williams, American Illustrator: A Life; they catapulted me back to memories I hadn’t touched in years. “Oh man, he really was terrific,” I thought, wiping my eyes discreetly as I poured over the book’s images of Wilbur. I watched as my past sprung up to meet me, I saw history wink and skip, and found myself grateful to a man I had never known I cared for, grateful to a talent to whom I never knew I owed so much.

 

–Some Intern