The Leaves of Fall and Books

As a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, author Vanessa Lillie’s compelling Blood Sisters is based on a real crime involving multiple missing indigenous girls and women. Syd, an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, finds herself back in her small-town home in Oklahoma to solve the mystery of a recently discovered skull. At the same time, her troubled sister is missing. Both a story of injustice and land rights issues, Lillie writes a gritty and insightful mystery.

The Australian historical novel The Butterfly Collector by Tea Cooper flitters between dueling timelines, one in 1868 and the other in 1922. The story follows several women: an artist, a writer, a maid whose lives intersect over the time period. A mystery of a missing baby ties the stories together. Cooper brings to light the disturbing real treatment of unwed mothers who were forced to give up their children in an illegal adoption scheme. The prose is beautiful as we follow these strong women as they struggle to assert their independence and place in the world. 

Local Santa Barbara author Carole Wagener’s The Hardest Year: A Love Story in Letters During the Vietnam War is a memoir about her brief courtship and hurried marriage to her husband, Bill. The relationship blossoms and develops when he is shipped to Vietnam just a day and a half after their marriage and the two ardently write each other hundreds of letters which Wagener shares with the reader. The moving handwritten letters between the two are the spine on which the story is revealed. 

I knew little about the Polly Klaas case, the 12-year-old girl kidnapped from her home during a sleepover with friends in 1993 that galvanized the country. In the pages of In Light of All Darkness, Kim Cross meticulously leads us through the kidnapping and investigation with intimate, chilling details never shared before. It is a heartbreaking story, but a case that as Cross says “used technology at the dawn of the Internet age and investigative skills that … changed the way the FBI does business.” Cross’s writing is riveting and kudos to her research and recreation of events that lead to that fateful awful night and the capture of the man responsible.

It’s not too soon for a holiday thriller. Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents is a fast-paced suspense. Mysterious presents have been arriving on Madeline’s doorsteps for years. Madeline runs the local bookstore, intent on escaping her tragic past. When Harley, a true crime podcaster, comes to town, he is determined to solve the mystery of Madeline’s friends who went missing years before. Harley intentionally stirs up ghosts from the past dragging Madeline and her best buddy to confront the night that changed their lives. Recently another girl has gone missing, and as a blizzard blows into town it is a race against the clock to rescue her and hopefully solve the secret of the other missing women. An entertaining snowy novella.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a wrenching story by Lauren Grodstein, set in the Warsaw Ghetto. Profound and dark, it is the story of Adam, pushed out of his home and into an area for Jews only. A secret group convinces Adam to participate in preserving the stories of those around him – inspired by Oneg Shabbat Archive, a true, underground organization “determined to create a historical record for future historians” according to the website for the organization. This will move you to tears. 

I must squeeze in one more. An espionage thriller by Anna Pitoniak. The Helsinki Affair is riveting. Amanda is a CIA operative, as was her father. Or he was, until something happened years ago and he was demoted to a pencil pusher. When Amanda is thrust into the middle of an assassination she could have prevented, she is forced to choose between loyalty to her father or her job. Her father’s name has turned up on an incriminating piece of paper. Is her father a spy for the Russians? From Rome to Finland, Moscow and Washington, D.C., this is a smart, globe-trotting adventure that will have you rooting for almost everyone despite their moral decisions.