“The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride,” by Joe Siple (Black Rose Writing, 2018)
This is the touching story of Murray McBride, recently widowed and 100 years old. He finds a new reason to live when he meets 10-year-old Jason Cashman, who has a heart condition requiring a heart transplant. Jason has five dying wishes, and Murray is determined to help him achieve each one. The goal brightens Murray’s life as he also relives his professional baseball career and his life with his beloved wife, Jenny. The reader gets to know the characters, including Jason’s divorced mother and his friend, Tiegan. Parts of the novel are hard to believe, especially a mother permitting her ill son to be in a car driven by a very elderly man without a driver’s license! But the gift that Jason receives at the end of the book is both shocking and joyous. — 3 stars (out of 4); Diana Doner, Lafayette
“Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, by Ramie Targoff (Knopf, 2024)
The subtitle should really be “How Privileged White Women Wrote the Renaissance,” because only that subset of women had the time, education and even materials to write with in Elizabethan England. Targoff leans on recently discovered diaries, letters, poems and even plays written by four different women (plus Queen Elizabeth I herself), to describe life in Renaissance England, with its societal expectations, legal strictures, political intrigues, everyday tediums, and personal joys and sorrows. You’ll discover countless trivial yet fascinating nuggets of information that you will just have to share. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“Table for Two,” by Amor Towles (Viking, 2024)
This captivating collection of short stories begins in Russia, moves to New York and ends with a novella set in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The book opens during the last days of the czarist regime with the kind-hearted Pushkin, a man who finally becomes something of a success in his homeland, only to leave Russia and sail to New York with his shrewd wife, who fails to appreciate his good nature and generosity (and indeed has her own chilling plan for a new life). Subsequent tales delve into the darker sides of human nature, each with the possibility of betrayal or even unexpected loyalty. The final entry is a 215-page novella that brings back a familiar character: Eve from Towles’ first book, “Rules of Civility,” who uses her charms to infiltrate the elite Hollywood clique she befriends. When she discovers a plot by two has-been photographers to blackmail several well-known, vulnerable actresses of the 1930s, the race is on to cleverly thwart their business plan, earn her place in Hollywood and offer a couple of aging friends one last triumph. — 4 stars (out of 4); Karen Hartman, Westminster
“I Cheerfully Refuse,” by Leif Enger (Grove Press, 2024)
Set in the near future, “I Cheerfully Refuse” is a mythic saga for today. Rainy, a bass guitarist and all-around good guy, sails around Lake Superior in an odyssey as fraught as that of Ulysses. He encounters villains and heroes, treachery, beauty, grief and hope. This story can be very dark, but as much as I don’t want to see this possible future, I hope people like Rainy and his wife, Lark, will inhabit it. Enger’s literary gift is so great that he writes even horrific scenes with grace. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker
“In a Lonely Place,” by Dorothy B. Hughes (New York Review Books, 1947)
From The Atlantic’s 2024 list of the best fiction of the past 100 years. Hughes turns the classic detective noir story on its head, shifting the narrative perspective from the typically cynical, marginalized and gritty detective to the serial killer himself. Will the hapless detective ever figure this out? Will the killer’s friends finally see him for who he really is? Truly a page-turner. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
