June Staff Picks

Elis­a­beth says,

“After many years of read­ing mys­ter­ies, I rarely come across one that feels fresh and dif­fer­ent. The Devo­tion of Sus­pect X is one that does. The nov­el quick­ly lays out the char­ac­ters and the mur­der in the first chap­ter. A high-school teacher, Ishiga­mi, has a crush on his neigh­bor, Yasuko. One evening, her abu­sive ex-hus­band sur­pris­es her at home and ends up dead on her apart­ment floor. Over­hear­ing the com­mo­tion, Ishiga­mi offers to help her dis­pose of the body. When the body is dis­cov­ered, the detec­tive assigned to the case sus­pects Yasuko, but is unable to find proof. He con­sults his friend, Dr. Man­abu Yukawa. A high-lev­el bat­tle of wits between Dr. Yakuwa and Ishiga­mi ensues, with the author mov­ing between char­ac­ter per­spec­tives to pro­vide the details that even­tu­al­ly lead to the novel’s unex­pect­ed con­clu­sion. The rela­tion­ships between the char­ac­ters give the nov­el depth and com­plex­i­ty, and as those rela­tion­ships devel­op and change, new truths are revealed.”
 

Matthew says,

“Heart­wood drops the read­er into the Maine woods, where an expe­ri­enced hik­er has dis­ap­peared 200 miles short of her final des­ti­na­tion: the north­ern­most ter­mi­nus of the Appalachi­an Trail. As she strug­gles to sur­vive in the wilder­ness, a search-and-res­cue team led by a Maine game war­den races to locate her before it’s too late; we learn the par­tic­u­lars of her ordeal through a series of let­ters she writes to her moth­er dur­ing the ordeal. As the clock ticks down, the mys­tery behind her dis­ap­pear­ance unfolds in a series of har­row­ing, ten­der, and pulse-quick­en­ing chap­ters full of sus­pense and sur­pris­ing twists. I had a real­ly hard time putting this book down. Heart­wood is a per­fect book for the hik­ing sea­son, and is the nov­el to read before you decide to buck­et list a thru-hike of the Appalachi­an Trail.”
 

Kady says,

“Maybe the pow­er has gone out on a remote First Nations reser­va­tion in Cana­da because there’s a prob­lem with the hydro line; elec­tric­i­ty has nev­er been super reli­able that far north, any­way. Or maybe the pow­er has gone out because the world is end­ing. All Evan Whitesky and his friends and neigh­bors know is that the pow­er has­n’t come back on, win­ter is loom­ing, food is get­ting scarce, and there’s been no way to con­tact any­one in the south for days and then weeks. With a tight focus on one com­mu­ni­ty, the read­er nev­er learns what’s hap­pen­ing in the larg­er world. Instead, we stay with Evan and explore all the ways his remote vil­lage, and the Anishi­naabe way of life – which has been lost, fought for, and ten­ta­tive­ly regained – is both well- and ill-equipped to han­dle the chal­lenges of rebuild­ing a soci­ety when dis­as­ter strikes.”