The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐ Dragon Palace  by  Hiromi Kawakami  (translated by  Ted Goossen ) is a fascinating collection of short stories that revolve around themes of transformation, human behavior and emotion and surrealism. In the first story  Hokusai  (3/5), we follow a strange encounter between a depressed young man and a person who claims to have once been an octopus. In  Dragon Palace  (4/5), a young woman is visited by her great-grandmother, who was once a god who used a creative method of manipulating her followers.  Fox’s Den (3/5) follows the relationship between a fifty-three-year-old caregiver and her elderly patient. In  Mole  (5/5), we meet an anthropomorphized who holds an office job in the human world and shelters unhappy and lonely human beings in his home in an underground hole. We follow a married young woman, unhappy with her life and interactions with her boyfriend, neighbors and the deity that inhabits her kitchen in  T...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ In 1940s San Francisco, former presidential candidate Walter Wilkinson is found murdered in his room at the Claremont Hotel. Eyewitness accounts are indicative of a woman’s presence in his room before the murder. Three young women from an affluent and well-connected family - Nicole and Cassie Bainbridge and their cousin Isabella Stafford - are among the suspects. In 1930 Isabella’s sister Iris, seven years old at the time, was found dead under suspicious circumstances in the same hotel. Coincidence, or is the recent murder somehow connected to the family tragedy? Detective Al Sullivan of Berkeley P.D., who is half Mexican but passes for white – a fact that helped him secure his position, is tasked with the investigation. A deep dive into Wilkinson’s life reveals his personal connections to key political figures, affluent families, including the Bainbridge family, as well as some shady dealings. Who killed Walter Wilkinson and why? Political rivalry or personal grudges? Com...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ As is the case with most anthologies,  The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023  was also a mixed bag. The anthology features twenty-one short mysteries written by contemporary authors and a bonus story by Edith Wharton. I liked that each of the stories began with a brief introduction about the author and enjoyed getting to sample the work of so many authors, many of whom I had never read in the past. Some of the stories also end with a note by the author about the inspiration behind the story. I must mention that the Introduction by Amor Towles, in which he discusses how the “Mystery” genre has evolved, was a fascinating read. My ratings for the stories are as follows: The first story, “Blind Baseball” by Doug Allyn (3.5/5), revolves around a tontine insurance scheme. This was a gripping read but ended abruptly. “The Adventure of the Misquoted Macbeth” by Derrick Belanger (4/5) is a mystery featuring Sherlock Holmes and is one of ...

Rating:  3.75⭐ As the story begins, we meet thirty-four-year-old Melody, a resident of the community of Shelly in Exmouth on the southern English coast. Melody has spent her whole life in her family home, a bungalow named “Spindrift”. After the demise of her mother Flora and younger brother Milo who was born with a developmental disability, she now lives alone, surrounded by the familiarity of the sea and the coastal community and memories of her family. She still spends her time collecting her “treasures”- flotsam and jetsam from the seashore - and making up stories about her finds as she had been doing since she was a child to entertain Milo. But her days in her childhood home are about to come to an end once her lease is up and the community is razed to the ground to allow for a new development. Melody must figure out how to move on and decide on what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Complicating matters further is a secret she discovered among her late mother’s belong...

Rating: 4.5⭐ Normal Rules Don't Apply  by  Kate Atkinson  is a remarkable collection of loosely connected short stories featuring a cast of interesting characters (enchanted and otherwise) combining elements of speculative fiction, surrealism, mystery, fantasy and folklore, humor, drama and much more. These stories revolve around themes ranging from dystopian, evolution and conservation of our planet and its resources, the human condition and life choices , accountability and consequences, family and motherhood, among others. The collection begins with a story of an apocalyptic event that selectively affects humans and other living species (Void) . A vicar’s daughter’s questions about and fairy tale about lost fairy queens and princesses might lead to some surprising revelations (Spellbound) . A deceased woman reflects over her life , marriage and her previous assumptions of the afterlife much more while trying to recall how she met her end in  Blithe Spirit . A midd...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ A lethal fire in one of the most profitable banana plantations owned by the American Fruit Company in Costa Rica in 1968 ended in a night of personal tragedy for Teresa Cepeda Valverde ‘s family. Following the tragic death of her mother Amarga and the disappearance of her husband of eleven years José María, employed with the company, Teresa leaves for the United States, leaving her children, eleven-year-old Lyra and eight-year-old Carmen, in the care of friends. The tragedy and secrets that surround their family, their mother’s abandonment and her abrupt return six years later cast a long shadow on the lives of both sisters – the impact of which follows them into their adult lives. Twenty-seven years later we meet adult Lyra, a fertility counselor in San José who is raising her deceased sister’s ten-year-old son. Estranged from her mother who is approaching her sixtieth birthday and has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Lyra tries to piece together her family’s history w...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Our protagonist, Red, spent the first seven years of her life on the run with her father, evading the eyes of those who, according to her father, intend to harm them. Red’s father, who goes by the name of George the Tenth of Kernow, is a "cunning-man" who comes from a long line of pellars. Using an ancient method of card reading that has been passed down through generations, father and daughter make their living telling fortunes using the Square of the Sevens method. Red is a gifted fortune teller. She never knew her mother, having lost her when she was a baby, and her father hadn’t shared much about her with Red. After her father dies, seven-year-old Red is left in the care of an antiquarian from Bath to whom he also entrusts the manuscript detailing the unique Square of Sevens technique. However, she remains curious about her parents, a quest that is discouraged by her guardian. Red spends the next ten years in Bath until her fortunes change after the demise of...

Rating: 4.5⭐ “Our lives and the lives of those we love merge to create a river whose current carries us forward from our beginning to our end. Because we are only one part of the whole, the river each of us remembers is different, and there are many versions of the stories we tell about the past. In all of them there is truth, and in all of them a good deal of innocent misremembering.” The discovery of the body of one of its influential residents in the Alabaster River on Memorial Day 1958 leaves a community in Minnesota in shock. The victim, Jimmy Quinn, was not without enemies and though not too many people are mourning his death, tensions are high. Sheriff Brody Dern's team and his former colleague and mentor, now part-time deputy Connie Graff, are tasked with investigating the murder. The narrative follows Brody as he tries to unravel the mystery of Quinn’s murder, starting with trying to find out who might have had a grudge against him among his family, neighbors and employees...

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thirty-five-year-old lawyer Camille Taylor’s life is upended after the sudden passing of her husband, Ben. In the months that followed, coping with this tragic loss proved harder than she could have imagined. Unable to concentrate on her work and struggling to maintain a work-home balance as a single mother, she is forced to go on leave from her job. When a panic attack lands her in the hospital, she decides to visit her parents in her hometown in the coastal town of Fairhope, Alabama with her six-year-old daughter Willa over the summer for a change in scenario and some much-needed emotional support. Camille had left her hometown at the age of eighteen, leaving her small-town life behind, eventually pursuing her dream to be a lawyer and settling down in Washington DC. As Camille and Willa explore Camille’s hometown, Camille is drawn back into the familiarity of the sights and smells and the warm embrace of her family. When she finds out that her father Sam, owner of a land...

  Rating:  4.5⭐️ In December 1943, criminologist Hugo Fischer called to the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau to investigate the death of Dr. Sigismund Braun, a colleague of Dr. Josef Mengele. “the angel of death”. Dr. Braun’s body was discovered by eight-year-old Gioele, one of a set of Jewish twins whose family was deported to the concentration camp. Though the crime scene has been compromised, Hugo deduces that Dr. Braun was poisoned. A favorite of Dr. Mengele for reasons that are gradually revealed, Gioele is a perceptive child, who has a talent for drawing. Hugo befriends him and in exchange for tracking down his parents' whereabouts in the camp, Gioele agrees to help Hugo. His drawings and recollections of the crime scene prove to be helpful to Hugo’s investigation. The narrative follows Hugo as he tries to find a murderer among the deceased doctor's colleagues, family, and other SS officers all the while bearing witness to the brutality exacted upon prisoner...

Rating:  4.5⭐️ Librarian Sayuri Komachi greets all visitors at the library at Hatori Community House with this simple question, the answer to which doesn't always come easily to the person to whom the question is directed. “What are you looking for?” Along with her recommendations, she adds a title that is seemingly unrelated to the patron’s query. She also adds a handmade ”bonus gift” to her patrons, that strangely resonates with the person on a deeply personal level. “Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped. Try not to think of upset plans or schedules as personal failure or bad luck. If you can do that, then you can change, in your own self and in your life overall.” What You Are Looking For Is in the Library   by  Michiko...