Carole Barrowman shares with us some of her favorite reads of the summer so far.
The Puzzle Master by Danielle Trussoni (Random House)
Mike Brink has been diagnosed with savant syndrome after a football injury. Brink “reroutes his life… like a river” and embraces his singularity. He becomes a famous puzzle master. When he’s invited to solve a strange puzzle posed by a convicted murderer, Jess Price, Mike finds it “impossible to walk away” from her. You won’t be able to either. This immersive, layered, brilliant book is a labyrinth of ciphers, cryptograms, logic puzzles, word puzzles, and a doozy of a conspiracy.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs (sounds like Terge) (William Morrow)
If Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six seduced you with its library of ancient secrets, if you swooned over Deborah Harkness’s enchanted manuscript in A Discovery of Witches, then let me introduce you to Minnesota author, Emma Törzs’ Ink Blood Sister Scribe, an enthralling fantasy debut about magic and books… and the magic of books.
The Good Ones by Polly Stewart (Harper Collins)
When she was a young woman, Nicola’s best friend disappeared. Twenty years later, she’s still haunted by the loss of her friend. She decides to move back to her small Blue Ridge Mountain community and try to find a clue, anything, to discover what years happened. This is a gripping mystery about female friendship. I’m still thinking about it. Plus, it’s cover pulled me right in.