Books You'll Stay Up All Night to Finish
Winter has broken
you—and you're not alone. The game plan? Flop down in the sun and
read something entertaining, engaging and unputdownable. Here, our favorites
for taking on vacation with you or for taking a mental vacation with right at
home.
8 of 8
After I'm Gone
By Laura Lippman
352 pages;
William Morrow
In 1976, things look bad for Felix Brewer, the crooked
businessman with big ambitions—"[Life] can better. It can always
be better. Don't think small."—who pulls up the stakes of
his cushy suburban Baltimore life and disappears. But he doesn't evaporate into
a vacuum: Brewer leaves behind a wife, Bambi; three small daughters; and, a
mistress, Julie. Ten years later, Julie vanishes. Then, in 2012, newly retired
homicide detective Roberto "Sandy" Sanchez begins investigating cold
cases for extra income, including the murder of Julie, whose body turns up in a
local park. Everyone—as is so often the case in a Laura Lippman
novel—knows more than he or she is telling, and everything comes back
to romantic, shady Felix. This isn't a murder mystery, not really. And yet it
is. This isn't a family saga, not really. And yet it is. Lippman doesn't deal
in absolutes and it's her exploration of the nuance of loss—and its
permeating presence, like carbon monoxide slowly poisoning the characters and
their air—that makes this a must-read.
— Jordan Foster
Published 03/23/2014