Split Second by David Baldacci

 

Michelle Maxwell has just wrecked her promising career at the Secret Service. Against her instincts, she let a presidential candidate out of her sight for the briefest moment and the man whose safety was her responsibility vanished into thin air. Sean King knows how the younger agent feels. Eight years earlier, the hard-charging Secret Service agent allowed his attention to be diverted for a split second. And the candidate he was protecting was gunned down before his eyes. Now Michelle and Sean are about to see their destinies converge.

Drawn into a maze of lies, secrets, and deadly coincidences, the two discredited agents uncover a shocking truth: that the separate acts of violence that shattered their lives were really a long time in the making--and are a long way from over.

This is classic Baldacci and very entertaining if you like thrillers,  5/5 stars, Highly recommended.

Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

 

In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world--her music, her purpose—is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.

Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery—no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won’t be enough.

This was a refreshing, new kind of science fiction, not about space or warships but about the future of music.  I enjoyed it very much.  5/5 stars, highly recommended. 

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

 

Kristin Hannah has evolved as a writer in recent years.  She used to write romance novels like Firefly Lane, which were good novels but nowhere near the quality she has achieved with The Nightengale, The Great Alone, and now The Four Winds.   Her novels have become epics almost; historical novels with amazing characters.

In The Four Winds, The setting is the dust bowl in the Texas panhandle in which the main character, Elsa, lives a desperate life of censure by her parents and then forced into a shotgun marriage.  Elsa learns to love her new family, and as a city-girl turned farmer, learns to love her new life.  Then the dust bowl comes, her life and her children's life is destroyed, and they flee to California to find a better life.

At first, I thought this book was treading on the ground of The Grapes of Wrath, but as I read on I realized that this story is about Elsa and her courage.  Hannah throws the book at Elsa, giving her an incredibly hard life to overcome.  Elsa triumphs and I became attached to her as the indomitable heroine of a cruel and uncaring world.

This book is so realistic that I felt at times like there was dust in my mouth as I read.  Later, Elsa's struggle in the central valley of California equally felt real to me.  This is a great novel and a pleasure to read.  5/5 stars, very highly recommended.

This book will not be commercially available until February 2021.