For the History Buff
The Necklace
by Claire McMillan
(Touchstone, $26)
Soaring adventure. A sparkling inheritance. Bitter family jealousy. And Cleveland at the center of it all. Readers will struggle to catch their breath as they tear through this fast-paced piece of historical fiction. Inspired by the travel journals of Amasa Stone Mather, her husband’s ancestor, McMillan deftly guides us through a century of family conflict and betrayal. At the center of the whirlwind is Nell, a young lawyer summoned back to Northeast Ohio to be the executor of her great-aunt’s estate, much to her family’s nasty ire. With the surprising revelation that Nell has been bequeathed a mysterious necklace, predatory relatives immediately begin circling the glittering prey, and family secrets are revealed. The story shifts between Nell’s present-day search for the necklace’s origins and the family’s heartbreaking history of love and treachery during the opulent 1920s. Although McMillan shows us far-off lands and gorgeous decades past, the characters always return to Cleveland, providing a sense of the familiar as we discover how the story of a family can radically change — depending on who is doing the telling. // Ken Schneck
For the Suburbanite
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
(Penguin Random House, $27)
Shaker Heights may have been one of the nation’s first carefully planned communities, but Little Fires Everywhere shows us the enthralling chaos that is unleashed when absolutely nothing goes according to script. Best-selling author Celeste Ng, a Shaker Heights native, peeks into a few suburban homes in the late 1990s, revealing secrets that fuel neighborhood fires both literal and emotional. Behind one set of expensively embroidered curtains lies the Richardson clan, appearing to the whole community to be the embodiment of suburban prosperity. In a sparse rental a few blocks away, eccentric artist Mia Warren arrives in town with her teenage daughter, bringing with them a mysterious past. When the two disparate families meet, their lives are forever altered as they take opposing sides in a public custody dispute. The book’s perspective shifts from character to character as it follows the drama of suburban identity, politics, young love and tragic misunderstandings. The result is a haunting novel of complicated sensations living at that crowded intersection of family, art, race and emotion. // KS
For the Mystery Lover
The Unclaimed Victim
by D.M. Pulley
(Thomas & Mercer, $15.95)
What if Cleveland’s most infamous murderer were still on the loose — and still out for blood? The true-crime lover will rip through D.M. Pulley’s fictitious take on two women — decades apart — trying to crack the unsolved case of the Torso Murderer, who dismembered at least 12 victims in the 1930s. The Shaker Heights resident, who won the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, follows each sleuth as they embark on personal quests to solve the whodunit. Ethel, a hardened, Depression-era prostitute, is desperate to find the killer who has already slaughtered two of her friends. More than 60 years later, Kris is determined to uncover who butchered her father. Pulley tells a terrifying tale made more disconcerting by its familiar settings: Tremont, Ohio City and downtown don’t feel quite the same by the book’s end. At times gruesomely descriptive, this local take on historical fiction shares a very real look at violence against women and minorities throughout the last century — and a shocking final twist will make you wonder who in your own life could be harboring secret prejudices. // Kate Bigam
For the Thinker
Everybody’s Son
by Thrity Umrigar
(HarperCollins, $26.99)
Thrity Umrigar thoughtfully examines what it’s like to be caught between two racial worlds in Everybody’s Son. The Case Western Reserve University professor’s seventh novel is a heart-wrenching look at race and privilege, told through the narrative of a struggling black mother, a well-to-do white couple and the biracial boy who binds them. Anton is 10 years old when he’s removed from the care of his drug-addicted mother and adopted by David Coleman, a well-respected judge whose own son died in a car accident. In his desperation to reclaim fatherhood, David sets morality aside and uses his professional connections to influence the family’s personal life. While Anton believes his birth mother gave him away, a shocking letter shatters what he knows as truth. As he’s forced to re-examine his self-identity, so, too, must Anton re-evaluate the loving father he thought he knew and the issues of race, class and power he’s so long ignored. This book is a powerful look at the ways white male privilege has the capacity to oppress and destroy, even when individuals believe they’re acting with the best of intentions. // KB
