Need For reads

--> Fiction Secrets in the wilderness LEAVE NO TRACE By Mindy Mejia 337 pp. Atria People disappear. Some, like the Maine hermit of North Pond, Christopher Knight, drive away from society, park their car, and vanish into the woods for 20-plus years. Others, like the Lykov family of Russia, flee persecution and live off their wits and the few seeds they took with them into the Siberian wilds. Or, like Ho Van Thanh with his son, they flee the violence of combat and aren't discovered until years after a war has ended.  Author Mindy Mejia pivots off these and other cases of the disappeared in her page-turner of a novel,  Leave No Trace , told in first-person by her flawed hero, Maya Stark. The story begins at the Congdon Psychiatric Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, where Maya is an assistant speech therapist. A remarkable feat considering she was once a patient there, back in the days after her mother left, her abandonment issues, the acting out, and her ...

--> Fiction Stick-in-your-eye privilege LAKE SUCCESS By Gary Shteyngart 352 pp. Random House Reviewed by Sarah Corbett Morgan Barry Cohen appears to have it all. A hedge-fund manager with 2.4 billion dollars in assets, he has the trophy wife, the lavish New York apartment, and thinks nothing of drinking twenty-thousand-dollar-a-glass whiskey—single malt, of course.   But in the first pages of Gary Shteyngart’s newest novel,  Lake Success , we encounter Barry in the bowels of New York City’s grubby Port Authority Bus Terminal searching for a ticket kiosk. He is drunk, his face is bleeding, scratched where his wife and the nanny both attacked him, and it’s three in the morning. He has a few dollars in his pocket, a roller bag with some hastily gathered clothes and a fist full of high-end collector watches he cherishes. He throws away his credit cards in the nearest trashcan. He’s on the lam.  So begins Barry’s search for himself; he believes...

Fiction What if they’d gone underground? THE MIDDLEMAN By Olen Steinhauer 368 pp. Minotaur Reviewed by Sarah Corbett Morgan What if the Occupy movement, or Bernie Sanders for that matter, had gone underground and formed a political terrorist cell after the 2016 election? What if, in an eerie and nonviolent way, thousands of young people quietly walked away from society—disappeared—and caused a local and ultimately national news sensation?  What if corrupt FBI agents then infiltrate the terrorist cell? These are the premises of Olen Steinhauer's new novel, The Middleman . Author of ten other books, plus the acclaimed TV series,  Berlin Station , he has written a thriller for these troubled times. The story unfolds in 2017-18 and Trump is president. Left-wing groups and protesting in the streets, the FBI is aware and monitoring the situation. Martin Bishop, the charismatic leader of the terrorist group, the Massive Brigade, is a wanted man, and FBI agent Rac...