Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for the weekend include the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery, and Erik Larson's best-selling Dead Wake.
A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear; Harper, 309 pp.; fiction
Now and then, we could all use a change of scenery.
Certainly that holds true for psychologist-turned-sleuth Maisie Dobbs, the damaged and yet indomitable hero of Jacqueline Winspear's mystery series set in Britain in the years between the two World Wars. Or at least that's where they were mostly set until A Dangerous Place, which finds Maisie in Gibraltar — recovering, or perhaps hiding, from a personal tragedy that has left her cut off from all she knew and loved in England.
In this 10th Maisie Dobbs novel, it's 1937 and Maisie has made an unplanned stop in Gibraltar — a British stronghold flooded by Spanish refugees and stalked by spies for the various governments who are using this war as a try-out for the one to come.
Walking one night, Maisie comes upon the body of a local Jewish photographer, and despite pressure from the local police and the British secret service, she cannot leave the case alone.
USA TODAY says *** ½ out of four. "May (Winspear) shine on the literary scene for many books to come."
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson; Crown, 430 pp.; non-fiction
The best-selling author (The Devil in the White City) remembers the sinking of the British ocean liner by a German U-boat 100 years later.
USA TODAY says ***. "A ripping yarn of Edwardian gentility yielding to merciless modernity."
World Gone By by Dennis Lehane; William Morrow; 320 pp.; fiction
Final volume in series about Joe Coughlin, now a 37-year-old "retired" Florida gangster whose wife has been shot dead in an ambush.
USA TODAY says ***1/2. "An exceptional read …Lehane writes convincingly, tensely, tersely, powerfully, about the fatal tensions of daily Mob life."
The Damned by Andrew Pyper; Simon & Schuster, 304 pp.; fiction
In this horror novel, a young man who died and "returned" is haunted by his twin sister, who didn't make it back from the afterlife.
USA TODAY says ***1/2. Well-written…chill-inducing."
The Sound of Music Story: How A Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired the Most- Loved Film of All Time by Tom Santopietro; St. Martin's Press, 324 pp.; non-fiction
Goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the beloved movie, now celebrating its 50th anniversary.
USA TODAY says ***. "Compelling when Santopietro focuses on the aspects that make the film itself enduring — particularly (Julie) Andrews' presence."
Contributing reviewers: Robert Bianco, Matt Damsker, Don Oldenburg, Brian Truitt, Elysa Gardner