25. Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Annie O’Sullivan seems to have it all.  She is 32, has a terrific and caring boyfriend, great friends, and is working hard to succeed as a realtor.  During a slow open house, she agrees to show the house to a man who pulls up in a van at the very end.  Suddenly the man who introduces himself as David, kidnaps her and holds her captive for a year in a remote cabin.  Subjected to daily rapes and psychological torture, she ultimately escapes and tells her horrifying story in flashbacks to an unnamed therapist.  Her kidnapper may be dead, but Annie feels a part of her life is still missing, especially since she can’t understand why she was kidnapped.  When the truth slowly comes out, it is a shocking and brutal surprise.

Readers may be surprised to learn that this is Steven’s first book.  While dealing with a difficult subject matter that involves pain and fear, the book is written in a very realistic way, until the ending.  I enjoyed the book until the end, when I was shocked to see how the story turned.  Still, the book is an engrossing, powerful tale of what people do to survive.  For those who like Jodi Picoult, and who have read Room by Emma Donoghue. 

24. Portobello by Ruth Rendell

Portobello Road in London is famous for its outdoor market and numerous shops.  It is also the setting for Rendell’s latest creepy psychological novel and brings a mixture of Londoners violently together.  While walking to the shops one day, Eugene Wren finds an envelope full of cash on the street. Instead of calling the police, he decides to post a “Found” sign in the Portobello neighborhood and question callers to see if they were the ones who dropped it.  A series of coincidences leads to a number of Londoners caught up in violence, and even death, because of these motions.

Rendell is the master of psychological novels that draw people in because of detailed characters and building suspense.  She writes with ease about street people, criminals, and the English upper class, lending credibility to her stories.  While I usually enjoy all of her books, this was a struggle because of repetitive details about main characters and a disjointed story that doesn’t truly come together until the end.  This may have worked better as a short story, something Rendell is also famous for.

23. I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson

The world is changing in 1989.  Communism is crumbling, and Arvid Jansen’s life is crumbling around him also.  His marriage is ending and he has just learned that his emotionally distant mother is dying of cancer.  When she decides to travel back to Denmark, where she grew up on the coast, Arvid leaves Oslo to follow her there.  Over the next few days, mother and son reminisce about their lives, weaving past with the present.  Arvid especially recalls his decision to leave college, join the Communist party, and spend his life in Communist factories, a decision his mother bitterly opposed.  His struggle to fully commit to communism, and to find purpose in his life while never truly understanding his mother, comes full circle during the Denmark trip.

This is a gorgeously written examination of two lives that are evolving while struggling with what has happened in their past.  Full of melancholy and failures, but also of love and hope, Petterson once again proves he is a writer that draws readers in and then holds them transfixed.  The stark Scandinavian scenery is described in a poetic way that adds to the starkness of the story.  There is a reason that the Los Angeles Times calls him a “master at writing the spaces between people.”  One of the best books I have read this year.

22. Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner

Boston police officer D. D. Warren is back in Gardner’s latest heart-pounding thriller.  A family is found brutally murdered in their Boston-area home, and all clues point to the barely alive father.  But why would he kill his family?  When another family is found dead, and the police end up at a locked-down psychiatric center for young children during their search for the possible killers, new theories begin to trouble Officer Warren.  Could young children, in the grips of severe mental anguish, be the killers?

Gardner tackles a disturbing plot that raises the uncomfortable subject of children capable of extreme acts of violence against their own families.  Yet the subject is never sensationalized, and fits into the overall story she is trying to tell.  Readers will be kept guessing almost to the end in this psychological page-turner.  For fans of Harlan Coben and James Patterson.

21. The Postcard Killers by James Patterson

Young couples are disappearing in cities around Europe, including Paris, Rome, Copenhagen,  Frankfurt, and Stockholm.  When their bodies are found, they are staged in elaborate displays of famous works of art that correspond to museums in that city.  NYPD Detective Jacob Kanon knows this only too well, since his daughter was one of the victims in Rome.  Kanon travels to Europe hunting the only clue he has about the killings, a postcard is send to a city newspaper shortly before a murder.  When Swedish reporter Dessie Larsson receives a postcard, Kanon knows they have little time before a new couple is found.

This new thriller from Patterson has him co-writing with Liza Marklund, a popular Swedish journalist and crime writer who is set to have her first English-translated book appear in the US in February 2011.  The story has a great premise, and short chapters hook readers into reading just one more chapter before stopping for the night, but the writing is stiff and clumsy.  In other hands, this could have been a great mystery.  Here’s hoping Marklund’s new mystery on her own is better.

20. Audrey Wait by Robin Benway

What if you were the inspiration of a popular song?  When 16-year-old Audrey decides to break up with her boyfriend, Evan, she has no idea he is going to write a song about it and perform it with his band.  When record executives happen to hear it at a show, the song becomes an overnight sensation, and Audrey is suddenly famous – for the wrong reason in her opinion.  Instead of normal high school stuff and her boring job at an ice cream shop, she is now fighting off paparazzi, finds herself in gossip magazines, and dealing with jealous classmates.

While written for teens, this is a light, fun read that works well for adults also.  Audrey is a likeable character trying her hardest to have a normal life in not very normal circumstances, and the characters of her best friend and her parents are very realistic too.  A fun, charming look at fame.

19. Faithful Place by Tana French

French has a habit of writing books about characters she has introduced in her previous books.  Her latest offering, Faithful Place, showcases this talent the best.  Frank Mackey grew up in a violent, alcohol-fueled house in Faithful Place.  He and his childhood girlfriend, Rosie, knew that the only way they could escape to a better life would be to take the ferry to England and not look back.  When Rosie doesn’t meet him on the planned night, he assumes she has left him, so moves on with his life and becomes a policeman.  Now an undercover police who still stays away from Faithful Place, Frank finds himself back in his childhood territory when Rosie’s suitcase, and then remains, are found in the house where they were supposed to meet that fateful night.

More of a psychological exploration than a mystery, French continues to gain strength as a writer with each book.  From bitter sibling rivalry that has never disappeared, to the long but never forgotten memories of a first love, French uses classic themes to draw her characters out.  My review for French's first book, In the Woods, can be read at http://tcpl.org/sarah/2007/07/36-in-woods-by-tana-french.html