Page-Turner Update: Year of Fog

I don't think it is a spoiler to tell you that I am halfway through the book and Emma, the missing kid, is still missing. Hmm....Year of Fog...title should have given it away.

So far, Year of Fog is well-written, engaging, and....realistic. It is entirely possible that I will finish the book and Emma will not be found. After all, in real life kids go missing and no one ever learns what happened to them.

Trivial pursuit (and poor marketing): Year of Fog references a (fictional) web site, findemma.com, set up to enable two-way communication with the public about the missing Emma. So I typed it into my web browser and whaddya know....it's a dead link! You'd think Bantam Dell Publishing could have at least bought the URL to promote the book or its author, Michelle Richmond.

It's Raining Page Turners: The Year of Fog

My latest page-turner, despite the warning on the book jacket that "The Year of Fog" by Michele Richmond is "highly recommended [for fans of] authors like Jodi Picoult," may not turn out to be a shameful page-turner after all. I am only six chapters in, but I may have to stay up all night to finish this one. Then again, given the subject matter, I may not be able to get to sleep anyway. I'll give you the blurb from the back cover and let you decide if you want to know more:
Here is the truth, this is what I know: I was walking on the beach with Emma. It was cold and very foggy. She let go of my hand. I stopped to photograph a baby seal, then glanced up toward the Great Highway. When I looked back, Emma was gone.

From this moment unfolds the spellbinding story of Abby Mason -- photographer, fiancee, soon-to-be-stepmother -- and the consquences of her greatest error. A riveting drama of how life can change in an instant, of a family torn apart by the search for the truth behind a child's disappearance, and of one woman's unwavering faith in the power of love.






I guess I'm like one of those rubberneckers at a train wreck. Whether it is Russell Banks telling the story of a schoolbus accident in "The Sweet Hereafter" or Michelle Richmond's "The Year of Fog," I have to keep turning the pages.

Finished the Shameful Page-Turner: The Liar's Diary

Without giving anything away, I'll summarize "The Liar's Diary" by Patry Francis as a cross between Zoe Heller's "What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal" and Jodi Picoult's "The Tenth Circle." I just won't tell you why. I will say Francis took an awfully long time to tell us anything about the Diary, which was the reason I bought the book in the first place. If you enjoyed those two books, I'll recommend "The Liar's Diary" to you as another of the Roxiticus Desperate Housewives shameful page-turners.

If you live in the Roxiticus Valley (Mendham, Bernardsville, Chester, Far Hills, Peapack-Gladstone, or anywhere in Morris County NJ), I'd suggest that you pick up a copy of the paperback at Mendham Books (in the Kings shopping center on "old" Route 24 in Mendham. If not, please click on the link below and pay for it with one-click so I can earn a few pennies!