I promised myself no new books until I finished the pile on my nightstand but fall brings out all the heavy hitters. There are some I just have to read:

Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips 464 pages published by Scribner  In her mesmerizing new novel, Quiet Dell, Phillips returns to the scene of a real crime that occurred in the 1931, in a West Virginia town not far from where Phillips grew up. A crime that Phillips’ mother, herself haunted by memories of watching townspeople flocking to the scene, had told her about when she was a girl. At the time the newspapers were full of sensational stories about Asta Eicher, a lonely young widow, and her three children, imprisoned and murdered by Harry Powers, a charming serial killer who seduced scores of women through lonely hearts columns all around the country with the promise of making them his wife. Many are comparing Quiet Dell to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and they do have much in common. For the second time, I am putting this book aside. They compare the book to In Cold Blood but I couldn't put In Cold Blood down and I just can't seem to get into this one.

* The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith 256 pages published by Pantheon  "The latest title is brilliant in its hopefulness, implying, as it does, that a person may only be a mere tweak away from beauty. This hopeful attitude is exemplified by Mma Ramotswe, the owner and operator of Botswana’s only detective agency, who resolutely tackles the problems people bring to her in her small, out-of-the-way office under an acacia tree. The clients’ problems showcase the usual suspects of greed, envy, sloth—all the vices that cause trouble for others. This time, the owner of the nearest town’s new beauty salon receives a tiny thing, a feather from a ground hornbill bird. But this artifact is a traditional way of conveying hate. This is followed by a highly effective smear campaign. The other case Mma Ramotswe works on here concerns an heir to a great cattle farm who may actually be an imposter. Mma Ramotswe must track the truth alone because her assistant Mma Makutsi is absent (no plot spoiler here). As usual, these novels are only a bit about actual mysteries. They’re leisurely, wonderfully crafted descriptions of life in the agency and at home, the beauties of Botswana, and the joys, big and small, of life. This latest is, especially, a tribute to enduring friendship." --Connie Fletcher The cases are only a vehicle for daily life in Africa, the simplicity and the confusion of changing times and society, morals and values. This is actually a very good book for ESL beginners because the language is simple but the reader has to use the techniques for finding new vocabulary from context. 

* Critical Mass (V.I. Warshawski Novel) by Sara Paretsky 480 pages published by G. P. Putnam's Sons  As in previous V. I. Warshawski mysteries, Paretsky works elements of Chicago history into the story, this time referencing the city as a nexus for atomic research and linking the science to the work conducted in Austria during the Nazi occupation. When Judy, the drug-addicted daughter of Kitty Binder, a Holocaust survivor whom Lotty Herschel knew in wartime Vienna, calls Lotty for help and then disappears, Lotty turns to Vic. The investigation leads to a burned-out crack house and the mutilated body of a dead man but not to Judy. Kitty, a bitter, uncooperative, seemingly paranoid crank, seems uninterested in finding her estranged daughter, but she hires Vic to locate her grandson, giving Vic two missing-persons cases in the same family. This book left me with a number of questions about the fictional aging of fictional characters.

Takedown Twenty: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich 320 pages published by Bantam  New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum knows better than to mess with family. But when powerful mobster Salvatore “Uncle Sunny” Sunucchi goes on the lam in Trenton, it’s up to Stephanie to find him. Uncle Sunny is charged with murder for running over a guy (twice), and nobody wants to turn him in—not his poker buddies, not his bimbo girlfriend, not his two right-hand men, Shorty and Moe. Even Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, has skin in the game, because—just Stephanie’s luck—the godfather is his actual godfather. And while Morelli understands that the law is the law, his old-world grandmother, Bella, is doing everything she can to throw Stephanie off the trail. The terrible thing about this is that I don't care what it is about because I will read any Stephanie Plum book that comes out.  I know that these are trashy books but I love them. Why?