All posts tagged: Catherine McKenzie

Wednesdays with Writers: What if you disappeared–intentionally–following a natural disaster? Could you deceive everyone and get away with it? That’s what Catherine McKenzie explores–and so much more–in her new domestic suspense, THE GOOD LIAR

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By Leslie Lindsay  A Goodreads Hottest Thrillers of 2018 Selection When tragedy strikes in a Chicago building, three women’s lives are thrust together in a tale of secrets, lies, and grief, in THE GOOD LIAR (Lake Union Publishing, April 3 2018) A year ago, Cecily (Lily) Grayson became the poster child for a horrifying explosion the ripped a Chicago building apart on October 10th. The media is calling this Triple Ten because it occurred at ten in the morning. Cecily was supposed to have been in the building that fateful day, but she wasn’t; she was late for a meeting. Her husband, Tom, worked in that building, so did her best friend, Kaitlyn. They both died. Meanwhile, Franny Maycombe, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched in horror as that building went up in flames. She was desperate to reconnect and now, it looks like she’ll never have that opportunity. Now, the anniversary of the explosion haunts the town. Documentaries are being made, memorials, and even a memory book, showcasing all 513 lives lost. …

WeekEND Reading: How quickly life can spin out of control…Jennifer Kitses talks about this, how she is constantly buying books, her literary inspirations, time loops, and more in this stunning look at 24-hours in a suburban marriage SMALL HOURS

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By Leslie Lindsay A tipping point of a novel with tense domestic vignettes leading each character deeper and deeper into destructive behavior.  SMALL HOURS is a slow-burn, ‘tinderbox’ of a debut novel (Matthew Thomas, WE ARE NOT OURSELVES) in which we are just waiting for the inevitable to explode. We follow the lives of a married couple, Tom and Helen for 24-hours. Told in alternating POVs (Helen and Tom), we dive into a myriad of secrets, promises, deadlines, children, neighbors, etc. It’s one small step into the danger zone with each paragraph read, with each flip of the page, each turn of the hour. I kind of wanted to shake these people. Perhaps that is what makes Jennifer Kitses’s debut so palpable. We can *feel* the tensions arising, see the outcome before her characters and we just want to thrust an arm out and say, ‘Stop!’ But the reading is propulsive; I wanted to keep reading. It was like a bad accident on the side of the road: you don’t want to look, but you do. Tom …

Wednesdays with Writers: Bestselling Catherine McKenzie talks about how Scrivener keeps her organized, the mirror images of her two main characters, her inspiration for the FRACTURED author character, & so much more

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By Leslie Lindsay  “When do you cross the line from curious to obsessed? From fan to fanatic? Compliment to threat?” That’s the overarching question of Internationally bestselling Catherine McKenzie’s FRACTURED sets to find out, and it’s done beautifully. I really, really enjoyed the aura of conflict she set up from page one. There’s mystery, a hint of romance, psychological conflict, all intermingling with a touch of women’s fiction ala Jennifer Weiner. Bestselling novelist Julie Apple Prentice and her family have just moved from Tacoma, Washington to bucolic Mt. Adams, Ohio. She thinks she’s finally put the past behind her, including a female stalker/fan/ex-law school colleague. Yet, her past seems to follow her. Could it be that there’s something ‘off’ about Julie? Told in alternating time frames from two distinct characters, Julie and John Dunbar (the married neighbor across the street), FRACTURED (just named one of the best books of fall by GoodReads) is a chilling and tense ride through suburbia where nothing is as it seems. Forget the cute white picket fences, the block parties, …