An original book.

Westerbeke is a full-time librarian who wrote this debut novel in his spare time.

Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her backpack that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she starts to bleed to death.

When medical treatment only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run from her condition, which won’t allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days—nor return to a place where she’s already been.

From the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of the Himalayas; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard, to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and ultimately, to truly live.

But the longer Aubry wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others, the clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s…

It was inspired by some of his favourite authors: Somerset Maugham, Thornton Wilder, Dostoyevsky, particularly The Brother’s Karamozov, Jack London. More recently Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Emily St. John Mandel.

Click PLAY or see the author explain the book on YouTube.

Disappointing.

A big fan, I downloaded the newest Reacher the day of publication.

29th in the series, it is very similar to the previous 28. 😀

A proven formula.

The same odd, somewhat stilted dialogue.

Plenty of Jack Reacher man handling the bad guys without knife or (aside from one case) gun.

The authors are still Lee Child & Andrew Child, though I assume Andrew is doing most of the writing now.

The recent books have been improved by making fun of Reacher being a luddite. He has no phone, so must keep borrowing phones. He barely knows how Uber works.

On the downside, the PLOT of this book might have looked good in outline. But — ultimately — it was way too complicated. Too many characters.

I lost interest.

I predict many fans will start the book excited, and finish underwhelmed.

That said, the worst Reacher book in the series is still better than almost anything else being published this year. If you don’t know these books, start back at beginning.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

An absurd premise … but it somehow weirdly works.

Details.

Holly is an Aussie game designer, now living in London. This is her 1st book. A hit.

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?