Posted in Adult, Fiction, History, Mystery, Nonfiction

While You Wait December 2023: The Price You Pay and Killers of the Flower Moon

NOTE: Apologies! It was pointed out that the first version of this post had a book in it, The Stakes by Ben Sanders, where the only copy in the library system had been withdrawn – it wasn’t actually available! It’s been replaced with a new readalike below.

On the fiction side, we’ve got a new Nick Petrie book being requested like mad. It’s the eighth book in his Peter Ash series, so people who have gotten invested in them are clearly eagerly awaiting this new release. And there’s nothing to boost the popularity of a non-fiction book like being made into a movie, so it’s not surprising that Killers of the Flower Moon is seeing a surge in popularity (plus, my mom says it’s an amazing book!).

The Price You Pay by Nick Petrie

Lewis has helped Peter Ash out of more trouble than Peter cares to remember. So he doesn’t hesitate when Lewis asks a favor in return. Lewis has left his criminal past behind, but a former associate may be in trouble, and he and Peter must drive into the teeth of a blizzard to find him. When they discover blood in the snow and a smoldering cabin, both men know things are bad. Then they learn that someone has stolen notebooks full of incriminating secrets about Lewis’s long-ago crimes, and realize the situation is much worse than they’d thought.

To save Lewis’s wife, Dinah, and her two boys, Lewis and Peter must find the notebooks. With Peter’s longtime girlfriend, June Cassidy, they begin the search—facing ruthless and violent foes at each turn, including one powerful person who will stop at nothing for revenge. Will Peter and Lewis be able to keep that dark past buried? Or will they need to step into the darkness to save the people they love most?

Read-Alike 1: Fool Me Twice by Jeff Lindsay

Stealing a Faberge egg. Surviving a double cross. And pulling off the most incredible robbery ever, for the world’s most demanding—and dangerous—collector.

This will be the challenge of thief extraordinaire Riley Wolfe’s life.

Held prisoner by a top-dog international arms dealer, and a top-notch art collector, Riley has to steal an artwork. Small problem—it’s a fresco, “The Liberation of St. Peter.” Slightly larger problem—it’s in the Vatican.

And, it’s a literal wall.

Riley has no choice: agree or die. But when his captor turns him loose, he finds even more dangerous criminals waiting to ensnare him, threatening his life and the life of the woman he loves. The threat is clear. Riley knows they both have only one way out.

Read-Alike 2: Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

In a daring operation, two crooks-for-hire rob an Atlantic City casino. But their heist goes horribly wrong, and only one of them makes it out alive. Now he’s on the run with half a million dollars vacuum-packed into a bundle the size of a briefcase. Little does he know it’s rigged with explosives.

Almost immediately, an expert fixer named Jack is in cross-country pursuit. With less than forty-eight hours to recover the money, clean up the mess, and—for god’s sake—try not to botch the job like he did last time….

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Read-Alike 1: In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels.

But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Read-Alike 2: A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

The Roaring Twenties–the Jazz Age–has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, Stephenson had become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees. A Fever in the Heartland marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.