Artwork for The Light Between Oceans book review. In 1918, after four
harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to
Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock.
To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a
year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a
young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two
miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the
grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the
wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living
baby. Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose
moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the
dead man and the infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby
to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim the child as their own
and name her Lucy, but a rift begins to grow between them. When Lucy is
two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there
are other people in the world…and one of them is desperate to find her
lost baby.
Artwork for Dare Me book review. Since both girls were small, Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's
best friend and right-hand lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy
carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought
them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they're seniors
who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by
the other girls - until the young new coach arrives.
Cool and
commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach,
Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her
life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's
golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her
position as "top girl" - both with the team and with Addy herself.
And
then a suspicious suicide hits close to home, and the police
investigation focuses on Coach and her squad. As Addy begins to suspect
what really happened, the line between right and wrong grows blurrier,
and she must decide where her loyalties truly lie-and how far is too far
to go for someone you love.
The raw passions of girlhood are
brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship,
ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with
what Tom Perrotta has hailed as "total authority and an almost desperate
intensity," provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the
all-American girl.
