A rom-com thriller, two girls of different races finding their futures, and Nick Carraway writes “Gatsby.” Fun reads for the lazy days of August.
(Courtesy of Berkley / Penguin Random House)
“Matchmaking for Psychopaths”: by Tasha Coryell (Berkley, $29)
People frequently assumed that our clients were ugly or strange and that was why they struggled to find love; often it was the opposite. Strange people found one another. — from “Matchmaking for Psychopaths”
“This book is bat— crazy.”
Tasha Coryell (Emily Covington / Penguin Random House)
That’s one reader’s online opinion of Tasha Coryell’s quirky novel “Matchmaking for Psychopaths,” and the St. Paul author considers it a compliment to her story about Lexie, a matchmaker whose niche is pairing psychopaths. She’s well-suited to the job because her parents were serial killers who lured young women to their deaths. Now Lexie’s father is dead, her mother in prison, and she discovers on her 30th birthday that her best friend and her fiance are in love. As if that isn’t enough for the poor girl, she starts receiving bloody packages that seem to have something to do with her murderous parents. She’s lonely, so she’s happy when a new woman friend comes into her life who seems too good to be true.
What is this book?
“I’d say it’s a thriller with literary touches and horror elements,” Coryell says in a phone conversation from her home in Highland Park, where she lives with her husband, 3-year-old son and a greyhound.
“One of the things I tried not to do is self-censor,” she explains. “If you go into writing worried about going over the top it’s easy to shut down. You have to go for it. I don’t want to write about anything where children or animals get hurt. In some instances I had to stop reading thrillers because they were so heavy. I knew when I wrote this story that it had to be crazy but come out happy.”
Coryell’s widely praised debut novel, “Love Letters to a Serial Killer,” is about a woman who writes to an accused serial killer and moves in with him after his acquittal, grappling with her feelings for him while secretly investigating his background. Like “Matchmaking for Psychopaths,” it’s a multi-genre thriller/horror/humorous story.
After the success of “Love Letters,” Coryell and her editors were kicking around ideas for a second book, including the author’s love of reality TV shows like “Love Island,” and somehow the conversation turned to psychopaths and matchmaking.
“I was open to the idea. It was a good airing for serial killers.” she recalled.
Coryell didn’t do a lot of research into psychopaths, a term that is not used by mental health professionals. To depict how Lexie figured out which of her clients fit the description, she got help from Canadian psychologist Robert Hare’s textbook that gives a checklist of psychopathic traits.
“Psychopaths in general are good at convincing people to like them,” she says. “They know what people want. They’re gregarious, fun to be around.”
Coryell, who is expecting a baby in September, is deep into writing her next novel set in a milieu similar to her previous books.
She will sign copies of “Matchmaking for Psychopaths” with Sam Tschida, who also writes mystery mashups, at 3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Barnes & Noble, 11500 Wayzata Blvd., Minnetonka, and will join fellow thriller writers Andrew DeYoung, Kathleen West, Katrina Monroe and Tschida for a panel discussion at 3 p.m. Sept. 6 at Avant Garden Bookstore, 215 E. Main Street, Anoka.
(Courtesy of Harpers Ferry Park Association)
“Between These Rivers”: by Kathleen Ernst (Harpers Ferry Park Association, $9.95)
The two rivers surrounding this story by an experienced Wisconsin author are the Potomac and the Shenandoah that flow through the legendary scenery around Harpers Ferry, W. Va. It’s 1895, and two very different young women form an unlikely friendship that withstands the hatred of many white people for their Black neighbors decades after the end of the Civil War. Ida Mae Parker’s family belongs to what we would call today the Black middle class. Her stern parents, who insist on education and upholding their conduct to the highest standard, want her to be a teacher. She wants to sing onstage. Hazel Whitaker, who is white, is shoved out of her family home by her stepfather when she’s only 15 because there are too many mouths to feed. The young women meet at a resort hotel where Ida Mae works and Hazel collects rags she sells to make money.
Ida Mae has never directly faced discrimination, but when her brother’s newly constructed hotel is burned, she follows a male friend to civil disobedience in a railroad car and pays the price. Hazel is fascinated by a photographer working at an island carnival and is soon learning from him how to take lifelike photos instead of staid, posed ones. Her dream is to take over his business.
Ernst is a social historian, educator and bestselling author of more than 40 novels, including the Hanneke Bauer historical mystery series and the Chloe Ellefson mysteries. Her children’s books include 20 titles for American Girl. “Between These Rivers” could easily fit into the young adult category.
“The Duke of Buccleuch”: by A.S. Lorde (Sea Goat Press, $30)
Subtitled “Nick Carraway writes The Great Gatsby,” this second novel by a Texas-based writer tells of what happened to Carraway (narrator of Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”) during the two years after Jay Gatsby was found shot to death in his swimming pool in New York.
Returning to St. Paul after national publicity attaching Carraway’s name to involvement with the murder of a bootlegger, the young man is not well received by his wealthy family’s social group. He lives at the University Club and is engaged to his former girlfriend. But he’s really in love with professional golfer Jordan, Daisy’s best friend in “Gatsby.” The story is a mash-up of parts of Fitzgerald’s real life and characters and settings in the original novel. And there are revelations about Daisy and Gatsby that will surprise readers. Although this story can be read without any knowledge of “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald fans can spend hours debating whether he would approve of this take on what happened after the Gatsby magic was gone.
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