Every Note Played

Lisa Genova

Richard and Karina are gifted pianists who met in music school, married, had a daughter, betrayed each other, and divorced. Bitterness verging on hatred remains. Then Richard receives an ALS diagnosis, depriving him of his ability to play. Genova portrays the unrelenting course of the disease, the indignities it plays on Richard’s body, and its cruelty. But she also shows how Richard and Karina suffer from a deeper malady. ALS forces them to confront their betrayals and seek forgiveness from each other—though not from God. The book includes graphic descriptions of Richard’s failing body—and some R-rated language.

Millard Salter’s Last Day

Jacob M. Appel

This novel is not for everyone. Here’s the premise: Millard Salter is a successful 75-year-old psychiatrist in New York City who plans to commit suicide tomorrow. But first he’s going to help his 68-year-old, fatally ill lover to take her own life. And before that, he plans to go about his last day of work, reconcile with his estranged ex-wife, visit the building in which he grew up, visit his wife’s grave, write recommendations, consult with patients, and have lunch with a 40-something son who hasn’t yet launched. It’s the sort of novel that would generate good discussion in a book club, though it has some obscenities.

Sulfur Springs

William Kent Krueger

Krueger usually sets his mysteries in northern Minnesota. But this novel takes private investigator Cork O’Connor to the Mexico-Arizona border in search of his stepson who has gone missing. The missing man has a history of drug addiction—law enforcement in Arizona assumes he’s using again. But as Cork and his new wife Rainy investigate, they begin to suspect that the son has stirred up bad guys with connections to human trafficking and drug running. Corrupt police further complicate the issue. The novel portrays sympathetically the immigrants coming across from Mexico. Warning: Some R-rated language.

Not a Sound

Heather Gudenkauf

Amelia Winn is an emergency room nurse who suffers a catastrophic injury that leaves her profoundly deaf. Alcohol becomes her way of coping with depression, but it costs her everything. A year and a half later, sober but unemployed, she comes across a dead body while rowing on a secluded stretch of river with her service dog. It turns out to be a fellow nurse and friend. Feeling guilty that she’d let the friendship lapse, Amelia seeks answers. Suspense builds as she faces the temptation to drink and deals with threats she can’t hear. Warning: The book includes a few obscenities.

Afterword

The 11 short stories included in Sit by Deborah Ellis (Groundwood Books, 2017) tell of children trying to understand or interact with the adult world. The first story is about Jafar, who works in a furniture factory and tries to avoid beatings by his boss. But he has a secret: At night he goes to school and has learned to read. One day he comes to work with a plan: to scratch on the underside of one of the crude wooden chairs his first poem. He’s filled with joy as he sees his chair loaded on the truck: “He heard his chair. It was singing.”

Other stories revolve around time-out chairs, chairs at social services, and even a long, many-seater, concentration camp latrine. Because Ellis wrote these stories for young adults, they have a straightforward style that doesn’t get in the way of the poignant tales she’s telling. —S.O.