The Keeper / by Sarah Langan

There is something wrong with Susan Marley. The residents of the small town of Bedford, Maine cross the street when she approaches and blame her for all their problems; especially for the terrifying things that dominate their dreams. But it's not just Susan, the whole town is haunted thanks to its sinister past and dark secrets hidden from view. Many now believe there's a curse on Bedford. With rampant unemployment owing to the recent closure of the paper mill, generally rainy weather and a history of misfortune and tragedy, the town has always been a dismal place, now even more so and many aren't so sure Susan Marley isn't the reason. Once the local beauty adored for her fair complexion and perfect teeth, she's now little more than a vagrant and sometimes prostitute whose odd, nocturnal habits have aroused suspicion. Even members of her family like her younger sister Liz and her seminally depressed mother, no longer living under the same roof as Susan, are starting to believe the rumors. It's also been raining a lot more in Bedford lately--a lot more. So much so that residents have begun to fear that the nearby river may flood over and ravage the already plagued town. As the mutually encountered nightmares are only matched by the drenching rainfall, those that can escape while others can only feel the sense of an impending disaster.

Columbia graduate Sarah Langan won a Bram Stoker award for this 2006 novel full of secrets, suspense and horror. Her sequel, The Missing (FIC LANGAN), has done equally well. The Keeper is definitely a 'keeper' as it portrays the damaged and mysterious Susan Marley, a vampish creature who somehow holds sway over the town of Bedford during the day and inhabits their dreams at night, through the narration of the protagonist Liz Marley, Susan's younger sister. With the suspense set from both origins of her situation and the pending predicament with the unnatural occurrences (and threatening natural ones), readers are well-engaged within the first few pages. And while the characters aren't especially good enough or believable enough to grant the sympathy needed for a truly creepy tale, the ending is well-rewarding and adequately completes a good story. (FIC LANGAN)

Red Hook Road: A Novel / by Ayelet Waldman

It's the perfect day for a wedding. With the Maine summer sun shining down on a beautiful young couple, it seems a promising start to a new union between two people--John Tetherly and Becca Copaken--and two families who've known each other a while, though not always as intimate friends. The Copakens are New Yorkers who've owned a roomy vacation home in the small town of East Red Hook for over a century. Mother Iris Copaken even insists that since they've summered in East Red Hook every year since 1879 they have just as much right to be considered locals as the year-rounders. Not everyone agrees with this theory though. John's mother Jane Tetherly is the hard-edged manager of a maid service which the Copakens employ. She considers herself a true Mainer and doesn't much care for her oldest son marrying a "from awayer". But she also understands that her oldest son John genuinely loves his new bride and though she prefers not to admit it, that Becca really loves John.
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Then just after the wedding the unthinkable happens: the limousine carrying the newlyweds is involved in a fatal accident killing all passengers instantly. Suddenly everything changes between the two families, particularly for mothers Jane and Iris who quickly reacquaint themselves with the social differences separating them. Over the next few years, the women work through their grief and sorrow, experiencing all of the pain, anger and deep-seated resentment which the accident has caused. But with their loss comes the opportunity for new beginnings like the odd compatibility forged between other members of the respective clans. Specifically it's the bond born of mutual bereavement between younger siblings Matt Tetherly and Ruthie Copaken who transform their sadness into a solid friendship and a budding romance. It's also the oddly fascinating rejuvenation of Iris' father Isaac, a forgotten master violinist, who takes on the task of tutoring one of the Tetherley nieces, a dormant music prodigy in her own right. With time all begin to redress the wounds suffered in the midst of such a horrible tragedy.
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Mystery author Waldman's follow-up to her fiction debut Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is worthy of the positive reviews of its predecessor and then some. Reminiscent of other New England domestic fiction writers like Anita Shreve, Barbara Delinsky or Anna Quindlen, this is an engaging story in which friction between in-laws is generally a guarantee and more internal family problems are never completely put to rest. And though writing about culture clashes between "summer people" and "the help" is nothing new, it never seems to get old either, especially if the story rings true. In this case it's the unique but believable plot device of a marriage between two opposing families where tragedy leaves everyone at a loss for how to deal with such a catastrophe. In practical and not overly-sensationalized fashion, Waldman gets to the heart of the matter, carefully avoiding any hasty judgments or over-dramatized flare-ups and seeing the tragedy through with uncommon bonds formed between opposing characters in charmingly practical ways. (FIC WALDMAN)

Impact / by Douglas Preston

Massachusetts native Douglas Preston began his career as a contributing columnist for periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and Smithsonian. As a both a novelist and non-fiction writer, his material, concentrated in the techno-thriller genre but well-grounded in conventional narrative style, is broadly accessible and uniquely suited to readers of all tastes. Recently some of his most well-regarded works including The Cabinet of Curiosities, The Ice Limit, Riptide and Relic, have been co-authored Lincoln Child, himself the author of several popular eco-thrillers. The character of Wyman Ford, an ex-CIA agent turned freelance undercover operative, has appeared in his last four Douglas Preston solo novels including his most recent, Impact, which chronicles the intriguing set of circumstances on earth following the peculiar crash landing of a meteorite from outer space.

One peaceful New England night, a comet rips through the sky over the coast of Maine landing (it seems) in the ocean only a few knots beyond a small fishing village. At precisely the same moment another meteorite makes impact in a remote part of the Cambodian jungle creating a crater approximately a mile in diameter. Though a rather ironical coincidence, the event is forgotten only a few days after the fact until some strange gemstones of a seemingly amber origin begin to emerge on the black market. When a Washington socialite who's been seen around town with a necklace bearing one of the gems is diagnosed with radiation poisoning, the stones are analyzed and determined to contain a peculiar type of gamma ray radioactivity. While it's anyone's guess as to the origin of the stones, the source needs to be located and soon. At a loss for what to do and running out of time, the feds call upon ex-CIA operative and fix-it specialist Wyman Ford to investigate. Ford works fast, connecting the origin of the stones to a naturally dug crater in Cambodia only to conclude that the large hole in the ground being mined by the natives, the sight of the aforementioned meteorite crash, is an exit point from which the substance in question was propelled out of the ground, not into it.

Meanwhile back in Maine, Abby Straw is a an Ivy League dropout living in her podunk hometown of Round Pond when she sees the meteorite drop from the sky and land just over the horizon. A bit of an astronomy enthusiast whose in need of some cash (knowing that any kind of orbital matter could fetch a hefty sum on ebay), Abby thinks she knows where the artifact may have landed, and contrary to the public opinion, it's not in the ocean but rather on a small uninhabited island just a few miles away from the shore. So with her friend Jackie tagging along, Abby 'borrows' her dad's fishing boat and sets out to excavate the site. What she doesn't know however, but what she soon finds out is that she may be dealing with more than just a piece of a meteor from outside the atmosphere, and where it came from may not have anything to do with asteroids or meteors but rather an extraterrestrial presence just a few light years away on Mars. Preston writes compelling characters and knows just how much science to input into his stories to create good narrative. As the mystery of the meteorite unravels, the author craftily merges the facts about astrophysics and current NASA-based research about Mars with a good backstory and storylines involving the two protagonists. And though it's multi-faceted sequences concerning the various characters take a while to come together, the book meets with a satisfactory conclusion and a good jumping off point for what promises to be an eagerly anticipated sequel. (FIC PRESTON)