You Love a Good Heist

Are a Gone Girl fan or followed the Johnson & Johnson opioid trial

Hi friends,

I had a big week last week: I adopted a dog! Meet Ellie. She’s a five-year-old dachshund terrier mix, sitting next to me as I write this.

So far, her hobbies include following me around, sleeping and asking for pets. She can also take surprisingly long walks on those little legs. Just seven days in, we’re both very attached. If you have a favorite dog training book, let me know.

And now, what to read if…

You’re Really Into Heist Stories

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

From “A Fish Called Wanda” to The Feather Thief, I love heist and con stories. I like everything about them — the careful planning, the last-minute changes when the plan goes off the rails, the motives. With Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Crosby has delivered a book that’s “Oceans 11” with a gritty, southern noir twist.

Blacktop Wasteland follows Beauregard “Bug” Montage, a mechanic and family man in rural Virginia. Before opening up his car shop, Bug was known as the best getaway driver for hire on the East coast, helping crews evade police in high-speed chases. As the book begins, Bug is in desperate need of money to pay for his daughter’s college tuition, his mother’s overdue nursing home bill and his young son’s orthodontic bill. He decides to team up with a previous partner to steal diamonds from a local jewelry store.

Blacktop Wasteland is unlike anything I’ve read before and rightfully appeared on many “Best of 2020” lists. Bug is a compelling — even sympathetic — antihero. It’s just as much an exploration of Bug’s struggle to become a better person and fully put his past behind him, and the plotline adds more heft to the book. Fans of Winter Counts and the Dublin Murder Squad books should give Blacktop Wasteland a try.

Bingo boxes this book checks: Thriller

You Love Gone Girl or Jane Eyre 

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

In 2019, back when in-person book events were a thing, I saw Rachel Hawkins in conversation with romance blogger Sarah Wendell, about Rachel’s YA book, Her Royal Highness. Rachel mentioned she was working on a retelling of Jane Eyre as a domestic thriller in the vein of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. I remember thinking, “That’s either going to be amazing or a disaster.”

Reader, it is a super-fun, fast-paced read, perfect for the summer. In this retelling, Jane is a dog walker in a wealthy Alabama suburb with a mysterious background. Early in the book, Jane sets her sights on Eddie, the neighborhood’s reclusive, rich widower, deciding a relationship with him is her way out of poverty. Rumors circulate through the tight-knit neighborhood about the role Eddie may have played in his wife Bea’s death.

I devoured this audiobook in the spring, listening to it for hours at a time. Hawkins follows the core of Charlotte Bronte’s gothic classic but deviates enough from it that The Wife Upstairs isn’t predictable. Jane Eyre lovers will find that the new form illuminates certain aspects of Jane’s personality, while those coming to the book cold will enjoy its twist and turns.

Bingo boxes this book checks: Retelling of a classic, thriller 

You Followed the Opioid Epidemic Trials

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Last week, Johnson & Johnson and three pharmaceutical distributors agreed to pay a $26 billion settlement to end thousands of state and local lawsuits for their role in the opioid crisis. The settlement comes a week after the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, agreed to pay $4.5 billion to resolve thousands of cases brought against them for the marketing and distribution of OxyCotin.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain is a brilliant account of the Sackler family’s role in creating the opioid crisis currently ravaging our country. While multiple books have depicted the devastating human costs of opioid addiction (notably Beth Macy’s Dopesick, Sam Quinones’ Dreamland and Pain Killer by Barry Meier), Keefe’s book focuses on the people who made repeated decisions to sell a drug they knew was unsafe because of the record profits it brought in. 

Keefe poured over thousands of pages of documents — previously confidential court records, internal Purdue Pharma emails and more — to clearly demonstrate how the family bankrupted its own company in an attempt to protect their billions from court-ordered settlements. Just as he did in Say Nothing, Keefe shows an exceptional ability to distill years of reporting on a complex topic into a compelling, readable book.

Bingo boxes this book checks: Nonfiction 

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That’s it for me this week. If you missed last week’s recs, you can catch up here. You can also read my Q&A with audiobook narrator Channie Waites here.

This week’s guest recommendation comes from Sarah Miller, the writer of Can We Read, a fantastic newsletter about children’s books. She recommended three titles:

Swashby and the Sea by Beth Ferry, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal (2020)

A little girl who moves in next door to an introverted curmudgeon eventually melts his heart in this sweet story about intergenerational friendship, neighborliness, and the importance of keeping an open mind.

George’s Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (1981)

This perfectly wild, hilarious tale of a boy who takes revenge on his grandmother by re-making her daily medicine holds up after 30 years -- readers/listeners will be on the edge of their seats (until they fall off from disbelief, and then laughter).

Bee-Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park, illustrated by Ho Baek Lee (2008)

Fun, lively, rhyming text tells the story of an enthusiastic young helper as she and her mother shop for, prepare and enjoy their family’s favorite Korean dish. This is a surefire crowd-pleaser with incredibly long-lasting appeal.

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What to Read If is a free weekly book recommendation newsletter. Need a rec? Want to gush about a book? Reply to this email, leave a comment or find me on Twitter @elizabethheld.

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