Good Weekend to Read

I seem to have been on a roll this weekend. First I finished "Paper Butterfly" by Diane Wei Liang. This Chinese mystery was as good if not better than her first novel,"Eye of Jade", although there was so much sadness in these peoples' lives that one wonders how they can go on. Mei Wang is still coming to grips with the fact that her mother betrayed her father in order to get Mei and her sister out of the prison camp the family was in that she can't decide how she feels about her mother and her selfish sister. Selfish siblings seems to be a common trait in Chinese novels these days. She takes on a case on the recommendation of her sister. A record producer has a rising new singer who has gone missing and wants her found with no fanfare in the press. There is a backstory also taking place in which a young man has been released from eight years of hard labor in a prison camp. He wants revenge for the life he's lost thanks to betrayal. Mei comes to identify with the singer and you just know that the ending won't be good - it isn't.
From this I needed something lighter. I turned to "Dead and Berried" by Karen MacInerney, a mystery set on Cranberry Island where Natalie Barnes owns a bed-and-breakfast inn. She's hearing noises in the attic at night and keeps hearing rumors of ghosts at the inn - a housemaid that was murdered. But when Natalie goes to check on the woman who helps her with the inn's laundry she finds her dead. The inept sheriff decides that it's suicide. When Natalie and her best friend, Charlene, have a falling out over the new minister - and Charlene's boyfriend - Natalie feels very lonely - especially with an annoying guest and an ex-fiance to stir the pot. Then the minister is killed and Charlene is the prime suspect. Lots of silly bits but the recipes are great!
Next I went onto an incredibly hokey book about Nephilim - beings who are the result of human women and rogue angels having sex. Apparently they are the only ones capable of reading the Voynich Manuscript which an arm of the Vatican has been guarding in the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. It was all pretty silly but I kept right on reading until I finished.The book is "In Tongues of the Dead" by Brad Kelln.
The last book was an Advanced Reading Copy of "The Last Bridge" by Teri Coyne. It was a grim story of a woman returning home when her mother commits suicide. The whole family is dysfunctional as a result of childhood beatings and other abuse from their drunk father. Cat is an alcoholic who drinks herself into oblivion to forget - it takes nearly the entire book to discover what she's trying to forget. How people make it through these kinds of life is amazing.