FDL Reads: The Disappearing Act
The Disappearing Act by Catherine Steadman
Reviewed by: Dawn Dickey, library volunteer
Genre: Mystery
Suggested Age: Adults
What is This Book About?: After a successful acting role which lands her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor, Mia Eliot is caught by surprise when her longtime boyfriend breaks up with her. With her agent’s blessing, Mia heads to Los Angeles to search for new acting roles, escape from a stalker, and recover from the breakup. In L.A., Mia answers a casting call for a role where she notes that the other actors auditioning for the role “all look weirdly similar” to herself: brunette hair worn up, similar age, and similar clothing (jeans, silk blouse). Faced with the tension and unfriendliness of most of the actors waiting to audition, Mia decides to wait outside until it is her turn to audition. Outside, hearing Mia’s British accent, a friendlier fellow actor named Emily starts up a conversation about Los Angeles, the audition, etc. When it is time for Emily’s audition, Emily makes an excuse, saying she needs to top off the meter for her rental car. Emily urges Mia to audition before her. But feeling jet-lagged and off kilter, Mia declines. Instead, Mia offers to feed Emily’s meter. Emily, somewhat surprisingly, gives Mia her wallet and car keys. Mia promises to feed the meter, bring the keys and wallet back in to the casting room, and wait for Emily to finish her audition to return the keys and wallet. Mia is soon faced with a mystery, however. Emily doesn’t return to reclaim her personal items, and she seems to have disappeared! What should Mia do?
My Review: Author Catherine Steadman, who is both a writer and actor, deftly builds suspense from the prologue, which finds Mia holding a gun and wondering how the story of her life should go. The following chapters build on the suspense. Mia is temporarily living in a fabulous – but mostly empty – high rise which should have adequate security, but a script and other items disappear. People and their motives are not what Mia would think. The suspense and unsettling events go on and on, increasing until the surprise ending in the final pages of the book. The characters, and the situations they are in, are believable and sympathetic. As a reader, I found myself cheering Mia on to try to solve the disappearance and stay safe doing so. The Disappearing Act has just the right amount of suspense – a great read!!
Three Words That Describe This Book: suspense, identity, acting
Give This a Try if You Like… Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; books by Tana French, especially The Likeness; and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
Rating: 5/5
About FDL Reads
FDL Reads is a series of weekly book reviews from Fondulac District Library.
Book Bundles
No time to browse? Our Book Bundles for kids are a great way to quickly pick up books for your child, or discover new books by specific subjects, read-alikes, or reading level. Each bundle contains 5 curated books centered around a theme and grade level, and each includes a corresponding craft or activity. Bundles can be requested through the online form, by email, or by phone. Choose from more than 20 topics, including adventure, mysteries, own voices, science, and more! Additional Bonus Bundles are available to check out monthly in Youth Services on a first-come, first-serve basis. Learn more at fondulaclibrary.org/book-bundles/.
#FDL: Overdrive’s Big Library Read
Fondulac District Library provides access to a large collection of eBooks and audiobooks through Overdrive’s Libby app. Several times during the year, Overdrive hosts a Big Library Read, an online book club for readers around the world. Featured books are chosen by librarians and announced shortly before the Big Library Read begins. Our library is provided with unlimited copies of the eBook or audiobook, and our patrons can read without wait time through the Libby app until November 15. A library card number and PIN are required to access the book. This fall, the Big Library Read has chosen Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards. Below is a little about the book from The Big Library Read’s website:
Five Total Strangers
A “page-turning thriller that will keep readers guessing until the very end” (School Library Journal) about a road trip in a snowstorm that turns into bone-chilling disaster, from New York Times bestselling mystery author and “master of tension” (BCCB) Natalie D. Richards.
She thought being stranded was the worst thing that could happen. She was wrong.
Mira needs to get home for the holidays. Badly. But when an incoming blizzard results in a canceled connecting flight, it looks like she might get stuck at the airport indefinitely.
And then Harper, Mira’s glamorous seatmate from her initial flight, offers her a ride. Harper and her three friends can drop Mira off on their way home. But as they set off, Mira realizes fellow travelers are all total strangers. And every one of them is hiding something.
Soon, roads go from slippery to terrifying. People’s belongings are mysteriously disappearing. Someone in the car is clearly lying, and may even be sabotaging the trip—but why? And can Mira make it home alive, or will this nightmare drive turn fatal?
–Post by Susie Rivera, Reference Specialist
#FDL is an update on all things Fondulac District Library and books.
Book Talk for Kids – Who Would Win? Series
Miss Alice thinks you’ll love learning all kinds of cool facts in the fun Who Would Win? series that pits two different types of animals against each other to see what might happen if they were to meet face-to-face! Head to our catalog to place one on hold!
YA Dystopian Thrillers Similar to Squid Game
The breakout Korean show Squid Game is captivating and shocking viewers worldwide. Whether you can’t get enough or are wary of the TV-MA rating, check out these YA dystopian thrillers – where the characters are thrown deep into playing a game, but their survival is never guaranteed!
For trigger warnings, please check out BookTriggerWarnings and/or visit Goodreads to see what other readers and reviewers have to say!
#murdertrending by Gretchen McNeil
Welcome to the near future, where good and honest citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society’s most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the suburbanized prison island Alcatraz 2.0. When seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera wakes up in a haze, lying on the ground of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she’s about to be the next victim of the app, but Dee refuses to roll over and die for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. Can Dee and her newly formed posse, the Death Row Breakfast Club, prove she’s innocent before she ends up wrongfully murdered for the world to see? Or will The Postman’s cast of executioners kill them off one by one?
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
When Devon and Chiamaka are chosen to be their school’s top prefects, they think the school year is off to a good start – but shortly after the announcement is made, someone who goes by the name “Aces” begins to blackmail them with anonymous texts revealing their darkest secrets. With the game taking a deadly turn, Devon and Chiamaka have to stop Aces before their futures fall apart.
– New York Public Library
The Culling by Steven Dos Santons
For Lucian “Lucky” Spark, Recruitment Day means the Establishment will force him to become one of five Recruits competing to join the ruthless Imposer task force. Each Recruit participates in increasingly difficult and violent military training for a chance to advance to the next level. Those who fail must choose an “Incentive” – a family member – to be brutally killed. If Lucky fails, he’ll have to choose death for his only living relative: Cole, his four-year-old brother. Lucky will do everything he can to keep his brother alive, even if it means sacrificing the lives of other Recruits’ loved ones. What Lucky isn’t prepared for is his undeniable attraction to the handsome, rebellious Digory Tycho – but daring to care for another Recruit in a world where love is used as the ultimate weapon is extremely dangerous. As Lucky soon learns, the consequences can be deadly…
All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban
What do the queen bee, star athlete, valedictorian, stoner, loner, and music geek all have in common? They were all invited to a scholarship dinner, only to discover it’s a trap. Someone has locked them into a room with a bomb, a syringe filled with poison, and a note saying they have an hour to pick someone to kill … or else everyone dies.
Amber Prescott is determined to get her classmates and herself out of the room alive, but that might be easier said than done. No one knows how they’re all connected or who would want them dead. As they retrace the events over the past year that might have triggered their captor’s ultimatum, it becomes clear that everyone is hiding something. And with the clock ticking down, confusion turns into fear, and fear morphs into panic as they race to answer the biggest question: Who will they choose to die?
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
Sisters Scarlett and Donatella “Tella” Dragna have always dreamed of going to Caraval-a once-a-year, multiday event that is part magical spectacle, part treasure hunt. With only a week before Scarlett’s wedding to a man she’s never met, Tella runs away to Caraval and arranges for Scarlett to be abducted by a sailor named Julian and secretly taken to Caraval too. But when Scarlett arrives, she discovers that Tella has become the prize of the game, and all the players are searching for her. In order to save both herself and her sister, Scarlett must figure out the ambiguous clues and confounding puzzles and journey through a magical world where secrets and plots abound, nothing is as it seems, and no one is to be trusted.
– Publisher’s Weekly
Endgame: The Calling by James Frey
Twelve teens who have prepared their entire lives for an ancient life-or-death game must finally come to terms with its arrival, forming tenuous alliances and killing each other for the chance to be the last one standing and the winner of the ultimate prize: the ability to save a select group of people from the end of the world.
– New York Public Library
Annotations from the publishers (unless otherwise noted).
Post by Katie Smith, Reference Specialist
FDL Reads: Eight Pieces of Empire
Eight Pieces of Empire: A 20 Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse by Lawrence Scott Sheets
Reviewed By: Jeremy Zentner, Adult Services Assistant
Genre: Nonfiction
Suggested Age: Teens and Adults
What is This Book About? Lawrence Sheets is a journalist who reports on the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the Russian Federation after the Cold War, compiling his most fascinating adventures in this book. Eight Pieces of Empire chronicles life amongst poverty-stricken communists, black market gangsters, a proud survivor of the Nazi invasion, secular insurgents turned religious fundamentalists, the inner workings of the Uzbek Stalinist state, the beginnings of the American war in Afghanistan, civil wars and foreign wars throughout the Caucus region, dwindling native ethnicities in Siberia, the excavation of the Romanov dynasty, and communities still living in the radioactive haze of Chernobyl.
My Review: This is an amazing historical and contemporary chronology of war and strife in the former Soviet Union. I have always been fascinated by soviet and Russian history, and Eight Pieces of Empire does not disappoint. Lawrence Sheets does a phenomenal job in bringing testament to some of the most historic events in modern Russia, as well as the former soviet republics. The reader will learn things that never received much media attention, while also getting a first-hand look at some of the subtle intricacies of what life was like in the former USSR. What I also like about this book is that Lawrence Sheets depicts how the United States’ war in Afghanistan is intertwined with the previous Soviet invasion that occurred in the 1980s. This is by far one of the most interesting reads on contemporary Russia and Central Asia.
Three Words that Describe this Book: Informative, Gritty, Historic
Give This A Try if You Like… Bloodlands, Imperial Cruise, A History of Russia, Into the Wild, Under the Banner of Heaven
Rating: 5/5