Novelist's Debut Is Newest Pick For Oprah's Book Club

“The Enchanters,” By James Ellroy. “The Enchanters.” By James Ellroy. Alfred A. Knopf. Los Angeles, 1962. Marilyn Monroe has just killed herself. Another movie star is kidnapped. A sex fiend is sneaking into women’s houses. The police department is corrupt, and so is Freddy Otash, former private eye and opportunist. Still, Bobby Kennedy wants to quash the rumors about Monroe and President Jack Kennedy, so he and the L.

“The Housekeeper and the Professor,” by Yoko Ogawa (Deckle Edge, 2009) Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. Sure, you could read advertising blurbs on Amazon, but wouldn’t you be more likely to believe a neighbor with no skin in the game over a corporation being fed words by publishers?

“The River We Remember.” By William Kent Kruger. Atria. In an epilogue to his novel, author William Kent Kruger writes, “Our lives and the lives of those we love merge to create a river whose current carries us forward from our beginning to our end. Because we are only one part of the whole, the river each of us remembers is different, and there are many versions of the stories we tell about the past.

Kenneth Branagh didn’t give us much time to miss Hercule Poirot. Early 2022 brought the release of “Death on the Nile,” an adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery novel and the follow-up to actor-director Branagh’s “Murder on the Orient Express” from 2017. Now, about a year and a half later, Branagh is back in theaters as mustachioed Belgian detective Poirot with “A Haunting in Venice.” (In fairness to Branagh, the release of “Death” was delayed more than once due to the pandemic, so, in a way, Branagh had more time to miss embodying the character than it may at first seem.) Thankfully, the consistently engaging “Haunting” feels fresh in a way the nonetheless enjoyable “Death” didn’t thanks to the addition of a spooky vibe to the series, stemming from the constant fear that a supernatural presence may be responsible for this round of killings. A loose adaptation of Christie’s 1969 novel, “Hallowe’en Party,” by “Murder” and “Death” writer Michael Green, “Haunting” is set in 1947 — a decade after the events of the previous film — in, of course, Venice. Poirot, drained from a life that has seen war, followed by constant criminal investigations, has retired in the Italian city, going so far as to hire a bodyguard — retired police officer Vitale Portfoglio (Richard Scamarcio, “John Wick: Chapter 2”) — to keep those seeking his help away from him.

“Crook Manifesto: A Novel” by Colson Whitehead (Amazon) Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. Sure, you could read advertising blurbs on Amazon, but wouldn’t you be more likely to believe a neighbor with no skin in the game over a corporation being fed words by publishers?

Dozens of booksellers from around the country will be offering their most interesting, most memorable, and most hard-to-find books for two days in September at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in Castle Rock. The Rocky Mountain Book and Paper Fair, now in its 39th year, attracts book lovers of all ages, tastes and budgets.