Read this gritty off-the-grid Western
full of corruption, criminals, and total anonymity
What to Read This Week
The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh
What It’s About
Imagine a place where everyone we don’t really think about goes: criminals, witnesses, recently released inmates who could be in trouble. That’s the town of Caesura, a secret government-run facility in rural Texas that houses anyone who needs to hide. The only catch is, you have to agree to have your memory completely and fully erased when you move into town.
Sheriff Calvin Cooper is in charge of keeping the town peaceful, quiet, and invisible to the outside world. But when the unthinkable happens—a dead body is found in town—it shakes everything up in a bad way. Cooper knows he needs to get a handle on this before news gets out and the head authorities are sent in, because it could jeopardize the entire town and everyone living in it.
Who Will Like It
This is one of those books that contains elements of several genres and does so so well that even if you’re not usually a crime reader, or a Western reader, or a speculative fiction reader, the book will still appeal to you because of how well it’s written. And if you like perfect characters who always choose the right thing, this book may not be for you: it’s full of realistic, flawed, messed-up people who sometimes try to do the right thing and sometimes don’t.
Next Up
I’m still slowly working my way through Tom Hanks’s Uncommon Type (just finished the Christmas Eve story), and I went to my local bookstore’s early holiday sale this weekend and picked up two new books the booksellers recommended to me: Not Your Average Hot Guy by Gwenda Bond, a rom-com that also happens to include some paranormal activity and the devil, and Bonds of Brass, a novel set in space and includes a secret heir and a possible romance, which very much intrigues me.
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