Where there's smoke

 

With wildfires raging, the air quality has made it too dangerous to be outside. Luckily, I had picked up a second batch of books curbside before it all started. What better way to escape from the tragedies of reality than to dive into those of fiction?

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

A plane crashes. Only one young boy survives. As we watch Edward struggle with his recovery, newfound fame, and the pain of achieving milestones his older brother never will, we also live through the hours of the plane ride.  Intermittently, we meet some of his fellow passengers and slowly discover what went wrong that day. The suspense of this novel lies not only in the mundane minutes of the plane ride that lead up to the crash, but in those everyday moments in the years that follow when Edward begins to hurt a little bit less.

A Death in Harlem by Karla F.C. Holloway

This lyrically written mystery set in Harlem in the 1920s features Weldon Thomas. As the novel opens, Thomas, the area’s first Black police officer, is expecting a quiet night working a literary awards banquet. By the end of the evening, two women from different social classes end up dead. After some weeks pass without an investigation, the women of the community approach Thomas to look into the matter. In the end, he discovers not only the culprit, but a host of secrets that those with enough wealth can conceal.