Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Ash Mountain is Helen Fitzgerald’s newest novel that brings the most creative and human characters to leap off the page. With its strong sense of setting and a distinct knowledge of human character, the book will creep up on you and catch you unaware as you know—you KNOW—there is not a pretty ending in sight, yet are compelled to read on and see how it all turns out.

That’s one of Fitzgerald’s talents, getting you to care about her quirky characters. In Ash Mountain, when Fran comes home to her small bushtown to care for her father after his severe stroke, it’s not because she misses the town she’s escaped from that holds some of her most awful memories and secrets.

With her sulky teenaged daughter in tow, escaping from the city job she loathes and a failed relationship is a minor positive factor for the single mom of two children. With her son in the area, she can almost kid herself she’ll be fine here—almost.

Fran picks away at her secrets, told in chapters alternating with a present where the oppressive heat has people do anything for relief. And those secrets will have their comeuppance as Fran is not the weak child she once was, all as she tentatively forges new relationships. When a bushfire starts and surges toward Fran and those she loves, the tension for the reader is almost unbearable.

This has been called a ‘disaster thriller’ and there’s good reason for that, as this catastrophe will change Fran and the town forever, but it doesn’t begin to explain the dark humor of Fran and the real feel of the people she’s created. The scenes with her taking her father-on-a-stick to get him out of the house are worth the read alone.

It’s dark, yes, but with an effusive sense of humanity at its heart that makes this read highly recommended.

(Don’t forget to read the Author’s Note where Fitzgerald describes where the cover photo originated.)

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Michael J. Malone’s haunting thriller, In the Absence of Miracles, has the distinction of garnering Auntie M’s first “Highly Recommended” rating of the New Year, thanks to @orendabooks.

The novel brings John Doherty to the page, a teacher whose mother is recovering from a massive stroke that will leave her in a facility. With his job and relationships in turmoil, John’s younger brother arrives to help with the selling of the family home.

It’s while John roots through stored items in the attic that he comes across a photo of himself as a toddler being held by an older brother he never knew existed. Setting out to find the truth behind that photo, along with other scarce evidence he uncovers, John plays detective-of-sorts, investigating the knowledge both of his parents hid from their other two sons, even while he discounts memories he might have buried.

John’s younger brother finally comes on board to help in the search once it becomes clear there was indeed an older brother neither boy knew about. But things continue to twist as the plot becomes as complicated as John himself.

Are there other secrets to uncover? What about the memories John can’t recall? Whose truth and memories are the right ones? How did growing up in this particular home affect these three young men and their choices?

Ian Rankin calls this novel “Vivid, visceral and compulsive” with good reason. Readers may be shocked by one particular twist, but Malone manages to capably illustrate what happens in a family where secrets are kept and hidden, and the long-term repercussions of growing up in such a home.

There’s heartbreak here, but also redemption for some characters. Malone has a gift for perceiving facets of human nature as he combines the inexplicable with a degree of sensitivity that brings a simple beauty out of tragedy. Not to be missed.

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