I'm a bit behind my own 2020 Reading Challenge despite all the "at home" time we've had of late. Here are a few titles I have really enjoyed in the last month.

1) The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (TP, $24.99): I'm not sure what I had been expecting when I picked it up, as the description made it sound like the initiating events of the mystery were "a woman disappear[ing] from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implod[ing] in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it." Instead, Mandel takes the reader on a very twisty, interconnected story, switching between narrators and storylines, about the lives of people touching the lives of others. Her writing flows so well, and her characters are compelling, although there was not much of a mystery to solve it was still an intriguing read.

2) Tangerine by Christine Mangan (available for order, TP, $21.00): This novel takes place in Morocco in the 1950s, where a recently married woman named Alice is surprised by an unannounced visit from an estranged college friend, Lucy. This reads very much as a melding of Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Carole," and features two unreliable narrators, gaslighting and conniving characters, and a very strong sense of place in the setting of Tangier.

3) The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (TP, $22.50) As a bit of a palate cleanser in these trying times, I picked up this sweet story. It is not exactly a mystery, but it is a wonderful story about a woman who works as a housekeeper for a brilliant mathematics professor. The twist of the story is that because of a head injury, his memory only lasts in eighty-minute cycles. It is a really endearing story about platonic love and patience.