Bacchanal by Veronica G Henry (2021) 47North

I love finding new authors who write so fluidly that I can get lost in the reading.  Bacchanal is set in the Depression, a unique black carnival populated by performers with real talents, and some with burdens that they cannot help or shake.  But we learn that even when our family connections seem to be too hard to bear, they can also give us strength we did not know we could wield.

The Magician’s Lie by Greer Macallister (2021) 47North

An interesting take on magic and illusion.  A woman who performs illusions runs from the scene where a man who is assumed to be her husband has been killed with the tools of sawing the man in half.  But is she a murderess, or the victim of domestic violence who has been pursued by a man who is not her husband?

One of the best books I've read this year.

The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver (2005) Simon & Schuster

A Lincoln Rhyme novel about a 140-year-old case, a descendent, and people who want to kill her.  These are today’s Nero Wolfe novels.  Lincoln Rhyme as the shut-in Amelia Sachs as his Archie, doing all the footwork.  There is a space-filling part that grows and is repeated a dozen times in the book, taking up at least 10% of the pages.
In this one, a high-school student wants to write about an ancestor, whom she feels was wrongly accused of stealing a foundation’s treasury in the days just after the civil war.  Other people are also trying to find out about the incident.  A professional hitman wants to find her, there’s a potential terrorist involved, two different accomplices, an estranged father who wants to reconnect, and a banker who will do anything to protect a secret.

The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin (2011) Orbit

In which Sieh’s story is told – he is the oldest of the Gods’ children, a trickster and in love with a mortal brother and sister – and when they mix their blood in a ceremony as children, Sieh becomes increasingly mortal.  The sister is the heir of the powerful family that rules the world.  Her brother, an inconvenience is sent away to learn how to be a scrivener.  But they are not ordinary mortal children.  They are also the grandchildren of a godling, which makes them demons and makes their blood poisonous to gods and godlings.  While The Three have exiled one of their own, the parallels between the two sets tells potentially the same story.