Ruin: A Novel of Flyfishing in Bankruptcy by Leigh Seippel
A thoroughly engrossing novel about a young couple’s struggle back from financial catastrophe. Having fled their urban life, they begin to build a new life together in a rural setting, only to have it fall apart all over again in ways that could never be predicted.
Former hedge fund owner Frank Campbell has gone bankrupt and lost the entire inherited fortune of his artist wife. The couple takes refuge in an abandoned Hudson Valley farm shared with a resident herd of congenial goats.
Frank tries to build a new business, but it is not the answer. Only when he turns to fly fishing, traveling the world in search of the ever more perfect and elusive trout (and one memorable carp), does he find his way forward.
KGB Banker by William McCormick and John Christmas
A pulse-pounding international thriller spanning the globe. A return trip to the land of his ancestors is about to turn deadly for one whistleblowing Chicago banker.
When financial executive Bob Vanags takes a job at ominous Turaida Bank in Latvia, he hopes to learn of his heritage and to fight economic fraud in Eastern Europe. Instead, Bob finds himself pulled into a world of political intrigue, blackmail, and murder.
Aided by his son David, his beautiful colleague Agnese, and a fearless Latvian journalist named Santa Ezeriņa, Bob begins to unravel his employer’s darkest secrets, discovering their sins and conspiracies beyond his wildest fears. Secrets that Turaida wants to keep hidden, even at the cost of Bob’s life.
Double Exposure by Jeannee Sacken
It’s November 2015. Seasoned war photojournalist Annie Hawkins returns home after an assignment to find her life falling apart. She’s under investigation for an incident that happened six months earlier in Afghanistan. Her best friend’s daughter is still missing, apparently with her Taliban boyfriend. Her daughter and friends are fundraising to rebuild the Wad Qol Secondary School for Girls and expect Annie to deliver the money.
When Annie returns to Afghanistan to cover peace talks between the government and the Taliban, she goes to Wad Qol, where she discovers that not everyone wants the new school. Sabotage delays construction, and when a worker ends up dead, it’s clear the militants are to blame. It’s also obvious that they know exactly where Annie is.
Mirth by Kathleen George
“You cannot fail to fall in love with Harrison Mirth.”
Mirth chronicles the struggles of a writer, Harrison Mirth, a romantic man who writes about love and tries to find it through three marriages, in three cities, and always with renewable hope. Amanda is first—New York City and youth. Maggie is second and spans the middle age years—Upstate New York. Liz, the third from Pittsburgh and the senior years, sees him as a man sheltering a secret lake of sadness, but somehow always upbeat, cheerful, a willful optimist, forever innocent. To her, that is irresistible.
Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in The Field, calls the book “a dazzling portrait of a man who lives up to his name, and of those who love him. A wonderful novel.”
