Beat the Reaper

The New York Times described this book as "completely outrageous and genuinely entertaining."

That pretty well sums up my reaction as well. This novel by Josh Bazell, who holds a degree in English literature and is an MD, is based on a protagonist, let's call him, Peter Brown, who is a first year resident in a miserable inner city hospital. The hours are terrible, the nursing staff is incompetent, and Peter relies on drugs to get through the day. But when the story opens he goes to evaluate a new patient and the man recognizes him as a hit man for the Mafia, Pietro Brnwa. Does Peter/ Pietro kill him right away to avoid having his new identity revealed to those who still seek to wipe him from the face of the earth, or does his Hippocratic oath prevent that?
The story moves back and forth in time, so we gradually learn how a good Jewish boy becomes a hit man and then becomes a target. The book is highlighted by footnotes that are designed, according to the author, first to entertain and secondly to inform. Thus we learn about medical terminology, the stages of grief, the reality of Auschwitz, and the total irrelevance of the fibula bone in your lower leg (this will turn out to be significant at a later point in the story). The details are gruesome at times, the humor is clearly very dark, and this book kept me distracted on a long flight home. I would absolutely read anything else he wrote. Additional reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, The Guardian, and Publishers Weekly.

Bellewether

Recommended to me by friend Anne Zald, Susanna Kearsley is a new author to me and a prolific writer of historic novels, often with a romance plot line to them. This is her most recent book (2018) and is told in alternating chapters by a contemporary museum curator, Charley, and by two of the historic figures she is researching, Lydia Wilde, and Jean-Philippe de Sabran, The setting is the north shore of Long Island in the present day and, alternately, in 1759, during the final stretch of the Seven Years War in the theatre of eastern Canada. Kearsley provides extended notes after the story detailing the actual historical figures upon whom many of her characters were based.
Charley has come to Millbank after her brother, Niels, suddenly died of a heart attack. His daughter, Rachel, although a young adult, was left the house and Charley has come to stay with her and taken a 2-year contract with a local group that's in the process of turning the historic  house belonging to the Wilde family into a museum. That means she's left behind her boyfriend, Tyler (who everyone else thinks is a jerk), and they are trying to maintain a long-distance relationship. You pretty much know from the beginning that it's not going to work out. The love interest in Millbank is the contractor who is rehabbing the house.
Jean-Philippe is a captured French officer who has been billeted in the Wilde household, along with another French officer, while waiting exchange. Lydia runs the Wilde house after the death of her mother. Her father and two brothers as well as a young black woman, Violet, also live there. The work seems endless to maintain the farm and Jean-Philippe soon pitches in to help with the manual labor. He falls in love with Lydia, who at first despises him because of the death of her fiancé in the war. The French are, after all, the enemy.
Charley wants to make the story of a doomed love affair between Jean-Philippe and Lydia part of the narrative of the museum, although other museum board members are adamantly opposed. The house and its ghostly inhabitants have a mind of their own and secrets are gradually revealed that tell a very different story about the  Wildefamily and the events that transpired.
It took me quite a while to get into this book, but in the end, it was worth the read. I am a fan of good historical fiction and appreciate the research that goes into grounding the stories. Brief but positive review from the Historical Novel Society, and a personal piece about Kearsley's own family history  that ties into the book in Publishers Weekly.

Desolation Mountain

I just read this recent installment (#17, published in 2018) of the "Cork O'Connor" series by William Kent Krueger. Over 5 years ago, I read the first book in the series, Iron Lake, and liked it well enough that I said I would follow up with sequels, which I did not do. Given what a compelling read this installment was, I think I will go back and pick up #2, Boundary Waters.
Cork's son, Stephen, has visions of things that come to pass--usually terrible things, such as his getting shot and crippled. A new vision comes to him repeatedly of a boy shooting an eagle out of the sky with an arrow. An egg drops to earth, and Stephen--the observer in the dream--feels a terrible menace approaching from behind, which he is too terrified to turn around and face. He is troubled that he does not understand what the vision means and consults his teacher in the healing arts, centenarian Henry Meloux. Henry also feels the evil approaching but can shed no light.
When a locally favored senator's plane crashes on the Iron Lake Reservation while she is en route to a town hall meeting in Aurora, Minnesota, the Native American first responders race to the scene. But they are quickly muscled out by the FBI and other unidentified federal agencies. When those who were first on the scene begin disappearing, Cork is convinced it is connected to the plane crash, and the urgency is heightened because his son-in-law, Daniel, was one of those first responders. Cork moves his daughter, Jenny, and his grandson, Waaboo, to a safer location, but Daniel and Stephen continue the investigation with him, along with an old acquaintance, Bo Thorsen, who Cork knows from his days as local sheriff. Although Cork trusts Bo, he is an outsider, and others are not so sure. Bo does indeed have divided loyalties, but is determined to find out who was behind the murder of the senator and her family.
This was a plot that gripped me right away. Characters are well drawn and the setting is immersive and as much a character as the people. Highly recommended. Positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, and NY Journal of Books, and an interview about the book with Krueger published in Booklist.