‘Game of Snipers’ a riveting read

Retired master sniper Bob Lee Swagger is rocking on the porch of his Idaho ranch home, not suspecting he is about to be drawn back into the game, in “Game of Snipers” by Stephen Hunter. A car turns into his driveway with a woman asking for his help in getting a legendary jihadist, Juba the Sniper, who killed her soldier son in Iraq.  Swagger reluctantly agrees to help when Juba is discovered to be in the U.S., preparing for a hit.  The book is a cut above similar books of the genre. The author, after all, is a Pulitzer Prize winner, albeit not for his fiction writing.

Chocolate houses, where the sweet/bitter drink was served, were all the rage in 17th century London, where “The Chocolate Maker’s Wife” by Karen Brooks is set.  Rosamund escapes abuse and poverty when a nobleman who sees her resemblance to his dead daughter marries her.  Lord Blithman, Rosamund’s husband, opens a chocolate house and she masters that business.  All it not as it seems, however. Blithman has a plan afoot in which Rosamund is just his pawn.   

In “The Perfect Wife” by JP Delaney, five years earlier Abbie supposedly either drowned or was killed by her husband.  There was never enough evidence to charge her husband.  Now Abbie—or at least a version of her—has mysteriously returned and is living with her Silicon Valley genius husband and their autistic son.  She has no memory of what happened five years ago, and is allowed only incomplete memories of her life with her husband before that time.