By the book: A suspenseful November includes 'The Break' by Katie Sise, 'Dark Rivers to Cross' by Lynne Reeves and 'Extinction' by Bradley Somer

Nov. 1—'The Break' by Katie Sise

If you haven't read Katie Sise — "Open House," "We Were Mothers" — consider her latest, "The Break," (Little A, Nov. 1) a primer: the author's suspense novels capture her cinematic roots, but delve deep into our collective unconscious, featuring strong female leads faced with inconceivable choices and situations.

The dedication page of "The Break" is telling: "For every woman who has experienced a traumatic birth. For anyone whose path to creating a family has been marked with loss. For every woman who had battled postpartum mental illness."

Mystery writer Rowan O'Sullivan has the perfect family — newborn baby girl, Lila, devoted husband, Gabe, and a part-time au pair, June, to help the family settle into their new life — though you wouldn't know it from the opening salvo. Rowan has blocked the traumatic birth and when we first meet her she's in Lila's nursery chatting with a therapist. The cracks widen.

Rowan "just knows" something isn't right with her life, her baby, her marriage and she suspects June is at the core of the disruption. When the nanny disappears, Rowan is left to untangle her fragile and unreliable memories, trying to uncover what happened to June while simultaneously burying a dark past.

Remarkably readable, "The Break" explores Rowan's growing instability, delving into depths of emotional trauma that come full circle to a satisfying and unexpected end.

'Dark Rivers to Cross' by Lynne Reeves

Trauma can be generational, and this is the river Lynne Reeves' novel "Dark Rivers to Cross" (Crooked Lane, Nov. 8) plunges us into from page 1. Like "The Break," Reeve's novel is "For women torn between impossible choices" — and includes directly after that dedication what every novel of this stripe should harbor, a content warning for those whose issues of family violence and trauma can act as triggers.

It's little wonder that Reeves includes such a disclaimer. Her day job for more than 30 years has been as a family and school counselor; she knows the aftermath of childhood nightmares.

In "Dark Rivers to Cross," so does Lena Blackwell, a woman who has sheltered her adopted sons for decades by erasing nearly every connection to their shared past. When one of the boys decides he wants to uncover his biological roots, Lena's actions to keep her children from the trauma that could overturn the calm waters of their lives — a neat literary device by the author are dictionary definitions sprinkled throughout, each centering on the dark forces of river currents — shows the depths and choices to what a mother will descend to protect those she loves.

"The Break" is the second novel Reeves has written under her own name — she has three, family-focused books as Lynne Griffin — and coming on the heels of last November's "The Dangers of an Ordinary Night," the author is showing herself to be competently in control of domestic suspense, churning lives into stories that reach our own inner recesses.

'Extinction' by Bradley Somer

You'll have to work to make some of the connections that tie the speculative fiction with the near-apocalyptic storyline in Bradley Somer's novel, "Extinction," (Blackstone Publishing, Nov. 22) and you'll almost get there — but going along for the adventure is worth the effort.

Ranger Ben has perhaps the loneliest job on the now environmentally devastated Earth, tracking and protecting the last bear in existence. Part of a severely stripped team that works in the most rural place on the planet to count and watch over the world's vanishing breeds, Ben — and to an extent, a colleague, Emma — develops a moral code and work ethic that Somer matures well. When he is confronted after weeks alone in the frigid wilderness by a wealthy poacher, his son and Ben's estranged mentor acting as guide for the pair, Ben's ethics and physical endurance are tested, twisted and reshaped as moral dilemmas develop.

A subplot involving references to lunar colonization and the psychological trials of space travel seems almost superfluous in this near-future adventure story, but you'll understand the call to action the author is laboring after here, even if the path to get there is more circular than the straight moonshot if could have been.