Books We Loved, June 2025

How on earth did it get to be June already? It seems like just yesterday we put away the snow boots and heavy jackets, and here the summer solstice lies just around the corner. But rain or shine, we at Five Directions Press keep reading. Here is our latest list of books we loved: one contemporary novel, one historical mystery, and one memoir of a childhood in Albania. We don’t read only fiction, you know …

But if you do love fiction, especially historical fiction set in the sixteenth century and with a romantic subplot, don’t miss our own C. P. Lesley’s latest novel, Song of the Steadfast, which we released less than two weeks ago. It’s part of a series (actually two interconnected series), but you need not have read the previous books to follow what’s going on in this one.

Tana French, The Hunter (Penguin, 2024)

Cal Hooper made his first appearance in Tana French’s The Searcher (2021), the prequel to her new book, The Hunter. Readers learned then that Cal, having been through a rough divorce and retired after twenty-five years of detective work in Chicago, bought himself a fixer-upper on some acres in a rural village in the mountains of western Ireland. Solitude was what he was after, but it’s not what he got. Instead he was stalked by a kid so indifferent to her own selfhood that he didn’t know for some time whether she was a boy or a girl. Trey, short for Theresa, had the social skills of a wild hare, but what she lacked in the graces she more than made up for in resolve. She’d heard Cal was a cop, and she had a mystery that needed solving—the disappearance of her beloved older brother, Brendan. Cal obliged, but in the course of searching for the truth on her behalf, he learned a bit too much about goings-on among the locals to ever expect to find the tranquility he’d come for.

When we catch up with Cal and Trey in The Hunter, they are enjoying something resembling a father-daughter relationship. He’s been teaching her how to work with wood, and she’s actually very good at it. He’s also putting time in getting her to behave like she wasn’t raised by wolves—though the neglect she’s been subjected to is not far off. Between Trey and Lena, a widowed neighbor with whom Cal has found a peaceful kind of intimacy that suits them both, life is finally gifting more than it’s taking—until Johnny, Trey’s father, an abandoner and a waster, shows up out of nowhere. And he’s not alone. His pal, Cillian Rushborough, a Englishman, had a grandma in the region, and years back she talked about gold that ran down the river that flows through the mountains that are now all farms owned by “lads” Johnny has known all his life. Johnny, whose talent is big talking, is hoping they may want to participate in a prospecting proposal he and Rushborough have devised. The region has been undergoing a terrible drought. The farms are all suffering, and the lads are afraid they’ll have to sell off livestock. Every day it doesn’t rain, Johnny and Rushborough’s proposal begins to sound better.

The characters in The Hunter are people who work hard, drink hard, and have their own way of handling hardship. They are the insiders, the good old boys (and gals) who don’t like people like Cal, a “blow-in” and a cop to boot, looking over their shoulders. But they’ve no problem using him when it works to their advantage, as it seems it may regarding the gold issue. Cal has his own reasons for wanting to get involved—especially when he realizes that Trey, herself as much an opportunist as any of the lads, sees in the situation the chance to take revenge on the very people responsible for her brother Brendan’s misfortunes.

The dialogue in The Hunter alone is worth the read. Not only is it pitch-perfect Irish backwoods slang, but the conversations the characters have make for, as they themselves would say, a “grand” listening experience. The mystery here is complex and thrilling. There’s nothing not to like. Readers will be begging for yet one more Cal and Trey story in the nearest possible future.—JS

Laurie R. King, Knave of Diamonds (Bantam, 2025)

It’s no secret that I love the Russell and Holmes series. I’ve read all the books and enjoyed every one of them. Among the many things I look forward to with each new installment are the clever extensions of the Sherlock Holmes canon as developed by Arthur Conan Doyle. Earlier novels have introduced new members of the Holmes and Adler families and elaborated an entire hidden past for Mrs. Hudson. This one—like Locked Rooms, one of my favorites—focuses instead on Mary Russell’s past.

Russell, as she prefers to be known, is, of course, herself an extension of the canon—a female Sherlock Holmes. For the sake of readers who haven’t read as far into the series as I have, I don’t want to say too much about her family situation, which has been gradually revealed over time. Knave of Diamonds introduces her uncle Jacob (Jake) Russell, a charming grifter assumed to have died fourteen years before the novel opens, when Russell was eleven years old. Jake’s last big con before his disappearance involved a set of diamonds called the Irish Crown Jewels, the theft of which was investigated by, among others, Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes still bears a grudge fourteen years after the fact because his original investigation and that of the Scotland Yard detective charged with the case were shut down by direct order from the king. So when his brother Mycroft asks Holmes to reopen the investigation on the grounds that the jewels have resurfaced, Sherlock refuses—until he returns home and realizes that Russell has decamped for Ireland with her uncle Jake …

This is a great addition to the series, well written and fast paced, as they all are. If you already love Russell and Holmes as a detecting pair, don’t hesitate to dive into this one. If you enjoy historical mysteries and haven’t encountered the series before, do yourself a favor and start with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. It won’t take you long to get through that and the next sixteen books.—CPL

Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (W.W. Norton, 2022)

In crisp clear prose, Lea Ypi uses anecdotes of her early life in socialist Albania and her coming of age during democracy to explore the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Ypi is a professor at the London School of Economics, but readers fearing a dry and preachy narrative will instead find themselves delighted by the many tragicomic stories that make up the chapters. She has a knack for storytelling; her dry humor is sly and subversive.

Ypi grew up handicapped socially, without quite being able to put her finger on the reason why. An ardent supporter of Uncle Enver Hoxha, the Albanian dictator that she was taught to adore, she never understood why her parents wouldn’t put up his photo in the place of honor over the TV. She gains a different perspective at age eleven, when the advent of open elections leads to disclosures that left me blinking in shocked disbelief and nodding my head. Suddenly it all makes sense.

But was democracy the panacea that many hoped for? Her narrative continues through the advent of a representative of the World Bank, and the instigation of “shock” therapy for the economy, to explore the repercussions of capitalism on her family and neighbors.

A quote to leave you with: “At one point in his life, he had figured out that irony was more than a rhetorical device, it was a mode of survival.” The author was speaking about her father, but she could well have been speaking about herself.

This is the best book I have read this year.—GM