Diane Chamberlain Does It Again!

Diane Chamberlain has written 27 books, and I just finished my 3rd.  It's hopeless!  But at least I can read any new one that comes out.  And that's just what I did.  The 1st 2, The Dream Daughter and The Stolen Marriage, were terrific.  So how's her latest, BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN, you ask?  In a word...excellent!  Let me blurb it for you:

North Carolina, 2018
Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed.  When she takes the fall for a crime she did not commit, her dream of a career in art is put on hold - until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will get her released from prison immediately.  Her assignment:  Restore an old post office mural in a sleepy Southern town.  Morgan knows nothing about art restoration but, desperate to be free, she accepts.  What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small-town secrets.

North Carolina, 1940
Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina.  Alone in the world and in great need of work, she accepts.  but what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
What happened to Anna Dale?  Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural?  Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?

I happen to be a fan of stories that skip back and forth in time.  This one obviously does that.  But it only works if you care about the protagonist(s) in each period of time.  And I certainly did.  I'm not an artist (ask me someday about how I let my partner down in a spirited game of Pictionary!), but I appreciated learning about the process.  And who can forget the most famous fictional art restorer of all time?  That would be Gabriel Allon, Daniel Silva's longstanding series about a renowned art restorer who also happens to lead Israel's intelligence services.  But unlike Silva, Diane actually tells us about the process.  And it's important to the storyline.

If I didn't have hundreds (at least several dozens) of books in my TBR pile, not counting the ones I will be buying along the way, I would binge-read Diane's books.  Alas, that is not practical.  I will just have to content myself with every new book that she writes.  It could be worse.