Crime Reads - Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Gun!
CrimeReads is a culture website for people who believe suspense is the essence of storytelling, questions are as important as answers, and nothing beats the thrill of a good book. It's a single, trusted source where readers can find the best from the world of crime, mystery, and thrillers. No joke,
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In 1961, a dashing young President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was sworn into office amidst world crisis. To greet the new President, East Germany covertly erected the Berlin Wall and Russia launched Yuri Gregorian into Earth orbit from a secret underground bunker. Not to be outdone, CIA trained mercenaries stormed the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and later assassinated the Dominican President, Rafael Trujillo, in bungled attempts at regime change. Nuclear warheads were bristling at “Fail Safe” designation on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Cold War was hot and spies were in demand. Espionage fiction was also in demand, led by a dashing British secret agent …
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America wasn’t even three months into Ronald Reagan’s first term when Cutter’s Way came out, but no film of the following decade would provide so indelible a metaphor for the nation’s callous transition from post-Watergate, post-Vietnam angst to the cartoonish nostalgia of Morning in America as when the movie’s eponymous hero, Alexander Cutter (John Heard)—a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed casualty of our deadly misadventure in Southeast Asia—drunkenly unloads his pistol into a smiling stuffed animal floating in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Released in March of 1981, Cutter’s Way (originally titled Cutter and Bone, after the Newton Thornburg novel of five years prio…
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My book The Note Through the Wire tells the WWII love story of Josefine Lobnik, a Slovene resistance fighter, and Bruce Murray, an Allied prisoner of war. They met by chance when she passed a note through the wire of a POW camp seeking information on her brother Leopold who had been captured by the Nazis. I’ve known about this story for almost 40 years—Bruce and Josefine were my parents-in-law and I learned about their wartime exploits when I was introduced to them over a traditional Slovenian dinner accompanied by more beer, wine and slivovitz than was healthy for any of us. I felt somewhat intimidated being in the company of genuine war heroes but quickly learned that …
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The funeral took place on a Friday. It was ten days into December and the air was grey with sleet. I met Jakob Aasen outside the chapel. At first I hardly recognised him. He had grown a beard and his dark, tightly curled hair was speckled with grey. For an instant we stood looking at one another. Then he smiled tentatively, while I nodded a kind of acknowledgement. ‘Varg?’ I nodded. ‘Jakob…?’ We shook hands. ‘How long is it since we…?’ I shrugged. ‘1965.’ ‘Yes, but … surely we must’ve seen each other since then.’ ‘Couple of times in the street maybe. By chance. Have you been in Bergen the whole time?’ ‘More or less. And you?’ ‘Yes, at any rate since 1970.’ ‘Six…
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I can’t remember when I first heard of Mike Hodges’s seminal 1971 British gangster film, Get Carter, but it was long before I finally managed to see it late one night on cable television in a hotel in Prague in the late 1990s. And it was several more years until I was able to track down a copy of the then relatively rare source novel of the film, Ted Lewis’s Jack’s Return Home, published in 1970. Until the last half decade or so, Get Carter as the book would subsequently be retitled and how it will be referred to it in this piece, along with Lewis’s eight other novels, were all out of print and little known. This is despite the praise heaped on them by luminaries such …
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Psychopaths lie, manipulate and they kill. We’re unlikely to invite them into our homes and offer them a seat at the dinner table. Our families are unlikely to be jumping up and down and planning their wedding outfits if we announced our engagement to a Hannibal Lecter wannabe. We indulge in True Crime documentaries and the serial killer memes are rife on our social media timelines. Psychopaths are everywhere. They infiltrate every moment of our lives. Our demand for the psychopath’s story on our tv screens, bookshelves and group chats shows no signs of abating. Psychologists have given our love for psychopaths a name. Hybistrophilia is a sexual interest in and attractio…
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Let’s face it. Growing up isn’t easy even in the best of circumstances. And whose circumstances are ever truly ideal? Maturing under the intense pressures of the world around us is challenging enough. But what if the things that fill us with dread and fear when we’re young become the stuff of real-life nightmares? What if we harbor guilty secrets that follow us into adulthood? The books that spoke to me during my own fraught, complicated journey of adolescence were always tales of mysteries and psychological suspense (I still love this genre). Stories about kids like me, or somewhat like me, maturing under extraordinary conditions really resonated. I would read far into …
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Stephen King, the master of horror, is also a big crime reader… * ARIEL S. WINTER First-novelist Winter stunned readers with his mammoth 180,000-word debut, The Twenty-Year Death, which tells the story of a disintegrating marriage as told, successively, in the manner of Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson. Stephen King called it “bold, innovative, and thrilling,” writing “The Twenty-Year Death crackles with suspense and will keep you up late.” DONALD E. WESTLAKE “A book by this guy is a cause for happiness,” King wrote about the man who, under the pseudonym “Richard Stark,” wrote the dark-as-dark-gets Parker novels and inspired the name of the mur…
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I don’t know why the 1993 thriller movie The Fugitive sets one of its most dramatic chase sequences in and around Chicago’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Probably just because it’s cool, it’s a cool scene, there’s nothing more to it than that. I do think it might be over-reading to suggest there’s some sort of allegorical connection between the story of Dr. Richard Kimble, the falsely-accused prison escapee hunting for his wife’s murderer, and the story of Saint Pádraig, the fifth-century Christian bishop who turned walking sticks into trees and fixed Ireland’s alleged snake problem. (And who was probably a fraud on the pest-control front, honestly, since there were zero sn…
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Just west of Holcomb, Kansas, on the lonesome wheat plains In Cold Blood begins with, stands the world’s largest slaughterhouse. It was the first thing Bonnie and I found when we went looking for the Clutter farm, on a June day so hot it felt like we were being ironed. Earlier, in Albuquerque, I’d typed Holcomb into my phone, and the directions led us here. If the Tyson plant had existed when Capote came to Kansas, his book would probably start with the abattoir at the edge of town. Subtlety was not his strong point. I stopped the car at the gates of the facility, where signs prohibited trespassing. The building ahead was long and beige and bland, as if designed to hide …
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In my debut thriller, Firekeeper’s Daughter, 18-year-old Daunis witnesses a murder and must use her knowledge of chemistry, traditional Ojibwe medicines, and even hockey to find out who is behind a series of drug-related deaths on her Indian reservation. I don’t shy away from telling a darkly realistic coming-of-age story. But I also include comic moments that are also every bit as real on my reservation. A great grandmother named Granny June who, upon seeing a graffitied billboard—one letter changed to read: VOTE! It’s your tribal eRection—dryly remarks, “I’d vote for that.” I lived and worked for many years in my tribal community in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. One of m…
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Sibling relationships are the stuff of gothic novels. When characters have grown up together from childhood, breathing the same familial atmosphere and inheriting the same assumptions about life, there is always going to be potential for intensity and intrigue. The intimate bond that sisters and brothers share may be a blessing or a curse, but either way it is inescapable. In my own novel, The Whispering House, the central sibling relationship is fraught with anger and guilt, but the protagonist, Freya, cannot move on with her own life until the mystery of her sister’s death is resolved. The gothic novels I’ve chosen here explore the deepest darkest possibilities of sibl…
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Although their partnership had lasted only ten months, Gurney knew more about the personal life of Mike Morgan than that of anyone else he’d worked with in his twenty-five years in the NYPD. From the day he was assigned to replace Gurney’s retiring partner in the homicide division, Morgan had treated him as a confidant—with the result that Gurney had learned more than he wanted to know about the man’s longing for approval from his revered cop father, his reckless relationships with women, his waves of paranoia. He’d also witnessed Morgan’s obsession with superficial orderliness, especially punctuality. So it was no surprise when, at exactly 3:59 p.m., a black Chevy Tahoe…
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“Can I come in?” asked Fazio. “Yeah, come on in. So you’re only getting back now?” “Chief, would you believe it if I told you I didn’t even have time to eat lunch?” “Where were you?” “Still at Trincanato’s.” “Did something happen?” “First, two of Spagnolo’s kids came. Spagnolo was the worker who hung himself. But the guards didn’t want to let them into the hangar.” “Are they minors?” “No way! One’s thirty, the other’s twenty-eight. Both without jobs. Sacked. At any rate, things could have got out of hand if we hadn’t been there . . .” “And then what?” “And then, when the prosecutor and Dr. Pasquano were done and the body was taken away, Giurlanno, Spagnolo’s old…
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The front cover of the 1997 edition of Lolita, the one I’ve dog-eared and underlined, features a black-and-white photograph of the lower half of an adolescent girl wearing bobby socks, saddle shoes, and a very short skirt, one leg self-consciously—or coyly—bent. The accompanying blurb, from Vanity Fair, proclaims that this novel is “the only convincing love story of our century.” The publisher’s ad copy on the back describes it as “a meditation on love.” The description on the book’s Amazon page calls the relationship between Humbert Humbert, in his late thirties, and twelve-year-old Lolita “a love affair,” “a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows,…
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For the past ten years I have lived in Oxford, MS, which is most famous for being the hometown of William Faulkner and John Grisham, neither of whom live here anymore. When I moved to Oxford with my husband Chris Offutt, I expected the place would be steeped in their legends, and it is. What surprised me was finding ourselves embraced by a living, vibrant community of writers. All we had to do was wander into City Grocery Bar, two doors down from the beating heart of our town, Square Books, and find all the crime writers there: William Boyle, Tom Franklin, Ace Atkins, the poet Derrick Harriell, whose short story won an Edgar last year, Michael Farris Smith, Matt Bondurant…
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Ten years ago, I came across a true story that enthralled me like no other: the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote post in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, over Christmas 1900. The mystery itself was fascinating enough—the abandoned, ghostly lighthouse; two stopped clocks; and the Principal Keeper’s weather log recounting a terrible storm when there had been no such thing—but the setting made it irresistible. I’ve long been drawn to the sea, its wild splendor and changing moods, the secretive depths that call us on a voyage of discovery. This real-life event roped together all I love to get lost in as a reader, and I knew I had to tell it. An author’s c…
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From the moment I began writing fiction, I knew my stories would be fantasies. I’ve always read widely and enjoyed a variety of genres, but I hold a special place in my heart for magical stories that feel as though they might just be real. A childhood love for C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle led me, as an adult, to authors like Gabriel García Márquez, Alice Hoffman, and Neil Gaiman. My debut novel, The Memory Collectors, is firmly grounded in our world, with a little bit of magic woven throughout. It tells the tale of two women with a shared gift: they can sense the emotions left behind on objects. Each of them is haunted by events in their pasts, and when they meet, the…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Melissa Ginsburg, The House Uptown (Flatiron) “Melissa Ginsburg’s page-turner is a devastatingly simple trap: characters so beguiling you settle in for a charming coming-of-age fable before realizing the spring is snapping shut on an inexorable and satisfying calamity. The theme is the-past-isn’t-dead-it-isn’t-even-past, but painted not with Faulkner’s heavy hand so much as with the crisp ingenuity of Ross Macdonald.” –Jonathan Lethem, Harlan Coben, Win (Grand Central) “Twisty—and we’d expect no less from the author of hot thrillers like Tell No One and Missing You.” –AARP Nadi…
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Fire Bones begins with a mystery: a Lebanese-American ferry pilot and Pentecostal preacher from the Arkansas Delta named Amra Boustani goes missing after a transatlantic flight. Back home, a poet named Greg Brownderville and a filmmaker named Bart Weiss investigate her disappearance, crossing paths with the townspeople of Thisaway, Arkansas: Amra’s friends, a ragtag bunch of outsiders and misfits and schemers, men and women who have walked out of a medieval pilgrimage tale into the carnivalesque contemporary Deep South. But what exactly is Fire Bones? Let’s start with what it isn’t. It doesn’t seem to be a chair or a telescope. It’s not a fake Christmas tree or one of …
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She slept naked. Dates with her psychiatrist were scrawled in a diary beside her bed, and it was her psychiatrist, in the end, who would find her lifeless body. She was thirty-six years old. A broken marriage, affairs with married men—but all of that was public knowledge. What wasn’t public was the problems with drugs and alcohol: amphetamines and barbituates, mostly, including old-fashioned sleeping tablets known as “knock-out drops.” Recently there had been lapses in personal hygiene: her toes and fingernails were unkempt, and her teeth were in a state of decay. She was not well, had not been well for some time. Most of the drugs had been prescribed to help with her me…
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In the spring of 2019, long before the global pandemic hijacked the news, the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues (OVB) college admissions scandal dominated the headlines for months. Jaws dropped around the world as rich and famous parents were indicted for faking sports resumes, cheating on standardized tests, and paying huge sums in bogus philanthropic contributions to guarantee golden admission tickets for their offspring. The incessant news coverage continued with each plea deal struck and prison sentence meted out. A few years before OVB made headlines, we’d begun exploring the parental college admissions battleground—the crown jewel of competitive parenting. We’d observe…
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Well, so here’s March again, and we are coming up on our one-year anniversary of pandemic lockdown (with a way too brief respite last summer). People are getting weird. Maybe it’s the endless ice and snow, rain and hail, lather rinse repeat of the Canadian winter, but I find myself and hear other people talking to people just to talk. Torontonians are not chatty, but suddenly everyone from the pharmacy (Shoppers, the Duane Reade of Toronto) to the ice cream place (Ed’s Real Scoop) is small talking up a storm. Such are the constraints of the way we live now. But there are books—yes, thank you for the books, we need them even if we have gotten into the habit of jumping pro…
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“Think Downton Abbey meets Sneakers, but in World War II!” That’s how a Hollywood bigwig might pitch the story of Bletchley Park, a remote English country manor stuffed with codebreakers, all laboring under dire secrecy to break the supposedly unbreakable Axis military codes. But Bletchley Park’s extraordinary achievements are no Hollywood screenwriter’s fever dream; they’re real…and would never have happened without thousands of extraordinary women. A university campus, a Wonderland, “the biggest bloody lunatic asylum in Britain”: BP, as it was casually known by insiders, resembled all three. A Victorian country house chosen for its remote location and its railway proxi…
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Once upon a time. In a deep, dark wood. In a kingdom far away. These fairy tale beginnings and so much more speak to a place and time very long ago. How many of us ever wonder if these places and those stories were real? Were there inklings of nonfiction embedded into the words of fairy tales we have come to know so dearly? The last lines in “Cinderella” are not “And they lived happily ever after.” The last lines in “Cinderella” are: “And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness all their days.” This punishment was of course applied to the wicked sisters, and shortly before the tale ended we learned that “pigeons pecked out one eye fr…
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Historical Settings & Romances
To Have and to Hoax RECOMMENDED: To Have and to Hoax by Martha Waters is $1.99! Aarya read this one and gave it a B: Despite all these points, I adored To Have and to Hoax. It made me giggle constantly during a week when I had little to smile about. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone; if the antics sound juvenile and infuriating, then you won’t like the story. But if you’re in the mood to escape into a Regency romp and swoon over a married couple falling in love again, I recommend To Have and to Hoax as your escape of choice. In this fresh and hilarious historical rom-com, an estranged husband and wife in Regency England feign accidents and illness in an attempt to gain attention—and maybe just win each other back in the process. Five years ago, Lady Violet Grey and Lord James Audley met, fell in love, and got married. Four years ago, they had a fight to end all fights, and have barely spoken since. Their once-passionate love match has been reduced to one of cold, detached politeness. But when Violet receives a letter that James has been thrown from his horse and rendered unconscious at their country estate, she races to be by his side—only to discover him alive and well at a tavern, and completely unaware of her concern. She’s outraged. He’s confused. And the distance between them has never been more apparent. Wanting to teach her estranged husband a lesson, Violet decides to feign an illness of her own. James quickly sees through it, but he decides to play along in an ever-escalating game of manipulation, featuring actors masquerading as doctors, threats of Swiss sanitariums, faux mistresses—and a lot of flirtation between a husband and wife who might not hate each other as much as they thought. Will the two be able to overcome four years of hurt or will they continue to deny the spark between them? With charm, wit, and heart in spades, To Have and to Hoax is a fresh and eminently entertaining romantic comedy—perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory and Julia Quinn. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. To Steal a Heart To Steal a Heart by K.C. Bateman is $2.99! This is the first in a new series by Bateman (who also writes historical romances under Kate Bateman). I’ve enjoyed most of Bateman’s romances. How about you? A master spy and a beautiful thief find love and intrigue in each other’s arms. . . Forced to do the bidding of a corrupt government minister, Marianne de Bonnard agrees to plant incriminating evidence in the offices of France’s most notorious spymaster. Under cover of night, the tightrope-walking thief puts her skills to good use—until her aerial stunt is foiled when her target appears in the window and, with consummate poise, helps Marianne off the wire and into his lair. The tremors that run through her body are not just from fear; there’s an unwanted frisson of desire there, too. But is it because of her elegant, wickedly handsome host . . . or his proposition? Nicolas Valette has had plans for his graceful trespasser since he witnessed her unique skills at the Cirque Olympique. Sinuous as a cat, Marianne is perfect for his next mission, but she refuses his generous offer for fear of disobeying her family’s tormenter. When their mutual enemy auctions off her virginity to the highest bidder, Nicolas leaps at the chance to purchase her cooperation. Keeping her will be like trying to tame a wild animal, but what’s life without a little risk? Besides, Nicolas and Marianne both want the same thing: revenge—and, perhaps, something else that’s equally delicious. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is $1.99! This is book one in the Flavia de Luce series, which I remember this being pretty popular for a while. This gives me Nancy Drew vibes. Fans of Louise Fitzhugh’s iconic Harriet the Spy will welcome 11-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce, the heroine of Canadian journalist Bradley’s rollicking debut. In an early 1950s English village, Flavia is preoccupied with retaliating against her lofty older sisters when a rude, redheaded stranger arrives to confront her eccentric father, a philatelic devotee. Equally adept at quoting 18th-century works, listening at keyholes and picking locks, Flavia learns that her father, Colonel de Luce, may be involved in the suicide of his long-ago schoolmaster and the theft of a priceless stamp. The sudden expiration of the stranger in a cucumber bed, wacky village characters with ties to the schoolmaster, and a sharp inspector with doubts about the colonel and his enterprising young detective daughter mean complications for Flavia and enormous fun for the reader. Tantalizing hints about a gardener with a shady past and the mysterious death of Flavia’s adventurous mother promise further intrigues ahead. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Paris Seamstress The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester is $2.99! Sarah reviewed this one and gave it a D+, mentioning that whoa there’s a lot of trauma. Did any of you read this one? How much will a young Parisian seamstress sacrifice to make her mark in the male-dominated world of 1940s New York fashion? From the bestselling author of A KISS FROM MR FITZGERALD and HER MOTHER’S SECRET. 1940. Parisian seamstress Estella Bissette is forced to flee France as the Germans advance. She is bound for Manhattan with a few francs, one suitcase, her sewing machine and a dream: to have her own atelier. 2015. Australian curator Fabienne Bissette journeys to the annual Met Gala for an exhibition of her beloved grandmother’s work – one of the world’s leading designers of ready-to-wear. But as Fabienne learns more about her grandmother’s past, she uncovers a story of tragedy, heartbreak and secrets – and the sacrifices made for love. Crossing generations, society’s boundaries and international turmoil, THE PARIS SEAMSTRESS is the beguiling, transporting story of the special relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter as they attempt to heal the heartache of the past. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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Why Tights and No Knickers?
Danielle Orchard, Lint, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery. The women in Danielle Orchard’s paintings are usually undressed, or only partially clothed. They might be smoking a cigarette in the bath, or staring at themselves in a mirror, or eating from a bowl of popcorn in bed. Orchard’s settings are often mundane—a bedroom, a boudoir, a kitchen—but these environments are striking in their angularity and irregular perspectives, the paintings’ compositions at once calling to mind the art historical tradition of the female nude and unsettling it. Her painting Lint graces the cover of the Fall issue of the Review and depicts a woman in stockings and no knickers. We talked about Balthus, working with life models, outsize objects, how she made Lint, and the notable absence of pubic hair from the painting. INTERVIEWER When did you start gravitating toward the female nude? ORCHARD The painting program I was in at Indiana University was fairly traditional and very observation-based, and the nude was a learning tool and a formal device: a way to develop the ability to depict volume and line. When I arrived at Hunter College in New York for graduate school, I didn’t want to abandon the nude, but I started to wonder, Who are these women? What is this uncanniness to their nudity? And who am I, as a painter, in this setting? I realized that the nudes I was painting were amalgams of my own experiences, but they were also deeply familiar images from art history. I was identifying with these characters and thinking about how their bodies might mirror my own, or how I might be unintentionally mirroring them. And so I started building a visual language with the female nude at the center. INTERVIEWER Do you have particular influences, or anti-influences, in painting female bodies? ORCHARD Everyone on my bookshelf is an artist I truly love and look to for inspiration—and whom I steal from directly. I think a lot about Picasso, naturally, but I’m also really into Balthus. The construction of his paintings—the eeriness and the function of light—were important to me when I was learning how to paint. Back then, the content of his paintings was never questioned by me or by my professors. INTERVIEWER How did you come to question it? ORCHARD When I got to New York, I saw a Balthus painting in person for the first time—Thérèse Dreaming at the Met. The professors of mine who’d come out of a feminist tradition often said it was incredibly fucked up in terms of its depiction of this sexualized adolescent, and would ask me to question my relationship to it. And I did question it—but I also sometimes felt like asking, Why? It’s such a great painting! I ended up making a couple versions of a painting inspired by Thérèse Dreaming. In Balthus’s original, there’s a cat lapping milk and it’s a pretty erotic little euphemism. I thought it would be funny to make Thérèse into a cat lady: an adult woman, a spinster, surrounded by cats. Danielle Orchard, Lessons, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery. INTERVIEWER How do you see your work in relation to the art historical tradition of nudes? ORCHARD Of course, once you learn about the subjugation some women have experienced at the hands of certain male artists who were depicting them, you can’t help sympathizing with their experiences as models. With this newer body of work, I’ve been trying to complicate things—to make my paintings at once more humorous and more specific to a feminine experience. The cover for The Paris Review is a good example. The idea of the painting was to show the discomfort of wearing tights. If you’ve spent a day walking around in tights, you’ll know that tights are always a bit less sexy than you’d intended. They have this formal function, which is to create clean lines on the body, but the internal experience is quite different. The seam is always off-center. INTERVIEWER How did that painting come to you? ORCHARD I had started to include pieces of clothing in my paintings—clothing that I felt was somehow more revealing than nudity itself. The transparency of tights interested me and posed a new painting problem, one I hadn’t taken on before. INTERVIEWER Why tights and no knickers? ORCHARD I thought it would make her appear even more uncomfortable. It would heighten the sensuality, but also, anyone who has ever worn tights would just be thinking about how gross that would feel. I was interested in these little gestures—nods in the direction of a woman’s true experience—which are often lost on a male viewership. In my experience, male viewers tend to see the painting in sexualized terms, while the humor is almost always picked up on by female viewers. INTERVIEWER And why no pubic hair? ORCHARD To make it a little bit more garish. And also just to continue the line—to underscore the linearity of the image. I’ve done other versions where she has a huge bush, but this image seems to me to suggest something about this character—maybe how meticulous she is, or that she wants to be seen as manicured. And then, of course, she’s having this wardrobe malfunction. INTERVIEWER Tell me a little bit about the process of making this painting—the materials you used and the iterations of the work. ORCHARD I worked hard to find this perfect temperature of brown for the tights. I tried so many different ways of layering, to different effects. A lot of them turned out pretty beautifully in studies, but then I couldn’t translate them onto a larger canvas. I couldn’t get it to feel quite right. This painting was probably the last one I did in preparation for a larger painting in the show that’s up right now at Perrotin in Paris. The brown was actually just an underpainting—some sort of residue from my palette table. I was about to scrape it off and then I realized that it was precisely the temperature I had been after. I’ve been trying to reproduce it, trying every brown I have in the studio, and it’s never coming back. INTERVIEWER The colors in this painting are darker than in some of the works of yours I’ve seen. Why is that? ORCHARD I had been trying to land on a color that felt like wearing stockings. At the same time, I realized afterward, I’d been looking at a lot of work by Georges de La Tour, who painted these dark, very calm religious paintings that are very angular and strange, in earthy colors. They have a lot of chiaroscuro, and what’s illuminated are the expressions of the women. INTERVIEWER How long did it take to paint this one? ORCHARD It took ten minutes to make that painting. Although that’s not exactly true, because of the time spent rehearsing on other canvases. I think about this all the time: how with runners, for instance, a single sprint is the accumulation of all the effort that went in before the actual race. Danielle Orchard, Skinny Pop, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery. INTERVIEWER Do you work with life models now, or from memory? ORCHARD After Hunter College, I couldn’t afford models, so I started pulling from old sketches and from my memory and imagination. The anatomical irregularities I’m interested in often come from misremembering anatomy—from having a foundation but then getting it wrong. I like it when the misremembering seems informed by the experience of physically inhabiting a female body. I’ve noticed that if I’ve done push-ups that week, say, then the women in the paintings will get a little bulkier. INTERVIEWER You often paint groups of women together. A few times you’ve called them “characters.” Are they separate individuals, or are they you—or amalgams of the two? ORCHARD They’re certainly amalgams, but together they also function almost like an organism—a fungus or something like that. It’s like when you’re around a lot of other women and this incredibly dynamic experience of viewership takes place, where you’re looking at one another with empathy, certainly, but also with some critical edge, and you’re also thinking about yourself and how you’re being perceived. Sometimes I include the same woman at different points in time in the same painting, as if she’s moved. There’s one painting I’m thinking of, a yellow bathroom scene that’s up right now in Paris, that has three figures in it, each at one step in the process you go through when you’re getting ready for an event: washing the hair, shaving the legs, putting on the makeup. A linear narrative stretched out visually. Danielle Orchard, Yellow Bathroom, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery. INTERVIEWER There are certain ordinary things—nail polish and beer and pencils—that often recur in your paintings and seem to play a kind of outsize role. Where do these objects come from? ORCHARD I think of them as outsize as well. I’m interested in the most generic version of all of these things. A phone is always a rotary phone, for instance, and a wineglass has almost emoji-level recognition and immediacy. I’ve noticed recently that these objects do often relate to a painterly impulse. The makeup and the nail polish are cognates to materials in the studio, and they’re symbols for navigating the ambivalence around how women are constantly reconstructing ourselves—like, almost every morning. Or I am, anyway. Danielle Orchard, Cheating at Solitaire, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Gallery. Sophie Haigney is the web editor at The Paris Review. View the full article -
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THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE by Roshani Chokshi (BOOK REVIEW)
“All Marriages possess their own tongue. It is a lexicon discovered in that space between clipped sentences. Its poetry can be heard in the rustle of blankets as you shift to curl around the other in silent apology. In this way, I spoke to my wife. I let the slow drag of my thumb along her jaw say what I could not.” The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is the debut adult novel by Roshani Chokshi and is my first foray into her work, to say that I was impressed would be an understatement, I was utterly blown away. This is a tale of horror and beauty, of broken promises and cracked dreams, of loss and loneliness, it is an addictive tale which vividly captures the dangers of fantasy and reality. Our story begins with a fairytale romance as our first protagonist, known only as Bridegroom, meets and falls head over heels in love with a mysterious heiress—Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. Their attraction is impulsive, heady, and in no time at all the Bridegroom and Indigo marry, and promise to live happily ever after…on one condition. Our Bridegroom must never look into Indigo’s past, he must never delve into her secrets. For a spell, the Bridegroom is content to spend his days devoted to wife and delighted to be in her presence. They expand and build upon the Casteñada hotel empire together, visiting countries all over the world, spending nights in castles sharing wine, food and telling fairy tales of old. Yet when Indigo receives a call informing her that her estranged aunt is dying, the pair must travel to Indigo’s childhood home, the House of Dreams. Within the walls of this house is where our Bridegroom wavers, where the temptation to pry into Indigo’s life becomes too great, for the House knows her secrets and the House wants to reveal. You see Indigo was not the only one who inhabited the House of Dreams, another presence was also felt, that of Azure, Indigo’s childhood friend who mysteriously vanished. As the narrative unfolds our Bridegroom becomes entangled in a web of fantasy and reality, where either one could destroy him. In essence The Last Tale of the Flower Bride centres on obsession and complex relationships where dependency, possessiveness and insecurities dwell within each character. When Indigo and our Bridegroom first meet their chemistry is instant, intoxicating, full of passion and lust. We spend many chapters watching their marriage flourish over the years, and it is as beautiful as it is deeply intense, but as the whirlwind dies-down we see a sourness creep in, a darkness. It begins to show that Indigo has a very controlling air about her, forever watchful of her bridegroom, an incessant need to know where he is and what he’s been doing. The Bridegroom is passive, treading carefully around his wife, fearful to upset their serenity, though in secret he searches to uncover Indigo’s past, but he also searches to uncover the truth of his own, for over the years the memory of his brother has haunted him, a brother who he was told never existed. I loved the way Chokshi built up the unsettling atmosphere throughout the beginning, the way she weaves romance with subtle dominance, and the foreboding sense that all was about to unravel. I also found it interesting that our Bridegroom’s name is hidden, almost as though his identity is insignificant, as though his name held no power, but then this is also not his story alone, it is more the story of Indigo and Azure. As the chapters then alternate between the present timeline with the bridegroom, and Azure’s POV which centres on her and Indigo’s childhood, we switch to a coming of age narrative, which I have to say is one of my absolute favourites. Azure’s life prior to meeting Indigo was one of poverty, broken parental relationships and a step-father with lingering eyes. Resentment, loneliness and fear builds, and it is easy to see why Azure becomes so enchanted by Indigo and the House of Dreams. The House becomes a place of luxury, safety and comfort to Azure, it speaks to her in a language of sounds and feelings. Indigo and Azure’s days together are filled with silk dresses and tea, spells and sacrifices, of believing in faeries and magic and the ethereal. They are whimsical, endearing and their story was filled with such a comforting sense of nostalgia as Chokshi perfectly captures the moment where children believe in magic and possibilities with their very soul. These two young girls became inseparable. Where did Azure begin and Indigo end? “The magic was nothing so tangible as a crystal glass or an uttered incantation. It lay in how the House decanted the light, the aristocratic lines of the shadows cast on the floor. The magic was the spark in her brown eyes, rendering them an animal shade of amber. The magic was this: the supple sorcery of Indigo’s words, such that your own hand became a blade you eagerly welcomed.” In the grounds of The House of Dreams, Azure and Indigo share a place they call the Otherworld, a place they believed would take them away from the mundane and transport them into the magical. Yet as both girls grow older, Indigo clings to this idea like a lifeline, whilst Azure begins to notice the world outside. Throughout the book Chokshi illustrates that Indigo has a manipulative side to her, on appearances everyone is drawn in by her beauty, her aurora, yet as more of herself is revealed the more we see a darkness within, a certain kind of cruelty, which progressively heightens. Chokshi superbly executes the transition from innocence of childhood to something more sinister. I also loved the way Chokshi freckled the narrative with fairytales throughout, some of which were familiar to me and some new, but they were effectively used to punctuate the narrative that was unfolding, often foretelling the upcoming dangers. Princesses, maidens, old crones, and monsters, the motif of starlings and apple blossoms, ‘once upon a time’ and ‘happily ever afters’ were all present in this novel, but they were wrapped up in disguises and deceit. Chokshi plays with the concept of fairytales in the most darkly delicious ways, representing their beauty, their whimsy, their ideals and even their gruesome horror. I could not help but see comparisons to Alix E Harrow’s works, and damn did I love that. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride reads like a spellbinding gothic fairytale, enveloped in dreamy poetic prose and enigmatic characters. This is a book you’ll want to devour and savour, a book you won’t be able to put down until the final act leaves you in awe. “We are two blues, the neat seam of dusk and dawn. We share a sky, if not a soul, and yet we are cut of the same shades.” ARC provided by Kate at Hodder and Stoughton Books. Thank you for the copy! All quotes used are taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is due to be released 16th February 2023 but you can pre-order your copy HERE The post THE LAST TALE OF THE FLOWER BRIDE by Roshani Chokshi (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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Six Ways to Support an Author’s New Book + CONTEST
Therese here to introduce a heartfelt community post regarding a friend and guest of Writer Unboxed who needs our help now. It begins with a personal plea on her behalf, authored by her husband, continues with actionable steps you can take to help, authored by former WU contributor Allison Larkin, and finishes with a infographic that you can use and share to help other authors in general. Thanks for reading, and for sharing, WU community! Your support is very much appreciated. Click the photo group above to be taken to a social media page filled with downloadable pictures you can share over Instagram or other social media sites! Tuesday is a special day in the world of traditional publishing, because it’s the day that a whole lot of books are released into the world for the first time. These books represent a mammoth effort for those authors, as we who write story understand, as well as the publishing house that releases that book. Every book has an ideal plan — a unique collaboration involving the author, the publicist and marketing team, and important peripheral groups, from stores to clubs, that sign on early as a book’s champion. But ideals rarely go off without a hitch, because reality brings chaos and chaos can be catastrophic. Especially when the author herself can no longer participate in a book’s release. Such is the case this month–today–with longtime friend, supporter, and guest of Writer Unboxed, author Ann Mah. Ann’s story in her husband’s words: My wife, Ann Mah, always fights hard against what writers call dull thud day — that day when their new books hit stores and sites with little fanfare, an anticlimax. She pushes for her own books, of course, but also for books by authors like her who must do so much on their own to promote their work. Ann’s new novel, “Jacqueline in Paris,” comes out September 27. Because of a serious sudden illness, she can’t make the case for it, not online or in person. It is a great book. I would be deeply grateful if you faithful unboxed writers could help me spread the word. “Jacqueline in Paris” tells the story of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’ junior year abroad in Paris in 1949-50 — a year she described as the happiest in her life. Ann immerses us in Jackie’s feelings and thinking as she encounters France’s postwar awakenings and reckonings. Her experiences unfold against the backdrop of Paris, which Ann depicts vividly and from the viewpoint of an attuned resident — the scents of fir trees and coal smoke on the street before Christmas; the dusty Roman amphitheater tucked behind a bus stop. Ann also captures the intellectual and geopolitical ferment that made life in Paris and other European capitals so intense in the immediate postwar period. The book grew from a travel story Ann wrote for The New York Times about Jackie’s time in Paris as a student — but she knew there was more to explore. Ann researched the novel with the energy and rigor of a historian, going horseback riding in the Bois de Boulogne as Jackie did, enjoying tea with Jackie’s 90-something host sister, visiting Dachau as Jackie did. The result is a book that is as transporting as it is absorbing. Writing “Jacqueline in Paris” struck a personal chord for Ann. Like Jackie, Ann took chances and moved far from home at a young age (in Ann’s case, to Boston and then New York from Orange County, California), defying family expectations. Like Jackie, Ann felt her time living in Paris transformed her, made her bolder and more confident. The sexism Jackie faced resonates even 70-plus years later and animates Ann’s (and my own) efforts to make a positive difference in our work. Ann also wound up marrying a public servant (me), although our style is more home-a-lot than Camelot. Ann loathes self-promotion, like so many writers I’ve met during my lifetime, so I am unsure how successful she would be getting the word out about “Jacqueline in Paris.” My hope is that the quality and integrity of this work will generate the high level of interest it merits. But I love Ann too much to leave it to chance. I hope you will help me defeat the dull thud and create a shooting star instead. – Chris Klein, Ann Mah’s husband Thank you, Chris, for sharing Ann’s story with us, and for helping us to help Ann! Today’s post continues with our good friend and former WU contributor, author Allison Larkin, who shares Six Ways to Support Ann Mah’s New Book! Authors support authors. That’s what we do. You all know this because that’s the power of Writer Unboxed. Ann Mah is always a gracious supporter of other authors and creatives. She tweets, posts, retweets, and champions the books, articles, and recipes she loves in her thoughtful newsletter. Ann is such a bright light, so we want to come together now to support our friend on the launch of her new novel, Jacqueline in Paris. We know that sometimes the hardest part of helping is figuring out what to do. So we’ve brainstormed and crowdsourced to come up with a list of Ann Action Items for you! Pick one or two, or check off all of them! We want Ann’s launch day and the days beyond to feel like an overwhelming lovefest. And we want you to be a part of that. Thank you so much for being a writer who is part of this community and the greater community of creative people. Thank you for making this launch day special for Ann and her family. Get the book. Jacqueline in Paris is available today everywhere books are sold! Grab an extra copy for a friend! Get your holiday shopping done early! If you can’t buy the book, request a copy from your local library (also, make sure to check it out). Leave a 5-Star Review. Give Ann’s new novel your heartfelt five stars on Goodreads, BookBub, and bookseller sites. If you’re still waiting to give it a read, you can add it on Goodreads! Make it a Book Club Pick. Choose Jacqueline in Paris for your book club! Or start a book club and make it your inaugural pick! If you’re an author who visits book clubs, mention the book as a suggestion for future selections. Spread the Word. Share your support of Ann and excitement for her beautiful new book on social media, in your newsletter, or even just tell friends and family who love to read! Ask your friends and followers to share and help spread the word too! Your social media message can be simple. Here are a few examples (feel free to use them directly!): Congratulations to @AnnMahNet on the release of Jacqueline in Paris! Kirkus gave it a starred review, calling it “A delightful and surprisingly insightful novel.” Learn more here: https://tinyurl.com/bdde8k4y Can’t wait to read @AnnMahNet’s new novel, Jacqueline in Paris, the poignant coming-of-age story of Jacqueline Bouvier’s year abroad before the world knew her as Jackie Kennedy. https://tinyurl.com/bdde8k4y Write a Shelf-Talker. Ask your local bookstore if you can write a short recommendation they can include on their bookshelf to help draw readers to the book! Include what you love best about Jacqueline in Paris: Ann’s rich descriptions of Paris and Grenoble, insight into Jacqueline Bouvier’s inner life before she became one of America’s most famous First Ladies, or the magical coming of age mixture of heartbreak and adventure? Attend a Book Event. On Wednesday, September 28th, at 8 PM Eastern, two exceptionally brilliant, kind authors who have also written Jackie Kennedy novels will be doing a virtual event to celebrate Ann and her new book. Steven Rowley (The Editor) and Louis Bayard (Jackie & Me) will partner with East City Bookshop to discuss Jacqueline in Paris. This is certain to be a unique and fascinating conversation. The event is free, but please register to attend! It helps support all three authors and the store supporting this event if you order your copies (or extra copies) from the store! You can also invite your friends! Here’s a sample tweet or post, and a photo you can add to accompany it: Looking forward to this virtual event (9/28 8 pm ET) with Jackie Kennedy experts @MrStevenRowley & @LouiseBayard in conversation with @eastcitybooks to discuss @AnnMahNet’s new novel, Jacqueline in Paris! Free registration here: https://tinyurl.com/4edbkfs9 Many thanks to Allie for both this post and for her fantastic “How to Support an Author” infographic below, which can be used to help any author with a new book release! “Right click” to save and share the image. How else might we help to spread the word about Ann Mah’s Jacqueline in Paris? How have you helped authors and writers who’ve needed a hand in the past? What are some of the most inventive promotional ideas you’ve seen or tried yourself? If you’d like to be entered into the running for a copy of Ann’s Jaqueline in Paris, please indicate interest in comments! If you’ve helped to spread the word about Jacqueline in Paris over social media, please include that in your comment for an extra chance at winning a copy of her book. We’ll choose a winner or two at the end of this week. Thank you, WU Community! About Writer Unboxed began as a collaboration between Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton in 2006. Since then the site has grown to include ~50 regular contributors--including bestselling authors and industry leaders--and frequent guests. In 2014, the first Writer Unboxed UnConference (part UNtraditional conference, part intensive craft event, part networking affair) was held in Salem, MA. Learn more about our 2019 event, ESCAPE TO WuNDERLAND, on Eventbrite. In 2016, the Writer Unboxed team published a book with Writer's Digest. AUTHOR IN PROGRESS: A No-Holds-Barred Guide to What It Really Takes to Get Published has been well-received by readers who seek help in overcoming the hurdles faced at every step of the novel-writing process--from setting goals, researching, and drafting to giving and receiving critiques, polishing prose, and seeking publication. James Scott Bell has said of the guide, "Nourishment for the writer's soul and motivation for the writer's heart." You can follow Writer Unboxed on Twitter, and join our thriving Facebook community. Twitter | Facebook | More Posts [url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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On Theda Barra and the Origins of the Vamp
Rudyard Kipling brought sex to the movies. The author of “Gunga Din,” “The Man Who Would Be King” and “The Jungle Book” didn’t intend to do it, but he certainly bears some responsibility for the morass of cinematic depravity in which we so happily wallow today. However inadvertent his contribution, he helped create the screen’s first seductress, a woman as “wicked as fresh red paint.” Her career was brief and almost all of her films have been lost, but in her day, she was one of the world’s most popular stars. It happened this way. At 32, Kipling had published several volumes of stories and poems and was enjoying wide-ranging popular and critical success. After traveling around the world and living in America for several years, he had settled in England. The artist Philip Burne-Jones was his cousin and close childhood friend. Little Phil was the son of the eminent Victorian pre-Raphaelite painter, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. In the London of 1897, the younger Burne-Jones was a well-to-do young man about town. A rising if somewhat dilettantish artist, he was struggling to get out of his father’s shadow. He would never measure up to Big Ed in that regard, but Phil was enough of a stud muffin to be seen with Mrs. Patrick Campbell on his arm, and that was really something. Mrs. Pat, as she was called, was one of the most famous stage actresses of her day. A favorite of George Bernard Shaw, the diva was notorious for her temperamental behavior and richly varied social life. (Mr. Campbell was not an issue.) Her rough equivalent might be a young Liz Taylor, respected for her acting abilities and gossiped about at delicious length. Little Phil fell hard for Mrs. Pat and plied her with jewels, flowers, carriages. Alas, those weren’t enough. Some suspected that Mrs. Pat had merely used the lad to get close to Big Ed, but whatever the reason, after toying with his affections for a time, she tossed him aside for one of her co-stars. Phil did not take it well. He uncorked his anger, resentment, and bruised ego and poured them onto canvas in a painting he called “The Vampire.” It depicts a handsome young man stretched out supine on a chaise in his bedroom. His clothes are open, revealing his chest. If contemporary accounts are to be believed, the guy in the picture looks like Phil but taller, slimmer and with more hair. Looming above, a beautiful long-haired woman gazes down on him. With a cool cruel expression on her face, she is, unmistakably, Mrs. Campbell. When the painting made its debut at the New Gallery, it became an immediate scandalous sensation. Everyone knew who the figures were and what was rumored to have happened between them. To fan the flames, Little Phil inveigled his cousin Rudyard to write a poem to accompany the painting. Kipling agreed and cranked out his own “The Vampire” in six verses. It begins: A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair (We called her the woman who did not care) But the fool he called her his lady fair— (Even as you and I!) Straightaway, Little Phil commissioned a limited run of signed first editions of his cousin’s work. (They sold. The painting did not.) Both poem and picture were both extremely popular in England and later in America. Beyond the immediate reference to such a famous woman, the painting touched something in the audience. It was an obvious variation on the sexual themes and undercurrents of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula” which had been published that same year. Both are built around seductive figures creeping into bedrooms late at night. The scandal over the painting died away but Kipling’s poem remained popular and in 1909, Porter Emerson Browne expanded the basic idea into a stage play and quickie novel with the title taken from the first line, “A Fool There Was.” The plot is a fairly standard Victorian melodrama about drunkenness, infidelity and the destruction of a happy family. Browne added the element of the predatory seductress from Burne-Jones and Kipling. Though the New York Times dismissed the piece as “claptrap,” audiences flocked to see it and the play was a major hit. Four years later, independent producer and theater chain owner William Fox was trying to step up from simple one-reel films to more complex (and profitable) feature-length stories. (His studio would eventually become the Fox in 20th Century Fox.) His first major acquisition was Browne’s play. He reasoned correctly that it would be a good vehicle for a new kind of star, a darker antidote to Mary Pickford’s “America’s Sweetheart,” and he got some good advice from the play’s producer, Richard Hilliard. He told Fox to lock his leading lady into a long term contract before he shot the first frame of film. Over the years, Hilliard said, he’d replaced his actress six times because the role was so good that it made each young woman extremely popular and “difficult.” Theodosia Goodman was exactly the kind of woman William Fox was looking for. She’d moved to New York from Cincinnati in 1905 with dreams of becoming a stage actress. The movie business was in its infancy then and she wanted nothing to do with it. But after several years of minimal success on Broadway and in Yiddish theater, she took a more accommodating view of the new art form and looked for any work she could find in the studios across the river in Ft. Lee, New Jersey. That’s where Fox studio director Frank Powell spotted her in 1914. By then, she was staring grimly at 30 and knew that she was overweight. The waif look was in that year, and even at her most svelte, Theodosia was a large woman. But Powell saw something. Maybe it was the long lush dark hair or her expressive eyes. Whatever it was, Powell hired her but made sure that she stayed in the background on his film, “The Stain.” He didn’t want anyone else to spot her. Not then. William Fox then signed her to a five-year contract at $100 a week, and announced with great fanfare that he was searching for an unknown actress to star in his upcoming production of “A Fool There Was.” Filming began in the fall of 1914 on location in St. Augustine, Florida, and ended in New York. It was ready for release in January, 1915. Reviews were generally positive, particularly for leading lady Theda Bara. Theodosia Goodman from Cincinnati simply wasn’t sufficiently alluring and mysterious for the movies’ first bad girl… Yes, Fox and his imaginative p.r. flacks Johnny Goldfrap and Al Selig decided that Theodosia Goodman from Cincinnati simply wasn’t sufficiently alluring and mysterious for the movies’ first bad girl, and so they created Theda Bara. This exotic creature, born in the shadow of the Sphinx, was the daughter of a French artist and his Arabian mistress. The name actually came from a diminutive of Theodosia and a variation on a family name Barranger. It was only later that someone realized the name was also an anagram for “Death Arab” and added that little detail to the increasingly fanciful Theda mythos. And Goldfrap, Selig and company were tireless in their elaboration of that mythos with press conferences featuring incense, dim atmospheric lighting and crystal balls, all promoting “the Wickedest Woman in the World.” That’s what Terry Ramsaye was referring to with the “red paint” metaphor for Theda in his history of silent movies, “A Million and One Nights.” Just a few days before the premiere of “A Fool There Was,” they held their famous introductory press conference with a few reporters to “introduce” their new star. It took place in a heavily curtained Chicago hotel room, thick with incense. Theodosia was decked out in furs and veils and played Theda to the hilt. After it was over, Goldfrap and Selig told one reporter, a young unknown Louella Parsons, to hang around. She was on hand to see Theodosia rip off the costume, throw open the drapes and gasp “Gimme air,” just as the boys had planned. At the very moment they were creating Theda the Sex Goddess, they were revealing their own charade. It worked. Doubtless a few people actually bought the Theda malarkey but most, if they paid any attention at all, simply enjoyed the silliness of the whole business. And what of the film itself? By the time it was released, Kipling had won the Nobel Prize for Literature and so his poem was often recited aloud by an actor before a screening, thereby adding a degree of respectability to an unashamed exploitative potboiler. It tells the story of a sexy young woman who seduces and casts aside a series of lovers. The Vampire, as she is called, sets her eye on upright John Schuyler (Edward Jose). The happy husband and father of an angelic little girl has just been given a special European assignment by the President, and is about to leave by himself. The Vampire books passage on his ship, the Gigantic, and straightaway goads her current lover into suicide after she famously says to him, “Kiss me, my fool!” (It became an instant catchphrase and punch line.) Moments later, she meets Schuyler and nails him with a smoky glance. Cut to her boudoir in Italy where a dissipated Schuyler opens a letter from his wife asking why he hasn’t written. His face is lined, his complexion is sallow, his hair is white, his hands tremble. The Vamp has him under her spell. What is her power? On screen, it’s mostly the eyes. They’re surrounded by mascara that appears to have been applied with a putty knife. The rest of her face is pale zombie white. The primitive lighting and makeup techniques of the day demanded such harsh overstatement. With that extreme appearance, Ms. Goodman was able to level an intense stare at the camera and her co-stars. She also wore a series of fairly revealing outfits. In one scene, she’s in constant danger of falling out of her negligee as she packs her trunk. Beyond that, she’s an energetic, animated full-bodied woman who acts on her sexual desires. Such a character had not been seen before and audiences were stunned. Women everywhere wanted to share her power. Humorist S.J. Perleman spoke for most men when he summed up his reaction to film. “For a month afterward, I gave myself up to fantasies in which I lay with my head pillowed in the seductress’ lap.” Despite the imprimatur of Nobel, the film was roundly condemned by responsible civic and religious organizations, and it was cut severely by many state censors. Everybody else loved it, and the film became a certified boffo box office smash. The public relations ploy worked better than anyone could have predicted. Theda Bara was immediately identified as “the vamp.” It had been her nickname on the movie set, and the use of the word to describe a seductive woman entered the language. Fox immediately set to work on more vampish vehicles for its new star, and the studio cranked them out as fast as it could. Theda Bara starred in no less than 60 features over the next four years. That’s not a misprint—60 pictures in four years. True, many of them were little more than an hour long, but she worked at a crushing pace, and some of the productions were lavish. Judging by the photographs and publicity stills that survive, her 1917 “Cleopatra” was a visual marvel with huge sets and outré costumes that beggar description. We’re unlikely ever to know because all known prints were burned, along with most of her films, in a fire at the Fox studio. (Lon Chaney’s “London After Midnight” and “Cleopatra” are the two holy grails of lost films.) Theda made a few pictures in which she played the “good girl,” but those weren’t what her public wanted to see and they fared poorly. The vamp wasn’t playing so well, either. By 1919, Theda had grown tired of the character and retired from filmmaking. She decided to take another run at the stage and in 1920 she opened on Broadway in “The Blue Flame.” If the reviews are to be believed, it was a terrible play and she was terrible in it. But once again, audiences disagreed and the production made Theda a wealthy woman. When it was finished, she embarked on a vaudeville tour and that made her even wealthier. A year later, she married one of her favorite directors, Englishman Charles Brabin. She retired then, though he continued to work regularly, and they divided their time between Hollywood and New York. In contrast to her public relations portrayal of the Wickedest Woman in the World, the real Theodosia/Theda was a quiet, bookish woman with a smart sense of humor. Her private life was notably restrained—no problems with drugs or alcohol, no outlandish spending. At the height of her fame, she lived in a relatively modest Upper West Side apartment and made sure that her family was financially secure. As her biographer Eve Golden notes, that lack of scandal or controversy in her private life is at least part of the reason that Theda Bara has been forgotten today. Many moviegoers may recognize the vamp caricature with its dark eyes, but they may not associate it with Theda Bara. She talked of returning to the movies later in life, but few stars were able to make the transition from silent to sound and her heart wasn’t in it. But she did maintain her contacts in the entertainment business and that led to a fitting postscript. In the early 1930s, Mrs. Patrick Campbell was attempting to revive her fading stage career by offering her services to the American movies. Every bit as demanding and contrary as she had ever been, she had a tough time of it. Her biggest role was as the pawn shop owner Peter Lorre kills in “Crime and Punishment.” But when Theda learned that Mrs. Pat was in the country, she offered her a place to stay. She also publicly pooh-poohed all the stories that were being told about how “difficult” Mrs. Pat was and went out of her way to praise the older woman’s abilities. No one knows if they ever talked about “The Vampire” who connected their careers but it’s hard to believe they didn’t. *** View the full article -
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Ed Gein, inspiration for ‘Psycho’ and ‘Chainsaw,’ was a real-life horror show
It’s possible, perhaps, to feel sympathy for Norman Bates. Mental illness and a manipulative mother drove him to murder and other horrifying hobbies even while, as a small business owner, he struggled to maintain a tiny roadside motel bypassed by progress. It’s less easy to feel sympathy for Leatherface, generally assumed to be mentally deficient and (also) easily manipulated by family members. But his history included not only gainful employment in a slaughterhouse but as an outsider artist, fashioning sculptures and mobiles from bones as well as sewing unique facial coverings. Described in such a way, the central characters of “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” seem like pitiable figures. The two are certainly among the most vivid in pop culture history of the past 75 years and both are drawn from Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who made headlines around the world in 1957 when his gruesome crimes were discovered. Gein’s story, fictionalized, reached millions of people when Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho” was published in 1959 and turned into a classic thriller film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960. Gein’s story has been reported in books, a notorious underground comic and a recent graphic novel. It’s as fascinating and repellent a story as has ever been turned into popular fiction. Thirteen years before “Eddie” Gein’s most gruesome crimes were discovered, came what was likely Gein’s first murder, with the death of Gein’s brother, Henry. Dreadful child, domineering mother The village of Plainfield, Wisconsin had always been a quiet place. The community’s population was only about 600, so it was likely everyone in the area knew the Gein family. Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906 to George and Augusta. George farmed and, for a time, ran a butcher shop. Augusta, a harsh and sex-averse woman – according to Harold Schechter’s 1989 book “Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho” – had already given birth to a son, Henry, born in January 1902. Ed Gein would recall, decades later, that he could never please his mother and that she called him “a dreadful child.” At school, other kids teased Eddie about his soft voice, his feminine mannerisms and his sagging left eyelid. Schechter writes that Henry and Eddie grew accustomed to their mother’s tirades, among them regarding the wickedness of women. Their father was possibly worse, regularly getting drunk and whipping the boys. When they weren’t being insulted or beaten, Augusta made the boys swear they would never be “contaminated” by women. Mercifully for Henry and Eddie, George Gein did not linger long into his sons’ adult lives. He died in April 1940, leaving Augusta time to focus on domineering her now-adult sons. You’d think the brothers, being on the receiving end of lifetimes of abuse both physical and verbal, would grow closer. But on May 16, 1944, Henry and Ed were dealing with a fire on the family property. Schechter’s book says that by some accounts, the brothers had set the fire to clear dry grass. Some thought the fire had been started by accident. Eddie reported to police officers that he had lost track of Henry while they were trying to manage the fire. But he led them to the spot where his older brother lay, in an area that had been scorched by fire. Henry didn’t appear to have been touched by the flames, but his head showed bruises. The police theory was that Henry had been overcome by smoke and collapsed and hit his head on a rock. It would be more than a decade, after Ed Gein’s most notorious crimes had been discovered, until people began to reassess what might have happened to Henry Gein. For her part, Augusta Gein survived her oldest son by a little more than a year. She grew sick and, under Eddie’s care, lived only until late 1945. For the first time in his life, Eddie Gein was alone. ‘She’s at my farm right now’ Over the next decade, Ed Gein and his family farm were both largely untended. The farm lay fallow while Eddie hired out to work for other farmers. Mild-mannered Eddie, now in his 40s, seemed to quit bathing and shaving and spent more time alone – when he wasn’t ogling the farmers’ wives and daughters who served lunch to farmhands for hire like him. Schechter’s book recounts how Ed Gein, even as he neglected upkeep of his farm and himself, began to study macabre subjects. He devoured books about Nazi atrocities and South Seas cannibals and headhunters, taking particular interest in how shrunken heads were made. At the same time, Schechter notes, Wisconsin police were dealing with a rash of disappearances of people, particularly women and girls. Among them was Mary Hogan, a tavern owner who vanished in December 1954. Blood was found on the floor of her tavern, but she was simply gone. In the wake of her disappearance, when men would tease Eddie that he should have courted the woman, he replied that she wasn’t gone. “She’s not missing,” he responded. “She’s at the farm right now. I went and got her in my pickup truck and took her home.” For Ed Gein, the saving grace in being an oddball who said oddball things was that few paid any attention to what would later prove to be his confession. Those around Eddie weren’t the only ones who, even if they had been paying attention, would be inclined to write things off as simply Ed Gein being Ed Gein. Local teenagers said that Eddie had shown them shrunken heads. Eddie claimed the heads were sent to him by a cousin who had served in the Philippines during the war. Rumors intensified after boys who had been in the Gein house recounted seeing heads – not shrunken – hanging in a room. The boys convinced themselves that they had seen Halloween masks. As the Gein farm gained a reputation as a haunted place, rumors were intensified by reports that, late at night, people passing the remote homestead swore they saw long-dead Augusta Gein in the yard, dancing naked in the moonlight. On November 16, 1957, on a day when most of the men of Plainfield were out hunting and the women were tending to their homes or shops, Ed Gein went to Bernice Worden’s store, where many of the townspeople shopped. Eddie went into the store seeking a refill of a jug of antifreeze. Before long, he had killed Bernice Worden, taking her body and leaving blood on the floor, just as had been the case with Mary Hogan three years before. When Bernice Worden’s disappearance was discovered, suspicion immediately turned to Gein due to his oddball ways. A group of men were dispatched to find Gein and search his property. Eddie was found at a neighbor’s house, and he immediately implicated himself by admitting that he knew he was a suspect in the shopkeeper’s disappearance. As for Bernice Worden, officers found her hanging upside-down from the rafters of a barn on the Gein property, dressed out like a deer: Her torso was split and her head had been cut off. A photo of the horrific state of Worden’s body was published in “Edward Gein: America’s Most Bizarre Murderer,” a 1981 recap of Gein’s trial, written by Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the case. The list of body parts found in Gein’s possession – everything from bowls made from human heads to a wastebasket made from human skin to Mary Hogan’s face, kept in a bag, and her skull, kept in a box – is appalling. Lips on the drawstring of a window shade and nine vulvae kept in a shoe box, for god’s sake. It seems Gein’s hobby wasn’t limited to Worden and Hogan. He had been robbing freshly-filled graves of bodies. Gein told investigators he’d raided graves 40 times. He especially favored digging up the remains of middle-aged women because they reminded him of his mother. He had, authorities found, assembled skin suits that he could wear. Eddie Gein’s case and his subsequent big-screen fame could be cited as the ultimate example of truth being stranger than fiction. Ultimately, a trial – with Judge Gollmar presiding – was held and Gein was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was ordered to spend the rest of his life at Wisconsin’s Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Eddie lived until he was 77 years old, dying July 26, 1984 as a result of lung cancer. But his notoriety was long-lasting and began decades before his death and lasted decades after. A twisted tale for a notorious author and director Robert Bloch and Ed Gein were perhaps the perfect match. Both had spent time in Wisconsin, for one thing. Bloch was a writer of renown before he published “Psycho” in 1959. By the time the book came out, Bloch was known for noting, “I have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” When “Psycho” was published by Simon and Schuster on April 10, 1959, that anecdote was cited in newspaper stories and columns to show Bloch’s irreverent and macabre sense of humor. And there is probably humor to be found in Bloch’s book, but it is a mostly straightforward tale of horror. If you haven’t read the book, you should know that Hitchcock’s movie, scripted by Joseph Stefano, follows it quite closely. But for a sampling of Bloch’s black humor and one tidbit that isn’t detailed in the movie, look no further than the chapter in which Norman Bates – overweight in the book, not lean and young like actor Anthony Perkins – kills Mary Crane (whose first name was changed to Marion for the movie version): “Mary started to scream, and then the (shower) curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. “And her head.” The Boston Globe was not impressed. “Very strange story about a homicidal maniac somewhere in the Middle West,” the paper’s Avis DeVoto noted in a capsule review. “Psychologically ineffective but so full of horrors it can scarcely be recommended as entertainment. The author plays an outrageous trick on the reader, succeeds brilliantly.” Most reviews were far more appreciative. Just a few weeks after the book debuted, columnist Walter Winchell reported, in June 1959: “Alf Hitchcock is very mysterious about his next movie. I hear it’ll be based on Robert Bloch’s suspense novel ‘Pyscho.’” Who knew Walter Winchell called Alfred Hitchcock “Alf?” By December 1959, Hitchcock – famously using the low-budget crew and production standards of his “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV show – was already shooting and newspapers were reporting the cast included Tony Perkins, Vera Miles and John Gavin, “with Janet Leigh in a special guest star role.” Uh, spoilers, Cincinnati Post editors of 1959. The Hitchcock film really doesn’t need to be broken down here, but when the movie was released in the summer of 1960, only four newspapers – three in Ed Gein’s home state of Wisconsin and one in Minnesota – noted that the movie and Bloch’s book were based on the Gein case. Hitchcock went out of his way to poo-poo the connection in an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “There is only the very slenderest thread of connection,” Hitchcock is quoted as saying. “Bloch knew about the Gein case, but that’s all. He didn’t get any ideas from it.” Sure, Alf. Sure. Cashing in on the horror After “Psycho” told the Ed Gein story through its own particular lens, other films borrowed liberally from his story. How many times have we seen young protagonists stumble onto remote houses decorated with bones and suspiciously sourced lampshades? But the 1974 Tobe Hooper masterpiece “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is probably the single best film besides “Psycho” to tell Eddie’s story. And if you’ve never considered Hooper’s film to be a masterpiece, you and I will part ways at the fibula in the road. Because just as “Psycho” is a masterpiece, so is the initial “Chainsaw.” It is a movie where unrelenting dread is slowly replaced by unrelenting horror. A group of young travelers find themselves stranded in a Texas backwater and explore a foreboding house. One by one, the horrific family that calls the house home is revealed. The aforementioned Leatherface is perhaps the most frightening, but that’s mostly because of the mask of roughly stitched human skin, his blood-smeared slaughterhouse apron, his inexorable pursuit and, of course, that roaring chainsaw. As restrained as “Psycho” is, with just that black-and-white swirl of “blood” going down the shower drain, “Chainsaw” is, improbably, restrained too. In the mind’s eye of moviegoers, Hooper showed a lot more blood than he really did. There’s violence aplenty, of course, of the “hang someone on a meat hook” variety. But the explicit piercing and rending of flesh that viewers experienced with “Chainsaw” was mostly in their imaginations. Mostly. There are reboots and remakes and rip-offs of these two pinnacles of Ed Gein fictionalizations, and many, many films that play upon our collective mind’s eye memories of those films. But there’s no equal. There’s also no end to horror fiction stories that owe at least a debt for inspiration to Bloch’s “Psycho,” but there are a couple of cool graphic-industry interpretations. The most recent is “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” a collaboration of longtime Gein chronicler Schechter, who wrote “Deviant,” and beloved artist and graphic story creator Eric Powell (“The Goon”). The book published in 2021 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. For graphic – no pun intended – versions of Gein’s twisted tale, I’m partial to an issue of the underground comic “Weird Trips,” which in its second issue, from 1978, presented a cover showcasing Eddie’s story with a decided EC Comics flavor. The Kitchen Sink Press publication could be found on or under a lot of tables in 1980s comic book conventions, which is where I found the two copies I had in my possession for decades. (And still might, although at this moment they can’t be found.) “Weird Trips” looked like a comic – and that cover art was phenomenal – but Gein’s story inside is told through text called “Ed Gein and the Left Hand of God.” The story was illustrated by drawings and photos of Gein and, inevitably, the sideshow exhibit of Eddie’s car that traveled around the Midwest for a few years after the gruesome story broke, discretely covered in a tent that was festooned with screaming signage. “REMEMBER ED GEIN OF PLANFIELD, WISCONSIN” the top sign on the tent read. ‘SEE HIS GRAVE-ROBBING AND MURDER CAR. $1,000 REWARD IF NOT TRUE.” “LOOK SEE THE CAR THAT HAULED THE DEAD FROM THEIR GRAVES,” read a sign on the side of the tent. It was not a subtle approach to showcasing the handiwork of a notorious murderer. But it would not be the last time other people made money from the horrifying story of Eddie Gein. View the full article -
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How Rudy Ruiz and His Neo-Western Aim to Change the Conversation About the U.S.-Mexico Border
In 1848, the Rio Grande River became the border between the United States and Mexico. A decision made in Washington, D.C., and forced into law through the American invasion of Mexico and occupation of Mexico City, forever changed the lives of Mexican border residents and their descendants. For the Mexican-American and Native American peoples who lost their rights, their lands, and – in many ways – their very future, the sense of loss and grief remains palpable, a scar that is repeatedly wounded by political rhetoric and ongoing acts of injustice. Hate crimes against Latinos and Native Americans often go unnoticed. They have also long been purposely forgotten. The Porvenir Massacre of 1918 was one such atrocity that inspired the setting and story of my novel, Valley of Shadows. In that tragic event, Texas Rangers and U.S. Cavalry rounded up and killed 15 Mexican and Mexican-American boys and men for allegedly stealing cattle in their West Texas town. No evidence was ever found. No trial was conducted. After the executions, the surviving families fled in terror to Mexico. It took an entire century for a historical monument to be erected. Many leaders still fight to keep stories such as these out of the history texts and books that speak truth to power out of the hands of students. Our country’s media and entertainment industry has traditionally – if unintentionally – conspired with the political powers-that-be to reinforce myths and stereotypes that support a long-established national narrative of Manifest Destiny and ethnocentric superiority. One such example is the classic and uniquely American genre of the Western. I grew up on an unhealthy diet of Western films and books. The heroes, as we all know, were quintessential Anglo White men. The only roles for people of color were those of villains, sidekicks, and drunks. The roles for women of color were typically even worse. When a public is taught a certain view of history in school and this view is reinforced through arts and entertainment it becomes cemented as that people’s truth. I naively enjoyed those Westerns and – as a child – I believed what I saw and read. But what does such wide-eyed faith do to a person’s view of themselves and the world when they are not properly represented? As I came of age, I grew keenly aware of the fallacies in this two-dimensional Hollywood set of how the West won, how the nation was built. Perhaps no genre further epitomizes what can happen when history is written only by the victors of violent cultural collisions. As a result, the wounds of social injustice are continuously inflicted, the violence against people of color is perpetuated, the belief in Anglo White superiority is institutionalized. Defiantly, and yet optimistically, Valley of Shadows imagines how the course of history might have differed had there been people of color in positions of power to help shape its flow. The novel strives to flip the Western genre on its head, redefining the classic American narrative. The story of Solitario Cisneros begins with his birth in the shallows of the Rio Grande in those tumultuous times. Burdened by a mystical curse, he flees his home, enlists in the Mexican military, and eventually settles in the Mexican border town of Olvido. However, when the curse catches up to Solitario, the Rio Grande capriciously changes course, stranding Olvido and its residents north of the border in the desert lands of West Texas. Stripped of his badge, Solitario loses everything he loved: his wife, his job and his country. Defeated, he retreats into hiding on his ranch, surrounded by nothing but cattle, horses, memories and ghosts. Years later, when a gruesome series of killings and kidnappings takes place, the town’s Anglo leaders coax Solitario out of retirement to solve the mystery and stop the violence before the townspeople turn on each other. As Solitario reluctantly risks his own heart to seek justice and protect the innocent, he also works cautiously to build and strengthen a fragile peace, an empathetic collaboration between the diverse elements that comprise his community. A neo-Western blend of magical realism, mystery, and horror, Valley of Shadows sheds light on the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border. At the same time, it plants seeds of hope that someday we might all outrun the curses that haunt us as individuals, cultural groups, and nations with a complex past as both enemies and neighbors, eventually emerging as harmonious collaborators and friends. To achieve this kind of progress, we must grapple with the hidden truths of history, expose them for all to see in their nuanced and often horrific glory. Banning books is never the answer to healing. Facing the truth together and with eyes wide open is the first step. This Hispanic Heritage Month, let us all celebrate not who we have always been told we are, but rather who we were always meant to be. *** View the full article -
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5 Mysteries that Don’t Sacrifice the Whodunit for the Whydunit
“Louise Penny,” was, at first, the sum total of what I blurted out yesterday to the interviewer wanting to know what might have influenced my new novel A Bend of Light. So many more names I’d meant to list right away in a long, lyrical response that would show both my gratitude to some favorite writers and maybe also make me sound deeply wise and well read. I’d planned to be eloquent and intellectually dazzling, of course, as one always plans, in addition to charming and funny and at least marginally coherent. I’d meant to speak compellingly about my novel’s setting, a fictional village on the coast of Maine—much like the small towns of Penny or William Kent Krueger—and its struggling female protagonist, a former photographic interpreter in WW2 who must start life over again in the hometown she fled years ago. And I’d definitely meant to grunt out more than two words. This, by the way, is why Daphne Du Maurier, author of Rebecca, insisted, “Writers should be read, but neither heard nor seen.” When asked to voice our thoughts on the spot, writers cannot be counted upon to be eloquent or sometimes even intelligible—and we may not have remembered to brush our hair before a public appearance. We are accustomed to channeling words through our fingers onto pages where, if worse comes to worse, they can be coaxed and corralled and made to make sense, if only by our beloved editors. At the very least, I could’ve begun talking about A Bend of Light and mysteries in general by recalling that tattered copy of Agatha Christie’s Curtain left by some former occupants at a beach condo, that book pulling me so hard into its pages I could not make myself go back in the ocean again until I’d finished, despite my skin charbroiling in the summer South Florida sun. I could’ve talked about much later discovering that even more than the thrill of the whodunnit, I was drawn to authors who explored the backstories and psychological states and cultural struggles of the suspects, all the festering jealousies and resentments and abuses that could turn a person’s heart toward violence. Because gradually, over the years, I discovered that what I really wanted to read and to write was a good whydunit. Despite my remarkably unhelpful grunting response yesterday to the poor interviewer, I do love to talk about an ever-growing list of authors who do this brilliantly, and whose work I learn from in writing my own novels. I could no more rank order my favorite writers than I could my own children or friends. In fact, even in listing these, I’m in near physical pain to leave so many out. Still, here are five mysteries that include all the twists we expect of a good whodunit, while also diving deep into what it means to be human, and the ways in which the inequities, privations and privileges of our own cultures can shape us. A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny I realize there are people in this world who like to read book series in order, and I can respect that. I’m just not one of them. I read my first Louise Penny book at the suggestion of a friend, and it was love at first page for Penny’s protagonist Armand Gamache and me—although the devotion is admittedly one-sided. I was late to the party with the Canadian author Penny, who was already widely acclaimed and on her twelfth novel A Great Reckoning. It was my first of hers, and I became obnoxious in my attempts to convert every literate person I knew into a fan. So much of what she does is brilliant, not least of which is her insight into what makes people tick…and suffer. And heal from unspeakable loss. Or not heal. And therefore plot to kill. Start at the beginning of the series if you’re one of those organized, sane sorts of readers, but the truth is, starting anywhere in the Three Pines series is so very worth the journey. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger William Kent Krueger also sets his novels—at least the ones I’ve been privileged to read—in a small town, in his case the north woods of Minnesota. Probably best known for his gripping Cork O’Connor series, he is remarkable handling the intricacies of detective fiction and also character development. The protagonist Cork O’Connor himself wrangles with his own dual identity as both Irish and Ojibwe, and those cultural tensions enrich this series. But my favorite book of his remains Ordinary Grace, a gorgeously gentle story with poetic prose that somehow still hurtles the reader forward to uncover the layers of lies, deceit and murder that the young protagonist encounters. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley Like Krueger, Mosley doesn’t shy away from cultural and racial tensions, and his fiction throbs with life for many reasons, but at least in part because of those very tensions. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is the WW2 veteran turned private investigator in late 1940s Los Angeles. The first in the bestselling series, Devil in a Blue Dress presents an array of complex characters. As in all the best storytelling, Rawlins’ allies may turn out to be enemies, and at least one would-be villain may have a past that could change everything about our perceptions of guilt. A National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Mosely manages to keep the reader both extraordinarily entertained but also, without slowing the story’s pace, contemplating the great existential questions of the soul and of our common society. Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear Jacqueline Winspear, like Walter Mosley, features characters who’ve been shaped and often damaged by war. Winspear’s fictional investigator and psychologist Masie Dobbs is a veteran of the Great War—and later of WW2. She continues throughout the series to deal with trauma from what she has endured and all she has lost. A costermonger’s daughter who later attends Girton College at Cambridge, Maisie can navigate both impoverished London alleyways and lavish, aristocratic estates. Trained to see beyond mere events and actions, Maisie analyzes not just the lives cut short by the deranged or the last whereabouts of missing persons, she focuses even more on the unremarkable, everyday cause that might’ve driven the violence or the disappearances: the harm ordinary people cause one another. One character, for example, [spoiler alert] has been so destroyed by the rejection and disdain of his father when it became clear the character was attracted to men, he has allowed himself to be presumed dead since a WW1 plane crash and has since lived tragically alienated from his family. Again, start with the first of the series if you must, but this third is one of my favorites. Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara Hirahara spent thirty years researching this novel, and it shows in all the best ways. A New York Times Best Mystery of the Year, Clark and Division refers to the area of Chicago where the Ito family is relocating after being released from Manzanar, the U.S. government’s detention camp for Japanese citizens during WW2. As twenty-year-old Aki Ito searches for answers about her revered older sister’s death, which authorities have labeled a suicide but Aki suspects was murder, the story unfolds in multiple layers. Hirahara’s own parents were survivors of the Hiroshima bombing, and perhaps partly because of her family’s story, the author explores history not as dusty old facts but as mystery, crevices of human experience we’ve not always explored fully or well. In Clark & Division, she has woven a story that is both captivating historical fiction and thriller *** View the full article -
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The Unstoppable, Fearsome, Delicious Allure of the Witch
Witches are powerful women. Like all powerful women, they have been maligned, persecuted, hated, desired, feared. They are eternal, mythical subjects, a source of endless fascination. In American history, they occupy a unique place where folklore blurs the lines of reality; we remember the “witches” of Salem, Massachusetts, who were not actually witches. They have become totemic figures in television, movies, books, and pop culture, and their appeal shows no signs of waning: as of this writing, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem is devoting a full-scale exhibit to the power and imagery of the witch. The witch has an interesting relationship to ghostlore; she is both part of it and separate from it. Though some lump the witch into the category “all things supernatural,” her status is somewhat distinct due in part to her complex and specific history, symbolism, and relationship to defined spiritual and cultural traditions. Yet where there are points of contact, the witch emerges as a curious but recognizable type of ghost. There are a few defining traits when it comes to the ghost-witch: first, she is generally the ghost of a woman who was accused or executed for witchcraft, whether she practiced it or not (usually not), coming back to seek revenge or draw attention to the injustice visited upon her. Second, she is often associated with a curse, and her powers transcend the grave. She is so strong, she bursts through the boundaries of death and comes back to wreak vengeance on the living. The witch as ghost, then, is defined by pretty much the same qualities as the witch as a living woman: she is powerful, fearsome, and not to be trifled with. The living witch can, however, be put to death; the real terror of the witch as ghost is that nothing can stop her. Another thing these ghostly witches have in common? Rumor. They probably were never witches at all, and have been so dubbed due to some confluence of coincidence, circumstance, and urban legend—or, as it happens, rural legend, for most of these tales take place in small towns and rural or semirural locations. Aesthetics and appearance have a lot to do with it, whether it’s the appearance of the “witch’s” grave, or the appearance and demeanor of the woman herself. Every town is haunted by the idea of the old woman in a ramshackle house even if one doesn’t exist there. Fear of the crone is fundamentally at work here, and single, outspoken, and old women are always suspect. In rare cases, the witch’s “curse” can at least somewhat be corroborated with local history, as with the witch of Yazoo City, an unpopular old crone whose deathbed vows surprisingly came true when the entire city burned to the ground a few years after her demise. An outcast old woman cursed the city to burn in a fire on May 25, 1904; after she died her prediction came true and a chain around her grave was found broken (the interpretation being that she escaped and got her revenge). This woman was dubbed a witch merely for her age and supposed but unsubstantiated supernatural powers, alleged mainly in hindsight and rumor. Attributing the fire to her curse merely solidified the legend, making it easy to believe that the witch continued to exert supernatural agency after her bodily death. Even if these stories are, for the most part, pure fabrication easily disproven, there is a collective desire to want to believe them. A surprising number of so-called witches have in common one specific element: their grave looks a particular way. The grave of “Witch Bonney” in Lowell, Massachusetts, has piercing black eyes, outstretched hands, and a salaciously low-cut robe drooping low to nearly expose her breasts. It is said that her top falls lower and lower each day in October until she is completely exposed by Halloween. Teenagers love legend-tripping at her grave, and Wiccans regularly pay Witch Bonney tribute on Samhain night. In Tallahassee, Florida, the grave of Elizabeth Budd-Graham, nicknamed “Bessie,” evokes witchy symbols in its design, placement, and epitaph, leading locals (usually, again, teens) to ponder in awe this supposed “white witch” and her benign spirit, who appears to her grave’s visitors in their dreams. Her mysterious epitaph refers to a woman “doubly dead in that she died so young,” which some point to as evidence that she was a witch, because you “have to kill a witch twice.” But the quote is from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Lenore,” a poem about a grieving husband mourning his young wife, and not a coded or veiled reference to witchcraft. In both these cases, and in nearly every similar case, the most cursory historic research reveals not a shred of evidence linking them to any witchy activity. But the power of myth mightily and easily outmuscles the more prosaic truth. Sometimes such stories can actually end up damaging the very graves and cemeteries they feature. The sad story of Mary Jane Terwilligar is one of these: The woman interred at Loon Lake Cemetery in Lakefield, Minnesota, is said to be an accused witch who was beheaded. So many legend trippers visited her grave, including members of Megadeth (who wrote a song about her, “Mary Jane”) that the entire cemetery ended up being repeatedly vandalized and her tombstone stolen. The tombstone is now in a local historical society, but many others have been irrevocably damaged or lost. The fact that Mary Jane was a domestic worker who died of diphtheria and not a beheaded witch doesn’t deter local legend. Why do so many of the vaguest and most circumstantial stories end up getting pinned on “witches,” and why do so many involve exotic or unusual-looking graves? Is it a reflection in death of what happens to witchy women in life—that is, they are pigeonholed because they (or their graves) look a certain way? Maybe. It’s an intriguing question, and a good example is the story of Ida Black and the “Witch’s Curse” of Bucksport, Maine. In this case, a witch was entirely invented to explain a strange mark on a powerful man’s grave. The story involves so many commonly repeated tropes, conjured in the fires of urban legend, that it becomes instantly familiar and readily adopted, regardless of easy debunking. A vague “truth” immediately becomes taken for granted. As with most of these tales, the “facts” of the stories are patently false, or at best unverifiable, but the ghostly legends are remarkably persistent, due perhaps to the unending allure of the witch. These are stories nobody seriously believes, but they are worth examining nonetheless as they demonstrate the imaginative power the witch still exerts over us all. The other type of witch-as-ghost story deals with accusation and injustice. In these stories, an accused or executed witch haunts the site of her injustice, reminding us of the repercussions of scapegoating and fearmongering. Grace Sherwood, the last woman ducked for witchcraft in colonial Virginia, still haunts Witch Duck Pond; Mary Tyler, one of the Salem accused, haunts her family farmstead in Boxford, Massachusetts. Both outlived their accusers, but nevertheless return in spectral form to protest their wrongful accusations. Moll Dyer, accused of witchcraft in seventeenth century Maryland, ran away from her accusers into a frigid night and was later found frozen to death near a rock; you better believe her spirit comes back to haunt that site. And in Stratford, Connecticut, where Goody Bassett was hanged as a witch forty years before Salem, poltergeist activity at the nearby Phelps Mansion was attributed to her angry spirit. In these stories, the accused witch laments injustice after her death. One such story is that of accused Salem witch Bridget Bishop. The reality of Bridget’s life and death is a maddening tale of paranoia and cruelty, but her spirit remains, quietly reminding those who are paying attention that something unjust happened in that town—it doesn’t matter how long ago—and that they sit on land wrongfully seized by those in power. There’s also the “Bell Witch” in Tennessee. Her story is an anomaly, a local oddity more evocative of a poltergeist than a witch. This witch isn’t a wrongly accused or particularly troublesome woman. She is a disembodied spirit essentially endowing a powerless teenage girl with surprising psychokinetic abilities, giving her the kind of power that has driven countless teenage girls in modern times to dabble in Wicca. Thus the witch comes full circle. In the end, the true allure of the witch rests in the concept of power. When in the historical narrative that power is stripped away from her—by being falsely accused or even executed, or by virtue of being a teenager, a minority, or the voiceless dead who cannot defend her reputation against slander—she comes back from beyond the grave to prove that nothing can stop her. This is a satisfying fantasy to consider. No wonder it is teenagers who continue to bear the torch of these tall tales. These witches display all the fantastic power the powerless ultimately crave. If nothing else, the witch is never forgotten, always remembered. Of all the female ghost tropes we have encountered while researching this story, the witch is one of the strongest. Nothing can silence her. Not accusation, not punishment, and certainly not death. ______________________________________ From A HAUNTED HISTORY OF INVISIBLE WOMEN by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes, reprinted with permission from Kensington Books. Copyright 2021. View the full article -
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HaBO: Roommates Share a Bed When Power Goes Out
This HaBO is from Ariel who wants to find a book they recently read: I recently came across a book, probably a week or two ago, on my Kindle app. The book features a female main character, and she lives with a male roommate. I believe the roommate was considered “cold” or “mysterious”, and she didn’t know him really well and they did not have much of a relationship. The two however are forced to share a room and a bed to keep warm after their heating/electricity goes out while it’s cold. I’m not sure if it said it was winter, but it was definitely cold out. The book was a spicy one and the description ends with it being like “What will happen between them?” or something like that. Please help me find it; it’s been driving me crazy. Sound familiar to anyone? View the full article -
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Interview With Sally O'Grady, Spring 2022 Flash Fiction Runner-Up
I'm excited to interview Sally O'Grady, one of our spring 2022 flash fiction runner-up winners in our writing contest. Be sure you read her story Today is Different then come on back and read our interview. First, a bit about Sally: Sally O’Grady has explored her lifelong love of writing in many formats but only recently has she begun sharing with a wider audience. She contributes weekly to her blog, Act 3 Unscripted which includes essays and short stories exploring her observations on life, social justice issues, and the shared human experience. Recently, her short story, ‘After the Storm’ was recommended by Edge of Humanity Magazine. Sally is also working on her first novel which she hopes to complete by the end of this year. In addition to her love of writing, Sally also enjoys reading, traveling, music, art, and cooking for her friends and family. Sally lives with her partner in their home on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Syilx/Okanagan people in Lake Country, British Columbia. ---- Interview by Nicole Pyles WOW: Your story touched me, and I love how you used the second person as if you were talking about the reader. What inspired this story? Sally: Thank you so much! I was a young mother and although I never faced homelessness, I did rely on social assistance for a period of time. It affected me deeply that I could be so close to losing a place to live and how precarious housing is for so many. Many years later I worked at a Women's Centre offering programs, counselling, and services to marginalized and immigrant women. Social justice has always been important to me but it was my time at the Centre that gave me a better perspective of what it was like to be a person who our society can so often look down upon solely because of their circumstance. I wrote the story in second person to try to draw the reader into the life of this unhoused person, and feel what it may be like to be ignored by the people you see every day; it then becomes a conversation between two humans rather than an observation that can be more easily ignored. WOW: How profound when our own circumstances inspire incredible creativity. When you first started this story, did you know how it would end? Sally: Yes, I had it in mind to connect the two characters in some way, ideally in a manner that left the character being observed understanding what it may be like for the main character. I wanted to illustrate how easy it can be to shift our own thinking when it comes to unhoused people. WOW: That's very true! It's possible we can change how we see those that struggle the most in our society. What is your rewriting and revising technique after you've written the first draft? Sally: I usually start with using the 'Read Aloud' function in Word (where I do most of my writing). I like it because it removes the context, intonation etc. that I presume as I re-read a draft and it quickly points out where the flow of a story isn't what I had imagined. I then usually work paragraph by paragraph or scene by scene making edits and then re-read again. It's a long process and I always leave time in between sessions on any one piece. I find I gain different perspectives, my voice can change, and new ideas come, hopefully making the piece better. WOW: What a thorough approach! What are you currently working on that you can tell us a bit about? Sally: I'm working on a book about one woman's life as observed by her partners. I feel if any of us ask our former partners to describe us, we may end up with wildly different images of who we believe ourselves to be, depending on time, age, personalities, pressures etc. This book is an attempt to explore those diverse views of one human and how she, in turn, views herself. WOW: That sounds incredible! What surrounds you when you write? Sally: I do most of my writing in my office in the basement of our house. It looks out over Lake Okanagan and the hills beyond but I face away from the view while I write and turn back to it to contemplate my work. I have an old, Victorian windowpane that I use as a whiteboard for my book as well as art (mostly by female artists) that I've collected throughout the years on travels and from friends on the walls. A clothing patch given to me by my youngest son is on my desk; it says "Be Optimistic." And I have books that have truly inspired me on my windowsills. WOW: I love that setting! What does a typical day of writing look like for you? Sally: I'm definitely an early writer, preferring to write before 10:00am until whenever my well of ideas for the day seems to dry up. I edit and do revisions in the afternoon. It's not often that I write in the evenings or at night but on a rare occasion, it has happened. WOW: That sounds like a set schedule that's been successful! Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to seeing what you have coming up next. (C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!'s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Writing Contests. Open Now![url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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“That Little Click in the Mind”: Vijay Seshadri Reflects on his Tenure as the Review’s Poetry Editor
Photo by Lisa Pines. This fall marks a transition on our editorial team, as Vijay Seshadri is bidding the Review farewell—at least as our poetry editor, a role he has occupied since 2019. He will be greatly missed. With our forthcoming Winter issue, we will welcome to the role Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy, a professor at the University of Chicago who has served as a guest editor of Poetry magazine and is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Underworld Lit. We are deeply grateful to Vijay for introducing us to the work of so many remarkable poets over the last few years, and for being a marvelous colleague and a true friend to the Review. The worst thing about choosing poems for The Paris Review is having to say no. The magazine receives many submissions, and many of those include strong poems that deserve to be in its pages but can’t be accommodated. Turning down poems is probably even worse for a poetry editor who is also a practicing poet and knows how being turned down feels. Guilt, misgivings, second-guessing, paralysis about naysaying, and avoidant behavior are the by-products of the process. And they should be. As a writer, if you don’t identify with the writers who are sending you work, you’re probably hardening yourself against yourself. Other than that, being The Paris Review’s poetry editor for the past thirteen issues has been a terrific experience. Looking back over the more than sixty years since I washed up on American shores, I’ve come to recognize how much literature was the means by which I socialized myself into this country and its civilization. Choosing poems for the magazine and mulling over the choices I made gave me a chance to make that socialization concrete in my mind. I was a descriptive rather than a prescriptive editor, largely because that unusual process of socialization had left me with a vivid sense of the imagined republic of American letters. At least as an editor, I saw my obligations as being almost as much civic as they were aesthetic, requiring me to acknowledge the entire republic rather than stake out a claim in one of its territories. I honored, I think, the multiplicity of American poetry (including translations into American English)—which is easy to do, because there is excellent work across the range of American literary allegiances. There has been something deeply satisfying about engaging with this country as an editor. I was most gratified when I chose poems by poets whom I felt were unfairly neglected or underappreciated. I had the chance to publish long poems, which have a harder time finding homes. I had the chance to experience over and over that little click in the mind, with its attendant rush of endorphins—very much like the click in the mind that comes from finishing a piece of writing you like—on coming across a poem that is undeniable. Maybe my only regret is that I came to the job too late to do full justice to my experience of the poetry of my time, and to some of my deepest enthusiasms. Very early on in my tenure, for example, I wrote to Allen Grossman’s widow, Judith, begging for unpublished Grossman poems. She told me there were none. That was a bitter moment. On the flip side, though, early on I also wrote to Kamau Brathwaite asking for work. The last poem he published before his death was in the pages of The Paris Review. I’ve worked with two excellent editors: Emily Nemens, who hired me, and Emily Stokes, who kept me on after she took the reins. The magazine’s vigilant staff and interns have made the mechanics frictionless, and have saved me from some serious rookie publishing errors. I’m grateful to the magazine itself, an enduring and central force in American culture. And I’m particularly glad that this goodbye letter gives me a chance to express my deep gratitude to Richard Howard, protean and titanic. The first poem I submitted to The Paris Review, in the mid-nineties, when I was about to publish my first book, was a long poem called “Lifeline.” At that time, the magazine had a long-poem prize, named after one of its former publishers, Bernard F. Conners. Richard gave me the prize for my poem, and he and the magazine arranged a reading at what was then the brand-new Barnes & Noble on Union Square for me and a writer who had contributed fiction to a recent issue, from a novel she was working on. That writer was Susan Sontag. It’s hard to convey, a quarter-century later, the enormous cultural presence and authority that Susan Sontag—and, for that matter, Richard and George Plimpton—had in the New York of the nineties. It was breathtaking to stand for half an hour in front of the eminence they had created, facing the huge crowd that had come out for the reading. Looking back to that event and then along the narrative arc that led to my sitting in the chair Richard once occupied, I get another of those clicks in the mind. Vijay Seshadri is the author of five books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning 3 Sections, and a professor of writing at Sarah Lawrence College. View the full article -
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Turning Points
Do you ever get the feeling that things are about to change? I mean, really change? Like, if you were to describe it in terms of the weather, it wouldn’t be just—“oh hey, it looks like rain,” but much more like, “Winter… Is… Coming!” As in, cue the Cate Blanchett-as-Galadriel voiceover: “I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air…” I have this feeling now. Indeed, I’m aware of a major milestone—one that’s been long upcoming. I’m inside of a month till the publication of my debut. But it’s starting to feel like something more than just a day of rain or shine. Of course I’ve presumed for many years that this fast approaching day would eventually come. But I’ve already met so many great people, and experienced so much kindness and wonder because of it. I’m starting to sense that my life is going to continue to change in ways I could never have anticipated, and really still can’t. Anyway, the phenomenon has me thinking about turning points, and how important they are to our lives—how unplannable and unavoidable they are. About how many steps are required on the way to them. All of which got me thinking about how these things apply to our characters’ lives. I thought delving into the phenomenon would be beneficial to me, and hopefully to you, too. Milestones Versus Turning Points As I say, the publication of a debut is something we know is coming. At some point it becomes an actual day on the calendar. I think the important dates and milestones of our lives—births, deaths, weddings, debuts, etcetera—are more like mere steps than the sort of turning point I’m trying to describe. Looking back on my own major turning points, I can see that it’s always taken a series of events to bring them about. Some are obvious, but others are more subtle-not so obvious as they happen, but hindsight reveals their crucial impact. For example, I consider my relationship with my wife to be the most important aspect of my life. From the moment we began sharing our lives, mine has been utterly transformed. I am who I am because of it. I can look back at dozens of milestones and vital dates that relate to our relationship, and it took all of them–steps falling one after another–to make this major turning point in my life complete. I perfectly recall the day we met. Indeed, I perfectly remember the moment I saw her, through a window at a house party as she emerged from a friend’s car (it’s been noted that I dreamily but emphatically asked, “Who is that?”). For my part, it was instant attraction. I also clearly recall our first “real” date (took her to see Prince’s movie, Purple Rain). And of course, with our 32nd anniversary just around the corner, I have to acknowledge that these events culminated in our wedding day, which came on the perfect autumn evening, cementing and commemorating the completion of the turn. But when I think back on it all, another auspicious day springs to mind—one between that first meeting and first date, and quite some time before the autumn day in the chapel. Hindsight reveals that this day was a key-spring—an event without which the turning may not have occurred as it did. I’m not sure exactly how many months had passed since our meeting; my wife and I weren’t exactly an instant item (and yes, she resisted and I persisted, how did you guess?). Anyway, we were retail coworkers during college, and on one particularly fine summer Saturday, as I was about to punch out at noon, I mused that it would be a perfect beach day. The store was slow, and I noted my very bored coworker’s interest in the idea, so I jokingly suggested that I would actually go if she joined me. To our mutual surprise, our manager, who’d been eavesdropping, suggested my coworker take the day off and do just that. To my even greater surprise, she did. To those who don’t know the Mighty Mitten, the Lake Michigan beaches on the western shore near the city where I grew up are world class expanses of soft sand and Bahama blue water. Often, those who grow up on the east side of the state—like my wife did—have never experienced them. That day I felt like a tour guide, revealing a legacy treasure that she’d just inherited. It was during this serendipitous beach day—getting better acquainted during the hour-long drive there; spending the afternoon relaxing, swimming, playing Frisbee; and then listening to music, laughing and chatting away the drive back—that our enduring friendship took root. I remember this impending sense I had that day of the turning of things. I began to feel it in the water, in the earth, in the air. I think we both sensed it that evening, as we sought to cool our sunburns over beers. The experience had shifted things for both of us. Yes, milestone experiences can have instant impact. But often it’s the subtle shifts that turn out to be key-springs to such turnings. Either way, such events are usually mere dominos, falling to push down the next, which falls to… You get the idea. Inexorable I’m getting far enough along in my life to see that it’s defined by a handful of major turning points, and that all such changes—over a series of incremental steps; incidents and events—come to feel inexorable as they arrive. Take a life-change of mine that is perhaps second in magnitude only to my marriage: our decision to leave the business world in Illinois and move back to Michigan. This turning point plays into everything that followed—particularly my writing life. The first domino to fall came in the form of a major blow—one that we knew was coming but had no grasp of its scale and lasting impact. It began with the passage of a dog. We said goodbye to our beloved black lab Maggie on the twilit morning of a September Friday. Mag had been with us through most of our years in business—a grounding presence through a whirlwind of toil. The day she left us we did something unprecedented: We left. We left our business without checking messages, without consulting our department heads, without leaving written instructions, and without offering to take calls. There had been no question where we would go. We went where Mag would have had us go. Oh, how our girl loved coming to Michigan. The joy was palpable, and contagious. Driving straight to what was then our getaway cottage on the day of Maggie’s passing taught us that the little house we built in the woods near the shore was our hearts’ home. That was twenty years ago this month, and we’re still here. It took over a year from Maggie’s passing, and an uncountable number of dominos, to complete this turning point. During that time, we started to joke about making a change. Looking back, we sensed the inexorable turning. We’d say things like, “We’ll do that after we sell the business,” or “We’ll be able to do this once we move to Michigan.” I remember one particular morning here. I’d stopped overnight at the cottage on the way to a business meeting further up the coast. Before setting out, as I sat on the porch drinking coffee, enjoying the stillness and birdsong, the thought of living here, of working at something creative here, buzzed around my head like a happy hummingbird, teasing and beckoning me to strive toward something that I couldn’t yet see. That domino was a subtle one, of the sort I only see in hindsight. There was a final domino. My wife and I began to see the signs of an oncoming economic downturn. For several years prior to this, we’d experienced what might be called growth-on-cruise. In response, we called a meeting with our partner, our top sales and marketing staff, and our accounting team. We laid out a fairly austere plan to proactively face the projected downturn. It did not go over well. Our team had grown metaphorically fat and happy. And, honestly, we had lost much of the zeal required to fight through such resistance. I’ll never forget leaving the meeting. Once we were in the car, and before I even started it, I said, “That’s it, isn’t it?” My wife gave a single nod. “Yep. We’re done.” We drove home in relative silence, feeling the resound of that final domino’s fall, knowing it had been the last of the turning. What we had long sensed possible—what had been both hopeful and terrifying—had become inexorable. Alignment Turning points such as these are intrinsic to storytelling. Indeed, change is the very essence of story. Often an entire story is built around one such turning point, and the dominos required to get our characters to it. Often it’s monumental. Thinking about this sort of change–bit by bit, one domino striking the next, until a character is utterly transformed–brings to mind characters like Ove, from A Man Called Ove, or Lieutenant John Dunbar, from Dances With Wolves. Heck, think about Frodo (sorry, had to go there), from the moment he tucks the one ring into his vest pocket and askes Gandalf, “What must I do?” to swatting at waking nightmares as he trudges across the Plateau of Gorgoroth. Only through witnessing the fall of each domino that led them there can we believe such monumental changes could have occurred. Having seen them tumble, one by one, we are all the more invested, and moved, by the result. As I sit here, feeling on the verge of yet another major turning, it’s not mine to know if the long string of events that have conveyed me this far have been aligned by unseen forces, guiding me to the life I am meant to live. But I must admit, it often feels that way. In our fiction, we are those unseen forces. And though some of the dominos we set are more auspicious and impactful, it’s our job to make each one feel like a necessary step. It’s on us to make our readers feel that each one is both surprising and essential. We must make change become a force like gravity, unrealized but accepted as a law of the nature of our stories. The dominos of storytelling—the inciting incidents, opportunities knocking, pinch points, the flips from reactivity to proactivity, the black moments and heroic sacrifices—all of them must feel both unexpected and unavoidable. The best story changes often feel both hopeful and terrifying. We must strive to have our readers feel them in the water, feel them in the earth, and smell them in the air. If we hope to tell stories that are both fresh and satisfying, we must strive to bring about the change in our characters that no one would believe at the onset, and then make it feel inevitable, even rightful. We do so by utilizing events and milestones that are inexorable steps to turning points that transform lives. What about you, WU? Is Cate Blanchett still the best Galadriel? Can you look back to the dominos that led to your own life’s turning points? Do you delight in being the unseen force that aligns them for your characters? About Vaughn RoycroftVaughn Roycroft's (he/him) teacher gave him a copy of The Hobbit in the 6th grade, sparking a lifelong passion for reading and history. After college, life intervened, and Vaughn spent twenty years building a successful business. During those years, he and his wife built a getaway cottage near their favorite shoreline, in a fashion that would make the elves of Rivendell proud. After many milestone achievements, and with the mantra ‘life’s too short,’ they left their hectic lives in the business world, moved to their little cottage, and Vaughn finally returned to writing. Now he spends his days striving to finish his epic fantasy series. 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10 New Books Coming Out This Week
A look at the week’s best new releases. * Kate Atkinson, The Shrines of Gaiety (Doubleday) “[Atkinson] takes on London in the 1920s, masterfully capturing both its shimmer and its seediness…It’s a deliciously fun, absorbing read.” –Time Sarah Bonner, Her Perfect Twin (Grand Central) “Airtight, cat-and-mouse plotting with twists that will draw Gone Girl comparisons, this is a compulsively bingeable debut thriller.” –Booklist Iain Reid, We Spread (Gallery/ Scout) “Reid combines magnetic character development with clipped, eerie prose in this masterfully crafted psychological thriller that will keep the reader guessing until the very last word on the final page.” –Booklist Katherine St. John, The Vicious Circle (William Morrow) “[A] fun romantic adventure-thriller… St. John effectively ratchets up the suspense and the surprises. Lushly exotic locales and touches of humor add to tasty escapism that should please fans of Nine Perfect Strangers.” –Publishers Weekly C.J. Box, Treasure State (Minotaur) “Excellent. . . Box has rarely been better in his plotting. . . The story culminates with one of Box’s most satisfying payoffs.” –Publishers Weekly Elizabeth Brooks, The House in the Orchard (Tin House) “Exceptional. . . . Readers will scramble to decide whom to trust, as misplaced faith leads to deadly outcomes.” –Kirkus Reviews Kim Taylor Blakemore, The Deception (Lake Union) “Kim Taylor Blakemore’s The Deception captures the fascinating world of nineteenth-century mediums in this story of intrigue, deceit, and the otherworldly. Historical fiction lovers will delight in the wonderfully captured details and the mystical elements at the center of this novel. A must-read!” –Lydia Kang Archer Mayor, Fall Guy (Minotaur) “Another winner in one of the best American procedural series.” –Booklist Leanna Renee Hieber, Andrea Janes, A Haunted History of Invisible Women (Citadel) “Delightfully harrowing and full of spine-tingling horrors, A Haunted History of Invisible Women is not your average book of ghost stories. Hieber and Janes go far beyond the obvious thrills and chills, providing fascinating context and lavish detail in this incredibly empathetic book as they gently remind us not only of what we are but what we may become.” —Deanna Raybourn Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing (Vintage) “A darkly comic, kaleidoscopic novel of unhealthy fixations, love, murder, the gifts and wounds that family can inflict and one woman’s fight to save herself.” –Shelf Awareness View the full article -
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Six YA Thrillers where Teens Fight the System
Below are six YA novels that I adore for their complexity, their willingness to grapple with larger social and moral questions, and their resistance to easy answers. Part of adolescence isn’t only coming to understand one’s own self and place in the world; it’s about questioning why the world is the way it is in the first place. No wonder adults find literature and teens so terrifying. They ask the questions we don’t always have the answers to and force the issues we’ve never been prepared to answer for. Courtney Summers, The Project A girl grieving for her shattered family. A father grieving for his lost son. Their pain, their suffering, as well as her own, lead young aspiring journalist Lo Denham to seek out the Unity Project, a community in rural New York where members dedicate themselves to charity and spiritual transcendence. But who is their leader, Lev Warren? And what connection does he have to Lo’s past? Summers’s novel quickly heads down the rabbit hole into a world where the line between coercion and consent; empowerment and dependence are flipped upside down. What is free will in a world where so much of power and success are wrapped up in hero worship and subservience? Lo is young, naïve, but determined to forge her own way, to take down this man who’s ruined the lives of so many. But what if Lev can offer her what she’s longed for most? What if Lo’s convictions aren’t what she thought they were? Janne Teller, Nothing “Nothing matters. From the moment you are born, you start to die….Life isn’t worth the bother.” When one of their classmates climbs into a tree and begins shouting about the meaningless of life, a group of Danish middle schoolers grow angry and decide to prove him wrong. Life does have meaning, they insist. The things they care about and value and center their daily lives around—well, those things matter. Don’t they? The children hatch a plan to force the issue: they’ll each sacrifice an item they care about, but that item will be chosen by the person who sacrificed before them. Human nature takes it course and what ends up mattering is not what they lose, but what they’re willing to take. Francesca Padilla, What’s Coming to Me There’s a lot for seventeen-year-old Minerva to be angry about; she’s been expelled from her Long Island high school, her mother’s terminally ill; her best friend’s ditched her; and she doesn’t have the money or means to escape her stifling existence. Then, when she’s finally able to land a job at a local ice cream shop, it turns out her boss is a perv who spies on his employees with hidden cameras. Well, there’s always something to be said for having nothing to lose and when rumors about hidden stashes of money in the boss’s office—courtesy of his unsavory side hustles—Minerva starts to plot some unsavoriness of her own. But there are people in Minerva’s life who care about her and who understand the haze of grief and anger she’s moving through. Will that be enough to save her? And is she capable of saving herself? Rebecca Barrows, Bad Things Happen Here It’s no paradise. In fact, life on the seemingly idyllic island of Parris is more fantasy than truth. It’s a place where denial allows wealth and opulence to outshine the human misery simmering below. Biracial teenage islander Luca, who suffers from severe anxiety, hates this place and has always believed Parris to be cursed. What else could explain the random acts of violence, including the childhood death of her best friend Polly? But when another tragedy strikes closer to home, something awakens in Luca. No longer bound by fantasy, she’s driven to find the real killer. But unraveling the truth will mean taking on the island’s tightly held secrets and pushing back against forces that have always been willing to wash the sins of the wealthy away. Zack Smedley, Deposing Nathan This is a book that starts after the crime’s occurred. The narrator, Nathan, is being deposed in a case against the person who brutally stabbed him—his supposed best friend Cam. But as the story unfolds, beginning with the boys’ initial meeting, their budding friendship, and eventually a more complex relationship, we start to understand Nate’s inner conflicts as well as the complicated dynamics present in some of his prior relationships. A sheltered boy living with his widowed father and an aunt who’s tried to take on a maternal role, Nate’s never questioned the adults in his life. He’s never wondered if they truly have his best interest in mind. But when the cost of obeying means hurting himself and those around him, Nate isn’t sure if he’s really a victim at all. And if he is, maybe Cam’s the one who’s been trying to save him. Kelly Loy Gilbert, Conviction In the stifling heat of California’s central valley, Braden, a young pitching phenom, faces an impossible choice. His father, whom he idolizes, has been arrested for a hit and run accident that left a law enforcement officer dead. Braden’s testimony about what happened that night will either set his father free or convict him. But the truth is never easy. And in his choice, Braden must reckon with his faith, his future, the reasons behind his older brother’s estrangement from the family, as well as who his father really is and who Braden’s always needed him to be. *** View the full article -
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Happy Holidays (That Aren’t Christmas)!
Holidays are fun to write about. Each has its own vibe. And we immediately associate iconic symbols with them. Colorful eggs mean it’s Easter and pumpkins take us straight to Halloween. There are special foods that we expect, too, like chocolates on Valentine’s Day and turkey at Thanksgiving. While families don’t gather for all holidays, when they do, authors love to write about dysfunctional family chaos. It can be very entertaining, provided it’s not our families that are involved. A GOOD DOG’S GUIDE TO MURDER is set at Thanksgiving and takes the reader into the holiday season. Holly Miller’s Jack Russell terrier and her calico cat have noses for murder. When they show an unusual interest in the most unexpected place, the trunk of a tree, it turns out someone hid a body in it! Holly has to figure out not only who is in the tree, but also who committed murder. But we’ll start at the beginning of the year. The very beginning when we drink champagne and ring in the new year. Murder in a Cape Cottage by Maddie Day Coming September 27th Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida runs a bike shop and belongs to a book group in Cape Cod, but her mind is on her upcoming New Year’s Eve wedding. She and her fiancé begin to renovate a cottage only to find a skeleton in the wall dressed in a bridal gown! Even worse, the killer lurks in their quaint seaside town, poised to make it a murderous New Year’s Eve. Death of a Chocoholic by Lee Hollis Giving up on dating disasters, on Valentine’s Day food columnist Hayley Powell intends to curl up with a box of special chocolates from Bessie Winthrop. But Hayley finds the chocolatier dead! Her chocolate may have been sweet, but it turns out that Bessie had plenty of enemies and it’s up to Hayley to pick through them. Easter Bonnet Murder by Leslie Meier Part-time reporter Lucy Stone can’t imagine how a sweet old lady could go missing over an Easter bonnet contest in Tinker’s Cove, Maine. Lucy soon finds back-stabbing has no age limits. She must hop to it and figure out what happened to the missing woman before Lucy becomes another tragedy. An Eggnog to Die For by Amy Pershing With Easter behind us, it’s time to move on and head to the beach for the Fourth of July where foodie Samantha Barnes is trying to choose the best blueberry buckle as a dessert after a clambake on Cape Cod. But when she settles on one, the baker, a cookbook author and retired restaurateur, dies in an accidental house fire. Sam isn’t buying that the fire was accidental and needs to find the killer before more fireworks begin. Claws for Suspicion by Deborah Blake When autumn winds begin to blow, what could be better than Oktoberfest in the Catskills? Kari Stuart is the new owner of Serenity Sanctuary and has her eyes on a handsome local. Everything is going well until her ex-husband arrives with the horrible news that they aren’t actually divorced, and he owns half of the sanctuary! Just when Kari thinks things couldn’t get worse, she becomes the prime suspect in a murder! Calypso, Corpses and Cooking by Raquel V. Reyes Coming October 11th Cuban-American cooking show star Miriam Quiñones-Smith wakes to find a dead woman in her Miami front yard next to a fake tombstone! When a chef tumbles down a staircase to his death, Miriam doesn’t think it could have been an accident. As more mishaps occur, Miriam’s life is also in jeopardy but she delves into rage, retribution, and murder. And that brings us back to Thanksgiving on Wagtail Mountain in Virginia where the annual dog and cat gingerbread house competition is under way and Thanksgiving weekend means a full house at the Sugar Maple Inn. Holly has to juggle her inn duties while figuring out who the man in the tree could be. It soon becomes clear that someone is desperate to keep the truth a secret. It’s up to Holly and her furry sleuth pals to find an elusive and conniving killer. *** View the full article
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