Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Carl Hiaasen, Fever Beach (Knopf) “Hiaasen is working in a grand tradition that stretches back to Mikhail Bulgakov satirizing Stalinism and Charlie Chaplin mocking Hitler. At his best, he can pack a paragraph with so many little parodic bangs that it feels like a fireworks display when the explosions come so fast you stop saying “Ahhh” and just stand in slack-jawed bedazzlement…. While white-shoe lawyers, university presidents and media moguls cower before the MAGA assaults on American democracy and decency, this mischievous 72-year-old writer is fighting back with every political gag and sex joke he can get his hands on.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post Anthony Horowitz, Marble Hall Murders (Harper) “Horowitz dazzles with the brilliant third entry in his Susan Ryeland series . . . . Horowitz is at the top of his game here, linking past and present in a virtuouso finale worthy of Agatha Christie. Fans will clamor for the sequel.” –Publishers Weekly John Lawton, Smoke and Embers (Atlantic Monthly) “Intricate . . . Short chapters and snappy dialogue help speed the kaleidoscopic narrative along, though not at the expense of character development or emotional power. Lawton remains a force to be reckoned with.” –Publishers Weekly Rachel McCarthy, Whack Job (St. Martin’s) “Whack Job is an engrossing historical analysis of how the axe has evolved as an instrument of change, retribution, and menace. In this exceptional book, James cites cases famed and obscure involving the axe, which will both inform readers and occasionally unsettle them.” –Booklist Michelle Young, The Art Spy (HarperOne) “The story of Valland’s courage and dedication to art and justice is compelling and inspiring… Ideal for fans of espionage and strong narrative nonfiction that reads like a compelling novel.” –Library Journal Helen Monks Takhar, The Marriage Rule (Random House) “Fiendishly entertaining…Monks Takhar remains a writer to watch.” –Publishers Weekly Brendan Slocumb, Dark Maestro (Doubleday) “A virtuosic thriller. . . . This is an intricately plotted novel, paced perfectly by Slocumb, who keeps the book moving at a breakneck speed—but not at the expense of his beautifully drawn characters. Curtis, shy and sweet, is especially memorable; Slocumb paints a beautiful picture of the young man’s internal life. . . . This novel should catapult Slocumb into the upper echelon of thriller authors.” –Kirkus Reviews Nev March, The Silversmith’s Puzzle (Minotaur) “March proves herself a master craftsman in offering us a glimpse into India’s conflicted history, which forms the perfect backdrop for a mystery shrouded in shadows and subterfuge.” –BookTrib Dana Huckelbridge, Queen of All Mayhem (William Morrow) “Huckelbridge has conjured up one heck of a Wild West tale about a ‘whiskey-drinking, horse-thieving, gunslinging double widow’ that is chock-full of Western lore and nasty desperadoes. . . . The elusive, colorful story of a rare outlaw, told with brio.” –Kirkus Reviews K.A. Merson, The Language of the Birds (Ballantine) “A thrilling page-turner full of heart and unforgettable characters . . . The Language of the Birds is a must-read for fans of puzzle books and intelligent suspense.” –Meg Shaffer Michelle Gagnon, Slaying You (Putnam) “Feature[s] Vegas-worthy theatricality and satisfying character evolution . . . a wild, absorbing ride. Recommend Gagnon’s series to readers who will appreciate hard-boiled crime delivered through a madcap filter.” –Booklist View the full article

James M. Cain was my gateway drug into crime fiction. Before Cain, I’d read Nelson Algren, whose novels, while often featuring criminals, would be better defined as social realism. But to my twenty-five-year-old aspiring writer self, Cain’s voice—and the reading it inspired—changed the focus of my writing horizon. I discovered Cain through film, specifically The Postman Always Rings Twice—the original, starring Lana Turner and John Garfield, its screenplay co-written by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder—and eventually tracked down from the library James M. Cain: Four Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, and Serenade). I read them in order, and quickly. Cain’s career in fiction writing didn’t follow the path of his being a successful short story writer and novelist before heading out to Hollywood to make his fortune. Instead, the writings for which he first became known, and which led to a lifelong friendship with H. L. Mencken, were nonfiction pieces for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The American Mercury. His first article for Mencken in The American Mercury, “The Labor Leader,” mocked both the miner and the businessman, using the vernacular of each. These so-called dialogues gave Cain the reputation as a master of spoken word, and among his admirers was Alfred A. Knopf. If he lacked the typical screenwriter’s pedigree, it was this facility with dialogue that led to his getting offers from Hollywood studios. When he got fed up with his job at The New Yorker, he finally accepted an offer from Paramount, believing that moving west would help him solidify his voice as an author. By 1931, Cain was indeed headed for Hollywood. Unlike some of the authors who preceded him there—Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al.—Cain had limited success as a fiction writer before he arrived, and so the charge of being a sellout didn’t apply. In fact, the opposite occurred as his literary reputation began to expand, beginning with the short story “The Baby in the Icebox,” published in The American Mercury and then sold to Paramount. With more confidence, Cain began writing a novel based loosely two news stories he’d read—one about a female gas station attendant who ended up killing her husband, the other about a woman and her lover who conspire to murder her husband before turning on each other afterwards. Because of its length (35,000 words) and perceived problems with the ending, the novel, titled “Bar-B-Que,” was conditionally accepted by Alfred A. Knopf. After considerable back-and-forth between Cain and the publisher, the book was finally published as is save for the title. “Bar-B-Que” became “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” Upon its release in 1934, Postman went—and there is no other word to better describe it—viral, with rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and best seller status for hardcover and paperback editions, along with adaptations for serial, stage, and screen. Cain’s next project was an eight-part serial, its title suggested by Jim Geller, his agent, and inspired by his own experience in the insurance industry. Titled “Double Indemnity,” the story was rejected by Redbook but eventually bought by Liberty. Like Postman, Double Indemnity went viral, if in a different way: people lined up to purchase the next issue of Liberty as soon as it was out. In between these successes, Cain spent time, much less successfully, on other writings. If he didn’t see these outlets as a hindrance to his novel writing, Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher of Postman did: “You can’t write fiction with one eye on the movies. … How much money would it take to persuade you to drop everything and do this book [meaning his next novel]?” Cain didn’t answer but did eventually produce Serenade (1937), a book as sensational as its predecessors, but one that did not sell as well. Mildred Pierce, Serenade’s follow-up, appeared in 1941. Unlike the earlier three works, it was written in third person (one of only three such novels in Cain’s lifetime) and was much longer; also unlike those three, it was not initially the publishing sensation of its predecessors. But of the four novels in the collection, I remembered details in Mildred Pierce the best. In one chapter, Mildred practices balancing plates at home to improve her waitressing skills. Far from being superficial, this scene reveals Mildred’s determination and drive, as well as her self-awareness, and it also shows that Cain, as always, had done his research. Cain spent many years in Hollywood, but received only three screen credits. Most of his income there came from work on other scripts and from the sales of his own fiction to various studios. His last novel, The Cocktail Waitress, was published posthumously by Hard Case Crime in 2012. Cain began writing it in 1975, when he was 83, but it remained incomplete at the time of his death. Edited by Charles Ardai based on Cain’s various drafts and notes, The Cocktail Waitress represents, as Ardai points out in the Afterword, when Cain “decided to go back to his roots and write a James M. Cain novel again.” There’s no way of knowing how many future authors Cain inspired. Ardai writes that without James M. Cain, there would be no Hard Case Crime. And without James M. Cain, it would have taken me far longer to find my way to writing crime fiction, if I got there at all. For if I’d initially embraced the laconic, cynical persona of Philip Marlow in my first crime fiction efforts, Cain’s prose and characters were surely living in my subconscious, because when I finally started writing from the perspective of people caught up in crime, I felt liberated. Author’s note: The quote from Alfred A. Knopf and the biographical details of Cain’s writing life are taken from Ray Hoopes, Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982). *** View the full article

Aspen, Colorado – a silver mining camp turned luxury ski resort. Once home to Hunter S Thompson, John Denver and some discreet druggies. The full-time population is not much more than 7,000, but that gets super swelled in ski season. What a great recipe for crime! Chuck Morgan’s Crime Delayed (2018) has all the luxurious ski resorts and celebrity sightings you could need. When a wildlife ranger goes missing, Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Buck Taylor is called in to assist with the search which uncovers the mummified bodies of 15 young women, all killed by the same person decades ago. Aspen’s citizens promptly go into panic mode and Taylor needs to get to the bottom of this. The Buck Taylor series – 20 books in all – bounces around Colorado from Durango to Rio Blanco County. A few, as well as Crime Delayed, focus on Aspen. Crime Denied (2020) sends Taylor back to the snow-capped mountains and luxurious ski resorts where a female killer is luring victims using her charm and beauty to lure unsuspecting victims into her traps. And Crime Scene (2023) sees Taylor and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation chasing a club killer through the streets of Aspen. Catherine O’Connell specialises in crime books with snow and skiing in them. O’Connell’s latest book, The Ski Resort (2025) is not clearly identified as Aspen but might as well be. Ski patroller Greta Westerlind wakes in hospital having almost been killed in an avalanche, she is devastated to learn that her close friend, bond trader Warren McGovern, perished in the slide. With no memory of the incident, Greta is at a loss to explain why the two of them were skiing in such lethal terrain in the first place and why a young woman they supposedly encountered is now missing. The Dead Girl in 2A (2019) by Carter Wilson starts with two strangers meeting on a plane. Jack Buchannan thinks he knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver―he just can’t figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe admits she’s traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and she disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing. A psychological thriller of the whom-can-you-trust paranoia genre that is a good example of the sub-genre and has some Colorado mountains in it. And a few more Aspen and Colorado-set crime novels…. Antler Dust (2007) by Mark Stevens is set in Colorado’s Flattop Mountains and features a female hunting guide, a “reformed” hunter, an earnest ranger and a greedy outfitter. Two deaths occur within a few minutes of each other on a snowy day at the outset of elk hunting season with witnesses seeing hunters dragging corpses – humans, elks? – up mountains. Hunters are shooting eco-protestors too. Stevens is a Colorado resident and former Denver Post reporter and producer for the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. Patrick Hasburgh’s Aspen Pulp (2007) is set in off-season Aspen with former TV writer turner private eye Jake Wheeler hired to find the rather feckless Tinker Mellon. Using what little he’s learned from The Rockford Files and other TV detective shows, Jake’s search for the cheerleader-turned-runaway uncovers a complex crime ring that lies deep within the old mine shafts of Aspen mountain. Anne Shillolo’s Murder at Aspen Creek (2023) finds off-duty Inspector Hilary Casgrain looking forward to a Cowboy Poetry Festival (sounds like fun!), but dragged into a drive-by shooting and the search for a missing teenager. Killjoy (2002) by Julie Garwood introduces FBI profiler Avery Delaney finds that her workaholic aunt Carolyn, trying to relax at the posh Utopia Spa in the Colorado mountains, has vanished mysteriously before even reaching the spa. Taylor Adams’ No Exit (2017) takes us up into the Colorado Mountains where college student Darby Thorne is stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop. There she stumbles across a little girl locked inside one of their parked cars. With no cell phone reception, no telephone, no way out because of the snow, and she has no idea which one of the other travelers is the kidnapper. Vibe change! – Aspen has attracted a lot of cozy crime writers it seems. Gail Roper writes the Mysteries of Aspen Falls series. In Tell Tail Clues (2022) Ohio native Dr. Ashley Hart, is the new veterinarian in Aspen Falls with best friend dog groomer Holly Kipp. And so a vet and a dog groomer solve crimes with animal-related clues piling up all over town. Other titles include Dogged Deception, Foal Me Once, Bones to Pick, Hounded by the Past, Paw and Order – you get the idea. There’s also a few in the crime/romance hybrid. For instance Christmas Crime in Colorado (2008) by Cassie Miles where Brooke Johnson is spending a quiet festive season in her new Colorado home before her look-alike roommate is killed and sexy police detective Michael Shaw shows up. She falls, literally, into the long arms of the law, but Michael can’t let down his guard with a killer still on the loose. And finally, something special and highly recommended – Ryan La Sala, the wildly popular author of Reverie, followed that hit up with The Honeys (2022), a kind of horror, crime melange set in and around Aspen. Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline’s radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who’d grown tragically distant. And so he attends the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister spent so much of her time. But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. It’s a super-contemporary novel where supposedly idyllic locales butt up against tradition and intransigence. Aspen may be chock full of luxury hotels, resorts and spas, but there’s some serious nature out there too. Put the two together, along with humans and all their petty jealousies, foibles and weirdness and you’ve got a great setting for the crime writers of Colorado. View the full article

2025 will be the last year of the Bristol Crimefest — 15 years of what one English newspaper described as ‘the friendliest of festivals.’ Among the guests of honour will be the Cornwell brothers, sons of John le Carré, one of whom (under the nom de plume of Nick Harkaway) is continuing the character George Smiley. Two years ago the same slot at the fesitval went to the heirs of Ian Fleming. Now, I am told, even in print, that I can be a bit of a churl and for reasons I can no longer remember I did not attend; hence I will not attempt to quote or paraphrase anything said on that occasion. Yet … and yet … that event, bolstered by the upcoming 2025 event, keeps prompting me to wonder what I really think of the much vaunted terms ‘heritage’ and ‘legacy.’ Name me an American president of late who has not worried about his ‘legacy’. In the last week Pope Francis’s legacy has been aired repeatedly, probably in every newspaper on earth. My dad’s legacy, some sixty-odd years ago, was a pair of shoes that didn’t fit me, an unpaid bill for piano lessons and a photo-album of his time in Hitler’s Germany — the latter, I freely admit, an influence and an inspiration. I have not yet paid for the piano lessons. Smiley’s ‘legacy’? Call for the Dead (the first to feature GS, I think) is one of my favourite novels. I could take more, and so it seems could England — Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice has been very well received. Bond’s ‘legacy’? Tricky. I read them all at the right age (17) and umpty years later find I have very mixed feelings. One of my first memories of James Bond is sitting outside a pub in Dublin (as the Dad necked a pint) reading a newspaper condemnation of the filming or Dr No in 1961 — readers were urged to reject Bond as ‘pornography’, referring to the bollock-beating Bond suffers at the hands of Le Chiffre. Alas they cited the wrong book — that scene is in Casino Royale not Dr. No and did not grace/pollute the silver screen for another forty-five years. But … it pinpoints a regular elision. At seventeen skool put me in a civics class — foreseeing that some of us were about to desert the summer of love to become the rebels of ’68 they made a last ditch attempt to mould us into good citizens. Tough. Sysyphean. Each surly brat was asked to deliver an appraisal of a writer they liked. One chose Fleming. I gave him three or four minutes before I interrupted. “Mike, have you actually read any of Ian Fleming’s books?” “What?” “Because it seems to me you’re describing the films not the books. You refer to Bond as ‘the man every man wishes he could be.’ Do you honestly want your bollocks beaten raw … do you want your girlfriends to kill themselves? James Bond is an habitual loser, for every triumph he pays a price in personal loss.” Amidst the chorus of denial I was chucked out for the ‘bollocks’ and ordered to recite eight million Hail Marys, so I never knew where the debate ended. The closest I got was a kid who accosted me in the seniors’ quadrangle the following day to tell me I was a ‘fukkin nutter.’ A year or two later the first legacy Bond book appeared, Colonel Sun by Robert Markham, a one-off pen name for Kingsley Amis. It wasn’t good. Almost simultaneously Amis published his study of Bond, The James Bond Dossier. Now, that was good. You can learn a lot reading it even today. Thereafter it seems the legacy novels were almost always eclipsed by the films. John Gardner wrote more Bonds than I can count, certainly more than a dozen, and the Roger Moore films were churned out with an alarming regularity if only to use up the stack of safari suits in Pinewood’s wardrobe that happened to be his size. They are all forgettable. They were not the Bond of the novels. Nor even the Bond of the early films. When Sir Roger retired I hoped Eon would call it a day. They got lucky, Tim Dalton finally signed on the dotted line. Suddenly with The Living Daylights the franchise was alive again. Fukkit, spoke too soon. The second Dalton film might just be the worst Bond film ever made, eclipsing even the execrable No Time to Die. Skip a few years. Eighteen to be precise. John Gardner’s last Bond appears in 1996, and in 2008 on the hundredth anniversary of Fleming’s birth, the books are relaunched with Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks. It was an intriguing idea — ask prominent writers, often literati rather than crime and espiongage specialists, to pick up the mantle. It worked. In 2015 Trigger Mortis (great title) by Anthony Horowitz came out. Anthony is quite possibly the most prolific current writer of crime. Was I alone of seeing a touch of PC? I aired this, to not much reaction, at Bouchercon Toronto a year or so later. Yet the doubt still nags. Bond is a misogynist dinosaur. In what I take to be ‘heading the critics off at the pass’, Judi Dench’s M says that to Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in their first film together. It changed nothing. So … at last to the point … where is the franchise going … and, just possibly, why? And why ask now? Two reasons. 1 : Amazon just bought the film franchise for a fortune. 2 : Fleming died in 1964. Under the terms of the revised Berne convention, for all countries that are signatories, the Bond books will enter the public domain in 2034/5. In media terms … that’s about 15 seconds. The opportunities for speculation are almost endless. Will the literati books continue after 2035 … alongside the zillion other efforts that will surely take advantage of the end of copyright? Will Bond free-for-alls see 007 in sci-fi, porn or giving online cookery lessons with our dreadful Duchess? (Helpful hints # 37 : Anyone wishing to set up a franchise would be well-advised to study the British Royal Family.) What will Amazon do in the eleven years of outright exclusive that remain? A film a year? Part of the Bond phenomenon has always been the waiting, the anticipation, the cinematic tease so neatly captured in the trailer for Goldeneye, the first Brosnan film — “You were expecting someone else?” A 52 part TV series streamed not released to cinema? Whaddafukk? You mean I’d finally have get a Netflix/Prime/Bookface/X/TukTuk/WakWak subscription? Ye gods and little fishes. Bear in mind that all this is happening with no one yet cast to replace Daniel Craig … and a long history of the English resisting Bond being played by anyone other than an Englishman. Who would I like to see play Bond next? Sorry, life is too short to give that question a nanosecond’s headroom. I don’t know, but … yep, there’s always a but … but … I think it a waste of time to update Bond. A PC Bond is no Bond at all. He is as Fleming made him. In all his nastiness, violence, misogyny and, as Amis asserted, racism … ‘who else would be snobby enough to draw a distinction between a plains Cretan and a mountain Cretan?’ (I paraphrase, of course.) As soon make Macbeth into a good guy. As soon redeem Bill Sikes. I’m not agin franchised sequels per se … Marjorie Allingham is continued by Mike Ripley, seamlessly. The great (nah … the greatest) Robert B. Parker continued by no less than a writer than Reed Farrel Coleman. It can and does work — but I fear it won’t work with Bond any longer. I think JB was ‘born’ circa 1920. He may be an author fantasy, Fleming being a much older man than his character. Bond lives the life that Fleming could not and had not? 1920 … that makes him … er … 105. Could I put in a plea here? Isn’t it time to kill the old bugger off? Rather than see Bond remoulded to fit the 21st century could he not simply be allowed to die? If not, we will see him milked like the cash cow he surely is until excess extinguishes all interest. If I’m right about the direction I perceive we are in for a Bond glut, a Bond who will be politically correct, thereby ceasing to be Bond, and both films and books will be regarded as ‘product’ (a word I do not want to see within ten light years of my novels — same goes for ‘brand’) and might as well be stacked in supermarkets next to the corn flakes. “The name’s Kellog, James Kellog.” As they say in my native dialect, “Tha mun let t’owd bugger dee.” *** View the full article

Assignment 1: Amidst violence, rebellion, and the awakening of long-dormant powers, Tristan and Ellasmer must work together to overthrow the Torrolc King and his immortal mystic, Galrwin, traveling to the Ebysand Isles in hopes of securing allies and a prophecy that might just help them succeed. Assignment 2: Ellasmer Isona is the rightful heir to the throne of Starn and one of the last surviving members of the Royals after the bloody sacking by the Torrolc tribe twelve years ago. But her plans must change when a boy named Tristan, the same boy prophesied to her by the waters of the Ebysand Isles when she was six to help her retake said throne, lands half-dead on her doorstep. Glarwin Elden was not always this empty, rotting, immortal mystic. Four hundred years ago, he had been a mortal, cursed to this existence by the Ultesca Stone when the one he had loved, Sira, was taken from him by her possessive mate. Now Galrwin has struck a dangerous deal with the new rebel King and the same ancient being in The Stones that took his mortality to win it back. His first task: kill a boy named Tristan. Assignment 3: 1. Voice in the Stones 2. Stonebound 3. The Prophecy of Water and Stone Assignment 4: The hero's-journey reminiscent of 'A Darker Shade of Magic' by V.E. Schwab, with alternating POV narratives like 'Six of Crows' by Leigh Bardugo. 'A Darker Shade of Magic' follows the journey of a man who becomes the target of a dark conspiracy, pairing with a fierce and reckless adventurer. Readers of this story will like the high-stakes, adventure, witty conversations, and magic of my novel. 'Six of Crows' narrates different POVs, capturing the internal conflict and struggle of each character. My story follows the POV of three main characters, including the antagonist, allowing readers to know what motivates and troubles each character. Assignment 5: Primary Conflict: Tristan must confront the truth of his bloodline and unravel a prophecy in order to survive. Secondary Conflict: Galwrin is trying to kill Tristan to win back his immortality and rescue Sira from her prison. Ellasmer wanted to use Tristan for her own ends to gain the Starn crown. Despite his efforts to stay focused on revenge, Tristan falls in love with Niressa. Inner Conflicts: Tristan doesn't believe he is worthy of any of it. It all feels too big for someone with such simple beginnings. Assignment 7: Tristan’s story takes place in a country called Starn, a larger part of the continent Matria. Starn is famous for its mountains and weapons, with a ragged history of conflict and stories of long-buried magic within the Earth. The kingdom is now poor and broken, torn apart by the mountain barbarians, the Torrolc, who razed the kingdom to the ground twelve years ago. Life is a brutal existence for most who live there, facing down poverty, famine, and the cruel whims of the Torrolc King. Because of this, most of people turn to stories to sate their thirst for life and what it used to be. Stories of old about magical beings who used to love humans and bestow them with gifts of power and elongated life. Of dragons who flew high and proud against the bluest of skies and men who lived within the mountains, carving tunnels deep into their depths and stashing away the treasure of a hundred kingdoms. Stories that most everyone, especially Tristan, sees as nothing but childish tales…until they start coming true. Tristan, isolated in his small farming town in Yú Valley, knows very little of the world beyond his sight and the stories their town weavers tell. But after his family's slaughter, Tristan is forced to flee, encountering places he never dreamed of—a beautiful cottage next to the sea, ports bustling with people from distant lands, taverns packed to the gills with delicious food and exotic music. It is within these new places that he meets people equally incomprehensible. The soft kindness of a girl named Juniper and her fiery sister, Ellasmer. The stoic and constant of Rose, their caretaker, and the quick smile of their friend Niressa. One bad decision leads to another, and soon Tristan finds himself aboard an ice ship, headed far beyond the borders of Starn across the seas to the ice-covered Ebysand Isles in search of an ancient prophecy, rumored to exist deep within their cold waters.

The invitation letter came twenty years to the day after the kidnappings. In 1999, guerrilla combatants from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia kidnapped my partner Terence Unity Freitas and two fellow land rights defenders. They were exiting Indigenous territory in Colombia—near land then coveted by a US oil company. Terence was a white environmental and Indigenous rights advocate from Los Angeles. He traveled with Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa—native to the Menominee Nation in Wisconsin and executive director of the Fund for the Four Directions,—and Lahe’ena’e Gay—Native Hawaiian and the founder and president of Pacific Cultural Conservancy International. The three were working with the Colombian Indigenous U’wa pueblo. Eight days later, a farmer found their bound, hooded, and bullet-riddled bodies in his rainy cow field just across the Venezuelan border. The timing was uncomfortable. The 2019 letter invited the families of the slain into Colombia’s post-civil war transitional justice process to participate as victims in Case 001, a cluster of cases involving thousands of victims of kidnapping. In the original Spanish text, they sought our demandas de la verdad, our truth demands. The letter communicated that: They wanted to know our stories. They wanted to know our questions. They wanted to put the voice of the victims in the center of the process. They wanted to discern how to attribute criminal responsibility. They wanted to give ex-combatants the chance to officially tell the truth or not. They wanted us to use our rights to truth, justice, and non-repetition. In the years following the murders, I felt pressed up against the machinery of fossil fuel extraction, tied there by the murders’ known and unknown dismal facts. I held fragments of stories for two decades, awaiting resolution that never came. To enter the Chamber, I needed to write them down. I wrote Truth Demands. Shaping the fragments into this book changed my understanding of resolution. Questions about the murders may always remain unaddressed. Some stories may never be told. And the future will remain unknowable. To offer this telling, I had to acquiesce to these truths. Acquiescence led to acceptance, which stirred my memory of agency. Finding agency in the telling led to my freedom, for it opened a back door to resolution. Questions about the murders may always remain unaddressed. Some stories may never be told. And the future will remain unknowable. As I wrapped up a draft of my memoir, I tackled the one remaining box in my closet. This box was the repository for documents that I tagged as important to revisit. Post-It notes scribbled with marginal insights, related articles, truth and recognition documentation, Terence’s papers, court filings—any document that remained untreated or that I feared I would forget. I made my way through the box swiftly, lifting helpful citations, details, and corrections into this text. I hummed through the work. I watched for the familiar dissociative fog to begin. It didn’t. I marveled at its absence, thinking I perhaps had made it solidly to the other side, to freedom. I have. This is how I know. The box contained a letter Terence wrote to me during a prior trip to the Indigenous territory, a letter within the pages of his journal. A letter he had never sent or given to me. In this letter, he stated his belief that the guerrillas had gone full-bore in support of oil development and that he felt that he faced threats because of it. Over the past twenty-five years, in any forum possible, we have woven Terence’s posthumous observations into our questions about what happened. I was familiar with the letter. But when I picked it up again from the box, I couldn’t access my memory of those details. Instead, I experienced shock as though reading the letter for the first time. I was flooded with worry as though in a recurrent nightmare, one in which a missing key is revealed too late. That is how far my mind has buried pieces of this story that are the most threatening. In my shock, I called our legal team, worried that I had a new finding. They assured me that, yes, they knew this letter and had already integrated it into our work. I have no clear recollection of sharing the letter with them. Some past version of myself did, probably several times. After talking to the legal team, I felt relief and gratitude. My nervous system started to re-regulate. With balance restored, I reread the letter. I observed something in Terence’s writing. He wrote that even though he didn’t plan to send me this letter, he had “all of these thoughts wanting to come out, to be written so that I can rest”: Unfinished ideas that are screaming to become more whole. There, they are written. The way that I would say them if you were here. The way that I am saying them aloud to you now, so that you will comfort me in my sleep.. . . It feels strange saying that. I don’t often feel the need to have someone else help me feel safe, moreover there are not many who could. You, your strength, makes me feel safe. I was struck that Terence turned to writing to unlock rest. I was familiar with choosing this pathway for myself, but I hadn’t ever noticed that he did, too. A measure of the inadequacy of our support systems during those early years of walking alongside the U’wa, Terence, in essence, turned to his journal to stabilize his daily life on the ground. His writing invited me to hold his words so that he could rest. In the normal course of things, this exchange—of words for rest— would be symbiotic. It would be an exchange that could expand into a community conversation. The burden would be shared. But our lives did not follow the normal course of things. He thought we had time. We did not. The murders stole time from us. I could see now that because this exchange happened only after he was already dead, it would go on to become, unbeknownst to Terence, the source of my own inability to rest for years to come. The clarity smarted. I gasped. Here was the source. I felt outraged. As was my practice, I turned to the woods to walk it out. I turned to the waters to dissipate, dissipate. I have grappled with Terence’s words since I was twenty-five years old. To share the burden, I reshaped them into our truth demands and into this book. I have examined with care the exchange between words and rest. In writing my memoir, I have told the story of our truth demands as a way of learning how to stand on this wretched shore. Doing so taught me how to navigate home. In the telling, I saw glimmers of how we navigate our collective hearts back home, too. I am clear that I do not stand on the shore alone. It is now twenty-five years later. I let go of the words and I choose rest. ___________ Adapted from TRUTH DEMANDS: A MEMOIR OF MURDER, OIL WARS, AND THE RISE OF CLIMATE JUSTICE by Abby Reyes. Excerpted by permission of the publisher, NORTH ATLANTIC BOOKS. Copyright © 2025 by Abby Reyes. All rights reserved. View the full article

When my family moved into a new home in the Chicagoland area around fifteen years ago, I was informed the day we moved in that the house had been previously foreclosed a while back in the depths of the recession. This house had been presented in a state of disrepair: the banisters were ripped out by the previous owner when he left. The windowpanes were missing. Upon meeting one of my neighbors, a girl my same age, she leaned in close and whispered that the home had been abandoned for some time, to the point where the neighborhood kids thought it was haunted and dared each other to go in there. When I was writing The Manor of Dreams, a story about an inheritance battle over a Chinese Hollywood star-turned recluse’s lavish, formerly grand estate, I was obsessed with the homes of the Gilded Age, a period of prosperity for America in the late nineteenth century due to technological improvements and the acquisition of coveted resources. Each of these houses had an origin of wealth, concentrated around titans who dominated industries of copper, railroads, guns, news media. They built houses with dozens of rooms and teeming with excess, homes so meticulously constructed in beloved architectural styles: Italianate, Beaux-Arts, Queen Anne Gothic. These homes now stand cavernous and empty, sometimes renovated into museums, sometimes left abandoned, hollowed of the promise which once possessed them, crumbling into the earth. What does the home mean? The home represents safety, security, shelter from all the uncertain unknowns and the outside elements. It represents rest and leisure. The concept of the home as an American ideal cemented itself in the nineteenth century, as a privilege to have a space to cultivate a private life and a family life. The opportunity to own a home was also a right that was wielded as a weapon against, withheld from, and brutally seized from historically marginalized people: Black, Chinese, and Native American communities, for example. Women were not allowed to own property in most states until 1900 and did not have equal access to credit to do so until the 1970s. To this day homes are both practical investments of personal capital but also keystones of personal identity and history. They are tangible representations of something one worked towards for their whole lives. To own a home, to get to renovate and decorate it, was to have made it; to have succeeded, perhaps in spite of the marginalizing forces, in achieving the American Dream. But what happens when the home becomes an unsafe place? The haunted house trope has long been an establishment of gothic fiction. There are many books with all kinds of creative spins on this trope—I point to favorites of mine such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, or more recently, Rivers Solomon’s Model Home or Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic—but the essence is this: the main character, or the main character’s family enters a home intending on staying there for a period of time, maybe forever. The house seems ominously sentient, strange things happen in the night, and some terrifying history about the house is revealed. The characters, at some point, might receive a warning about what has happened in the house. Still the main characters stay, until something truly cataclysmic and irreversible happens, and by then, it’s too late to leave. Why don’t they leave? It’s a question that is often asked of the main characters. Why not go at the first sign of unease, at the first hint that something might not be right with the place? I feel a sympathetic fear but also a deep, furious disappointment at the characters for choosing to stay and put everyone’s lives in danger. But I think it’s easy, from our omniscient perspective as a reader or viewer, to write off the main characters for being clueless and arrogant. It’s important to consider the context of the house as well. Maybe the house dazzled with a sense of promise, maybe it was a prized inheritance. Maybe this house was the culmination of their savings and everything they had. However they came into contact, the characters have staked their lives on this place to provide them exactly what they need, whether it be shelter, status, safety, clarity, or community. This is why the haunted house trope is so compelling every time; to see that place of promise turn into a place of terror is a betrayal on the deepest level. And this is why the cycle of the haunted house repeats: each set of people move into the house thinking that they could overwrite the past and avoid whatever pitfalls the previous inhabitants fell prey to. That they are different. And isn’t it a human condition, to think you could beat the odds? Isn’t it natural to think that if only you worked hard enough; if you only loved something enough, you could change it? The emotional heart of these stakes and this personal betrayal were what propelled me throughout the writing of The Manor of Dreams. In the book, Chinese actress Vivian Yin moves into her new husband’s home, a beautiful, decaying California Gilded Age era mansion that she is determined to rebuild and renovate for her young daughters. Eventually she learns that the house has a compromised history. It was built on railroad wealth, which involved the exploitation of Chinese immigrant labor. But she doesn’t let this stop her. With this house, she’s officially made it and secured the future for her family and herself, big enough to contain her Hollywood aspirations and everything she’s ever wanted for her children. This house is too important to her. Everything else is just ancient history, she thinks. To her, America is the land of reinvention; this all could be smoothed over and built anew. She is sorely mistaken. *** View the full article

I have always been fascinated with creatures, and I have wished to invite them into my life for as long as I can think—ill-fated early attempts at trying to hatch chicks from un-incubated eggs and breeding racing snails can attest to that. But while chicks are cute and racing snails are ambitious, there was one companion I coveted more than any other: I cannot remember a time when I didn’t want a dog. Unfortunately, my parents were a sensible lot, and so I spent a large portion of my childhood being bribed with low-maintenance hamsters and fobbed off with annoyingly reasonable arguments. Who is going to walk him? Who is going to train him? Who is going to clean up after him? I! I! And yet again, I! By the time I had finally achieved freedom from parental rules, some of their arguments had managed to seep into my own mindset. Of course, taking in a dog is a huge responsibly. Of course, they require not only love, but time, training, walks and ideally a garden. Of course, you can’t expect them to sit at home all day waiting for your return from uni. I spent my student years responsible and dogless. Time passed. Life unfolded. One sunny day I found myself an author, living in the verdant English countryside, in possession of a house. I was working from home. I had a garden. Surely, now, if ever, was the time to invite a waggy, sharp-toothed muse into my life! I could already picture myself typing away on my computer, my faithful hound snoozing at my feet. I can honestly say that the day I brought home my first dog, Fyodor, an impossibly soft pup the colour of smoke, was one of the happiest in my life. The subsequent night, however, turned out to be an entirely different story. Just how many times could a tiny puppy need to go out in a single night? I didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning found me bleary eyed and the pup exuberant, ready to dig his needle teeth into anything that moved—and quite a few things that didn’t. I couldn’t even glance at my computer, let alone work on my novel. Overnight, I had turned from author-with-a-deadline to full-time dog-police. Don’t bite! Don’t chew! Don’t dig! Don’t bark! And above all: Do not pee on the blasted kitchen floor! This was hell! How was I supposed to think? How was I supposed to write? The truth is: a puppy is the very opposite of a muse. They don’t inspire—they distract, absorb every last little stray bit of your attention and energy. * One of the things that kept me going during these taxing first months was the odd stolen glance at other authors. Being a dog owner and being a writer were not mutually exclusive. Others before me had brought pen to paper in the presence of a canine, hadn’t they? World literature is full of dogs, described in touching and accurate ways that show their creators had some firsthand experience in the matter. There is Argos, Odysseus’ faithful old hound, recognizing his master when no one else does (and tragically suffering a heart attack in the process). There’s Jack London’s White Fang, Virginia Woolf’s cocker spaniel Flush—all splendid fusions of fiction and dogginess. Apparently, the top dog in Virgina Woolf’s own life was her mongrel Grizzle. He even makes a surprise appearance in her diaries: “As for the soul . . . the truth is, one can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look [. . .] at Grizzle, [. . .] and the soul slips in.” Yes! Obviously, I was neither Homer nor London nor Virginia Woolf, just a writer of mystery stories, but this was what I was ambitiously hoping for: a slippery shard of soul! Naturally, over time, things improved on the domestic front. There still were days when I couldn’t write, but there was never a day when I didn’t laugh, didn’t feel my existence was richer and more complex than before. Our lives fell in step and trot and what had started out as outright canine sabotage, slowly morphed into something best described as a gentle and rather random inspiration. It seemed like a miracle at the time, but of course there were good reasons. A lot of my writing has always been about exploring the world from different angles, and few things help you shift your point of view like looking after a dog. Their world is fundamentally different from ours, full of scents and sound and speed and big big feelings. Understanding this world is crucial for interspecies bliss—in short, I was treated to the crash course in empathy I didn’t think I needed. A dog in the house will also help you to put things in perspective, recalibrate your sense of self-importance as a writer (and a human being). Nobody in your home is going to care more about you than your dog. And absolutely nobody is going to care less about your literary achievements. A book is a chew toy in the making, that is all. To me, this approach is quite refreshing and by no means trivial. I have always felt that writing a novel is in part a disappearing act. The goal is to become transparent as an author, allowing the reader the best possible view of the story beyond. It is not about you—it is about the world. I can attest that Fyodor helped me quite a bit to hone this transparency. Looking back, it almost surprises me to see how many dogs have found their way into my books. There has never been a dedicated canine protagonist—maybe because this feels too close to home and dangerously non-fictional. But the dogs on the sidelines matter. There is Tess, George’s old sheep in Three Bags Full. She barely makes an appearance, but her absence speaks all the louder. Brexit, the wolfhound in the Agnes Sharp series, is a chaotic and reassuring presence in the house share, providing my senior detectives with warmth, protection and dog hairs alike. Yet, the highest density of dogs is found in Big Bad Wool, my second sheep detective story. The situation is tense. My sheep protagonists are facing a series of mysterious killings and need all the help they can get. We finally get to spend some time with Tess; a lonely, heart-wrenching howling foreshadows dark things to come and Vidocq, the Hungarian livestock-guardian dog comes to the rescue. Even the perpetrator might or might not be a canine of sorts. * None of these stories are about the dogs, and yet the books are richer for them. Maybe their presence does imbue the works with a soul. There is a flipside to all of this, of course: the utter lack of inspiration that follows the death of your dog. When Fyodor died shockingly young, I was lost, devastated, desperate for the feeling of a wet nose nuzzling into my hand. Nothing worthwhile was written for over half a year. The pain was just stunning. Was it worth it? Yes. Without any question. I am writing these lines with my dog Ezra snoozing at my feet—and I wouldn’t have it any other way. *** View the full article

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As funding gets cut off and climate change gets worse, all our cultural treasures are at risk of being stolen by kleptocrats, sold off by bankrupt cities, or at the very least, environmentally damaged in heat waves. So while we still have museums, why not read some museum-based mysteries and thrillers! here are four excellent recent and upcoming novels featuring cultural institutions and plenty of crimes. Heather McGowan, Friends of the Museum (Washington Square Press) Aside from having the best title in this list, Heather McGowan’s novel is laugh-to-keep-from-crying levels of funny, a biting satire of the compromises we make to keep the things we believe in going, and how we lose ourselves along the way (and also, why we should all be able to have FEDERAL FUNDING FOR CULTURE instead of relying on donors. RIP, NEA grants.) Maha Khan Phillips, The Museum Detective (Soho) This book is so cool! As The Museum Detective begins, an archaeologist gets a call from the police to identify a body—specifically, a mummy preserved in a highly unusual sarcophagus that just about everyone would like to get their hands on, for profit or for politics. Poupeh Missaghi, Sound Museum (Coffee House) Why should male torturers get all the credit? In Poupeh Missaghi’s parody of corporate feminism and the misplaced morality of professionalism, the women holding up a brutal regime would like their contributions acknowledged, too, thank you very much. And one has created a strange new archive dedicated to analyzing the sounds of torture, which she would love to tell you all about. Humorous enough to avoid feeling heavy-handed, Sound Museum may challenge the squeamish, but even if it takes several sessions to get through Poupeh Missaghi’s Kafka-esque tone poem, it’s well worth the effort. Kosoko Jackson, The Macabre (Harper Voyager) This book is batshit, in the best way. When Jackson’s artist protagonist heads to London to take up a prestigious residency, he has no idea that the British Museum plans to use his talents towards a rather different end: he must work with the Museum’s eccentric (and super hot) staff to locate and destroy nine malevolent paintings first created by his distant ancestor, and potentially able to destroy the entire world. I really enjoyed Kosoko Jackson’s Disneyland-set post-apocalyptic thriller Survive the Dome, and his new book promises just as immersive a storytelling environment, this time with a unique magic system that would lend itself easily towards being adapted *cough cough*. View the full article