Review of Shunning Sarah, by Julie Kramer
Fast-paced with a sense of humor and a shiver of terror, Shunning Sarah uncovers layers of mire in the Amish community of Harmony, Minnesota and among the TV broadcast staff of Spartz’s Channel 3.
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From the New York Times Book Review: The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall
The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall: from the New York Review of Books, insights into the central role of “story” in humanity.
LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER FOR DESERT SLEUTHS WRITENOW! CONFERENCE
Join the Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime for a fantastic conference for writers (and readers) at the gorgeous Millennium Resort on August 11. To register right now go to the DesertSleuths.com website.
First Publication! SoWest: Desert Justice Anthology is now available
SoWest: Desert Justice, an anthology of 20 mystery stories including Judith Starkston’s story “A Season for Death,” is now available on Amazon.
Lost Trojan Treasure, A Seductive Woman and an Archaeologist
Obituaries aren’t usually quite this exciting. I held my lunch partner spellbound reading this one of James Mellaart, a groundbreaking archaeologist in ancient Anatolia/Turkey.
Review of Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal
MacNeal writes clever, enticing mysteries set in London during World War II with an inventive mathematician named Maggie Hope as her sleuth.
Review of Mission to Paris by Alan Furst
Set in 1938 in Paris, this spy thriller reveals an interesting chapter in history. America had no CIA or equivalent intelligence agency. Roosevelt had the foresight to realize he had to prepare for the inevitable war. Frederic Stahl, the main character of Mission to Paris, is a movie star with no training in being a spy, but while in Paris making a movie he becomes one.
Review of The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
If you like your Homer with a postmodernist twist, Mason’s boundlessly imaginative redo of the Odyssey will charm you. Reading Mason’s fourty-four “books,” about two to six pages each, reminds me of the experience of turning a prism and launching completely different colors across the room. Sometimes you’re in a bizarrely modern environment, say a sanitarium or a place where books have pages and bindings (i.e. not the ancient world), other times you’re in a variation that skims close to the Homeric narrative but is tipped on its end somehow.
Review of Under the Lemon Trees by Bhira Backhaus
Under the Lemon Trees, set in the small Northern California town of Oak Grove in the Sikh immigrant community, moves between 1976 and 1947 to tell the story of love and finding one’s way in a world that seems at times both too big and too limited in this classic coming-of-age story.
Review of The Officer’s Daughter, by Zina Rohan
The Officer’s Daughter reminds me, oddly enough, of Huck Finn, if it’s possible to say that about a book set in World War II and crossing much of Poland, the USSR, and into Iran with a stop in England later on. It’s a tale of a young person’s epic journey and ongoing moral crises.