When Rebecca Graff, a PhD student at the University of Chicago in need of a dissertation, was told by a professor that the view before them from the school’s Ida Noyes Hall was “a hundred years ago the center of the world,” she didn’t see the bucolic splendor of Jackson Park hugging the Lake Michigan shoreline. Instead her sights went to what lay beneath and that was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, an unexcavated but huge part of Chicago’s history. Held in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus arrival in the New World, the exposition attracted 27 million people who paid 21.5 million for admission in a six-month period. Designed by noted landscape architect Frederick Olmsted, the 630-acre park had more than 65,000 exhibits from 46 countries and introduced to the public such new inventions as a 250-foot Ferris Wheel, Aunt Jemima’s Pancake syrup and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum. Electricity, still rare back then, was used to light up the expo at night.
Surprisingly what seemed an almost guaranteed bureaucratic nightmare in terms of permits and permissions all fell into place but then Graff was told she couldn’t start without a million dollars in liability insurance. Not likely for a graduate student.
“I needed to turn the excavation into a job,” she says. And so she did, teaching a field class at the University of Chicago where she and her students excavated the site.
View from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition’s South Canal looking northeast. The Machinery Building, the Columbian Fountain, and the Electricity Building are on the left, with the Agriculture and the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Buildings on the right. The Illinois State Building’s dome is in the center, and the flatter dome of the California State Building is to its left. Image is by an anonymous photographer, 1893. From the Smithsonian Institution Archives
Expecting to find those things that archaeologists love—pottery shards, a coin here and a twisted spoon there—Graff and her team were stunned to unearth a section of the Ohio Building, a stately Beaux Arts-style edifice with an elaborate portico entranceway that served as a meeting place for Ohioans. It was among the best of all the other findings they uncovered such as a collar stud, religious medal, cruet tops indicating that food was made on site, and lots of pipes. Though to hear Graff describe them, they’re all treasures and keys to the past.
As for the building, contemporary sources said it no longer existed.
“Even the New York Times wrote it had been thrown into the lake,” says Graff, who instead found segments in a ditch where it might have been used as landfill.
Coincidentally, Graff later discovered she wasn’t the only family member to dig at the site, so had her great grandfather, Morris Graff, a Russia immigrant who dug ditches at the fair.
Graff would like to return to Jackson Park for further exploration but was denied a permit the second time around. She says it’s surprising that Chicago doesn’t have a city archaeologist as other big cities do. But she’s certainly doing her fair share of uncovering urban remains. She is currently excavating the Charnley-Persky House Museum, a National Historic Landmark located on Astor Street in the Gold Coast designed Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan and his young draftsman Frank Lloyd Wright.
Cover image from Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism during Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair by Rebecca S. Graff. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020.
Lust, who teaches Italian at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire and also cooking classes, grew up in an Italian-American family, learning to cook from her mother and grandmother whose recipes were written by hand on little notecards. Wanting to discover and delve into Italian cuisine because of its meaning to her, she learned to speak Italian and traveled through the country of her ancestors.
“I wanted to see and feel the connections to the traditions and geography of the regions,” says Lust, whose previous book, Pass the Polenta: and Other Writings from the Kitchen, was praised by Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Julia Child.
Going deep, she visits relatives and meets the people of the regions’ small towns, going into their kitchens to watch as they prepare food. It’s a constant learning process about the intricacies not only of the broad regional cookery of Italy that many of us are familiar with—that of Florence, Naples, or Sicily but of such places as Maremma, an area in western central Italy bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea and Le Marche, a region sandwiched between the Adriatic Sea and the Apennine Mountains.
“Italian food is very regional, and even in the regions its broken down by cities, and then gets smaller and smaller until each dish is an expression of oneself and it can be an affront and violation if others add ingredients or make changes,” she says. “There’s an integrity to the dish.”
It’s not the way we think of food here. Indeed, to me a recipe is to be altered by ingredients I have on hand so the idea of not changing is a thoughtful concept, one that I will think about. But then again, I’m not making family recipes dating back centuries and besides, old habits die hard.
In Camerano, a town in Le Marche, an 80-year-old woman shows Lust how to hand-roll pasta with a three-foot rolling pin. In Manciano, she masters making Schiacciata All’Uva, a grape flatbread with honey and rosemary that back home in New Hampshire takes her two days to complete.
But, Lust says, you only spend a few minutes in active work as if it were as easy as popping a frozen dinner into a microwave.
Intrigued by the food philosophy of the people she cooks with, she goes beyond recipe and its ingredients to their history and what they represent.
“Acquacotta—such a beautiful word and beautiful dish–but then you find out what it really means–cooked water and that it was born out of poverty made by people who had nothing,” Lust tells me when we chat on the phone.
In her description, acquacotta is a rustic soup that nourished generations of the area’s shepherds and cowhands. It’s her way of adding poetry to food and to people who take such pride in what they cook.
Lust includes recipes in her book, but this is not a glossy cookbook, but rather a lovely and thoughtful journey of rediscovering roots and meaning.
The two of us discuss growing up with ethnic relatives and how important the culture of the table was for us when young. It does seem to be something that is missing from our daily lives and Lust is hoping to reconnect people to food and help them see the importance of taking the time to bring friends and family to the table to enjoy a meal.
In the cooking classes she teaches she demonstrates how to make Italian food and encourages participants to talk to her in Italian. She feels that she is helping forge an important connection that way.
“I have people contact me through the website who said they tried the gnocchi and though they never thought they could make it, they found it was easy for them,” she says with a touch of pride.
The week before, they’d been isolated when a snowstorm and cold temperatures forced everyone to stay inside. But that morning Gerta, the young teacher who boarded at the Pedersen’s house, and her student Annette, a waif who had been dropped off at the home by her mother who hadn’t even hugged her goodbye, ran across the Nebraska prairie to the schoolhouse enjoying the sunny warm weather.
It was like being free again, but it was only January, and the school children let out for recess because of the wonderful weather were suddenly confronted by a black wall of clouds that blocked the sun. Running back to the schoolhouse, they discovered there was little wood left to keep the big stove burning, and they all shivered as the temperature plummeted — oh, why had they only worn their shawls and not their heavy coats and boots? The sounds of the howling wind rushed through the schoolhouse, and through the windows they saw almost nothing but the occasional bright sparks of lightning, because the snow formed a curtain so thick it blocked everything else out.
In history books, this sudden and deadly snowstorm would be known as “The Children’s Blizzard” because, of the 250 to 500 known fatalities, many were children trying to find their way home.
Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of “The Aviator’s Wife,” “The Girls in the Picture” and “The Swans of Fifth Avenue,” has taken the incident and turned it into the page-turning novel “The Children’s Blizzard: A Novel” (Delacorte, $28).
It’s an obscure but fascinating aspect of America’s frontier history, but Benjamin, a voracious reader of history already, was somewhat familiar with the disaster when she and her editor decided that might be her next book. Benjamin, who grew up in Indianapolis with aspirations to become a New York actress, lived in Chicago until moving to Williamsburg, Virginia a few months ago. She began writing historical novels in 2010, and, amazingly, this is her seventh. She must, it seems after spending an hour chatting with her on the phone, write as fast as she talks.
The gist of our conversation: she’s a history junkie; she investigates a subject relentlessly, but if she can’t conjure up characters that really come to life, she’ll move on to the next project, as she doesn’t want to write a book that doesn’t seem real. That means she’s written entire novels and then just abandoned them. Even when she loves the personalities she creates, once she’s done with her novel, there are no second glances as she moves on to the next book. Oh, and though she’s a history buff and dwells in different pasts when writing, she doesn’t live in a stately old mansion, just a historic town.
Luckily, she discovered many captivating characters for “The Children’s Blizzard” and, though I know we’re talking Nebraska here, an equally compelling landscape and period of time.
Hard working immigrants, mainly Norwegians, Swedes and Germans were lured to Nebraska by dreams of lush crop producing farmland. It was easy as just packing up your belongings, the advertisements read, as coming by wagon or boarding a train to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities.
Only Nebraska really wasn’t all that. Don’t think “Little House in the Prairie” because it was so much more harsh, unyielding, and frustrating. There were blizzards, droughts where the soil cracked and the crops withered, prairie fires and vast hordes of insects devouring everything in their paths. We’re not talking fun here, not at all.
“Nebraska wasn’t a state at the time, it was a territory,” says Benjamin. “They were trying to get enough people to settle there because that’s one of the ways you became a state.”
Benjamin found that the story ignited her entire imagination, forming a connection to generations of her family.
“There was a personal epic quality to it, my mother’s family immigrated from Germany to an Illinois farm,” said Benjamin. “So the story was kind of in my DNA.”
Benjamin describes her imagination as her biggest strength, which is why she can put herself into the lives of people she’s created and who live in a time long before she was born.
“I was a serious child,” she said. “I was always imagining people’s lives and what they were like. Most authors are observers, we’re on the outside looking at the party, not at the party.”
“Including just one hundred would only get me to the 1970s,” says Giovanni, a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. “I definitely wanted to get some younger voices in too so there are actually 220 poems but they’re only numbered from one to a hundred.”
And so Giovanni’s diverse collection of poetic voices includes poems not only by Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks and Mari Evans but also Tupac Shakur.
“Anybody who knows anything about me knows that I love Tupac and I’m not the only one,” says Giovanni. “This is an incredibly important young man. Tupac’s been dead 10 years and people still treat him as if they know him. Because of the power of that young man, we had to include him. My admiration is based on his talent. How could we not honor him?”
Accompanying the book of poems is a CD where such luminaries as actresses Ruby Dee and Novella Nelson as well as Giovanni and the president of Virginia Tech read some of the poems.
“It’s so you can read the book and also stick the CD in your car and hear them,” says Giovanni. “That’s great for people who like to read poems and for those who like to hear them.”
The book is dedicated to “The Aunt” by Mari Evans, a poem that Giovanni describes as one of her favorites.
“That’s what I used for the dedication –– my only living aunt. Instead of writing something, I used that poem,” says Giovanni. “I just love it. First of all, my mom has passed. I’m not a little girl anymore, but after losing your mom, your aunt is the one who comes in and let’s you know you are loved and helps you bury your mother. Mari wrote that about her mother. It’s a lovely sentiment. I could have stuck it anywhere in the book, but I wanted it where it is, because you open up the book and you get this poem as a dedication. It’s just beautiful.”
Once a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis, Le Sommet is now a posh hotel in the Swiss Alps with soaring glass windows, minimalist interior and relics of its past, when patients were sent most likely to die. Beautiful, it’s also isolated — miles away from the nearest town and accessible only by helicopter or a winding mountain road.
Sarah Pearse. Photo credit Rosie Parsons Photography.
It’s not exactly the perfect place for Elin Warren to reconnect with her brother, Isaac, and his fiancé, Laure. Elin is dealing with a multitude of stresses. She is on leave from her job as a police detective, her boyfriend Will who is accompanying her is pressuring for a commitment, the human resources director wants a commitment from her to return to work, and, worst of all, she believes Isaac may have killed her young brother years ago in one of his murderous rages.
“The Sanatorium” is Sarah Pearse’s first novel and it’s a whopper — though a slight warning: reading it while the snow is falling outside your window just adds to the mounting dread. As avalanches and snowstorms make it impossible for help to arrive at Le Sommet, Elin races to solve the crime as one by one people, including her former best friend and Isaac’s fiancée are being brutally dispatched wearing treatment masks from when the place was a sanitarium. It calls for all of Elin’s strength, as she remains unsure and unsettled about her past and her future.
The secrets at Le Sommet are complex and many. Elin wonders who she can trust among the secret rooms high up in the building, almost face-to-face with the mountain walls inside a deep tunnel where Elin discovers a body and is almost locked underground with the corpse. And there is her own relationship with Will, whom she loves but feels she is losing because of her own uncertainties. Will she be able, she wonders, to overcome her overwhelming doubts about herself and move forward, or will she become the next victim of a vicious killer?
Pearse, who describes herself as an avid reader, moved to Switzerland in her early 20s and fell in love with the charming Swiss Alpine town of Crans Montana and the mountains around it both of which became the setting for her novel.
“I’m always struck by the drama of the mountains,” she said in a Zoom call from her home in South Devon where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
That interest — as well as reading about the sanatoriums that existed before effective treaments tuberculosis existed, and it was thought that the clean, crisp mountain air, would help — form the plot of her novel.
“I read books about that time and there were photos of half-naked kids in the snow because they thought that would help heal their lungs,” Pearse said. “I also wanted to write a book about family dynamics.”
Reese Witherspoon, who selected “The Sanatorium” as a Reese’s Book Club Pick describes it as “An eerie, atmospheric novel that had me completely on the edge of my seat.”
Though Susan Ryeland thought she was ready to retire and leave London to live on a small Greek island and run the Polydorus Hotel with Andreas, her longtime boyfriend, she begins to wonder if it was such a smart move after all. The hotel, though charming, is a little ramshackle and Susan finds her days are filled with trying to make complaining guests happy, ensure the internet is working and the linens are getting changed, among a long list of other chores. It certainly is less than the paradise she imagined.
Ryeland is in this restless state when the Trehernes, an English couple who own the posh Branlow Hall, an inn on the Sussex coast, check into the Polydorus. They’ve traveled all this way to ask for Ryeland’s help. Eight years earlier, their daughter Cecily was married at Branlow Hall, the charming inn they own on the Suffolk coast. On that same day, a guest at the hall named Frank Parrish was murdered and their Romanian handyman confessed to his death and is now in prison for the crime. But Cecily, after reading “Magpie Murders,” a mystery novel written by Alan Conway before his death, became convinced she knew who had really murdered the man. Indeed, Conway knew Parrish and had even based one of his other novels on the murder. Cecily.
The Trehernes believe that Ryeland, because she was Conway’s long-time publisher before his murder (there are a lot of murders and a lot of twist and turns to keep track of so be prepared) and helped who killed him would be the perfect person to find Cecily who has disappeared.
They offer her 10,000 pounds stay at their posh inn, interview their employees who worked there when Parrish was murdered, and reread the novel Conway wrote about his death in hopes she’ll pinpoint whatever it was that made Cecily so sure the handyman wasn’t the killer.
And here it gets even more complex. “Magpie Murders” was not only the name of Conway’s book but is also the title of the real novel written by New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz. In his latest, “Moonflower Murders,” he continues the saga of Ryeland, sending her once again on a mission to unravel a mystery.
10,000 pounds and the chance to get away from the drudgery of the Polydorus are enough of an incentive for Ryeland who also loves a good mystery.
“What you have in “Magpie Murders” and “Moonflower Murders” is a book insides a book,” says Horowitz who was asked to write a sequel immediately after Magpie came out and is also working on the television script for Magpie. “In both the books you have novelist Alan Conway hiding the solution of a modern mystery in his novel set in the 1950s. Susan, Conway’s editor, has to find the solution using clues from his novels.”
Yes, it is that complicated but both mysteries—which are both stand-alone novels—are fascinating reads.
Horowitz, the author of more than 40 books including two Sherlock Holmes novels commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate and the bestselling Alex Rider series for young adults which has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide,” says that “Moonflower Murders” is like getting two books in one.
Horowitz doesn’t have any virtual book events coming up, but you can watch an interview with him about “Moonflower Murders” on You Tube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thH4vrG7tWI
This story appeared in the Northwest Times of Indiana.
No one believed Frankie Elkin when she said Lana Whitehorse was at the bottom of the lake, and for a moment, as Frankie swam through the cloudy waters, oxygen almost gone and unable see the truck Lana had been driving on the night she disappeared, she wondered if maybe they’d been right.
But no, there were the remains of Lana, her truck upside down in the muck, her blonde hair floating in the water.
Now that Frankie has found Lana, a deed she did without expectation of pay, she returns to the internet looking for another missing person. She has no training, no detective license and no connection to the person she is looking for. She doesn’t even have a home or friends. Her next choice is Angelique Lovelie Badeau, a Haitian teenager who lived with brother and aunt in Mattapan, a crime-ridden neighborhood in Boston.
One day, Angelique, a sweet girl and good student, didn’t come home. Later her school bag and cell phone were found hidden in the bushes outside of her school. Her family hopes she’ll be home soon but that was almost a year ago.
Frankie hopes if she locates Angelique the ending will turn out differently than it has with the other 16 people she has found — all of whom were dead.
“There are people out there like Frankie who spend their time looking for missing people,” said Lisa Gardner, author of “Before She Disappeared” (Dutton 2021; $27). “There are dog handlers who volunteer to have their dogs search for missing people for free, pilots who fly their planes over areas where someone has gone missing, and those who use their computer and social media skills to help — all for free.”
Gardner, a New York Times best selling crime novelist, goes deep on the web when looking for true crime plots on which to base her mysteries.
“I like to think of it as research, not procrastination,” said Gardner, who has written more than 30 novels, four of which have been made into movies.
This time, instead of choosing a criminal case to turn into fiction, Gardner’s inspiration came about after reading about Lissa Yellowbird-Chase, who grew frustrated by the number of women going missing on tribal lands and the lack of resources, or even interest, in finding them. Yellowbird-Chase founded the citizen-led Sahnish Scouts, which is dedicated to finding justice for missing people and their families.
“The idea that one person, without any special training or background, can make such a difference amazed me,” she said. “And it’s what brings recovering alcoholic Frankie Elkin to Mattapan, where a Haitian girl went missing 11 months ago. I had no idea the surveillance that goes on in a big city, so 11 months later I realized what this is was almost a closed room case: How does anyone disappear in a city?”
Gardner said she is not a plotter, instead she introduces her characters and then as she writes their personalities take over to tell the story. It was trying to determine what made Frankie tick that got her out of bed each morning to start the day’s writing.
“Before She Disappeared” is Gardner’s first standalone novel in more than 20 years.
“But I’ve failed at writing standalone,” she said, “because I’m already writing the next book about Frankie.”
“I’m destined to disappear,” Rachael Bard tells the listeners of her true crime podcasts.
Eliza Jane Brazier
For Sera Fleece, whose life is tumbling down around her as she dwells upon each of her many perceived failures and seldom leaves her home, her time is totally focused on every episode — each one dedicated to a missing or murdered woman. She thinks in terms of the episodes and absorbs the details Rachel reveals about her personal life. Sera knows she lives on Fountain Creek Ranch in the yellow house somewhat distant from her parents’ home and the barns, stables and quarters for the campers who fill the ranch in the summer.
And then, one day it happens. There are no more podcasts and no more social media posts. Rachel has disappeared.
“I know, the first 48 hours are crucial,” Sera tells herself. (After all, she doesn’t talk to anyone else — not her ex-husband who still cares, or her parents, or even the clerks she interacts with when she finally is able to get herself out of the house to buy tea.) “And every hour you don’t update, I think, ‘Something is wrong.’ I think, ‘The case is going cold.’”
“I will use the things you told me,” she says to Rachel, promising to find her.
But it doesn’t look promising. Somehow she missed the turn for the ranch, and stopping in the little town where Rachel went to school and where her best friend disappeared when they were high school students, she finds that no one will even mention its existence.
Turning back, she finds the ranch’s entrance, noticeable because what is supposed to be a tourist attraction has signs reading “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” posted on the drive.
“The setting came from a job I took in northern California that got weird at an isolated dude ranch. I won’t go into details, but the truth is very nearly stranger than fiction,” Brazier said when I ask about the eerie setting she created. “The emotion came from finding myself single again after my husband died. And the hook came from my love of true crime.”
Like Sera, Brazier says she was looking for answers but in a different way than most.
“After my husband died, I found that the grieving process really replicated true crime podcasts: you are searching for answers,” she said. “I found a lot of comfort in them and still do to this day. For me it’s about facing your fears, making order out of chaos and also about control. In true crime, you know the bad thing is coming. It can be a way to address trauma and feel less alone in it.”
Playing detective, Sera is hired by the Bards to work with the horses, a job that allows her to search for clues to Rachel’s disappearance. Her searching arouses suspicions but startlingly, she realizes that no one seems concerned about Rachel’s disappearance besides Sera. Rachel, she learns, has disappeared before and will do so again. At the ranch, Sera finds meaning not only in her investigation but in working with the horses and her developing romance with the ranch manager.
Yet that doesn’t stop her search for Rachel, or the overwhelming feelings that there are many dangerous unknowns surrounding her. Was Rachel involved with the ranch manager and what happened to his wife? Did she really go back to Texas like he says. Is it possible he’s a murderer?
Brazier, a screenwriter and journalist who lives in Los Angeles, is currently developing “If I Disappear” for television and writing another mystery.
“It’s a brutally funny thriller about very bad rich people,” she said.
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This story previously appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times:
Mainstream & Independent Titles Score Top Honorsin the 17th Annual Best Book Awards
HarperCollins, Penguin/Random House, John Wiley and Sons, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Forge, Sterling Publishing, Hay House, Sounds True, Llewellyn Worldwide, NYU Press, Oxford University Press, John Hopkins University Press, The White House Historical Association and hundreds of Independent Houses contribute to this year’s Outstanding Competition!
Best New Non-Fiction The Book of Help: A Memoir of Remedies by Megan Griswold Rodale Books/Penguin Random House
Biography T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito Independent Institute
Business: Careers TIP: A Simple Strategy to Inspire High Performance and Lasting Success by Dave Gordon John Wiley and Sons
Business: Communications/Public Relations The Apology Impulse: How the Business World Ruined Sorry and Why We Can’t Stop Saying It by Cary Cooper & Sean O’Meara Kogan Page
Business: Marketing & Advertising The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI by Carlos Gil Kogan Page
Business: Motivational Unlock!: 7 Steps to Transform Your Career and Realize Your Leadership Potential by Abhijeet Khadikar Vicara Books
Business: Personal Finance/Investing Enhancing Retirement Success Rates in the United States: Leveraging Reverse Mortgages, Delaying Social Security, and Exploring Continuous Work by Chia-Li Chien, PhD, CFP®, PMP® Palgrave Pivot
Business: Real Estate Market Forces: Strategic Trends Impacting Senior Living Providers by Jill J. Johnson Johnson Consulting Services
Business: Reference The Non-Obvious Guide to Virtual Meetings and Remote Work (Non-Obvious Guides) by Rohit Bhargava IdeaPress Publishing
Business: Sales The Visual Sale: How to Use Video to Explode Sales, Drive Marketing, and Grow Your Business in a Virtual World by Marcus Sheridan IdeaPress Publishing
Business: Technology Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders by Ram Charan and Julia Yang IdeaPress Publishing
Business: Writing/Publishing Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves: Criteria-Driven Strategies for More Effective Fiction by Larry Brooks Writer’s Digest Books (a division of Penguin Random House)
Children’s Educational Galileo! Galileo! by Holly Trechter and Jane Donovan Sky Candle Press
Children’s Fiction Nutmeg Street: Egyptian Secrets by Sherrill Joseph Acorn Publishing
Children’s Religious That Grand Christmas Day! by Jill Roman Lord, illustrated by Alessia Trunfio Worthy Kids
College Guides Diversity At College: Real Stories of Students Conquering Bias and Making Higher Education More Inclusive by James Stellar, Chrisel Martinez, Branden Eggan, Chloe Skye Weiser, Benny Poy, Rachel Eagar, Marc Cohen, and Agata Buras IdeaPress Publishing
Cookbooks: General Recipes from the President’s Ranch: Food People Like to Eat by Matthew Wendel The White House Historical Association
Cookbooks: International Cooking with Marika: Clean Cuisine from an Estonian Farm by Marika Blossfeldt Delicious Nutrition
Cookbooks: Regional The Perfect Persimmon: History, Recipes, and More by Michelle Medlock Adams Red Lightning Books
Current Events In All Fairness: Equality, Liberty, and the Quest for Human Dignity, edited by Robert M. Whaples, Michael C. Munger and Christopher J. Coyne Independent Institute
Education/Academic The EQ Intervention: Shaping a Self-Aware Generation Through Social and Emotional Learning by Adam L. Saenz, PhD Greenleaf Book Group
Fiction: Young Adult The Return of the Dragon Queen by Farah Oomerbhoy Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Health: Addiction & Recovery Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation by Marilea C. Rabasa She Writes Press
Health: Aging/50+ EIGHTSOMETHINGS: A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well, and Finding Unexpected Happiness by Katharine Esty, PhD Skyhorse Publishing
Health: Alternative Medicine Have a Peak at This: Synergize Your Body’s Clock Towards a Highly Productive You by Said Hasyim Self-Published
Health: Cancer All Of Us Warriors: Cancer Stories of Survival and Loss by Rebecca Whitehead Munn She Writes Press
Health: Death & Dying Aftermath: Picking Up the Pieces After a Suicide by Gary Roe Healing Resources Publishing
Health: Diet & Exercise Whole Person Integrative Eating: A Breakthrough Dietary Lifestyle to Treat Root Causes of Overeating, Overweight and Obesity by Deborah Kesten, MPH and Larry Scherwitz, PhD White River Press
Health: General True Wellness for Your Gut: Combine the best of Western and Eastern medicine for optimal digestive and metabolic health by Catherine Kurosu, MD, L.Ac. and Aihan Kuhn, CMD, OBT YMAA Publication Center
Health: Medical Reference The Ultimate College Student Health Handbook: Your Guide for Everything from Hangovers to Homesickness by Jill Grimes, MD Skyhorse Publishing
Health: Psychology/Mental Health The Big Bliss Blueprint: 100 Little Thoughts to Build Positive Life Changes by Shell Phelps Positive Streak Publishing, LLC
Health: Women’s Health The Book of Help: A Memoir of Remedies by Megan Griswold Rodale Books/Penguin Random House
History: General Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance by Stephen P. Halbrook Independent Institute
History: Military 40 Thieves on Saipan The Elite Marine Scout-Snipers in One of WWII’s Bloodiest Battles by Joseph Tachovsky with Cynthia Kraack Regnery History
History: United States Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History by Randall G. Holcombe Independent Institute
Home & Garden My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation by Donald M. Rattner Skyhorse Publishing
Humor Struggle Bus: The Van. The Myth. The Legend. by Josh Wood Lucid Books
Law Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump by Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia NYU Press
LGBTQ: Non-Fiction Our Gay History in 50 States by Zaylore Stout Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Multicultural Non-Fiction Overcoming Ordinary Obstacles: Boldly Claiming the Facets of an Extraordinary Life by Nesha Pai SPARK Publications
Narrative: Non-Fiction Sola: One Woman’s Journey Alone Across South America by Amy Field WanderWomyn Publishing
New Age: Non-Fiction Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness by Keri Mangis Curiosa Publishing, LLC
Novelty & Gift Book The Official White House Christmas Ornament: Collected Stories of a Holiday Tradition by Marcia Anderson and Kristen Hunter Mason The White House Historical Association
Parenting & Family Why Will No One Play with Me? The Play Better Plan to Help Children of All Ages Make Friends and Thrive by Caroline Maguire, PCC, M.Ed. with Teresa Barker Grand Central Publishing
Photography Beautiful Living: Cooking the Cal-a-Vie Health Spa Way by Terri Havens Cal-a-Vie Health Spa
Poetry Five Oceans in a Teaspoon, poems by Dennis J. Bernstein, visuals by Warren Lehrer Paper Crown Press
Religion: Christian Inspirational Extraordinary Hospitality for Ordinary Christians: A Radical Approach to Preparing Your Heart & Home for Gospel-Centered Community by Victoria Duerstock Good Books
Religion: Christianity Come Fill This Place: A Journey of Prayer by Stacy Dietz KP Publishing Company
Religion: Eastern Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam by A. Helwa Naulit Publishing House
Religion: General Esoterism as Principle and as Way: A New Translation with Selected Letters by Frithjof Schuon World Wisdom
Science Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity and Joy by Dawson Church Hay House
Self-Help: General Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done by Charlie Gilkey Sounds True
Self-Help: Relationships The Remarriage Manual: How to Make Everything Work Better the Second Time Around by Terry Gaspard Sounds True
Social Change I Am Not Your Enemy: Stories to Transform a Divided World by Michael T. McRay Herald Press
Spirituality: General The Universe Is Talking to You: Tap Into Signs and Synchronicity to Reveal Magical Moments Every Day by Tammy Mastroberte Llewellyn Worldwide
Spirituality: Inspirational Spark Change: 108 Provocative Questions for Spiritual Evolution by Jennie Lee Sounds True
Sports The Martial Arts of Vietnam: An Overview of History and Styles by Augustus John Roe YMAA Publication Center
Travel: Guides & Essays Exploring Wine Regions — Bordeaux France: Discover Wine, Food, Castles, and The French Way of Life by Michael C. Higgins, PhD International Exploration Society
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A rich young woman running wild, her boyfriend left for dead in a low-rent hotel room and lurid headlines such as “Brooklyn is a Modern Sodom” might seem like a contemporary made-for-television movie. But it’s all straight out of history in Virginia McConnell’s latest historic true crime book, “The Belle of Bedford Avenue: The Sensational Brooks-Burns Murder in Turn-of-the-Century New York” (Kent State University Press).
The year was 1902 when Florence Burns, who craved excitement frequented dance halls, drank in roadhouses, and even smoked in public—a truly decadent act, discarded the standards of her well-to-do family to hang with the Bedford Avenue Gang.
Society was changing with the advent of public transportation in big cities like New York and young women like Florence didn’t have to wait to be introduced by a chaperone to “suitable” young men. Instead she chose gang member Walter Brooks who was found with a bullet in his head and died the next day.
Ironically, though Florence loved the freedoms of the new century, she escaped punishment for Walter’s death because of old norms of an “Unwritten Law” that was frequently used to justify murder. That, says McConnell, kicked in when Walter refused to marry Florence after they’d had sexual relations—hence it was, though unspoken, retribution for his dishonoring her. Taking this into consideration, the prosecutor didn’t even bring charges against her.
If only Florence had learned from this brush with the law but alas, she didn’t. And reading about her exploits is a fascinating true crime story as well as insight into a world so much different than ours.
McConnell, a college English instructor at Walla Walla Community College-Clarkston Campus in Washington, is the author of other historic true crime books including “The Adventuress: Murder, Blackmail, and Confidence Games in the Gilded Age” which was a 2011 Gold Medal-Independent Publisher Book Award/True Crime Category.
Drawing upon scandalous but long forgotten crimes, McConnell says that at first she didn’t think there would be enough material to write “The Belle of Bedford Avenue.
She had to go beyond what she could find in the New York Times to ferret out more about the case, reading through lots more newspapers, many that were only available on microfilm through Interlibrary Loan.
“But when I dug into it, there were a lot of interesting items – such as, the hotel’s being at Ground Zero and the teenagers hanging out at Coney Island and then I found the reference to her subsequent incarcerations,” she says, adding that she had to order the microfilm of one of the trial transcripts from the John Jay College, because the topic was so racy that the newspapers wouldn’t print it.
“There were times when I’ve expended a lot of energy on a case that interested me, only to have to abandon it because it simply didn’t have enough material for an entire book,” says McConnell, describing herself as lucky to have connected with the grand-nephews of Belle’s first husband, who had a lot of information on their great-uncle Tad.
It was also lucky for those of us who like a well-written, intriguing true crime story.
Shelf Life 