Shelf Life

Tag: book-reviews

  • The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter

    The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter

    Jed Rosenthal is living a desultory life in a garden apartment with his cat, both having been exiled from the family home they shared with Jed’ s partner and their daughter who he can see only at approved times. Despite a job as a professor of writing at Loyola University in Chicago and receiving good reviews for his previous works, Jed is disconnected from his current reality and immersed in his family’s past and the death of the daughter of their once close friends, shortly after JFK’s assassination.

    The victim was Karyn Kupcinet, an aspiring actress and the only daughter of Irv and Essee Kupcinet, one of Chicago’s uber power couples who stayed in the limelight from 1934 to 2003. Kup or Mr. Chicago, as Irv was called, was a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times at a time that really mattered and if he didn’t know everybody, he knew almost everybody including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King and Sidney Korshak.

    Wait, you’re thinking Sidney Korshak? Who is he? Well, for people like Kup who was at the top of his game when it came to collected celebrities, you could sip Champagne with Dean Martin or Shirley McClaine in the Pump Room or have them on your television talk show, but if you need something fixed—and we’re not talking patching up the roof—and were connected, you called Sidney. And, in “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter,” a novel by award-winning author Peter Orner, that’s what Kup did when his daughter died.

    “Like Jed, I am somewhat obsessed with the case,” says Orner, the direc­tor of cre­ative writ­ing at Dart­mouth Col­lege, who has spent eons researching this book.

    But Orner isn’t the only one seeking answers about what happened to Karyn.

    “If you’re into conspiracy theories there are numerous ones,” says Orner and then dives deep into some of those theories.

    Was Karyn Kupcinet murdered? The autopsy performed in Los Angeles where she lived while working as an actress, said she had been. But there were doubts, could she have overdosed on pills? Either on purpose or accidentally? She was anxious, unsure of her looks, desperately trying to be slim, and extremely despondent about a recent break up with her actor boyfriend who had moved on to someone, no make that, numerous someones.

    There’s the JFK angle espoused by some, says Orner, pointing out Karyn was among several people who mysteriously died around the time of the president’s assassination. Was Karyn the woman who called authorities just before Kennedy was shot to say he was going to be murdered?  

    In the book, Jed’s grandfather accompanies Kup to Los Angeles to identify his daughter’s body while his grandmother consoles Essee who remained in Chicago. That’s real life as well. Sidney Korshak was also at Karyn’s apartment and Orner discovered a newspaper photo of him carrying several of her belongings out of her apartment.

    “They say unidentified man,” says Orner. “But everyone knew who Sidney Korshak was. I may have found a new clue.”

    But the book is more than just a true crime caper, it’s about relationships, those that flourish and those that fall apart, it’s also about Chicago in a different era, a time when a gossip columnist held sway over the city and men like Korshak could make big problems go away.

    “The relationship between the Kups and my family  is true,” says Orner. “The families had been very good friends and then suddenly they weren’t. I’ve always tried to understand why.”

    Korshak could fix many things but didn’t fix the rift that severed the Kupcinets from the Rosenthals, a cut so sharp and complete it’s as if someone took a cleaver to it.  Why this happened is difficult for an obsessive like Orner, who sometimes, when he returns to Chicago from his home in Vermont, revisits all the family homes (real) or walks from where Jed lives in the book to where he and his partner lived, counting the steps (unreal since Jed and Hanna don’t exist).

    You could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what’s true and what is fiction in this fascinating novel, or you can just go along for the ride so to speak, by enjoying a great read.

    This article orginally ran in the Northwest Times of Indiana.

  • All the Other Mothers Hate Me

    All the Other Mothers Hate Me

    Florence Grimes is a mess. Once part of a popular girl rock band, after a brief interlude with the manager who is really in love with another of the women in the group, she’s cast out and left with a baby to raise courtesy of the man who fired her. Sure, he pays for their son to go to a posh private school, and she adores her child, but her royalty checks are dwindling and let’s face it—she shouldn’t be spending what little money she has left on fancy nail art and other unnecessary items.

    But then Flo isn’t someone who knows how to manage her life, She just doesn’t fit in with the other mothers, but then she doesn’t try that hard—her clothing and attitude impairing her ability to be accepted.

    Finally, there’s hope. She gets a call about meeting an old colleague and she dreams of returning to the stage, but, as always with Flo, bad stuff happens and this time it’s really bad. Her son’s class bully mysteriously vanishes on a field trip, and Florence’s quirky, misunderstood 10-year-old son becomes a suspect.

    “To save her son, Florence has to figure out what actually happened to the missing boy,” says Sarah Harman, author of All the Other Mother’s Hate Me (G. P. Putnam’ & Sons 2025). “But the more she uncovers, the more she realizes her son might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe,”

    Books about missing children and women on the rocks aren’t typically funny but Harman, who describes the subject as a “fine line to walk” uses humor in recounting Flo and her attempts not only to resuscitate her career—and her life—but find out what really happened. And Flo, despite all her faults and mishaps, is someone to root for.

    “Personally, as a parent, I have zero interest in fiction about bad things happening to children,” says Harman. “There’s enough of that in the real world; I do not want to consume that darkness in my limited free time. So, it was important to me to telegraph to the reader from the outset, that while this is a twisty mystery about a missing boy, this is not a book where children are going to suffer.”

    Harman was never in a girl band (that’s what they called them back then) but she was inspired to write the novel by thinking back to the early aughts and the way that female celebrities were treated by the media and society in general. She references Britney Spears as one example.

    “Or remember how the paparazzi took a horrible upskirt photo of Anne Hathaway and then Matt Lauer asked her on national television ‘what lesson she learned from the experience?’” she says. “That was in 2012. It really wasn’t very long ago. When I was writing Florence, I was thinking about how coming of age creatively in that sort of environment might shape a person’s worldview —and the rest of her life.”

    The book, which came out in March of this year, is so compelling that even before publication, foreign rights to it were sold at auction in 14 markets  and the TV rights bought by FX and The Bear creator Chris Storer, Not bad at all for any novel, but this is Harman’s first which makes it even more impressive.

    Like Flo, Harman is an American living in the West End of London, and she notes that navigating the class system is much different than here. But there are some things that are common worldwide and one of them, she says, the redemptive power of female friendship.

    “When we meet Florence, all the other mothers hate her—and for a good reason,” she says. “She’s kind of awful. Over the course of the novel, as Florence forges an unlikely alliance with another mom, Jenny, she discovers that she actually is capable of caring about something other than herself. It’s only by learning to be a friend that Florence is able to move on from her past and forgive herself for her failures. Ultimately, my hope is that this book makes readers feel it’s never too late for a comeback.”

    This article originally appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.

  • Bearer of Bad News

    Bearer of Bad News

    Lucy Rey is having a very bad week. Besides finding out Julian, her fiancé—the one who convinced her to move to Las Vegas and rent, in her name, an expensive apartment and then decamped to Hollywood in order to find work as an actor—is cheating on her, her hairdressing business is in a slump, and she hates Vegas. Oh, and the diamond engagement ring Julian gave her is really cubic zirconia.

    And so when she sees an advertisement for an expense paid job with a $25,000 success fee just to find a missing sister and deliver unspecified bad news, what does she have to lose? Her flight to Europe is all paid, there’s a generous per diem, and Ortisei, the village in the Italian Dolomites where she is sent, is totally charming.

    But being a Bearer of Bad News (Gallery Books), which is the title of Lucy’s new job and this first novel by Elisabeth Dini, is not a slam dunk. First of all, Taffy, the woman who hired her, is totally flaky, the assignment murky, and, Lucy soon discovers, the village, though quaint and pretty has an unsavory past including Nazis and stolen jewels.

    Soon, the assignment gets even stranger as it becomes apparent that Taffy (real name Countess Tabitha Georgiana Wellington Ernst) crafted the ad to attract and hire Lucy, who is the estranged granddaughter of a once very famous movie actress.

    Taffy isn’t the only one searching for stolen jewels. There’s the Department of Lost Things, a quasi-government agency working to return valuables people lost during the war.

    “The Department of Lost Things was inspired by stories about the numerous ongoing lawsuits over art and other valuables that were stolen or sold during World War II,” says Dini. “I was shocked by how long the legal process takes–many cases are still ongoing even decades later, with some of those suing for the return of family heirlooms dying before the case could reach a resolution.”

    Dini always found stories about clandestine secret organizations fascinating and so inventing the Department of Lost Things, an organization working to return the diamonds to their rightful owner, was a natural solution.

     “As for the idea of a Bearer of Bad News, I was reading an article about a man who had outsourced various life tasks to a virtual personal assistant, from writing an apology email to his wife to calling companies to complain on his behalf, and I thought that if people would pay for that, then why not outsource delivering bad news?” she says.

    But being a bad news bearer doesn’t go smoothly for Lucy. Chased by an influencer whose photo shoot she accidentally interrupted, Lucy is hidden by a charming hotel clerk in rooms above the oldest tavern in town, which is also where much of the action happened in the past. For being hidden away, Lucy’s lodgings get a lot of action—including a handsome man she met on the tram and Coco, the missing sister, a human rights attorney who might have been fired under suspicious circumstances. In other words, who do you trust?

    Dini drew upon her work as a trial lawyer at the International Criminal Court when writing the book.

    “I knew from working with legal case files what types of things might end up there after years of investigating, and my background interviewing witnesses informed the interview files as well,” she says, noting that no matter how different the conflict or the country where it happens, certain things are always true: among the ugliness, there are always acts of extraordinary kindness and bravery. “As heavy as it felt at times, my time prosecuting war crimes left me hopeful about the ultimate nature of human beings, and I wanted to leave readers with this same feeling of hope, especially in a time when world events can feel very heavy.”

  • Gothictown

    Gothictown

    In 1832, at the height of the Georgia gold rush, gold had been discovered on the banks of the Etowah River on land owned by Alfred Minette. As men flocked to work in the mine and others to supply their needs, a small town arose and Minette named it after his firstborn, a beautiful but frail girl named Juliana who had died years ago in South Carolina.

    But now the Civil War was waging and while the men and boys of Juliana were off fighting, Minette forced their wives and children to work in the mines.

    Union General Philip Sheridan and his troops were laying waste to all he passed through on his march to the sea and Juliana lay in his path. Destroying the town meant destroying the wealth that helped fuel the Confederate war effort and so three of the town elders, including Minette, formed a plan to save it.

    And it worked. Sheridan did stop in Juliana and he and his men decimated the town’s food and livestock supplies but they didn’t discover the mine, nor the women and children trapped in the bottom of the mine when the town’s elders had the entrance dynamited with explosives. Sheridan and his troops tarried and by the time the mine was unsealed, all those insides were dead. When the surviving men returned home from the war, they were told their families had been sent away and they could now work in the lumber mill Minette was building, accept it as God’s will that their families were gone, and start anew.

    It was a small sacrifice for the good of all, Minette argued, and that his daughter, Julianna, was pleased with their offering.

    More than 160 years later, Billie Hope receives an offer. A former restaurateur, Billie lives in a cramped apartment with her husband and daughter in New York City when she receives an offer to purchase a dream home in historic Juliana for just $100. The offer describes the town as idyllic, and the accompanying photo shows a quaint town square straight out of a storybook as does the link to the professionally done town website. Billie sees it as part of a trend to lure people to help grow stagnant towns with new citizens. Feeling at a dead end in her life and lured by the thought of a pretty house in a lovely small town, she replies.

    It’s an offer too good to be true, but desperation often clouds people’s judgment, so it is with Billie and her family who make the move to Juliana.

    “A small town,” she thinks. “Our own house. A perfect childhood for Mere and…another restaurant for me.”

    Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.

    Bestselling author Emily Carpenter, whose other suspense novels include Burying the Honeysuckle Girls and The Weight of Lies, weaves a frightening and compelling tale as we follow Billie and her family move from elation at what they see as a chance for a new and better life and the dawning realization that they may have embarked upon a dangerous and frightening adventure.

  • Trust Issues: A Mystery That Asks Who You Going to Trust?

    Trust Issues: A Mystery That Asks Who You Going to Trust?

    “a tense, well-plotted mystery with enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged . . .”

    “Something strange happened when Hazel and Kagan showed up. Ava had begun hearing her father’s voice so clearly that it sounds like he’s crawled inside her head. This isn’t the first time in her life she’s been haunted by his negative commentary. It followed her on the bus when she first escaped and lingered for a few weeks after she settled into life with Sam again. When she was in prison she’d hear her father’s voice late into the night, chastising her for thinking she could outrun her destiny and for being stupid enough to get caught.”

    Spoiled and entitled, Hazel Bailey and her brother Kagan Bailey have gone through the millions their mother, Janice, gave them after the death of their abusive father and, resentful that she won’t give them more, have cut off all contact with her. Still, despite their treatment of her, they’re outraged when they learn of their mother’s death and that Perry, their smarmy stepfather has inherited all of Janice’s considerable fortune,

    When they learn that Janice was murdered, they’re sure that Perry is the culprit despite his unassailable alibi—he was on a plane at the time of her death. And so, the two, who don’t typically get along, team up together to discover all they can about Perry to prove he’s somehow responsible for her death. Surprisingly, Perry has no internet presence, except for a hazy half photo at a charity event he attended with Janice.

    Though the siblings are self-centered, combative, and often compete for the same romantic interest, they also are resourceful and before long discover that Perry is a conman who seduces rich, older women who then disappear or die. Taking it one step further, they trace his daughter, Ava, who long ago separated herself from her father and ask her to join them in their search and revenge mission.

    Like Kagan and Hazel, the seductive Ava has her own baggage. Trained from an early age by her father to con people, she’s spent time in prison and has been offered a straight-and-narrow lifestyle. But the idea of helping them regain their fortune and punish her father who murdered her mother and uncle is impossible to resist. And besides, as the siblings neglect to keep in mind, when you’re trained to be a conman or woman, old habits die hard— particularly when there’s a fortune to be had.

    As the three chase Perry down the Eastern seaboard, coming up with an elaborate plan to fleece Perry out of the money he conned their mother out of and to keep him from marrying—and killing another wealthy woman—they fail to keep in mind that Perry mayhave a fatal plan to stop them as well.

    Elizabeth Keenan and Greg Wands, authors of Trust Issues (Dutton 2025), have previously written three novels under the pen name E.G. Scott including The Woman Inside and The Rule of Three. Besides their books, which have been translated into a dozen languages, they created and co-host the podcast “Imposter House with Liz & Greg,” where they chat with authors and artists about creativity, self-doubt, and about featuring imposter characters in their stories.

    In Trust Issues, they’ve written a tense, well-plotted mystery with enough twists and turns to keep the reader engaged as well as hopeful that Perry finally is outsmarted and has to pay for his sins.

    This article originally appeared in the New York Journal of Books.

  • “City Under One Roof” by Iris Yamashita

    “City Under One Roof” by Iris Yamashita

    Point Mettier, Alaska is no one’s idea of paradise. Its inhabitants—all 205 of them—live in the same high-rise apartment building and the only access to town is by a tunnel or the sea.

    But Point Mettier is perfect for many of those who live there. It’s a chance to invent new names, identities, and lives. For some, it’s a safe harbor such as an escape from an abusive spouse. For others, the reasons for disappearing into the void of a place like Point Mettier are darker. And so when a severed hand and foot wash up on shore and Cara Kennedy, a police detective arrives from Anchorage, she finds the inhabitants to be aloof and evasive. Everyone, it seems, has something to hide.

    “City Under One Roof” (Berkley) is the first novel written by Iris Yamashita, a screenwriter nominated for an Academy Award for the movie “Letters from Iwo Jima.” The inspiration, she says, comes from a documentary about Whittier, Alaska she watched more than 20 years ago. At the time, Whittier only was accessible by boat or through a 2.5-mile long tunnel.

    “Jumping off point for me was the tunnel,” says Yamashita, who has been working in Hollywood for 15 years developing material for both film and streaming, “I had the feeling I was going down into the rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland. Cara is like Alice, she too fell down the rabbit hole.”

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    And there Cara meets a wide range of quirky characters including Lonnie, who has a moose she has rescued as a pet, and Amy, a teenager who delivers the Asian food her mother makes to the building’s residents.

    Cara has her own burdens, her family died in a tragic, terrifying way. And working with local policeman, Joe Barkowski, stirs feelings she has thought were gone forever.

    But even as their feelings for each other grow, the two have to contend with another crisis. A storm closes the tunnel and the residents of Point Mettier—and Cara—are trapped. But though help from the mainland is days away, mayhem is close by when a gang from further north arrives to terrorize the community and that’s when everyone’s secrets start to come out.

    Yamashita has always loved writing and for a while, it was a hobby. She has a degree in mechanical engineering and says her “Asian parents always told her ‘you can’t make a living as a writer.’”

    “And so I worked at my day job until I had a contract in my hand and then I quit,” she says. “Now I’m working on my next book.”

    This story originally appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.