Shelf Life

Tag: #books

  • Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook

    Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook

    Nancy Singleton Hachisu dives deep into the Japanese food scene, having married a Japanese farmer and learning the intricacies of cooking various vegetables and other ingredients that most of us aren’t familiar with.

    The author of several cookbooks including Japanese Farm Food, winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2012: USA Winner for the Best Japanese Cuisine Book, Preserving the Japanese Way: Traditions of Salting, Fermenting, and Pickling for the Modern Kitchen, and Food Artisans of Japan, Hachisu is meticulous in her receipt development and helping us understand the intricacies of Japanese gastronomy. Her latest is Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook (Phaidon 2023).

    For those who want to learn, Hachisu’s recipes require attention to detail and buying foods we may have trouble sourcing. But the results, for those who like a kitchen challenge, are well worth it and as someone who has been following Hachisu and using her cookbooks for years, I can assure you it gets much easier.

    It’s a fascinating take on Japanese cuisine from Hachisu, a native Californian who moved to Japan to stay there just for a year and immersed herself in Japanese food culture. Love intervened and after meeting an organic farmer, she married and moved to the rural Saitama Prefecture.

    That was more than 30 years ago, time enough for Hachisu to raise a family in an 85-year-old traditional Japanese farmhouse and become proficient in both culture and cooking.

    The book is so very niche that it’s almost like being in her kitchen and on her farm, giving us an amazing insight into a tiny slice of Japanese farm culture.

    CHILLED UME-TOFU SQUARES IN DASHI

    • Preparation time: 30 minutes, plus 2-3 hours pressing and chilling
    • Cooking times: 10-15 minutes
    • Serves: 4 squares
    • Vegan, Dairy-free, Nut-free

    Junsai, harvested from ponds from May to September, are baby water lily buds called “water shield” in English. They have a natural gelatinous covering so add a cool, slippery element to summer dishes. They might be available at Japanese markets, otherwise, just omit or substitute with blanched julienned green beans or cooked edamame. Salted sour “plums” have been prepared in Japan for a millennium, since the Heian period (794–1185), and are purported to have many health-improving qualities, including aiding digestion and combatting summer fatigue during the rainy season. The combination here makes a subtle, but lovely little bite.

    INGREDIENTS

    • 101⁄2 oz (300 g) cotton tofu or Japanese-style soft block tofu • 1 tablespoon hon kuzu
    • 2 medium umeboshi
    • Canola (rapeseed) oil, for greasing the pan
    • Generous 3/4 cup (63/4 fl oz/200 ml) Konbu Dashi
    • 1⁄2 tablespoon shoyu
    • A pinch of flaky sea salt
    • Scant 1⁄2 cup (31⁄2 fl oz/100 ml) baby water lily buds
    • Boiling water

    DIRECTIONS

    Place the tofu on a dinner plate and weight with a small cutting board for 1 hour.

    Smash the kuzu to a fine powder in a Japanese grinding bowl (suribachi, see page 354). Squeeze the tofu by handfuls to express excess moisture  and drop into the suribachi. Mash into the kuzu until well incorporated.

    Cut out the umeboshi pits (stones) and discard. Finely chop the umeboshi and fold into the smashed tofu.

    Dampen a folded-up piece of paper towel with the oil and grease the bottom and sides of
    a 5 1⁄2 × 4 1⁄2 × 2-inch (14 × 11 × 4.5 cm) nagashikan mold (see page 353) or a 4 3⁄8 × 8 1⁄2-inch (11.5 × 21 cm) loaf pan (bottom lined with parchment paper). Scrape the ume-tofu mixture into the pan and rap smartly on the counter to eliminate air pockets and make sure the tofu is evenly distributed into the pan.

    Set a bamboo steamer over a large wok filled one-third of the way with water and bring to a boil. Place the pan in the steamer, cover, and steam over high heat for about 10 minutes until set. Remove from the steamer, blot off accumulated moisture, and lay a piece of plastic wrap (cling film) on the surface. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours to chill.

    In a small saucepan, stir the dashi, shoyu, and salt together over medium heat to dissolve the salt. Transfer to a small bowl and refrigerate for 1 hour to chill.

    Place the junsai in a wire-mesh sieve and pour boiling water over for 10 seconds. Refresh
    by running the sieve under cold water. Shake off excess water and set the sieve over a bowl to drain. Store in the fridge for 1 hour to chill.

    Unmold the umedofu, cut into 4 squares, and place each on a small shallow individual dish. Stir the junsai into the cold dashi and spoon around the umedofu. Serve immediately as a light, palate-cleansing bite.

    Extracted from JAPAN: The Vegetarian Cookbook © 2023 by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. Photography © 2023 by Aya Brackett. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

  • Disturbing the Bones

    Disturbing the Bones

    It’s an archaeological dig so finding human remains shouldn’t be a surprise, but Dr. Molly Moore immediately recognizes that the skeleton they’ve unearthed is much more recent than what you’d find on a site dating back 12,000 years. Indeed, the body is that of a young Black reporter who disappeared just decades ago when covering the racial unrest in Cairo, Illinois.

    The loss of his mother has left a large void in the life of Chicago Police Detective Randal Jenkins, and he travels back to Cairo, where he lived as a young boy, to learn more about the case. But it soon becomes clear that this is more than just the murder of an investigative reporter during a tumultuous time. Moore finds herself pressured by her long-time mentor and supporter, retired military general and contractor William Alexander to complete the dig and minimize her discovery. As Moore and Jenkins, each with their own family issues to deal with, work at discovering answers they realize that the General is trying to disrupt the process of a disarmament agreement being developed at a global peace summit taking place in Chicago. The stakes are so high that not only are their lives in jeopardy, but the world may be hurling towards a nuclear disaster.

    Disturbing the Bones (Melville House 2024) is the first joint effort by director and screenwriter Andrew Davis, a native of Chicago’s southside and Jeff Biggers, an American Book Award-winning historian, journalist, playwright, and monologist.

    In writing the book, Biggers, whose work has appeared in American and foreign newspapers and magazines as well as numerous anthologies, relied upon his knowledge of archaeology, the environment, culture, and history as well as his abilities as a researcher. He is the author of such books as Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland and The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America.

    “I’ve been around a lot of archaeological digs,” he said in a joint conversation with Davis and this writer.

    It’s also a timely story in that there’s a presidential election going on as Jenkins and Moore race to solve the mystery.

    “It’s the only novel with a woman running for the presidency but in the book she’s from Chicago,” says Davis, noting that, as in the book, he sees this election as a turning point in our history. “The story is a blending of art and action, and it asks provocative questions which I think any good book should do.”

    Any enjoyable book should, as it tells a story, also open another world for us. The authors do that here as we learn about archaeology, what happens on a dig, and the social upheaval the country went through during the Civil Rights movement. It also explores the psychology of Jenkins and Moore whose personal lives affect their profession and the decisions they make.

    This was the first collaboration between Biggers and Davis, but it won’t be their last. The two are also working on a screenplay for the book. Davis has an extensive background in this area, having worked on a myriad of films such as “Holes”, “Under Siege”, “Code of Silence”, “A Perfect Murder”, and “The Guardian.” Known for directing intellectual thrillers, his film “The Fugitive,” was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture.

    Biggers, who served as the Climate Narrative Playwright-in-Residence at Indiana University Northwest several times and lived in Miller Beach during his time there, enjoyed the collaborative process.

    “I’ve written a lot of books on my own,” he says, “but this was, in ways, the best of both worlds as we went back and forth and exchanged ideas and shared thoughts.”

  • Kalamazoo County Characters by Dianna Higgs Stampfler

    Kalamazoo County Characters by Dianna Higgs Stampfler

    This fascinating book, featuring profiles of 50 notable figures in the Kalamazoo area history, will be released by The History Press in January 2025.

    Since its founding in the early 1800s, Kalamazoo has welcomed a variety of notable individuals who have shaped the community’s legacy in their own special way. From founding fathers to early innovators, groundbreakers to entrepreneurs, artists to authors and athletes to entertainers, author Dianna Higgs Stampfler celebrates 50 figures in her book Kalamazoo County Characters to be released from The History Press in January 2025 (ISBN: 9781467155922 | IMAGES: 53 | PAGES: 144 | DIMENSIONS: 6 (w) x 9 (h)).

    Dianna and her brother with Santa & Mrs. Claus, Darwin & Opal Brown.

    Individuals like Orville Gibson and Derek Jeter are nationally recognized, while others, such as Sue Hubbell or Donald Bonevich, may be less well known. Abraham Lincoln and Flora Temple briefly passed through town, and Mary Jackson and Gwen Frostic were among those who came here to attend college. Others, like Darwin and Opal Brown (aka Santa and Mrs. Claus) or Gene Rhodes (aka Gene the Pumpkin Man), were lifetime residents who have entertained families for generations.

     Stampfler is shown here with her father, stepmom, and kids with the Eagles backstage at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids in 2018. Her father helped launch the band to stardom – as a DJ playing a song that became their first hit. You can google Jim Higgs and Eagles for the full story.

    “Selecting the 50 individuals for Kalamazoo County Characters was a challenge as I had over 125 to choose from” notes Stampfler, who worked on the book with her father, Jim Higgs, a local genealogist, historian and notable Kalamazoo figure in his own right. The book is dedicated to her father, who passed away in May 2024 at the age of 79. “I was diligent in featuring people from different walks of life, with unique stories to share. Some I have personal connections to, as I spent a lot of time in Kalamazoo growing up in nearby Plainwell, but others I discovered through various other channels or by recommendation of fellow historians and authors.”

    This 1987 photo shows Dianna as  Miss Plainwell and Narada Michael Walden, who was the grand marshal of the Wine & Harvest Festival Parade in Kalamazoo.
     

    Beginning in January, Stampfler will present Notable Figures in Kalamazoo Area History(Kalamazoo County Characters) at libraries, bookstores, museums, conferences and events. The official book launch will be on Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 6:30pm at the Kalamazoo Public Library downtown branch.

    “I expect each presentation to be a little bit different, as I’ll be able to hand-pick the individuals to feature based on the venue,” Stampfler continued. “Plus, I am able to include some of those people who may not have made it in the book, but who also have compelling stories to share! Each profile in the book features just one photograph, and the presentations will also allow me to share more historical images and visual documents.”

    Upcoming presentations include:

    Additional events will be posted on the Promote Michigan Speaker’s Bureau online. Information about booking presentations for this and other themes can also be found on the Speaker’s Bureau page.

    Autographed copies of Kalamazoo County Characters are available for $24.99 (plus shipping/handling and tax) at PromoteMichigan.com. Shipping will take place by mid-January.

    Dianna Higgs Stampfler

    About the Author

    Dianna Higgs Stampfler has worked in Michigan’s tourism industry for nearly thirty years and is the founder of Promote Michigan, a public relations consulting company specializing in tourism and historical destinations of the Great Lakes region. Her articles have appeared in Michigan Blue Magazine, Lakeland Boating, Michigan Meetings + Events, West Michigan Carefree Travel, and Lake Michigan Circle Tour & Lighthouse Guide, among others.

    She is the author of several best-selling books including Michigan’s Haunted Lighthouse, available through The History Press (March 2019), a fun and fascinating compendium of spirited stories about 13 historic lighthouses around the State of Michigan and Death & Lighthouses on the Great Lakes: A History of Murder and Misfortune.

    Stampfler holds a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in Community Journalism and Communications with an emphasis in radio broadcasting from Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo. She is a member of the Historical Society of Michigan, West Michigan Tourist Association, Michigan Hemingway Society, Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association, and Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society among other historical organizations.

  • Author Erik Larson offers compelling acount of the start of the Civil War

    Author Erik Larson offers compelling acount of the start of the Civil War

    Only a master storyteller like Erik Larson could turn the five tumultuous months leading up to the Civil War into “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroes at the Dawn of the Civil War” (Crown), a compelling, page-turning read, chock full of anecdotes, psychological profiles and obscure but compelling tidbits of history all set against a relentless march towards a conflict that would kill over 620,000 soldiers and devastate a nation.

    Larson, the author of six New York Times bestsellers whose previous works include “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America,” about a mass murderer and the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair, writes in a novelistic style that makes history come alive. He does so through his ability to weave together the familiar facts of history with information that can only be gleaned through relentless and extensive research.

    Yes, most of us know that the Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter, which was located in Charleston Harbor and under the command of U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson. But did you know that Anderson had owned enslaved people and was a defender of slavery? That Lincoln often misspelled Sumter as Sumpter? Or, more importantly, South Carolina did not have to succeed because of Lincoln’s election, as he had no intention of outlawing slavery in the Southern states?

    “When I started out doing this, one concern I had was that the Civil War has not exactly been underwritten,” Larson told me during a phone conversation earlier this week, noting that a quick Google indicated around 65,000. “I had vowed over the years never ever to write about the Civil War.”

    That changed when, as he was looking for the topic of his next book and watching the events of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, he began to consider the deep divide and unrest of our own times.

    Faced with what he describes as an intimidating world of previous scholarship, Larson says “What I really wanted to do was to provide a rich sense, on an intimate level, of what the forces were and the motivations for the start of the Civil War.”

    The magic of his writing is that he accomplishes this by immersing the reader in details, descriptions, and personalities mostly unknown to many of us, including “eight typical characters” such as Charleston society doyenne Mary Boykin Chestnut, who kept a detailed diary, and James Henry Hammond, a Charleston planter who was a leader of the secessionist movement and who later became a U.S. senator despite public knowledge of his sexual relationships with four nieces ages 13 to 19.

    He also includes information about resolving issues regarding dueling, from “The Code of Honor or Rules for the Government Principals and Seconds in Dueling” and instructions for the “proper” way of whipping slaves as well as the going prices for selling human beings.

    The Southern mindset among the owners of enslaved people of the time is best summed up in a letter written to President James Buchanan, president before Lincoln, by Arthur Peronneau Hayne, a U.S. senator from Charleston. In it, he writes that without slavery “our every comfort would be taken from us. Our wives, our children, made unhappy — education, the light of knowledge — all lost and our people ruined forever. “

    “White southerners had persuaded themselves that slavery was a good thing for all concerned, especially for the enslaved blacks,” said Larson. He also notes that many of these same men were devoted readers of writers like Sir Walter Scott, author of “Ivanhoe,” and believed fervently in honor and the code of chivalry.

    As outrageous and hypocritical as that seems today, Larson says when writing about a different era it’s important to consider the point of view of those times to accurately reflect how events unfolded.

    “It gives a better sense of what the forces were that did lead to states like South Carolina succeeding from the Union and the Civil War,” he said, noting that understanding is not condoning, but historic context provides a lesson for the present and future as we struggle with political division today.

    This article previously appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.

  • Article: The Most Borrowed Books in New York City Libraries in 2024

    The Most Borrowed Books in New York City Libraries in 2024 https://flip.it/M0gnHE

  • Article: 2024’s Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and True Crime

    2024’s Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and True Crime https://flip.it/aSD.2m

  • Castle Gormenghast: Revisiting Gothic Fantasy

    Castle Gormenghast: Revisiting Gothic Fantasy

    A crumbling castle, an eccentric and slightly mad family, and intricate plotting in a Medival fantasy series about a remote earldom is the perfect antidote to stressful holidays.

    Need to escape into a different world after talking politics over the Thanksgiving table–or even harder, avoiding talking politics across the Thanksgiving table? Then it’s time to visit Gormenghast, the ancestral home of the ancient Groan family who lived in a wild and isolated landscape. Written by author and artist Mervyn Peake, the books in the series are Titus Groan, published in 1947, Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959). Peake died while writing Titus Awakes, the fourth book. His widow, artist Maeve Gilmore, completed the book sometime in the 1970s but the manuscript wasn’t discovered and published until 2011.

    According to its Wikipedia citation, “The series has been included in Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels and 100 Must Read Fantasy Novels as one of the greatest fantasy works of the twentieth century. Literary critic Harold Bloom has praised the series as the best fantasy novels of the 20th century and one of the greatest sequences in modern world literature.”

    Available on Amazon, find a cozy corner to escape contemporary 21st post-election American angst and whisk yourself away to Castle Gormenghast.

    The books are also available on Kindle and Audible.

  • Where Are You, Echo Blue?

    Where Are You, Echo Blue?

    “In those years, the hardest of my childhood, Echo felt like a kindred spirit. I memorized her lines in Slugger 8. I practiced her stance on the field in the mirror. I cut out snapshots from Teen Beat magazine. I bought four copies of her cover issue of Sassy, the one where she wore a red cropped T-shirt with big lips smacked across her flat chest. I made a collage, carefully glued images of her together, draped it with a heart garland, and hung it over my bed. My favorite was a photo of Echo and her also-actor dad, Jamie Blue, leaving a restaurant, his arm slung over her shoulders, protecting her, the way I wished my father did.”

    From Where Are You, Echo Blue? by Haley Krischer (Penguin Random House).

    Goldie Klein, a writer for Manhattan Eye, has it bad when it comes to Echo Blue, the famous child actress. The obsession that worried her parents when she was growing up still has a hold on her even now. And when she learns that Echo, who was scheduled to appear on MTV’s New Year’s Eve Y2K special, one that will help her regain her foothold on stardom, hasn’t shown, Goldie knows it has to be more than just a relapse and stint in rehab. Echo has really disappeared.

    Currently, Goldie is writing the kind of stories she hates and that her father, an overly critical professor loves, including her most recent article on boxing. But Goldie’s aspirations are to cover subjects much hipper and more compelling. And she sees Echo’s vanishing as just the ticket. She manages to talk her editor into sending her to Los Angeles to track down the missing star. But it’s going to be difficult. Even those close to Echo have no idea where she is, and they’re upset that Goldie is looking for her.

    But in her adoration of the Echo, Goldie has spun a mythology in her own mind. She saw Echo as the only friend she had during her early teens. The boy-crazy girls in her class intimidated her with their talk about sex while Goldie was still playing with dolls. She tried to connect but it just didn’t happen despite the best efforts of her mother who planned slumber parties to help her make friends. And so, Goldie further immersed herself into Echo’s world—or the world she thought Echo inhabited.

    But Echo’s life was also difficult. Her mother, a washed-up television actress, is a depressive who has locked herself away in their house. To escape that environment, Echo opted to live with her movie star father who was always away on location hoping to become an Academy-award winning actor and never had time to talk on the phone, changed girlfriends monthly and really wasn’t that concerned with his daughter’s well-being. Echo had handlers that raised her and like Goldie she was terribly lonely with just one friend. Stardom couldn’t make up for not having the type of normal life most teenagers have.

    Goldie manipulates herself into the lives of people who know Goldie, including Jamie Blue. Accompanying an actor to his house, she eats a marijuana-laced cookie at the door and becomes completely stoned.

    “Don’t you know not to eat cookies at a stranger’s house without asking what’s in them?” her editor asks incredulously when Goldie calls to tell her as if that’s a basic fact everyone should know. And though Goldie wants to leave, her editor tells her that she’d better get in the hot tub with Jamie, even though he’s likely to be naked.

    Welcome to Hollywood.

    Goldie begins to get the idea of what Echo’s life was like as she continues to hunt for the missing star. The story cuts back and forth between 2000 and the 1990s, capturing the era precisely and what life was like for Echo as she became an Oscar-winning child star. In her pursuit of her story, Goldie realizes that it’s time to chart a new course in her own life.

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

    Book Club Kit.

  • “The Wildes” by Louis Bayard Book Signing

    “The Wildes” by Louis Bayard Book Signing

    On Thursday, Oct. 3rd at 6:30 PM,  Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye and Jackie and Me, will be in conversation with novelist Lori Rader-Day at The Book Stall. They will discuss Bayard’s new novel, The Wildes, a profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde’s wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright’s imprisonment, told against Victorian England and World War I. 

    This program is free, but registration is required. CLICK HERE to reserve your spot.

    Benjamin Dyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer’s English, says, “It requires a novelist of great audacity to dare to attempt to bring Oscar Wilde back to life, and it requires a novelist of great skill, to say nothing of wit, to manage the feat persuasively. Happily, Louis Bayard is both of those novelists.

    “As if that were not enough, The Wildes also presents us with a portrait of Oscar’s wife, Constance, that is little short of breathtaking in its vibrant depth, and a recounting of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Wildes that is eloquent and fully compassionate to all its characters, certainly to the Wildes’ sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and even to (almost astonishingly) that feckless instrument of destruction Lord Alfred Douglas. I read The Wildes in an improbable state of breathless suspense, so wonderfully well has Bayard presented us with real people pressing, often excruciatingly, toward fateful decisions. This is an intoxicatingly gorgeous novel.” 

    Louis Bayard is the critically acclaimed bestselling author of nine historical novels, including Jackie & Me and The Pale Blue Eye, which was adapted into the global Netflix release starring Christian Bale. His articles, reviews, and recaps have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, and the Paris Review. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

    Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award-nominated and Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is co-chair of the mystery readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. She served as the national president of Sisters in Crime in 2020.

  • Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

    Camino Ghosts by John Grisham

    “what could be better than a cursed island, some supernatural happenings, and the righting of centuries of social wrongs?”

    “It was a ship from Virginia, called Venus and it had around 400 slaves on board, packed like sardines,” bookstore owner Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann, a writer who is looking for a new book subject. “Well, it left Africa with 400 but not all made it. Many died at sea. The conditions on board were unimaginable, to say the least. Venus finally went down about a mile to sea near Cumberland Island. Since the slaves were chained and shackled, almost all of them drowned. A few clung to the wreckage and washed ashore in the storm on Dark Island, as it became known. Or  Dark Isle. It was unnamed in 1760. They were taken in by runaways from Georgia, and together they built a little community. Two hundred years went by, everybody died or moved away and now it is deserted.”

    One of the many facets of John Grisham’s enthralling fiction is his ability to take complex social issues and weave them into the fabric of his novels so that they make for a compelling read.

    In Camino Ghosts, the third book in the Camino series, he does it again with his compelling story of Lovely Jackson, an 80-year-old Black woman who is determined to save Dark Isle, the now deserted island once settled by both shipwrecked Africans kidnapped into slavery and escaped slaves. Lovely is the last of those who settled on the island, and she stopped living there when she was 15, only returning to tend to the cemetery where her ancestors are buried.

    For years no one wanted the island, an inaccessible and unfriendly barrier island of impenetrable jungle, poisonous snakes, and prowling panthers. But Hurricane Leo has changed the island’s topography and rabid land developers with politicians in their pocket see Dark Isle as the place to build a sprawling casino and resort complex.

    But Lovely is determined, believing she is the sole owner of Dark Isle and the protector of her ancestors’ history and graves. She also happens to be the only one who can lift the curse of her great, great, great grandmother, Nalla, a woman who was kidnapped from her village in Africa, taken away from her husband and only child, chained in the hold of a ship as it crossed the Atlantic, and raped repeatedly by the crew members. No white man who has stepped on the island has survived.

    Camino Ghosts is the third in the series about bookstore owner Bruce Cable, who likes fine wine, good food, pretty women (he and his wife, an importer of French antiques, have an open marriage), and books. But he is more than a bon vivant and purveyor of tomes, he likes to intervene in the island’s business to produce the best outcomes and is extremely supportive of his writers. Good at pulling strings, he is the force uniting the factions fighting the development and is also helping his former lover, Mercer Mann, a bestselling author with writer’s block, find her next subject. And what could be better than a cursed island, some supernatural happenings, and the righting of centuries of social wrongs?

    This article originally appeared in the New York Journal of Books and the Northwest Indiana Times.