Shelf Life

Tag: #books

  • Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody

    Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody

    Theodora “Teddy” Angstrom, a high school teacher dealing with the mysterious vanishing of her sister, Angie, ten years ago, is dealt another blow when her father drives his car off of a bridge on the anniversary of her disappearance.

    She is, at this point, the last in a long line of the socially elite Angstrom family, only now irreparably tarnished by her father’s affair and desertion of his family to marry Teddy’s mother, a loss of money, and cratering social status.

    This is how dire it is.

    “I discover in my digging that Dad gave up around Christmas,” says Teddy in Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody (Soho Crime). “The bills have been past due for months. The cable company gives me a hard time clearing the balance because my name is not on the account. Mom’s name is not even on the account. They finally let up when I explain that the account holder can’t come to the phone because he launched himself to the bottom of a river. I use my own savings to take care of the remainder.”

    . “The bills have been past due for months. The cable company gives me a hard time clearing the balance because my name is not on the account. Mom’s name is not even on the account. They finally let up when I explain that the account holder can’t come to the phone because he launched himself to the bottom of a river. I use my own savings to take care of the remainder.”

    Teddy is left to take care of her mother, a spendthrift who refuses to deal with the fact they have no money except for her teacher’s salary and to unwind exactly what her father was up to before he died.

    Besides that, she’s embarked on a love affair with the family’s former gardener, has to teach her students while she’s becoming emotionally undone, and finds herself being drawn into the Reddit discussions about what happened to her sister. She is, indeed, descending into a rabbit hole, one that has her chasing phantoms, making friends with people who are just as unstable as she is, and attempting to determine if her father was a bad guy or just someone so overcome with grief he couldn’t go on.

    As if that isn’t enough to manage, Teddy’s dog, the one the family got as a puppy before Angie suddenly disappeared one night, is pitifully dying. It’s enough to drive anyone into a downward spiral, and that’s where Teddy finds herself as she learns that she can’t trust anyone to tell her the truth. And so, it’s left for Teddy to be strong enough to determine what happened to both her father and sister—and to live with the truth.

    • Amazon Editors’ Pick
    • Indie Next Pick
    • Aardvark Book Club Selection
    • Powell’s Pick

    About the author:

    Kate Brody lives in Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Lit Hub, CrimeReads, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, and The Literary Review, among other publications. She holds an MFA from NYU. Rabbit Hole is her debut.

    This review initially appeared in the New York Journal of Books.

  • The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan

    The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan

    “I tell other people’s stories for a living.

    “You can call me a ghostwriter, though usually I just say I ‘freelance’ which is vague and boring enough to put an end to strangers’ polite inquiries . . . That’s a lie . . . About my supposed friends. I have lots of acquaintances, colleagues, and associates—an assortment of people pepper my existence so that if you saw me from the outside you think my life was perfectly full. There are times it seems full even to me. But the truth is I don’t have any friends.”

    Thus opens Kemper Donovan’s The Busy Body where we meet the ghostwriter who has just received the most plum assignment of her career, collaborating with Dorothy Gibson, who just lost the presidential election and has retreated to her lovely abode outside a small town in Maine. Readers might be forgiven for thinking of Hilary Clinton when meeting Dorothy and that’s because Donovan based her character on the former first lady. But she’s also an amalgam of other female politicians including Sarah Palin, Amy Klobuchar, and Susan Collins—according to the author.

    Told in first person, the ghostwriter alludes to a distant tragedy in her past as the reason for her walling herself off from emotional entanglements though we never learn the entire story—possibly Kemper is saving that for future books as it appears our protagonist will become involved in future mysteries.

    The ghostwriting project quickly gets put aside when a murder occurs at the Crystal Palace, a three-story glass maze of cavernous spaces and no stairs that serves as both an event center and hotel overlooking the Crystal River next door to Dorothy’s estate. The first murder victim is a not-so-successful actress, Vivian Davis who has improved her financial and social status in the world by marrying Walter, her plastic surgeon with cold blue eyes, and a hot young assistant with whom he is having an affair. Walter has rented the Crystal Palace and invited one of his medical school classmates, a successful West Coast entrepreneur, to get him to invest in a revolutionary new plastic surgery product he’s invented. The week doesn’t begin well and only gets worse when Vivian is found dead, after apparently downing too many sleeping pills and drowning in her bathtub.

    Shortly before her death, Dorothy and Vivian had a chance meeting, and the obligatory celebrity photo was taken by Vivian of the two of them. The shot goes viral after a toxicology report showed there were no drugs in her system. Vivian’s death is now labeled as a homicide and Dorothy, with her ghostwriter in tow, decides to do some sleuthing much to the ire of the local police.

    Kemper uses his acerbic sense of humor coupled with a fast-moving plot and an interesting assortment of characters, each with a reason to kill, to make The Busy Body, with its twists and turns, a witty and fun whodunit.

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

  • The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper

    The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper

    Always fascinated by photos, Lucy is eager to see her colleague’s snapshots from her honeymoon in the Maldives. But as Lucy slides through Ruth’s pictures, she pauses, surprised to see a familiar auburn-haired man. It’s Scott, her best friend’s husband but the woman with him isn’t his wife Cora nor is she someone that Lucy recognizes.

    “’How…” Lucy’s head felt thick. “What were their names?”

    “’Jason and Anna,” Ruth reeled off with pride writes Helen Cooper in her mystery novel The Couple in the Photo (G. P. Putnam’s Sons). “An interesting pair! Pretty drunk that night but then so were we!’ She laughed to herself as if at some remembered in-joke, then swiped onward, reeling through more palm trees and lapping waves while Lucy sat back in her chair with bile rising in her throat.”

    Unwilling or unable to believe she’s misidentified the man, Lucy begins prying to the consternation of Scott as well as her own husband, Adam, who has been best friends with Scott and Cora since college. When Adam married Lucy she became part of the tightly knit group that is so intertwined that their kids are best friends, and they restoring a weekend cottage they bought together. But Lucy has always felt that there were things she didn’t know from that time, a feeling she tried to dismiss because she had attended the same university as them.

    Her feelings of misapprehension darken into a much deeper concern than just whether Scott, who was supposedly in Japan on a business trip, was having an affair. She tries to get a copy of the photo from Ruth but finds she’s absent from work. Ruth is avoiding her but when finally pins her down says the photo was erased.

    Watching television, Lucy learns that a woman named Juliet Noor failed to return from a trip to the Maldives. Juliet, whose bludgeoned body turns up on the island, is the woman with Scott in the photo. Scott denies knowing her, but Lucy discovers that Juliet, a journalist, interviewed Scott for an article not long before. And there’s a connection between Juliet and Cora, Scott, and Adam. They all went to university together along with a man named Guy who mysteriously died back then.

    It all gets murkier when Ruth says she’s found the photo after all but when she sends it to Lucy, it’s a different couple. And when Lucy arrives at Ruth’s house to confront her, she learns that Ruth has been attacked and it’s not sure if she’ll survive.

    Sick with worry and fear, Lucy realizes that her relationship with her husband and best friends is based on lies, deceit, and possibly more than one murder. The truth is she doesn’t really know them at all. What she does know is that one or more of them may be willing to harm her to prevent the truth from coming out.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Helen Cooper is the author of The Other Guest and The Downstairs Neighbor. She is from Derby and has a MA in Creative Writing and a background in teaching English and Academic Writing. Her creative writing has been published in Mslexia and Writers’ Forum; she was shortlisted in the Bath Short Story Prize in 2014, and came third in the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize 2018.

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

  • THE FLAVOR THESAURUS: MORE FLAVORS

    THE FLAVOR THESAURUS: More Flavors: Plant-Led Pairings, Recipes, and Ideas for Cooks by Niki Segnit, the plant-focused follow-up to the global 2010 bestseller and beloved cookbook/ cooking guide THE FLAVOR THESAURUS: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes, and Ideas for Creative Cooks.

    THE FLAVOR THESAURUS: More Flavors just received a great review from Booklist which said, “This follow-up to Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus will please all foodies who want to nerd out on the tiniest details of nature’s edible delights and their pairing potential. The prose hums with poetic cadence in descriptions such as caramel roasted, flower and meadow, creamy fruity, zesty woody, nutty milky, and animalic, making it a whimsical read for those who simply want to be delighted by a discussion of food … Clever, unusual, and overwhelmingly intriguing, part two of The Flavor Thesaurus adds pizzazz to cookbook collections with its offbeat, choose-your-own-adventure look at the possibility of flavor pairings today.”

    Since its release in 2010, THE FLAVOR THESAURUS has become a favorite guide for culinary students, something of a “secret weapon” for chefs, including Yotam Ottelenghi, Samin Nosrat, Rukmini Iyer, Great British Bake Off finalists and winners John Waite, Frances Quinn, Ruby Tandoh, and more (see list below) and a handy tool for bartenders and serious home cooks for its hundreds of flavor combination pairings and inspired ingredients, as well as Segnit’s brilliant sense of humor and entertaining writing style.

    Segnit returns with anew treasury of pairings – this time with plant-led ingredients. More Flavors explores the character and tasting notes of chickpea, fennel, pomegranate, kale, lentil, miso, mustard, rye, pine nut, pistachio, poppy seed, sesame, turmeric, and wild rice, as well as offering new takes on favorites like almond, avocado, garlic, lemon, and parsley from the original, then expertly teaches readers how to pair them with ingredients that complement. With her celebrated blend of science, history, expertise, anecdotes, pop culture, and signature humor, Niki Segnit’s More Flavors is a modern classic of food writing, and a useful, engaging reference book for every cook’s kitchen.

    The book is divided into flavour themes including Meaty, Cheesy, Woodland and Floral Fruity. Within these sections it follows the form of Roget’s Thesaurus, listing 99 popular ingredients alphabetically, and for each one suggesting flavour matchings that range from the classic to the bizarre. You can expect to find traditional pairings such as pork & apple, lamb & apricot, and cucumber & dill; contemporary favourites like chocolate & chilli, and goat’s cheese & beetroot; and interesting but unlikely-sounding couples including black pudding & chocolate, lemon & beef, blueberry & mushroom, and watermelon & oyster.

    There are nearly a thousand entries in all, with 200 recipes and suggestions embedded in the text. Beautifully packaged, The Flavour Thesaurus is a fascinating, highly useful, and covetable, reference book for cooking –

    Segnit covers tried and true, yet creative pairings. A few sample combinations and excerpts that showcase the uniqueness of the book include:

    • White bean & garlic: Garlic is to the cannellini bean as Chanel No 5 was to Marilyn Monroe: it’s all it needs to wear.
    • Eggplant & Sesame: Eggplant bathes in sesame’s glory, whether in the form of oil, seeds or tahini. Paired with a milder tahini, cooked eggplant flesh can seem so sweet as to earn dessert status. It certainly exposes aubergine as a fruit.
    • Chive & Yogurt: A version of the sports-bar classic, sour cream and chive, for people who actually play sport. That said, for all its leaner, sharper taste, it still speaks loudly of the snack bowl, thanks to the mouth-filling combination of lactic tingle and sulphurous breath.
    • Mint & Date: Mint is never lovelier than on a date with a date.
    • Date & Coconut: Two palms meet in a round of applause. Mine would be for the glossy little coconut cakes, studded with date pieces, that my mother used to make. I liked them best before the batch cooled, when they were still sticky and tasted like coconut ice mashed with unset fudge.
    • Lemon & Fennel: As clean and uplifting as a piccolo duet.
    • Mustard & Turmeric: Turmeric is the wind beneath mustard’s wings. It’s responsible for the shade known as mustard yellow. How detectable the flavor of turmeric is in mustard depends on which seeds it is made with.
    • Lemon & Poppy seed: The flavor could have come from a newly discovered berry, the aromatic zing of citrus harmonized by the typically almond note in the poppy seed (apple, pear, apricot and cranberry all have seeds that taste almond-like). You might also consider poppy seed and lemon as a flavor combination for white chocolate, fresh pasta and pancakes.
    • Sweet Potato & Kidney Bean: A power couple in the world of desserts, unlikely as it sounds.

    Praise for The Flavor Thesarus: More Flavors

    ‘The book will inspire a new generation of home cooks, chefs and writers alike’ RUKMINI IYER

    ‘Matching ingredients isn’t a trivial matter and Niki Segnit is definitely the reigning champion’ YOTAM OTTOLENGHI

    About the Author:

    Niki Segnit is the author of Lateral Cooking and The Flavor Thesaurus, which won the André Simon Award for best food book, the Guild of Food Writers Award for best first book and was shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards. It has been translated into fifteen languages. Her columns, features, and reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Sunday Times. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

  • NPR: What to read in 2024: 11 books we’re looking forward to

    https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1221337678/what-to-read-2024

  • The Great American Recipe Cookbook: 100 Memorable Recipes to Celebrate the Diversity and Flavors of American Food Foreword by Pati Jinich

    “opens the door to what American cookery is—the coming together of cultures, identities, flavors, and tastes that celebrate what is probably one of the most diverse cuisines in the world.”

    This is the second edition of The Great American Recipe Cookbook, based on the popular eight-part PBS cooking show contest in which home cooks compete using their personal recipes. It’s a diversity culled from international cultures and traditions from around the world brought to America but also native fare. Think Sausage Pierogies with Barbecue Crema, Jerk Alfredo Pasta and Pan-Seared Scallops with a Side Salad, Chicken Hekka with Wontons, and Malasadas Two Ways.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYTVLYERhZE

    The cookbook, a collection of treasured recipes and the stories behind them are provided by an interesting lineup of cooks that includes a recipe writer, real estate developer, Midwestern soccer mom, and a semi-retired architect, homebuilder, and consultant. The diversity of their backgrounds—a first generation American born to two Guyanese immigrants, a mom who was raised in Maui, Hawai’i, a special education teacher from Cleveland whose culinary background is rooted in Southern cuisine, and a general counsel for a financial tech firm whose parents hail from Barbados—is reflected in their recipes.

    Designed in a large format with glossy pages, plenty of color photos, and easy to follow instructions, this is a book for all levels of tastes and cooking skills. Ingredients for the most part are easy to find and don’t involve an outlay of cash for something that will be used only once or twice. As an example, though Bahrat Chicken Thighs with Hummus and Flatbread may sound exotic and complicated, it is a very easy dish to make with the only unique ingredient being Libyan Baharat spice.

    But since that typically consists of black pepper, cardamom, cloves, cumin, nutmeg, coriander, and paprika, it can be used in other recipes as well. There are no unique ingredients in Mini Spinach B’jibin Pies, a recipe that harkens back to the home cook’s Syrian Jewish community. Basically, these are mini pies that can be made in four easy steps—the first one being to preheat the oven. All this makes it easy for home chefs to try new cuisines without a lot of complicated ingredients and equipment.

    With a foreword by cookbook author Pati Jinich, whose three-time James Beard award-winning and Emmy nominated TV series “Pati’s Mexican Table” is now in its 12th season, the book goes beyond the typical concept of American cookery and delves into what we all bring to the table.

    “The phrase “American food’ often brings to mind certain classic dishes: a fried chicken recipe served up at a summer picnic or a honey-glazed ham gracing the table at the holidays,” reads the book’s introduction. “And those meals are delicious ones to celebrate, especially when we can share them with the people we love. But those quintessentially ‘American’ foods represent only a narrow sliver of what our country’s cuisine really is. We are one nation with more than one million kitchens, each with its own heritage, culture, and community—making American food an amazing mix of different culinary traditions that bring together flavors from around the country and beyond.”

    In all, The Great American Recipe Cookbook (published by Ben Bella Books) opens the door to what American cookery is—the coming together of cultures, identities, flavors, and tastes that celebrate what is probably one of the most diverse cuisines in the world.

    Croque Madame Mini Quiches and Dijon Béchamel

    • Croque madame mini quiches
    • All-purpose flour, for dusting
    • 1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
    • 1 tablespoon olive oil or unsalted butter
    • ½ small sweet onion, diced
    • 1 garlic clove, grated
    • 6 large eggs
    • ¾ cup heavy cream, divided
    • ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
    • Salt and ground black pepper to taste
    • 4 ounces ham, diced
    • 1½ cups shredded Gruyère cheese
    • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
    • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
    • Dijon béchamel
    • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
    • 1 small garlic clove, grated
    • 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
    • ¾ cup whole milk
    • ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
    • 1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
    • Salt and pepper to taste
    1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.
    2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the puff pastry sheet to about ¼ inch thick. Cut it into 9 squares. Press the pastry squares into the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 5 minutes.
    3. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until the garlic is soft, about 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.
    4. In a small bowl, make an egg wash by whisking together 2 of the eggs and 2 tablespoons of the cream.
    5. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining 4 eggs and remaining cream until well blended. Add the nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.
    6. Fill each of the pastry-lined muffin cups with equal amounts of the ham, cheese, cooked onion and garlic, thyme, and chives, then pour over the egg and cream mixture. Brush the edges of the dough with the egg wash. Bake for 15–18 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and the egg mixture is set. Let cool slightly before serving.
    7. While the mini quiches bake, make the Dijon béchamel. In a small skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Whisk in the flour to make a roux. Cook the roux for several minutes, stirring constantly, until it takes on a light brown color. Slowly add the milk, whisking constantly, until you have a thickened and smooth sauce. Add the nutmeg and Dijon mustard and stir to fully incorporate. Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper as needed.
    8. Pour the béchamel over the mini quiches and serve with a fruit salad.
    9. Recipe courtesy of The Great American Recipe

    Cassava Pone

    • 3 medium to large cassavas (about 4 pounds), peeled and cut into thirds
    • 2 cups finely shredded grated coconut
    • 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
    • 1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk
    • 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
    • 1 tablespoon freshly grated nutmeg
    • 2 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper
    • 1 teaspoon salt
    • 3 large eggs
    • 1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
    • ½ cup white sugar
    • ½ cup packed light brown sugar

    Directions

    1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9 × 9) baking pans or 1 (13 × 9) baking pan.
    2. Finely grate the cassavas, either by hand with a box grater or in a food processor with a grating disk. (If you’re using a food processor, you may need to cut the cassavas into pieces to fit the food processor tube.)
    3. With a clean tea towel, squeeze the excess liquid from the grated cassava and transfer it to a bowl. Add the shredded coconut, condensed milk, coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, and stir to combine.
    4. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, evaporated milk, and sugars until well blended.
    5. Slowly stream the egg mixture into the cassava mixture and stir to combine.
    6. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish(es) and spread it out evenly with a rubber spatula.
    7. Bake until the edges are set and golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25–30 minutes. Let the pone cool and set for 10 minutes before slicing.

    Mini Spinach B’jíbín Pies

    Recipe courtesy of The Great American Recipe

    • 2 cups all-purpose flour
    • 2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
    • 1 teaspoon sugar
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
    • ¼ cup cold water
    • 1 onion, chopped
    • 4 large eggs
    • 2 pounds frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
    • ½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
    • ½ cup ricotta cheese
    • ½ cup crumbled feta cheese
    • ½ cup shredded Muenster cheese
    • ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
    • 1 teaspoon chicken consommé powder
    • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
    • ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
    • Pinch cayenne pepper

    Directions

    1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
    2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, 1 teaspoon of the salt, the sugar, and baking powder. Mix in ½ cup of the oil and the cold water until uniform in texture. Divide the dough into 12 equal balls. Place a dough ball in each prepared muffin cup. Press the dough into the bottom and up the sides to form a mini crust.
    3. In a small skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes.
    4. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs together. Add the spinach, cooked onion, all the cheeses, consommé powder, garlic powder, remaining 1 teaspoon salt, the black pepper, and cayenne and mix thoroughly. Divide the spinach mixture equally into the mini crusts. Bake for 30–40 minutes, until cooked through. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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

  • We Lie Here: A Return Home Leads to Toxic Family Secrets

    We Lie Here: A Return Home Leads to Toxic Family Secrets

    Nominated for the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Mystery/Thriller, Rachel Howzell Hall’s We Lie Here (Thomas & Mercer) is the ultimate in twisty family secrets, murders, long standing grudges, and buried–both literally and figuratively–truths.

    In this book, Hall, the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things, tells the story of Yara Gibson, a L.A. screenwriter who returns to the small desert town of La Paz to help plan a family event. Yara has a lot of reservations about the trip and as her time at home progresses she becomes even more wary of what’s going on below the surface of what seems like a typical middle class family. She’s contacted by a woman claiming to be her cousin Felicia who leaves Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. Felicia has secrets to reveal about the family and the two agree to meet but then Fellicia’s body is discovered, setting Yara off on a quest to uncover what the family has spent years to hide.

    But there’s more going on as well. Files in the basement of the cabin refer back to a tragedy that happened years ago. And as she investigates her family’s past and how it impacts her, Yara becomes concerned she’s losing her focus when things go missing including the medicine necessary to keep her from having an asthma attack. Or is there something more insidious going on?

    Hall has again written a tightly woven mystery, one that keeps a reader in their seat, turning the pages to find out how it ends. Also available on CD and Audible.

  • A Sinister Revenge: A Victorian Mystery by Deanna Raybourn

    A Sinister Revenge: A Victorian Mystery by Deanna Raybourn

    Deanna Raybourn takes us back to Victorian times in “A Sinister Revenge” (Penguin Random House), the latest novel in her Veronica Speedwell series. Speedwell, a scientist, lepidopterist or butterfly collector, and lady adventurer, has traveled to Bavaria in search of Revelstoke “Stoker” Templeton-Vane (called Stoker for short), her lover and scientific partner, who understandably is upset to learn that her husband who she presumed dead, is still very much alive. Upon finding out the news, he leaves the country and now seems to have completely disappeared. Traveling with Speedwell is Stoker’s brother, Viscount Tiberius Templeton-Vane, and the two, while dining at a Bavarian inn and hearing the landlord talk about a disagreeable encounter he had with a wolf-like man believe they may have found Stoker.

    But there’s more going on than just a missing lover and brother. Tiberius has received death threats tied to an incident that occurred years ago and he needs his brother’s help in unraveling the mystery in order to save his life.

    Raybourn, a New York Times bestselling author and sixth generation Texan, knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer. Influenced by such women writers as Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Agatha Christie, and even Jane Austen, she describes her books as mysteries with enough romance to keep readers who like both genres happy.

    “There was never a time when I didn’t make up stories,” she says, adding that she remembers being thrilled when she finally learned how to print so she could get them out of her head. There was also the time where she missed out on entire school lesson because she was busy writing a story about Maria Antoinette.

    That might explain why she is a prolific author, having written not only eight Speedwell novels but also the Lady Julia Grey series, which are also historical fiction. Besides that she has stand alone novels including last year’s “Killers of a Certain Age” about a band of female assassins who are over 60.

    Her Speedwell character is like many of the resolute women found in the pages of history and is inspired in part by Margaret Fountaine, a Victorian era lepidopterist who Raybourn says traveled the world collecting both butterflies and lovers. Both Fountaine and Speedwell are nothing like what people expect Victorian to be like says Raybourn.

    “Fountaine was dynamic and intriguing,” she says.  “She was my inspiration for Veronica.”

    This article originally appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.

  • A mysterious inheritance leads to danger in Kate White’s latest book: “Between Two Strangers”

    A mysterious inheritance leads to danger in Kate White’s latest book: “Between Two Strangers”

    For the last 12 years, Skyler Moore has struggled with a crippling sense of guilt and an inability to be around large groups. An artist who specializes in collages, her work is about to be displayed in a prestigious art gallery and, hopefully, it will help her shaky finances as she wants to become pregnant through in vitro before her biological clock runs out.

    But hearing she may have to speak to the large crowd expected at the gallery greatly increases her social anxiety. Add to that, she still is dealing with her mother who blames Skyler for what happened to Chloe, her younger half-sister 12 years ago after they became separated at a party.

    Told Chloe had left, Skyler returned to the hotel where she was staying and, unusual for her, indulged in a one night stand with Christopher Whaley, an older, handsome—and married–man she just met. And so sets the stage for Kate White’s newest mystery, “Between Two Strangers.”

    Her half-sister never left the party, her body was found days later at the bottom of a hill on the property. As for Whaley, he and Skyler never meet again but his lawyer contacts her a few nights before her gallery show. Whaley has recently died and left her several million dollars much to the anger of his family. Soon she is being harassed and threatened, her apartment broken into, and her career as an artist stymied when her collages, on display at the gallery are defaced. Skyler, unsure of herself as it is, must face the threats and accusations made against her by his family.

    White, the author of 17 novels, was formerly the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and uses her knowledge of New York and the New York art scene to create a fast paced novel that takes us into that world when Skyler works on a collage that she hopes will help unlock the secret of her half-sister’s death.

    I ask White, during a long phone conversation, how she was able to write best selling novels and work as editor-in-chief of an extremely popular woman’s magazine, That, in itself, must surely have been a full-time job.

    “I was definitely burning the candle at both ends,” she says, adding that when she first got the call to take over the job she had completed four chapters of her first foray into mystery writing. “I put those aside.”

    Uber-successful at editing—she took Cosmo to the number one best seller of single issue copies (the magazine was famous for its covers and inspired advice to women), selling two million copies a month.

    “I loved the job, my team, the magazine,” says White.

    But she also loved mysteries, having become addicted to the Nancy Drew mystery series at age 12. And so despite being married with two children and working as editor-in-chief, she returned to the mystery novel she was writing.

    When I ask where she gets her ideas, White says from many places. She keeps a file of news clippings and notes. A plot, which she is meticulously outlined, can come from overhearing a conversation on an elevator. Yes, she says. She eavesdrops.

    After 14 years at the helm of Cosmo (how many other magazines have a nickname?), White decided to focus on writing full-time. Now she spends part of the year in Uruguay where she and her husband have a place in a small beach town where she enjoys the lavender sunsets, the food and being warm in the winter.

    It is also the perfect place for White to write and she is already at work on her next mystery.

    For more information on White including upcoming author events, visit her website katewhite.com

    This article previously appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.

  • Book: “What Never Happened” by Award Winning Mystery Writer Rachel Howzell Hall

    Book: “What Never Happened” by Award Winning Mystery Writer Rachel Howzell Hall

    Twenty years ago, Colette “Coco” Weber survived the mass murder of her father, mother, and brother on idyllic Catalina Island off the coast of California. The man accused of the murder is now in prison and Coco, who moved away, married, and is now separated from her husband, has returned to the island hoping to jumpstart her life again.

    But Catalina, so pretty with its colorful homes and eclectic boutiques and restaurants, has undercurrents as well. Sure some things haven’t changed. Her Aunt Gwen, who became the caretaker of Coco after the murders, still resents her and is hiding secrets possibly about the ownership of the house where she lives. At first it seems lucky that Coco is still best friends with the owners of the family run island newspapers who hire her to write obituaries—a special skill that Coco excels in. But rampant Realtors are buying up the quaint cottages that line the hilly streets of the island, turning out owners and repricing them at astronomical fees. Catalina, it turns out, may not be the place soon for anyone but the very wealthy.

    That certainly includes Gwen, a former house and hotel cleaner with a penchant for stealing both baubles and expensive items from the places she cleans. It’s in a small part, a payback for all the scorn people in her position endure particularly those of color. But it’s also part of Gwen’s sneaky nature and her disdain for most people including her niece.

    Before long Coco is involved with a handsome rich guy who works at the paper as a lark. His parents make enough money that he really can just dabble in whatever interests him. Soon, though, Coco suspects him of lying to her about his whereabouts at certain times when he goes radio silence so to speak and doesn’t answer his cell phone. And why has he chosen Coco when there are all these luscious beauty queen types in his past.

    “As for her choice of jobs, her family’s obituaries were not special and didn’t capture who she knew they were. And now she has a chance to do for others what she wished had happened for her,” says Rachel Howzell Hall, an award-winning mystery writer about her latest standalone novel, “What Never Happened.” “This is also a story about a woman who’s trying to figure out where she belongs.”

    Determining where she belongs also means figuring out who to trust and as she becomes immersed into island life during the isolated time of Covid, she soon learns that’s not easy to do. One big question is who is sending her threatening obituaries—her own—outlining the day of her death. It turns out there are many secrets and as she writes obituaries, Coco notices a stunning similarity in the deaths of many elderly women. They have refused to sell their homes which now are worth small fortunes. But unfortunately, it’s hard to get someone to believe her.

    “Coco has been stunted in her growth and her ability to figure people out—she lost her parents during the time when they should have been guiding her and her aunt begrudges having to take care of her,” says Hall, who lives in Los Angeles and has visited the island on field trips with her daughter and also conducted extensive research that goes beyond the tourist brochures. “The way her family was taken away from her left her not knowing who she can trust and that becomes even more so with all that is happening on the island. And then she learns that this person she thought—and the law thought—killed her family, did not do it.”

    Determined to find answers, Coco takes chances in trying to solve the mysteries swirling around her. She knows that is the only way she can remain on the island and survive.

    Follow Rachel Howzell Hall at rachelhowzell.com

    This book review originally appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.