“For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
—Rudyard Kipling, from the poem “The Female of the Species.”
“Why is that we’re always so shocked when women commit violent crimes, in particular, the crime of murder? Perhaps we’re more accustomed to seeing men as the aggressors when it comes to murder, not women. Yet some of history’s most notorious killers have been women. From Countess Erzsebet Bathory, Delphine LaLaurie, Amelia Dyer, Lizzie Borden, and Belle Gunness . . . it often seems impossible to keep up.”
True crime writer Mitzi Szereto is the editor of Women Who Murder: An International Collection of Deadly True Tales(Mango Publishing), a compendium of murderous women written by internationally famous writers such as horror writer Anthony Ferguson, who lives in Australia; Tom Larson, an American mystery writer; and Cathy Pickens, an attorney who writes both true crime and the Blue Ridge Mountain Cozy Mysteries.
The tales they tell, some well-known such as “Ruth Snyder: The Original Femme Fatale” by Claran Conliffe and “On the Courtroom Steps: The Trial of Susan Smith” by Picken and others much more obscure but no less fascinating like “Mona Fandey: The Malaysian Murderer” by Chang Shih Yen and “Anno Biesto, Anno Funesto” by Alish Holland about the brutal slaying of John Charles on Leap Year Day in 2000 in New South Wales, give lie to the saying that women are the gentler sex. Indeed, these women can kill just as violently and wantonly as any man.
In her introduction, Szereto points out that men and women do kill differently and often for different reasons. Poison, at least in the past, often was the murder weapon of choice of women—easier to administer than creeping up and stabbing someone and so much tidier—no blood to clean up. They also kill less frequently and are typically not in it for the thrill of the kill like many male serial killers. Szereto says that many women, particularly those labeled as Black Widows, do so for the money, though that’s not the only reason. Sometimes it’s the only way to get rid of a threatening boyfriend or spouse or because of jealousy, love, and hate.
But kill they do. And in this fascinating read, we learn about 14 women who did.
A travel guide for the intellectually curious, Tony Burton’sWestern Mexico: A Traveler’s Treasury provides an insider’s entry to this extraordinary region of Mexico. The book, published by Sombrero Press and now in its fourth edition is less about logistics and instead focuses on the myriad of reasons–historical, ecological, cultural, and/or scenic–that make each place featured in this well-written and well-researched book both special and worth visiting.
Burton, an award-winning travel writer, educator, and ecotourism specialist, who was born in the United Kingdom and has an M.A. in geography from the University of Cambridge and a teaching qualification from the University of London, moved to Mexico in 1979 and subsequently was granted Mexican citizenship, looks for the road less traveled.
And in this book, he encourages us to explore the smaller, lesser known community with their many local customs, seasonal celebrations, sites, and events, places that, in his words, “offer a glimpse of the Mexico behind the mask; they are places where Mexico has retained her ancient culture and her ancient traditions.”
Providing a mix of interests, Burton opens the doors, so to speak, to such historical sites as Zacatecas,Lagos de Moreno and San Blas; artistic colonies like Ajijic; and lakeside communities including Chapala and Pátzcuaro.
Besides that there are ecological wonders, such as Manantlán, the monarch butterflies, the old mining towns of Angangueo and Bolaños, coastal communities like Barra de Navidad and Puerto Vallarta, Angahuan and other Indian villages, and a host of others. He delves into Pueblos Mágicos, designated as Magic Towns by the federal government in recognition of their cultural, historical, and/or ecological significance, their nearness to major cities, and the facilities they offer visitors.
This is a travel guide but of the most intimate kind. We drive with Burton along the lovely road to Tamazula, settled from pre-Columbian times, conquered by the Spanish in 1524, and a vital silver mining town and hacienda center until the mines were worked out by the end of the 18th century. As for its name, well, interestingly enough, it translates to “place of frogs.”
Where to stay when there? Burton recommends Hotel Real de la Loma with its spacious and comfortable rooms and pool and two person tubs in the room filled from a hot-water spring at the foot of a hill. The views from the hotel are of the Tamazula River and its valley made green with sugar-cane. A good time to go for many is during the two-week Our Lady of Sagrario festival.
We learn that Mazamitla is “one of the prettiest towns in all Jalisco. It is a graceful, charming town of cobblestone streets, adobe walls, wooden balconies, old doorways and red-tile roofs, one of Mexico’s Magic Towns. Among its many attractions are the fresh air and scenic beauty of the surrounding countryside, some fine restaurants specializing in Mexican food, and the chance to shop for fresh cream, cheese, and home-made preserves. As befits a mountain town, its inhabitants also make lovely woolen sweaters and ponchos, for sale in the local shops.”
Burton, who has lived in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Jocotepec, has traveled widely, leading educational excursions and specialist ecological tourism groups to both well-known areas such as the Yucatán and Copper Canyon as well as little-known ones like Manantlán and Tingambato. At the former, at the Manantlán Biosphere Reserve visitors can experience the astonishing diversity of plant and animal life found in a cloud forest, one of the rarest types of vegetation anywhere in the world. In the latter, located near the major archaeological site of Tinganio, is one of the few sites in Western Mexico where there are genuine pyramids.
Larger than the previous editions there are dozens of new destinations and each chapter contains new material, updated travel directions, and redrawn maps.
Divided into parts, one and two are within three hours of driving time from either Guadalajara (Mexico’s second city) or nearby Lake Chapala, a popular retirement center for Americans and Canadians making them perfect for day trippers.
Parts 4 to 9 are longer journeys such as the trip to Jungapeo, where director John Huston filmed scenes from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre starring Humphrey Bogart. Here, in this small village, you can stay at Agua Blanca Canyon Resort which dates back to the 1940s. According to Burton, it is a charming spa-hotel with just 20 rooms arranged in the Purépecha Indian style around three sides of the greenest lawn in Mexico. Its pools and lawns overlook the deeply carved valley of the River Tuxpan.
“Many butterfly visitors, after the cool and dusty atmosphere in the fir forests want nothing more than a long soak in a warm tub and this is the ideal place,” he writes.
And, of course, there are the Monarch butterflies. Every winter, some one hundred million monarch butterflies fly into Mexico from the U.S. and Canada. On arrival they congregate in a dozen localities high in the temperate pine and fir forests of the state of Michoacán.
For me, a definite-not-to-be-missed is Zitácuaro, where my culinary hero Diana Kennedy lived. Famous for her cookbooks on Mexican cuisine, she made her home outside of Zitácuaro. And here again, is how deep Burton drills down into his destinations. Kennedy lived near the Rancho San Cayetano, a small, exclusive hotel on the road towards Huetamo and the Del Bosque reservoir.
“The San Cayetano’s charm lies not only in its comfortable rooms but also in its first rate cuisine,” he writes, asking if there could be a better recommendation for the food served there than the fact that Diana Kennedy regularly brought friends to dine in the hotel?
For aficionados of Mexican food, there are several outstanding restaurants to put on the list of where to go.
“Neither of my two favorites is well known to tourists, hence their inclusion here,” writes Burton. “Next to the gas station in Pátzcuaro, where the highway from Morelia and Quiroga enters the town, is the Camino Real restaurant where the Tarascan soup, a local specialty which is a bean-based version of tortilla soup, has to be tasted to be believed. Whatever you choose in this unpretentious restaurant, you will not be disappointed,” he writes. “The Camino Real has a sister restaurant, the Real del Cobre, in Santa Clara del Cobre.
My other favorite is an hour’s drive away, in the unpretentious town of Tacámbaro. Near the entrance to the town is the Hotel-Restaurant El Molino (The Mill), housed in a museum-piece nineteenth century flour mill, complete with grinding wheels. Simply and artistically decorated and furnished, this hotel-restaurant’s fixed-price comida features slightly finer cuisine than that of the Camino Real, with more subtle sauces and a more varied menu.”
Whether your interests are in art, architecture and/or archaeology; fiestas and folklore; unusual sights and natural wonders, or in Indian villages and indigenous handicrafts, Burton’s book is your guide to Western Mexico’s many hidden treasures.
Burton, author of many books about Mexico includingIf Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants; Lake Chapala: A Postcard History; and Mexican Kaleidoscope: Myths, mysteries and mystique, is currently editor-in-chief of MexConnect, Mexico’s top English-language online magazine. He says the inspiration for writing this book came about with the “realization that it was impossible for me to personally introduce readers to many of the places and things I consider most rewarding to find and appreciate. Of the truly spectacular, I have yet to find anyone who ever forgets the magic of visiting the Monarch Butterflies in one of their overwintering sites. By sheer good fortune, I happened upon them the first time in 1980, several years before their locations became widely known or any organized tourist excursions to them had begun.”
Burton encourages opening up to new places and experiences.
“With an open mind ‘gems’ can be found everywhere in Western Mexico,” says Burton. “My greatest hope is that my book encourages readers to explore and find their own hidden gems.”
“This book is a compelling read as Angus is a clear, concise, and talented writer who makes even small facets of long ago lives fascinating.”
The irony of Henry VIII is acute. The once dashing heroic young man who succumbed to gluttony, cruelty, and, though it was done in a state-sanctioned manner, the murder of unwanted wives in hopes he could finally sire an heir, had at least one and most likely more illegitimate sons. But Edward, born of his third wife, Jane Seymour, who gained the throne with the beheading of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was sickly and would die after a short stint as king.
And thus, first Henry’s legitimate daughter Mary, to be soon known as Bloody Mary because of her religious fanaticism, and then Elizabeth would come to rule. There is more irony here as well. Mary was the daughter of Henry and his first wife, Katharine of Aragon, who was cast aside so that he could marry Anne. Elizabeth 1 was born of that short-lived union. Both Mary and Elizabeth’s early childhoods were filled with rejections and loss of status. Things grew more precarious after her mother’s death. Her father was off with his next wife—there would be six all together and Mary, after Edward’s death, saw her half-sister, a Protestant to boot, as a rival for the throne. It was as dysfunctional of a family as any on a Jerry Springer show.
But what went on between these two siblings isn’t the only story regarding Henry’s children. And Caroline Angus, author of Henry VIII’s Children has written an immensely readable history of Henry’s other children, their mothers, and how they fit into Tudor society.
“The tales of King Henry VIII’s illegitimate children are stories made form precious few recorded clues, plus memory, slander, gossip, and conjecture,” writes Angus. “But within the dramatic lives of the Tudor dynasty, almost anything is possible.”
It was while Henry was married to his first wife, Katharine of Aragon, the widow of his brother Arthur, who was pregnant with his child, that he impregnated Bessie Blount. Still in her teens, Blount was in the third tier of Katharine’s ladies-in-waiting, not noble or wealthy enough to be in the first or second ranks but better than the fourth tier. Her job was to fetch and hold items for the queen and deliver messages. For that, she received her own room and servant and was granted permission to keep pets in the royal household.
Bessie wouldn’t be the first of the Queen’s ladies that Henry bedded. He had already had an affair with at least one and would embark relations with several others. Katharine’s lost her child, much to the chagrin of the kin who was tired of his wife’s inability to give him a son. Bessie did much better and Henry was delighted with their son who was called Henry Fitzroy. The term Fitzroy is French word meaning “son of a king” and was used by the English to denote an illegitimate child. Henry bestowed upon titles and lands upon little Henry while Katherine just had to smile and bear it. That’s what women had to put up with in those days.
Angus’ research is so extensive that readers even learn what Fitzroy ate for his afternoon meal. The first course was pottage, boiled beef, mutton, geese, capons, veal, and custard. If that sounds like a lot consider the second course consisted of lamb or kid, rabbits, pigeons, wildfowl, a tart or baked meat, fruits, and four gallons of ale and two pitchers of wine. Now, of course, some of that was probably for those who were dining with him. Fitzroy’s dinner meal was equally heavy and included 12 sweet desserts.
In another touch of irony, after Henry divorced Katharine, he could have made Fitzroy legitimate by marrying Bessie Blount whose husband had just died. But he was so entranced by Anne Boleyn that he married her instead, believing she would give him a son. She didn’t and lost her head.
There were other illegitimate children scattered around, probably more than history reveals. Anne’s sister Mary oldest son and daughter, Catherine and Henry Carey, were said to be Henry’s children. So was Ethelreda Malte, whose mother was a laundress. John Perrot claimed he was the son of Henry. And there were rumors Henry was the father of Thomas Stuckley, Richard Edwardes, and Henry Lee.
This book is a compelling read as Angus is a clear, concise, and talented writer who makes even small facets of long ago lives fascinating.
22nd-STRAIGHT YEAR: EXCLUSIVE NON-FICTION BOOK COVERAGEON BOOK TV ON C-SPAN2
C-SPAN’s Book TV has provided live, in-depth, uninterrupted coverage of the National Book Festival since it began. Now, after several years of virtual coverage because of the pandemic, Book TV is back in person, once again providing signature LIVE gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Festival’s non-fiction authors.
“As we celebrate this year’s National Book Festival with the theme ‘Books Bring Us Together,’ the Library of Congress’ partnership with C-SPAN’s Book TV will bring together readers across the country, allowing them to enjoy our exciting lineup of authors. We’re proud to join with C-SPAN to extend the reach of the Library of Congress National Book Festival once again so that book lovers from coast to coast can experience this celebration of reading,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.
Among the guests and authors the nationwide Book TV audience will see and hear from on September 3, 2022, (9:30amET-5:30pmET):
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden
David Maraniss, “Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe”
Conversation on women leaders of the civil rights movement with authors Tomiko Brown-Nagin (“Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley”) and Kate Clifford Larson (“Walk With Me: Fannie Lou Hamer”). Moderated by Neda Ulaby.
Clint Smith, “How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America”
Conversation on creating community in America with authors Gal Beckerman (“The Quiet Before) and Kathryn Judge (“Direct”). Moderated by Sewell Chan.
Conversation on conspiracies in America with authors Brendan McConville (“The Brethren”) and Elizabeth Williamson (“Sandy Hook”). Moderated by Roswell Encina.
Jack Davis, “The Bald Eagle: The Improbably Journey of America’s Bird”
Conversation on climate change with authorsJuli Berwald (“Life on the Rocks”) and Edith Widder (“Below the Edge of Darkness”). Moderated by Liz Neeley.
Conversation on the modern essay in the age of speed with Morten Høi Jensen (“The Fiction That Dare Not Speak Its Name”), Shawn McCreesh (“The Hatboro Blues”) and Becca Rothfeld (“Sanctimony Literature”) .Moderated by Celeste Marcus.
Will Bunch. “After the Ivory Tower Falls.”
In partnership with the Library of Congress, C-SPAN has been part of the National Book Festival from the first one, September 8, 2001. Book TV’s LIVE coverage has taken the C-SPAN2 audience to the Festival’s various venues – U.S. Capitol grounds, a vast tent city on the National Mall (2002-2013), expo-style event in the Washington Convention Center (2014-2019), virtual (2020-2021), and now back to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Wherever the National Book Festival goes, Book TV is there. Over the past 21 years, Book TV has featured hundreds of non-fiction authors and guests, including Laura Bush, David McCullough, Buzz Aldrin, Salman Rushdie, Carla Hayden, Julie & David Eisenhower, Kinky Friedman, David Rubenstein, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Madeleine Albright, to name a few.
Book TV doesn’t limit itself to covering the National Book Festival. A partial list of other book festivals from around the country which Book TV covers includes: the Miami Book Fair, the Mississippi Book Festival, the Tucson Book Festival, the Southern Festival of Books, the Wisconsin Book Festival, the Texas Book Festival, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and many more.
If non-fiction books are your thing, C-SPAN is your place.
About Book TV:
Book TV – Sundays on C-SPAN2 – is the only television service dedicated to nonfiction books. Book TV features programming on a rich variety of topics, such as history, biography, politics, current events, the media and more. Watch author interviews, readings and coverage of the nation’s largest book fairs. Every Sunday on C-SPAN2 starting 8am ET or online anytime at booktv.org . Use that website as well to connect with Book TV via social media and email newsletter.
About C-SPAN:
C-SPAN, the public affairs network providing Americans with unfiltered access to congressional proceedings, was created in 1979 as a public service by the cable television industry and is now funded through fees paid by cable and satellite companies that provide C-SPAN programming. C-SPAN connects with millions of Americans through its three commercial-free TV networks, C-SPAN Radio, C-SPAN Podcasts, the C-SPAN Now app, C-SPAN.org and various social media platforms. The network’s video-rich website contains over 270,000 hours of searchable and shareable content. Engage with C-SPAN on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and stay connected through weekly and daily newsletters.
A very anxious dog teaches a couple how love stretches our capacity for compassion and caring.
Edie first exhibited signs of severe anxiety at her first puppy social at the San Francisco SPCA. Unlike the previous two dogs Meredith May had owned, whom she describes as typical goofy, playful, curious, undaunted puppies from Golden Retriever Central Casting, Edie was absolutely terrified of the noise, the lights, the other dogs, the people — all the movement happening in a 360-degree circle around her.
“Her hyper-reactivity set off her fight-or-flight response, so that she ran from practically anything that moved — traffic, pedestrians, children, bicycles, motorcycles, garage doors, plastic bags floating on the wind,” said May, who writes about her experiences in her new book “Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to be Brave” (Park Row Books 2022; $24.99 Amazon price).
May, an award winning journalist and fifth generation beekeeper who lives in San Francisco with her wife Jenn, had her own issues. The daughter of a deeply depressed mother, she spent years without getting out of bed and sought refuge in reading, a favorite stuffed animal that she took to college, hiding in small spaces and raising bees.
But she and Jenn didn’t return the adorable puppy, who was only calm and happy when indoors and away from stimulation.
“What this meant for me and Jenn was that one of us had to be with her at all times, indoors, there to protect her,” said May. “Which brought our carefree lives to a standstill and shut us out of the vibrant San Francisco dog culture. Think: dog rooftop cocktail parties, Corgi-con at the beach, dog cafes, pet parades and dog hikes that we had enjoyed with our other dogs.”
Edie also added stress to their relationship in other ways as they kept trying to “fix” her, transforming her into the dog they wanted her to be.
”Jenn, who had never raised a puppy before, kept asking me when Edie would grow out of it, and I was foolishly trying every remedy possible to make that happen so we could have the dog that was going to deepen our relationship and bring us nonstop laughter and joy.”
This might have gone on for a long time, but May fortunately met a brilliant veterinarian who had experience with anxious dogs. The vet shared a story about a mother of an anxious child. To get the daughter ready to go snorkeling in Hawaii, the mother started by having her learn to wear a snorkel and then use it, first in the bathtub and then in the pool.
“Only then, after the baby steps, could the family go to Hawaii and snorkel without any meltdowns,” May said. “This vet’s simple story made me realize that Edie wasn’t here for my entertainment, she was here for me to be her protector. What I had been resisting this whole time was being pushed into a maternal role with Edie because deep down I didn’t think I’d ever make a good a mother to human or animal, because I’d been raised without my father in the home and by a mother who often complained openly about how motherhood shackled her. They say dogs come along at the precise moment you need to evolve in a certain way, and for me the therapeutic part of Edie is unearthing a buried maternal instinct and discovering that it’s not a subtraction of my life, but an enhancement to keep this dog alive and happy. The best thing in the world is when Edie runs to me when she’s scared. She no longer runs blindly in any direction — she knows I’m home base.”
What would you like readers to take away from your book besides a fascinating and heartfelt read, I asked May?
“I hope readers learn that all dogs are different, and all have deep emotions that need tending,” she said. “I did not know how to read canine body language until Edie forced me to research it, and now I cringe at all that I didn’t understand with my other two dogs. I hope readers sympathize with my mistakes in the story. It took a neurotic dog to teach me that I was neurotic about being perfect, about having control, and that I was the one who needed to change, not Edie.”
For more information about May and her virtual book signings, visit meredithamay.net.
A mordant, linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.
A funny, poignant play that deftly transposes “Hamlet” to a family barbecue in the American South to grapple with questions of identity, kinship, responsibility, and honesty.
A gripping account of Indigenous justice in early America, and how the aftermath of a settler’s murder of a Native American man led to the oldest continuously recognized treaty in the United States.
An original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think about the U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.
A searing first-person illustrated account of an artist’s life during the 1950s and 1960s in an unreconstructed corner of the deep South–an account of abuse, endurance, imagination, and aesthetic transformation.
A virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.
An affecting, deeply reported account of a girl who comes of age during New York City’s homeless crisis–a portrait of resilience amid institutional failure that successfully merges literary narrative with policy analysis.
Chicago author Alex Kotlowitz has always been willing to tackle the big issues that impact our society and in his book An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago, he looks at one summer in Chicago to tell the story about violence throughout the United States. Kotlowitz discussed his book with Northwest Indiana Times correspondent Jane Ammeson.
What was the inspiration for writing An American Summer? And can you give us a synopsis of the book in your own words?
I feel like I’ve been working my way to this book for a long while. When some thirty years ago I was reporting There Are No Children Here, it was the violence that unmoored me. The numbers are staggering. In the twenty years between 1990 and 2010, in Chicago 14,033 people have been killed, another 60,000 wounded by gunfire. I’ve long felt we’ve completely underestimated the effect of that violence on the spirit of individuals and the spirit of community. And so I set out to tell the stories of those emerging from the violence and trying to reckon with it, people who are standing tall in a world slumping around them. The book is set in one summer, 2013, and it’s a collection of 14 stories, intimate tales that speak to the capacity of the human heart, stories that I hope will upend what you think you know.
How did you choose who to talk to? How did you find them? And how did you go about choosing which stories to use?
I spent that summer speaking with as many people as I could. I’ve been reporting on many of these neighborhoods for thirty years, so I visited with many of the people I knew. I embedded with a homicide unit. I spent time at a trauma center. I hung out at the criminal courthouse. I spent time on the streets, in churches, at taverns, halfway houses. I was looking for stories that surprised me, that knocked me off balance, hoping they might do the same for readers. And as is often the case, I wrote about people who on some level I admired. For who they are. For how they persevered. For their character. I wrote about people who I came to deeply care about. I wrote about stories that made me smile and that left me anger. I wrote about stories that left me with a sense of hope.
You’ve been writing about violence for 30 years? Do you ever get worn out by it?
It’s by no means all that I’ve written about, but, yes, a lot of my work has dealt with the profound poverty of our cities. I write out of a fundamental belief that life ought to be fair, and so much of the time I land in corners of the country where life isn’t fair at all. Do I get worn out by it? Sometimes. But I come away each time inspired by the people I meet along the way.
I know the number of murders has gone down but so has the number of murders and shootings that are solved. Any thoughts on why that is? And does that have an impact on the continuing violence?
Murders have gone down from the early 1990s, though we saw an unsettling spike in 2016 which approached those numbers of 30 years ago. And, yes, you’re right the clearance rate on homicides and shootings are remarkably low. You have a three in four chance of getting away with murder in Chicago, and a nine in ten chance of getting away with shooting someone and wounding them. Those numbers aren’t a misprint. That inability to solve violent crimes only erodes even further the distrust between communities of color and the police. It erodes even further that there will be justice. And as a result when there’s a sense that there’s no justice, people take matters into their own hands.
What would you like readers to take away from your book?
The humanity of the people I write about. I’m a storyteller. My ambitions are reasonably modest. I guess my hope in the end is after reading these stories, readers will think of themselves and the world around just a little bit differently. And maybe it will nudge along politicians and policy makers to act, to recognize the urgency.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
One final thought. This book takes place in Chicago, but Chicago, despite its reputation, isn’t even among the top ten most violent cities in the country. I could’ve written this book about so many other cities. What’s more, these stories speak to who we are as a nation. In the wake of the tragedies at Newtown and Parkland, we asked all the right questions. How could this happen? What would bring a young man to commit such an atrocity? How do the families and the community continue on while carrying the full weight of this tragedy? In Chicago, in Baltimore, in New Orleans, in the cities across the nation, no one’s asking those questions. What does that say about us?
An American Summer is available in hard cover, digital, and as an audiobook.
Shelf Life 