I drove to Sun Valley once with my roommate, a former professional ice skater. We were going there to see an ice skating competition. The mountains were lovely, but I chiefly remember that trip because we stopped to get gas along the highway and a couple of yahoos tried to convince us that some random part of the car was so worn down it was a danger. 'I wouldn't let my daughter get on the road with a car in that shape." We chose to ignore the warning but I was completely paranoid that the guys had done something to the car that would cause it to break down. (I know, I've seen too many horror movies.) But as it turned out, we were fine and there was no problem with the car. I haven't been back to Idaho since, although a friend of mine used to live in Boise and loved it there, despite the extreme weather both summer and winter. (Idaho's a red state but it Boise mayor Dave Bieter sounds pretty progressive. But somehow Idaho is a state that feels like it has a dark underbelly. The Boise Weekly used to have a Historical True Crime feature and the stories in it were fascinating.
The best book I've read set in Idaho is C.J. Box's taut thriller Blue Heaven. (You can read the first chapter here.) Blue Heaven was a stand-alone novel--Box writes the popular "Joe Pickett" series, and won the Edgar in 2009. The story revolves around two kids who have seen four retired cops commit murder. They're on the run in the Idaho wilderness and their only hope for safety is a rancher on the brink of losing everything. Good characters. Great local color. A smart plot (if somewhat farfetched) plot. Blue Heaven is a great read.
Aloha! You can't really take a road trip to the Hawaiian islands, but let's not be too literal here. I lived in Honolulu for a year in my twenties, sharing a one-bedroom condo that belonged to my roommate's uncle in a place called Nuuanu Towers. We had a view of Diamond Head in the distance and the Iolani Palace (aka,the headquarters of the classic Hawaii 5-O starring Jack Lord). The year I lived there, everyone my rooomate and I had ever met wanted to come visit us and they always wanted to go to the Iolani Palace. Because the show was still in production, tourists would often get to catch glimpses of the show's stars. James MacArthur was known to be particularly gracious and would often mingle on his lunch breaks. (And because life takes strange detours, one of my former landlordes is now the producer of the reboot of the show.) I actually started one of my first crime stories while living there. It started with the word "Pau," which is Hawaiian for "finished" but pronounced as in "pow" like the gunshot. I still have that story somnewhere although I'm pretty sure I'm never going to finish it.
Myster writer Toby Neal has a whole series of "Lei Mysteries" set in Hawaii (well into the double-digts by now) as well as a grittier series called "Paradise Crime." She also has a couple of one-offs.
The books cover topics as trendy as the "farm to table" movement and as classic as artifact looting. There's a real "island feel" to the books--not something you could pull off after taking a cruise and then watching a lot of YouTube videos. Toby is currently living in Northern California due to family obligations, but you can tell her heart belongs to Hawaii. (In my stay in Honolulu, I learned just enough Hawaiian to be able to say, "My heart belongs to Hawaii." Ko'u naau no i Hawaii. Pronounce every letter and you'll get it right.
When I was living in Hawaii, there were a number of issues that were starting to bubble up, including the rights of people with Hansen's Disease (more commonly known as leprosy) to be "mainstreamed." (My roomate attended the church where Father Damien first preached in Hawaii, before he went to the island of Molokai (one of the most beautiful of the islands) to serve at the leper colony there.) There were also tensions among the native Hawaiians and the military population stationed there, among them the Marines and Navy men on the island of Oahu. That's nothing new, one of the most crimes in Hawaii history, the Massie case, occurred in 1931 and involved the rape of a white woman and the lynching of one suspect, Joseph Kahahawai by the victim's husband, mother, and two sailors. the case was fictionalized in the novel Blood and Orchids, which was made into a television movie.
famous
To my mind, the best book about Hawaii is probably The Shark Dialogues, written by Kiana Davenport, who traces her ancestry back to the first Polynesian settlers on the islands. It's a richly layered family saga-type book (much like James Michener's book Hawaii), and though set in contemporary Hawaii, it's filled with myth and legend. IN some ways, it reminded me a lot of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, although Kingston's book is a very different genre.
John Berendt is a terrific writer. His book, The City of Falling Angels, is so seductive in its story of the destruction of the city's famed opera house that you almost feel like you're there (with side trips to some glass-blowing factories. The book that made his name, though, was Midnight in the Garden ofGood and Evil. Not only was the book a runaway best-seller, spending four years at the top of the New York Times bestseller list (longer than any work of fiction or nonfiction before), but the photo used on the cover sent so many tourists to the Bonaventure cemetery in Savannah where "the bird girl" statue was located that the family had it removed. (Ironically, the photographer who took th iconic shot used on the cover is buried in the same cemetery where the sculpture used to stand.) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is true crime of the very best sort. It reads like fiction, full of quirky and multi-faceted chraacters, with a brooding sensibility that is dripping with Southern Gothic trappings. It's a great read.
If you're looking for a great crime fiction set in Georgia, check out Karin Slaughter's Undone. Set in Atlanta, the book is number three in her series about Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent. It's paced like a movie thriller and it just does not stop. I like Slaughter's work a lot, and this is one of my favorite of her novels.
And finally, there's Melissa Fay Greene's Praying For Sheetrock, a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times "Notable Book." The story of how one black man took on the racist power structure and prevailed is as timely now as it was two decades ago.
Florida...long before Portland, Oregon embraced the mantle of weird, Florida seemed to be the source of all the weird news. For me Florida means the Space Coast and the home owned by my parents' friends, Les and Mary Gross, Miami Vice, and Disney World.
I'm not a fan of the Disney brand and I share that opinion with my favorite Florida-based writer, Carl Hiaasen. I've been a fan since Tourist Season (after living in Honolulu for a year, I'm not that fond of tourists) and particularly loved Native Tongue. I also highly recommend the fantastical novel Swamplandia, tom Dorsey's Florida Roadkill, which I picked up because of the flamingo on the cover. (Flamingos say "Florida" to me, whether it's the actual birds of plastic pink flamingos in a trailer park.)
Other great books set in Florida include Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, Jennine Capo Crucet's collection of short stories, How to Leave Hialeah, Charles Willeford's Miami Blues, Joan Didion's Miami, and Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie.
I know that everybody always mentions The Yearling in lists of books set in Florida, but I never read that. Nor did I ever read Where the Red Fern Grows. I read enough sad animal stories as a kid to last me a lifetime. Old Yeller???? I bawled for days. And I wasn't the only one. My grandfather had to kill a dog when he turned on my father and it put my dad off pets for life.
For most people, the state of Delaware is mostly famous for being the birthplace of everybody's favorite ex-VP and current meme star, Joe Biden. Delaware is a small state, located on the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware/Maryland/Virginia) and unless you have a destination in mind--like heading for Rehobeth Beach, it's mostly a drive-through state. (The top ten attractions are mostly museums housed in stately buildings that were formerly private homes.)
I've read two books set in Delaware (that I know of), Ann Rule's And Never Let Her Go,the chronicle of Thomas Capano, who killed Anne Marie Fahey, who was secretary to the Governor. "Tommy" is a mesmerizing figure--a wealthy attorney (and former state prosecutor) with a very dark side. This book isn't as well known as Rule's book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, but it's a fine example of her style and substance.
The other book I've read couldn't have been more different. The Saint of Lost Things is an immigrant story, a family story, a woman's story. The characters in the novel are particularly well-drawn, and the central character, an Italian woman named Maddalena who has been trnsplanted to Wilmington, Delaware in the early 50s, is a memorable woman. There's a sequel to the novel, All This Talk About Love and a prequel, A Kiss from Maddalena, but I haven't read either of them.
Speaking of Columbine, Wally Lamb's book inspired by the event, The Hour I First Believed, is set in Connecticut. I have not read that book although I have read She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True. (The latter also takes place in Connecticut.) The last two books were featured on Oprah's Book Club and sold a bajillion copies. I found Lamb's books well-written but damn depressing.
Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives (set in Connecticut0 was much more to my taste. I saw the movie before I read the book and the virtual lobotomizing of the Paula Prentiss character scared the bejezus out of me. According to Wikipedia, Levin based the town of Stepford on Wilton, Connecticut, where he'd lived in the 60s. This is my favorite of Levin's books. I like it more than his most popular work, Rosemary's Baby.
Probably my favorite book set in Connecticut is The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Witch was my gateway to the historical romances by Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney, which I devoured as a teenager.
Speare. It was written in 1958 and I don't think it's been out of print since. It was probably the first "historical novel" I ever read, and i loved the heroine Kit Tyler, a smart and independent young woman who triumphs in love and life. I loved that her full name was "Katherine," like mine. (I have a cousin Katherine who goes by Kit, which I always thought was sooooo cool.) I'm pretty sure that Witch was the gateway book that led me to the historical romances of Victoria Holt and Phyllis A. Whitney and Mary Stewart, which I devoured when I was a teenager. (And they in turn led me to historical mysteris and after that, there was no turning back.
I misread a "call for submissions" notice and created this Drabble (a story in exactly 100 words) for a market that doesn't actually exist. But I kind of like it anyway. So here it is. SHATTERED GLASS
This is why you can’t have nice things,
Alice scolded herself as she picked up the shards of the vase she’d just
broken. She knew the voice in her head was not her own but belonged to her stepmother,
but even so, it hurt.
Alice was a
big girl and her bulk made her clumsy. She knew that. Her stepmother didn’t
need to be such a bitch about it. But then, she was a bitch about everything.
Even about the color of the tulips Alice had brought her. So, Alice had whacked
her over the head with the vase.
I have never been to Colorado except in movies and books. I read Isabella Bird's wonderful A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains when I was in middle school and it sent me off on a binge of reading
about women explorers. And of course, since Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, I checked into the Overlook Hotel in Sidewinder, Colorado when I read The Shining, and later, Doctor Sleep.
Isabella Bird
But most of what I've read about Colorado has to do with the Columbine high school shooting. (Interestingly, the high school massacre is not the first massacre in Columbine's history. In 1927, a union action went bad when police and coal miners clashed in what's become known as the Columbine Mine Massacre.)
I don't read a lot of true crime books. I'm not an avis follower of lurid criminal cases on TV. I will admit that the JonBenet Ramsey case intrigues me and I wish someone would explain how she got that strange first name.) I like watching homicide hunter because I enjoy Joe Kenda's character but also because I know that the crimes depicted on the show were solved and the person (or persons) responsible were brought to justice. As Kenda would say, "Justice. It works for me."
But Columbine was a whole new level of crime and at the time, the narrative around it seemed familiar. Misfit kids. Outcsts. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Except...that's not how it happened. Dave Cullen's book Columbine (see an excellent review by Jesse Kornbluth here) tells the real story and it will chill you. Dylan Klebold's mother Sue has done a TED talk about her son and his friend Eric, and watching that in conjunction with reading Columbine will make you want to weep. She. Had. No. Idea.
I love urban fantasy, but lately it's felt pretty stale. How many leather-clad women in katanas can one genre support? And even as someone who writes the occasional vampire story I'm starting to get a little tired of bloodsuckers. And then I read R. S. Belcher's Brotherhood of the Wheel. It's got a really ugly cover that doesn't really convey "urban fantasy" but look past that and what you get is unexpected, original, satisfying and--I really hope--the beginning of a series. Brotherhood of the Wheel sets up a world in which the tradition of the Templars is alive and well with a group of men and women who "live on the asphalt." They are protectors of the innocent, and they can "see" the signs of evil that others cannot. And from the exciting opening when a trucker and a gypsy cab driver help capture a serial killer and save his latest victim, the book is filled with action and myth and genuine emotion and actual horror. It also has tremendous world-building and humor. (Some of the humor is a tad whimsical for my taste but overall, I think this is a terrific book.)
I have seen some photographs of the Ozarks that make the state look breathtakingly beautiful. Unfortunately, I have never been to the Ozarks but I have driven though Little Rock. My sister and I were driving to California one December and we stopped there one night, not in the scenic part of town. We were so ready to leave the city that we got up before dawn the next day and headed out.
Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse "True Blood" books) set her Lily Bard series in Shakeseare, Arkansas and they sound like a lot of fun. John Grisham's novel A Painted House (set in 1952 with a secret that involves migrant workers) takes place in Arkansas. So does Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
There is no one California when it comes to literary depictions of the state. The San Joaquin Valley was immortalized by John Steinbeck's books, including his masterwork The Grapes of Wrath) but Jack Finney's The Body-Snatchers was also set there, as was T. Jefferson Parker's Summer of Fear, and John Lescroart's Hard Evidence, and James Patterson's Third Degree.
Los Angeles is the city that spawned hard-boiled detective fiction, a sub-genre that's alive and well with writers like James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and others who inhreited the mantle from Raymond Chandler. Further south, you find Don Winslow's Dawn Patrol, and om Wolfe's The Pump House Gang, and Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End. The first truly "Califonia" book I ever read was Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays, and then later, her books of essays about the place, The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
I've spent a lot of time in Arizona. I've been to the Tuscon Gem and Mineral show, I've been to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, which is an amazing place, especially if you're their for thier "Raptor Show." I've toured Biosphere 2 in Oracle, AZ and generally soaked up the sun in Phoenix. It's a red state, so I don't think I could live there, but I do like to visit it.
Three Arizona books stand out for me. one is Navajos Wear Nikes, a memoir by Jim Kristofic, who grew up on the reservation after his mother took a job working at a hospital there. He's an outsider--a white kid--but it's still an intriguing look at life on the reservation.
There's also Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, a nonlinear, multi-character novel that meanders from the US to Central America. The book was published in the 90s and the writer's treatment of gay characters (way too many of her villains are gay), but that sadly reflected the tenor of the times.
The book that's stayed with me the longest, though, is The Quartzite Trip, a novel about a school trip that goes very, very wrong that really gets teenage feelings right. There's a scene where a guy looks at a girl who's plagued by acne and as he sees her in the moonlight, he realizes what a beauty she is. It's incredibly tender. I can't believe this book is out of print. It's one I read, along with Red Sky at Morning, that made a deep impression on me and 36 years later, I can still remember the way it made me feel.
A historian doing her mother a favor stumbles across a secret that changes her life.
Deliverance Dane was a “cunning woman” in the 17th century who failed to heal a child and became the subject of vicious gossip and accusations of witchcraft. Connie Goodwin is a Harvard-trained historian whose mother Grace sends her to Marblehead to clean out her grandmother’s house. While doing so, Connie runs across a reference to Deliverance that sends her on a quest to find the woman’s missing “book of physick,” her recipe of spells.
This dual time-frame story offers a somewhat different perspective on the Salem witch trials is much more interesting than the contemporary story. Connie isn’t as engaging a protagonist as Deliverance, and her academic search for the book of physick and the truth about Deliverance pales beside Deliverance’s own narrative. ture about some aspect of colonial life), but the stories being told here do not draw us in as much as they should.
When I was little, I was fascinated by the Iditarod race. (I even had a t-shirt that said, "Alaska, where men are men and women win the Iditarod.") So when I came across a mystery called Murder on the Iditarod Trail, I snapped it up. The author was Sue Henry, one of several women who have well-established Alaska-set mysteries. (Probably the best known is Diana Stabenow who writes the long-running Kate Sugak books.) Turns out there are a couple of other mystery writers who have made Alaska their stomping grounds. I'm a fan of John Straley (particularly his The Woman Who Married a Bear), and I intend to check out Christopher Lane's Inupiat mystery series.
For me, though, the quintessential Alaska book is John McPhee's Coming Into the Country. McPhee is widely known as a pioneer of "creative nonfiction" and I've been a fan of his since I read Oranges. His prose is cut-glass sharp but never pretentious. He's got books with titles so odd they suck you in, like The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed or The Curve of Binding Energy (a brilliant book about nukes) and his topics range from the geology of the West to a farmer's market (the title essay in Giving Good Weight). One of his best books is La Place de la Concorde Swiss, which is about the Swiss Army and its role in society.Seriously. He will make you care about that.
Coming Into the Country is about both the land and the people on it and it's a grand colletion of personalities and observations. It made me want to visit Alaska more than ever before. Don't let that cover fool you (it looks like it was designed more for graphic impact than to give readers an idea of what's inside) and check it out if you're a fan of elegant writing and interesting subjects.
For my generation, Joyce Maynard's Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties pretty much summed things up. The author, an elfin, barefoot figure in jeans and a yellow sweater stared solemnly at the reader from the cover, and you got the picture. This is an "old soul." Maynard's book was highly praised at the time and since its publication in 1973, she has written about the various stages of her life. She was born in 1953, so she's gracefully aging into her middle years now.)
I don't really know who spoke for Gen X or Gen Y but when Marina Keegan first burst onto the scene, it was clear that she was a talent to be reckoned with. The Opposite of Lonelness is a collection of her essays and short stories and a showcase for a writer already confident and accomplished. Sadly, it is a posthumous collection, and unlike Joyce Maynard, we will never have the pleasure of seeing the writer mature. She died in a car accident just after she graduated from college.
If you want to write, write. Life is not a dress rehearsal.
Robert McCammon's Boy's Life and Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafeare both set in Alabama and they couldn't be more different. McCammon's book (a Bram Stoker award winning fantasy/horor) is set in Zephyr, Alabama in 1964 and it opens with a chilling scene as a car plunges into a lake some say are bottomless. A milkman who witnesses the accident while makings his rounds with his son, dives down to see if he can rescue the driver and discovers...this was no accident. Flagg's book, the basis for the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, is set in the fictional town of Whistle Stop, Alabama and tells the story of a friendship between two women and plays out against various timelines. I highly recommend both books.
And then there's This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijcamp. Set in Opportunity, Alabama, it's the story of a school shooting told through multiple points of view. I have a fondness for that kind of storytelling (Ryan Gattis' All Involved is probably my favorite) and the writer does a fantastic job here. The book is tagged as YA but it is in the vein of Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give than John Green's The Fault in Our Stars.
the shooter in Nijcamp's book, Tyler Browne, is an outcast whose rage is fueled by the mantra, "I will make sure you remember me." In some ways it will remind readers of Todd Strasser's Give a Boy a Gun, a novel based on the 1999 Columbine school shooting.
Beginning in April, I'll be taking a reading road trip all around the country. From the Redwood forests (Rutherford G. Montgomery's book Kildee House) to the Gulfstream waters (Thomas McGuane's Key West novel Ninety-Two in the Shade), I'll be taking a look at local lit from all fifty states plus D.C., the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. I'll be covering a couple of books from some states and not all of the books I'll be reading are fiction. The route will be eccentric (I'm not going alphabetically) but I promise the trip will be fun.
In the wake of the presidential election, I've been reading a lot more political-themed fiction and non-ficiton. This book seems to be a fusion of the two and the premise is provocative. The Last Bastion of Civilization: Japan 2041 sets out a scenario for a different kind of future. I'd really like to believe there is a civilized future out there. Here's the blurb and a testimonial:
Brexit, Trump, Le Pen: Where Are We Heading?
If you’re a contrarian, or simply wish to imagine a radically different future, The Last Bastion of Civilization will challenge your current world-view.
Written
as a series of letters and short essays, each of the 18 chapters
attacks a present-day assumption with a counter-punch argument of its
own.
Sometimes controversial, always challenging, it’s a future to consider given today’s world affairs.
“Blencowe’s
writing is fast-paced and easily readable. The structure of the book is
unusual, in that it's not a novel, though not quite non-fiction. I can
best categorize it as fictional journalism, or perhaps an imaginary
opinion piece. He expresses himself clearly and his intentions and
message are never in doubt.” —Andrew Henry
I love book lists. And I especially love book lists that hav a theme. Now that everyone from the Seattle Seahawks to Emma Watson (and Emma Stone) to Cory Booker are sponsoring book clubs, there's never a lack of suggestions for my next read. Today this list "20 Books to Take You Around the World" popped up on The Modern Mrs. Darcy blog. Since I love travel as much as I love reading, it felt like a Monday morning Christmas present. (And bonus points for Mrs. Darcy, one of the recommended books was NOT Eat, Pray, Love, which continues to irritate me.)
I was delighted to see one of my old favorites, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley in Search of America on the list. It's a lovely book, and intriguing to compare the America of Steinbeck's time to today's nation. It's an eclectic list that includes Tana French's Into the Woods, Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, and All the Light We Cannot See. Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow piqued my interest the most but I marked down several for my TBR pile.
A friend and I were lamenting the overload of merely mediocre paranormal and urban fantasy novels out there and wondering what to read next. I decided to go looking for a list and this book popped up on several of them.
I knew Simon Green's name but hadn't read anything of his. Looks like he's got a couple of urban fantasy series; but this one caught my eye.
Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairy tales. I cannot wait to see the movie when it opens this weekend. The Summer Garden is my version of the fairy tale, a novelette that's free on Amazon through the weekend.
This sounds like a big, juicy read. It comes highly recommended by the Libray Journal. Here's the blurb:
The Books of Rachel is a fictional microcosm of 500 years of Jewish
history. Since the 15th century, in the Cuheno family, the first
daughter born to the family is given the name Rachel and a heritage of
faith and courage as precious as the family diamond. A saga sweeping
from the Spanish Inquisition to the birth of a Jewish homeland.
G. WELLS TAYLOR was born in Oakville, Ontario, Canada in
1962, but spent most of his early life north of there in Owen Sound where he
went on to study Design Arts at a local college. He later traveled to North
Bay, Ontario to complete Canadore College’s Journalism program before receiving
a degree in English from Nipissing University. Taylor worked as a freelance
writer for small market newspapers and later wrote, designed and edited for
several Canadian niche magazines.
He joined the digital publishing revolution early with an
eBook version of his first novel When
Graveyards Yawn that has been available online since 2000. Taylor published
and edited the Wildclown Chronicle e-zine from 2001-2003 that showcased his
novels, book trailer animations and illustrations, short story writing and book
reviews alongside titles from other up-and-coming horror, fantasy and science
fiction writers.
Still based in Canada, Taylor continues with his publishing
plans that include additions to the Wildclown Mysteries and sequels to the
popular Variant Effect series.
1.You’re a horror writer. What scares you? The knowledge that civilization is only a
thin veneer.
2.Who
were the writers who introduced you to horror? Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Robert E.
Howard, Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King among others.
3.What are the scariest supernatural
creatures? Ghosts.
4.Did you write stories as a child? Were you
encouraged to write? I read comic books when I was a kid and
learned some of the drawing basics by copying pictures of my favorite
superheroes and monsters. Later I began creating my own characters and writing
stories about them. My mother who was a teacher read these and encouraged me to
write more. She was also a fan of genre fiction and we shared novels and talked
about authors and books.
5.What was your first publishing credit? My high school English teacher produced a
play I wrote as a class project and entered it in a countywide drama festival
where it won the special adjudicator award for promising new writer. While it
wasn’t a paid gig, it sure encouraged me to take my writing more seriously.
6.Your trilogy, DRACULA OF THE APES, must have
involved an enormous amount of research. I was particularly impressed by how
well you managed to imitate 19th century storytelling (in all the
best ways). What did you do to prep for writing that saga?
In preparation for writing Dracula of the
Apes, I read fiction and genre novels from the era, and re-read the source
books until I was dreaming them. So far as historical references and setting, I
have to thank the local library and the many text, audio and video resources
offered online.
Regarding the nineteenth century storytelling style, I love early genre
fiction, and studied it in university. The lavish descriptions found in such
narratives provide detailed accounts and definitions of the unknown or
unfamiliar for audiences that had no access to radio, television or Internet
communications. It is perfect for writing about exotic locations, horror and
mystery.
