THE MAID’S VERSION by Daniel Woodrell

THE MAID’S VERSION by Daniel Woodrell is a small book but reads like a tome, with such literate and beautiful imagery that I was enthralled. The book centers around the mystery of the explosion at Arbor Dance Hall in 1929. The explosion killed 42 people, many unrecognizable in death with their bodies broken up or burned beyond recognition. Alma Dunahew lost her sister Ruby in the explosion and for years has been trying to discover the answer to what happened. Those years have been hard on her with several of them spent at the Work Farm in West Table, Missouri, due to her psychic breakdown caused by rage and grief …

December 21, 2013 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Noir, US South

MURDER AS A FINE ART by David Morrell

MURDER AS A FINE ART by David Morrell is one of the best mystery books I’ve read this year. It is historically based, taking place in the nineteenth century. As some of you may know, Morrell is best-known for his book, First Blood, upon which the the Rambo movies are based. Murder as a Fine Art is very different from his first writings. It is literary fiction and page-turning at its best.

December 3, 2013 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Character Driven, Facing History, Literary, Mystery/Suspense

11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King

Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.

November 8, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Alternate History, Facing History, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Texas, y Award Winning Author

PIGEON ENGLISH by Stephen Kelman

Around ten years ago, a young Nigerian immigrant, 10-year-old Damilola Taylor, was beaten by boys barely older than him in Peckham, a district in South London. Damilola later bled to death. The incident sparked outrage in the United Kingdom and was subsequently pointed to as proof that the country’s youth had gone terribly astray.

The same incident seems to have also inspired a debut novel, Pigeon English, with 11-year-old Harri Opoku filling in for the voice of Damilola Taylor.

September 14, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Debut Novel, Facing History, United Kingdom, World Lit

AN ACCIDENT IN AUGUST by Laurence Cosse

Very early in the morning of August 31 1997, Princess Diana was killed when her car crashed at high speed into a pillar in a road tunnel near the Pont de l’Alma in Paris. Evidence at the crash site suggested that the driver of the car might have lost control after side-swiping a slower-moving car, a white Fiat Uno, near the tunnel entrance. It was not until 2006 that the driver of this car was identified as a young man of Vietnamese origin, but at the time that Laurence CossĂ© published this novel in 2003, the Fiat still posed a mystery, leaving the author to imagine a story of her own.

August 31, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Mystery/Suspense, Translated

THE ECHO CHAMBER by Luke Williams

Evie Steppman’s mammoth ears are a repository of history, memory, and time. She was born unnamed to British parents in Lagos, Nigeria, during the end of British colonial rule (1946), and, now in her fifties, she is chronicling her story and the stories of various individuals from a collection of documents, letters, diaries, pamphlets, photographs, and assorted, emotionally powerful objects, or “unica” (one-of-a-kind objects).

August 16, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Africa, Character Driven, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Facing History, World Lit