Hot Off the Conference Presses

Just back after a wonderful week as a guest of the San Miguel Writers’ Conference. Many of the best-selling authors I met have terrific books I wanted to make sure were on your radar.

‘Without Consent’

Greta Rideout’s harrowing tale is an empathetic investigation into a once-controversial subject in Sarah Weinman’s Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime. Though her husband would be acquitted, the 1978 case was the beginning of the movement that criminalized spousal rape. Making it illegal by 1993. Weinman’s research is thorough but never dry, reporting details with compassion for a difficult subject.

‘Havoc’

I thoroughly enjoyed the elderly woman meddling around a sun-baked Egyptian luxury resort in Christopher Bollen’s Havoc. The book was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and it is a hoot. Maggie is 81 and looking to “help” some unsuspecting guest but meets her match in an eight-year-old boy, another guest at the hotel along the river Nile.

‘Broadway Butterfly’

Sara DiVello’s Broadway Butterfly was reviewed here prior and remains a favorite. DiVello fictionalizes a true crime that occurred in 1923 when Dot King, a dancer, is found murdered in her own bed. Crime reporter Julia Harpman investigates the numerous suspects, including a lover or two. This is fast-paced and lush with details of the era and with motives, as two women – Dot and Julia – try to make their way in a man’s world.

‘Pick a Color’

Giller prize winner Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Color is the delightful tale of a nail salon owner. Ning is a retired boxer (minus a finger) who has named herself Susan for her clients, who just see her as another anonymous immigrant with polish and file. The story takes place over a single day and Thammavongsa told me she is looking forward to writing a story that takes place over one hour. I don’t doubt she can pull that off.

‘The Shape of Dreams’

New out this month is The Shape of Dreams by April Reynolds, set in the mid-1980s in East Harlem with the discovery of a dead 12-year-old Black boy. The story follows Anita, the boy’s devastated mother, as she grapples with how to carry on. She had always been so careful with her son, who seemed to follow the rules: don’t stay out late, don’t cause trouble. Who did this to her boy? A cast of neighborhood characters rounds out the ensemble of hardworking or hardly working neighbors, including a sincere pastor fighting for his people, the six-foot woman who discovers the body, and Anita’s best friend, Wanda. It is a story of a time when a city was beaten down, a neighborhood’s crimes unsolved, and the citizens fought for dignity and a better quality of life. 

‘Saoirse’

Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise is a mystery set in Ireland. A young woman on the run from her past falls straight into trouble in the guise of a helpful stranger. Saoirse is an artist struggling to start over, to forget the things she has done, and to stay safe. When the art world discovers her, it puts her in peril as the media wants to know who she really is. This one was a beautiful immersive read and I found myself longing to tell Saoirse everything would be alright, even as I knew it would not.