Dark and Stormy Book Club

It is that time of year again where we interview some of the Agatha Award Nominees.
Watch Her by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
Best Contemporary Fiction
Edwin Hill is the author of LITTLE COMFORT and THE MISSING ONES. He was born in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and spent most of his childhood obsessing over The Famous Five, Agatha Christie, and somehow finding a way into C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe. His parents were fond of taking his sister and him on month-long family camping trips across the U.S. and Canada, and one of his best memories is of finishing a copy of The Seven Dials Mystery while the rest of the family visited Mount Rushmore. Growing up when VHS tapes were new meant that watching Alien, Jaws, The Shining, or Halloween whenever he wanted seemed luxurious, and still does today. Like Hester Thursby, he watched these movies – and others like them – a lot. After attending Wesleyan University and graduating with a B.A. in American Studies, he headed west to San Francisco for the original dotcom boom. Later, he returned to Boston, earned an MFA from Emerson College, and switched gears to work in educational publishing, where he served as the vice president and editorial director for Bedford/St. Martin's, a division of Macmillan Learning, for many years before turning to writing full time. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.
A Dead Man's Eyes by Lori Duffy Foster (Level Best Books)
Best First Novel
Lori Duffy Foster is a former crime reporter who writes from the hills of Northern Pennsylvania, where she lives with her family. She was born and raised in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, where part of her heart remains. Never Broken is book two in her Lisa Jamison mystery/suspense series.

Rapid Reads
Show Notes
For our first Rapid Reads episode we gave short reviews of six different books:
Militia House by John Milas
“This is a beautiful horror story told masterfully and elegantly. It is a brilliant, different kind of war
novel, one that reveals the insidious ways the violences of war can tear people apart from the inside
out. “
Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead
“a gothic Southern thriller about a killer haunting a small Louisiana town, where two
outcasts―the preacher's daughter and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks―hold the key to
uncovering the truth. “
Murder with Chocolate Tea by Karen Rose Smith
Tea shop owner and bride-to-be Daisy Swanson must solve a murder before she can say “I do”
in the latest Daisy’s Tea Garden Mystery set in Pennsylvania’s Amish country...
What Wild Women Do by Karma Brown
Two women's lives unexpectedly collide at a camp in the Adirondacks in this fascinating dual-
timeline novel full of ambition, secrets, betrayal, mystery, intrigue, nature, inspiration, and a journey of
self-discovery.
Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
“This is a nice take on retirement—five old spooks whose bones may ache but whose minds
remain sharp. You can expect mystery, action, and bloodshed in this exciting thriller launched straight
from the peaceful shores of Maine.”
TRIVIA
Last week's question was:
Which mystery author used the pseudonym Mark Sadler, John Crowe, Carl Dekker and William Arden?
a. Dan Brown
b. John Grisham
c. Mickey Spillane
d. Michael Collins
The answer is d. Michael Collins but the name Michael Collins is actually a pseudonym for Dennis Lynds.
Beginning in 1968 with The Mystery of the Moaning Cave and ending in 1989 with Hot Wheels, Lynds wrote
fourteen novels under the pen name William Arden for the juvenile detective series The Three Investigators,
which was originated by Robert Arthur, Jr. Under this same name, he also wrote five novels featuring private
eye Kane Jackson, a former military policeman who has become an industrial security specialist after leaving
the military. The first Jackson novel, A Dark Power, appeared in 1968.
Prolific, explaining that he had more ideas than he knew what to do with, in addition to his Collins name, he
created additional series under the pseudonyms Mark Sadler, John Crowe, and Carl Dekker. For a few years,
he published under three of these pseudonyms at the same time at three different publishing houses
This week's question is::
Mark Andrew Twitchell (born July 4, 1979) is a Canadian filmmaker. He became famous in April 2011 for
what?
a. He used a fictional murderer as a guideline for the crime
b. He pulled off the biggest jewel heist in history
c. He murdered his wife and 6 children
d. He murdered a man and filmed the murder

WWAR October
Show Notes
On today's episode, we selected mysteries that were set in Colonial America.
Misty reported on “A Shaker Murder” by Eleanor Kuhns. It is #6 in her Will Rees mystery series.
Fresh from facing allegations of witchcraft and murder, travelling weaver Will Rees, his heavily pregnant wife
Lydia and six adopted children take refuge in Zion, a Shaker community in rural Maine. Shortly after their
arrival, screams in the night reveal a drowned body ... but is it murder or an unfortunate accident? The Shaker
Elders argue it was just an accident, but Rees believes otherwise.
As Will investigates further, more deaths follow and a young girl vanishes from the community. Haunted by
nightmares for his family’s safety, Rees must rush to uncover the truth before the dreams can become reality
and more lives are lost. Yet can the Shaker Elders be trusted, or is an outsider involved? Misty highly
recommends this series.
Ann reported on “Brutalized” by J. R. Thompson. 17th-century Dublin, Ireland, preteen Callum McCarthy
is shipped to the English Colonies, where he will endure horrors of the Irish slave trade. Intense and powerful,
JR Thompson’s Brutalized explores ideas of greed, loneliness and despair, determination, and faith.
Growing up in an area where poor Irish families are as welcome as malaria, Callum, the son of a drunkard
father and neglectful mother, already has the odds stacked against him. But when the boy is kidnapped from
his own home, he’s plunged into a living nightmare.
Upon arrival in America, a cruel man by the name of Josiah Gillcrest makes Callum his ill-treated workhorse.
Bone-chilling secrets Callum uncovers on the tobacco plantation force him to make difficult decisions. Should
he make a run for it? Kill the wicked overseer, who happens to be his master’s son? Lead a slave uprising?
The possibilities are endless.
Mystery, brutality, and deep, dirty secrets saturate Brutalized as Thompson shares truths of white slavery from
Ireland and Germany to Colonial America. Callum’s detective skills could prove useful in bringing crucial
changes to the plantation if they don’t kill him first.
Finalkly Tracey reported on the book. Bone Rattler by Eliot Pattison. Unfairly convicted and force into
indentured servitude, young Highland Scot Duncan McCallum finds himself aboard a prisoner ship bound for
the New World. A series of mysterious deaths plagues the passengers and claims the life of Duncan’s dear
friend Adam Munroe. Enlisted by his captors to investigate, a strange trail of clues leads Duncan into the New
World and eventually thrusts him into the bloody maw of the French and Indian War.
Duncan is indentured to the British Lord Ramsey, whose estate in the uncharted New York woodlands is a
Heart of Darkness where multiple warring factions―the British, rogue Scots, the French, the Huron, and the
Iroquois―are engaged in battle. Exploring a frontier world shrouded in danger, Duncan, the exiled chief of his
near-extinct Scottish clan, finds that sometimes justice cannot be reached unless the cultures and spirits of
those involved are resolved.

On today's episode, we selected libraries and librarians for our WWAR subject for this month.
Misty reported on the book “Librarians and Larceny” (Book One in the Rebel Librarian Crime Fighter Mystery series by Cyndy Cypress
LARCENY! KIDNAPPING! MURDER! OH MY!
In the cozy college town of Kootenai Hills, Montana, a beloved librarian goes missing ... right under the noses of Rebecca Fulton, the university's newest library coordinator, and Jenn Acosta, a mature grad student and aspiring librarian!
And it happened in broad daylight ... during homecoming weekend, no less!
But that's not the only thing that's disappeared. An important historical manuscript tied to the missing librarian's past, leaves the women wondering just what Rebecca's boss and beloved mentor got himself into.
What happened to Professor Clifford Smith?
Rebecca and Jenn are determined to find out, but they have a few of their own challenges to work through first - a grumpy police captain being one of them.
Do these two polar opposites have what it takes to break away from their quiet, campus-librarian lifestyles and make it as amateur sleuths? Can they save the professor, find the manuscript, and stop those responsible from getting away with the perfect crime? Or will their naivety and inexperience put their lives in danger and land Rebecca behind bars?
There's only one way to find out.
Welcome to Cascade University, where you’ll meet the latest budding female detectives, along with Jenn’s uncommonly intelligent canine sidekick, and an eccentric old man who lives in his motorhome.
What could possibly go wrong?
Enjoy this totally addictive cozy mystery.
Tracey then reported on “The Librarian of Crooked Lane” (Book one in the Glass Library series) by C.J. Archer.
Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she’s descended from magicians, she’s skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she’s just an ordinary girl who loves books. She seeks the truth from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won’t be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.
War hero Gabe is gifted with wealth, a loving family, and an incredible amount of luck that saw him survive four harrowing years of a brutal war without injury. But not all injuries are visible. Burying himself in his work as a consultant for Scotland Yard, Gabe is going through the motions as he investigates the theft of a magician-made painting. But his life changes when he unwittingly gets Sylvia dismissed from her job and places her in danger.
After securing her new employment in a library housing the world’s greatest collection of books about magic, Gabe and Sylvia’s lives become intwined as they work together to find both the painting and the truth about Sylvia’s past before powerful people can stop them.
But sometimes the past is better left buried...
Ann then reported on “Checked Out” (Number one in the Village Library Mystery Series) by Elizabeth Spann Craig.
There are no renewals when you’re permanently checked out. When librarian Ann Beckett finally reluctantly agrees to being set-up on a blind date by one of her over-eager patrons, she figures the worst that could happen would be the two of them wouldn’t hit it off.
Little did she know that she’d be stood up...because her date was murdered.
With help from her patrons, Ann tries to find out who might be responsible in the small town of Whitby before more residents are permanently checked out.

Rachel Monroe is a writer and volunteer firefighter living in Marfa, Texas. Her work has appeared in The Best American Travel Writing 2018, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.
Savage Appetites - In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a frustrated heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.
Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.