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Our First Event: Tea and Tell

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We’re thrilled to announce our first event: Tea and Tell.

Join us as we celebrate the launch of A Good Name by Yejide Kilanko!

  • December 11, 2-4 p.m. at Turns & Tales (213 King St W Chatham)
  • Meet the author
  • Enjoy a free beverage with your purchase of A Good Name
  • Get your copy signed by the author
  • Listen to a reading

A Good Name

Twelve years in America and Eziafa Okereke has nothing to show for it. Desperate to re-write his story, Eziafa returns to Nigeria to find a woman he can mold to his taste.

Eighteen-year-old Zina has big dreams. An arranged marriage to a much older man isn’t one of them.

Trapped by family expectations, Zina marries Eziafa, moves to Houston, and trains as a nurse. Buffeted by a series of disillusions, the couple stagger through a turbulent marriage until Zina decides to change the rules of engagement.

 

We’re Open!

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After many delays, rather a lot more expenses than we’d planned for (pro tip: don’t start a business in the middle of a pandemic) we’re THRILLED to announce that we’re open.

We have books, LOTS of stocking stuffers, and of course dozens of board games for you to play and to buy. You can find our hours here.

Come in and enjoy our delicious homemade Salsa Verde and have a peek at the newest Mexican cookbook by Pati Jinich.

 

In Praise of Old(er) Books: Reboot or Return?

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Before the movie The Thing (released in 1982, directed by John Carpenter, starring Kurt Russell, with a screenplay adapted by Bill Lancaster from the story “Who Goes There” by John W. Campbell Jr.). there was another film adaptation of the same novella. The Thing from Another World, directed by Christian Nyby, was released in 1951 with a screenplay supposedly based on the same Campbell novella, although that time it was adapted by Howard Hawks, Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht.

Few story to movie adaptations better illustrate the original conceit of this series than the history of the John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? That novella is available in eBook form from Kobo.com. The story, in style, interpersonal relationships and scientific grounding, is very much a product of its time.

Rather than being set in Antarctica, the film’s action has been relocated to the Arctic. Rather than a group of scientists who are cut off by weather for months at a time, the scientists in the movie are regularly visited by (and provisioned by) the American military.

The 1951 and 1982 films are fundamentally different in tone and production values as well as widely diverging in setting and story line. The earlier film was a mere 87 minutes long, filmed in black and white, and very much a product of the early Cold War Period. The 1982 film is darker (in every sense of the word), more expensively produced, longer and surprisingly for those who routinely denounce/criticize the remaking of earlier films, arguably closer to the original work upon which both movies were based.

As Campbell himself describes it, in the introduction to Who Goes There? Seven Tales of Science Fiction (Campbell, John. 1991. Buccaneer Books. Cutchogue, New York) the emphasis of the story “is on putting over to the reader a feeling of the inescapable tension and fear brooding in the Antarctic camp.”(p.4)

Campbell also considered it to be an example of a ‘gadget story’ as opposed to a concept or a character story. The alien in the story could, he argued, be considered a non-mechanical gadget.

One could argue that the two film adaptations of the novella approach the question as to whether the alien is a ‘gadget’ and, if so, how to respond to it, in fundamentally different ways.

The 1951 film opens in Anchorage, Alaska as the audience follows a reporter out of a snowy night and into a very nice and civilized looking officer’s club. The books opens with the lines:

The place stank. A queer, mingling stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. (p. 7)

When the 1951 film was being written and produced, the Korean police action has not yet started, so the American troops are watchful but not engaged in active combat. So rather than the ‘stinking’ opening to the novella, the film begins in Anchorage, Alaska with people who look, clean, well fed and well groomed heading off to fly to a “conference of scientists” and the crashed air vehicle. People are joking and passing the time playing cards in well lit rooms.

Some of the officers who were playing cards in gossiping with the reporter in the club in Anchorage are sent out to investigate reports from an icebound group of scientists soon after they have detected what appears to have been the landing of a meteor/comet/alien device. There is a suggestion that the ‘crashed air vehicle’ might be Canadian (given the location this is not unlikely) or Russian (since they were presumed to be “all over the place”.)

When the military arrive at the camp, we find an orderly outpost. The scientists have clean well-lit labs, the heroine is the lead scientist’s secretary (with a nice office of her own and a typewriter.) All the women wear makeup. Everyone except the cook (played by an uncredited Lee Ton Foo) is white.

The movie (and the original novella) is firmly set in a world in which military officers are male, scientists are male, women, if they are employed, are secretaries and ‘helpers.’ This is a world in which the man who is accused of ‘handsy’ behaviour on a date not only finds it amusing but also, apparently, does the woman he was groping.

All the named (human) characters in the novella are male. The reader can surmise attitudes towards women but has no chance to observe them. The 1951 films’ introduction of women to the story is uncanonical. Just as the 1982 film returned the setting to the original location (Antarctica) that film also returns to an all (apparently) male cast of characters.

The 1951 film changes the basic nature of the alien “gadget” to the point that it is unrecognizable. The alien threat is current (recently arrived on earth), the alien is threatening (it doesn’t simply flee) and the major threat it poses is the ability to build an army of superstrong, self-healing soldiers at great speed. The American soldiers are competent and the film is not anti-science though it does question the common sense and practicality of scientists. The American soldier triumphs, the Alien is defeated and we are left with a feel-good film that warns the audience to ‘watch the skies’ as a warning.

The 1982 film opens to a wide expanse as we see a helicopter chasing a husky across a wide, bright snowy terrain. The film progressively becomes more claustrophobic and less clearly lit. The crew of the outpost smoke (as they did in the 1951 film) and they do dope and they drink. They are not neatly clad, and they have a less than clear line of authority.

Further than, that I am loathe to go, for fear of spoiling the version of the movie now playing on Netflix. It isn’t a film version of the novella, rather it is a film that brings to life the ‘gadget’ of the original story. At the same time it manages to be both a concept and a character story. In opposition to the usual plea to first read the book, I think most people would enjoy watching the film first and then reading the book. Either way, I hope you find them as enjoyable as did I.

 

In Praise of Old(er) Books: Part 4, The past is a different country

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It is reasonable to presume that many (most?) of the people who watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho are, at best, dimly aware that the movie was adapted from Robert Bloch’s book of the same name.

This pairing is an excellent example of how different movies may be from the books/stories that inspired them. Psycho the book (henceforth PTB) is Norman’s story. Psycho the movie (henceforth PTM) is Marion’s story. Both stories are set in a past that may seem quite unfamiliar to the modern day audience.

The first line of the book introduces us to Norman as the reader is told he “heard the noise and a shock went through him.” (p. 1)1

The unfortunate Miss Crane who arrives at the Bates Motel in the novel is named Mary rather than Marion2. The reader first meets her on page 19, already on the run, having stolen money, traded cars (at a loss) to evade pursuit and is already exhausted physically and psychologically. We don’t directly ‘see’ Mary decide to steal the cash that a client of her boss (a real estate agent named Mr. Lowery) ostentatiously and publicly offered, rather than the more regular cashier’s cheque. We don’t directly see any interactions between her and the fiancee towards whom she is fleeing. We learn about the theft and her relationship with Sam Loomis only through her memories of their interactions and plans. So the reader only knows that cast of characters and those circumstances through Mary’s remembrances and understandings.

Hitchcock begins the story at a different moment and from a different character’s point of view. The movie opens with Sam and Marion dressing after having had an afternoon tryst in a hotel that catered to people who rented rooms by the hour or part of the day. In both the movie and the book, Sam is struggling to pay off debts his father left him but in the latter he is also encumbered with alimony payments. At one point in the book Mary wonders if Sam will go along with her plan to use the money she has stolen to pay off his debts. Marion appears to have no doubts that he will.

The Mary Crane of PTB is less reactive than the Marion of PTM and she seems both more and less innocent than Marion. Mary proactively plans to trade cars to evade those attempting to trace her while Marion appears to do so only when fearing she is being ‘watched’ by the police. Marion was already engaged in a physical affair with Sam AND was pressuring him to marry her while he cried off doing so due to his debts.

The Norman of PTB is not charming or attractive. We are told that he is overweight, out of shape and balding. He represents every danger that lonely travellers fear as they pull into rundown motels located on back roads. Norman drinks (to the point of passing out) and prior to Mary’s arrival he had already made a hole in the wall between his office and one of the motel rooms, a hole that allowed him to watch the residents in the bathroom. The reader has a clear sense that this cannot end well.

Marion is the ‘star’ of the early part of the movie, then Marion and Norman dominate the movie as it focuses on their interactions and reaction. Mary does not open the book nor does she play any active role in the story after the first few chapters.

The latter part of both book and movie focuses on the efforts of a private detective, Mary/Marion’s sister (Arbogast and Lila in the book and the movie) and Sam to find out what happened to Mary/Marion and Norman’s efforts to prevent them from doing so.

For those who first read/saw Psycho without having lived in/experienced the America in which is is set, the book presents a strange, almost nonsensical world. Why did Mary/Marion risk everything to steal a mere $40,000? Why didn’t Sam simply walk away from his father’s debts? Why did the police officer grill Marion for the ‘crime’ of having slept for a bit after pulling off the road too tired to drive any longer? Why did Mary/Marion pull into a clearly seldom frequented motel? Why did Mary/Marion imagine that by simply driving to another state and trading in her car she could elude detection? Why did Marion/Mary think that stealing money in order to get married was worth while?

One of the ways of engaging with PTM and PTB is to see them as divided into sections, all of which explore aspects of life in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

To begin with let’s start with ‘the instigating factor’ that changes life (and drives decisions) for our characters, the $40,000 that Tom Cassidy slapped down to buy his daughter a house as a wedding present. Now even today, that is a tidy sum of money but it is certainly not enough to justify throwing over one’s job and starting a new life.

However, when the book was published in 1959 (and the movie released in 1960) $40,000 was enough to buy a lovely house. In fact, in 1960 the median household income in the United States was $5,600. (And less than half that for households led by senior citizens.) So with $40,000 Sam and Marion/Mary could anticipate him being able to pay off all the debts he inherited from his father, (we learn in the book he has paid off all but $11,000 of those debts) and buy a car (which in 1960 would have cost less $3,000.) With the $26,000 he and Marion/Mary would be left with, they could have easily bought a house (median house price in 1960 was less than $12,000—  they could have afforded a very nice house) and then settled down to a comfortable upper middle class life. Mary/Marion could anticipate pitching in as one of the workers at Sam’s hardware store rather than holding down ‘a job.’

So $40,000 was enough money to tempt someone to break the law while at the same time it wasn’t quite enough money to guarantee that the police would be immediately involved in the case. One can imagine the questions that were raised by ‘higher ups’ at the real estate company) deciding to take a cash payment for the house (a cash payment from a man who openly boasted that he didn’t declare all of his income to the IRS) and ‘trusting it’ to one of his staff. One understands why Mr. Cassidy/Mr. Lowery might decide that cost of paying for a private detective to track Mary/Marion down was worth not attracting police/government and public attention to the way in which they conducted their business.

Why does Sam not simply walk away from his father’s debts? These were not his debts and he, as far as we can tell, had not co-signed for any of the loans legal or illegal. Sam explains why in the book. His ambition to to keep running the same hardware store in the same small town where he and his father had worked and lived. The loss of reputation and respect in the local community were he not to pay off those loans would make it impossible for him to stay in business.

It’s a nice town, but a small one. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. As long as I’m in there pitching, I got their respect. They go out of their way to trade with me—they all know the situation and appreciate |I’m trying to do my best. Dad had a good reputation, in spite of the way things turned out. I want to keep that for myself and for the business. And for us, in the future. (p. 26)

Why is Marion/|Mary an attractive capable woman not yet 30 so desperate to marry Sam? Because, like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood her “job’ was to find a man, get married and settle down. That is simply what most women did at that time and few considered other options. At 27 she and those around her, considered her to be rapidly approaching ‘old maidship.”

Mary had met Sam on a cruise (which he had won for being a good salesman). When Mary complains at having to wait until the debts are paid off before Sam marries her he tells her:

“It isn’t easy and it isn’t pleasant. But I know what I want, and I can’t settle for less. So you’ll just have to be patient, darling.”

So she was patient. But not until she learned that no amount of further persuasion—verbal or physical—would sway him.

There the situation stood when the cruise ended. And there it remained, for well over a year. Mary had driven up to visit him last summer; she saw the town, the store, the fresh figures in the ledger which showed that Sam had paid off an additional five thousand dollars. “Only eleven thousand to go,” he told her proudly. “Another two years, maybe even less.”

Two years. In two years, she’d be twenty-nine. She couldn’t afford to pull a bluff, stage a scene and walk out on him like some young girl of twenty. She knew there wouldn’t be many more Sam Loomises in her life. So she smiled, and nodded, and went back home to the Lowery Agency.(pp. 26-27)

The feeling that there was no role in life for a woman other than that of being a wife was ubiquitous at the time the book was written and the film released.3 Opportunities had indeed opened up for women. However for many people the change meant that women would no longer be only wives while many still had trouble envisioning a world in which being a wife was not a central aspect of every woman’s character.

At this point, in both movie and book, Marion/Mary goes on a road trip. And going on a road trip in the late 1950s was far more difficult than it is now, especially for women.4

Why did the police officer grill Marion about her choice to pull over and sleep rather than continue driving when she was tired? This is a movie-only incident and its ‘filmic’ logic is excellent. It puts a “face” on Marion’s fears and forces her to confront the practical reality of what she is doing. It would also ring true for the original movie audiences. By 1960, it was no longer unusual for an American woman have a driver’s license, although it was less common for a woman to own a car. Women didn’t tend to travel alone and since they could not open bank accounts or hold credit cards without the consent of their husband, it was difficult for them to buy cars and even rent rooms. The police officer could quite reasonably wonder if Marion was fleeing a crime or fleeing danger.

Why did Mary/Marion imagine that by simply driving to another state and trading in her car she could elude detection? Remember this is a world before cell phones and faxes and video uploads. Finding a picture of someone could be difficult. Getting in touch with someone in another town, let alone another state, could be difficult, time-consuming and expensive. And it was not uncommon for married women to completely drop the use of any form of their “maiden” name. Mary Crane looks forward to settling down in different town, with a different car, known to all her neighbours as Mrs. Sam Loomis. Few would even realize that her given name was Mary.

How unusual was if for the Bates Motel to find itself on a less-travelled road after the investment had been made to build it? It happened to many businesses. Although a ‘highway system’ had been funded by the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, the interstate highway system of the United States was the result of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. That act, and the subsequent road building, altered the traffic flow in many places in the United States.

The book (set in 1959) and the movie (released in 1960) are both set after the beginning of the building of the interstates but before the proliferation of the major motel chains we are now accustomed to seeing. In neither book nor movie was Marion/Mary intending on travelling this back road and finding a motel to stay in. She is tired, lost, has made a wrong turn, isn’t quite sure how far she is from her destination. She sees a motel that looks no different from many others she may have passed earlier that day.

Psycho the movie is brilliant. The progenitor of every current day slasher film. The work of a great director and more than one actor at the top of his/her game. Psycho the book gives the reader a close up view of how people (educated people) in the late 1950s and early 1960s understood issues of gender, dissociative behaviour, sexuality and host of other issues I will not list in order to avoid spoilers.

As someone who has seen the movie dozens of times and read the book many times I think each offers something the other does not and both are worth experiencing.

Psycho, is currently streaming on Netflix.

Psycho, by Robert Bloch is currently available in  audiobook form from Kobo.com and in audiobook form from Libro.fm.

1All book quotations are from 1989 edition of Psycho by Robert Bloch, published by TOR

2There was an actual Mary Crane residing in the city in question.

3Leigh herself was 33 when the movie was released. She had had two marriages when young. In 1951 she married Tony Curtis. She and Curtis were divorced in 1962. She married for the fourth time to Robert Brandt, that same year and they were still married when she died 42 years later.

4Any difficulties/concerns would be magnified to near impossibility were Marion and Sam not white. For African-Americans car travel was difficult and sometimes fraught with danger. Victor Hugo Green, a New York City mailman, published The Negro Motorist Green Book, (also known as The Negro Motorist Green-Book, The Negro Travelers’ Green Book and The Green Book) between 1936 and 1966, with information as to what stores, garages, motels and diners would do business with African-American travelers, which would turn them away and what places should best be avoided. Those who would like to know more about that book and the impact it had on the lives of African-Americans can read Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor….which is currently available in ebook or audiobook form from Kobo.com.

Beginning in 1938 editions of The Green Book included information about Canadian destinations. There appears to have been no Canadian equivalent for the book itself however these additions serve as a reminder that travel in Canada was also difficult for African Canadians and Americans.

In Praise of Old(er) Books: Part 3

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The War of the Worlds: The Future is Always Now

H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds,1 has, over the years, been adapted many times and to various media (in just the last century and in the English language it was adapted both to film2 and radio.3)

The War of the Worlds, originally published in 1897, is a surprisingly easy read for a book written over a century ago. Set in then contemporary England, it may start at a stately pace, but by the time the narrator/protagonist is fleeing before the advancing Martians, the story has become an action thriller. The technology may still be bicycles, dog carts and horse-drawn artillery, but the panic and chaos on the roads feels modern.

The book seems almost to cry out for adaptation especially given its science fiction logic… we (the Earth) are invaded by aliens whose technology is so far advanced that we cannot even begin to understand how it works. Nothing we throw at the Martians does anything to stop them or even slow them down. We see their advanced technology only from the outside, from the point of view of those running in terror from the invaders.

That logic makes the basic story easy to adapt. In 1938, a radio play adapted by Howard Koch and featuring Orson Welles, set the story in New England where the American Army fought with the planes and armament developed during WWI and before WWII. Scientists were more involved than in the book, but basically only to explain to the listening audience where these capsules were coming from and perhaps even Martians’ motivation. Biplanes had replaced dog carts but human beings seemed not to fare any better than they had three decades previously.

The story is set in another venue in the 1953 movie. Now we are in California and now we have many scientists centrally involved. Unlike Independence Day, the fight against aliens is not led by the United States even though they had recently demonstrated their power in the second world war (and in the contemporaneous Korean War.) Unlike the book and the radio play, in this version of the story, there are women actively involved in resisting the Martians and we see some (mostly stereotyped) diversity among the American population.

In 2005, Spielberg moves the story back to roughly the same area focused on in the 1938 radio play… New York and New England. Again, the American military throws their best against the Martians and again, they are seen as part of unified effort on the part of all humanity to best the Martians. The protagonist is made more ‘relatable’ (a divorced father struggling with shared parental custody, a wide gap in wealth between the protagonist and his ex-wives new husband, anxious and recalcitrant children) and perhaps most pointedly, a protagonist who is no longer situated within the wealthy and the highly educated.

What makes the book evergreen in my opinion? Written at a time when England was beginning to grapple with the logic of colonialism and imperialism (and by a man well aware of it), the book’s themes echo down through the years. The tables have turned, we are now the people marveling at the advanced technology of the invaders (note all of these adaptations are placed in first world countries, countries with their own colonial pasts.) None of the versions posit a leader, a saviour, a ‘man on the white horse’… they are all generous to others, accepting that people will panic and do dreadful things under pressure but presenting the bulk of humanity as a ‘good’ thing.

What makes the book/movie/radio play painfully relevant to us today? All these adaptations had something in common—all were set in the NOW of the adaptation. Haskin’s 1953 movie is set in what is recognizably the America of the 1950s. Spielberg’s 2005 film starring Tom Cruise takes place in a recognizably current United States with military and civilian anti-Martian efforts limited to the currently existing technologies. Similarly technologies deployed against the Martian invasion in the 1938 radio play were those which the American public believed to be within the capabilities of the American military at that time.

The original book and the adaptations all present humanity with an existential threat, demonstrate that there is nothing that humanity can do to ward off that threat and then posits a deus ex machina that will save humanity and human civilization. The message is clear… when faced with an overwhelming threat don’t worry, SOMETHING will save us. In every case, original and adaptation, the moral is clear. There is nothing that WE can do to stop the destruction of our world and all our efforts will do us no good.

And this, unfortunately seems to have been a message learned. Today it is not Martians who pose the existential threat… it is climate change. And many of us seem to be waiting for the deus ex machina to arrive, to solve the problem.

At one point in the radio play a radio broadcasts “is there anyone out there” on a loop receiving no answer. I always thought that that is where the play should have ended. The Martians arrived, WE died. The End.

The War of the Worlds is now in the public domain. There many excellent e-editions available from Kobo.com for less than a dollar, while others are more expensive but also have forewords and commentaries that might help the modern day reader. Both Kobo.com and Libro.fm have multiple audiobook versions available (narrated by the cast of Star Trek.) Buying through these links supports Turns and Tales.

 

1 Wells, H. G. 2002 (1897). The War of the Worlds. New York, NY: Dover Publications.

2 Haskin, Byron. 1953. The War of the Worlds. United States: Paramount Pictures.

Spielberg, Steven. 2005. War of the Worlds. United States: Paramount Pictures.

3 Koch Howard. 1938 The War of the Worlds. New York Mercury Theatre of the Air

Coming Soon

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As booksellers we get advance copies/notice of books soon to be published. Here is a preview of some of the coming attractions. If you click on the images, you can buy theses titles through Kobo.com, our ebook supplier.

Down the Hatch: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
by M. C. Beaton with R. W. Green
Minotaur Books
Pub. Date 26 Oct 2021

Agatha Raisin made her debut as a PR agent/amateur sleuth in Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death in 1992. That book was the first of M. C. Beaton’s 30 Agatha Raisin novels. Marion Chesney (Beaton’s real name) was a prolific author who wrote several series of books under her own name and a number of pen names.

Chesney’s Agatha Raisin books were classic cozies but she herself was perhaps more down to earth and practical about the business of writing and the relationship between author and readership than most. She, unlike many other authors, had reached out and identified another author to pick up the pen/typewriter after she was unable to carry on her work. R. W. Green took over writing the Raisin books with Hot to Trot which was finished before Chesney died and published in 2020.

Down the Hatch is Green’s second Raisin book. His writing style and plotting isn’t quite the same as Beaton’s but this reader (and many others) find his work to be quite similar to Beaton’s. Beaton will never write another Agatha Raisin book, but for those who want to follow Agatha as she stumbles upon murders (as she seems fated always to do) to watch her ongoing relationship with James develop, watch her ever continuing battle with Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, Green tells a good, one might even say, a cozy murder story.

True Crime Story: A Novel
by Joseph Knox
Sourcebooks Landmark
Pub. Date 07 Dec. 2021

This isn’t a nonfiction book about true crime, this is a novel, a story constructed not using the routine narrative pattern rather those of the true crime nonfiction books. The reader learns about Zoe Nolan, a young girl who walks out of her apartment one night and is never seen again. The story is told through interviews and stories about her family, her friends, her flatmates and a broad swathe of others with whom she was in contact in her life. On one level, thus, the book is about the attempts to solve a crime while on another level discussion of the crime is a tool to give us more insight into these people, these places this time. The book is designed to appeal both to those who are interested in character driven narratives and those who truly do enjoy true crime stories.

Do You Speak Fish?
By DJ Corchin, illustrated by Dan Dougherty
Sourcebooks eXplore
Pub. Date 05 Oct. 2021
Recommended for ages 4 and up.

As it says on the cover, this is “a story about communicating and understanding”. The tale is about a boy who tries in vain to communicate with a fish, a lion and a bee. When the fish doesn’t respond he initially jumps to the conclusion that the fish was being rude. But then he encounters a talking tree who asks the boy if he speaks Fish. As the boy talks with the tree the boy realizes that different animals and people have different ways of communicating so the fish wasn’t really being rude after all. In the end the kid, fish, lion and bee all learn each others’ languages and as a result of making that effort they now enjoy sitting under the talking tree having fun telling stories. The message is easily understood by the target audience; the book does an excellent job of communicating about communicating. It teaches children that their first impressions may not be correct, and may in fact get in the way of enjoyable experiences. Finding out where others are coming from can be beneficial for everyone, a good thing for young children to learn given how naturally inward-focused young children inevitably are. The illustrations are good, the tone is light-hearted, and there is enough humour to sustain interest.

Dark Night: A Mystery
by Paige Shelton
Minotaur Books
Pub. 07 Dec. 2021

From the Publisher: The third book in the gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series by beloved cozy author Paige Shelton…..

For the reader who has not read any other books in the Alaska Wild series, don’t worry. You don’t need to read either of those books to follow and enjoy Dark Night. Shelton provides enough contextual backstory and explanation to make the book understandable to those beginning the Alaska Wild series with book 3 without falling into the trap of repeating so much from earlier books that it turns off those who have read those books. This is actually a modified (loosened) locked room story. Benedict, Alaska is never completely cut off from the outside world although there are periods of time during which travel is almost impossible and it is clear that this isolation is both an attraction and a problem for different residents of the town. This doesn’t read as the typical ‘cozy,’ perhaps because of its setting. Alaska in general and Benedict in particular become characters in the story and when you reach the last page, murder having been solved, you will still find yourself hoping that Shelton has already started to write the fourth book in series. Beth Rivers (our protagonist) still has personal mysteries to be solved and Benedict and its inhabitants are far to complex and realized not to be worthy of yet another story.

The Grimrose Girls
by Laura Pohl
Pub. Date. Nov. 2. Sourcebooks Fire

LGBTQUIA, Teens & YA There is magic as well as mysterious death afoot at the Grimrose Académie. Like Hogwarts, the Grimrose is a residential boarding school with students who are predominantly teenagers. But there the likenesses between to the two schools disappears Without there being a suggestion of ‘token individuals’ Pohl presents the reader with a cast of characters who differ in social backgrounds financial standing, home environments, racial identification, ethnic identification, gender identification and gender orientation. There are mysteries, deaths and dangers, and throughout the book the characters respond in ways that are true to young adults struggling with questions of their own identities, their relationships with friends and family and, indeed, with themselves.

The mystery plot is both fresh and deeply intertwined with more traditional stories of youngsters, primarily female. Indeed the reader will likely finish the book with an appetite to learn more about old European folk tales. The multiple protagonists have clear and clearly individual voices. The ending both delivers on the quest of uncover the reasons so many students at the Grimrose are dying and leaves the reader hoping that Pohl has already written the next book, the book that takes us even deeper into the magic of the Grimrose and the lives of the characters we have met.

I am NOT the intended audience of this book but it won me over. How much more would a member of that intended audience enjoy the book? There is only one way of finding out.