O’Connell, Carol. Shell Game (1999)G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 374 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14495-1 After a break for Judas Child, Carol O’Connell returns to her series character, NYPD detective Kathleen Mallory, in Shell Game. When an elderly magician dies horribly in what appears to be a botched magic act, only Mallory suspects murder. […]
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Cheever, Susan. Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker Simon & Schuster, 1999Hardcover, 192 pagesISBN 0-684-80432-8 Recommended My grandmother Cheever taught me how to embroider, how to say the Lord’s Prayer, and how to make a perfect dry martini. She showed me how to tilt the gin bottle into the tumbler with the
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Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman’s Life (1988) W.W. Norton & Company, 144 pages, $14.95 hardcover ISBN 0-393-02601-9 In the “Introduction,” feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun explains the topic of her book: There are four ways to write a woman’s life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiography; she
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Jessop, Violet. Titanic Survivor edited and annotated by John Maxtone-GrahamSheridan House, 1997Hardcover, 238 pagesISBN 1-57409-035-6 Violet Jessop went to sea as a stewardess on an ocean liner in 1908. She continued as a stewardess through the glory days when a transatlantic ship crossing was as much a society event as a mode of transportation. She retired
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Cross, Amanda. The James Joyce Murder (1967) Ballantine Books, 197 pages, $5.99 paperback ISBN 0-345-34686-6 Spending the summer at a house in the Berkshires editing letters between James Joyce and his publisher promises to be a peaceful refuge from the city for Kate Fansler. Caring for her young nephew Leo is only a
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Westlake, Donald E. Trust Me on This (1988) Mysterious Press, 292 pages, $5.50 paperback ISBN 0 445 40807 3 This send-up of tabloid journalism is the precursor to Baby, Would I Lie?. Young reporter Sara Joslyn has just lost her job when the small New England newspaper she worked for was bought out,
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Middlebrook, Diane Wood. Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton Houghton Mifflin, 1998Hardcover, 326 pagesISBN 0-395-65489-0 Billy Tipton was a musician and entertainer who flourished during the 1930’s and 1940’s. When paramedics arrived to treat Billy after he had collapsed at home in January 1989, Billy’s adopted son William, who had placed the 911 call,
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Westlake, Donald E. The Hot Rock (1970) Simon and Schuster, 249 pages, $5.95 hardcover ISBN 671 20541 2 The Hot Rock introduces John Archibald Dortmunder, the criminal you can’t help but like. According to William L. DeAndrea in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, Westlake’s “most successful comic novels, the Dortmunder series, grew directly from the grim
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O’Connell, Carol. Judas Child (1998) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 340 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14380 7 Readers disappointed that Carol O’Connell’s latest novel doesn’t feature Kathleen Mallory will quickly forget their displeasure once they begin reading Judas Child. This is the most chillingly effective psychological novel I’ve read in a long time.
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O’Connell, Carol. Stone Angel (1997) G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 341 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0 399 14234 7 In Stone Angel Charles Butler tracks Mallory to Dayborn, Louisiana, where she’s gone in search of her past: “Though she had buried it deep, the act had come back in bits and pieces of unguarded thoughts
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