Author Archives: Anna

Murder at the Rummage Sale

by Anna

By Elizabeth Cunningham

Okay, this book is wild; I’m not even sure how to write this review. My uncle gave it to my mom for Christmas as a joke since my mom absolutely loves yard, garage and estate sales. None of us knew anything about it but it sounded like a charming cozy at a church bazaar full of small-town eccentrics, so I pretty quickly snagged it from her.

It is a murder mystery, though it takes 100 pages for the murder to happen (after a sneak peek prologue). The main investigator is a somewhat overlooked single older woman, though she is oddly… fae? There is a fair amount of woo-woo overall in the book, both vaguely witchy and strongly Christian. I didn’t actually think much of all the prayers and scriptures at first, since it all takes place at a church of course, until God starts answering back, and then I realized, oh, this is Christian-Christian.

I did some half-hearted research into the author, and I’m still not sure quite how to classify her or this novel, actually. She writes in her bio that she is descended from nine generations of Episcopal priests, and her most well-known series appears to be a Mary Magdallen/Jesus fanfic? That said, she really doesn’t seem to be overtly proselytizing.

In fact, most of the characters are struggling with their faith and falling well short of basic standards of morality (not just the murderer). We know this because the book rotates through multiple points of view from a whole slew of unhappy congregants, all with hidden hatreds and fears. Honestly, I really should have hated this book (I hated at least half the characters) but I was just agog.

I caught on to the identity of the murderer fairly early in the book, but even that didn’t diminish my interest. This book was so overall strange to me that I wasn’t sure if they were going to solve the case through human means, divine intervention, or at all. I’m pleased to report that it ends as bonkers as it began, and has a sequel that sounds like it stretches genre definitions even further. I’ll probably end up reading it out of sheer morbid curiosity, but I’m catching up on The Thursday Murder Club next.

The Gods of Gotham

by Anna

By Lindsay Faye

Whew, this book… I picked it up because it is the same author as the excellent Jane Steele, but whoo boy, are there some timely commentaries here. Set in 1845, New York City is recovering from yet another major fire, facing a huge influx of Irish immigrants due to the potato famine, and establishing the first politically organized police force, all to much turmoil. It’s a little disconcerting to have the ‘Nationalists’ of the time ranting against “a standing army” of the new police. The parallels of the past and present create a somewhat dizzying double vision (one character explaining the uphill battle for acceptance that the new police are facing: “New Yorkers eat incompetent for breakfast… and our criminal population couches their arguments in the language of patriotism”).

Our protagonist, reluctantly shoehorned into the police by his politically ambitious brother, quickly discovers a pedophile ring run by a large political donor, at one point described as “a benefactor, one might even say a very personal friend.” (book copyright in 2012, by the way). It is a gripping mystery, dramatic character study, and stringent love letter to New York City, all very well written, and I honestly struggled to get through it.

All struggles were on me as a reader, though, and this novel helped clarify my personal reading tastes. Having recently read and loved Women’s Hotel, also a historical love letter to NYC of sorts, in which little actually happens, I realized that I very much prefer stories that are smaller in scope, focusing more on daily life than sweeping cultural changes. While ratcheting up action and suspense of course keep me riveted, I also start to feel a little overwhelmed by it all and unable to really sink into the writing itself.

At the same time, the news has been an absolute maelstrom, and I’m struggling to focus on anything at all at this time. I’ve started and stopped any number of books over the last few weeks, so the fact that I read all 400+ pages of this one is a real testament to the writing, regardless of how I feel about the narrative after the fact.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Graphic Edition)

by Anna

By Timothy Snyder

Well, this was a long overdue read. My uncle gave this to me years ago; I read the first lesson (do not obey in advance) and got so bummed out (by all the people and institutions doing just that) that I set it aside for far too long until I couldn’t ignore the necessity of it any longer.

Timothy Snyder knows well that this is both a difficult read and a very important one, so he’s made it as accessible as possible. I have the graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug, who has previous written about reckoning with her German history.  The graphic novel comes in at a tidy 120 pages, broken down even further into 20 clearly delineated lessons that run 2-4 pages each. I had assumed it was condensed from the original, but the original also turns out to be a well compressed little chapbook as well.

This book is a perfect example of the idea that it takes a real expert to write on a topic briefly and clearly. It is clear that decades of research have gone into this, and the reader gets the final fruit of all that labor, organized into these 20 practical lessons. This is not an academic or historical treatise; Snyder has done his best (which is better than most) to create a roadmap for readers to push back against the erosion of freedom and democracy.

Each lesson starts with a short explanatory paragraph, followed by more context. Snyder weaves in events and quotes throughout history, 1930s Germany of course, but also 1960s Soviet Union bloc and US slavery, among others; not in flagellation, but a push to really work to learn from the history available to us. Despite the temptation to just tear through it and get it read, I set myself the schedule of only one lesson a day, so that I had the time to really think through and internalize each one.

How Lucky

by Anna

By Will Leitch

Man, it is my season for finally getting around to reading novels by authors that founded beloved defunct websites. Will Leitch co-founded Deadspin, and while he often wrote about sports, he was so clever and witty that I read all his posts anyway. Anyway, I was very much looking forward to reading a mystery by him, and it only took me four years!

I love an unlikely detective, and this was specifically recommended to fans of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time, which was one of my first of the genre. In this novel, protagonist Daniel suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA, described as similar to infant ALS), with a predicted lifespan of 21 years tops, though he is beating the odds in his early 20s and living independently though with round-the-clock assistance. He can’t speak verbally or move without his wheelchair, but still participates in more of life than many of us, which becomes a clear theme of the novel.

While sitting on his porch each morning, he regularly sees a young college student walking to class, and when one morning she gets in a car and then disappears, he appears to be the only witness. He is promptly dismissed by the police in the face of his disability, and his two closest friends jump in to help him continue to get his statement heard. This brings him to the attention of the kidnapper, which really ramps up the suspense.

The crime itself is fairly straight-forward, and is secondary to showcasing a number of socially-marginalized characters and how much they contribute to society as a whole. The end takes a startling swing toward high action, which felt a little jarring, but I’m not sure that wasn’t intentional as well. If at times the theme felt a little blunt, it is definitely a message that is needed more and more today: that everyone can contribute to our society in large and small ways, and that you get out of life what you put into it.

Women’s Hotel

by Anna

By Daniel Lavery

This novel is less about telling a story than evoking a place and time, but it does that so well that I didn’t mind the slight plotting at all. In fact, with everything currently going on, a sort of gentle pastiche of the past might be exactly what I needed.

Daniel Lavery, a favorite author of mine, can just really turn a phrase that had me giggling at basically just clever nonsense (which I mean as a high compliment). Almost every sentence is packed with both witticisms and what I assume is meticulously-researched details of the period, and though it could make for an occasionally dense style, it is also a most welcome distraction from everything in the present.

I’ve seen some low-star reviews complaining that you must love the narrative voice, because there’s not much else going on, and while I suppose I agree, I absolutely love the narrative voice! For me, Lavery does a great job of recalling the absurdist comedy of Three Men in a Boat and Wodehouse. And even with the very light touch, he fits in some poignant themes of personal responsibility, social responsibility, and the frequent conflict between the two, which is very relevant today and helpful to hear, like a gently prodding pep talk. This book won’t be for everyone, but for those of us it is for, it is marvelous!

Unsatisfactory Cozies

by Anna

Only the Cat Knows by Marian Babson

Yeah, yeah, I know… I didn’t particularly like the earlier book I read, but just like that one, I was suckered into the premise. After a suspicious fall puts his twin in critical conditional, a renowned ‘female impersonator’ takes her place in the strange rich guy’s compound where she lives and works. The whole cast of weirdos all hanging on to an enigmatic millionaire is very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ excellent Summer of the Dragon, and this book suffers by the comparison.

As I found in the first book, Marian Babson lacks the key charm necessary to write a standout cozy mystery, though her plots are fun enough. The bare bones are there, but a lot more goes into a decent cozy than the average reader (or writer, I guess) realizes. The end, too, felt fairly abrupt, just wrapping up with the nearest available weirdo being the culprit without much setup, and the happily ever after for the rest of the characters felt fairly unearned as well.

A Deadly Walk in Devon by Nicholas George

Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s 2025, but cozy mysteries are taking an increasing amount of suspension of disbelief, and I may have reached my limit. I already have to accept that the police are concerned with justice and safety in this fantasy world (at least this particular protagonist is already retired), but also that murder is always wrong. Hear me out: maybe if someone is an absolute nightmare to be around at all times, when they eventually push someone too far, that’s just natural consequences.

So, I’m already struggling to believe that our protagonist is a good guy, though he is sympathetically written, and now I have to convince myself that the main investigation is even worth doing. Nicholas George is a capable writer, but this is a steep uphill demand. Overall the majority of the book felt like following a basic outline for a cozy mystery with all the boxes checked off in order, though the end took a bit of a dramatic turn. I’m guessing that George will find a more natural flow in later books, though I’m not invested enough to see.

Martyr!

by Anna

By Kaveh Akbar

This is capital-L Literary novel about a depressed young poet searching for the meaning of life and death, and I should absolutely hate it, but I was riveted! I guess that’s a testimony to the writing. The protagonist is still quite annoying, the sort of drug-fueled tortured artist that intrigued me in my 20s and just exhausts me now. But even within the first few pages, I ran across lines that I knew would stick with me for a while.

I never would have even picked it up if it hadn’t been recommended by what is becoming one of my favorite e-newsletters, Death by Consumption.* The recommendation includes this quoted passage:

Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty.

And I thought to myself, well, yes, of course we all want to be happy, contented, and rich; who doesn’t? So I felt like I needed to read the book to find the counter argument. I didn’t really get an answer, but instead got a lot to think about over the next few days and weeks. (Danny also calls it “short but expansive” and I believe his definition of short has been warped by the enormous tomes he usually reads, since this comes to a healthy 331 pages, but it was a quick read, with short chapters from rotating viewpoints that pull you in for ‘just one more.’)

Also, about halfway through the book, there’s a surprise twist that adds a significant mystery that I wasn’t expecting at all, but helped balance the tortured artist side of it all. That said, I found the ending both confusing and upsetting, which could have been intentional but I got the sense that I was getting caught up in details and missing the big point of it all. I was incredibly grateful to google for autofilling my search of “Martyr! Kaveh Akbar…” with “ending explained” and finding an hour-long lecture on youtube, as well as a decent sized reddit thread.

*Side recommendation: I first started following Danny Gottleib’s writing when he was doing a tongue-in-cheek Julie & Julia thing called Danny & Gweneth, where he tried to make all of Gweneth Paltrow’s recipes with ingredients he could find locally in the Midwest. He ended up moving to NYC and switched to a general media recommendation newsletter that I look forward to every week.

The Hymn to Dionysus

by Anna

By Natasha Pulley

Ooh, Natasha Pulley just keeps getting better and better at her special talent, which is weaving truly brutal social commentary through a cover of fantasy action. I went into this one with less trepidation after The Mars House, and I’m sort of wondering if The Mars House was a setup. There are enough notably similar themes between the two novels that I began to think of them as a pairing of sorts, though very, very different in setting, character, and plot.

The Hymn To Dionysus has an even more light-hearted tone right off the bat. Our protagonist is a happy child soldier in ancient Thebes, and if it doesn’t exactly sound like a happy existence to a modern reader, well, sometimes that’s just the case with fantasy, especially historical fantasy. I mean, look at the majority of children’s and young adult media, right? The Hunger Games and Naruto, just to name a few right off the bat – full of deeply traumatizing events for young children who just sort of make do, and that’s what our protagonist does, too. His life has some downsides (murdering, enslaving, etc.) but there’s plenty of upsides, too (his military unit is like a family to him, he gets to travel and see all sorts of sights). He and everyone else in Thebes are just going along, until Dionysus, the god of madness, shows up and suddenly they can’t just go along, and the full awareness of it all starts crashing down on them, and it is devastating, for both the characters and the reader.

As if all that wasn’t enough, there are some striking comparisons to our current world. My ancient Greek history isn’t up to much, but I started getting the impression this was set toward the end of the Grecian empire, with a years-long drought devastating all levels of civil society. As field slaves run away, figuring capture and death is better than starvation on the stringent food rations, the military is charged with rounding up ‘criminals’ to work the fields for the necessary food for the city and given a quota to meet, which rang direly true.

It ends as satisfactorily as possible, more so than I’d imagined it being able to after a whole series of gasp-worthy twists, and left some scenes indelibly imprinted in my head, so I’d generally recommend this, though I am looking forward to returning to something a little more gentle next (spoiler: I didn’t do that).

To Catch A Cat

by Anna

By Marian Babson

For such a charming cozy premise, this mystery is surprisingly grim and nasty, which is not necessarily a pan but definitely a surprise. Within the first ten pages, 11-year-old Robin has been dared to steal a neighbor’s prized cat but while in the house, witnesses the husband brutally beat his wife to death. I guess I’d expected more of a ‘closed door’ mystery, where all the violence is off-screen so to speak, but it’s really quite explicit. We continue to get intermittent chapters from the husband’s unhinged viewpoint, which are unpleasant and I imagine would be very triggering to anyone experienced in any sort of domestic abuse situation.

At the same time, Robin is staying with his aunt and her less violent, but still verbally abusive boyfriend, and honestly, this novel is not very generous to any sort of post-pubescent male characters. Individual scenes are darkly funny, but the overall situation is grim enough that it is hard to fully enjoy the mystery. Robin is, at best, severely neglected by the variety of self-centered adults around him, with his only real comfort and companion being this cat that he has successfully smuggled out of the murder house.

All the adults are fairly useless in general, with the only real support and help coming from other children and teens. The several divergent plot strands come together in a neat (and fairly quick, at less than 200 pages) ending, and like any decent cozy, it all concludes satisfactorily, though disconcertingly so, considering everything everyone has been through.

Manners and Monsters

by Anna

By Tilly Wallace

I’d run across a couple different recommendations for this book, and the premise is fascinating! Set in a fantasy England in the early 19th century, a biological weapon created in the Napoleanic wars has turned several hundred members of the English aristocracy, primarily women, into zombies of a sort. Honestly, the worldbuilding is so clever, this is more of what I would have liked to see in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! The aristocracy, being the elite, have made it a whole song and dance, with a whole new set of ridiculous etiquette around their living-dead members.

When the etiquette is broken quite violently with a zombie-esque murder (missing brains, of course) at a grand ball, chief investigator Viscount Wycliff, on the fringe of haute ton himself, must pry into secrets of the various ‘unfortunates’ in attendance. In order to ruffle as few feathers as possible, he is accompanied by Spunky Heroine™ Hannah, the unassuming daughter of a surgeon specializing in undead ailments. And here’s where the novel lost me a little.

I generally liked Hannah, but both protagonists are fairly flatly written: Wycliff is brusque to the point of insulting, while Hannah pines for love at least half a dozen times throughout the book. The two are very clearly destined for each other, which wouldn’t bother me if they didn’t seem like an exceptionally bad match. I’d be reading along, enjoying the general zombification of the Regency era, and then their personal interactions would be a sour note. Romance really is trickier to write than people realize!

An additional big kudo to author Tilly Wallace, though: she sells all of her books directly through her website, tillywallace.com, where you can pay and promptly download an epub file. As someone trying to cut my very last tie to amazon (those pesky self-published ebooks), I very much appreciated this, and hope that more self-published authors follow suit!