We’re having a Book Giveaway to celebrate the upcoming publication of The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily–coming later this month. Win these four signed hardcovers for yourself or for gifting. Quick-and-easy entry–simply comment below, telling us what you like best about the Dahlias. Continental U.S. only, please. One entry per person. Comments close on […]

The second Pecan Springs novella trilogy is coming out this week! Available right now on Kindle, it will shortly be available on Nook and iBooks. Here’s the scoop, via my author’s note at the beginning of the book. If you’re looking for an entertaining (and, I hope, thought-provoking) read, this might suit you. Enjoy, with […]

            Last week was the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, the day when Nazi Germany formally surrendered to the Allies. It  reminded me of a telling pair of photographs that I dug up when I was doing the research for one of my favorite writing projects: a biographical novel called […]

This enchanting 1957 cat-memoir by May Sarton may be the grandmother of the current litter of cat-cozies, a fact that may or may not endear it to you, depending on how you feel about cats and cozies. I ran across it on my shelf last week and sat down with it immediately, remembering the great […]

When In Cold Blood was published in 1965, Truman Capote’s book was a landmark, widely promoted as a factually true account of the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas, and of the investigation, the trial and appeals, and the execution of the two convicted killers. Capote (with his longtime friend […]

My experience of Shirley Jackson began with her two memoirs, Life Among the Savages (1952) and Raising Demons (1957), both genuinely funny, crisp, and captivating. I discovered them in the early 1960s, when I was a young mom with small children, learning how to write and wanting a career as a writer. In those books, […]

One of the most fascinating mysteries in American literature is the mystery of Harper Lee’s single masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird–especially after Go Set a Watchman was published and we realized that there really were no masterpieces tucked away in Lee’s bank vault. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep, […]

For me, Beverly Lowry’s book about the Austin TX Yogurt Shop murders ranks right up there with Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood as among the very best of true crime. But you have to be patient, for the story world Lowry recreates is initially–and deliberately, artfully, confoundingly–as confusing as the real world she must […]

The talkative parrot who shows up near the end of A Plain Vanilla Murder has developed his own personal following, it seems. Maybe  you remember him from the book. His name is Mr. Spock. China Bayles describes him as “a stunning green parrot with an orange beak and splashes of red and blue under his […]