Death of a Neighborhood Witch by Laura Levine

Reviewed by Jeanne

In this entry in the long running series, Jaine Austen runs afoul of one of her neighbors, a former actress known for her role as Cryptessa in a zombie sitcom back in the day.  The show only lasted one season but like any good monster, Cryptessa refuses to be buried.

Cryptessa’s pet parakeet Van Helsing can’t say the same, inasmuch as the elderly bird has keeled over dead just as Jaine is in Cryptessa’s yard trying to get Prozac—her cat, not the drug. Cryptessa claims that Prozac frightened her bird to death and threatens to sue unless Jaine helps bury the budgie.  And spend hours planting Cryptessa’s petunias.  And numerous chores to be named later.

This is putting a serious crimp in Jaine’s plans to flirt with Peter, the hunky guy who just moved in down the street and who is definitely, yes, DEFINITELY flirting with her, although Jaine’s friend Lance is equally sure that Peter is flirting with him.  Both are attending Peter’s Halloween party where they think matters will be settled, but—unsurprisingly—things don’t go as planned.

For one thing, Cryptessa managed to get herself killed in grand style, and Jaine—parakeet murderer—may be suspect number one.

I will admit it was the cover that first drew me in: Hiro Kimura’s renditions of Prozac are a delight, and a good representation of the contents.  They’re funny, cute, and a little over the top.  Levine exaggerates everything for comic effect, and that includes the names of characters, just in case Cryptessa didn’t give you a clue.   (Wait’ll you read about Prozac’s favorite cat food flavors.) There are epic battles, such as Jaine and the Tummy Tamer or Jaine’s father aka Daddy-O and the neighbors over his “FANG-Tastic” Dracula blasting “Fangs for the Memories” which is causing complaints for some reason.  And of course, the little matter of Jaine being a murder suspect.

If you aren’t a fan of unlikely situations or snarky cats, this may not be the book for you. On the other hand, if you love a heroine who throws caution to the wind, scarfs down Oreos, and rushes in where angels fear to treat, you may be in for a treat.  I love Jaine because she bounces back no matter what.  She can be insulted (and insulting) but she is quick to move on, and (mostly) forgive.  I’m looking at you, Lance.

Books don’t need to be read in order.

 

Titles in the series:

This Pen for Hire

Last Writes

Killer Blonde

Shoes to Die For

PMS Murder

Death by Panty Hose

Killing Bridezilla

Killer Cruise

Death of a Trophy Wife

Pampered to Death

Death of a Neighborhood Witch

Killing Cupid

Death by Tiara

Murder Has Nine Lives

Death of a Bachelorette

Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge

Death of a Gigolo

Murder Gets a Makeover

Death by Smoothie (2022)

She Kills Me: The True Stories of History’s Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

In case you haven’t gathered it from the title, this is relatively light hearted look at women who kill.  Note that I didn’t say murder, because a number of these women were warriors, from the Celtic Queen Boudica who rose up against Rome to Nadeahda Vasiyevna Popva who was a member of the famed WWII Russian air squadron the “Night Witches” to Freddie Oversteegen who joined the Resistance at fourteen. Some choices I found understandable but unexpected:  Mary I of England, for example.

Some of the women are well known, including Elizabeth Bathory or Lizzie Borden, while others have been relegated to footnotes in history.  The stories are brief, mostly less than four pages, and the author has a notation about topics at the beginning of each (Torture; Child Abuse; etc.) in case a reader is sensitive. 

The author doesn’t dwell on gruesome details, thankfully, but gives a quick overview and does put the story in historical context. Some of the most horrific stories for me were the ones involving slaves, especially the section on Delphine LaLaurie.  Even her New Orleans neighbors complained about her cruelty to her slaves, to no avail.  Finally, her starving cook set fire to house, revealing the horrors within.

Locusta of Gaul was one I found particularly intriguing.  The author comments, “It’s good to have work that you’re respected for” as this section opens, before adding, “You should not become a professional poisoner.”  Locusta’s skills with poisons made her quite popular in some circles in Rome—even in the Emperor’s household. 

 It may sound strange but one thing I loved about the book was its sense of humor. Let me quickly note that the humor is not at the expense of individual victims.  Mostly, it’s situational as the comments made under the section “Poisoning Husbands”:

“Truly, it was a scary time for men in England.  Not only were women pushing for better workplace conditions, and beginning to suggest they’d like to vote, now men feared their wives were going to poison them, largely for being awful.” The paragraph goes on to point out that in the 1850s, women were considered more or less the property of their husband.  He had control of property, money, and any children.  In the words of the old folksong:

Hard is the fortune of all womankind

She’s always controlled, she’s always confined.

Controlled by her parents, until she’s a wife—

A slave to her husband for the rest of her life.

Widowhood was one of the few ways a woman could become independent.

This isn’t to say that the author condones the practice of poisoning husbands, she merely puts it in context as to why it became so much a political issue that the House of Lords accepted an amendment to make the sale of arsenic to women illegal.

Cult leaders, pirate queens, saloon owners, warriors, and vigilantes roam these pages, and I enjoyed reading about them all.

Nevermore: We Carry Their Bones, The Woman in the Library, Miss Jane Pittman, No Better Friend

 

Reported by Garry

 

We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys by Erin Kimmerle is the unflinching inside story of the recovery of dozens of remains of young boys from the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier Boys School in Florida. Established in 1900 as a reform school for children, some as young as six years old, many of the children were Black and were hired out to local farmers as indentured labor by the management of the school. After the school shut down in 2011 after years of reports of cruelty, abuse and murder, forensic anthropologist Kimmerle stepped in to locate the school’s graveyards, both official and unofficial. Despite threats and intimidation by locals, Kimmerle continues to search for not only the remains of the children, but their relatives in order to reunite the deceased with their families. Our reader said that this book, while harrowing, is an interesting read and a real indictment of the reform school system both past and present.  CD

                                                             

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill. A quiet morning in the Boston Public Library is shattered by a woman’s scream. Security locks down the building and four strangers pass the time sitting around a table in the reading room. Friendships begin and each member has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room at the time – except that one of them is a murderer. This book was reviewed by one of our readers who typically doesn’t go for such fare, but who was really taken with the twists and turns that Gentill works into her stories, and who thought that the final result was: “Not bad!”  SC

 

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines depicts the life and times of a 110-year-old Black woman born into slavery, who lived through both World Wars and the Civil Rights era of the late 1960s. Even though this book is a fictionalized account, the author went to great lengths to ensure that the voice and history of Pittman and others in the book were true to life. When the novel was initially published in 1971, many people believed that the book was non-fiction. Famously, the novel was turned into a groundbreaking television movie in 1974 starring Cicely Tyson. Our reader states that this book is very moving, useful, and a beautiful depiction of the human soul.  AH

 

No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII by Robert Weintraub is our feel-good book for the week. Judy of Sussex was an English pointer, born in China during World War II. Initially guarding boats on the Yangtze River, Judy became part of the crew and even accompanied them to a Japanese prisoner of war camp for three years when the team was captured. Judy placed her own life at risk many times during their internment, intervening when the soldiers were being beaten or tortured by their captors. Once freed, Judy and Fran Williams (who had the strongest bond with Judy) travelled the world as part of the Royal Air Force. To date, Judy remains the only official canine POW of World War II. This heartwarming story of fierce, unconditional love, and loyalty moved our reader deeply and she highly recommends it to anyone who has been lucky enough to know the love of a dog.  KM

 

The Red Cotton Fields by Michael Strickland

How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for Our Times by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens

Capture the Crown by Jennifer Estep

Death in a Blackout by Jessica Ellicott

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer’s Life by Kathleen Norris

The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths

Haven by Emma Donoghue

The Chaos Machine:  The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

The Bad Angel Brothers by Paul Theroux

Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships by Nina Totenberg

The Shadow of the Empire (A Judge Dee Investigation Book 1) by Qiu Xiaolong

Hollywood Horrors: Murders, Scandals, and Cover-Ups from Tinseltown by Andrea Van Landingham

Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

 

Reviewed by Christy

Most people of a certain age have probably heard of (and read) Go Ask Alice – an anonymous (but allegedly real!) diary of a troubled teenage girl. I have hazy memories of reading it in middle school (or did my best friend read it and tell me all about it? We did that a lot too, Flowers in the Attic being one scandalous example.) Regardless, one of us may have read it but both of us were aware of it. The unnamed diarist (whom, for simplicity's sake, many people just call Alice) has a normal family life, not at all the type of person one would assume to take drugs. That is until July when someone slips LSD into her coke at a party! Less than a week later, she is injecting crack. By October, she's run away to California and opened up a clothing boutique with another runaway. (She is all of fifteen.)

            Alice was not real. It was a novel masquerading as an authentic diary. It was a huge hit, however, spawning multiple re-prints and a tv movie-of-the-week starring William Shatner and Andy Griffith. Beatrice Sparks, the Mormon homemaker who was actually the author, was devastated that her name was nowhere on the cover. She tried selling some of her more straightforward novels (ones that would give her name prime real estate on the front), but no one was interested. Thus, she kept creating "diaries" and attaching "edited by Beatrice Sparks" (or in the case of Jay’s Journal: edited by Dr. Beatrice Sparks, who also discovered the international bestseller Go Ask Alice). When a grieving mother, Marcella, saw an article about Sparks and her alleged work with troubled youth, she reached out to her. Marcella’s son Alden had struggled with addiction and depression before dying by suicide at only seventeen. She wanted his death to mean something, and to possibly spare any other mothers from burying a child. She asked Sparks to publish his diary as a cautionary tale. Sparks agreed. Jay’s Journal was released in 1978. In it, “Jay” struggles with addiction and depression. He becomes involved with a satanic group and practices disturbing occult rituals until he dies by suicide. Marcella and her family were horrified. This was not who Alden was. The book became the source of local urban legends and, more than once, was used as “evidence” to corroborate the so-called satanic ritual abuse that would fuel the subsequent satanic panic of the 1980s. As if losing a loved one wasn’t difficult enough, now Alden’s family had to watch his name dragged through the mud and constantly tidy up his routinely vandalized headstone.

            Rick Emerson takes a deep dive into this niche pop culture moment. I found it immensely interesting and enraging in equal parts. Emerson keeps a light, almost irreverent tone when it’s appropriate, and it (mostly) doesn’t bleed into the more somber parts. But sometimes it does, and I felt he should’ve reeled that in a bit. However, he clearly has a lot of sympathy for Alden’s family. One thing that really bothered me is that not only does he not cite his sources; he claims he did not do so because the information is freely “available on the internet” and besides, he wanted fast pacing, and notes would just bog that down. To be frank, that is absolutely absurd and sounds like a high schooler’s logic. Especially since he does have some notes throughout. I don’t think he’s lying, by any means, but let’s be professional here.

I wasn’t too upset about Go Ask Alice because honestly, advertising it as a real diary was a pretty smart marketing gimmick. Reading it as an adult, though, I can’t believe I fell for it. It’s just so histrionic and over the top. Jay’s Journal is another thing entirely. The family was deeply scarred by its existence, and its claims of authenticity sent reverberations throughout the next decade. The fact that Sparks went on to write several more “diaries” with no real repercussions is kind of heartbreaking. I found all of this fascinating, and I do recommend the book because I have barely scratched the surface of Sparks’ unhinged fraud.

Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine

 

Reviewed by Kristin

After a long cold winter, what if spring never came? As March, April, May, and even June rolled around, what if the sky stayed overcast and the sun shone dimly? What if this continued and became known as the year with no summer, but people held out hope for the next year? With such a poor growing season, shortages would become obvious, food would become scarce, and people would start to go hungry. And what would happen when the next year nothing changed?

Wylodine (Wil) is living alone on her family farm in southern Ohio. Her mother and stepfather Lobo decided to head to California to see if any better conditions exist. Lobo was always known in their small town for his ability to grow weed. Wil has the green thumb required too, even though she would rather that Lobo left them long ago. Like it or not, Wil is known as the girl who can make things grow.

Wil’s best friend is Lisbeth, and she is all caught up in The Church. Lisbeth’s parents have brought her up to believe, and now that the summers are not returning, the religious fervor of The Church has created a cult-like following. The Church decides they must leave Ohio to find a new promised land, one with sun and hope and strict obedience to the leaders.

Wil tries to keep going—she really does. But as the days and nights get colder and colder, she decides to attempt the trip to California to find her mother. She has an address, and a tiny house that she can haul with her truck. Wil sets out, picking up strays along the way. They hit many obstacles, some figurative and some literal, but Wil and her little entourage keep moving.

The tone of the novel could be called bleak, but there is something about Wil which keeps hope alive. She is brutally honest, refusing to loot convenience stores or to steal fuel from abandoned gas stations. She and her little group take what they need, but she always leaves cash in exchange. Wil hopes that she will see her mother again, and maintains a protective attitude about those who need protecting. She knows that they will keep moving until they reach California, or until they find a good place to be, a right time to give up the increasingly difficult travel across a landscape frozen into place. Wil may have at least temporarily lost contact with her mother, but she builds a family with her traveling companions.

Alison Stine books are hard to recommend enthusiastically because they are full of characters going through extreme hardships and they don’t always (or ever?) end up with a bright, happy ending. I read and reviewed Trashlands a couple of months ago. While these are both hard books to talk up, I find Stine’s take on the world to be both contemplative and well worth reading.

Nevermore: Witches Abroad, Agent Josephine, Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, Family Upstairs

 

Reported by Garry

 

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett is part of the Discworld series but can be read as a standalone. Our reader absolutely loved this hilarious, irreverent fantasy set in the Discworld universe. Fairy godmother Desiderata has died, leaving her coveted wand to young witch Magrat Garlick but failed to leave adequate instructions on its use.   She did give Magrat strict orders to tell witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg that they definitely could not accompany Magrat on her mission to help a young woman NOT marry a prince. This of course ensures that they will insist on accompanying her to “foreign parts” to help. Fortunately, Nanny Ogg speaks foreign.  This utterly delightful journey takes them through any number of fairy tales and pays tribute to the power of story.  Our reader was kept in stitches and highly recommends this book. WJ

 

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis. Entertainment icon Josephine Baker was much more than just one of the most beautiful women of her time.  She was an incredibly intelligent, driven and cunning Resistance fighter. Baker found fame and acceptance in France, where she became a super-star, until the Nazis seized Paris and banned her from the stage. Overnight she became a Resistance fighter and spy. Drawing on a trove of historical documents and research, Damien Lewis brings to light this lesser-known side of one of the world’s most iconic performers in a book that our reader (who loves WWII books) loved, and highly recommends to anyone who wants to know more about WWII.  ML

 

The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers is a multi-award winning novel that tackles the generational effects of slavery in America. Ailey Pearl Garfield is raised in the North but spends summers in the South in the small Georgia town that her family has inhabited since being transported there as slaves. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that every African American possesses a “Double Consciousness” which they use to survive a culture biased against them and other people of color. Our reader says that she has never read anything that was so descriptive of the experience of BIPOC before, and states that this towering work of Black feminist historical fiction is definitely worth reading.  MH

 

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell.  Be careful what you wish for – you may just get it and more. Libby Jones is a 25-year-old Brit who does not know who she is. Her birth parents have been a mystery to her since she was found as a baby at the site of a horrendous murder – of which she was the sole survivor. She finds out not only who her parents are, but that she is the heir to a mansion in the heart of one of London’s most desirable neighborhoods, worth millions of pounds. She also finds out that she is not the only one with secrets that have just been revealed. Our reader says that this is a definite page-turner and stayed up WAY too late reading it.

 

Also Mentioned:

 

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

The U.S. and the Holocaust by Ken Burns on PBS

Birds of America: A Novel by Mary McCarthy

Red Shirts by John Scalzi

Ducks Overboard by Markus Motum

Moby Duck:  The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn

The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II by Buzz Bissinger

D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way

Bunnicula (Graphic Novel) by James Howe

The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale

Path Lit by Lightning the Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss

The Return by Rachel Harrison

 

Reviewed by Christy

            Julie, Elise, Mae, and Molly have been friends since college. Now in their late 20s, they’ve somewhat drifted apart with big moves and marriages, but they still consider each other best friends. Julie and Elise most of all. No one has a bond like them. So when Julie suddenly disappears and her friends and new husband are freaking out, Elise isn’t too terribly worried. Because isn’t this just like Julie? To take off just so she can find herself again. Six months go by. Then a year. A memorial service is held. Then two years go by. And just when Elise is starting to doubt her own doubt, Julie shows up again. Out of the blue, just like her disappearance. And she has no memory of what happened to her.

            The women, completely baffled but elated, decide to take a girls’ trip to celebrate and get re-acquainted. Mae has found a wonderfully kitschy hotel, tucked away in the woods with plenty of activities for them to do. Sip and paint, here they come! They try to ignore how gaunt and sickly Julie looks, how she randomly loses teeth with nothing more than a shrug. They can ignore it for a while but not forever.

            This was a fun read. It mostly all takes place at the hotel, and I enjoyed the time Harrison took to highlight the women’s complicated relationships with each other and their own individual personalities. I listened to the audio book, and the narrator Sarah Scott does a fantastic job of differentiating between the four women so seamlessly that you almost forget only one woman is speaking. It’s a slow-paced book with a lot of buildup, and honestly, not much of it is scary. (Although there is some creepy tense moments throughout and well-written body horror towards the end.) I enjoy reunion-type thrillers when secrets spill out so I liked it quite a bit. I was a little underwhelmed by Harrison’s novel Cackle so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this one. It’s probably not a new favorite, but I’m glad I read it, and I look forward to her recently released werewolf novel Such Sharp Teeth!

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula by Koren Shadmi

 

 Reviewed by Jeanne

 

As he did with his excellent graphic novel style biography of Rod Serling, Koren Shadmi presents a fascinating look at another entertainment icon:  Bela Lugosi. The moody black and white drawings seem especially appropriate for a figure whose best known works were filmed that way.  The book opens in 1955 with the elderly Lugosi checking himself into a hospital to try to beat his addiction.  During his delirium, he sees figures, some from his past, some who are just representations, who illuminate his life.

He was born Bela Blasko in Lugos, Hungary, the youngest child of a relatively prosperous family.  His father had begun as a baker but had become a respected banker. Bela’s theatrical aspirations didn’t please his family, so he left for Budapest as a youth, taking the name of his hometown as his surname. The novel traces his career and personal life, both of which could be fraught. He was married multiple times and had numerous affairs, including one with Clara Bow. The “IT Girl” finagled a meeting with Lugosi because she wanted to know more about how he learned his lines phonetically, as his English was limited.  Bow had a thick Brooklyn accent and at that time the motion picture industry was transitioning from silent pictures to talkies. 

Of course, Lugosi’s big break came when he was cast in the stage version of Dracula in 1927, which led to his being cast in the 1931 movie. Suddenly, he was a hot commodity, but his accent and typecasting limited his roles. He had a screen test for the role of the monster in Frankenstein but he hated the heavy make-up and the creature’s lack of lines.  The role eventually went to Boris Karloff.

In order to make ends meet, Lugosi took roles in low-budget productions, which did nothing to enhance his reputation as an actor. Of course, near the end of his life he worked with Ed Wood, which is a whole ‘nother story.

Overall, I enjoyed Lugosi. Shadmi uses the graphic art medium to great effect, uniting image and words to make a memorable story.  I especially love the way he uses the art to both set mood and to give a strong sense of time and place.  I found the scenes set in the ‘20s and ‘30s to be particularly atmospheric. 

The author appends a list of the articles, books, and other sources he used to create this book. Some aspects of Lugosi’s life are given scant attention and some incidents are not included, but that’s also the nature of the medium.  It doesn’t help that in reading about the actor there can be multiple versions of an event, making it difficult for any biographer to sift out truth from fiction. If I have a quibble, it is that I would have liked some indication of the source for some incidents Shadmi depicted.

I recommend this to anyone who has an interest in early Hollywood, and especially the dawn of horror movies, or anyone who enjoys a good graphic novel biography.

Nevermore: Thread Collectors, Mosquito Bowl, Wonders of Lost Causes

 

Reported by Garry

 

The Thread Collectors by Shaunna Edwards and Allyson Richman. This historical fiction novel, set in 1863 follows the intertwined lives of Stella, a young Black lady in Louisiana, who embroiders intricate maps to freedom for runaway slaves, and Lily, a New York City woman who stitches quilts for her husband who is stationed with the Union Army in Louisiana. Their lives collide in New Orleans where they discover that the most delicate threads can save lives and tie destinies together. This book has been reviewed by a number of our Nevermore readers, and all agree that it is a phenomenally well written, captivating story of female friendship, strength and perseverance in the face of near overwhelming adversity.  ML

The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II by Buzz Bissinger is the retelling of a little-known but historically significant football game played on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve, 1944. Bissinger (the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Friday Night Lights) has brought together oral histories, newspaper articles, and rigorous research to bring to life this near-forgotten game that involved the greatest gathering of college football stars who would go on to fight in World War II.  KN

 

The Wonders of Lost Causes by Nick Trout is the heartwarming novel of a single mom and her chronically ill son and how their lives are upended and enriched by the arrival of an unexpected new family member – a very special dog named Whistler. Dr. Kate Blunt is a young single mother whose son, Jasper, has cystic fibrosis. This incurable lung condition has precluded the Blunts from getting a dog, until Whistler shows up at the door of Dr. Kate’s veterinary practice and makes an unexpected and instantaneous bond with Jasper.  WJ

 

Also mentioned:

This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor by Adam Kay

Moby Duck:  The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn

Haven by Emma Donoghue

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

The Secret Guests by Benjamin Black

The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller by Henry James

Queen of the Underworld by Gail Godwin

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

“Life Was Meant to Be Lived”:  A Centenary Portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt by Joseph P. Lash

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers