When I was growing up, my mother and I borrowed armfuls of books from the library every week. As I worked my way through classic novels, she devoured mysteries and imparted her enthusiasm to me. After earning a Ph.D. in English, I taught college-level writing and literature. I currently write the Five-Ingredient Mysteries, each with five suspects, five clues, and five-ingredient recipes. My recent books unite my love of mysteries and classics. Though set in the present, they revolve around iconic authors or events of the past. Poe, Dickens, and Christie, along with suspense master Hitchcock, have influenced the characters, plots, and themes of my books.
As a mystery reader and writer, I idolize Agatha Christie, the bestselling fiction writer of all time. In her 60+ detective novels, the mystery is always solved, but she left behind an unsolved mystery about herself. In 1926, after Archie Christie asked for a divorce to marry his lover, Agatha vanished for eleven days. Found after a massive manhunt, she never revealed why or how she disappeared. The Christie Affair solves that mystery in an inventive way, narrated by Archie’s mistress, a character I didn’t expect to like but grew to understand. I love the novel’s intertwining of history and mystery. It explores the effect of war on the hearts and minds of the characters and includes a murder solution worthy of Dame Agatha.
Why would the world's most famous mystery writer disappear for eleven days? What makes a woman desperate enough to destroy another woman's marriage? How deeply can a person crave revenge?
"Sizzles from its first sentence." - The Wall Street Journal A Reese's Book Club Pick
In 1925, Miss Nan O’Dea infiltrated the wealthy, rarefied world of author Agatha Christie and her husband, Archie. In every way, she became a part of their life––first, both Christies. Then, just Archie. Soon, Nan became Archie’s mistress, luring him away from his devoted wife, desperate to marry him. Nan’s plot didn’t begin the day…
This novel explores the mysteries of the heart, much as Jane Austen did. The book’s chapters correspond with Austen’s six novels and the six meetings of the book club focused on her. As five women of various ages and one man discuss each Austen novel, their witty sparring reveals the complexity of their own searches for love and meaning. By studying Austen’s novels, the book club members, all of them at a crossroads, understand themselves better and forge a path forward. Having read and re-read Austen for decades, I love this book for showing how Jane Austen speaks to us two centuries after she died.
Six people five women and a man meet once a month in California's Central Valley to discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy, but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen a couple of them even fall in love 'A thoroughly delightful comedy of contemporary manners' Entertainment Weekly
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
This novella is inspired by the iconic character, Sherlock Holmes. Its title recalls “The Final Problem,” the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle left his fictional detective for dead and then had to resurrect him after a public outcry. Chabon’s title also echoes the Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust. The story is set during World War II in an English village, where a mute Jewish boy, his talking parrot, and a famous detective in advanced old age come together. When a stranger is murdered and the parrot goes missing, the retired detective, nameless though clearly Holmes, agrees to find the boy’s bird, a task that incidentally leads to the murderer. I love Chabon’s elegant writing as he explores the solvable and unsolvable mysteries of unspeakable crimes.
A brilliant reworking of the detective story by the much-acclaimed Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & KLAY.
In THE FINAL SOLUTION, Michael Chabon has crafted a short, suspenseful tale of compassion and wit that reimagines the classic 19th-century detective story.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an 89-year-old man, vaguely remembered by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with other people. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African grey parrot.…
This entertaining book about the man who invented the armchair detective is perfect for armchair travelers and for researchers. I pored over it for the 4th mystery in my series, with its cast of Poe fanatics. Poe-Landexplores the life and legacy of Poe through the places where he lived and where museums and monuments now honor him. His best-known stories stem from his time in Philadelphia, home of the Poe National Historic Site. The Philadelphia Free Library’s collection of Poe-phernalia (Ocker’s word) includes Charles Dickens’s stuffed pet bird, the raven said to have inspired Poe’s famous poem. Ocker unravels the mystery of how the bird got there, but neither he nor anyone else can solve the puzzle of Poe’s mysterious death in Baltimore.
Edgar Allan Poe was an oddity: his life, literature, and legacy are all, well, odd. In Poe-Land, J. W. Ocker explores the physical aspects of Poe's legacy across the East Coast and beyond, touring Poe's homes, examining artifacts from his life-locks of his hair, pieces of his coffin, original manuscripts, his boyhood bed-and visiting the many memorials dedicated to him.
Along the way, Ocker meets people from a range of backgrounds and professions-actors, museum managers, collectors, historians-who have dedicated some part of their lives to Poe and his legacy. Poe-Land is a unique travelogue of the afterlife of the poet…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
This novel is two books for the price of one. It contains the unfinished manuscript of The Mystery of Edwin Drood that Dickens was writing when he died. Chapters from the Dickens book alternate with scenes from a conference in Rome devoted to unfinished works. The conference attendees who resemble fictional sleuths, including Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, and Hercule Poirot, look for clues in the Dickens text to deduce how he would have finished the story. The book also offers insights into the life and death of Charles Dickens and a stunning ending. I love the book for its unique combination of a mystery and a novel by a literary giant.
The authors combine the text of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, literary scholarship, the detective genre, and their knowledge of Rome to produce a hilarious, offbeat satire. Translated by Gregory Dowling. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
A Christmas Carolby Charles Dickens inspired my 7th Five-Ingredient Mystery featuring café manager Val and her live-wire grandfather as sleuths. While Val hosts a tea for costumed volunteers during a Dickens of a Holiday festival, an intruder shrouded in black, like the eeriest Dickens ghost, crashes the party and gives out macabre gifts—gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Santa munches his gingerdead man and keels over. A second deadly treat in a gift bag claims another victim and darkens the shadow over the town’s celebration. Once Val and Granddad unmask the cookie-cutter killer disguised as a ghost, they and the whole town can celebrate the holidays as the Dickens characters do—with family, friends, and food.
