It’s here!
The REvised edition of my first novel
Trees Long For Rain
Venice, 1643. Isabella wants to sing in Monteverdi’s choir, but only boys (and castrati) can do that. Her singing teacher, Margherita, introduces her to a new wonder: opera! But then Isabella finds Margherita murdered. And now the killer is after Margherita’s son, Rafaele.
Isabella and Rafaele have to find Margherita’s killer before Rafaele is condemned for a murder he didn’t commit, though Isabella fears that the truth will tear her apart from the man she loves.
REview:
The Night we became strangers
Written by Lorena Hughes
Review by Alison McMahan
This is a complexly plotted historical novel, a fictional story that swirls around one historical event: the live 1949 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in Spanish in Quito, Ecuador. Orson Welles had broadcast it in the US in 1938, causing a widespread panic by people who really believed the Martians were invading. The broadcast in Quito was scripted in a “breaking news” format, with real politicians playing themselves as they gave “breaking news updates” to an increasingly panicked populace. Some set fire to the radio station, leading to the deaths of fifteen people inside.
The characters in the novel include a journalist and radio actress who died that night under confusing circumstances. Years later, the actress’s daughter, Valeria, the main character in a strong group of ensemble characters, returns from boarding school and decides to find out what really happened to her parents (her father disappeared after that fatal night) while she also tries to establish herself as a photojournalist.
You can read the full review at the Historical Novel Review website, here:
REview:
The Phoenix Pencil Company
Written by Allison King
Review by Alison McMahan
In WWII Shanghai, women of a certain family can absorb messages from the pencils that wrote them. They stab the pencils into their wrists and pour out life energy with the liquified pencil hearts. The Japanese invaders force the women to spy; after the war, so do the Communists and the Nationalists dueling for China’s soul. Yun and her adored cousin Meng lock down for years in the pencil production company, co-writing a fantasy story to stay human.
Yun finds a way out, to California, still indentured. Political complications, cowardice, and shame keep her from helping Meng. The historical background is sketched too lightly. Still, Yun’s section is fascinating.
REview:
TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS:
The Graphic NOvel
“Trouble is my Business” (1939) was Raymond Chandler’s 21st mystery story. Chandler first wrote stories about knights of derring-do. He served in WWI, then returned to the US to work for an oil company. Let go during the Great Depression, he started writing pulp detective fiction.
Reading Chandler ninety years later is challenging. His poetically hard-boiled slang is so strange to us that the re-release of his first novel, The Big Sleep, has footnotes. In this graphic novel adaptation, Arvind David and his gifted artists make it easy: you see “shill” when Harriet Huntress uses her wiles to keep a man at the gambling table, and a “pretty hip draw” when George the chauffeur executes an attacking thug with a balletic arm motion.
Article:
The Lost Writing Partner: The case of Charles & Caroline Todd
WRITTEN FOR HISTORICAL NOVEL REVIEW
What is it like for a writer to lose their writing partner after many years and books together? How does the survivor navigate the financial and legal aspects of a long-standing partnership? What happens to the work when the writing partnership ends?
