Features
Fall’s Best International Fiction
.
Sorry, folks—we got a little behind with the column, but there’s been so many wonderful new novels in translation coming out this fall, I had to do at least one more new release roundup before the end of the year. Below, you’ll find an eclectic melange of mystery, thriller, and horror, with plenty of cross-overs…
Learning to Be Lost (and Found) in Fiction and in Life
.
It’s 1986, and I’m lost in the forest. I’m ten years old, huddled at the base of a Ponderosa pine at the far reaches of Silver Lake, California, one of innumerous small, high Alpine lakes strewn across the Sierra Nevada mountains like blue-green jewels in a tangled necklace. It’s getting dark, and I haven’t seen…
Brave Women in Mysterious Circumstances: A Reading List
.
When I was 12 or 13, I read a book called The Other Side of Dark by Joan Lowery Nixon. There wasn’t a ton of YA in those days (this was before cell phones and streaming music, back when we had to look up information in encyclopedias and dinosaurs roamed the earth) so whenever a…
There’s Nothing Better Than A Good Bad Guy
.
“The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” —Alfred Hitchcock Let’s start with the simple assertion that all great fiction is crime fiction. From classic Greek tragedies to Shakespeare’s plays to film noir, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of The Rings or Stars Wars or Game of Thrones—something has been stolen, someone has…
Cozy Mysteries to Add to Your Christmas Stocking
.
I don’t know about you, but a fresh set of fleece pajamas and a brand-new novel on Christmas Eve is one of my favorite holiday traditions. Throw in a roaring fireplace, a mug of cocoa loaded with whip cream and a candy cane stir, and trust me, I’m up long after Santa flies overhead. I…
On the Bizarre Relationship Between Lee Harvey Oswald and his Mother
.
The following is an excerpt from Deanne Stillman’s new book, American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Relationship Between Lee Harvey Oswald and his Mother. The book explores Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother Marguerite, and how their strange relationship factored into the JFK assassination.Together, they formed ‘a conspiracy of one’, as Deanne calls it, locked in pursuit of fame…
From Academic to Crime Writer
.
“You can’t be serious.” Twice in my life, academic colleagues and friends have had that reaction when I’ve told them what I was planning to do. The first time was in the early 1990s, when I decided to teach a course on LGBT politics at the University of California, San Diego, one of the first…
A List of Jewish Crime Thrillers
.
My novel The Great Gimmelmans is about a family of Jewish bank robbers who lose all their money in the Stock Market Crash of 1987 and start robbing banks, kids and all, out of the only thing that hasn’t been repossessed: their gas-guzzling RV. The Gimmelmans begin as a secular, reform Jewish family, but by…