A year ago at this time, in the wake of our devastating presidential election, I reviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, two treatises on racism and oppression in America. As I read N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy, it occurred to me that her novels present a perfect fictional account of the same topic. These Hugo-Award-winning stories take place in a world where racial difference leads to oppression, exploitation, and genocide. As a result of this […]
More March family madness
This is book four in the Lady Julia Grey series, and it begins with the newly wedded couple of Julia and Brisbane on their extended honeymoon. They are enjoying their connubial bliss, away from the clutches of the March family, but this bliss is interrupted by the arrival of Julia’s sister Portia and brother Plum. Portia is on a mission to India, in a manner of speaking, to be with the woman who left her previously so that she could have a normal life and […]
Investigating the Texas Yogurt Shop Murders
I am probably one of many who picked this up after it was name-checked during My Favorite Murder’s discussion of the Texas Yogurt Shop Murders, and I found it to be incredibly informative, not just concerning the crimes, but also the factors that have made it so notorious, and so hard to solve. Beverly Lowry’s detailed account explores the facts of the horrifying crime, from the girls’ lives and families, the landscape of Austin before and after, through the decades long investigation. But it isn’t […]
It was a dark and gloomy moor
This is the third book in the Lady Julia Grey series, and I found myself a little disappointed with some aspects of it. To begin with, Julia is convinced that Nicholas Brisbane is in love with her – she just has to get him to admit it. In the first two books, they have had an on again, off again sort of courtship, if you can even call it that. He helped to solve the mystery of her first husband’s death, and they worked together […]