Friday, June 06, 2014

What is Donis Casey reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Donis Casey, author of Hell with the Lid Blown Off.

Her entry begins:
When I am writing, I generally do not read as much as I do in those precious interims between books, when I actually have a life. Not that I don’t read at all. I do. In fact, I read too much, if that is really a thing. I want to read every book I see. I am interested in just about anything except sports (unless the sports story is more of a human interest story). The problem with wanting to read everything is that even though I am a fast reader, it takes me forever to finish any one book. There are only so many hours in the day, after all, and I can’t possibly let a day go by without making some progress in every book in my current reading pile.

At the moment, I am reading five books at once. One literary novel, one traditional mystery, one short story collection, two non-fiction. I am almost finished with Nicole Mones’ novel Lost in Translation (no relation to the movie). Since I love exotic settings I couldn’t pass this book up when I saw that it is set in China. The story revolves around an ex-pat American woman, Alice, who lives in Bejing and works as a translator for English speakers traveling to China for business. She is hired by an American archaeologist who believes he knows the location of treasure that has been lost for years in the vast outback of the northwest border country between China and Mongolia. The government sends two Chinese scientists along on the expedition, and Alice finds herself...[read on]
About Hell with the Lid Blown Off, from the publisher:
In the summer of 1916, a big twister brings destruction to the land around Boynton OK. Alafair Tucker’s family and neighbors are not spared the ruin and grief spread by the storm. But no one is going to mourn for Jubal Beldon, who made it his business to know the ugly secrets of everyone in town. It doesn’t matter if Jubal’s insinuations are true or not. In a small town like Boynton, rumor is as damaging as fact.But as Mr. Lee the undertaker does his grim duty for the storm victims, he discovers that even in death Jubal isn’t going to leave his neighbors in peace. He was already dead when the tornado carried his body to the middle of a fallow field. Had he died in an accident or had he been murdered by someone whose secret he had threatened to expose? There are dozens of people who would have been happy to do the deed, including members of Jubal’s own family. As Sheriff Scott Tucker and his deputy Trenton Calder look into the circumstances surrounding Jubal’s demise, it begins to look like the prime suspect may be someone very dear to the widow Beckie MacKenzie, the beloved music teacher and mentor of Alafair’s daughter Ruth. Ruth fears that the secrets exposed by the investigation are going to cause more damage to her friend’s life than the tornado. Alafair has her own suspicions about how Jubal Beldon came to die, and the reason may hit very close to home.
Visit Donis Casey's website.

Writers Read: Donis Casey.

--Marshal Zeringue