Five historical fiction books featuring older women

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five historical fiction books in which "older women prove that it’s never too late to begin a new adventure." One entry on the list:

The Woman With No Name by Audrey Blake

Based on the life of a remarkable real woman, The Woman With No Name tells the story of Yvonne Rudellat, the first woman recruited by Britain to become a saboteur during WWII. Estranged from her husband and with her adult daughter working in a factory for the war effort, Yvonne is already feeling adrift when her apartment is bombed in the Blitz. She wants to do her part, but no one wants anything from an unassuming, middle-aged woman. That is, until she’s recruited by SOE (Special Operations Executive) to become a sabotage agent. Defying the expectations of all the men who underestimated her, Yvonne takes to spy school with enthusiasm and is soon off to France, where her work will set her against Nazis who will go to any length to uncover the spies in their midst.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eamonn Gearon's "The Arab Bureau"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain's Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit by Eamonn Gearon.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the midst of the First World War, an extraordinary intelligence unit operated from Cairo's Savoy Hotel, combining the skills of archaeologists, academics and soldiers to revolutionize how Britain gathered information and shaped events in the Middle East. Overshadowed by Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab Bureau's true significance has remained hidden in plain sight ever since.

This fascinating study uncovers the Bureau's remarkable story through newly discovered Arabic documents and previously overlooked archives. At its heart lies an astonishing find: Thawrat al-Arab, an ambitious Arabic-language book and the longest piece of British propaganda produced during the war. From the Arab Bulletin's secret intelligence reports to sophisticated propaganda campaigns, the Bureau was decades ahead of its time. The team--including archaeologists fresh from desert digs and scholars fluent in local dialects--developed new methods of cultural intelligence that would influence future generations.

Eamonn Gearon's compelling narrative reveals how this unique organization navigated the complexities of Arab politics, tribal rivalries and Ottoman intelligence, while developing techniques that resonate with today's challenges in intelligence-gathering. Essential reading for anyone interested in intelligence history, the Middle East or how innovation occurs in wartime, this book transforms our understanding of a crucial moment in world history.

Visit Eamonn Gearon's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Arab Bureau.

--Marshal Zeringue

April Howells's "The Unforgettable Mailman," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman by April Howells.

The entry begins:

If The Unforgettable Mailman got optioned for a movie, I would cast Harrison Ford as Henry. (Please say yes, Harrison!) I can picture him bringing the humour and determination of Henry to the role, capturing hearts the same way he has in Shrinking and the Indiana Jones franchise.

I’d also cast Morgan Freeman as Stan, Henry’s close friend and confidante. Morgan Freeman was a...[read on]

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books that explore the machinery behind celebrity culture

Candice Wuehle is author of Monarch, Fidelitoria: Fixed or Fluxed, Death Industrial Complex, and BOUND. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Her new novel is Ultranatural.

At Lit Hub Wuehle tagged six titles that explore the machinery behind celebrity culture. "Taken together, they suggest that celebrity has always been less about visibility and more about narrative control." One title on the list:

Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde

Joyce Carol Oates’s monumental reimagining of Marilyn Monroe’s life remains one of the grittiest and most disturbing novels ever written about celebrity. I’ve read Blonde three times: once when it came out, again in my twenties, and then years later while I was working out the structure of Ultranatural. Each time hit different, although this last time the machinery of celebrity production Oates highlights stood out. Rather than reproducing Monroe’s public mythology, Oates invents a fictional interior life for Norma Jeane Baker, exploring the psychological cost of becoming a cultural icon. One scene has stayed with me across all three readings: the moment when nude photos are taken for what will later become Monroe’s infamous Playboy spread.

In Oates’s telling, Norma Jeane isn’t thinking about scandal or fame. She is preoccupied with something much smaller—she hopes the bottoms of her feet won’t show in the photographs. That tiny anxiety becomes a devastating microcosm of celebrity itself: the star worries about one vulnerable detail while the image is destined to circulate far beyond her control. When the photographs resurface later and ignite a scandal, the studio forces Monroe into a carefully staged public apology. Reading it now, the scene feels eerily familiar—a rehearsal for the ritual that would play out decades later when Britney Spears was likewise pushed to apologize to the paparazzi and the public for the spectacle built around her own image. In Oates’s hands, the novel exposes the brutal asymmetry at the heart of celebrity culture: the world consumes the image, while the person behind it struggles to survive the narrative imposed upon them.

Read about another entry on Wuehle's list.

Blonde also appears among Jerome Charyn's five best books about the lives of divas, Nathan Smith's seven top Marilyn Monroe books, Rose Tremain's six best books, John O’Farrell's top ten celebrity appearances in fiction, Michel Schneider's top ten books on Marilyn Monroe, Ron Hansen's five best literary tales of real-life crimes, and Janet Fitch's book list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sandrine Bergès's "No Place Like Home"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: No Place Like Home: Women Philosophers' Struggles with Domesticity by Sandrine Bergès.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why should we think about the home? Most would agree that it is central to children's development-a healthy, stable, and hopefully loving environment where they can prepare for adulthood. But for women, the duties and expectations bound up with life at home have historically often meant stunted development, confinement to the home and domestic work, subordination to a man who goes in and out of the home freely. While societal advancements have helped to close this gap for some, these problems endure for many. The writings of women philosophers, some going back many centuries, reveal insights on these challenges that deserve close study.

In No Place Like Home, Sandrine Bergès calls attention to women philosophers' ideas and arguments, starting in antiquity and continuing into the twenty-first century. Through their writings, she examines the concept of the home in all its historical richness and variety, thus reinstating the home as a philosophical problem, worthy of deep inquiry. Bergès examines writings about domesticity from numerous female thinkers and writers across history, including but not limited to, Perictione, Angelina Grimké, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Beecher, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Cavendish, Simone de Beauvoir, and Marie Kondo.

Through their perspectives, she reveals the rich and varied history of philosophical reflections on the home, from which we are given the tools to draw our own conclusions about its place in our modern lives.

Visit Sandrine Bergès's website.

The Page 99 Test: No Place Like Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Helen Benedict's "The Soldier's House"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Soldier's House: A Novel by Helen Benedict.

About the novel, from the publisher:

A bold and compassionate novel about war’s aftermath, The Soldier’s House confronts the uneasy truths of rescue, redemption, and what it means to share a home and future with a former enemy.

In The Soldier’s House, Helen Benedict tells the story of an Iraq War veteran who saves the lives of his assassinated Iraqi interpreter’s widow, child, and mother by bringing them to his upstate New York home. For the soldier, this is a way of making amends, but the widow finds being rescued by the enemy both humiliating and compromising. This is a compassionate tale that examines whether redemption and forgiveness are even possible in the wake of war. In light of the increasing displacement of people all over the world, The Soldier’s House is particularly timely and poignant.

Visit Helen Benedict's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season.

Q&A with Helen Benedict.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Deed.

My Book, The Movie: The Soldier's House.

Writers Read: Helen Benedict.

The Page 69 Test: The Soldier's House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top modern fantasy novels that revitalize fairy tale tropes

Moorea Corrigan holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in English literature from the University of Edinburgh and a master of publishing degree from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She works at an academic press in Boulder, Colorado. When she is not writing, you can find her singing, spending time with her menagerie of pets, or attending Jane Austen conventions in full Regency regalia.

Thistlemarsh is her debut novel.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged ten books that twist fairy "tales in innovative ways that engage with both the original material and the modern day." One title on the list:

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

T. Kingfisher brings a folkloric touch to the story of Sleeping Beauty with this delightful novella. Switched at birth with a Faerie child, our main character a Toadling grows up amongst the Faeries and only returns to grant a gift to her own dangerous replacement. Focusing on finding strength in strangeness and acceptance, this is a stunning take on an old tale. Standalone.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paula Davis Hoffman's "Making the Miami Cubanita"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Making the Miami Cubanita: A Pop Cultural Genealogy by Paula Davis Hoffman.

About the book, from the publisher:

At the end of the nineteenth century, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal glorified cubanas as “the most feminine and simple women in the world.” Ever since, the stereotype of Cuban femininity as chaste and dutiful has informed Cubans’ racial, social, and ethnic identity in the dominant American imagination, and this gendered and deracialized narrative has taken different forms and served various purposes throughout the Cuban diaspora.

In Making the Miami Cubanita Paula Davis Hoffman examines the cultural precepts and political aims underlying the construction of Cuban femininity in pop culture outlets produced by, for, and about Cuban Americans of the Cuban diaspora. By incorporating academic texts, oral interviews, and elements of popular culture as well as personal accounts of growing up in a first-wave Cuban exile family, Hoffman discusses the historical forces that molded vacillating constructions of Miami Cuban women. Organized by decade, this book traces internal and external articulations of Cuban American culture and examines how Cuban American exceptionalism played into the evolution of the term chonga, originally an insult disciplining young cubanas who performed stigmatized ethnic signifiers that has today become a label some proudly own. Not only does Hoffman fill a gap in academic research surrounding the subculture of Cuban American women, she further demonstrates how migration, race, gender, and sexuality are informed by popular culture and political agenda within the diverse context of South Florida.

Visit Paula Davis Hoffman's website.

The Page 99 Test: Making the Miami Cubanita.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with April Howells

From my Q&A with April Howells, author of The Unforgettable Mailman: A Novel:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I like to believe the title sums the whole story up. Not only is it a play on words regarding Henry’s memory loss, but it also lets readers know the story will linger with them after they turn the last page. Henry is sweet and determined and unintentionally funny. He’s the type of character you root for and one you won’t soon forget.

I wrote the story off and on for years, and in the beginning the working title was much different. It wasn’t until I experienced the impacts of memory loss in my family that Henry’s character fully developed and this title came to me. I provided several alts to my publisher, but The Unforgettable Mailman was the clear winner.

What’s in a name?

Whenever I’m choosing names for characters, it’s important to me that...[read on]

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books where romance meets murder

USA Today bestselling author Letizia Lorini is an Italian writer who is passionate about heartwarming books with high cackling potential. Currently based in a Scandinavian country, she lives with her partner and their fluffy Japanese Spitz. She also has a degree in sociology and one in criminology, speaks three languages, and drinks the daily recommended dose of coffee before breakfast.

Lorini's novels include the murder romcom A Killer Kind of Romance.

At The Strand Magazine she tagged ten titles for "readers wanting sparks alongside murder weapons." One title on the list:

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Meddy Chan’s blind date ends very badly. “How do we hide this corpse?” badly. Together with her four aunties, she juggles wedding planning, family chaos, and a body in a cooler. This book is pure chaotic rom‑com energy paired with murder and satire.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see Bellamy Rose's seven top books that combine mystery and romance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Caitlin C. Gillespie's "Women and Resistance in the 'Annals' of Tacitus"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Women and Resistance in the Annals of Tacitus by Caitlin C. Gillespie.

About the book, from the publisher:

Women and Resistance in the Annals of Tacitus explores how Tacitus often represents a Roman woman's relationship to the imperial household and its members as one of resistance. Throughout his Annals, women discover ways to resist without relying on traditional forms of power. Women engage in political protests, legal disputes, public processions, and subversive religious rituals. They demonstrate resistance in acts of mourning and commemoration and overturn gender stereotypes by enduring pain and displaying courage in death. Tacitus illustrates how women's public movements, rituals, suicides, and survivals become sites of resistance and opportunities for civic engagement open to women.

Caitlin C. Gillespie situates nonimperial Roman women at the fore, reading them in comparison with Tacitus's narratives of imperial women and hierarchies of power. With this new analytical approach, stereotypes against women are variously confirmed or denied, challenged or evoked as evidence, or employed as a means of attack or defense. Women emerge to claim agency over their bodies, reputations, and actions, and though a vulnerable population, refuse to be passive victims of their circumstances.

Learn more about Women and Resistance in the Annals of Tacitus at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Women and Resistance in the Annals of Tacitus.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Helen Benedict reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Helen Benedict, author of The Soldier's House: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Like so many people these days, I feel overwhelmed and distressed by the many injustices crowding in on us, from the wars in the Middle East to the dismantling of the natural world, the destruction of our environment, the persecution of immigrants and Latinos, and the deriding of science and fact. I could go on.

So I recently retreated to rereading my favorite novel in the world: Middlemarch, by George Eliot, only to find that she was writing about all the same things a century and a half ago. The way hypocrisy and lies destroy people, including the hypocrites and liars. The evils of greed and destruction. The consequences of...[read on]

About The Soldier's House, from the publisher:

A bold and compassionate novel about war’s aftermath, The Soldier’s House confronts the uneasy truths of rescue, redemption, and what it means to share a home and future with a former enemy.

In The Soldier’s House, Helen Benedict tells the story of an Iraq War veteran who saves the lives of his assassinated Iraqi interpreter’s widow, child, and mother by bringing them to his upstate New York home. For the soldier, this is a way of making amends, but the widow finds being rescued by the enemy both humiliating and compromising. This is a compassionate tale that examines whether redemption and forgiveness are even possible in the wake of war. In light of the increasing displacement of people all over the world, The Soldier’s House is particularly timely and poignant.

Visit Helen Benedict's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season.

Q&A with Helen Benedict.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Deed.

My Book, The Movie: The Soldier's House.

Writers Read: Helen Benedict.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top twisty dating app thrillers

Corinne Sullivan is the senior news editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers celebrity and entertainment news. She graduated from Boston College in 2014 with a degree in English and creative writing. She went on to receive her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Night Train, Knee-Jerk, and Pithead Chapel, among other publications, and her 2018 debut novel, Indecent, was included on several “best of” lists.

Sullivan's new novel is Yours Always.

At CrimeReads she tagged six twisty dating app thrillers "that are filled with twists, turns, and very few happily-ever-afters." One title on the list:

Wendy Walker, The Night Before

The Night Before is all about Laura, a troubled, unlucky-in-love New Yorker who decided to move to move in with her sister Rosie in Connecticut following yet another breakup. There Laura tries her hand at online dating and goes on a blind date…from which she fails to return. It’s then on Rosie to figure out what may have happened to Laura on her date—or, more accurately, what Laura may have done to her date.

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Cotten Seiler's "White Care"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: White Care: The Impact of Race on American Infrastructure by Cotten Seiler.

About the book, from the publisher:

Framing infrastructure as the expression of a state’s care for its population, White Care explores the crucial role of race in the building, maintenance, scope, and quality of US infrastructure.

Infrastructure delivers to its users a range of benefits, from health, safety, and sanitation to mobility, energy, and education. It is, as Cotten Seiler argues, how modern states show care for their populations. White Care recounts the rise and fall of public infrastructure in the United States, unearthing its origins as an investment in those Americans deemed most highly evolved, showing the political stakes of its desegregation, and accounting for its current state of dilapidation.

From the late nineteenth century through much of the twentieth, government investments in physical (“hard”) and social (“soft”) infrastructure constituted a regime of care that Seiler calls “custodial liberalism.” This regime achieved legitimacy with the New Deal, which conferred upon white citizens a bounty of life-enhancing public works. But custodial liberalism began to unravel in the postwar decades, as Americans of color gained access to public schools, housing, swimming pools, parks, and other sites from which they had long been excluded. As the infrastructural commons were desegregated, white Americans withdrew from the social compact that had empowered them and turned toward neoliberalism, with its program of austerity and privatization. This racialized renunciation has deprived everyone—including themselves—of a cleaner, greener, healthier, safer, more affordable, and more functional environment.

Learn more about White Care at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: White Care.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael O'Donnell's "Concert Black"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Concert Black by Michael O'Donnell.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the acclaimed author of Above the Fire comes Concert Black, a hauntingly elegant novel that unspools a tale of music, obsession, and the fragile architecture of legacy.

Ellen Wroe, a celebrated biographer known for her piercing insight, sets her sights on Cecil Woodbridge, the legendary conductor whose name reverberates through concert halls and conservatories. But Woodbridge, imperious and elusive, rebuffs her approach and conspires to thwart her efforts. Undeterred, Wroe embarks on a relentless pursuit, trailing the maestro across continents—through the archives of his correspondence, into the confidences of his colleagues, and deeper still into the long shadow of his past.

Maestro, cellist, king of the baton—Woodbridge is a man enshrined in myth and bristling with contradictions. Beneath the grandeur lies a hidden lattice of ambition, betrayal, and sorrow. As Wroe attempts to chart his ascent, she uncovers not only the cost of genius but the wreckage it often leaves behind.

With lyrical precision and atmospheric sweep, Concert Black echoes the psychological depth of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and the philosophical resonance of Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time. From the frostbitten avenues of postwar London to the symphonic stages of Boston and Chicago, biographer and subject circle each other in an elegiac dance—until they collide in a reckoning neither can escape.

A novel of ambition and artistry, Concert Black is a symphony of human complexity: piercing, poised, and unforgettable.

Visit Michael O'Donnell's website.

Q&A with Michael O'Donnell.

The Page 69 Test: Above the Fire.

Writers Read: Michael O'Donnell (December 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Concert Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books about characters seeking community & connection

Wendy J. Fox is the author of five books of fiction, including What If We Were Somewhere Else, which won the Colorado Book Award; If the Ice Had Held, a top pick in audio from LitHub; and the newly released The Last Supper. She has written for many national publications including Self, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, and Ms. She authors a column in Electric Literature focusing on the big works of traditional small presses. A lifelong resident of the American West, she currently lives outside of Phoenix.

At Electric Lit Fox tagged eight books that "illustrate the complexity of finding our place in the world, all while showing that it really is possible." One title on the list:

Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen

This is a book that could have just as easily been called a speculative memoir as a novel. Jen writes toward an understanding of a fraught relationship with the narrator’s mother, who speaks from beyond the grave; and the narrator begins to understand how her mother was trapped between cultures, carried deep trauma, and was often misunderstood. It’s intimate and compulsively readable. Jen takes a complex family dynamic, transforms it into an intergenerational saga, distills it back into a love letter, and in doing so, forges a new bond.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carl P. Borick's "Backcountry Resistance"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina's Militia and the Fight for American Independence by Carl P. Borick.

About the book, from the publisher:

The extraordinary story of a war fought by ordinary people

In Backcountry Resistance, Carl P. Borick delivers a groundbreaking account of the citizen militias that defied British forces in South Carolina's volatile Backcountry during the pivotal Southern campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Focusing on rank-and-file militiamen, Borick explores how these ordinary men were recruited, armed, fed, and motivated. Drawing on underused pension records and state claims, he reconstructs their everyday realities and their battlefield experiences. He also examines the war's devastating effects on civilians, including enslaved people and women, who played crucial roles in the struggle.

Richly detailed and grounded in the human experience of warfare, Backcountry Resistance offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of South Carolina's militia during the decisive years of the American War of Independence.

Learn more about Backcountry Resistance at the University of South Carolina Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Backcountry Resistance.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Alex Ritany reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Alex Ritany, author of Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know: A Novel.

One title the author tagged:

Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I’m working away at the Murderbot series whenever my library has copies for me. At the moment I have just finished the first one, and it absolutely lived up to the hype. I love “robot” fiction and this take on consciousness and duty was absolutely fascinating. Plus Murderbot’s sense of humour is just awesome. I’ve had this recommended to me countless times, and honestly put off reading for so long only because I knew I’d be completely obsessed whenever I did pick it up (and I was right!), and I can’t wait to explore...[read on]

About Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know, from the publisher:

A boy is trapped in a time loop―and in a girl’s body―in this heartfelt and wryly humorous love story.

Laurie wakes up in a girl’s body with no memories, driving down an unknown highway, and promptly crashes the car. Thankfully, a handsome stranger named Gideon comes to his rescue. It’s awkward for Laurie to pretend that he’s a girl, but at least this is the scariest thing he’ll ever have to deal with.

Except the next morning―and every morning after―Laurie wakes up barreling down that same highway. He re-meets Gideon every day, with no idea who this girl whose body he’s inhabiting even is. Only one thing is clear: he’s on a countdown. Laurie has been given only one hundred days to get back in the right body, break the time loop, and not fall for Gideon while he does it.

Maybe Tomorrow I’ll Know is a funny, deeply felt exploration of love, identity, and what it means to move through the world in a body that is truly yours.

Visit Alex Ritany's website.

Q&A with Alex Ritany.

The Page 69 Test: Maybe Tomorrow I'll Know.

Writers Read: Alex Ritany.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine books about ordinary & everyday heroes

At Book Riot Megan Mabee tagged nine titles about ordinary and everyday heroes, including:

The Patron Saint of Second Chances by Christine Simon

While we’re on the topic of Italy, Christine Simon’s charming book set in the tiny Italian village of Prometto shines a spotlight on the power of a small-town hero. With a water crisis growing dire in Prometto, charismatic vacuum repairman Signor Speranza gets caught up in an elaborate scheme to raise the money for the town’s pipe repairs.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Leslie Karst's "Murder, Local Style"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Murder, Local Style (An Orchid Isle Mystery, 3) by Leslie Karst.

About the book, from the publisher:

Retired caterer Valerie Corbin investigates a suspicious poisoning in this Orchid Isle cozy culinary mystery, featuring a feisty queer couple who swap surfing lessons for sleuthing sessions in tropical Hilo, Hawai‘i.

A dinner to die for!

It’s been an eventful transition, but retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen are finally settling into life on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Val’s even joined the neighborhood orchid society to make some new friends. So when she’s asked to step in to cater their latest social event, as the newbie of the group she can’t exactly say no.

But what should have been a straightforward gig is soon a dining disaster when the food from the event poisons and kills the society president. As Val herself becomes a suspect in the murder investigation, she’s determined to uncover the truth. Who would want to kill the mild-mannered president of the orchid society?

Turns out the list is longer than a celebrity chef's tasting menu. Apparently some of the residents did not "love thy neighbor." Can she reveal the killer’s identity before they strike again?

This mouthwatering cozy mystery is perfect for fans of Ellen Byron, Jennifer J Chow, Lucy Burdette, and Raquel V Reyes, and includes a selection of delicious Hawaiian recipes to cook at home.

Visit Leslie Karst’s website.

Coffee with a Canine: Leslie Karst & Ziggy.

My Book, The Movie: The Fragrance of Death.

Q&A with Leslie Karst.

The Page 69 Test: Waters of Destruction.

My Book, The Movie: Waters of Destruction.

Writers Read: Leslie Karst (April 2025).

The Page 69 Test: Murder, Local Style.

--Marshal Zeringue