Her entry begins:
When a novel is gestating, I rarely read fiction—I don’t want to be subconsciously influenced. While I sometimes make exceptions to this rule, I’m never without at least one history book on my nightstand.About City of Sharks, from the publisher:
Today, that book is the brilliant American Colonies, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor.
The subtitle of this transcendental, urgent and at times transgressive work is “the settling of North America.” Not just the English-Pilgrim-Madison Avenue Americana history most of us over forty were saddled with in elementary school, but a wide view lens on Native American cultures and the various European powers who colonized, commodified and enslaved the land and the peoples of North America, the Caribbean and Africa.
Great non-fiction always gifts the reader with an “ah ha!” moment—that nano-second when your brain connects dots heretofore unthought and unexamined, and...[read on]
The blonde secretary was scared when she visited Miranda Corbie’s office. A shove into a streetcar track, a box of poisoned chocolates…hateful, violent letters.Visit Kelli Stanley's website.
Someone was trying to kill her.
Miranda isn’t sure of anything at first except that Louise Crowley, the blonde who works as an assistant to NilesAlexander, San Francisco publisher, is in trouble. Despite her own preparations for an imminent voyage to a blitzkrieged Britain and a painful farewell to the city she loves, Miranda decides to help Louise and takes on her last case as a private detective in San Francisco…investigating her client, surveying the publishing world of 1940, and stumbling into murder with a trail that leads straight to Alcatraz…an island city of sharks.
Along the way, Miranda explores her beloved San Francisco once more, from Playland-at-the-Beach to Chinatown to Nob Hill and Treasure Island. She encounters John Steinbeck and C.S. Forester, and is aided and abetted by the charming and dapper San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. And she also discovers personal truths she’s long denied…
With her characteristic luxurious, lyrical prose and insightful eye for character, Kelli Stanley paints a rich, authentic portrait of 1940 San Francisco in this latest installment of her award-winning series.
Coffee with a Canine: Kelli Stanley & Bertie.
The Page 69 Test: City of Dragons.
The Page 69 Test: City of Secrets.
The Page 69 Test: City of Ghosts.
My Book, The Movie: City of Ghosts.
The Page 69 Test: City of Sharks.
My Book, The Movie: City of Sharks.
Writers Read: Kelli Stanley.
--Marshal Zeringue
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