AHML Staff Choices

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The Girls of Murder City : fame, lust, and the beautiful killers who inspired Chicago is the full title of a new book by Douglas Perry. Even if you have no interest in the musical Chicago, haven’t seen it, didn’t like it, you will still find much to interest you in this book.

Its fascinating to read that from 1840-1920 no women were convicted of murder in all of that time. It doesn’t mean that women weren’t killing, no, it has more to do with the fact that the juries were all male and still put women on a pedestal. AND forget it if you were good-looking. All the newspapers had tabloid elements to them and your picture appeared on the front page: pictures of you from before the murder, pictures of you in jail perhaps looking helplessly up to the sky. The newspapers were just as responsible for depicting these women as helpless much to the chagrin of the prosecutors.

Finally, in 1924, a jury convicted a poor dishevelled Italian immigrant, Sabella Nitti, who spoke little English. Even after this, good-looking women could still get off for the most heinous murders. When a female lawyer decides to take the appeal case of Sabella Nitti, she dresses her up and gives her English lessons and she wins the appeal.  This book is about all of those women and the female journalists who wrote about them.

It was the fact that it was so difficult to get a conviction of a good-looking woman that made the Illinois Courts change to adding women to juries. Really a fascinating read and great book club read.

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The tower is the Tower of London. The zoo is a return of the Royal Menagerie to the Tower after 165 years. And the tortoise is Mrs. Cook, the world’s oldest tortoise, owned by Beefeater Balthazar Jones who resides in the Tower with his wife and the memory of his young son.

Balthazar Jones and his wife, who works at the London Underground Lost & Found, are still struggling with the sudden loss of their only child, when Jones is assigned to manage the new Royal Menagerie at the Tower. Jones turns to organizing the Menagerie to deal with his grief, while his wife deals with returning items to their rightful owners to keep herself from dwelling on their loss. As they grow estranged, we learn more about how they met and fell in love.

Although there is sadness in the book between Balthazar Jones and his wife, Stuart tries to keep it lighter with the antics and assignations of the other characters. From the enraged Ravenmaster who is disturbed that other creatures should outshine his ravens, to the Minister of the Tower’s Chapel and his unrequited love for the barmaid, there is a lot of fun in the book. Stuart never lets the sadness become overwhelming.

Even if you have been on one of the Beefeater’s tours of the Tower of London you will learn more about the history of the place and how the Beefeaters (or, as they refer to themselves, Yeoman Warders) live within the confines of the Tower. A light, delightful read even if you have never visited the Tower of London.

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Sixteen year old Ree Dolly would like nothing better than to join the Army and leave her family behind. But her mother has had a nervous breakdown and cannot take care of her two younger brothers. Her father Jessup has run off and used the family home and land as bond for his court date on manufacturing crank. If Ree doesn’t find her father before Tuesday, the family will lose the house and all of their land.

Manufacturing Crank is the new moonshine of the Ozark Mountains and the Dolly family and relations have a monopoly on it. These are tough hard-living backwards folk who know how to survive. Everyone in the family is too frightened to give any needed information to Ree in case she becomes that thing hated above all–the snitch.

But Ree is hard living too and determined to save her family. What happens to her at the hands of her own kindred is pretty tough to read. But what makes one person in the family hard and mean can make another strong and determined. You will be pulling for Ree.

A film-adaptation of this book is currently out in the theatres. You can also add your name to the hold list for when the DVD becomes available. Click Here for DVD.

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Wyatt Hillyer has been estranged from his daughter, Marlais,  since she was two. The novel is one long letter to explain what happened between her mother and he. But also to give her background about her family and growing up in Nova Scotia during World War II.

Marlais’ Grandfather becomes obsessed with U-Boats being off the coast of Nova Scotia. When one of the U-Boats torpedoes a ferry with his wife on board, he decides to bring the war to his home and his daughter’s German husband.

This is a story of love and loss and the choices we make to endure.

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What would make a teacher enter a school assembly and start shooting? This is the question Detective Lucia May must answer in this novel by Simon Lelic. Were the dead targeted? Or just random victims?

Many of the chapters are the recorded conversations of the witnesses to the shooting. Detective May tries to find out if a brutal attack a week earlier was related to what happened. That attack was to be the subject of the school assembly. Bullying seemed to be what caused that attack. But by whom?

Other chapters show what life is like in this police precinct for new Detective May. The only woman in the office, May has to deal with the misogynistic tendencies and fears of the other detectives. Her superiors would really like her to wrap up the report and chalk it up to the actions of a madman. But May feels that there is more at stake.

A psychological study of a man who cannot take anymore and a woman who is understanding how he feels.

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The Imperfectionists is a collection of stories about workers, readers and their companions who are influenced by an international paper based in Rome. (The paper is based on the International Herald Tribune). Each chapter covers a different person and their relationship to the paper.

Rachman does a great job of pulling all the characters together. In different chapters you will read about what someone thinks about a person showcased in a previous chapter. Some chapters deal with the same events but told from different characters.

Some reviewers have called this a collection of short stories. Most stories do involve an event that has a beginning, middle and end. But the stories hold together more closely than that. As the book moves along, you begin to wonder which character will be showcased next and what their story is.

The Imperfectionists is time well spent for the reader who likes to learn about characters from angles not necessarily their own.

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Bright Young People: the lost generation of London’s Jazz Age is a terrific survey of the people and places and events of the time between the wars. It is hard not to read this and think of today’s celebrities. London during in the 20’s was filled with young people bent on breaking out from the stodgy Victorian and Edwardian eras of their parents.

The young people were minor aristocrats or had rich parents and they did anything to get their names in the papers with outlandish behavior and outrageous parties. They liked to pretend that they didn’t care about royalty and class. They invited black performers to their parties and prostitutes and other working class types to help them feel that they were tearing down walls.

However, who they married said much more about what they really felt about the other classes. Everyone in the upper class married another in the upper class. The mixing of classes was all meant for show and shock value.

Most of the people mentioned became famous for being outrageous. Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul were the Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan of their era. Elizabeth Ponsonby had no discernible talent and Brenda Dean Paul struggled with alcoholism and other drugs.

The reality show equivalent of the time was a newspaper column.  You would either be asked, or you would solicit for, a newspaper column in which you could write about yourself and all of your outrageous friends. All of the newspapers had such columns and there were always people wanting to create them.

Certain writers such as Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford began their writing careers writing thinly veiled books about these people. While they were participants, they were also able to see the flimsiness and hypocrisy of this group of people who were their friends and peers.

This book does not go in-depth but rather gives you the feel for the times. Although I found the celebrity for celebrity-sake era very identiable to our own, how it will end in today’s world is less certain. For the bright young people, the outrageous partying came to an end in the Depression of the thirties and the march into another world war. What will it take today?

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It is rare to like a memoir in which you don’t care so much for the person writing it. Dead End Gene Pool is one such memoir. So many of the surrounding people of the memoir rise to the top.

Wendy Burden is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt on her father’s side. Her mother’s family, who had money once, are now poorer. That means that they have start selling their Picasso’s and Monet’s to keep their homes.

Wendy and her brother’s father disappears early in their lives and is one of the questions that lingers until the the end. Throughout the book you get to meet her Great Grandmother who is made to look silly by Burden but as a reader you can’t help but like her.

The same is true for some of the servants, especially Grandfather’s poor leagured secretary Miss Pou. She has to handle his calls asking her to get five of the newest Mercedes Benz cars and have them to each of his estates by noon. Some requests she immediately handles and others, which she deems irresponsible and forgettable, she cancels. Although she is briefly in the memoir in snippets, she comes across as someone who cares about the Grandfather.

Fitzgerald wrote, “The rich are different from us.” Burden might add, but sometimes, as children, they don’t want to be.

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When “Christopher Columbus” shows up at Consuela Lopez’s mental institution she doesn’t know what to think of him. But she listens to the  stories of his many women and trying to get Queen Isabella to invest in his scheme of travel across the Western Sea. Consuela is lonely and soon finds that she is falling in love with the romantic Christopher Columbus.

Emilie St. Germain works for the missing persons division of Interpol (the International Police). He is trying to track down a lost man who bears many similarities to Christopher Columbus. Why is this man so important to Interpol and why is he hiding behind the persona of Christopher Columbus?

This is a very sensual story about love and loss and the nature of who we really are. You can get lost in Waiting for Columbus.