Annual Book Sale 2024: My Husband's Books

Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. We usually visit a minimum of five times. This year our visits were curtailed because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began. 

Nevertheless, we did find many books to add to our collection. These are six of the books my husband found. As you can see from this list, he enjoys reading about social history.

My husband purchased the following three books about daily life in various historical periods in England. The author is Elizabeth Burton. The three books were published between 1958 and 1972, and all of them have lovely illustrations by Felix Kelly. In the 1940s she published 6 novels as Susan Alice Kerby. Wikipedia describes them as comic fantasy novels. 

The Elizabethans at Home by Elizabeth Burton.

First published in 1958. This edition is a reprint from 1970.

From the dust jacket:

In this reissue of Miss Burton's highly praised and highly successful domestic history of the Elizabethans, she draws most entertainingly on a wealth of contemporary sources. How did the Elizabethans really live? What was ordinary existence like for the Elizabethan man and woman? What sort of furniture did they use? What were their staple diets? What sort of remedies did they keep in their medicine chests? How did they get their news? What games did they play? These and other questions are answered in this fascinating account which is illuminated by the superb drawings of Felix Kelly.

The Georgians at Home by Elizabeth Burton

Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1967.

From the dust jacket:

In The Georgians at Home, she covers the period from the accession of George the First to the death of George the Fourth, and from a mass of sources, many of them unpublished, she presents a fascinating and remarkably complete picture of Georgian domestic life in all its detail.

She is as interested in the chattels and hovels of the poor as she is in the architecture, gardens, furniture and interior decoration of the great houses built by Kent, Gibbs, Adam, Holland, Nash, Soane and others of a glorious age. Cooking and food; glass, china and utensils; the relative cost of living; the bizarre and often horrifying medical remedies of doctors and quacks, the use of cosmetics; travel, transport and amusements–from Elizabeth Burton's meticulous research into such minutiae a whole way of life emerges.

The Early Victorians at Home by Elizabeth Burton

Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1972.

From the dust jacket:

The Early Victorians at Home gives a wonderfully detailed account of the domestic lives of our ancestors–their houses, furniture, food, medicine, recreations, gardens–with numerous sidelights on the minutiae of every day life at all levels of society.

The Last Country Houses by Charles Aslet

From the Goodreads description:

The magnificent country houses built in Britain between 1890 and 1939 were the last monuments to a vanishing age. Many of these great mammoths of domestic architecture were unsuited to the changes in economic and social priorities that followed the two world wars, and rapidly became extinct. Those that survive, however, provide tangible evidence of the life and death if an extraordinarily prosperous age. This book recounts the architectural and social history of this era, describing the clients, the architects, the styles and accoutrements of the country houses. 

Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom

From the Goodreads description:

Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and “frost fairs” were erected on a frozen Thames–with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.

Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A timely examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.

 

McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories by Michael Chabon (editor),  Mike Mignola  (Illustrator)

From the Goodreads description:

Michael Chabon is back with a brand-new collection that reinvigorates the stay-up-all-night, edge-of-the seat, fingernail-biting, page-turning tradition of literary short stories, featuring Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Peter Straub, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Heidi Julavits, Roddy Doyle, and more!

A complete list of the authors and their stories:

• Margaret Atwood - Lusus Naturae
• David Mitchell - What You Do Not Know You Want
• Jonathan Lethem - Vivian Relf
• Ayelet Waldman - Minnow
• Steve Erickson - Zeroville
• Stephen King - Lisey and the Madman
• Jason Roberts - 7C
• Heidi Julavits - The Miniaturist
• Roddy Doyle - The Child
• Daniel Handler - Delmonico
• Charles D’Ambrosio - The Scheme of Things
• Poppy Z. Brite - The Devil of Delery Street
• China Mieville - Reports of Certain Events in London
• Joyce Carol Oates - The Fabled Light-house at Viña del Mar
• Peter Straub - Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle

Short Story Wednesday: "Dead Man's Shoe" by Floyd Sullivan

 

This story was published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine January/February 2023. I had not heard of this author before, but he had an earlier story published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine September/October 2021 which I will also read.

"Dead Man's Shoe" by Floyd Sullivan

Rick Peters tells the story of his brief visit to a cabin on Keuka Lake in New York. He was taking a vacation from his job as a professional photographer. The local sheriff rings the doorbell and asks Rick to take photos of an object on a nearby pier. The object turns out to be an athletic shoe with a foot in it. The foot had been sawed off a body just above the ankle. 

This was a slow burn story. Peters doesn't want to give up on figuring what was behind the discovery of the foot. There are some elements that stretched my ability to suspend disbelief, but I enjoyed the story and the ending was very satisfactory.

Last line: "I have no plans to return to the Finger Lakes. Ever."

There is an article about the inspiration for this story at Trace Evidence.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus II

 

"A Father's Story"

In some ways this story sneaks up on you. The man telling the story is in his fifties and he talks about his previous life with his wife and four children, and his life now, after his wife left and took the children. Twelve years after she left, the children are grown although his youngest, a daughter, is only twenty and still visits him once a year and meets her old friends in the area. All of a sudden the story switches to a traumatic event that happened when his daughter visited, and tells about that event and how it has affected his life and hers since then. Religion and morality play a big part in this story. Of course, family relationships also have a role.

I liked the story, although I could not fully relate to it. I love the author's writing, and how he tells the story.

This story is collected in Selected Stories of Andre Dubus, originally published in 1988. There are 23 stories by Andre Dubus II (1936–1999) in this book. Not to be confused with his son, Andre Dubus III, who is also a writer of novels and short stories.

I first learned about this author at Patricia Abbott's blog in these posts on two other stories... "Leslie in California" and "The Winter Father." 

I tried to find any book of the author's short stories at last year's book sale but failed. This year, I was lucky and found this book on the last day. 

This was my first experience reading anything by that author. I will be reading more stories from this collection.

Short Story Wednesday: Shadow Voices, ed. by John Connolly

 

The subtitle for this volume of short stories is "300 years of Irish Genre Fiction, A History in Stories." The first story is from 1729, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The last story is from 2019, "The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams" by Maura McHugh.

My husband and I bought this book because we both like short stories and we thought there would be stories that would appeal to both of us in this book. We bought the eBook edition because it is a great price and it is a very large book, at over 1000 pages. Connolly's introduction is very good, very informative. And he has provided lengthy introductions for each author and the story included for that author.

This is a difficult book to describe, so I am going to use the overview at Connolly's web site: 

Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, Narnia — the history of Irish fiction is a history of genre fiction: horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more. Irish writers have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories, and ground-breaking women’s popular literature. In a single volume, John Connolly presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself.

Deeply researched and passionately argued, SHADOW VOICES takes the lives of more than sixty writers — by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary — and sets them alongside the stories they have written to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses.

I read three stories from the book. None of those stories were my usual reading, but they were all good stories. 

"The Man in the Bell" (1821) by William Maginn

This is a very brief story and as such I don't want to tell too much about. A young man is a bell ringer for his church. He relates the events when he got trapped in the belfry when his friends start ringing the bell. Well written.

"The Witching Hour" (1884) Margaret Wolfe Hungerford 

Hungerford was a prolific writer of romantic fiction, both novels and short stories. This story is part ghost story, part romance. Three servants have left the employment of the Vernon family. The latest to leave is the cook. The servants have all been scared by an apparition walking around upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have a beautiful daughter, Dolores, who is engaged to Frank Harley, who is staying at the Vernon's home. He volunteers to stay up late that night and see if he can view the ghost and solve the problem. 

"Fly Away Tiger, Fly Away Thumb" (1953) Brian Moore 

The introduction to this story was especially interesting because Connolly explored Brian Moore's life, especially in relation to his writing and gave me lots of recommendations for books to look for. Moore was born in Ireland but later emigrated to Canada. Connolly notes that, in this story, Moore drew on his experiences in Naples during World War II.

The story is very strange, and tells of a magician who is abducted by a gang of outlaws, who demand a huge ransom to return him to his band of performers. He does escape of course. The story has some gruesome aspects, but it was entertaining.

I look forward to trying more stories from this book. I will try more of the earlier stories and some of the stories from contemporary authors.

Short Story Wednesday: Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal

 

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. It consists of 16 stories; 10 of them are about the "Ladies' Lunch" group. This group of older women, now in their 90s, have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more, usually at the home of one of the group. There are five ladies named as the main group (Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie) but others are mentioned in later stories. Obviously over time their health and abilities have been affected by age, and at this point they often think of "how they will shuffle off this mortal coil."

Some of the stories are sad but not all of them. Most of them had a humorous element also.

My favorite stories were...

• "Ladies' Lunch" is focused on Lotte, as several stories are. This one is about Lotte's move to a care home, Green Trees, because she requires care and she cannot get along with any of her live-in caregivers.
• "Making Good" is not a Ladies' Lunch story. A group of people, half Jewish Holocaust survivors and half people from Vienna who were Nazi supporters during the war, or their descendants, take part in a Bridge Building Workshop to reconcile their differences. This was one of the longer stories in the book at 23 pages.
• "Pneumonia Chronicles" is an autobiographical story based on the time when the author was in the hospital for two weeks during the Covid pandemic. She had pneumonia, not Covid, but her children could not visit her when she was hospitalized.

I enjoy collections with stories that are linked and create an overall story when read together. As with any collection, there are some outstanding stories and some that did not do that much for me. I know I will reread this book and find more to enjoy in the stories.

I finished reading this book on Monday, October 7, and later in the day I learned that Lore Segal had died on that day, at age 96.

The stories in Lore Segal's Ladies' Lunch were recommended by Jeff Meyerson who comments on Short Story Wednesday posts at Patricia Abbott's blog. I thank Jeff for this recommendation and many others that I followed up on.

Short Story Wednesday: Stories from Fire Watch by Connie Willis

 

Back in August 2022, I read the novelette, "Fire Watch," by Connie Willis. It was published in a collection with the same title, and was part of the same universe as Willis's Oxford Time Travel series: Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1995), Blackout (2010), and All Clear (2010). I liked "Fire Watch" a lot but I did think that it might not be too clear if the reader had not read at least one of the books in her time travel series.

After reading an additional three stories from Fire Watch last week, I hesitated to write a post about them. Mainly because I found the stories confusing, and two of them I did not really understand at all. 

"Service for the Burial of the Dead"

This one was pretty good. It is a ghost story, set in the 1800s (I am guessing). A young woman is shunned by her neighbors because she has had an affair with a young man. He dies and she dares to attend the funeral. Embarrassed, she leaves the chapel and goes into a room nearby. To her surprise her lover is there, and says he won't reveal himself to any one else until the father of his fiancee settles his debts. The story is somewhat open ended.

"Lost and Found"

An apocalyptic story about cults and the state stealing treasures from the churches. It isn't that this story is totally unclear, it is more that I wanted some more concrete information on what is going on.

"All My Darling Daughters"

This story was long and very icky, but I could not stop reading it. I was hoping there would be some resolution that would make it worth reading. It is science fiction and it concerns a school (on a large space craft). It was about sex and fathers and implied rape and incest. Some reviewers loved this story and others hated it, so don't take my reaction too seriously.

"Blued Moon"

I did not want to give up on the stories in this book and only report on ones that I had mixed reactions to. The fourth story I read was "Blued Moon." It was a highly recommended story by Willis. It was undoubtedly the best story of these four. It is a romantic comedy and a fun and humorous read. It involves a project to restore the ozone layer, which may or may not have disastrous results.

There are seven more stories left in this book and I will persevere,  plus I have two more books of Willis's short stories to read.

Short Story Wednesday: "Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt

"Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt was published in the July 18, 2024 issue of The New York Review of Books. The story was fun to read but in the end I did not know what to think of it. It seemed to me to be full of whimsy, but whimsy has never really appealed to me, so why did I like it so much? It is impossible to describe adequately, and so short that I do not want to retell the story.

The premise:

A woman, Flip, is hounded by a New York agent to send him a manuscript. This irritates her husband to no end, and he is uncooperative in every way. Eventually she succeeds in sending a manuscript to get the agent off her back. The agent is thrilled and wants to discuss it. Through a series of mishaps, she finally gets to New York to meet the agent.  

I had to read the story twice, because the first time through I was trying to focus on the sequence of events, and there is much more to it than that. The next time through I focused on the writing style, which is a little over my head. I think I could re-read the story many times.

From the little I have read about Helen DeWitt, I understand that she has had problems with getting published; thus this story could certainly be poking fun at that process. 

If anyone can shed light on this story or other writing by Helen DeWitt, I would love more information on that subject.

Short Story Wednesday: 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

 

100 Years of the Best American Short Stories was published in 2015 and was edited by Lorrie Moore (Editor) and Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor).

Last week I wrote a post on the first short story in this book, "The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber. This week I decided to post about the book, listing all the short stories in the book. It will be a useful list for me to refer back to. This book has been on my Kindle since August 2021, so it is time for me to read more of these stories. 

There is an introduction for the whole book, written by Lorrie Moore, and an introduction for the section about each decade, written by Heidi Pitlor. The years covered are 1915 - 2015. 

Towards the end of the introduction to the book, Lorrie Moore discusses the limitations in selecting short stories for an anthology with this scope. John Updike and Katrina Kenison published The Best American Short Stories of the Century in 2000, and Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor decided to have no overlaps between the two books. (Both were published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.) All the stories were selected from the Best American Short Stories series published annually.

So, here is a list of all the stories in the book:

1915-1920

• The Gay Old Dog / Edna Ferber

1920-1930

• Brothers / Sherwood Anderson
• My Old  Man / Ernest Hemingway
• Haircut / Ring Lardner 

1930-1940

• Babylon Revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald 
• The Cracked Looking-Glass / Katherine Anne Porter
• That Will Be Fine / William Faulkner

1940-1950

• Those Are as Brothers / Nancy Hale
• The Whole World Knows / Eudora Welty 
• The Enormous Radio / John Cheever

1950-1960

• I Stand Here Ironing / Tillie Olsen 
• Sonny's Blues / James Baldwin 
• The Conversion of the Jews / Philip Roth

1960-1970

• Everything That Rises Must Converge / Flannery O'Connor 
• Pigeon Feathers / John Updike 
• Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / Raymond Carver 
• By the River / Joyce Carol Oates

1970-1980 

• The School / Donald Barthelme 
• The Conventional Wisdom / Stanley Elkin

1980-1990

• Friends / Grace Paley 
• Harmony of the World / Charles Baxter
• Lawns / Mona Simpson 
• Communist / Richard Ford 
• Helping / Robert Stone 
• Displacement / David Wong Louie

1990-2000

• Friend of My Youth / Alice Munro 
• The Girl on the Plane / Mary Gaitskill 
• Xuela / Jamaica Kincaid 
• If You Sing Like That for Me / Akhil Sharma 
• Fiesta, 1980 / Junot Díaz

2000-2010

• The Third and Final Continent / Jhumpa Lahiri 
• Brownies / ZZ Packer 
• What You Pawn I Will Redeem / Sherman Alexie 
• Old Boys, Old Girls / Edward P. Jones 
• Refresh, Refresh / Benjamin Percy 
• Awaiting Orders / Tobias Wolff

2010-2015

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank / Nathan Englander 
• Diem Perdidi / Julie Otsuka 
• The Semplica-Girl Diaries / George Saunders 
• At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners / Lauren Groff

Some of these authors I am familiar with, some not. Other than the first story in the book, I haven't read any of the stories. 

Many reviews of the anthology note that the story by Nathan Englander is very good. I find it interesting that there are only two stories from the decade 1970-1980 and five stories from the following decade.

I would love to hear if anyone else has had experience with these stories or authors.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber

 

"The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber was first published in 1917 in the Metropolitan Magazine. It is the first story I read in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, published in  2015, edited by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor.

The story starts out describing Jo Hertz as "a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving- eyed, and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him." He is quite well-to-do and he goes out at night in search of happiness. The setting is Chicago, Illinois.

Next we learn of Jo Hertz's more youthful years, starting when his mother was on her deathbed and he promised her that he would not marry until all three of his sisters were provided for.  The story relates how this promise affected the rest of Jo's life. He is a good man, he is a kind man, but not a happy one. 

I enjoyed this story, but I did not get emotionally involved with any of the characters. We often get stories of women forced to give up their lives and marriage for their mothers or their siblings, but this one shows a man doing that. The story of the hardships of Jo's early life and how his fortunes change is interesting. I also liked the picture of the times. Some reviewers described it as a "time capsule." 

This is a very good quote from the story:

"Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living."

The short story is available online here.

The story was adapted to film in 1919; it was directed by Hobert Henley.

Short Story Wednesday – Valentino: Film Detective

This week I read three stories from Valentino: Film Detective by Loren D. Estleman, published by Crippen & Landru in 2011. The collection contains 14 short stories, all starring Valentino. He is no relation to the actor, Rudolph Valentino, but he does look like him and is constantly getting comments noting that resemblance. All of the stories in this book were originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine between 1998 and 2010.

On Estleman's website, Valentino is described as "a film detective for UCLA who inadvertently becomes an amateur sleuth." 

The first story I read, "Dark Lady Down," was a bit of a disappointment. It was one of the shorter stories, and it is solved too quickly. But the next two stories in the book were very good so I have high expectations for the rest of the stories.

In "The Frankenstein Footage" Valentino gets a call from an old friend, Craig Hunter, who is in San Diego. He assumes he is asking for money as usual and hangs up on him. The next morning two homicide detectives from San Diego come to see him. Craig Hunter was murdered the previous night, beaten to death. He answers their questions. After they leave he does some investigating on his own. 

In "Director's Cut" Valentino is trying to complete the Film Preservation Department's collection of Justin Ring's films. He is seeking a copy of the director's student film. The director insists that he burned every print and the negative years before. Months later Justin Ring's motor craft is lost at sea. Eight years later Ring's nephew shows up with a copy. This one got a bit confusing for me but it was interesting and entertaining.

The stories are told with humor, and Estleman reveals his love of movies and deep knowledge of film history. 

Loren D. Estleman is a very prolific and well-known author who has been publishing novels since 1976. He has published seven mystery novels starring Valentino since 2008. He is also the author of the Amos Walker series, the Peter Macklin series, and many standalone novels, including many Western novels. He lives in Michigan. 

Short Story Wednesday: the Juliet stories by Alice Munro

Recently I read three short stories from Runaway by Alice Munro. All of these stories are about the same woman, Juliet. Together they total about 110 pages, about the length of a novella. 

The first story, "Chance," takes place in 1965, and tells about how Juliet first meets Eric, the man she later moves in with. Juliet had been teaching in a girls school; Eric fishes for prawns and lives in a cabin in Whale Bay, north of Vancouver.   

In the second story, "Soon," set in 1969, Juliet takes her 13-month-old daughter Penelope to visit her parents in the small town she grew up in. Juliet and Eric are still together but have not married, and this embarrasses her parents. Although Juliet's family has never been affiliated with any religion, a minister visits her mother and lectures Juliet about not raising her daughter with any religious beliefs. 

The third story, "Silence,"  takes place about 20 years later. Juliet now has a job interviewing people on television. Eric died years before while he was out fishing during bad weather. Juliet is taking a ferry ride from Buckley Bay to Denman Island, to see Penelope at a spiritual retreat. She has not seen or heard from her daughter for six months. Penelope invited her to the island but when Juliet arrives, she is not there and no one can tell her where to find her. The issue of the lack of spiritual training comes up again in this story.

I liked all of these stories, but I did find Juliet to be an enigma. She seemed to keep her emotions under the surface, and worried a lot about how people viewed her. As is often true, other readers interpreted these stories differently.

I recommend reading these stories all at the same time (or close together). I read the first story, "Chance," two or three weeks earlier than the other stories. While writing this post I went back and reread "Chance" online. I had not remembered that one of the characters, Christa, had featured prominently in the first and last story. Each one of the stories are fine alone, but as a whole they are more meaningful. I am sure I will reread them again later.

"Chance," "Soon" and "Silence" were first published in The New Yorker in 2004.

The three Juliet stories have been made into a movie directed by Pedro Almodovar, titled Julieta. 

Short Story Wednesday: Crime Hits Home, Part 2

 

Crime Hits Home is an anthology from Mystery Writers of America, edited by S. J. Rozan. The book was published in April 2022 and all of the stories in the book were first published in this book.

The theme for the stories in this book is home and the crimes that endanger it. The definition of home has been interpreted in different ways in the various stories in this book.

In 2023, I reported on the first three stories in the book. See my comments on those stories here. 

This week I have read four more stories in the book:

"Banana Island" by Susan Breen

In terms of pure enjoyment, this was my favorite story. Marly Bingham owns a small house in Long Island City (three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, Standing Room Only kitchen). For this house she has been offered two million dollars. She doesn't want to sell, although she could use the money. Many of her relatives live in the same area and she wants to stay where she has family. But the really interesting part is that Marly works for the IRS; her job is to talk on the phone to scammers who try to convince lonely, needy people into giving away all their money. While Marly is taking up the scammer's time, they are not bothering other people. The scammer she is currently working on is very persistent. The story was very unusual, entertaining, and  I loved the resolution. 

"Calling Mr. Smith" by Ellen Hart

This is another unusual story. It takes place in October 1987, in Hollywood, Minnesota. The theme is "you can't go home again." 

Astrid Ahlness is returning to her home town and the house she grew up in to celebrate her mother's 75th birthday. Astrid and her mother have never gotten along. Her older brother, Ivor, has always been the favored one who can do no wrong. Now that they are older and have families, Astrid and Ivor get along fairly well. Astrid desperately wants to inherit her half of the house when her mother dies, but Ivor wants to buy it from their mother for his summer home. There is a lot of plot and backstory packed into this 23-page story. Overall it was sad and depressing but well-written.

"Stalking Adolf" by Renee James

This story centers on a transgender woman. She lives with her 16-year-old daughter, who resents the fact that her father chose to become a woman. The woman, who narrates the story, is being stalked by a man who threatens her life and her daughter's. One night he invades their home, and she has to decide how to handle the situation. An interesting story, but the resolution made me uncomfortable.

"Playing for Keeps" by S.J. Rozan

The last story in the book is very brief and takes place in the US following World War II. The main character is a Jewish girl who was in a Polish prison camp during the war. Her mother's cousin brought her and her younger brother to live in a small town in Ohio following the war. The children in the neighborhood taunt her and bully her brother into giving up his marbles. She is determined to win them back. An excellent story and very moving.

Other resources:

• A review by Sam Sattler at Book Chase. 
• At CrimeReads, some of the authors of the short stories discuss their stories.
• An article about this anthology at The Big Thrill.

Short Story Wednesday: Nearly Nero, Part 2

 

In April, I read the first four stories in Nearly Nero by Loren D. Estleman. See my comments on those stories here. This week I finished reading the remaining six stories in the book. 

The subtitle for this book is "The Adventures of Claudius Lyon, the Man Who Would Be Wolfe." Between 2008 and 2016, Estleman wrote nine short stories about Claudius Lyon, a man who is obsessed with emulating Nero Wolfe in all ways, and his assistant, Arnie Woodbine. Six of these stories were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. One was published by the Mysterious Press, one by the Mysterious Bookshop, and one was published by Crippen & Landru.  The last story in the book ("Wolfe Whistle") was written for publication in this book. 

The last six stories are: 

“Wolfe Trap” 

“Wolfe in Chic Clothing” 

“Wolfe in the Manger” 

“Wolfe and Warp” 

“Peter and the Wolfe” 

“Wolfe Whistle” 

Two of those stories were set at Christmas, "Wolfe Trap" and "Wolfe in the Manger." Those were my favorite stories in the book.

In "Wolfe Trap," Captain Stoddard of the Brooklyn Bunco Squad asks for Lyon's help because his niece has been accused of theft. She works at a successful bookstore and was the only person around when $200 went missing at a Christmas party. Otto Penzler is a character and the crime took place at his book store.

I found that the later stories in the collection were more imaginative, developed some of the characters to a greater extent, and had more interesting puzzles. It is also much clearer in those stories that Claudius Lyon is intelligent and a good solver of puzzles. He may be a nut case who wants to  model his whole existence around another person's life, but he is clever at the right time and place. 

The book also includes:

• An excellent introduction by the author, discussing Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries and Estleman's decision to write a humorous version of Wolfe and Goodwin in these stories.
• The introduction that Estleman wrote for the 1992 Bantam paperback edition of Fer-de-Lance.
• A Recommended Reading section.

Also see this review at George Kelley's blog. 

Short Story Wednesday: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

 

I have recently read several stories from Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. Initially I had a hard time getting into the stories in this book. Some of them were very difficult to read and relate to. I read the first five, was mostly confused, enjoyed a couple of them, then took a break.

When I came back to the book, I skipped two stories that had some relationship to Christmas ("Charades" and "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens") and read the next two stories. I liked both of them. How did that happen? Did I just get used to her style? I think all of the stories I have read have elements of sadness and deal with relationships, but these two I really liked.

"Beautiful Grade" 

Bill is taking his 24-year-old girlfriend to a New Year's Eve party. Bill is about 50 and he is very conscious that his friends are talking about the age difference in his newish relationship. He is a college professor and she was his student when they first got together. Now that she is not his student he can be more open about it. 

This quote describes the people at the party: 

There is Albert, with his videos; Albert's old friend Brigitte, a Berlin-born political scientist; Stanley Mix, off every other semester to fly to Japan and study the zoological effects of radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Stanley's wife, Roberta, a travel agent and obsessive tabulator of Stanley's frequent flyer miles (Bill has often admired her posters: STEP BACK IN TIME, COME TO ARGENTINA says the one on her door); Lina, a pretty visiting Serb teaching in Slavic Studies; and Lina's doctor husband, Jack, a Texan who five years ago in Yugoslavia put Dallas dirt under the laboring Lina's hospital bed so that his son could be "born on Texan soil." ("But the boy is a total sairb" Lina says of her son, rolling her lovely r's. "Just don't tell Jack.")

The party is at Albert's; he has just successfully divorced his third wife. He serves a meal; they talk, and all the while Bill is thinking about these people, dinner parties from the past, his attraction to Lina, his insecurities. 

My favorite part: at midnight, they all have a spoonful of black-eyed peas as the first thing they eat on January 1st. This is a southern tradition to ensure good luck year. 

"What You Want to Do Fine"

This story had a lot of humor, and I enjoyed that. Two gay men set off on a road trip, from Indiana all the way to New Orleans. Their backgrounds are very different. Mack paints houses; Quilty is blind with a seeing eye dog and has a legal practice. On the trip they visit a lot of cemeteries and play Trivial Pursuit at the motel. They eat hush puppies and catfish when they get into the deep south. They argue about petty subjects and try to figure out if they should stay together. 

Favorite quote: "He may have been blind and a recovering drinker, but with the help of his secretary, Martha, he had worked up a decent legal practice and did not give his services away for free. Good barter, however, he liked. It made life easier for a blind man. He was, after all, a practical person. Beneath all his eccentricities, he possessed a streak of pragmatism so sharp and deep that others mistook it for sanity."

Short Story Wednesday: "Runaway" by Alice Munro

Last night I spent the evening reading several short stories by Lorrie Moore. But this morning I heard that Alice Munro had died at 92, and I decided to read one of Munro's stories for my post this week instead. Luckily, I have several of her books of short stories, and the one I decided on was Runaway, published in 2004. I read the title story.

All of the stories in this collection are longer stories, usually between 35 to 45 pages in length.

In "Runaway," Carla and Clark run a stable for boarding horses; they also provide trail rides to campers nearby and riding lessons for children. They live in a mobile home on their land. One morning, Carla sees their nearest neighbor, Sylvia Jamieson, driving home from a trip to Greece. Carla is afraid of what will happen when Clark discovers that Sylvia is home. What happens after that is surprising and unexpected. The story is an interesting look at marriages and relationships.

I liked the story, but it was a little unsettling.

The next three stories in this book are about a single character, Juliet. I hope to read them soon.

I don't have a lot of experience with Alice Munro's stories, but overall, I have been impressed with those that I have read. She is a Canadian author, and the settings of her stories are usually in Canada, which is an added attraction for me. Last year I read a collection of her stories published in 2012, Dear Life. My comments on those stories are here and here. 

Short Story Wednesday: The Habit of Widowhood and Other Murderous Proclivities

Robert Barnard (1936 - 2013) is one of my favorite authors. He wrote about 50 novels between 1974 and 2012. Some were series books but a large number of his mysteries were standalones. I have read and enjoyed most of his series books, but the standalone books have the best plots and subtle humor.

The Habit of Widowhood is a collection of short stories by Barnard. There are 17 stories in 215 pages. Based on the stories I have read, his short stories are darker than most of his novels, but not unpleasantly so. 

These are the six stories I read. They all involve a crime but they are not puzzle mysteries. Most are between 10-12 pages, a good length for me.

"Cupid's Dart" 

An overprotected and sheltered young woman is pushed into an arranged marriage, with devastating results. This was my favorite story of the ones I read; I found it an intense and affecting read.

"The Habit of Widowhood"

A woman marries older men in order to inherit their money when they die. This happens too often and she eventually realizes she will have to move from town to town. Some of the marriages are very brief; some last a few months. The story is told by her great-great-grandson, using her diaries.

"Soldier, from the Wars Returning"

Description from the book cover: "A young soldier, home from World War I, is determined to live and love not just for himself, but for all his fallen comrades. But in doing so he enrages a number of husbands."

"Dog Television"

A dog witnesses a murder. A wonderful story and not so dark.

"The Women at the Funeral"

The story begins in 1891; Roderick, at 52 years of age, lives with his three sisters and his mother. He dies from tuberculosis. After her brother's funeral, the oldest sister, Alice, finds out that he had done some charitable deeds to support people less fortunate than he and his family. He was generous and Alice does not approve. Not a lot happens in this story, but I found it satisfying and a good read.

"Perfect Honeymoon"

David and Carol have chosen a small Greek island for their honeymoon. David is old-fashioned, timid, and has recently inherited a thriving business. Unfortunately their honeymoon is marred by the arrival of Joshua Swayne, one of Carol's old suitors. 

Short Story Wednesday — Doctorow: Collected Stories

 

My husband purchased Doctorow: Collected Stories at the 2023 Planned Parenthood Book Sale, and at his suggestion, I read some short stories from that collection, which is comprised of fifteen short stories written by E. L. Doctorow. Per the dust jacket, the stories were "selected, revised, and placed in order by the author himself shortly before he died in 2015."

I read the first five stories in the book, plus a later story I was especially interested in. Of the six stories I read, I only really liked two of the stories, but I liked those a lot, so it was a worthwhile experience.

These are the first five stories:

• "Willi"
• "The Hunter"
• "The Writer in the Family"
• "Heist"
• "The Water Works"

I did not care for "Willi" at all. I found these stories confusing: "The Hunter," "Heist," and "The Water Works." From what I have read, "Heist" was expanded to be the novel City of God.

"The Writer in the Family" was my favorite of the first five stories I read. It tells about a man who dies and how his death affects his family. The man's sisters don't want to tell his 90-year-old mother about his death, so they tell her that he has moved to Arizona. They request that his wife and two sons join in this deception. One of the sons is asked to write letters to his grandmother as if they are from his father. Not only is it a very moving story, it gets a lot across in 15 pages.

The other story I read was "Wakefield," which was first published in The New Yorker, January 7, 2008. It was one of the longer stories in the book at about 35 pages. In 2016, the story was adapted to film, starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner.

The story is about a man, Howard Wakefield, who leaves his wife and family, in a manner of speaking. I am not even going to try to summarize the story any further than that. I wanted a more definitive ending but it was still an effective ending. I liked this story very much.

Here are the first few sentences of the story:

People will say that I left my wife and I suppose, as a factual matter, I did, but where was the intentionality? I had no thought of deserting her. It was a series of odd circumstances that put me in the garage attic with all the junk furniture and the raccoon droppings—which is how I began to leave her, all unknowing, of course—whereas I could have walked in the door as I had done every evening after work in the fourteen years and two children of our marriage. Diana would think of her last sight of me, that same morning, when she pulled up to the station and slammed on the brakes, and I got out of the car and, before closing the door, leaned in with a cryptic smile to say goodbye—she would think that I had left her from that moment.

"Wakefield" is available online at The New Yorker. 

Short Story Wednesday: "Forgiveness Day" by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

"Forgiveness Day" by Ursula K. Le Guin is a science fiction novella published in 1994, a part of Le Guin's Hainish cycle of books. I have not read any of the Hainish novels and I am not sure how much my unfamiliarity with those stories affected my reaction to this story. However, in retrospect I don't think that was the problem. 

First paragraph:

Solly had been a space brat, a Mobile's child, living on this ship and that, this world and that; she'd traveled five hundred light-years by the time she was ten. At twenty-five she had been through a revolution on Alterra, learned aiji on Terra and farthinking from an old hilfer on Rokanan, breezed through the Schools on Hain, and survived an assignment as Observer in murderous, dying Kheakh, skipping another half millennium at near-lightspeed in the process. She was young, but she'd been around. 

The story describes Solly's experiences as the first Envoy of the Ekumen to the Divine Kingdom of Gatay. The themes of the story seem to be feminism, misogyny, sexual repression, and slavery.

Solly is assigned a Guide and a Guard, plus a Maid. At least one of those three were with her at all times. The Maid was assigned to her as an asset, which was essentially the same as a slave, which Solly was very uncomfortable with. Women did not take part in any events that Solly attended. Solly is treated as an equal to the males in the society, to a certain extent, but it is clear that they all look down on her. She never has any contact or conversations with women, because they all wait at home for their husbands. Solly and the Guard, Rega Teyeo, have an antagonistic relationship, which is explained to some extent by revealing his very complex backstory.

She gets around her isolation to a certain extent by gaining access to Batikam the Makil. He is a transvestite, part of a traveling troupe of entertainers, and is allowed to visit her at night after his performances.

During Forgiveness Day activities, Solly and the Guard are taken prisoner by a rebel group. Up to that point they have never spoken more than necessary, but they are forced to get to know each other under the circumstances.

The first half (or more) of the story was very complex and confusing for me. I suspect I read it too fast. I went back and reread bits of it and figured out where I had gone astray, and I intend to read it again in full.

I was emotionally engaged and moved by the ending of the story, and when that happens, I figure that the author has succeeded. So my final "rating" for this story is very high.

I read this story in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. All the stories in that anthology were published in 1994.

It is also included in Five Ways to Forgiveness, an eBook published by Library of America, which includes five stories (one novelette and 4 novellas) in the Hainish cycle.

Two other short stories I have read by Le Guin are "The Shobie's Story" (also in the Hainish cycle) and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", reviewed at the Casual Debris blog in September 2023.

Short Story Wednesday: Three Captain Leopold Stories by Edward D. Hoch

 

Recently I read another three stories in Leopold's Way by Edward D. Hoch. I read the first five stories in the book in November 2023. See this post for my thoughts on those stories and notes about the book and the author.

These are the three stories I read:

"The Oblong Room"

A college student has been killed in his dorm room, and his roommate stayed in the room with him after his death for at least 20 hours before the student next door discovered the situation. The assumption is that the roommate killed him, but question is why. This one was more spooky than most. It was a puzzle, of course, but it had a psychological element too.

This story won an Edgar award. My only complaint is that Captain Leopold keeps saying that this case is Sergeant Fletcher's case, but then he seems to take the lead. Still a great story. From what I have read, it has been reprinted many times.

"The Vanishing of Velma"

In this story, a teen-age girl has been reported as missing under very unusual circumstances. The young man who she was out with reports her missing; he says she took a ride on the Ferris wheel but never got off. It is a very good puzzle but Leopold figures it out.

The story mentions events in a previous story in this book, "The House by the Ferris," and Stella Gaze, a character in that story.

The solution was outstanding.

"The Athanasia League"

Of the three, this was my least favorite, but very interesting nevertheless. A woman is dead at the Athanasia League, a sort of home for older people run by Dr. Raymond Libby. He is not a medical doctor, but he leads a group of older people who pay to live in the home, "striving for deathlessness and immortality." A very strange case, since there seems to be no one with a motive to kill the woman, who was a member of the group.

Two interesting aspects are that Sergeant Fletcher has taken the test to become a Lieutenant and the only other policeman competing with him is one with a questionable reputation, not above taking graft or using force with a suspect. Also both Leopold and Fletcher have conflicts with the Mayor and a staff member. Unfortunately the story leaves it up in the air whether Fletcher gets his promotion or not.

Why do I like the Captain Leopold stories?

• Captain Leopold is a very likable character. Dedicated to his job, smart and intuitive. I also like Sergeant Fletcher, who works with Leopold most of the time.
• There were over 100 Captain Leopold stories and I have only read nine of them, so I am no expert. But so far in each story we learn just a bit more about Leopold and his background. (In "The Vanishing of Velma" the missing girl is 15 years old and he wonders if he might have a daughter that age if he and his wife had not divorced.)
• The stories are always interesting and never too far-fetched. 

Short Story Wednesday: Wave Me Goodbye, Anne Boston, ed.

 

I read a few stories in this book in November 2022, and it took me over a year to return to it. Wave Me Goodbye is an anthology of stories about World War II; all the authors are women and most of the stories were published between 1939 and 1949; all but one story was written at that time. Many of the stories are about the home front, focusing on the lives of the people who did not go off to war, and in this case, mostly the experiences of the women left behind.

The collection was first put together and published in 1988. The "Introduction," written by the editor, Anne Boston, for this new printing, is excellent. There are two informational sections at the end. The "Notes on the Authors" section provides background information on each author, which was especially useful to me because I had not read anything by most of the authors. The "Acknowledgements" section provides information on when and where the stories were published.

Here are my thoughts on a few of the stories I read recently...

Kay Boyle's "Defeat" is about French soldiers returning to France after they have been defeated by the Germans. They are disappointed and disenchanted with the reception they get from the French citizens they encounter. This story was published in the May 17, 1941 issue of The New Yorker.

In "Goodbye My Love" by Mollie Panter-Downes, a married couple have a few days together before he has to leave for a posting during the war, destination unknown. Once he has gone, she finally settles into some acceptance of his absence. Then there is a brief reprieve; he won't be leaving for a week or more, and she will have to go through the agonizing buildup to his departure once again.

Two stories cover similar subjects: "Miss Anstruther's Letters" by Rose Macaulay and "Night in the Front Line" by Molly Lefebure. They deal with the devastation of the Blitz, the terror of waiting for the bombing to end, and the loss of a place to live and personal treasures.

In Olivia Manning’s "A Journey" a woman travels to Cluj to report on the Hungarian occupation of Transylvania, a region in Romania. When the reporter gets to Cluj, the city is in chaos, and it is hard to find a place to stay. She does her best to get the story she needs, then has a harrowing experience trying to get out of the city, as everyone else is also desperate to leave. 

Other stories I read were:

• Anna Kavan's "Face of My People"
• Barbara Pym's "Goodbye Balkan Capital"
• Jean Rhys’s "I Spy a Stranger"

All of the stories I read were good, although many of them were sad or depressing. I have seventeen stories left to read. I like that most of the stories are between 10-15 pages long.

Other writers represented are Elizabeth Taylor, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Doris Lessing, Inez Holden, Beryl Bainbridge, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bowen, Marjorie Sharp, Pat Frank, Diana Gardner, Malachi Whitaker, Ann Chadwick, A. L. Barker, Jean Stafford and Stevie Smith.