From a Raven's Shelf

May 2023 Edition

By Sarah Young

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing—
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring.

—“May Night” by Sara Teasdale

Hello, Friends:

Here we are in May, “over-brimmed with spring.” I love Sara Teasdale’s vision of spring as “fresh and fearless.” Fearlessness is a quality we speak of but seldom find in ourselves or others, but there is much fearlessness in the books engaging me this month.

This novel has been around for a few years, but I recently went back to Circe by Madeline Miller. Do you want a fabulous, finish-in-one-sitting book? This is it! As she did with The Song of Achilles, Miller reimagines Greek mythology for the modern age. In Circe, Miller introduces us to a powerful and misunderstood nymph, banished by Zeus and her father Helios to an isolated existence on a deserted island. She is a witch, whose nascent power frightens the powerful male gods. But on the island, she grows strong, leaning into her magic, learning to speak and live for herself. Of course, among the sailors who find their way to her island is famed Odysseus, but we see her encounter with Odysseus from her perspective. Instead of the wild sorceress who delays the hero on his journey, turning his men into pigs, we see a woman enthralled not just by the man himself but by the concept of humanity. She ponders the inherent quality of humankind: their mortality. How does that change how they live their lives, fuel their desires, pursuits, and hatred? In this book, Miller gives Circe a chance to speak for herself, and we discover her profound wisdom.

Let’s turn to another woman who defied conventions and raised a ruckus. Fabulous historian Lynne Olson has gifted us a new book this spring: Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction. Now, I love a great Egyptological mystery. (Remember my love for Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody books?) I also admire Lynne Olson, one of the foremost historians of World War II. Her books focus on people, known and unknown, who were at the heart of the most important moments of that era. In Empress of the Nile, her real-life heroine is Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, an Egyptologist working at the Louvre who also defied the Nazis as a member of the French Resistance. Her life as an Egyptologist before and after the war is astonishing, but Olson goes on to reveal one of the greatest contributions to human cultural history that never would have happened had she not been involved. In the 1960s, as the Aswan High Dam was being built, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt along with another strong woman, Jacqueline Kennedy, persuaded, cajoled, strong-armed, and pushed Egypt’s President Nasser, France’s President de Gaulle, President Kennedy, and leaders of fifty countries to save ancient temples in the waters’ path. The temples were dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt away from the flood. This is a rollicking story that is better than the best Indiana Jones movie because it is true and truly inspiring.

Another novel about a strong, independent woman is The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredericks. This mystery is based on the experiences of a real woman affected by the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping and death: his nanny, Betty Gow. As Fredericks notes, she is a figure whose story has not been adequately told, and she was inspired by this fascinating woman. This is fiction, a reimagining, but in Fredericks’s hands, we see a marvelous merging of fiction and fact that helps to understand this obscure figure in the middle of the “Crime of the Century.” She’s an immigrant from Scotland, trying to understand the strange world of America and the even stranger world of the Lindbergh household, but she loves baby Charlie Lindbergh. When he is kidnapped, Betty decides she must discover what has happened before she becomes the scapegoat.

My staff pick at the store this month is considerably less dramatic but lots of fun. What do you do if you are a Chinese mother with boundary issues and you find a body on the floor of your tea shop? You investigate, of course! Vera Wong is a delightful lady who never misses her brisk morning walk through the neighborhood, does a little casual snooping via the Internet on her adult son, mothers the few regular customers who still patronize her little forgotten shop, and believes she will do a better job investigating the murder than the police. Sutanto’s creation is pushy—in a polite sort of way—and meddlesome, and wise. She’s a San Francisco Chinatown “Miss Marple.” Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto gives us a charming new series to enjoy.

Let me shift from my reading list to the awards! The mystery world’s heavy-hitter awards were announced in April, and—as promised—I’ve added a few of them here. Full disclosure: I have not read all of these (more’s the pity), but I think there are some great new reads for you all here. Perhaps I can get a fuller read of some of them for you in later columns.

The Edgar Awards are given by Mystery Writers of America. The organization “is the premier organization for mystery writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and those who are devoted to the genre. MWA is dedicated to promoting higher regard for crime writing and recognition and respect for those who write within the genre.”

The nominees in these categories are all great books, and I direct you to the website to see all nominees and winners, but here are a few standouts:

The Edgar Award for BEST NOVEL: Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
The Edgar Award for BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR: Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor
The Edgar Award for BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL: Or Else by Joe Hart
The Edgar Award for BEST FACT CRIME: Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse
The Edgar Award for BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL: The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators by Martin Edwards
The Edgar Award for BEST JUVENILE: Aggie Morton Mystery Queen: The Seaside Corpse by Marthe Jocelyn
The Edgar Award for BEST YOUNG ADULT: The Red Palace by June Hur
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD: A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers
THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD: Hideout by Louisa Luna
THE LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN MEMORIAL AWARD: Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry

The Special Awards:

GRAND MASTER: Michael Connelly and Joanne Fluke
RAVEN: Crime Writers of Color and Eddie Muller for Noir Alley and The Film Noir Foundation
ELLERY QUEEN AWARD: The Strand Magazine

The Agatha Awards are given by Malice Domestic and “celebrate the TRADITIONAL MYSTERY, best typified by the works of AGATHA CHRISTIE. The genre is loosely defined as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, excessive gore, or gratuitous violence, and would not be classified as ‘hard-boiled’.”
I featured a few of the nominees in previous columns, and I think the field was particularly strong. You can see them all here.

The Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel: A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny
The Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel: Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Amanda Flower
The Agatha Award for Best First Novel: Cheddar Off Dead by Korina Moss
The Agatha Award for Best Short Story: "Beauty and the Beyotch" by Barb Goffman (Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Feb. 2022)
The Agatha Award for Best Non-Fiction: Promophobia: Taking the Mystery Out of Promoting Crime Fiction, Diane Vallere Ed. (Sisters in Crime)
The Agatha Award for Best Children's/YA Mystery: Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade, Nancy Springer

Whew! That’s a lot of wonderful mystery reading to catch up on. There are some familiar authors there and lots of new ones to me.

Well, the marvelous Lily Wulfemeyer, who does all the newsletter formatting, including all the links to the books I mention, is probably tearing out their hair at this moment as they try to get them all in here, but I want to mention a couple more. Last month I told you about Birds of Kansas by Stan Tekiela, but I did not mention that those of you not in Kansas can probably find a Tekiela book for your state as well. He is a wonderful photographer who has created a whole series of these books for many states and regions. I have several of them, and when I checked the Raven website online ordering platform, there were dozens of his identification guides available about birds, flowers, and animals from all over the country.

If you are in Kansas, however, here is another must-have in your bird book collection: The Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots by Bob Gress and Pete Janzen. I think I squealed a little when I first discovered this book. Not only does it have beautiful and informative entries on birds in Kansas, but it also gives you the low-down on the best places in the state for birders to feed their habit. If you are a “have-binoculars-will-travel” kind of person, this is the book for you.

Thank you for sticking with this long column today. I hope you have found your new best read of the day.