Teaser Tuesday: The Difficult Sister by Judy Nedry

But the rock woman was dead, drowned in shallow water.  The hairs on my arms and neck prickled.

-- The Difficult Sister by Judy Nedry.


The Difficult Sister is the second book in Nedry's Emma Golden mystery series, following the series debut, An Unholy Alliance.

Emma Golden makes a terrific heroine. She's a a 50-something wine writer turned amateur sleuth.  Here, Emma heads to the Oregon coast to find her friend's missing sister.


Judy Nedry is the author of two nonfiction books about Northwest wine and co-founded Northwest Palate magazine. The Emma Golden books are her first works of fiction. 

Mailbox Monday: The Gods of Second Chances by Dan Berne

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday!  MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event.  Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

Only one book came into my home last week, but it looks great!



The Gods of Second Chances by Dan Berne, published by the up-and-coming Forest Avenue Press.

Based on the description on the back cover, I flipped to the first page and was sucked into the story from the get go.  The writing seemed effortless and there is no tinge of purple to get in the way of the prose. I can't wait to read this one.

Look for it starting March 1, either on-line or order it from your local bookstore.  The Gods of Second Chances is a book to get excited about.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Family means everything to Alaskan fisherman Ray Bancroft, raising his granddaughter while battling storms, invasive species, and lawsuit-happy tourists. To navigate, and to catch enough crab to feed her college fund, Ray seeks help from a multitude of gods and goddesses—not to mention ad-libbed rituals performed at sea by his half-Tlingit best friend.

But kitchen counter statues and otter bone ceremonies aren’t enough when his estranged daughter returns from prison, swearing she’s clean and sober. Her search for a safe harbor threatens everything Ray holds sacred. Set against a backdrop of ice and mud and loss, Dan Berne’s gripping debut novel explores the unpredictable fissures of memory, and how families can break apart even in the midst of healing.

European Reading Challenge: Why Unite the Kingdoms?

 

The 2014 European Reading Challenge is underway with gusto.  Dozens of adventurous readers have signed up to take the Grand Tour in books and the first reviews are already posted.  There is still plenty of time to join the fun -- sign up here.

But there's been some grumbling about treating the United Kingdom as one country instead of four separate countries, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.  (Note: Ireland is an independent sovereign nation; only Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.)  When I set up the ERC  three years ago, I decided to stick with the list of 50 recognized sovereign states of Europe as the list of participating countries.

A couple of people have commented or emailed me to object that the United Kingdom only counts as one country.  This is a relevant argument because the point of the challenge is to read books set in different countries or by authors from different countries.  Here is a sampling of the arguments:

• Residents and writers from Scotland, Wales, north of Ireland and England have their own distinct voices and experiences, i.e., Denise Mina, Mari Strachan, Anne Cleeves, Martin Edwards, and the many Irish and other writers. Their experiences differ, their history does, too.

• The UK is a remnant of an imperialistic culture; if you are counting the former Soviet Union's countries as separate, then Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland should be different.

These are reasonable points in favor of considering England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland as separate countries.  They deserve a response.  I have two main reasons for following the official formula of treating the United Kingdom as one country.  One is general, related to Europe; one specifically relates to the United Kingdom.

IT'S JUST POLITICS

The Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish are not alone in claiming cultural independence from the official sovereign nation of which they are a part.  Europe is chock-o-block with groups who -- prompted by history, religion, geography, or politics -- consider themselves independent and would like to be treated as their own country.

An example close to my heart is Bavaria, where my family comes from.  Bavaria is part of Germany, but it has its own laws and considers itself an independent country, "Freistaat Bayern" -- the Free State of Bavaria.

My relatives in Bavaria call themselves Bavarians, not Germans (in fact, they refer to non-Bavarian Germans as Prussians).  They are Catholics, not Protestants.  They follow Bavarian traditions, eat Bavarian food, look for any excuse to wear Bavarian clothing, and (especially when drinking Bavarian moonshine) speak a Bavarian dialect.

But as much as my relatives and other Bavarians would like to think they have their own country, they don't.  They are part of Germany.

Likewise, Greenland is part of Denmark.  Northern Cyprus is part of Cyprus.  South Ossetia is part of Georgia.  And no one knows for sure what Kosovo is a part of.

My point is that there are a lot of people in a lot of countries whose claims to independent nationhood rival or even exceed those of the Welsh, Scots, and Northern Irish.  The European Reading Challenge is about reading books and having fun, not debating or deciding the merits of separatist causes. 

Which is why only the 50 uniformly recognized countries of Europe count for the challenge. 

EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS

The second reason I stick with treating the United Kingdom as one country rather than four is to encourage participants to get out of their comfort zone.

Most -- but not all -- of the ERC participants are in the USA or the UK and speak English as their first language.  Most bibliophiles are Anglophiles, myself included.  I naturally drift to books and authors from Great Britain and Ireland.  Last year alone I read 37 books set in, or written by authors from, the four countries of the United Kingdom, plus three written by Irish authors.

The main reason I started to European Reading Challenge was to encourage myself and challenge participants to read books from all over Europe.  If the United Kingdom counted as four countries, we could complete the highest level of the challenge (five books) by reading one book each from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland and never set a metaphorical foot on the Continent.  Where's the adventure in that?

By allowing only one book from a United Kingdom country to count, I hope participants read books that are set in farther-flung countries or written by non-English speaking authors.

HAPPY READING

The important thing about the European Reading Challenge is to have fun.  Enjoy the challenge.  Read some great books.  And If you find a book that counts for Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, or San Marino, please share with the rest of the us!

Book Beginning: The Difficult Sister by Judy Nedry

THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

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TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

MY BOOK BEGINNING

February is the cruelest month in western Oregon.

-- The Difficult Sister by Judy Nedry.

With apologies to T. S. Eliot, she's right.  February in the Willamette Valley and on the Oregon coast is dark, cold, grey, and wet.  Weather forecasters usually give up and just predict "winter mix" -- a combination of any two or more of rain, snow, sleet, hail, or freezing fog.  It's a month of black ice, damp fleece, cold fingers, cabin fever, and short tempers.

You can tell that this is an opening sentence that really set the scene for me!

The Difficult Sister is the second book in Nedry's Emma Golden mystery series, following the series debut, An Unholy Alliance. I already love the heroine -- a 50-something wine writer turned amateur sleuth.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Set on the southern Oregon coast, The Difficult Sister follows amateur sleuth Emma and her friend Melody Wyatt as they search for Melody’s missing sister Aurora. Known as “the Bolter”, Aurora has burned her way through a plethora of husbands and lovers. At age 50, freshly reinvented by modern science, the she meets a man on-line and falls in love. She moves with him from Portland to the remote fictional town of Radnor. Within a few weeks, her emails and phone calls cease. Melody becomes further alarmed when her sister’s cell phone is answered by the man, who claims Aurora left him. She and Emma drive to Bandon, Oregon to look for her. In a novel where place emerges as a key character, the two women are swept into the miasma that is the southern Oregon coast—where the “haves” live in homes overlooking the Pacific Ocean on coastal side of Highway 101 and the “have-nots” live in 50-year-old single-wide trailers on the dark side of the highway. It is a place some folks go to cook meth, disappear into poverty, or just disappear.

THE AUTHOR

Judy Nedry earned a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon and worked for two decades documenting the growth of the Northwest wine industry. She is the author of two nonfiction books about Northwest wine and co-founded Northwest Palate magazine. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Teaser Tuesday: Heist and High by Anthony Curcio

The shakes, panic and paranoia never let him think he had a long leash.  At this point, Anthony was taking anywhere from thirty to fifty hydrocodone or Oxycodone pills a day. 

-- Heist and High by Anthony Curcio and Dane Batty. Curcio went from golden boy to prescription drug addict, robbing an armored truck of over $400,000, and ending up in federal prison. This is his own story of crime and redemption.

Co-author and publisher, Dane Batty, is a technical writer and biographer who also wrote Wanted: Gentleman Bank Robber: The True Story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, One of the FBI's Most Elusive Criminals.  He runs Nish Publishing Company.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.