Midnight in Peking
How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China
by Paul French (Penguin)
If this long-forgotten true-crime tale from 75 years ago seems oddly familiar, just look at the headlines out of China today. In the wake of the murder of a British businessman, a top Chinese Communist leader’s been stripped of his post and his wife arrested. French brings us back to 1937 Peking on the verge of Japanese occupation and the murder of 19-year-old Pamela Werner, daughter of a diplomat. A Chinese and a British detective join forces in an investigation that leads to the city’s decadent anything-goes underworld, but the case remained unsolved — until now.
The Queen Mother
The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
by Lady Colin Campbell (St. Martin’s)
Trash talking about the queen mother may be the English equivalent of taking down, say, Derek Jeter, but that isn’t stopping Campbell, author of “The Real Diana.” Among the noble naysayer’s allegations: Elizabeth the queen mother was born illegitimately to the family cook, had a loveless marriage to King George VI and was artificially inseminated to give birth to current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The queen mother died in 2002, at age 101 and beloved by the English people. Quite an offering for the British during their Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
A Wedding In Haiti
by Julia Alvarez (Algonquin)
This beautiful memoir from Alvarez is a look at Haiti through an unlikely friendship. A writer-in-residence at Vermont’s Middlebury College, Alvarez, and her husband, Bill, run an organic coffee farm and literary center in her Dominican homeland. There, they met teenage Piti, whom they befriended as he worked for them. They promised to attend his wedding in impoverished, rural Haiti. And it’s their adventures there, and flashbacks to Alvarez’s Dominican Republic, which are wonderfully told.
If I Could Tell You
by Hannah Brown (Vantage Point)
From a former New York Post writer, a New York story: Brown’s main characters in her debut novel are part of an elite group — successful Manhattan women. But there’s a twist. Each of four of these women is raising an autistic child. This makes them part of a not-so-elite group, one in which 80% of marriages end in divorce. Adrift in a sea of unsupportive relatives, friends and colleagues, they form their own support group where they draw on each other’s humor, hearts and hope.
Ernie K-Doe
The R&B Emperor of New Orleans
by Ben Sandmel (The Historic New Orleans Collection)
In 1961, Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-in-Law” was the first hit by a New Orleans artist to top the R&B and pop charts, quite an accomplishment in the racially charged era. Some local hits followed, but he never again achieved that success. But K-Doe, born Ernest Kador Jr., was a real New Orleans original. The ’70s were lost to alcoholism, but K-Doe, a Little Richard-like character, revived himself with a Big Easy radio show in the ’80s and his Mother-in-Law Lounge in the ’90s.