Beach Reads by Ali Rosen

 LUCY BURDETTE: Ali Rosen visited us a while back and we enjoyed not only her first novel, but also her recipe for Amalfi Lemon Pasta. We’re thrilled that she’s back today with a second novel, and watch your waistlines—a recipe for Irish cheddar gougeres. Welcome Ali!

ALI ROSEN: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the term ‘beach read’ and what we all hope to get out of our reading in the summer. 

Among non-readers (or reading snobs!) there’s this idea that a beach read is vapid. That it’s meant to not challenge. As a romance writer, I see this dismissal all times of year, but there’s a certain synergy with summer and vacation that seems to make these stereotypes raise their heads even more.

But for those of us who love reading, summer is just a chance to maybe have a bit more time for our favorite escape and to perhaps get to do it outside. Winter is snuggling up on the couch with a book and summer is lying on a lounger in the warm weather. Maybe the mood strikes for something a little different (cozy mysteries vs sunshine escapes), but the sentiment to me is the same. A book is an adventure. A book is there to take me somewhere new. A book propels me inside someone else’s life. 

I think the assumption of frothiness in a beach read is because it often relates to books where we know the shades of the ending before we start. With a romance or a women’s fiction beach read, we’re guaranteed our happy ending. But to me, the knowledge of a happy ending can contain so much more depth than other books because it cocoons us enough to explore the complexities of life without the fear of them hurting us. 

My newest book, Alternate Endings, has all those fun trappings of a beach read—it’s a romance set across New York and Ireland and features all the hijinks you want out of a romcom (falling out of boats! sexy castles! a precocious kid!). But it tackles some headier topics that I hope resonate with the women who read it: what happens when we reach middle age and don’t actually have everything figured out as promised? How do we balance being mothers and career women who also want a romantic life? Can we ever become brave enough to not only ask for what we want, but just know what we want? 

For me, that’s the best kind of beach read. Because as women and readers, we contain all those multitudes. We want thoughtful prose along with our fun. So I’m going to wear the beach reader label as a badge of honor, and I hope you will too. I hope we all get time to ourselves on a beach (or wherever our summer vacations take us) to reflect on our lives while enjoying our books.

And since I can’t ignore my other favorite love - cooking! - I’m going to leave you not just with a recommendation to read my book (out now in paperback and on Kindle Unlimited for those digital readers like myself!) but also with an Irish recipe from it. Have a marvelous start to summer everyone!

What's a book everyone described as a beach read but has sat with you forever and changed your perspective?

Irish Cheddar GOUGÈRES

This is an appetizer that no one can argue with: it’s cheese and bread—come on! Gougères are technically French, but we’re making them Irish here with one of the best exports you can get from the Emerald Isle—assuming you can get Irish cheddar, of course.

Makes 30–35 small gougères.

Ingredients

1 cup water

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup all-purpose flour

5 large eggs

2 cups grated cheddar cheese (Irish cheddar preferred)

Preheat the oven to 450˚F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine the water, butter, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Turn the heat to low and immediately add the flour, whisking it into the liquid. You want to stir quickly and long enough for the dough to get drier and much smoother—a bit of starch on the bottom is totally fine. Transfer to the bowl of a mixer and allow to cool for a few minutes. Then add the eggs slowly as the dough mixes (if you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer, but put it on a low setting). The eggs should be fully mixed in and incorporated. Then add the cheese and fully incorporate that—the dough should be sticky but manageable.

Scoop out the dough into approximately 1-tablespoon balls and place them on the parchment paper.

Put the gougères in the oven and immediately turn it down to 350˚F. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan once halfway through. They should be golden and puffy when cooked.

Note: you can also freeze the uncooked balls and then cook them for just a few minutes longer, and they should turn out almost completely the same.

About Ali Rosen:

Ali Rosen is a bestselling writer of both cookbooks and novels, and is the Emmy and James Beard Award-nominated host of Potluck with Ali Rosen on NYC Life. Her first novel is the #1 Amazon romance Recipe for Second Chances and her second, Alternate Endings, is coming May 7th. She is also the author of the cookbooks 15 Minute Meals, Modern Freezer Meals and Bring It!. She's been featured everywhere from The Today Show to The New York Times and has written for publications including Bon Appetit, Wine Enthusiast and New York Magazine. She is originally from Charleston, SC but now lives in New York City with her husband and three kids and can usually be found cooking in her kitchen or curled up in a chair reading a romance novel.

Follow Ali on Instagram

What we’re reading

 

LUCY BURDETTE: You know I adore this topic (and I know many of you do too) even though I honestly have more books in my multiple piles than I could finish in a lifetime. But new sparkly titles are constantly getting published, along with favorites from my most favorite authors, and reminders about older books that I’ve overlooked. Aside from all that, I’m judging a contest that I am forbidden to discuss. So I’m accumulating a teetering stack of books that might be right up your alley that I can’t mention!  I’m trying the technique of alternating the books I’m dying to read with the ones that are part of my contest obligations.

Most enjoyable books of the spring so far? Kristin Hannah’s THE WOMEN, Rhys Bowen’s THE ROSE ARBOR (one of her very best!), Kent Krueger’s THE RIVER WE REMEMBER…and I’m so looking forward to Barb Ross’s TORN ASUNDER and Jenn’s LOVE AT FIRST BOOK, and so many more—just look at my recent pile—wahhh! Reds, what are you reading?

HALLIE EPHRON: I just finished reading a book that Sarah Weinman suggested in a roundup of recommendations. It’s an oldie and now I’m wondering how I missed the series. I read DEATH AND THE PENGUIN by Andre Kurkov. Wonderful dark humor in a book with a detective/aspiring writer who’s in a dead end job writing obituaries and, oh by the way, he has a pet penguin. Highly recommend. 

And fascinated as I am by the movie business and alcoholic mega-stars, I’m reading COCKTAILS WITH GEORGE AND MARTHA, and nonfiction by Philip Gefter. It’s about the genesis and filming of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. From Edward Albee to Mike Nichols to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: utterly fascinating. Also an excellent doorstop.

I also loved Rhys’s THE ROSE ARBOR which I tore into the minute I got my hands on an advance copy.

JENN McKINLAY: Count me in for Rhys’s THE ROSE ARBOR! Such a fascinating story. I loved it. Also, I’m reading YOU’D LOOK BETTER AS A GHOST by Joanna Wallace. Very original! I can’t even describe how different it is but I’m enjoying it tremendously. Recently, I read WEYWARD by Emilia Hart and could not put it down. It was excellent.

RHYS BOWEN: Aw, I’m blushing because you all said nice things about The Rose Arbor! Thank you. It was a complicated book and I was relieved that it worked out so well in the end. What am I reading? I’m returning the compliment… Jenn’s LOVE AT FIRST BOOK.  It was exactly what I needed right now having had a stressful first half of the year with radiation for John, lots of strange doctor visits (the symptoms were strange, not the doctors). So I’m savoring Ireland and Jenn’s snappy dialog. Always so good. I’ve reread the Paris book at least twice.  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I just read two absolutely fabulous books, completely fabulous! By two of my favorite authors, and was so honored to interview them afterward. The first is CLOSE TO DEATH— and I know I go on and on and on about how much I adore Anthony Horowitz and his brilliant meta-fiction, and they just get better and better. This book is absolutely terrific in every way, and sometimes I just had to stop reading and applaud. You know, this is the series where I Anthony Horowitz the author is a character in the book. I don’t know how he managed to do it so beautifully.

And the other book I just read, and adore is THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Stuart Turton—- it’s sort of a dystopian utopia, yes, truly, or Agatha Christie meets the apocalypse on an isolated island. The world has ended, and there are only 121 people left, and they live this idyllic life – – although the reader is aware, something is not quite idyllic :-) – – until someone is murdered. And that’s like, chapter 1. This is an absolute tour de force in genre bending, with a solid mystery underneath.

It strikes me in discussing these—that both authors have written an intriguing, unique complex, unusual, pushing-the- envelope novel, but underneath both still depend on a satisfying, believable, and fair traditional mystery .

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Joining the dittos on Rhys’s THE ROSE ARBOR! I loved it! So well plotted, and I particularly loved the characters and the details of the late sixties setting.

Also, I’ve listened to the audiobook of THE WOMEN by Kristin Hannah, narrated by Julia Whelan, my absolute favorite female narrator, and was blown away. It’s one of those books that makes you feel desperate for someone to talk to about it when you’ve finished it. AND I finally, finally (I think I’m the last person in the world!) read LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus, and of course it is just brilliant. It was nice to read these one right after the other–similar themes, similar time period (LESSONS is a bit more than a decade earlier,) and then Rhys’s book also is set in the same time period as THE WOMEN. I listened to the audio of Marion McNabb’s SOME DOUBT ABOUT IT, which I really enjoyed. And now I’ve started Elly Griffith’s THE LAST WORD, but i picked up Jenn’s LOVE AT FIRST BOOK and will not be putting this one down until I finish it. So good!!!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I saw THE LAST MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD and thought it was calling my name, but you've sold me - it definitely sounds like my kind of read. 

Loved THE ROSE ARBOR and LOVE AT FIRST BOOK (don't hate us because we get advanced copies, dear readers!) and I also recently read Tessa Wegert's next Shana Marchant mystery, THE COLDEST CASE. It's a little Agatha Christie combined with frigid weather and a great detecting couple, so if that appeals, pre-order it now!

Catching up with what everyone else raved about, I tore through Benjamin Stevenson's EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE and EVERYONE ON THIS TRAIN IS A SUSPECT. I can see why HBO has picked this up. 

Next up, VILLAGE IN THE DARK, Iris Yamashita's follow-up to one of the most original mysteries of  '23, VILLAGE UNDER ONE ROOF. No science fiction! That's a first for me.

LUCY AGAIN: That's enough from us, but we'd love to hear what you're reading!

My Travel Buddy:

RHYS BOWEN: If you've been reading my posts you'll know that I love to travel. But I don't love to travel alone. I need someone to keep me company. When I see something breathtaking I want to say "Look at that!" and I want to share amazing meals and have someone to commiserate with if it's pouring with rain or the hotel is terrible.  I'm an extrovert. If I'm alone in New York on business for three days, by the third day I'm chatting with every store clerk and waiter.

Having said that I do make sure that I have one travel buddy with me all the time. He is totally non-judgmental and delights in everything we do. For many years this buddy was a small fat bird my daughter gave me. I called him Hubyrd and he came with me on every trip. 

I got strange looks when I placed him on Queen Victoria's head in Malta but I had to document that he had been to every place with me.

 (See him on the wall?)

Alas, I lost Hybyrd. I know he is in my house somewhere. I've turned my bedroom upside down and can't find him. Is he behind a big chest of drawers? Inside an old suitcase? I wish I knew because I miss him.

I tried taking my tiny bears, Sophie and Alexander, but they did not enjoy the travel and got air sick in my

suitcase. 

However last Christmas my same daughter put this in my stocking. He is clearly a traveling mouse, dressed ready for adventure. I've named him Hector and he's waiting to go off with my on my next travels. I'll keep you posted.

Do you have anything, anyone, that you have to take when you travel? (And am I quite sane, do you think? Do normal people take favorite animals with them?

Brave New World

 RHYS BOWEN: Our recent Facebook trials when we tried to do a Facebook live event for our group REDS AND READERS highlighted how annoyingly stressful modern life can be. We all are suddenly required to be more tech savvy than we want to be. Mastering Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, not to mention Canva and learning how to create images with stars exploding all over them. Who would have thought it when I sat down with a pan and pen to write my first book?

Every time I have to do a Zoom, Streamyard, Chime etc etc I'm stressed that I won't be able to connect, that I'll freeze, that i'll suddenly notice my bra-strap is showing or I look as if I have no chin. I suppose the positive aspect of all this is that we can connect with readers in a way not possible before. I now speak to bookclubs anywhere in the world. When I do an event for the Poisoned Pen we get about 2000 watching the video , not just from America but from Australia, Sweden, you name it. It is mind boggling how one can have fans from across the globe.

But it is also so time-consuming. I reckon writers these days spend half their time writing and the other half in social media. I try to interact on Facebook every day. I post blogs, I do podcasts and interviews. On Monday I had two Zoom interviews, one after the other. Total of over 2 hours. When I went upstairs I said to John "My cheeks hurt from so much smiling." You can't look grumpy for a second on a Zoom!

So I'm thinking that Shakespeare and Jane Austen didn't have to spend half their time interacting on social media. Okay, that wasn't a good example. Shakespeare's works were performed so he was able to assess the success or failure of his words. Dickens's novels were published in weekly installments so he was also able to get feedback from his readers. but they didn't have to spend half their lives smiling on Zoom.

Of course it is lovely to meet many more readers than I ever could on bookstore visits. But it's made writing into a celebrity thing--that it's not just the words they like, it's the writer they follow. I find it strange and mind boggling that I have about 400,000 followers across social media (Facebook, Bookbub and Amazon). Did I ever, in my wildest dreams, imagine that my words would reach that many people, across the world. I should add that some of those followers are creepy guys from Nigeria, but then some are real African fans so it's hard to weed them out. (but that's why I started the private group TEA WITH RHYS as they have to be admitted and can be booted out if they do anything inappropriate).

I suppose I should be grateful and embrace the convenience. I still remember the days when the copy edits from my publisher came in a large envelope and I had to edit and reprint and send it back. Now it can be done in a day in the review mode. And I get a lot of fan mail because it doesn't require a stamp and a trip to the post office. And Google can alert me to any time my name shows up in the media. All good, but...

Maybe if I were younger I wouldn't have a hard time keeping up with technology, but it seems as soon as I've mastered one thing, something new replaces it. I'm still coming to terms with email. I'm not quite sure of the correct protocol. Should an email be considered a letter and therefor start 'Dear X?" and end with a yours sincerely etc.

Should it start like a chat with a friend? "Hi X! and end with kisses xxxxx

Or should it need not intro and conclusion at all since the recipient can see who it is coming from?

And then there is texting. Don't get me started on emojis or all of the acronyms. I haven't got past LOL yet. I can't see myself ever communicating with things like Wsg? hyd? NTG ISTG etc.

Even more baffling: 459 apparently means I love you!

39 means thank you (three and nine in Japanese apparently)

Do you think that humans are reverting to cave man speak and will lose the art of large vocabulary and polished sentences. No matter, there is always AI to do it for them. And that's another whole discussion.

So who here feels comfortable with technology and is glad of the conveniences we have? And who would like to return to the good old days when we sat down with pen and paper and wrote a letter instead?

My Comfort Foods

 RHYS BOWEN: Recently when I was interviewed the woman said, “You must love to cook. There is so much food in your books.”

No, actually I love to eat good food. I’d love someone else to cook it for me. I get messages all the time asking me when I’m going to put out a cookbook with all the foods in my books. I may do that when I ever find the time to breathe… still two and a half books a year, you know!

 Now I’ve started my own Facebook group (TEA WITH RHYS—come on over and join) I just chose this title because it sounded like me, and warm and welcoming. But I’ve found that my members actually like to talk about tea, and scones, and share pictures of luxurious tea settings and cozy tea pots. It’s something that binds us together.

 And I’ll share a secret: I have found a way to enjoy all my favorite foods without putting on a pound. I write about them! I realize, as I go through the Royal Spyness books, that the menus I include are ones I’d like to be savoring right now. I confess they include a lot of the dishes that Queenie makes—not at all haute cuisine, but my own childhood foods, fondly remembered. Shepherd’s Pie. Toad in the Hole, even spotted dick (which sounds awful but was filling and comforting to a child in a cold house. Of course served with warm custard).

 I do like more adventurous foods: Italian, French, Chinese, Indian etc. I enjoy them all. I’ve plenty of French foods in my books, and now very fancy French cuisine with the introduction of Pierre the chef. So my characters have had boeuf bourguignone, coq au vin, floating islands, crème brulee… all the dishes I love. I can drool as I describe them and not gain an ounce. I’ve a great idea: I’ll charge a small fee to mail out a daily description of a meal. Readers can salivate and not have to worry about all those calories. Brilliant, eh?

 But seriously, I most enjoy writing about my comfort foods. There are certain foods from childhood that I need when I am stressed, or not feeling well. When I was pregnant with my first child I had horrible morning sickness that lasted all day and all I craved was my mum’s lamb stew. And we could not find lamb at any shops near us.

 When my stomach is a bit upset all I want is marmite on toast (I know you have to have British genes before you can eat Marmite, but I love it, spread thinly).   If I go out to a fancy seafood restaurant I often end up ordering fish and chips. When I am in England and we go to my SIL’s manor house in Cornwall the first things I want are scones with clotted cream and jam, bangers and mash and Cornish pasties. All items that are laden with fat and everything bad for you, so I’m glad I’m only there a couple of weeks. But I can keep writing about them all year, can’t I?

So, dear Reds, what are your favorite comfort foods? Do they come from your childhood?

HALLIE EPHRON: Like you, Rhys, I love to eat good food. But I also love to cook. But I confess my comfort foods are out of a bag. Barbecue potato chips. Roasted salted cashews or almonds. Shrimp cocktail with loads of Heinz Chili Sauce. Haagen-Dazs Rum raisin ice cream. 

My mother rarely set foot in the kitchen (we had a live -in cook, Evelyn Hall, who has SO gifted and talented…)  But the one thing my mother would make for herself were roasted almonds. She’d boil almonds untl you could pop them out of their skins.Then roll them in butter and salt and roast them in the oven. A lot like what you can buy today as “Marcona almonds” but better. To me that’s still the quintessential “comfort food.” 

RHYS: My mother also worked all her life so food was anything that could be cooked quickly with no fuss: 

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh how I love to eat and read and talk about food and eating! But Rhys, your technique of writing about food so you don’t eat it all does not work for me. I get hungrier and hungrier as I write!

My mother was a little like Hallie’s–she did not love to cook. With four kids, she had to do it, but it was 50’s-60’s style convenience foods and roasts and so on. She would also eat liver and onions and pigs’ feet–as Hallie would say, ICK! My comfort foods are hearty homemade things like spaghetti Bolonese and chicken pot pie and lots of piping hot biscuits loaded with butter. I will help Hallie with the BBQ potato chips, and I admit that we both share an addiction to Bishop’s Orchards caramel corn. Yesterday I found some cheese wafers at Trader Joe’s that were extremely dangerous…to my waistline.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: First I will say contrarily that –like the term bucket list–I am not a fan of the term “comfort food.” That said…:-) If I could eat anything and doing so would make me happy and I wouldn't worry about carbs and whatever, I would DEFINITELY  have Popcorner chips. AND spinach artichoke dip. Tacos, with sour cream on top. Baked potato with sour cream and broccoli.  Truffle fries. 

Did they come from my childhood? Definitely not. (Mine mirrored Halllie’s, we had Viola Brown, thank goodness, although my mother DID cook, in a kind of a 1950’s way..)  ALTHOUGH I am a massive peanut butter and jelly fan. Which did come from childhood. 

In fact, toast with peanut butter is one of the best things in the world. AND bagels with cream cheese and tomatoes and capers and smoked salmon. Stopping now.

JENN McKINLAY: My mother is a fabulous cook and baker. Usually, people are one or the other but she is both. I am a baker - I love, love, love it and when the Hooligans were at home I baked breads, pies, cakes, and cookies all of the time. Now that it’s just Hub and me and we’re not supposed to have all that baking goodness, I don’t bake unless it’s a holiday or birthday. Very sad but our cholesterol thanks us. 

Hub does most of the cooking now (I officially quit during the pandemic when I was the only one working and then declared no give backsies when life resumed), although I make the salad because he won’t. He swears no one likes salad but I do, I really do! Anyway, comfort food for me is my mom’s lasagna or her coconut custard pie. If I’m cooking for myself it’s my signature mac and cheese. If I’m sick then it’s a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup – the ultimate comfort food.

RHYS: Oh yes. Totally agree to that, Jenn. When I've been on book tour and had to eat fancy hotel food for a week or so, all i want is grilled cheese!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My mom was a good cook, but she never made most of those traditional American comfort foods–I don't remember her ever making mac and cheese!--so I had to think a lot about what was comforting and I kept coming back to toast. This is what I want when I am under the weather, when nothing else sounds good. Especially cheese toast, with good bread and good sharp cheddar, sometimes with a slice of tomato sprinkled with oregano, sometimes with some British pickle (like chutney–Rhys will know Branston's pickle) and sometimes just plain, maybe with some apple slices.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My comfort foods as a kid were Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese with - wait for it - fried Spam slices. My mother would make that for us when she was going out for the evening and we had a sitter. And then, of course, when we were sick, it was Lipton Chicken Noodle Cup of Soup. You can tell those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s because it’s impossible to describe your favorite foods without using trademarked brand names!

As an adult, I will always go for a soup and sandwich when I need to be braced. I make excellent chowders, bean soups and butternut squash bisques, and with a nice grilled cheese on the side, I’m in my happy place. Now, please excuse me, all this food talk has me famished, and I’m off to make myself something good to eat!

RHYS: I think the concensus among the Reds is that grilled cheese wins! I lived on it in college when I was studying for exams, and then as a single working girl who had no time to eat properly.

So Reddies: how about you? What are your comfort foods and do you think that the Reds should publish a cookbook together? Great idea, huh?

It's Fiction, Dammit.

RHYS BOWEN:  Like the rest of the Reds I get letters all the time telling me I’ve got something wrong. It seems that readers get great delight from scoring a point against authors, whether it's a typo on page 54 and would you please go back to print, or some fact that they are sure is not right. Much of the time it is they who have got it wrong. Clare and I are just in the middle of copy edits for our next Molly Murphy book and the editor has queried our time line in some of the innovations we mention. However Clare, the most meticulous researcher in the universe, can quote an article in a trade publication or a lawsuit in the NYT that proves we are right.

It's funny because we are writing fiction. We should be able to make up what we like. But if we are writing about a real time and place then accuracy is important, at least it is to me. I want to take my reader to that time and place and make them feel that they are there. For the early Molly books I went to New York and walked every street that Molly would have walked. I got a letter saying “the distance she walked was quite impossible.”  I replied, “I walked it.”

For The Paris Assignment I got a letter from an Australian woman saying that nobody would have flown out from England before 1970. They would have taken a ship. Again I replied, “I did.”

The one thing you absolutely can’t get wrong is guns and trains. People who know about those are fanatics. In one Constable Evans book I had a missing dueling pistol when someone is found dead. I got all these letters saying “those pistols didn’t use bullets. So stupid etc etc” and I replied, “read on.” A chapter or two later a bullet is found and it is decided that the missing pistol has nothing to do with the murder.

But I got a letter from a train buff complaining that the train Molly had taken to San Francisco would not have stopped in Reno because that particular train would have taken the Winnemucca cut. Nothing happened in Reno. The train stopped then went on. No major plot point happened there. But it mattered to this man..

So I do work hard to get things right. IN one of the Constable Evans books Evan has to creep up a steep mountainside and wrestle a rifle away from a man. I asked John to help me figure out how he’d do this and we ended up wrestling on the kitchen floor, muttering "If I grab this, you'd grab that.". Our son (teenager at the time) came in, stared in utter horror, and asked “What are you doing?”  But we got the scene right!

I’m really annoyed when I watch something on TV and they get it wrong. As John will attest, I complain quite often. One pet peeve is when a policeman has to break down a door. I don’t know if you’ve tried this, but you’d dislocate your shoulder long before the door would give, especially if it's a good old British solid oak door. However on TV the policeman is not even seen rubbing the affected shoulder afterward.

Another pet peeve is the number of times people are knocked unconscious in books. If they are knocked out in every single book in a series they are going to have severe brain problems. Concussions are not to be taken lightly, as I can tell you from the latest sports protocols. In a water polo match in which my granddaughter was playing the goalie was taken out after a ball hit her in the head. Not allowed to play for the rest of the game.

So I do understand. It is worth getting every detail right because it will matter to somebody. I’m always so tempted to write back saying “It’s fiction, dammit.”

Do you have any pet peeves about things that books and TV get wrong? And authors, have you had snippy letters telling you that you’ve goofed?

Hagini Nagendra on A Right Royal Mess

RHYS BOWEN:  Having been to India many times and married to someone who worked for Air India, I was delighted to find the first book in this series, giving a wonderfully different perspective on the days of the British Raj: the narrator is an educated Indian woman, with a forward-thinking husband!

And since I write a lot about the Prince of Wales it is fascinating in this book to see him visiting India. So welcome Harini!

HARINI NAGENDRA:

I’m so pleased to be back on Jungle Red Writers, announcing the launch of A Nest of Vipers, part of my 1920s historical mystery series. The first book, The Bangalore Detectives Club, and the second, Murder Under A Red Moon, were also featured here - it feels like a good luck charm to be back for the third time. A heartfelt thank you to Rhys Bowen and the other terrific Jungle Red writers for inviting me back!

The 1920s were a time of political ferment in India. In April 1919, a peaceful gathering of Indian protesters in a park in Amritsar turned into a bloodbath. Hundreds of men, women and children were brought down by a hail of bullets, shot in the back as they fled. India never forgot or forgave the Jallianwalabagh massacre.  For its part, the British empire refused to apologize, or even to discipline the men responsible.

Shortly after, Mahatma Gandhi launched the non-cooperation movement in August 1921, asking Indians to boycott British institutions and British-made goods. Across India, calls for Swaraj – self-determination and independence – grew louder. At this non-propitious time Edward, Prince of Wales (the very same Edward whom Rhys writes about so entertainingly in her Royal Spyness series, who later abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson), choose to visit India.

Edward landed in Bombay in November 1921. The Prince might have expected to see streets packed with cheering crowds. Instead, he was greeted with hartals and bandhs – city wide strikes – in Bombay, Allahabad, Benares, Lucknow and Calcutta. Terrified of the Swaraj movement, the police threw anyone they suspected of being involved into jail, packing cramped cells with tens of thousands of political prisoners.

Edward hated his visit, complaining that “I am hardly ever allowed even to drive through the bazaars and native quarters of the cities” (because of the fear of violence. By February 1922, the unrest reached its zenith when policemen fired on protestors in the small north Indian town of Chauri Chaura. The crowd stormed the station, and set fire to it, killing over twenty men. Shocked by the transformation of what was intended to be a non-violent civil disobedience movement into large scale violence, Gandhi went on a five day fast, and persuaded the Congress Party to pause the noncooperation movement.

A Nest of Vipers is set in the backdrop of these tumultuous events. Edward traveled to Bangalore in January 1922, shortly after visiting Madras – where he was greeted by protestors who burnt buses, stoned government buildings, and attacked men in uniforms. From newspaper accounts, it seems as though his subsequent visit to Bangalore was relatively peaceful. Shortly after, he left India for Nepal, soothing away the affront to his dignity made by India by going on a classic colonial pursuit - hunting tigers, mounted on elephant back, from a safe distance.

But would the all good people of Bangalore remain quiet? It does seem as though something might be missing from those sanitized newspaper accounts. This is fertile ground for a book, of course. My story opens with a circus performance in Bangalore, a few days before the prince’s upcoming visit. The police are out in full force, watching out for signs of disturbance at all public events. Kaveri’s good friend Inspector Ismail seems unusually serious, refusing to discuss why he is there with her, as he usually does.

Soon after the circus begins, their master magician disappears from a locked cage on stage, in full view of everyone. Armed goons take over the tent, looting the audience of their wealth, as the police chase them, and the performance devolves into chaos. Soon after, Kaveri stumbles on a dead body – Pawan, her friend Anandi’s abusive husband, who is part of the circus team, has been killed.

When the magician’s son approaches her, asking her to find his missing father, she gets drawn into a tangled web of intrigue. Is the independence movement being co-opted by those who seek to exploit it for their own goals? With danger stalking her, her former friend Inspector Ismail now distancing himself from her, and a sinister team of wrestlers following her across the city, Kaveri must find a way to hide from them all and infiltrate the independence movement - to find out if her suspicions are right.

In 1920s British India, it was dangerous to be seen talking openly about Swaraj or to be found going to independence meetings. People developed fascinating ways to signal that they were meeting in secret. As some of the elderly freedom fighters interviewed by journalist P. Sainath describe, in his book, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, they found ingenious ways to hide in plain sight. A pat of wet cowdung outside a safe house might signal that a secret meeting was ongoing - but only to those in the know. If the cowdung cake was dry, the meeting was over, and it was safe to enter. Others used twigs of neem leaves.

These fighters found similarly inventive ways to run underground radio stations and printing presses, rob cargo trains of money, hide messages in hair buns and parcels of food. In one especially fascinating escapade, a young woman - 17 year-old Hausabai Patil - faked a quarrel outside a police station, allowing herself to be brutally beaten by a fake ‘husband’. When the police came out to counsel the supposed couple, escorting them to the railway station, their comrades sneaked in from the other side, stealing four rifles. She was inspired by her father, who was a core member of the movement, later sent to jail. Their family paid a heavy price for their involvement when the British seized their property, working as manual labour, and surviving on very little food, not even able to get a handful of salt from the grocer.

While the bravery of these ‘foot soldiers’ of the movement was inspiring to read, their stories were also harrowing. These incredibly brave men and women became masters of disguise, traveling across India to nucleate new nodes of action, but they also sacrificed so much – home, career, health, family – even life itself. Several of the characters I describe in A Nest of Vipers, whom Kaveri meets while infiltrating the movement, are inspired by these fearless patriots. The book is a small effort to pay homage to their incredible lives and escapades – which seem wilder than anything a fiction author could possibly imagine.  

 

 

About the author:

Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology at Azim Premji University. She is a well known writer and public speaker on sustainability and climate change, and on Stanford University’s list of the top 2% cited scientists in the world. She has published three acclaimed historical mysteries: The Bangalore Detectives Club, Murder Under a Red Moon, and A Nest of Vipers; and a number of non-fiction books including Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future, Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities, So Many Leaves, and Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities. Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes.

LOVE AT FIRST BOOK -- Jenn's release day!!!

 

BUY NOW!

JENN: Today's the day!!!  LOVE AT FIRST BOOK is finally out. I feel as if I wrote this book years ago - it was 2022/2023. And the trip I took to Ireland also feels as if it were ages ago. It was Nov 2022.

Why is this romcom (which received a starred review from Booklist) about an illness anxiety suffering librarian and a change resistant bookshop owner set in Ireland? I mean I could have written about anywhere, right? Well...I really wanted a vacation. And it had been a long while since I'd been through Dublin, so it felt right. Below are a few of the photos and a story, a short one, that I used in the novel almost word for word.

The Fab Four

My mom, Sue, my college roommate, Annette, and her daughter, Alyssa (or as I call them -  the historian, the medic, and the navigator), and I all went to Ireland for a little over a week. In case you're wondering what they call me, I am the driver. Why? Because I thought it would be grand to drive around Ireland, a place littered with roundabouts whose drivers happen to motor on the left side of the road. 

Me driving and Mom looking super at ease...lol.

I was so confident about driving that I rented a car and never gave it a thought until the night before we were to leave Dublin. I stared at the ceiling -- while everyone else slept off our pub crawl around Temple Bar -- with the sudden realization that I was going to get us all killed. Panic ensued.

The next morning, I accepted that I had no choice if I wanted to get where I needed to go (the Ring of Kerry) and so we took a cab to the car rental place in Dublin and the lovely man driving us inquired about where we were headed.

Mom: We're going to rent a car.

 

Him: Who's driving?

Me: Me.

Him: (a slight pause and then) If you could just give me thirty minutes to get off the road.

Yes, we all laughed, even me. Then he offered some advice.

Him: When you're driving, remember you always want to keep your passenger safe. To do that, keep your passenger on the curb side then you'll always be in the correct lane.

Me: That makes sense.

Him: If you have trouble remembering it, just think to yourself, keep the bitch in the ditch.

Me: "Um, that'd be my mom."

Again, more laughter, which was pretty much how the entire trip went. Mighty craic, as they say.

All in all, I drove 1200 kilometers and I only made my passengers scream once, eh, maybe twice. Okay, three times but I swear that was it. And the above conversation with the cabbie? Yeah, it went right into the book. 

Another thing that went into the book? Sheep in the road.
Yup, they really do that. 

Below are some more pics. Please enjoy. And if you fancy a trip to Ireland without leaving your home, pick up LOVE AT FIRST BOOK. 

The Cliffs of Moher - just as majestic as you'd imagine.

More sheep - cute little bleaters are everywhere.

Gaillimh River in Galway - loved that town.

The bookshop that inspired The Last Chapter bookshop in the novel.

This one is for the Reds, They have a whiskey just for us!
Writer's Tears at the Whiskey Museum.

Flower boxes still blooming in November. 

Chatting with the Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde
- not the dazzling conversationalists you'd expect. *wink*
Our historian (Mom) has been to Ireland several times and
was an endless resource for information. Invaluable.
Everyone needs their own historian.

The medic (Nettie) yes, her nursing skills were required (long story), and the navigator (Lyss) - she talked me through every single roundabout -- I could not have managed this trip without them!

And, of course we had to stay in a castle (Ballyseede in Tralee) which also made it into the book but renamed. As I said to my Mom in regards to staying in a castle (she felt it was a bit bougie for us),
"If not now, when?" It was fantastic! Even Mom agreed.

I knew the Irish countryside would be beautiful
but it was truly breathtaking everywhere I looked.

One day we saw eleven rainbows! Eleven!!!


Those are the highlights so when you read LOVE AT FIRST BOOK,
I hope these pics help you imagine it just a little bit clearer. Now go pick up a copy and come to Ireland with me!

Here's more about the novel for the curious:

When a librarian moves to a quaint Irish village where her favorite novelist lives, the last thing she expects is to fall for the author’s prickly son… until their story becomes one for the books, from the New York Times bestselling author of Summer Reading.

Emily Allen, a librarian on Martha’s Vineyard, has always dreamed of a life of travel and adventure. So when her favorite author, Siobhan Riordan, offers her a job in the Emerald Isle, Emily jumps at the opportunity. After all, Siobhan’s novels got Em through some of the darkest days of her existence.

Helping Siobhan write the final book in her acclaimed series—after a ten-year hiatus due to a scorching case of writer’s block—is a dream come true for Emily. If only she didn’t have to deal with Siobhan’s son, Kieran Murphy. He manages Siobhan’s bookstore, and the grouchy bookworm clearly doesn’t want Em around.

Emily persists, and spending her days bantering with the annoyingly handsome mercurial Irishman only makes her fall more deeply in love with the new life she’s built – and for the man who seems to soften toward her with every quip she throws at him. But when she discovers the reason for Kieran's initial resistance, Em finds herself torn between helping Siobhan find closure with her series and her now undeniable feelings for Kier. As Siobhan's novel progresses, Emily will have to decide if she’s truly ready to turn a new page and figure out what lies in the next chapter.

So, Reds and Readers, if you could travel anywhere right now, where would you go?

The Toy That Changed my Life

RHYS BOWEN:  I was watching scenes of volcanic eruption on Iceland and the display of frightening raw power brought back memories of a toy I had as a child. I must have been about ten when I was given a Viewmaster for Christmas. Do you remember those. They came with a reel of photographs and you looked through the viewer and they appeared in 3D. It was a brand new toy at the time and I was blown away with the reality of those 3D scenes. It came with a good assortment of reels, one of which was the volcanic eruption on Hawaii. I couldn’t believe it was real, it looked so scary. But the other reels were all travel scenes from around the world. You have to remember that this was before color TV in England so the effect was even more impressive.

 I watched them over and over, especially Venice. It almost felt as if I could touch that gondola on the Grand Canal. And I knew from that moment on that I had to travel. I had to see this big and beautiful world. Shortly after that Cinerama came to the big screen and we stared in wonder as we flew over the Grand Canyon or the Swiss Alps.

 I rather suspect that Viewmaster came from my Aunt Gwladys, who was the consummate traveler. She was the one who spent every Easter in Venice and inspired my book, The Venice Sketchbook. She took me to Wales when I was seven or eight then I started my travel abroad in my teens. With my parents I went to Venice several times, and through the Alps. With my aunt I toured the rest of Italy, and alone I traveled to Austria. And do you know what? In real life they took my breath away, just as they did on that Viewmaster reel. They still do. I don’t know how many times I’ve stood looking down the Grand Canal, or looking up at the snow capped peaks of the Alps and still find it hard to breathe. So a big thank you to Aunt Gwlad or whichever relative gave me that toy, all those years ago.  It changed my life.

 Now tell me about one thing that changed your life, your perception of the world, when you were a child.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I had a globe that was lit from the inside. I don't remember now if it was a Christmas or a birthday present, but I was entranced by it. My grandmother (who lived with us) had a subscription to National Geographic, and we would read about places, find them on the globe, then draw imaginary trips on the globe with erasable markers. I'm sure this inspired my adult love of maps and geography, and I still have the globe–it sits on the console table in my office!

 HALLIE EPHRON: What wonderful gifts! And they definitely set you both on a path…

I’m afraid one of the few toy/gifts I remember receiving was a doll who wore high heels. (Before Barbie, before Women’s Lib…) I’d begged my mother for a “high-heel doll” and the one I got that Christmas was a blonde. WRONG!  I cannot say why this gift stuck in my brain. It was so not what I really wanted, and it didn’t change my life, but it did define for me who I was, in a backwards sort of way. (I was not a blonde.) 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Huh. That is a truly thought-provoking question, and I guess. OH. Certainly. It was a gift from my grandmother, and I was maybe–10? Or younger? Younger. 

 I had fallen in love with…typing. Typing! And she had a typewriter that came in its own carrying case.  You’d open the top of the suitcase-like holder, and the typewriter was inside.  I think I remember that it was pale blue.

So, thing was, and I SO remember this, I didn’t have anything to type. It never crossed my mind to make up something of my own. Seriously. So I got Gramma’s Readers Digests, and I would type out, like, the Laughter is the Best Medicine articles, and Humor in Uniform. I mean–I just copied them, because I loved typing so much.

I loved that typewriter.

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, Hank, I love that story. I found my mom’s red portable typewriter when I was a kid and I would type up the family news like a newspaper (ratting out all of my sibs) and then sell it to my mom for 25 cents so I could go buy candy! LOL.

The gift (not really a toy) but still a gift that changed my life was my very first journal from my Aunt Nancy when I was 14. It was hardbound blue leather with silver embossed swirls all around the edge of the cover and it came with a matching pen. I wrote down everything! So much teenage angst. I still have it but am not ready to read it. Too cringey. Still, I genuinely believe it helped me find my author’s voice for which I am ever grateful.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What changed my life wasn’t one gift, but a series of them over and over: tickets. My mother loved art, music and performance, and she managed to fill my life with them (despite some extremely lean years after her divorce and before marrying Dad.) In Stuttgart, we went to the Staatstheater, where we saw operas like Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute, and ballets like Swan Lake and Ondine. Then, when we moved to upstate NY, we went to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center every summer, sitting on the lawn and seeing the greatest dancers of the day from the NY City Ballet. 

She also took me to my first Broadway show, my first play, my first Shakespeare. While I wound up not pursuing my dreams to be an actress, I’ve retained my love of performance throughout my life, and am much, much richer for it. Thanks, Mom!