Amy Ephron's UNSEASONABLY COLD is IN SEASON!

 HALLIE EPHRON: Today it's my great pleasure to welcome my sister Amy Ephron to Jungle Red! She's a lot younger than me and still she beat me, getting started writing years before I took the plunge.

Her brand new book, UNSEASONABLY COLD, is off to a great start.

It's a mystery and a love story. The tag line:
A socialite living in late 1930s New York City, disappears without a trace.

And it just got a fabulous review in AIR MAIL Magazine:

The place is New York; the year is 1939. War is the backdrop of Amy Ephron’s latest novel, a suspenseful noir that travels between the bohemians of Greenwich Village and the aristocrats of uptown. But the society set is far more preoccupied with another matter: the mysterious disappearance of heiress Jane Abbott. None more so than her best friend, Liza, who is haunted by the foreboding last words Jane said to her. Unseasonably Cold’s atmosphere is Wharton and Towles; its page-turning plot is pure Christie. - Air Mail Magazine

Today I'm thrilled to host Amy here on Jungle Red.

Amy, tell us about the crime/event that inspired you to write UNSEASONABLY COLD.

AMY EPHRON: It wasn’t really a crime... unless it was.

When I was in my 20.’s a dear friend had an “accident” on the island of Kauai — toppling from a mountain cliff. His glasses were left on the mountainside.

There was a lot of speculation. Did he fall? Did he jump? Was he pushed? There were rumors someone had been with at the time.

He’d always been so jovial and unconditionly kind. I’d never known about the depression, the heartbreak, or that there might have been drug use. Secrets, illusions, perfectly masked.

His loss was so unexpected….it was an awful and long lasting loss.

HALLIE: I know you started writing UNSEASONABLY COLD years ago... what made you set it aside? And then (lucky for us) what made you pick it up and write to the finish line?

AMY: I wrote three kid’s novels, ‘The Castle in the Mist’ ‘Carnival Magic’ and ‘The Other Side of the Wall’ for Philomel/ Penguin, took a screenplay job, and wrote a silly/fun book (‘The Amazing Baby Name Book')with my daughters Maia Wapnick and Anna Ephron Harari.’

So the manuscript for UNSEASONABLY COLD was just waiting to get finished.

HALLIE: 1930s New York City: What is it about that period that intrigues you.

It was a time a bit like today. The division of wealth and class differences was extreme. So were political and religipus views, discrimination rampant, women’s rights. The war was just beginning, the end of which was so uncertain and unknown, almost a mirror for the story, as no one knows what was happened to Jane.

I think so many people now are experiencing loss that is hard to fathom. 

[Photo by Katrina Dickson]

HALLIE: What kind of research did you do to make the period and the characters come so alive?

AMY: Thank you for saying that. It was a very interesting time for art, what was hanging at the Met, theatre, the world’s fair, beginning Hollywood.

I also researched clothes and food and existing clubs and restaurants which was very fun. But I researched it as it came up. I’ve previously read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about that period.

A bestselling earlier novel of mine “A Cup of Tea” (based on a Katherine Mansfield story - don’t believe in stealing, I bought the rights from her estate.) A story of love, disloyalty, and madness, is set in New York and France at the time of the U.S. entrance to World War I.

HALLIE EPHRON: A wonderful review of the book in AIRMAIL called the book a "historical thriller" -- do you think that feels right?

AMY: Unseasonably Cold is a bit of a hybrid: lit fiction, mystery, love story, historical fiction, noir. I hope it finds many fans! Thanks for having me and being my sister!

HALLIE: It's a terrific book and it will appeal to a broad range of crime fiction readers, and on to straight up Agatha Christie. Hopefully it will also send readers off to find A CUP OF TEA as a chaser.

ABOUT AMY EPHRON: Amy Ephron is a best-selling, award-winning novelist and children’s book author. She is also a journalist, screenwriter and producer. She was a contributing editor to Vogue, The New York Times’ T magazine. She has published in print and online at Airmail Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Unseasonably Cold is her 10th novel.