BOOKED ON MURDER by Marilyn Levinson

JENN McKINLAY: If you know me at all, you know I have a soft spot for stories about libraries. Well, our today's guest Allison Brook (aka Marilyn Levinson) has given us an even better setting -- a haunted library! Take it away, Marilyn.

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MARILYN/ALLISON: One reason why I love writing cozy series is because it gives me the opportunity to write about many subjects. Of course my characters and their story lines are my major concern. I love the excitement of setting up murders and sprinkling my plots with clues and red herrings. But writing cozy series also offers me the chance to explore other topics. Here are two I've included in BOOKED ON MURDER, the eighth and final book in my Haunted Library series.

My sleuth, Carrie Singleton, the head of programs and events at the Clover Ridge Library in Clover Ridge, Connecticut, has come across a centuries-old diary while helping the reference librarian put the library's historical collection in order. It was written by a woman named Verity Babcock, who lived in the sixteen hundreds and was hung as a witch. Verity Babcock's diary never existed because Verity Babcock is a character I created based on what I'd read about people who were accused of being witches. Between 1647 and 1663 of the 43 cases of witchcraft, 16 resulted in executions, mostly hangings. Or at least 34 were accused of witchcraft and 11 were hung.  Numbers vary somewhat because of poor documentation. The first Connecticut hanging took place years before the Salem Witch Trials.

JENN: I was raised in CT, and I had no idea. Fascinating!

Carrie and other characters are outraged by what Verity had experienced when she was accused of witchcraft by a neighbor whose husband died after taking some of Vertity's herbal medicines. This woman had begged for Verity's help when her husband was deathly ill and had little chance of recovering. I explore the reasons why women and a few men were accused of witchcraft when witchcraft was a capital offense in the Colony of Connecticut. For years, relatives of victims and other concerned citizens tried to get these victims exonerated with no success. Finally, in May 2023, while I was writing this book, both the Connecticut House of Representatives and Connecticut State Senate voted in overwhelming numbers to exonerate 12 people who were convicted of witchcraft in the seventeenth century. I was delighted that that long overdue wrong had been righted, but for the purpose of my novel I took literary license and continued to write it as though the victims had yet to be pardoned.

A secret society is another topic I explored while writing BOOKED FOR MURDER. Carrie receives a formal invitation to attend a meeting of the Wise Women's Circle, a loosely formed organization in Clover Ridge. Carrie has never heard of the Wise Women's Circle, and she is astonished to discover that many of the women she knows, including a few she is close to, are members. At the meeting she learns that the group's mission statement is to help women in trouble or danger; women who suffer in painful silence. 

Carrie has been invited to join the group because she has helped many people. She is shocked to learn the Wise Women sometimes resort to "other" methods to achieve their ends, and has to think good and hard whether or not to join.

How about you, Reds and Readers, would you join a secret society?

About Marilyn: A former Spanish teacher, Marilyn Levinson writes mysteries, novels of suspense, and books for kids. Her books have received many accolades. As Allison Brook she writes the Haunted Library series. Death Overdue, the first in the series, was an Agatha nominee for Best Contemporary Novel in 2018. Other mysteries include the Golden Age of Mystery Book Club series, the Twin Lakes series, and Giving Up the Ghost. Her suspense, Come Home to Death, was released in April, 2024, and her suspense, Dangerous Relations, will be republished in 2025.

Marilyn's juvenile novel, Rufus and Magic Run Amok, was an International Reading Association-Children's Book Council Children's Choice and has recently come out in a new edition, followed by Rufus and the Witch's Drudge, the second book in the Rufus series. And Don't Bring Jeremy was a nominee for six state awards. Her YA horror, The Devil's Pawn, came out in a new edition in January, 2024.

Marilyn lives on Long Island, where many of her books take place. She loves traveling, reading, doing crossword puzzles and Sudoku, chatting on FaceTime with her grandkids and playing with her kittens, Romeo and Juliet.

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Something's very wrong in our country

Like all of you, we are sickened, horrified, saddened. We don't have answers, but we do have questions...

Why are the lives of children less important than owning guns?

Why does anyone need an assault weapon unless for killing people?

How many people have to die before the people we elected to lead us band together to do something about this?

We cannot let any more lights be extinguished...

Our dis-united states...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Does anyone remember the "Six Californias" story from this summer? Billionaire Timothy Draper

(I'm picturing someone who looks a lot like Lex Luthor) proposed divvying up the Golden State into six new states that sounded a lot like the single-enterprise districts in THE HUNGER GAMES: the technology state, the agricultural state, the Hollywood state, the flat hot boring state, etc, etc. 

Well, that got shot down, but evidently he's back with a more equitable "Three Californias" idea that's ready to enter the signature-gathering phase. If he can get 365,880 registered voters to agree that Fresno ought to be somebody else's problem, it will go up for a public vote. (Interestingly, in both the first and second proposals, Draper's evil lair, or residence, would be in the most affluent state.)

This has got me thinking if some of the states I know and love might want to consider carving themselves up. Maine, for instance, is basically three states existing in rough belts running from the Atlantic to the Canadian border: the beautiful, very expensive coastal regions (Vacationland), the failed mill towns, small farms and gun shops of the interior (Stephen Kingdom) and the uninhabited, wood-covered wilderness to the north (Uninhabited Wood Covered Wilderness.)

New York, the state of my birth, could simply split into two parts: New York (the counties of New York City, Long Island, and Westchester) and the Adirondack State Park (everything north of Westchester.) The Park would support itself by charging everyone entering its borders $70 per car load ($30 for those on foot or bicycle.)

How about you, Reds? Can you see your states shifting boundaries? Or is it an idea best left for mustachio-twirling billionaires?

HALLIE EPHRON: VERY interesting politics in Maine right now. Just for example  that referendum on whether to overturn the Governor's decision not to take funding to offset insurance costs? And you've got Senator Susan Collins and Governor LePage: talk about a state of contrasts. 

Massachusetts?  We gave birth to Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. For sure. East and west. Just look at how they vote politically. But maybe that's a reason to keep the halves together. Disagreeing isn't a reason to divide.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, agreed about Massachusetts.  East and West are --well, wait. Not necessarily. But I wonder if the Cape and Islands would like to secede? It's bursting with tourists in the summer, and bleakly (and beautifully) empty in the winter. So there could be the State of Boston, and surrounded by the state of  Hightechistan, bordered on the West by Appleachia (Orchardia?) and the Cape and Islands could be Touristiana.   Still. I think we should stick together. Not that, ahem, it generally matters on national election days.   

RHYS BOWEN: Julia, there have long been proposals to divide California into North and South. I'd have no problem with that as long as Silicon Valley and San Francisco and Monterey were clearly in the North where I live! Actually a more thoughtful proposal these days, which I believe has been gathering signatures, is for California to leave the US and become its own country. I believe we are the 5th wealthiest country in the world on our own. Normally I'd chuckle at such a suggestion, but given the current political climate and white nationalist marches, it's beginning to sound more appealing!

JENN McKINLAY: I'm originally from CT. I don't think we can carve that sucker up much more or there won't be anything left. But now I live in AZ, where eighty percent of the population is in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. There is vast desert that is uninhabited here, there are mammoth national parks, and twenty plus Native American tribes that are self-governed, mostly. The urban centers and the outlying areas definitely have differing political philosophies but I think, as was observed by Hallie, that we do better together than we would apart. The one thing about all the wide open space is that there's room for everyone. Truly.

INGRID THOFT: Washington State already feels like two states with the Cascade Mountains serving as the dividing line.  Seattle and Puget Sound lay west of the mountains, which accounts for our rainy, gray weather.  Once you traverse the mountain passes, which close frequently in the winter months, you find yourself in dry, sunny eastern Washington.  It’s not just the geography and weather that separate us—it’s the politics.  Seattle and its environs are blue state territory, but the rest of the state is red state.  

I agree that we need to stick together though; ideally, our differences make us stronger.  Another reason?  All the wonderful wineries are in eastern Washington.  Who wants to secede from that?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Texas is its own special case, as it is so big that we have everything. Well, almost everything, as our highest mountains are only half as high as Colorado. We have north Texas Prairie, where I live (really lovely once you get out of the cities, not that different from parts of southern England), the Cowboy Plains of west Texas, the Piney Woods of east Texas, the Swampy Gulf of the southeast, the Borderland south, and mountainous high plains of the southwest. I'm sure I've left out something... Oh, yeah, the Hill Country, west of Austin, which is absolutely gorgeous. Especially in the spring, with bluebonnets. 

Politically, we are just about as diverse, although you wouldn't know it from our senators and representatives. Every major metro area in Texas votes blue, so I'm not sure exactly how the silly secessionist  trolls would divide us up.  We are better together. 

LUCY BURDETTE: Florida is huge too, it takes us two days to drive down the length of the state! All I can say is that the Keys tried seceding from the rest of the state in response to a US Border Patrol blockade up in Florida City. The new entity was called the Conch Republic and the natives are still referred to as conchs. 

Florida is such a funny state–tons of retirees along the southern coast on both sides of the state, and probably a lot more native people along the center. We have a senator from each party, so we're mixed up in many ways! Probably better to simply leave things as they are…

SO WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF YOU? Are you in a state that could feels dis-united, and is that a good or a bad thing??