Jungle Reds books under your tree?

HALLIE EPHRON: Just in case Santa brought you a gift card and you're wondering what to get, here's a few of the latest books from the Jungle Reds to fill your now empty stocking.

Jenn McKinlay

HITTING THE BOOKS

It's murder by the book in the latest hit Library Lover's mystery. When a stack of library materials is found at the scene of a hit and run, library director Lindsey Norris finds herself dragged into the investigation as the police try to link the driver of the stolen car to the person who borrowed the books.

Rhys Bowen

THE VICTORY GARDEN

As the Great War continues to take its toll, headstrong twenty-one-year-old Emily Bryce is determined to contribute to the war effort. She is convinced by a cheeky and handsome Australian pilot that she can do more, and it is not long before she falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage. When he is sent back to the front, Emily volunteers as a “land girl,” tending to the neglected grounds of a large Devonshire estate. It’s here that Emily discovers the long-forgotten journals of a medicine woman…

Deborah Crombie

GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS

On a beautiful morning in mid-May, the body of a young woman is found in one of Notting Hill’s private gardens. To passersby, the pretty girl in the white dress looks as if she’s sleeping. But Reagan Keating has been murdered... #17 Duncan Kincaid & Jemma James mystery

Hank Phillippi Ryan

TRUST ME

Hank’s first standalone. An accused killer insists she's innocent of a heinous murder. A grieving journalist surfaces from the wreckage of her shattered life. Their unlikely alliance leads to a dangerous cat and mouse game that will leave you breathless.

Julia Spencer Fleming

THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS
Friday, January 9th. A middle-of-the-night call wakes Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and her husband, Police Chief Russ van Alstyne: a farmhouse has erupted in flames, killing the couple sleeping indoors. A tragedy for the Adirondack mountain town of Millers Kill.
But a darker, more evil current quickly emerges…

Lucy Burdette

DEATH ON THE MENU

The latest Key West Food Critic mystery. Food critic Hayley Snow is thrilled to be working at a three-day international conference at the Harry S. Truman Little White House. But things get off to a bad start when Hemingway’s Nobel prize gold medal (which belongs to Cuba and is on display for this weekend only) disappears. And they only get worse when a body is discovered in the storeroom. Hayley must spring into action before the killer adds another victim to his menu.

Hallie Ephron

YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR

Lissie Woodham was only seven years old when her little sister Janey disappeared. They had been in the front yard, playing with their dolls, custom creations made for them by their mother Miss Sorrel, a famous dollmaker. Lissie wandered off for a moment. When she returned to the yard, Janey was gone, and so was her doll. Forty years later, the doll comes back.

Happy Day After Christmas!! AKA Enjoy Leftovers Day.

-->

THINGS OUR CHARACTERS TEACH US

**BREAKING NEWS!! HOORAY for Susan Elia MacNeal who hit the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list at #7 with MRS. ROOSEVELT'S CONFIDANTE! CONGRATULATIONS SUSAN! 

Now, on to our blog for today...



LUCY BURDETTE: I know I shouldn’t read reviews, but I can’t help it. One thing that has stood out scanning these is the descriptor most often used for Hayley Snow (after dizzy in the debut book): loyal. Sure, loyal to the point of foolhardiness, but loyal all the same. She goes to extended lengths to support her pals and her family members and nose around looking for alternate answers if someone she loves is accused of something bad. It makes sense for the protagonist in a cozy mystery to have this quality, as she needs a reason to investigate a crime that would otherwise be none of her business. But I do love it when a reader says she wishes she had a friend like Hayley, someone who would step up and vouch for a friend in trouble. I aspire to be that kind of friend.

Reds, what has one of your characters taught you? 

HALLIE EPHRON: Two characters in THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN showed me how two women, one 92 years old and another 30-something, can develop a real friendship despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that they're not related. I've read too many books in which old woman are reduced to caricature or helpless victim and Mina is definitely neither. I hope I turn out to be as feisty and tenacious as she, and I hope, even in my final years, I continue to have friends decades younger than me. 


LUCY BURDETTE: That’s so funny Hallie, because Hayley has an older woman (Miss Gloria) with whom she’s become friends and roommates. Readers love her. And they love the relationship between the two women.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: That's a wonderful sentiment, Hallie. I've noticed that the older people at my church who seem the most vital are the ones who are involved with and have friends of all ages. If it doesn't keep you young, it at least keeps you up to date with slang!

I think Clare Fergusson has given me a negative example. One of her most enduring traits is her impulsivity. She leaps into political positions. people's problems, volunteer jobs and crime scenes without stopping to ask herself, "Is this a good idea?" It's a terrific trait for an amateur sleuth - after all, she has to be drawn into investigations somehow - but in real life, it can lead to moments such as arriving in a romantic beach town and discovering there are no rooms to be had. And you forgot sun screen. And your bathing suit.

I used to be very impulsive myself, but as the years go by (faster for me than for Clare) I've learned the joys of pre-planning, scheduling, and buying tickets well ahead of time. Not to mention making reservations. Part of it is parenthood - it will be interesting to see, going forward, if Clare begins to stop and, as Russ says, "Measure twice and cut once," now they have a child.

RHYS BOWEN: I think both my main characters share my strong sense of justice although they are braver than me, more impulsive than me. Molly Murphy is most often described as feisty. Lady Georgie as delightful. So I wouldn't mind being both those things, Especially Molly, taking on assignments in an era when women were supposed to be helpless and stay home, when she was hampered by skirts and petticoats and yet kept  up with men in a man's world. She should remind me that nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. And Georgie? That it doesn't hurt to have royal connections. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: True, Rhys! But commoner Jane Ryland is--more confident than I am. She talks back to power, stands her ground.  Isn't afraid to do the right thing--often to her employment peril! I got an email the other day from a worried reader, asking me to make sure Jane stopped quitting, or getting fired over her ethics. She was worried Jane's unemployment benefits would run out!

When I was Jane's age, I put off having children and family because I was focused on my career. Though I have ZERO regrets, Jane, now in the same situation,  is showing me, again, what a very tough call that can be.

  Jane's often described as determined and honorable, and I get that a lot, too. But we're different in that Jane doesn't feel she has to please everyone all the time. I sometimes ask myself--Do I really need to say yes again? Or can I stand my ground and say no? I think-what would Jane do? And then I burst out laughing.


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Wow, this is a tough question. I feel I've learned a lot from Winston Churchill — not that he's perfect, or even close to it — but his sense of honor, duty, justice, and doing the right thing are inspiring. (We won't discuss Churchill and India here, ahem.) 

I also love Churchill's sense of humor. And his perseverance. His love of language. His tenacity. And his willingness to speak out when it's not popular and it seems as though no one is listening. I'm continuing to learn from him (and also his mistakes) as I write the Maggie Hope series.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: So interesting, Lucy. What I'm reading in the others' responses, and what I'm thinking about, is that we seem

to write characters that we aspire to be. When I was writing A FINER END, an older woman named Erika Rosenthal popped up, one of those convenient secondaries who come along to move things forward for our primary characters. But Erika had her own story to tell, and later her own book, WHERE MEMORIES LIE. She survived leaving her country and losing her family during WWII, she lost her husband and then the love of her life, and yet she made a good life for herself in London, her adopted home. I love that she's developed a deep friendship with much younger Gemma, and especially that she continues to encourage and inspire Duncan's son Kit, who has also suffered great loss. I'd like to thing I'd be half as brave and compassionate as Erika.

Red readers, can you think of a character who's taught you something important or even become a role model? 

What I'm writing: Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I get the anchor spot because I'm still touring for THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS (but I'm almost home!) Touring for the newly-published book while working on the next one puts my head in an odd place: by day, I'm deep into the events of HID FROM THEIR EYES (working title for the 9th Clare and Russ book) and by night (or afternoon, if I'm doing a tea-time appearance) I'm talking about the writing of the last book. Sometimes I get confused, but no one can tell because confusion is my normal state.


So: HID FROM OUR EYES. It's a book about fathers and sons,  real and replacement, and the way young men look up to and model themselves on their older mentors. It's also about a series of deaths occuring in 1951 and 1972 and the present day (which is 2006 in the series) all of which appear to be identical. And of course it's about Russ and Clare and the tangled, angry relationship between officers Hadley Knox and Kevin Flynn. Here's a no-spoiler excerpt: 

     He had parked his cruiser in the muddy verge of the county highway, a little way from the circus that was going on up the road. That gave the Millers Kill chief of police the chance to surreptitiously twist and crack his back and flex his knees, which felt every one of his fifty-odd years after being hauled out of bed at four am. He never could have survived being a dairy farmer, that was for damn sure.

     He checked around to make sure no one had seen his display and tugged his wool cap down around his ears. His own cap, not MKPD-issued. He was here on courtesy, not on right, and he had tried to parse the difference with his clothing: his winter uniform blouse and departmental coat over heavy twill pants and his old boots.

     The state police had cordoned off the road coming and going and had two enormous lamps illuminating the crime scene. He trudged up the side of the road, past the other cop cars and the mortuary van, his footsteps uneven on the rutted, half-frozen mud. They had had a thaw the past few days, which he was experienced enough to know wouldn't last, and the bright fluffy snowbanks of January had shrunk into dirty hard obstacles, turning every patch of bare ground into a morass of slush and mud.

     He ducked beneath the tape and approached the scene. Two evidence officers: one the camera man, the other bent over searching for anything that might prove useful in the investigation. Which wasn't ever much – ninety-nine out of a hundred crimes were solved by knocking on doors until someone talked, in his experience. Two detectives in overcoats that made them look like they were headed for the executive offices at General Electric, smoking and talking. One uniform, the first man on the scene.

           “Hey!” A detective spotted him. He recognized the man; Stan Carruthers, a hotshot from downstate who was disgruntled by his exile , as he saw it, to the hinterlands of Troop G. “What're you doing here?” Carruthers glared at the uniform, whose charge was securing the scene and who should have stopped anyone from crossing the line. The trooper tried to appear innocent, and mostly got it right, since he was so young he looked as if he ought to be home sleeping in his mother's house, not guarding a corpse.

           “Who's this?” the second detective asked.

           “Harry McNeil, Millers Kill chief of police.” Harry held out his hand and the the other man shook it automatically. “Pleasure to meet you.”

           “There's no need for you to be here, McNeil.” Carruthers sounded more bored than upset. “We're almost finished up.”

     Harry got his first good look at the body. A young woman, barely more than a girl, sprawled face-forward in a tangle of limbs and hair. She was wearing a fancy dress, a party dress, with petticoats frothed up over her back. Bare feet. No stockings. It looked as if she had collapsed while walking down the road and fallen asleep. 

           “Any idea as to the cause of death?” Harry directed his question to the evidence officer.

     The man shook his head. “No signs of violence from here. We're about to move her, though, so maybe we'll see something from the front.”

           “It's obvious,” Carruthers said. “Some good-time girl, got liquored up and passed out and froze to death. I've seen it before.”

           “In Cossayuharie? In the middle of Route fifty-seven?” Harry looked around. On either side of the two-lane road, fields rolled away in silent darkness. To the west, the first Adirondack hills that would gather and crest a hundred miles away in the High Peaks showed black against the faint starlit sky. Not a single farmhouse light relieved the gloom.

     Carruthers waved his cigarette. “Maybe her john wouldn't pay up. They had a fight, she stumbled out of the car to show him what's what, he took off.”

           “Without her shoes and stockings. Or coat.”

     Carruthers frowned. “Drunks do stupid things, McNeil.”

The mortuary men had left the comfort of their wagon and were placing their stretcher next to the body. “Okay boys,” the evidence officer said. “Nice and easy.”

     They rolled the corpse over, depositing her neatly on her back. Everyone moved closer to get a look. Pretty. Young. No blood, no bruises, no scratches or ripped fabric or anything to indicate she might have been attacked.

           “See?” Carruthers took a last drag and flicked his stub away, a sure sign that he no longer considered this a crime scene. If he ever had. “She passed out and died of exposure.”

     Harry looked at the evidence man again. “Have you found anything? Shoes and stockings? Handbag?”

     The officer shook his head. “Nothing. And I did a thorough search, up and down the road.” His tone was bland, but his eyes shifted to the detectives for a moment. Harry could picture Carruthers yelling at the man to stop wasting his time and for God's sake just get the body bagged already. “Either side of the road as well, although we ought to go back over it in daylight to make sure.”

           “Oh, for Christ's sake. Can one of you geniuses give me any other reason she'd be here like this?”

     There was a pause as Harry turned the picture over in his head.

           “Murdered and dumped.” Everyone turned toward the speaker. It was the responding trooper.

           “Oh, great,” Carruthers said. “Now even the traffic cops are detectives. What's your theory of the crime, Sherlock?”

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November - for Julia's New Book!

 

RHYS BOWEN: Here at Jungle Red we're jumping for joy, tooting our horns, waving flags and generally behaving with extreme excitement because today, November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day back in England, celebrates the release of Red Julia's new book. So I'm handing the floor over to her to tell you all about it.

 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  I'm spasming with excitement because finally, finally, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS is available in stores and online! Here's the cover copy:

     On a frigid January night, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson are called to the scene of a raging fire. The extent of the tragedy isn't known until the next day, when the charred remains of a man and woman are recovered—along with evidence showing they were shot execution style.

     The last thing Russ needs are two potential homicides. He's struggling with the prospect of impending fatherhood, and his new wife is not at all happy with his proposal for their long-delayed honeymoon: a week ice-fishing at a remote Adirondack lake.

     St. Alban's Church is still in turmoil over the Reverend Clare Fergusson's news that she's five and a half months pregnant—but only two and a half months married. Worried her post-deployment drinking and drug use may have damaged the baby, she awaits the outcome of the bishop's investigation into her "unpriestly" behavior: a scolding, censure, or permanent suspension.

     Officer Hadley Knox is having a miserable January as well. Her on-again, off-again lover, Kevin Flynn, has seven days to weigh an offer from the Syracuse Police Department that might take him half a state away. And her ex-husband's in town—threatening to take custody of their kids unless Hadley pays him off with money she doesn't have.

     When Hadley discovers that the dead couple fostered an eight-year-old girl who was a recent liver donee, the search for the killer takes on a new and terrible urgency. With no access to immunosuppressant drugs, transplant rejection will kill the girl in a matter of days.

     As a deadly ice storm downs power lines and immobilizes roads, Russ and Clare search desperately for the truth about the missing child, but the hunters will become the hunted when they are trapped in the cabin beside the frozen lake and stalked through the snowbound woods by a killer.

I'm in Pawleys Island, SC today, appearing at Litchfield Books, and I'll be on the move for the next two weeks, visiting Massachusetts, Houston, Michigan, Chicago, Arizona, New York and of course, Maine. You can find my whole book tour at my website and under the Events section of my Facebook.  To celebrate, let's go all Oprah around here and give away three hot-off-the-presses hardcovers of THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS to three lucky commentors! You get a book! And you get a book! And you get a book!

Can't make it to one of my signings? No problem - my friends at WCSH TV have a great interview with me and anchor/207 host Rob Caldwell. (By the way, if you think my outfit looks good, you can thank Hank - she gave me tips on what to wear on TV!) And thanks to all my sister Reds and our Honorary Red community for the encouragement and support - during the 50 weeks a year when I'm not touring, writing is a lonely profession. It's beyond great to have friends for this daily kaffeklatch (with bodies.)

For those if you in the UK: THROUGH THE EVILS DAYS is being released today from Headline Publishing! Yes, all eight of the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series are now available in the UK. So grab a light and a few of your friends and head down to your local bookshop to pick up a copy today!

I believe these are eager Britons marching to Waterstones to demand THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas? How About the Ice Storm of the Century.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here's the question every crime fiction writer gets: where do you get your ideas? The real answer - I don't know, I was staring out the window sorting socks and I suddenly wondered how long someone could survive being buried alive - is never socially acceptable. In my case, social issues play a part in many of my books, and thus I have a ready-made source to point to. I read an article on migrant workers. I saw a news report about returning soldiers. The idea that makes the frame for my story is almost always something extrinsic, not something I myself have lived through. Except for the latest book.
 
No, I don't have first-hand experience of meth brewers, or of arson, or of turning up five months pregnant after three months of marriage (although all these factor into the plot of THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS.) What I did live through was impassible roads, state-wide declarations of emergency, fallen power lines, and weeks without electricity in the coldest part of the year. Yes, I survived the Ice Storm of '98.

For me, the ice storm started with a bad weather forecast and my husband away in San Francisco on business. We lost power that January afternoon (I remember The Boy, then 4, repeatedly pressing the button on the VCR to get Aladdin to start up again.) Since we live out in the country and lose power when the wind blows too hard, I didn't take it amiss. If I had know it would be nine days before the electricity was turned back on, I probably would have grabbed a kid under each arm and hightailed it to Fort Lauderdale. 

Ice storms require a precise set of weather conditions; a layer of warm air sandwiched between two layers of cold. Frozen precipitation falls from the upper layer, melts in the central layer, and supercools in the final layer, so that the still-liquid drops freeze upon contact with whatever they land on: roadways, branches, power pylons, telephone lines... the weight of the ice accumulates fast. 
 
Back at my electricity-free house, I was bundled up in bed when a terrific cracking sound brought me bolt upright at 3am. It sounded as if someone had set off a cannon in the side yard. Our ash tree had split in two under the stress of the ice, knocking a pair of shutters off my house as it fell and narrowly missing our neighbor's bedroom windows. The next morning, we stomped through the yard, rain splattering and icing our hoods, and marvelled at the sight, as if a celestial axe had cloven the tree from crown to root. I was lucky - no serious damage occurred, and despite the fact that it continued to ice well into the next night, our roofs held. I moved the car to the bottom of the drive, which prooved to be a sound decision after a huge maple branch snapped off, blocking our upper driveway.

The roads were impassible. On the hand-cranked radio, I heard stories of three-level accidents: cars crashing, emergency vehicles going off the road attempting to respond, and finally, tow trucks sent to clear the mess skidding sideways and blocking the roads. Lines were down everywhere. No one had power.  At my house, this meant no furnace, no running water (we have a well that doesn't work without an electrical pump) and no flushing toilets. 

Ross and I (he got home two days late, when the Portland Jetport finally reopened) slept in shifts, rising every three hours to restock the woodstove and the two fireplaces, which, burning round the clock, kept our house at a balmy 50 degrees. I became an expert on cooking on the woodstove. We relocated all our perishables in coolers outside. I sent the children, 6 and 4, outside with hammers and instructions to smash the ice which lay six inches deep over everything and bring it inside in buckets. Melted on the woodstove, it was used for gravity flushing.
 
School was closed for days. We read books by candlelight, played Candyland and Parcheesi, drew pictures, sang songs. Elsewhere in Maine, barns collapsed, killing livestock, and people were rushed to hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty generator lines. We bunked the children together in the warmest room of the house, and made endless circles trimming candles, lighting them, snuffing them. The National Guard was called out. When the grocery store reopened, we had fresh milk for the first time in a week. Electrical crews came from as far away as North Carolina, working round the clock to restore power. Over half the population of the state was without electricity. When a crew finally made it to our country road, nine days after the beginning of the storm, I went out with a thermos of hot cocoa and thanked them personally.

The experience was one of the signal events of my life. At the time, In the Bleak Midwinter was just a few ideas jotted down on a legal pad, but I already thought the ice storm would make a great story. For years, I've wanted to write a thriller about a prison outbreak coinciding (and aided by) a massive ice storm. Alas, my turtle-like writing pace means it will be more years before I got to take a crack at that book. Finally, I thought why not put the ice storm into one of the Russ and Clare books?

Thus: THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS. An ARC of which one of you dear readers will be able to win if you tell me about your weather disaster. Any other survivors of the Great ice Storm of '98 among the Rederati?

BOOK CLUB DAY!

BREAKING NEWS: If you are in a position to review or spread the word about an Audible copy of HEIRS AND GRACES, please contact Rhys for more information. She has a few copies....RhysBowen at comcast dot net 

AND Rosemary Harris's THE BITCHES OF BROOKLYN is free to download today and tomorrow only! Click here.

 


LUCY BURDETTE: It seems odd to me that mysteries and crime fiction can be lumped into a category of non-book club books--in other words, escapist reading, nothing worth discussing. We couldn't disagree more! With September around the corner and book clubs resuming meeting or planning their reads for the year, we thought we'd make a few suggestions. From each red, a book, a couple of discussion questions, and something memorable to eat along with it.

I'll start:)

TOPPED CHEF, the third book in the Key West food critic mystery series by Lucy Burdette

Things to discuss:

1.  TOPPED CHEF opens with Hayley worrying about her first negative review. How do you feel about restaurant reviews, either online or in newspapers? Do you trust them? Do you write them? Do you feel critics should write about their negative experiences as well as their positive?

2. One of the most challenging parts of writing a mystery with an amateur sleuth has to do with her stake in solving the mystery. Were you convinced by Hayley's insistence on getting involved in this story? How does this fit with her character?Find the whole list of discussion questions for TOPPED CHEF here:

What to eat: Lime cupcakes with lime cream cheese frosting


Recipe here.

  
HALLIE EPHRON: THERE WAS AN OLD WOMANThings to discuss:

1. The theme of remembering and honoring the past is prominent in There Was an Old Woman. Evie has dedicated her life to the preservation of memories, and Finn keeps all of the artifacts from the old Snakapins Park in his basement. Do you think it is important to preserve the past, and why? Are some things better left forgotten?

2. Evie and her sister Ginger are polar opposites. Evie played soccer; Ginger was a girl scout. Evie sees Ginger as the dutiful daughter and herself as the one who runs away. How might these two different personality types both have been shaped by the experience of growing up with an alcoholic mother?What to eat: Discuss it over Chinese Dim Sum.

 

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Now this is fun. I'm not in a book club these days. I went to a fabulous book club meeting in San Francisco last year. The members had agreed to read THE BITCHES OF BROOKLYN and act as my focus group. It was a blast.

Possible discussions -
1. Friendships - old and new - are at the heart of Bitches. Each of the women in the book, Jane, Tina, Rachel, Clare and Abby, questions the meaning of friendship, particularly childhood friendships. Are they better left in the past? What are the risks in trying to rekindle (no pun intended) old relationships?

2. Every decade of life brings its own set of issues. What are the insecurities each of the women faces?

3. All five of the women have called each other Bitch since high school when it was an epithet thrown by a jealous classmate. Now it's a term of endearment for them. What do you think about the word?

My gals are good eaters. Hallie's already claimed Chinese takeout and more's the pity readers can't camp out in Jane's Brooklyn bakery so I'd have to say a medium-priced Italian restaurant. Red-checkered tablecloth. With a bottle or two of good wine.RHYS BOWEN: This is most timely for me as I have an author buzz going out to zillions of bookclubs next week with questions about my new book, Heirs and Graces. So here are some questions I gave to them.

1.    Lady Georgiana seems to have a privileged life. What are some ways in which her life is not so rosy?
2.    This story centers around the heir to a great estate. Discuss that whole concept, plus other instances of property entailment disrupting lives in literature

3.    These Royal Spyness books are funny�gentle satire of English aristocracy. But there are always serious undertones. What are some in this book?

And food to serve? Well, it has to be a classic English tea party with thinly sliced cucumber sandwiches, warm scones topped with strawberry jam and cream. Mmmm. Now I'm feeling hungry (or peckish as my characters would say)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: OH, fabulous. I'm  tempted to discuss THE OTHER WOMAN, with all its juicy discussion possibilities about infidelity, and sex as power, and the conflict in failing marriages. But let's go with THE WRONG GIRL, coming Sept 10!

1. The book opens with Jane's friend Tuck suspecting the adoption agency that's  reunited her with her birth mother has made a mistake---and, as she says, "sent that poor woman the wrong girl." As a reporter, I know that's happened in real life. What if that had happened to you..do you think--just based on instinct--you would know it? (Do you know anyone searching for their birth parents? Did they find them?)

2.  The Wrong Girl also takes an inside look at the state's foster care system--where children need homes--and there aren't always enough of them. HAve you been in foster care, or known someone who was? Have you ever taken in a foster child? Or wanted to? Why or why not? How well did that system work?

Food? Well,  Jane is always rushing, and I'm tempted to say fast food! But it's in Boston, so let's say luscious creamy clam chowder from Legal Seafoods with those little round crackers and a twist of pepper,, accompanied by a crisp white sauvignon blanc.DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, fun! (And I want everybody's food!) Here are a couple of questions for readers of The Sound of Broken Glass:

1) We see in the back story that young Andy Monahan is the caretaker of his alcoholic mother. How does this affect his ability to form relationships when we meet him again, fifteen years later? Do you believe it's possible for children of alcoholic parents to form happy and stable relationships as adults?

2) The seed of much that happens in this novel is bullying. How might Andy's life have been different if he'd had adult support in dealing with the boys who bullied him? Do you believe that Nadine was bullied as well? Were there characters who could have stood up for her and made a difference in the course of her life?

Now, food! I think my book group should have delicious, hearty sandwiches from The Jolly Gardener pub in Putney--roast beef with horseradish; thick, sharp English cheddar slathered with Branston pickle; roast turkey with cranberries--accompanied by a big platter of fresh fruit, good beer, and crisp Sauvignon Blanc. (My characters have theirs with tea, but they're working!)JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: This is a perfectly timed subject, because I need to supply my editor with questions for THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS, my November release. Like Rhys, I'll be having an author buzz going out to book groups (though not for another couple of months) and St. Martin's library division posts discussion questions online. Pro tip for book club organizers: lots of publishers do this! If your group is reading something that doesn't come with discussion suggestions in the back of the book, check the publisher's website.

1. At one point, Russ tells Clare, "I won't say a word against [having a baby]. But don't expect me to pretend to be happy about it." Is his attitude reasonable, given that they agreed, as a couple, not to have children, or is he being stubborn about not getting his way?

2. Officers Hadley Knox and Kevin Flynn are assigned to work together to try to find Mikayla Johnson, the missing girl. At the same time, they're becoming closer personally. Should they put the brakes on their relationship? Is it unprofessional for them to get involved again, especially during a high-stakes investigation?

3.  There are many types of families in THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS: Clare and Russ and their impending baby, Mikayla and her dysfunctional, criminal parents,  Hadley and her ex fighting over custody. What do these relationships say about the effect of parenthood on couples and on individuals? What is the author saying about the responsibilities of parenting versus the pleasures of having a child?

For an accompanying meal: Russ and Clare have a hearty, delicious stew in their remote lakeside cabin, perfect for a book group discussion on a cold November night. Of course, they don't have any alcohol, but I would recommend a nice Cotes-du-Rhone and some crusty bread to sop up the broth.

Don't forget to leave a comment--best book club discussion ever? best meal eaten with a book group? And you'll be entered in a drawing for an advanced copy of THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS.