Night and Its Longings

A dark, deeply engrossing crime noir about a soul-searching, middle-aged writer determined to find out what happened to his missing ex. 

Night and Its Longings is a hauntingly atmospheric, beautifully crafted crime noir written by accomplished novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright and filmmaker, Philip Cioffari.

 

The book, set in June 1995, centers on Jake Garrett, a “less-than-famous,” hardboiled crime novelist. On the brink of age 40, Jake is “short on money and friends.” He does his best writing late at night and often keeps company via the disaffected, spiritually wounded lonely-hearts who call in to an after-midnight, radio program. Jake has been known to take walks in the shadowy wee-hours, through "abandoned city streets, past shuttered bars, darkened storefronts."

 

“I wasn’t what you’d call a fearful man, except in the way most life-long New Yorkers are fearful,” Jake tells the reader. “Never leaving my car unlocked. Always keeping tabs on my surroundings. Trusting my sixth-sense to detect danger…The fact of the matter was this: the self was the enemy I feared most, not strangers on the street.”

 

One night, just as Jake is hitting his writing stride--drawing “wisdom in dark hours”--he’s jarred by a knock on the door that opens onto the courtyard of his Village (New York City) apartment building. There, he is surprised by Norm Davison, the husband of Vera Davison, a woman with whom Jake had a passionate, one-year love affair ten years prior. After Vera went back to Norm, Vera and Jake had lost touch. However, on this dark night, the spirit of Vera is suddenly resurrected in a chilling and foreboding way.

 

Norm is beside himself, worried about Vera, who has disappeared for 11 days. Is she in danger? Alive? Dead? Did she leave by force or vanish voluntarily? Norm, Vera’s husband, is frustrated by the police investigation. While he was aware of Jake and Vera’s affair, he is now desperate to find his wife—this includes his enlisting his wife’s adulterous ex-lover to aid the search.

 

What ensues is a dark, deepening story that reveals, layer by layer, details of the love affair shared between Jake and Vera and the life Vera went on to live without Jake—as a wife, mother, and budding photographer. When Norm allows Jake access into the minutia of Vera’s life--including his poring over her journals and photographs--even more questions arise. Amidst an extensive search that winds through New York and later, South Carolina, Jake’s crime-writing detective skills are put into action. Along the way, he begins to search his own soul, realizing that Vera’s departure from his life created a “dead center” in him—an abyss of sorrow, guilt, and regret. Might Vera have experienced a similar void?

 

The introspective intrigue of Jake’s narrative voice propels a suspenseful plot where danger unspools via short, ratcheting chapters. Cioffari (If Anyone Asks, Says I Died from the Heartbreaking Blues) delivers a spellbinding--profoundly thought-provoking--literary mystery that ultimately unravels with surprising twists.  

 

Night and Its Longings by Philip Cioffari

Livingston Press, $18.99 paperback, 978-1604893748, 234 pages

Publishing Date: March 26, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

To learn more about Philip Cioffari and his extensive body of work, link HERE

The Threat

A clever dark comedy about an unassuming New Yorker whose dull, stunted life takes wildly hilarious turns after he receives a death threat. 

Nathaniel Stein, writer for the New Yorker, dishes up an inventively absurdist, dark comedy about an unassuming middle-aged man whose life goes farcically off the rails in The Threat.

 

Melvin Levin is a single, conscientious, rule-following, 41-year-old with a bad back. He lives alone in a New York City apartment, and his social circle consists largely of bestowing good deeds upon an elderly neighbor. One night while Melvin is anticipating a promotion at his totally nondescript job, the boring, dull routine of his life is suddenly overturned when he receives a “plain little note” in the mail: “Mr. Melvin Levin, I’m going to kill you,” the note begins. “You’ve worn out my patients for the last time and your through…” The unelaborate note, complete with poor grammar, becomes like a “flag planted atop the mountain of bad luck” that was Melvin’s life. The threat produces a ferocious sense of anxiety in Melvin, who--having lived with “unerring politeness” and an “unceasing, almost superstitious rectitude, taking great pains to avoid rubbing people the wrong way”--struggles to decipher whom he might’ve wronged. Despite the chilling implications of the note, Melvin ultimately becomes empowered and excited by the idea of having an anonymous, formidable enemy, and he undergoes a hilarious life transformation.

 

Stein’s smart, clever first novel will charm readers with a simple premise that snowballs into a side-splitting, thought-provoking meditation about how one man’s seemingly inconsequential life finally overflows with grandiose meaning when faced with the prospect of death.

The Threat by Nathaniel Stein
Keylight Books (Turner Publishing), $27.99 hardcover, 9781684429691, 192 pages
Publishing Date: January 16, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 2, 2024), link HERE 

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

A thoroughly researched, eye-opening study of the deep value platonic friendships can hold in enriching and empowering personal lives.  

In her first book, The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen, an NPR editor and producer, presents an eye-opening exploration into the many ways friendship, in various forms, can enrich and empower lives for the better. 

In 2022, Cohen attended six weddings in six months. Amidst these pandemic-deferred nuptial celebrations, where couples vowed to spend the rest of their lives together as a “we,” Cohen began to question societal expectations of love and its meaning. Was sex the essential component of a truly committed relationship? Was a person’s life somehow incomplete without a long-term romantic partner? Cohen, married, had always felt that friendships “electrified” her life. Thus, she began to examine the “we” of friendship: what draws people together on a purely platonic plane? What made some friendships endure despite the parties not formally professing a long-term commitment to each other?

 

Cohen presents stories from her own life--along with other historical and contemporary case studies--that deconstruct diverse friendships of all stripes. These include people of varying ages, races, genders, marital states, sexual orientations, and religions. She delves into co-parenting friends; shared homeowners; friends who serve as executors of estates; and even those who act as primary caregivers, helping to shoulder the demands and burdens imposed by illness and debilitating medical treatments.

 

Cohen’s well-researched, appealingly structured narrative stretches modern assumptions of love, making the case that a life bonded by friendship can hold limitless potential for a more fulfilling, deeply meaningful existence.

 

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen

St. Martin’s Press (Macmillan), $29.00 hardcover, 9781250280916, 320 pages

Publishing Date: February 13, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (February 23, 2024), link HERE 

The Mystery Guest

When a world-famous author dies at a five-star hotel, a neurodivergent maid sets out to find the culprit for his suspicious, sudden death.

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose is a bright, dynamic continuation of her cozy mystery series that features Molly Gray, a lovable, learning-as-she-goes maid who works at the Regency, an elegantly sophisticated, five-star boutique hotel.

In the first book, The Maid, neurodivergent Molly struggled to navigate life after the death of her touchstone, her grandmother, “Gran,” who spent her life working as a maid. Molly, then a meticulous maid-in-training, became swept up in a murder investigation of a hotel patron that called her and her co-workers into question. In The Mystery Guest, Molly’s story picks up three and a half years later. Molly, now 29-years-old, has since been promoted to Head Maid at the Regency. 

The hotel is eager to redeem its image, hosting “world-famous,” reclusive author, J. D. Grimthorpe. He is intent on making a major public announcement. Standing before a gaggle of press people and adoring fans in the Regency Tea Room, he suddenly drops dead before the big reveal, sending Molly and those in her orbit into mayhem. Could it be that Grimthorpe was murdered? If so, why? 

Prose deftly employs a familiar cast of quirky characters plus adds a few new ones, each with dubious motives. As in the first book, “Gran” and her wisdom continue to influence Molly’s smart perceptions. Molly’s strong narrative voice mines experiences from the past that just might hold clues to her solving this suspensefully well-drawn, second-in-the-series mystery.

The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (Molly the Maid Book Two) by Nita Prose

Ballantine Books, $29.00 hardcover, 9780593356180, 304 pages

Publishing Date: November 28, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (December 29, 2023), link HERE 

Jill Fordye: The Undoing of Aloneness

 The Writer's Life

Jill Fordyce: The Undoing of Aloneness

(photo: Nathan Westerfield)

Jill Fordyce was born and raised in Bakersfield, Calif. She received a degree in English from the University of Southern California, and a law degree from Santa Clara University. While practicing law, she continued to study writing through the Stanford Continuing Education creative writing program. Her first novel, Belonging (Post Hill Press, January 30, 2024), traces the relationships and generational influences that impact the life of one woman over the course of 40 years. (See the review below)

Why write a coming-of-age story?

I have always been moved by stories that chronicle of young love, lifelong friendships, hometowns, music, and the hold the past often has over the present. And when I think of important times of youth, for me they are set against the backdrop of the Central Valley of California.

That accounts for the Bakersfield setting.

Initially, I thought of setting the novel in a fictional town, but every time I traveled back to Bakersfield, I felt such a unique type of inspiration, and I knew I had to write about it. I think we write what we know, what we can see--particularly with a first novel. The setting is so important, and Bakersfield is a place I know personally, so it made sense to put Jenny (the main character) there.

Themes of "hometown" are central to the story.

While some inspiration may come from what the notion of "hometown" evokes for everyone, some of it feels very specific to Bakersfield and Central California--the music, the food, the tree-lined streets and flat horizon, the warmth and the fog, the families who have known each other for generations.

Yes, the importance and influence of family--both birth and created families--is threaded throughout, as are themes of life and death, and a reliance on spiritual faith.

Family to me is a place of home and belonging. And belonging is fundamentally about the undoing of aloneness, which is a primary need for everyone. As I came to understand Jenny more deeply, I could see that her faith--Catholic faith instilled by her extended family--was central to her life. The comfort she derived from those spiritual influences was critical to her survival as a child, as she undergoes illness, isolation, and experiences death for the first time. Jenny comes to believe that to "love forever is to live forever." If she didn't have a spiritual grounding and hold such belief, I don't know if she would have had the fortitude and resilience that she does. She knows she's not doing it all alone. 

The book offers an ensemble cast. Yet, you tell the story solely through the perspective of a sensitive woman whose life is traced over decades.

All of the characters exist relative to Jenny, and I wanted to convey her experience of growing up in an intimate and realistic way--especially in a home with an alcoholic mother. I wanted to show those things that a young girl would rely on when her home life is so tumultuous: friends, extended family, faith, music. Finally, I wanted to understand how she would emerge from it and create the life that she longed for--and those things are possible primarily due to the large circle of loved ones around her.

The enduring battle of alcoholism figures prominently.

I don't know the percentage of families affected by alcoholism, but I suspect it is very high. Jenny learns that you can love and forgive an alcoholic on your own yet, also, step away and live your own life. Even if the alcoholic is never better, is never able to see her way out of the disease, the people around her can find grace and peace, both for themselves and the alcoholic. I think adult children of alcoholics have a unique burden when trying to find trusting love relationships and, in exploring Jenny's relationships, I try to show how some of those difficulties can be overcome.

How difficult was it to tell this story?

The most fulfilling part was experiencing the story as it unfolded, when it wasn't struggle or effort, when storylines emerged without conscious thought. That felt like magic. However, Belonging took me over 10 years to conceive of, write, and market. I embarked on many rewrites. When I first sat down to write, the only concrete idea I really had was the notion of the bonds of childhood friendship that light the way throughout life, across time and distance--and even death. 

The book spans from 1977 to 2017. Why that timeline?

I love a complete and full story--of seeing characters as children and then as young adults on their own in the world... and then in middle age, in a place where they can look back. The seeds of early relationships are so important. I always want to know, if characters are in love, why are they in love? If characters are best friends, why are they best friends? I tried to show readers the strength--and lasting impact--of childhood bonds, what they bring out in people.

Detailed flourishes and nostalgia are embedded throughout the novel. How much research was necessary? 

I researched the climate and geography of Bakersfield and the surrounding area: why there is fog, why the river was dry, the origin of the Grapevine, the ramifications of valley fever, a fungal disease. I delved into the history of Bakersfield and the Bakersfield Sound. I spent time in antique stores and looked at religious prayer cards. I rewatched films that inspired me. I listened to many old songs and made sure they were chronologically correct. I re-read both Our Town (Thornton Wilder) and The Greatest Thing in the World (Henry Drummond) several times. I spoke with a hospice nurse about end-of-life care. I spent hours researching the Vietnam War. But there were moments, too, when no research was necessary--gifts were just presented to me.

Belonging is certainly a gift to readers! Any plans for a second novel?

Yes, I am so excited to be working on another coming-of-age love story and family story, this time set in rural Tennessee.

Belonging

A captivating, sensitively drawn first novel that traces the relationships and generational influences that impact the life of one woman over the course of 40 years.

Belonging--the first novel by Jill Fordyce--is a tenderly drawn coming-of-age story that sympathetically traverses decades in the life of one soul-searching woman from Bakersfield, Calif., and how generational influences shape her fate.

The story begins in December 1977--a time filled with wood-paneled station wagons, the music of Merle Haggard and Carole King, and movies like The Goodbye Girl, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saturday Night Fever. Jenny Hayes is 13 years old, a "shy and slow to make friends" eighth-grader fascinated by photography and smitten with Billy Ambler--"his broad shoulders, the dark curls that touched the top of his perfect ears, the way he held his camera like he knew what he was doing." Jenny's best friend is Henry, the "boldest and funniest person" she had ever known. The two bonded in kindergarten and became "unlikely but inseparable" friends. Henry's parents broke up when he and Jenny were in the fifth grade, and he is privy to Jenny's home life--the erratic, neglectful, and emotionally abusive nature of her alcoholic mother, Janice. Henry knows "the crushing level of cruelty" of which Jenny's mother is capable, and how her father--amiable, but often absent--works long hours as a produce broker to escape Janice's wrath.

Jenny's saving grace--in addition to her friendship with Henry--is her extended family on her mother's side. The Morettis, who also reside in Bakersfield, are vivacious, loving, and spiritually bolstered by their Catholic faith. The supportive presence of her widowed Nonna and Uncle Gino--Nonna's youngest brother, also widowed, who runs a local antiques shop--brings happiness and much-needed stability to Jenny's life. She often works at the store and is always intrigued when Gino and Nonna regale her with stories of the Moretti family's migration from Italy in 1902, and how they came to put down roots in California.

Shortly before Christmas, a terrible dust storm sweeps the San Joaquin Valley. Eleven days later, Jenny wakes to find itchy red welts covering her body. She has contracted valley fever, an illness caused by fungus spores stirred up in the wind that enter the lungs and develop into a pneumonia-like infection. Jenny's damaged right lung keeps her out of school for months. Throughout her long, harrowing medical ordeal, Jenny's mother and Nonna care for her daily. Janice and Nonna share a "tenuous and bitter" relationship, as Janice became pregnant with Jenny when she was only 19; she eloped, and Jenny was born six months later.

During her prolonged isolation, Jenny draws from the spiritual faith of Nonna and Uncle Gino. Catholic statues and religious icons that Jenny discovers at Uncle Gino's shop become sacred touchstones; they bring comfort on her long road to healing. And a collection of prayer cards with religious art depicting the lives of the saints takes on greater meaning when an unexpected death profoundly impacts Jenny's young, still malleable life.

When Jenny returns to school months later, she reconnects with Billy Ambler, who is now an aspiring pitcher. The two join forces, taking pictures for their photography course, and romance blooms. For the next several years of high school, Jenny and Billy's passionate young love grows--a love that, in some ways, liberates Jenny from the prickly relationship with her mother, who is clearly jealous of her daughter's happiness. At every turn, Janice passes judgment, calling Jenny "trashy" and "floozy," among other slurs. Janice also degrades Henry, describing him as a "freak." These slanders deepen the mother-daughter divide, and Jenny applies to college to escape her mother. Through it all, Jenny conceals her mother's alcoholism from Billy, who doesn't fully accept Jenny's enduring, however changing, friendship with Henry.

At the end of senior year, Jenny and Henry set off to study at USC, while Billy gets a baseball scholarship to Arizona State. Jenny and Billy make a heartfelt, romantic vow: in seven years, after they launch their adult lives, they will get married. But surprising twists and turns, choices made, challenge them and change both Henry's and their lives.

Readers dip in and out of dramatic episodes from Jenny's life. Fordyce crafts perceptive scenes that depict Jenny's maturation, illustrating how the past influences her ability to love and trust. The path she travels rarely goes according to plan. Jenny, and those who come to define her life, are tested, forced to face hard truths--even truths about themselves. Can wounds from the past ever truly heal? Is forgiveness possible? And what will it take for Jenny to carve out her own unique place in the world so she can finally experience a true sense of belonging?

Multi-layered characterizations, spiritual undertones, and emotionally evocative scenes propel this searching, inspiring story that explores themes of trust and loyalty; secrets and truth-telling; the meaning of love; and the many challenges posed in living a truly authentic life. With prodigious insight and great delicacy, Fordyce intimately explores ideas of family in its many forms--how family can both empower and damage--while also probing the battles between the head and the heart in matters of love and acceptance.

 

Belonging: A Novel by Jill Fordyce

Post Hill Press, $28.99 hardcover, 9798888451748, 279 pages

Publishing Date: January 30, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness: Maximum Shelf (December 18, 2023), link HERE 

The Uncharted Life of Olivia West

An exciting, adventurous novel about two courageous women, living in different eras, whose entwined lives ultimately solve a long-ago mystery.

Prolific author Sara Ackerman presents an inspiring, well-researched novel that delves into the stories of two women--living in different eras, 60 years apart--who lives are unexpectedly entwined in The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West. 

Through a beautifully braided narrative, two clearly delineated points of view, Ackerman anchors her story on the “The Big Island” of Hawai’i in both 1927 and 1987.

 

The 1927-part of the story centers on Olivia “Livy” West, a young, ambitious female pilot trying to measure up and compete in a male-dominated world. Determined to participate in the Dole Air Race--a real-life, 2400-mile flight competition that launched in Oakland, Calif., crossed the Pacific Ocean, and ended in Honolulu, Hawai’i--she wheedles her way to become a navigator in a race that will test her strength and fortitude.

 

The 1987-part of the story centers on down-and-out Wren Summers who suddenly learns that she’s inherited (from a great-uncle) a piece of land on the Big Island of Hawai’i. The place, however, is a depilated shambles; a mess. Badly in need of money, Wren goes to sell the land, but soon discovers an object in the barn that piques her interest—so much so, that she sets her off on a quest to learn more. Along the way, she dredges up the past and follows a winding road that leads to chilling, unexpected revelations.

 

As in her other exciting novels (The Codebreakers Secret, Radar Girls), Ackerman displays great finesse in her understanding of Hawai’i, women, and fast-paced historical fiction. Filled with spirited romance and suspense, this uplifting, inspiring story adds to Ackerman’s accomplished body work. The Uncharted Life of Olivia West will hold great appeal to readers who admire stories of courageous women determined to live authentic, empowered lives.

The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West by Sara Ackerman

Mira Books (HarperCollins), $18.99 paperback, 9780369747785, 384 pages

Publishing Date: February 6, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

A Wish for Winter

An enchanting, fun romance about a single, 40-year-old bookstore owner in search of finding her Mr. Right—a nameless man in a Santa suit.

Viola Shipman (pen name of Wade Rouse) delights readers with A Wish for Winter, an unforgettable, heartwarming story about a never-married bookstore owner from Petoskey, Mich. who goes in search of rekindling Christmas joy and finding true love.

 

Christmas was always special for Susan Norcross. Both her mother and her grandmother met their future husbands when they were dressed up as Santa Claus. But when Susan was in fifth grade, her parents were killed in a Christmastime car crash that snuffed out hope from the holidays.

 

Susan is “girlishly youthful looking” and now the successful owner of “Sleigh By the Bay,” a thriving community bookstore. As she nears her 40^th birthday, those who love her--especially the grandparents who raised her, a dear friend of her late mother’s and Holly, Susan’s best friend--want her to settle down. When Susan dresses up like Mrs. Claus and attends the famed “10k Santa Run” in Chicago, she meets an appealing Kris Kringle who sparks her fancy. The two make plans to meet up after the race. However, Susan is later stood up—and she never got Santa’s name. This disappointment encourages determined friend Holly to take to social media to find him. Three men--three Kris Kringles from the run--step up claiming to be the ‘mystery’ Santa. Might one of them be Susan’s romantic destiny?

 

Shipman’s (The Charm Bracelet; The Recipe Box; The Secret of Snow) sensitive storytelling is enlivened by offbeat, well-meaning characters and an enchantingly fun, romantic plot.

A Wish for Winter by Viola Shipman

Graydon House (Harper Collins), $17.99 paperback, 9781525804847, 416 pages

Publishing Date: November 15, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

Gator Country

An exciting, propulsive true story about an alligator poaching sting operation in Florida and what it reveals about nature—including human nature.

In Gator Country, science and nature journalist, Rebecca Renner delivers an astounding story about an alligator-poaching operation in the Florida Everglades. She grew up in Florida, the “swampy deep south,” one of the most bio diverse places in the country. At the age of seven, she encountered her first alligator up close behind her family’s home. By 2017, Renner was working to support herself as a high school English teacher when a student had turned in a well-informed, intimate wildlife essay on poaching--“the active illegally taking or flora or fauna from the wild”--and profiting from it. The student feared Renner might snitch on him, and this planted a seed in Renner. 

 

Years later, when she was working her way up the ranks as a nature writer for National Geographic and The New York Times, Renner’s interest in poaching resurfaced. In 2020, she became determined to learn more about alligator poaching from the points of view of the law and the poachers--those whom she identified as the economically poor, struggling to live in Florida’s diminishing wetlands. Her adventurous, in-depth study probes the nature of crime and human character, while also mining the far-reaching consequences of what it truly takes to survive—in the wild and in society.

 

Renner (Drift: Collected Short Fiction), a gifted and deeply empathetic writer, paints such sympathetic, well-rounded portraits of the justice-seeking rangers and wildlife officers versus the struggling-to-survive poachers that readers will have trouble taking sides. Her propulsive narrative reads as suspensefully as a well-wrought mystery novel as she uncovers an exciting true story that will educate, enlighten, and enthrall her audience. 

 

Gator Country: Deception, Danger and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner

Flatiron Books (Macmillan), $29.99 hardcover, 9781250842572, 288 pages

Publishing Date: November 14, 2023

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 17, 2023), link HERE 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (October 2, 2023), link HERE