Deadly Daughters Summer Give-Away

Drum roll, please! And the winners are:

Winner of Bleeding Through: Lauren K
Send mailing address to Sandy at sandraparshall@yahoo.com

Winner of Outrageous Older Woman and Shifting is for the Goyim: Dru Ann Love
Liz will be in touch.

Winners of The Ghosts of Lovely Women: Penny T, Warren Bull, Lelia Taylor
Contact Julia at julishka@sbcglobal.net

Winner of Sour Apples: Nora
Send mailing addresses to Sheila at sheila328@aol.com

Winner of Troubled Bones: Giovanni Albers
Send mailing address to Jeri at jeriwesterson@gmail.com

Winner of Missing, Presumed Wed: judydee
Send mailing address to Sharon at cml@wildwindauthor.com

Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing!

We love our readers, and we appreciate your taking a few minutes out of your day to stop by our blog. To thank you, we're having a drawing for free books, downloads and music. Check out what's on offer, then leave a comment telling us what you'd like to win. We'll post the names of the winners here no later than Thursday afternoon. You'll have to give us your e-mail or snail-mail address to receive your prize, so be sure to check back tomorrow and find out whether you're a winner.

Sandra Parshall

I'm giving away a signed hardcover copy of my September release, Bleeding Through, the fifth book in the Rachel Goddard mystery/suspense series. As Tom Bridger works to solve the murder of a young law student, Rachel comes face to face with her hidden past, and both she and her sister Michelle must accept the truth about who they are and what happened to them as children. Kirkus Reviews praised Bleeding Through, saying that it "combines nerve-wracking suspense with a twisty mystery."

Elizabeth Zelvin

 

I'm straying off the straight and narrow path of mysteries and (retronym alert!) "physical books" to bring you a couple of offbeat offerings: a copy of OUTRAGEOUS OLDER WOMAN, my CD of original songs, and a PDF of Shifting Is for the Goyim, my paranormal whodunit novelette.

As Liz Zelvin, I've been singing almost as long as I've been writing, and this collection of urban folk originals with a dash of country, a little gospel, a little klezmer, and a lot of fun and life experience has been simmering in the pot for decades. I'm pretty sure anyone who liked the Sixties will enjoy it.

Paranormal is something new for me. I think you'll like my protagonist, a nice Jewish girl who's also a rising country music star and a shapeshifter. I'm offering the PDF, which you don't need an e-reader to read, because I haven't figured out how to send one of the e-formats as a freebie. If you don't win it, you can get it for almost nothing on Untreed Reads in any digital format you can imagine.

Julia Buckley

I'm offering two readers a copy of my Teddy Thurber mystery The Ghosts of Lovely Women, which has a 5 star ranking in the U.S. and the U.K.  Check it out at Amazon here and be sure to read the reviews. Teddy is a bibliophile who teaches English; she cannot help but become embroiled in the mystery behind the murder of her former student, Jessica Halliday, especially because Jessica seems to have used literature itself to point Teddy toward her killer. This book is currently only available on Kindle, but you won't need a Kindle if you win it--you can get a free reading frame to devour the book on your own P.C.

 

Jeri Westerson

I’m offering a signed hardcover of Troubled Bones. In this fourth in the series, disgraced knight Crispin Guest gets himself into some serious trouble in London and is forced to accept an assignment far out of town. The Archbishop of Canterbury has specifically requested Crispin to investigate a threat against the bones of St. Thomas Becket, which are housed in a shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. But when he arrives at Canterbury, Crispin is accosted by old acquaintance Geoffrey Chaucer, who is traveling with a group of pilgrims. Trapped in Canterbury, looking for a murderer, a hidden heretic, and a solution to the riddle that will allow him to go back home, Crispin Guest finds his considerable wit and intellect taxed to its very limit. “A creative and enthralling retelling of the Canterbury Tales…authentic medieval history combined with modern suspense.” –John Lescroart, bestselling author.

Sheila Connolly

I'm offering a copy of the latest book (#6) in the Orchard Mystery series, Sour Apples, to be released on August 7th.

Rick Sainsbury, Granford hometown football hero turned successful businessman, has decided to run for Congress and to launch his campaign in Granford.  He looks like the perfect candidate--smart, charming, and sincere.  But looks can be deceiving:  when a local dairy farmer dies and the autopsy points to murder, Meg Corey begins to wonder why the farmer died, and her questions lead to some unsettling discoveries that may point a finger at the candidate.

Just how far would a candidate go to win an election?

Sharon Wildwind

I'm giving away the 4th Elizabeth Pepperhawk/Avivah Rosen mystery. If you've been involved in a less-than-stress-free wedding this summer, you'll especially appreciate this book. Benny and Lorraine's problems will put yours in perspective.

Missing, Presumed Wed is about broken promises, false hopes, and the art of redemption.

It’s Memorial Day, 1974. Viet Nam has dropped out of the American consciousness, replaced by Watergate and high gas prices. Viet Nam veterans may be losers, but at least they’re home. Best to forget the war.

Unless you’re an ex-Special Forces Sergeant with a chest full of medals, scars, and nightmares about raising the two sons your dead best friend left behind. Benny Kirkpatrick is one week away from marrying Lorraine Fulford and, as he puts it, “I’ve seen courts martial that required less preparation than this wedding.” Then Benny’s mother, Grace Kirkpatrick, is abducted. Benny and his friends, policewoman Avivah Rosen and former Captain Elizabeth Pepperhawk, put their own romantic entanglements aside to find the killer, but the price of justice may tear Benny’s family apart forever.

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Leave a comment telling us which prize you'd like to win!

In Defense of Clytemnestra and the "Lovely Women" of THE ODYSSEY

by Julia Buckley

Way back in 2007 I blogged about the mythical Clytemnestra, because I had recently read the Orestia--three short plays by Aeschylus. Clytemnestra, in Greek legend and in the play Agamemnon, is depicted as a monstrous woman, a woman who would dare to plot the murder of her husband and then carry it out in bloody triumph, even as her husband returns, victorious, from The Trojan War. Therefore, Clytemnestra is painted as an aberration, an unnatural woman.

There’s more to the story, of course: Agamemnon killed his own daughter, sacrificed her to the gods so that his ships, which were stalled, would have fair winds to speed them to the Trojan War. This entire detail is given short shrift in the play; after all, this is ancient Greece, and women are second-class citizens. If a man has to kill a female for the sake of his own glory, then he will have to make that sacrifice.

Ironic, though, that Agamemnon is not depicted as a monster, but a hero, and his wife, who exacts premeditated and bloody revenge for the loss of her child, becomes the only “evil” character. Granted, murder is horrible. But isn’t the Trojan conflict full of murder—men savagely slaughtered on battlefields, ostensibly, in debate over the ownership of a beautiful woman? Still, there doesn’t seem to be much literary defense of Clytemnestra’s motives.

Sure, I don’t suppose I would murder my husband if he killed my child, but then again, who knows? Grief itself is monstrous, and can twist a person in different ways. Certainly I did not see in Clytemnestra the horrifying creature that the men in my class did. In general, the women looked at her and saw someone consumed by loss.

It’s not fair, I suppose, to impose a modern sensibility on an ancient story. Clytemnestra is meant to be seen as a monster, and so I am supposed to look for the things that make her horrifying. I find that I just can’t do it, though, especially when I read The Odyssey, and even in Hades Agamemnon, that great egotist, can’t get over what his wife has done to him, and rails about it to every shade who floats his way, and to Odysseus, the visiting human.

What I am looking for is an Agamemnon who seeks out the dead Iphigenia, his murdered daughter, to ask for her forgiveness. That doesn’t happen, of course, nor does Clytemnestra find solace in anyone’s understanding of her deed. Her son condemns her and kills her himself to avenge his father’s death. That son, Orestes, never mentions his dead sister.

Around the time that I wrote about this I was also starting to write a mystery novel that referenced the themes raised in this ancient myth and in more modern literature. Teddy Thurber, an English teacher, must look to the truths of literature in order to solve a crime of the present--the murder of her former student, a nineteen-year-old girl.

The title of the book, THE GHOSTS OF LOVELY WOMEN, comes from a scene in THE ODYSSEY in which the shades in the Underworld want to speak to Odysseus, but only the men are given a chance, and Persephone scatters the "ghosts of lovely women" away, not allowing them a voice.

Teddy feels that her student, Jessica Halliday, was also deprived of a voice, a life, a future--and she pledges to be an advocate for Jessica by seeking her murderer.

That book is now available on Nook and Kindle! If you love the classics, you might enjoy the way that Teddy uses the truths of great fiction to solve a crime in the real world.