The Crows of Pearblossom

By Aldous Huxley. New York: Random House, 1967. Illustrated by Barbara Cooney

Aldous Huxley wrote The Crows of Pearblossom for his niece, Olivia, and one of the charms of the story is the way that Huxley works Olivia’s home in to the story, as well as the names of people and towns with which she would be familiar. As the story opens, Mrs. Crow is frustrated by her inability to hatch an egg. Every afternoon, when she goes to the grocery store, the egg she has laid disappears. Mrs. Crow soon learns that a snake is taking the eggs, and when she asks her husband to kill the snake, Mr. Crow and his friend Mr. Owl hatch a less dangerous plan.

Bye, Bye, Black Sheep

By Ayelet Waldman.  New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2006. 259 pp.

Detective Juliet Applebaum’s client in Bye, Bye, Black Sheep is a tall, lovely woman named Heavenly who began life as Henry.  Heavenly is trying to solve the murder of her sister, Violetta, a drug user and prostitute.  When the police fail to take the case seriously, Juliet finds herself getting to know the girls of Figueroa Street and their pimps, watching the “desperate cotillion, partners changing, passed from hand to hand” (61).

Watermark

By Vanitha Sankaran.  New York: Avon, 2010. 322 pp.

Watermark begins as a rather lurid historical romance: in the winter of 1300, in Narbonne, in the south of France, a mother dies giving birth to a girl who is so pale that the midwife’s apprentice assumes she is a product of the devil or witchcraft.  From its earliest pages, the novel rings with terror of the Inquisition and its threat to the poor and defenseless.  But the girl, Auda, is born to a papermaker, and Sankaran’s grim view of medieval France is tempered with fascination for the new medium that will bring printed texts, both sacred and secular, to all.

Mrs. Somebody Somebody

By Tracy Winn.  New York: Random House, 2010.  207 pp.

An interconnected collection of short stories is not my usual choice for recreational reading; I prefer novels.  But I thoroughly enjoyed Tracy Winn’s beautifully-written vignettes of life in Lowell, Massachusetts.  The title story chronicles a union attempt at organizing the Hub Hosiery Mill in 1947, and the subsequent stories carry us forward into the twenty-first century, following factory girls, mill owners, and immigrants in waves from Europe and South America.  It’s a pleasure to see characters reappear, the dramatic moments of their lives intersecting in a portrait of a town, as well as the people in it.

Staggerford

By Jon Hassler.  New York: Atheneum, 1977.  341 pp.

I have an old copy of Staggerford, water stained and dotted with mildew, its torn jacket still sporting the 50¢ sticker from Reeds Odds and Ends outside Athens, Georgia, where I bought the book about 20 years ago.  At the time I was living far from Minnesota, and I greeted the book like an old friend.  Since then it’s become a favorite of my children for its humor, its characterizations and its gripping story line.  It’s what Mark Twain might have written if he had lived in Minnesota in the 70s and decided to write about a high school English teacher.

The Cradle Robbers

By Ayelet Waldman.  New York: Berkley, 2005.  218 pp.

I absolutely adore Ayelet Waldman’s mysteries.  Her likeable protagonist, Juliet Applebaum, juggles motherhood and detective work, and the juxtaposition of  dirty diapers and stakeouts, preschool misbehavior and murder is surprisingly hilarious.  In Juliet’s words, “The beauty of being a self-employed mother is that you can take your baby to work. That’s also the horror of being a self-employed mother” (9).  In her sixth mystery, Waldman manages to simultaneously explore the challenges of marriage with children and the injustices of our foster care system.

Saint Erasure

By Donna de la Perrière.  Greenfield: Talisman, 2010.  63 pp.

In her second book of poems, de la Perrière explores depression, illusion and delusion and makes them lovely.  The cover photograph of this collection is an image of a crumbling room in the Danvers State Asylum, a signal of the haunting internal landscapes that de la Perrière’s poems explore.