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January 2016 Midwest Connections Picks

11/12/2015

1 Comment

 
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Download the one-sheet for January 2016's Midwest Connections Picks

The Do-Right

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A Novel by Lisa Sandlin
Cinco Puntos Press
October 27, 2015
Paperback Original, $16.95
ISBN: 9781941026199
“The do-right”—that’s old Southern talk for prison. Delpha Wade doesn’t want to go back there. Fourteen years is enough.
  • "This book is flat out excellent..I heartily recommend this novel."—Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield's Books (California)
  • "I'll be damned if [The Do-Right] isn't more like a good old fashioned Nero Wolfe mystery with a Gulf Coast accent—what with the more-than-able assistant, the typewriters zinging, the friendly but not too friendly local cops, and the running off to check up on information at the newspaper morgue...Thank you for this trip to a new but familiar seeming world. I hope to make a return trip to this new world again soon. I am most impressed."—John Mesjak, Abraham and Associates
  • "One of my top picks on the whole Consortium list this season. I can't wait to read anything else that Sandlin writes."—Emily Johnson, Abraham and Associates
"Sandlin’s clipped prose style is pleasingly eccentric, and can become downright Chandleresque." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
1959. Delpha Wade killed a man who was raping her. Wanted to kill the other one too, but he got away. Now, after fourteen years in prison, she’s out. It’s 1973, and nobody’s rushing to hire a parolee. Persistence and smarts land her a secretarial job with Tom Phelan, an ex-roughneck turned neophyte private eye. Together these two pry into the dark corners of Beaumont, a blue-collar, Cajun-influenced town dominated by Big Oil. A mysterious client plots mayhem against a small petrochemical company-why? Searching for a teenage boy, Phelan uncovers the weird lair of a serial killer. And Delpha — on a weekend outing — looks into the eyes of her rapist, the one who got away. The novel's conclusion is classic noir, full of surprise, excitement, and karmic justice. Sandlin's elegant prose, twisting through the dark thickets of human passion, allows Delpha to open her heart again to friendship, compassion, and sexuality.
Lisa Sandlin is the author of of five collections of short fiction. Her work has appeared in Shenandoah, The New York Times, Southwest Review, Crazy Horse, Story Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the NEA Fellowship, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. The Do Right is her first mystery. Lisa was born in Beaumont and currently lives and teaches in Omaha, Nebraska.
If you're interested in inviting Lisa to your store for a reading or event, please contact John Byrd (johnbyrd@cincopuntos.com) and/or Jessica Powers ( jessicapowers@cincopuntos.com).
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Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II

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Nonfiction by Theresa Kaminski
Oxford University Press
December 14, 2015
Hardcover, $27.95
9780199928248
The compelling tale of four ordinary American women propelled by extraordinary circumstances into acts of heroism.
"Two American women, known as Miss U and High Pockets, risked their lives in clandestine efforts to help the Allies, a story related in Angels of the Underground: The American Women Who Resisted the Japanese in the Philippines in World War II (Oxford Univ., Dec.) by Theresa Kaminski, who also provides an account of life under three years of Japanese occupation." --Publishers Weekly
When the Japanese began their brutal occupation of the Philippines in January 1942, 76,000 ill and starving Filipino and American troops tried to hold out on Bataan and Corregidor. That spring, after having been forced to surrender, most of those men were thrown into Japanese POW camps while dozens of others slipped away to organize guerrilla forces. During the three violent years of occupation that followed, Allied sympathizers in Manila smuggled supplies and information to the guerrillas and the prisoners.
Theresa Kaminski's Angels of the Underground tells the story of four American women who were part of this little-known resistance movement: Gladys Savary, Claire Phillips, Yay Panlilio, and Peggy Utinsky - all incredibly adept at skirting occupation authorities to support the Allied war effort. The nature of their clandestine work meant that the truth behind their dangerous activities had to be obscured as long as the Japanese occupied the Philippines. If caught, they would be imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Throughout the Pacific War, these four women remained hidden behind a veil of deceit and subterfuge
An impressive work of scholarship grounded in archival research, FBI documents, and memoirs, Angels of the Underground illuminates the complex political dimensions of the occupied Philippines and its importance to the war effort in the Pacific. Kaminski's narrative sheds light on the Japanese-occupied city of Manila; the Bataan Death March and subsequent incarceration of American military prisoners in camps O'Donnell and Cabanatuan; and the formation of guerrilla units in the mountains of Luzon.

Angels of the Underground makes a significant contribution to the work on women's wartime experiences. Through the lives of Gladys, Yay, Claire, and Peggy, who never wavered in their belief that it was their duty as patriotic American women to aid the Allied cause, Kaminski highlights how women have always been active participants in war, whether or not they wear a military uniform.
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Theresa Kaminski is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She is the author of Citizen of Empire: Ethel Thomas Herold, An American in the Philippines and Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific.
Read more about this title on Edelweiss

The Drifter

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A Novel by Nicholas Petrie
G.P. Putnam & Sons / Penguin Random House
January 12, 2016
Hardcover, $27.00

9780399174568
An explosive thriller debut introducing Peter Ash, a veteran still struggling with the demons of war, who finds that the skills he learned there can’t easily be left behind…
“With The Drifter, Nicholas Petrie has written just about the perfect thriller. I haven’t read such a well-crafted and gripping story in a month of Sundays.”—John Lescroart, New York Times-bestselling author of The Keeper
“A tangled tale of intrigue, action, and adventure with a battle-scarred hero who definitely rises to the challenge. The clever plot is firmly conceived and crisp writing makes this a terrific story.”—Steve Berry, New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Myth
Peter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his “white static,” the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars. But when a friend from the Marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man’s estranged widow with some home repairs.
Under her dilapidated porch, he finds more than he bargained for: the largest, ugliest, meanest dog he’s ever encountered…and a Samsonite suitcase stuffed with cash and explosives. As Ash begins to investigate this unexpected discovery, he finds himself at the center of a plot that is far larger than he could have imagined, and it may lead straight back to the world he thought he’d left behind. Suspenseful and thrilling, and introducing a fantastic new hero, The Drifter is an exciting novel from a new voice in crime fiction
Nick Petrie received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and his story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the Seattle Review, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home inspection business in Milwaukee. The Drifter is his first novel.
Read more about this title on Edelweiss
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1 Comment
Theresa Kaminski link
2/16/2016 12:10:47 pm

Thank you so much for including Angels of the Underground in the January 2016 Midwest Connections Picks.

Reply



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