Book picks similar to
Elsie's Business by Frances Washburn


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The Crying of Lot 49


Thomas Pynchon - 1966
    The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.

A Jury Of Her Peers


Susan Glaspell - 1917
    Two women uncover the truth in a rural murder investigation.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI


David Grann - 2017
    After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear


E.K. Johnston - 2016
    She’s been captain of her cheerleading team. The envied girlfriend and the undisputed queen of her school. Now it’s her last year and those days and those labels are fading fast. In a few months she’ll be a different person. She thinks she’s ready for whatever comes next.But then someone puts something in her drink at a party, and in an instant she finds herself wearing new labels m ones she never imagined:Victim. Survivor. That raped girl.Even though this was never the future she imagined, one essential thing remains unchanged: Hermione can still call herself Polly Oliver’s best friend, and that may be the truest label of all.Heartbreaking and empowering, Exit, Pursued by a Bear is the story of transcendent friendship in the face of trauma.“I love you,” I say, because I really, really do.“I know,” says Polly.

The Confidence-Man


Herman Melville - 1857
    Male, female, deft, fraudulent, constantly shifting: which of the masquerade of passengers on the Mississippi steamboat Fidele is the confidence man? The central motif of Melville's last and most modern novel can be seen as a symbol of American cultural history.

The Hidden Hand


E.D.E.N. Southworth - 1859
    Southworth was one of the most popular and prolific writers of the nineteenth century and her Capitola Black, or Black Cap - a cross-dressing, adventure-seeking girl-woman - was so well-loved that the book was serialized three times between 1859 and 1888 and was dramatized in forty different versions. When we first meet sharp and witty Capitola she is living among beggars and street urchins, and dressed as a boy because a boy can get work and be safe, whereas a girl is left to starve for want of "proper" employment. Unknown to her, Capitola has a very rich elderly guardian who finds her at a providential moment and takes her back to his palatial mansion where she finds herself "decomposing above ground for want of having my blood stirred." But not to fear. There are bandits, true-loves, evil men, long-lost mothers, and sweet women friends in Capitola's future - not to mention thunder storms, kidnap attempts, and duels. The pace is fast, the action wonderfully unbelievable. This is escape literature at its nineteenth-century best, with a woman at its center who makes you feel strong, daring, and reckless.

The Yellow Wall-Paper


Charlotte Perkins Gilman - 1892
    This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband's controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless.

Black Jack Justice: Dead Men Run


Gregg Taylor - 2015
    When it comes to deeply unqualified guardians of the moral high ground, it would be tough to find many that equaled Black Jack Justice and his erstwhile partner, Trixie Dixon, girl detective. But they will learn the hard way just how serious the sender was, and that in the end, only Dead Men Run.The his and hers private detectives of Decoder Ring Theatre’s long-running radio mysteries return to two-fisted prose adventure, delighting long-time fans and new readers alike with the classic, hard-boiled feel of their exploits.

Whereas


Layli Long Soldier - 2017
    What did I know of our language but pieces? Would I teach her to be pieces? Until a friend comforted, Don’t worry, you and your daughter will learn together. Today she stood sunlight on her shoulders lean and straight to share a song in Diné, her father’s language. To sing she motions simultaneously with her hands; I watch her be in multiple musics.—from “WHEREAS Statements”WHEREAS confronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.” This strident, plaintive book introduces a major new voice in contemporary literature.

A View from the Bridge


Arthur Miller - 2016
    Eddie Carbone is a Brooklyn longshoreman, a hard-working man whose life has been soothingly predictable. He hasn't counted on the arrival of two of his wife's relatives, illegal immigrants from Italy; nor has he recognized his true feelings for his beautiful niece, Catherine. And in due course, what Eddie doesn't know?about her, about life, about his own heart?will have devastating consequences.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw


Stephen Graham JonesStephen Graham Jones - 2021
    She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges… a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

Bone Black


Carol Rose GoldenEagle - 2019
    At least that is the way Wren StrongEagle sees it.Wren is devastated when her twin sister, Raven, mysteriously disappears after the two spend an evening visiting at a local pub. When Wren files a missing persons report with the local police, she is dismissed and becomes convinced the case will not be properly investigated. As she follows media reports, Wren realizes that the same heartbreak she’s feeling is the same for too many families, indeed for whole Nations. Something within Wren snaps and she decides to take justice into her own hands. She soon disappears into a darkness, struggling to come to terms with the type of justice she delivers. Throughout her choices, and every step along the way, Wren feels as though she is being guided. But, by what?

The Blessing Way


Tony Hillerman - 1970
    Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch is leading him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.

Scalp Dance


Lutricia Clifton - 2015
    He’s a man of the Law—the letter of the Law—and he’sa man of his word. But he’s at a breaking point, ready to quit the force. Hisfather’s murder is ten-years cold, his young wife’s premature death haunts him,and tribal police in Oklahoma are being prevented from ensuring the Peoplereceive justice. A mix of tribal and non-tribal lands has created a checkerboardlaw enforcement community—federal, state, municipal and Indian—a land thatlawbreakers jokingly refer to as lawless. Indian women are the ones paying thehighest price. One in three can expect to be raped in her lifetime, and tribalpolice cannot arrest the assailant if he is not Indian. And then, Chitto isassigned to work undercover on a mystifying case. In pre-dawn light, a sacredChoctaw ceremonial ground is transformed into an execution site. The naked,beheaded corpse is the husband of a Chickasaw woman and stepfather to her youngdaughter. Except for the victim’s driver’s license, no evidence is left behind—with one exception: his freshly laundered clothes retain the odor of fabricsoftener. A series of seemingly unrelated incidents come together to help Chittosolve the case, but he is forced to make a decision that could not onlychallenge his personal code of ethics but also cost a man his life.

Invitation to Valhalla


Mike Whicker - 2001
    She is the Nazis' top spy. Code-named Lorelei, she is the English speaking daughter of Hitler's old comrade and a member of the Fuhrer's inner circle. She is beautiful, athletic, and clever--the epitome of Aryan womanhood. She'll stop at nothing to accomplish her mission, including masquerading as a Jew. Joe Mayer. A prominent American metallurgist working on a top secret project for the U.S. Navy. Mayer holds the secret Erika Lehmann is sent to the United States to steal--a secret that could alter the course of the war. Axel Ryker. The Gestapo's top henchman. Ryker is Heinrich Himmler's top problem solver, i.e. murderer. As ruthless as he is cunning, Ryker is sent to America with a startling mission--find and kill their own spy, Erika Lehmann. The year is 1942. In Evansville, Indiana, a Jewish metallurgist named Joseph Mayer is conducting top secret experiments for the U.S. Navy. Life could not be better for Joe Mayer: he loves his job, and he is dating a beautiful, young Jewish woman...Highly impressive is Whicker's knowledge of the minutiae of spying at all levels in WW II Germany, Britain, and the USA. Clancy's Hunt for Red October. Whicker is especially good at portraying the vicious infighting that went on constantly among the Nazi leaders. The suspense grows gradually but inexorably till the very end. --Dr. Bernard Norling, author and professor emeritus of European history, University of Notre Dame