James J. Patterson Reads from MELANIE’S SONG on Latest LFTRR
The new mystery novel by ASP's Joanna Biggar is given the Patterson treatment in Episode 11 of Live from the Reading Room
“Melanie’s Song is an unputdownable, riveting feat of storytelling.”
Set in the era of Woodstock and Watergate, Melanie’s Song centers on a young woman’s mysterious disappearance, and on her friend’s determined search for her.
Melanie, who fled her marriage to a straight-laced classical musician in order to hitch-hike to Woodstock and San Francisco, was last seen at a commune in the California hills. Rumors abound: that she took up with a Black radical; that she had his child; that she and her lover, armed, ran a bank heist a la Patty Hearst; that she developed a mystical gift for spiritual healing; that she died in a possible accidental, possibly staged commune fire.
Trying to sift truth from invention pulls her friend, the young reporter, J.J., into the underbelly of the sexual and social revolutions of the 60s and early 70s, where she encounters corrupt cops, paranoid hippies, activists, mystics, drug-runners,and most astonishingly, Melanie’s own parents. Risking her job, her connections, her life, J.J. follows Melanie’s trail, determined to find out what happened to her once-compliant friend now turned, it seems, into a rebel angel.
David Downie on PLACES I REMEMBER podcast: Stories of the Italian Riviera
The novelist and travel writer talks the Ligurian Coast, Italian travel ideas, and his new thriller set on the Italian Riviera, Red Riviera
Excerpt From Upcoming Dave Housley Novel Hits The Rumpus
In this Rumpus-exclusive excerpt from Dave Housley’s upcoming novel The Other Ones, follow four of the principle characters in the novel as they discover that their detestable colleagues have become overnight millionaires.
Katherine E. Young Reviews Merwin’s THE VIXEN for 25 Year Anniversary
Katherine E. Young’s retrospective on W.S. Merwin’s The Vixen appears in The Adroit Journal. Her newest collection of poetry is Woman Drinking Absinthe available from Alan Squire Publishing.