Brewing Death, book #5 in the Auntie Clem’s Bakery series will be released this weekend, so be sure to pop by for a look. Or preorder now and it will be delivered straight to your kindle Friday!
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
I mentioned The Life We Bury in my last post, and I had to bring it up again to give you a teaser. I really enjoyed this one. Faintly reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, this well-woven mystery is a pleasure to read. The writer/sleuth has a complex background and a younger brother with autism. The brother is treated as a real person and not just a foil or token diverse character.
His name is Carl Iverson. He’s a convicted murderer,” she said, whispering like a schoolgirl telling a story out of turn. “The Department of Corrections sent him here about three months ago. They paroled him from Stillwater because he’s dying of cancer.”
Allen Eskens, The Life we Bury
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe’s life is ever the same.
Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran–and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.
As Joe writes about Carl’s life, especially Carl’s valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.
Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?
This one sounds fascinating – and I very much approve of an autistic character who is more than a mere gesture to diversity in genre fiction. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve been noticing this book; great cover! Thanks for sharing, and enjoy. Here’s mine: “OUR HOUSE”
I think I’d whisper that too. My Teaser
I’d read this one. It has more than one plot line and sounds very intriguing.
My TT from Italian Iced