Palace Council 
Stephen L. Carter, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307385963

Summary
Bestselling author Stephen L. Carter delivers a gripping political thriller set against the backdrop of Watergate, Vietnam, and the Nixon White House.

Philmont Castle is a man who has it all: wealth, respect, and connections. He's the last person you'd expect to fall prey to a murderer, but then his body is found on the grounds of a Harlem mansion by the young writer Eddie Wesley, who along with the woman he loves, Aurelia Treene, is pulled into a twenty-year search for the truth.

The disappearance of Eddie's sister June makes their investigation even more troubling. As Eddie and Aurelia uncover layer upon layer of intrigue, their odyssey takes them from the wealthy drawing rooms of New York through the shady corners of radical politics all the way to the Oval Office and President Nixon himself. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—October 26, 1954
• Where—Washington, D.C., USA
• Education—B.A. Stanford University; J.D., Yale Law School
• Currently—New Haven, Connecticut

Stephen L. Carter has helped shape the national debate on issues ranging from the role of religion in American political culture to the impact of integrity and civility on our daily lives. The New York Times has called him one of the nation's leading public intellectuals.

Born in Washington, D.C., Stephen L. Carter studied law at Yale University and went on to serve as a law clerk, first on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and later for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In 1982 he joined the faculty at Yale, where he is now William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law. His critically acclaimed nonfiction books on subjects including affirmative action, the judicial confirmation process, and the place of religion in our legal and political cultures have earned Carter fans among luminaries as diverse as William F. Buckley, Anna Quindlen, and former President Bill Clinton.

Carter's first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, draws heavily on the author's familiarity with the law and the world of highly placed judges, but he didn't begin by attempting to write a "judicial" thriller— Carter earlier tried the character of Judge Garland out as a White House aide, and also as a professor like himself. He has said that in the end "only the judicial role really fit."

With Emperor Carter has moved (for the moment) from writing nonfiction to fiction—a shift which he downplays by noting "I have always viewed writing as a craft." But, while he has also indicated that another novel like this one is in the works, he sees himself as "principally a legal scholar and law professor" and plans to continue publishing nonfiction as well.

New England White, Carter's second novel, published in 2008, takes up the story of two secondary characters from The Emperor of Ocean Park, LeMaster and Julia Carlyle.

Extras
From a Barnes & Noble interview:

• An avid chess player, Stephen L. Carter is a life member of the United States Chess Federation. Although he says he plays less now than he once did, he still plays online through the Internet Chess Club. For The Emperor of Ocean Park, Professor Carter says he had to learn about "the world of the chess problemist, where composers work for months or years to set up challenging positions for others to solve."

• Carter lives with his wife, Enola Aird, and their two children, near New Haven, Connecticut.

• When asked what books most influenced his career as a writer or scholar, her is what he said:

I would have to say the Bible, especially as I began to read theology and philosophy in a serious way. The Bible has changed my life.

• Other favorite books include:

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, for the sheer beauty of the prose and the seamless integration of metaphor into the story. Rarely have I encountered such remarkable characterizations and settings. And, oh, how deft her touch with dialogue!

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Simply put, one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Bringing an era to life and offering a withering critique without preaching at us. Marvelous characters, engaging story, and in so small a package.

James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. A novel of immense passion and power, taking seriously the Christianity of its characters but presenting them as complex and flawed as he cuts back and forth across their stories. Just stunning. I am not sure I have read a finer inter-generational story.

E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime. Whether you think it is just a good read or, as some think, a novel-length metaphor for the '60s, a wonderfully evocative tale of a hundred years back, set in a time of great social flux, told in a prose so compelling that it is difficult to find a place to stop for breath.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. I read this in college, before it became a standard text for high schoolers, and its power nearly wore me out. No finer story, in my experience, of the conflict between traditional society and the modern world, with the possible exceptions of two others I rather like: Death and the King’s Horseman, by Wole Soyinka, and, more recently, The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

George Orwell's 1984. I have never read another novel that provides more food for thought, or more text for discussion. And as scary as they come.

Stephen King's Christine. Few people would probably rank this as King’s best, but I think that it creates as fully realized an adolescent world as one is likely to find in popular fiction. One of the few contemporary novels I find worth going back to again and again to learn more.

John le Carré's Smiley’s People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—the two modern masterpieces of the espionage genre. I suppose I could add some mystery writers, such as Sue Grafton and Agatha Christie.

(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
The twists, turns and double-crosses take place in a number of settings, including Harlem, Washington and parts of Africa and Southeast Asia....Palace Council contains tantalizing hints of conspiracies to come.
Los Angles Times

Pitch-perfect.... A mystery that will give a surprising jolt to your conscience.
Washington Post

While Carter offers a finely drawn picture of the complicated black social world, and the high-reaching conspiracy has its allure, he seems to strain to pull his story together—discarded candy wrappers become a clue to the anticlimactic finish.
The New Yorker

(Audio version.) Dominic Hoffman's voice possesses a touch of sandpaper that causes every word to be rubbed raw before emerging from between his lips. The hardboiled sensation is appropriate for law professor and novelist Carters suspenseful story of secret societies, political intrigue, and the social swirl of Harlems 1950s elite. Eddie Wesley, a writer and member of African-American high society, finds himself thrust into a shadowy world of murder and espionage, forced to use his authorial skills to uncover the truth. Hoffmans occasional forays into doing voices, like those of Vietnamese police officers, are unfortunate, but the grain of his voice is alluring enough that listeners will want him to just keep going.
Publishers Weekly

A Wall Street lawyer is recruited into a mysterious conspiracy. Two and a half years later, a young writer stumbles over the lawyer's corpse in Harlem; an unexplained suicide follows. The writer's sister vanishes. The writer sets out to connect these seemingly unconnected events; his quest takes him through the tumultuous 1950s and 1960s. In his previous novels (New England White; The Emperor of Ocean Park), Yale law professor Carter has delighted in bending genres. His latest is no exception, at once a hyperbolic thriller and a subtle and convincing comedy of manners. Lives intersect across 20 years in ways both obvious and hidden: Richard Nixon appears as a strangely sympathetic figure, and poet Langston Hughes, Joe and Jack Kennedy, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and J. Edgar Hoover take bows. Few authors are better than Carter at capturing the nuances of human behavior on both sides of the color line. His take on race relations isn't bleak, but Carter is no Pollyanna: there's still a long way to go by the end of this book. Council will grip readers, but it will also make them think. Enthusiastically recommended for all general collections.
David Keymer - Library Journal

In the author’s notes, Carter admits to fudging the timeline in order to incorporated both Harlem’s storied salon society and the turbulent 1960s into the same story. The ploy works, letting Carter explore evolving perspectives on race, violence, and national ideals through a cast of fascinating characters, drawn from both real life (J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon) and from the author’s earlier novels. A winner for fans of both historical and crime fiction. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

A brilliant black writer's harsh education in reality, a search for a lost sibling and the history of "a radical organization [created] to scare white America" are the primary ingredients of the third bulky thriller from Carter (Law/Yale; New England White, 2007, etc.). The serpentine plot spans two decades of the previous century's history, beginning in 1954 when recent Amherst graduate and semi-willing tool of Harlem crime bosses Eddie Wesley stumbles onto the body of a murdered black attorney, and into a whirlwind of intrigue that's gradually linked to the title organization, a shadowy cabal that exploits and endangers even its most hopeful and idealistic members. Eddie seeks answers from the woman he loved and lost to another man, a parade of mentors and exemplars (including prominent authors Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison), even the Javert-like FBI agent who keeps him under constant surveillance. Another major plot strand commits Eddie to seek his disappeared younger sister Junie, rumored to have become a kingpin (queenpin?) in the violent leftist organization Jewel Agony. All this and much more (including a pattern of ominously meaningful Milton quotations) occurs as Eddie himself, established as a successful and respected novelist, shifts his focus to politics and becomes an insider in the Kennedy administration, then "a journalist for a radical monthly" and a seasoned observer of events that lead inexorably to the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the looming resignation of (a surprisingly sympathetically portrayed) President Richard Nixon. The latter is only one of several luminaries and villains who make memorable appearances, among them JFK, J. Edgar Hoover and Barbra Streisand. There are arguably too many barely distinguishable scenes in which Eddie is abducted, interrogated, threatened or tortured. But Carter keeps the pot boiling energetically, and surprises leap out until this very long (but never dull) novel's penultimate page. The so-called masters of the genre could learn something from Carter's intoxicating blend of political street smarts and literary skill. This is Grade-A entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. Carter writes, “The social distinctions mattered little to the great mass of Negroes, but Eddie had been raised, in spite of himself, to an awareness of who was who” [p. 16]. How does Eddie's father's position in the community, as well as his own experiences at a prestigious college and graduate school, influence Eddie's self-perception and his ambition? Do his experiences working for Scarlett and in various low-paying jobs affect his outlook and his understanding of (and sympathy with) the lives of “the great mass of Negroes”?

2. Despite the claims made by others, “Eddie did not consider his short story revolutionary. He did not consider it anything, except finished” [p. 15]. What does this show about the way Eddie thinks of himself as a writer? Is he naïve? Self-serving? Does his view of the role of a writer change in the course of the novel?

3. What does Aurelia's approach to her career and marriage reveal about the things that matter to her? Do her ambitions justify her rejection of Wesley [p. 16]? Does the information about her that emerges later in the novel help explain the opinions she voices and the decisions she makes? In what ways is she a typical example of many smart, well-educated, upper-middle class women during the period in which the novel is set?

4. Palace Council covers the vast changes in American politics and society between 1954 and 1974 through the lives of individuals. Discuss how the following characters contribute to the broad and complex picture Carter draws: Edward Wesley Senior; Gary Fatek; Perry Mount; Matthew and Kevin Garland; Benjamin Mellor.

5. Eddie is subjected to extreme psychological and physical intimidation throughout the novel. What do the threats from Hoover and his henchman show about the way power operates in Washington [pp. 100–101]? What do Eddie's experiences in Saigon [pp. 319–325] and his horrific kidnapping in Hong Kong [pp. 368–372] demonstrate about the acceptance of extreme measures to achieve a goal? Do the differing perceptions—and mutual suspicions—of opposing political groups or interests inevitably encourage extremism?

6. John Milton's Paradise Lost holds the keys to the nature and scope of “The Project.” How does the great epic poem about the battle between God and Satan illuminate the moral themes of Palace Council? Milton's purpose was to “justify the ways of God to man.” Is there a parallel theme or “purpose” underlying Palace Council? To what extent do the characters embody the ideas of good and evil that are at the heart of Paradise Lost and of traditional Christian belief?

7. Aurelia asks herself, “Why did the group identify so completely with Satan, who is doomed to defeat?” [p. 346]. What answers does the novel provide?

8. In his celebrated essay “The American Angle,” Eddie identified the qualities that define the country in 1967 and concluded, “If America failed to change the angle from which it looked at life.... then the nation was at a moral dead end” [p. 313]. Are these still the salient characteristics of our politics and our culture? In your opinion, has the situation improved or deteriorated over the last forty years?

9. Many of the secrets the characters keep from one another reflect the need (or desire) to protect both their public roles and their private lives. To what extent are they driven by a sense of loyalty—to their families, their causes, their ideals? What does this show about the relationship between individual and social responsibility?

10. In describing his novel and the people in it, Carter said, “Human motive and human weakness interest me, and politics happens to highlight those weaknesses” [Vintage interview]. What does the Council and its convoluted history reveal about the motives that drive people to commit themselves to a radical course of action? Do you think the kind of conspiracy Carter describes is possible?

11. Throughout the book, Carter imagines the conversations of prominent people like J. Edgar Hoover [pp. 93–99], Joseph Kennedy [pp. 132–135], and Richard Nixon [pp. 463–469]. Discuss the “legitimacy” of putting words into the mouths of real people. Do their voices conform to your impressions of them? Does Carter capture both the tone and the content of their thoughts in a realistic way or does he distort or exaggerate them to make them relevant to the fictional narrative?

12. Were you familiar with the larger history that forms the background to the novel? Did you discover things you hadn't known before? Are specific events adequately explained and put into context? In the author's note, Carter writes, “I chose to fiddle a bit with history. My only excuse, other than the needs of the narrative, is that I have tried to reorder the decades in a way that does honor to my subjects.” [p. 514]. Does a novelist have an implicit obligation to present an accurate record of the times he is portraying? Do the modifications Carter describes enrich the depth and impact of the book?

13. If you came to Palace Council with prior knowledge of Empyreals from reading Carter's previous novels, did you find yourself using that knowledge as you read? Were the recurrent characters (the Garlands, Aurelia, and Mona Veazie, for example) consistent with your recollections of them? Did this prequel inspire you to read (or reread) Carter's other books?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Deja Dead (Temperance Brennan Series #1)
Kathy Reichs, 1997
Simon & Schuster
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780671011369


Summary
Rarely has a debut crime novel inspired such widespread excitement. A born storyteller, Dr. Kathy Reichs walks in the steps of her heroine, Dr. Temperance Brennan. She spends her days in the autopsy suite, the courtroom, the crime lab, with cops, and at exhumation sites. Often her long days turn into harrowing nights.

It's June in Montreal, and Tempe, who has left a shaky marriage back home in North Carolina to take on the challenging assignment of director of forensic anthropology for the province of Quebec, looks forward to a relaxing weekend.

First, though, she must stop at a newly uncovered burial site in the heart of the city. One look at the decomposed and decapitated corpse, stored neatly in plastic bags, tells her she'll spend the weekend in the crime lab. This is homicide of the worst kind. To begin to find some answers, Tempe must first identify the victim. Who is this person with the reddish hair and a small bone structure? (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1950
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.S, American University; M.A., Ph.D., North-
   western University
• Awards—Arthur Ellis Award, Best Novel (1997)
• Currently—lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Montreal,   
  Quebec, Canada

Kathy Reichs burst onto the fiction scene in the late 1990s with her first novel, Deja Dead, a thriller rooted in an expert knowledge of science and medicine and powered by a strong female protagonist, Temperance Brennan. Since then, Reichs has been a regular feature on bestseller lists and is often mentioned in the same breath as the chief of the autopsy whodunit, Patricia Cornwell. (From the publisher.)

More
Both a forensics expert who has seen—firsthand— the aftermath of murderers and a novelist whose heroine tracks villains like the "Blade Cowboy," Kathy Reichs has some ideas about what the face of evil looks like: ordinary. "I see the perpetrator across the courtroom when I'm testifying. Generally, I'm underwhelmed," she said in a 2000 interview published on her web site." I'm always shocked by how totally normal they look. They look like my Uncle Frank, usually."

Reichs mulled over those experiences for about seven years before deciding to apply her ideas to fiction. Out came Déjà Dead in 1997, introducing mystery fans to a new but, more likely than not, recognizable heroine: forensics expert Temperance Brennan, a fortyish, recovering alcoholic on the run from a wobbling marriage. Brennan—a sort of mix between Nancy Drew and Quincy—is also something of a hothead, prone to marching off on her own when she runs afoul of a sexist male cop. This is the kind of woman who would sit down to brunch with Vic Warshawski, Kay Scarpetta, or Jane Tennison, if any of them did brunch.

As a forensic anthropologist for the state of North Carolina, as well as the province of Québec, Reichs draws heavily from her own experiences standing over the autopsy table. Her novels—Death du Jour, Deadly Decisions, Grave Secrets and the like—are packed with the kind of well informed clinical details that make critics take notice. "The doctor clearly knows a hawk from a handsaw," wrote the New York Times about one of her books.

She also built some parallels to her own biography when creating Tempe Brennan. Both women are forensic anthropologists with the unlikely dual addresses of North Carolina and Canada. But Reichs rolls her eyes when asked about the comparisons. "Personally, she's completely her own person," Reichs told USA Today in 1997. "She gets physically involved. She takes risks I've never been tempted to take."

Reichs was editing forensics textbooks when she began toying with writing a novel. The initial result, she said, was a dud: slow, boring, and in the third person. But it picked up steam when she came up with the Brennan character. Inspired by friend and medical examiner Bill Maples, author of Dead Men Do Tell Tales, she sat down to write, meticulously drafting an outline of her story and getting up early to write before teaching classes at the University of North Carolina. It took her two years.

The effort paid off when her manuscript made the rounds of the Frankfurt Book Fair. A heated auction won Reichs a million-dollar, two-book deal.

Critics and readers alike loved Tempe. Wrote the Library Journal, "Despite her ability to work among fetid, putrefying smells that 'leap out and grab' and her 'go-to-hell attitude' with seasoned cops, Tempe is as vulnerable as a soft Carolina morning." And People magazine said, "Reichs not only serves up a delicious plot, she also brings a new recipe to hard-boiled cop talk."

Over chicken salad lunches with newspaper reporters, Reichs will casually talk about dismembered bodies, maggots, and concerns for her children's security in light of some of the unsavory characters she'd testified against. But then she'll confess her true idea of a waking nightmare. "[My] idea of horror would be to sit in a little gray office all day and add up columns of numbers," she told USA Today. "I say to people, 'How do you do that?"'

Extras
• When she was a child, Reichs loved both the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, as well as books about such far-flung places as Easter Island.

• One of the reasons she is Quebec's forensics anthropologist is because she is one of the few in the profession who is fluent in French.

• Among her favorite books are the science fiction series the Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams. "It's one of the few things I re-read because it's just nothing to do with anything I do," she has said.

• She avoided college literature courses to concentrate on science.

• In 2005, Fox TV launched Bones, a forensics/police procedural inspired by Reichs's life and writing. In a neat twist, the main character, Temperance Brennan, is a forensic anthropologist who, as a sideline, writes thrillers about a fictional anthropologist named Kathy Reichs!

• Kathy's daughter, Kerry Reichs, made her literary debut in 2008 with the romantic comedy The Best Day of Someone Else's Life. ("More" and "Extras" from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
Great, suspensful fun.... A fascinating inside look at the workings of a coroner's office.... Temperance Brennan is the real thing. That's because her creator, Kathy Reichs, is the real thing.
New York Newsday

With fast action, a great lead character, impeccable writing, [and] a perfect setting.... Deja Dead is a keeper.
New Orleans Times-Picayune

With this assured and intelligent debut, Reichs introduces herself as a prodigious new talent in the crime game. Someone is murdering and dismembering women in Montreal, and forensic anthropologist Temperance "Tempe" Brennan, a middle-aged North Carolina transplant, is having a tough time convincing the Canadian version of the old boy network that the grizzly slayings are the work of a single killer. Since no one believes her theories, Tempe is left pretty much on her own to track the killer, following a trail that leads through demimondes of prostitution, religion and animal research. When a spreadsheet listing past victims and including Tempe's name is discovered in the home of a suspect, even the dyspeptic Constable Claudel is forced to admit that Tempe might be on the right track. Reichs handles the tension between Tempe and the men deftly, allowing the reader to despise their unfair treatment of her while understanding that an expert in such a field can be intimidating. A master of nimble phrasing, Reichs herself entertains readers even as she educates them in some of the finer points of forensics. Tempe is as comfortable negotiating the meaner streets of Montreal as she is talking about the myriad types of saws available to those with a penchant for dismembering their fellow human beings. The final confrontation scene is as gripping as anything in recent suspense fiction, and it is impossible not to like the vulnerable, observant and competent Tempe, who refreshingly admits to never having "gotten used to" the maggots that abandon corpses on the cutting table: "the seething blanket of pale yellow...dropping from the body to the table to the floor, in a slow but steady drizzle." FYI: Reichs, like her heroine, is a forensic anthropologist in North Carolina and Canada, and a professor.
Publishers Weekly

A superb new writer introduces her intrepid heroine to crime fiction. Dr. Tempe Brennan, a trowel-packing forensic anthropologist from North Carolina, works in Montreal's Laboratoire de Medecine Legale examining recovered bodies to help police solve missing-persons cases and murders. It's clear to Tempe that the remains of several women killed and savagely mutilated point to a sadistic serial killer, but she can't convince the police. Determined to prevent more brutal deaths, she sleuths solo, tracking her quarry through Montreal's seedy underworld of hookers, where her anthropologist friend Gabby, doing her own scary research, is being stalked by a creep. Despite her ability to work among fetid, putrefying smells that "leap out and grab" and her "go-to-hell attitude" with seasoned cops, Tempe is as vulnerable as a soft Carolina morning. When a grinning skull is planted in her garden, her investigation turns personal and escalates to an intense and satisfying conclusion. Except for imparting an excess of lab information, Reichs, also a forensic anthropologist, drives the pace at a heady clip. A first-class writer, she dazzles readers with sensory imagery that is apt, fresh, and funny (e.g., "fingers felt cold and limp, like carrots kept too long in a cooler bin").
Library Journal

Dr. Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist transplanted from North Carolina to Montreal, hopes the bones found at Le Grand Séminaire are too ancient to fall within her purview. No such luck. Not only has Isabelle Gagnon been recently and horribly killed, but Tempe's memory of another grisly discovery in a bunch of trash bags marks this death as the work of a sadistic serial killer who's far from finished. To catch this monster, Tempe and her colleagues at the Laboratoire de Medicine Legale take a long look at several sets of teeth, compare the traces left on human bone by different kinds of saws, and consider exactly what it means to find a bathroom plunger, or a statue of the Virgin Mary, inside a rotting rib cage. As a break from her exhaustive lab sessions, Tempe spars with Sgt. Luc Claudel, the homicide cop who has a problem with interfering women, and hangs out with her grad school friend Gabby Macaulay, whose study of the mating habits of prostitutes is bound to be more closely connected to Tempe's case than she realizes. Tempe is an appealing new heroine, and the forensic detail is gripping, but because Reichs—whose resume sounds a lot like her heroine's—lacks the whiplash control of Patricia Cornwell at her best, the story seems overlong, over peopled (more lifeless walk-ons than the phone book), and overwrought. (The hysterical scenes between Tempe and Gabby, who keeps babbling about the unspeakable secrets she just can't share with her old friend, are especially annoying.) But readers ravenous for ghoulish detail and hints of unfathomable evil, spruced up by the modishly effective Quebec setting, will gobble this first course greedily and expect better-balanced nutrition next time.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Deja Death:

1. Talk about Temperance Brennan. What kind of character is she? Which of her personality traits do you admire...or dislike? Does Reichs do a good job of fleshing (pun?) her out?

2. How has Tempe's struggle with alcohol affected her life and career? How does she cope with her addiction? What are the demons she has to face? Has Reichs painted a realistic picture of a recovering alcoholic? Does this dark side of Tempe add to...or detract from...the plot?

3. What is a forensic anthropologist? In what ways is it different from a forensic pathologist?

4. What convinces Tempe that the five murdered women are connected? Why don't her colleagues buy her theory? Consider the differences between intuitive vs. empirical approaches to solving crimes?

5. Does Claudel have a legitimate reason to dislike Tempe? Is it fair of Tempe to overstep the boundaries of her job (putting herself—and her daughter—in jeopardy in doing so)? Or is she right in following up her hunches when the detectives dismiss her theories?

6. How does Reich depict the difficulties Tempe faces as a female in two professions ( homicide work and forensics medicine) typically dominated by men?

7. Do the lengthy technical descriptions of Tempe's work enhance the novel...or do you find them distracting, off-putting, or overly detailed? (Opinions only...no one point of view is right.)

8. What about the secondary characters: Gabby; Detective Ryan; Tempe's daughter Katy? Talk about each one in turn ... and the role each plays in the story?

9. Were you thrown off track by the red-herring Reichs put in your way—the connection between Gabby's work on prostitution and the Tempe's search for the serial killer?

10. Does this mystery thriller deliver in terms of suspense and surprise? Or is it the storyline and the ending predictable?

11. Kathy Reich has been compared to Patricia Cornwell and her heroine, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. If you've read Cornwell's books, how do the two writers (and their heroines) compare? Do you plan on reading other installments in Reich's series?

12. Have you watched any of the TV episodes of Bones, which are based on Reich's books? How does the series stack up to the book (or books)?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West
Hampton Sides, 2006
Knopf Doubleday
624 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400031108


Summary
In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

In Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation.

Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio 
• Birth—1962 
• Where—Memphis, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—PEN-USA for Nonfiction
• Currently—Santa Fe, New Mexico

Hampton Sides is an American historian and journalist. He is the author of Hellhound on His Trail, Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, and other bestselling works of narrative history and literary non-fiction.

Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine and has written for such periodicals as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Men's Journal, and the Washington Post. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing.

Ghost Soldiers (2001), a World War II narrative about the rescue of Bataan Death March survivors, has sold slightly over a million copies worldwide and has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. Esquire called the book "the greatest World War II story never told." The book was the subject of documentaries on PBS and The History Channel, and was the basis for the 2005 Miramax film, The Great Raid. Ghost Soldiers won the 2002 PEN USA Award for non-fiction. The book's success led Sides to create The Ghost Soldiers Endowment Fund, a non-profit foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of the sacrifices made by Bataan and Corregidor veterans by funding relevant archives, museums, and memorials.

Sides' Blood and Thunder (2006) focuses on the life and times of controversial frontiersman Kit Carson, and his role in the conquest of the American West. A critic for the Los Angeles Times described Blood and Thunder as "stunning, haunting, and lyrical," while the Washington Post called it "riveting, monumental...authoritative and masterfully told." Blood and Thunder was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2006 by Time magazine, and was the subject of a major documentary on the PBS program American Experience.

Hellhound on His Trail (2010) is about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the largest manhunt in American history to capture James Earl Ray, who pled guilty in 1969 and served the rest of his life in prison. Sides, who is a native of Memphis, is the first historian to make use of a new digital archive in Memphis, called the B. Venson Hughes Collection, which contains more than 20,000 documents and photos, many of them rare or never before published. Sides’ research forms much of the basis for PBS’s documentary "Roads to Memphis" which originally aired May 3, 2010, on the award-winning program, American Experience.

Sides has appeared as a guest on such national broadcasts as American Experience, the Today Show, Book TV, History Channel, NPR's Fresh Air, CNN, CBS Sunday Morning, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Colbert Report, Imus in the Morning, and NPR's All Things Considered.

A native of Memphis with a BA in history from Yale, Sides lives in Santa Fe with his wife Anne Goodwin Sides, a journalist and former NPR editor. They have three sons. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
Like a Cinemascope western, Blood and Thunder abounds in colorful characters, bristles with incident and ravishes the eye with long, lingering pan shots of the great Southwest…as the title suggests, [it] resounds with war whoops, rifle fire and hoofbeats. Many scalps are taken, by both sides, and Carson dies on cue, with a jaunty farewell on his lips. In other words, the story always moves. In this case, that may be enough.
William Grimes - New York Times

The truth of history is often fickle and difficult to determine, and Sides demonstrates his awareness of this with a riveting narrative focus. Like the authors of many other recent works of popular history, Sides dispenses with footnotes but offers an exhaustive bibliography that underscores the scope of this monumental undertaking. Not only does Blood and Thunder capture a pivotal moment in U.S. history in marvelous detail, it is also authoritative and masterfully told.
Jeffrey Lent - Washington Post

Although delivering little in the way of new information, Sides, an Outside magazine editor-at-large and bestselling author (Ghost Soldiers), eloquently paints the landscape and history of the 19th-century Southwest, combining Larry McMurtry's lyricism with the historian's attachment to facts. Inevitably, Sides's main focus is the virtual decimation of the Navajo nation from the 1820s to the late 1860s. Sides depicts the complex role of whites in the subjugation of the Navajos through his portrait of Kit Carson an illiterate trapper, soldier and scout who knew the Native Americans intimately, married two of them and, without blinking, participated in the Indians' slaughter. Books about Carson have been numerous, but Sides is better than most Carson biographers in setting his exploits against a larger backdrop: the unstoppable idea of manifest destiny. Of course, as counterpoint to the progress of Carson and other whites, Sides details the fierce but doomed defense mounted by the Navajos over long decades. This culminated in their final, desperate "stand" during 1863 at Canyon de Chelly, more than a decade after a contingent of federal troops operating under a commander whose last name of "Washington" seems ironic in this context killed their great leader, Narbona.
Publishers Weekly

Two related but not interdependent epic themes run through this book: the wresting of the Southwest and California away from Mexico to make them a part of the United States and efforts by the Navajo to protect their territory from inroads by Mexico and the United States. Outside magazine editor Sides (Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission) does not give readers much guidance as to which is the principal theme or what his exact intent is here. It appears that he began with the Navajo resistance and kept adding interesting stories as he came upon them, without considering how they related to the dual theme. But he does know how to tell a good story, drawing on a wide variety of published sources. Academic libraries already have analytical works that cover all these topics. However, little has been written for the general reader on either theme, so this book fills that gap and will be useful for public libraries. —Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette
Library Journal

Kit Carson versus the Indians-and everyone against everyone else in the Hobbesian world of the newly conquered American West. Whereas Bernard De Voto, Wallace Stegner and latter-day historian David Roberts were and are concerned with the ideas and social trends behind historical facts, this author's chronicle mostly blends just-so stories with human-interest sketches: Americans stream west into Spanish-speaking lands as James Polk ("possibly the most effective president in American history-and likely the least corrupt") urges them to empire; the Navajo people, a case study in the terrible collision of nations, fight well even though they are culturally indisposed to draw blood; and few in the war between Mexico and the United States are inclined to play by the rules, leading to such little-sung moments as the Battle of San Pasqual, which should make no gringo jingoist proud. Sides (Ghost Soldiers, 2001, etc.) has studied the historical literature diligently and turned up some engrossing tales, from the fate of mountain man Bill Williams to the exploration of the Great Basin to the circumstances of Carson's first marriage; if the details of native customs and the wealth of future senators are sometimes repetitive, his attention to what motivates people to act is refreshing, and Sides has a fine way of complicating his heroes and villains so that they emerge as flawed humans rather than misty figures of legend. And the flaws are endless, as with one fellow, for whom more than a few points on the map are named, who writes back to Washington following the death of a Navajo leader, "I very much regret that I had not procured Narbona's cranium, as I think he had the finest head I ever saw on an Indian."Popular history in the Alvin Josephy vein. Sides works material well-known to historians, but less so to general readers, into an unchallenging but informative narrative.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
1. Were you familiar with the Navajo wars before reading Blood and Thunder? How do the book’s historical details compare with what you previously believed about the West?

2. The contradictions in Kit Carson’s personality make him an alluring figure. How was Carson able to embrace so many aspects of Native American culture, even marrying two Indian women, but nonetheless lead campaigns that crippled them? To whom (or what) was he most loyal?

3. What was John Fremont’s essential quest in exploring the West? What spurs all explorers to pursue risky journeys?

4. What do the biographical details in chapter six indicate about James K. Polk? What might have stoked his determination to claim the West? How did he manage to keep military leaders motivated, despite Polk’s ambiguous leadership style?

5. Is American literature’s love of the “noble savage,” inspired by characters such as Fremont and his pathfinder Carson (chapter nine), a thing of the past? Who are the heroes in new fiction of the twenty-first century?

6. How did the post-colonial unrest in Mexico affect U.S. attempts to purchase and conquer the West? What racial hierarchies were in place among Hispanic and Indian populations there? What is the current legacy of these conflicts?

7. Is the underlying concept of Manifest Destiny still used to justify violence around the world? What did Carson’s words and actions reveal about his understanding of divine will?

8. What does Carson’s illiteracy, paired with his knowledge of numerous languages, say about him? What distinguishes the power of the written word from the power of the spoken word,as evidenced by Carson’s enthusiasm for an epic poem by Lord Byron? Is a society truly literate if its members are not versed in more than one language?

9. Did the Texas Confederates believe they were different from (or even superior to) the Confederates fighting closer to the Mason-Dixon line? What were the stakes for both sides as the Civil War played out in the West? How did the reasons for this war compare to the reasons behind Native American warfare and raids (such as the Comanche raids on dwindling Pecos resources at the end of chapter seventeen)?

10. Why was Carson able to scorn generalizations and see Native Americans as individuals? What made him resistant to the hubris of men like General Carleton? How would you have responded if you had been a witness to both the death of Navajo chief Narbona (which closes chapter thirty-two) and the brutalization of Ann White (depicted in chapter thirty-five)?

11. In what way was the landscape a “warrior” in Blood and Thunder (as in the Washington Expedition’s encounter with Canyon de Chelly, depicted in chapter thirty-four)? How have various populations perceived the landscape of the West, from ancient populations to modern-day tourists?

12. Discuss the promises that were made to Mexicans and Indians by Americans such as General Kearny. Why did so many of the treaties and pacifist proclamations prove to be hollow? How was this lack of concern for credibility justified?

13. What did Carson seek in a wife? What prevented him from being more involved in the lives of his children? Did his first child, Adaline, fare better or worse than his other children, who were raised with less structure?

14. How did you react to the scorched-earth tactics that forced the Navajos to begin their doomed migration? How would you categorize these tactics of war? Why has the Navajos’ Long Walk, until now, been less well-known than the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears?

15. The book’s title is derived from the rousing “blood-and-thunder” pulp novels that made Kit Carson a caricature. Were fictionalized versions of his life harmful? Is exaggerated storytelling a necessary component of most cultures? Why have some Native Americans rejected historical and linguistic evidence for their global migrations, preferring to maintain dramatic myths instead?

16. Why did Kit Carson die in poverty? What does it say about Carson that his estate comprised considerable debt–owed to him by others? What are the appropriate means of measuring a life’s accomplishments?

17. What was the ultimate fallout of the history contained in Blood and Thunder? Where do Indian and American identities now stand in response to each other?

18. How would Kit Carson advise contemporary America on diplomacy and fighting terrorism? How did he balance the need to win allies with the need to be perceived as a fearsome warrior?

19. How did Kit Carson’s ideas about American Indians evolve over the course of his life?

20. Do Americans still have an emotional investment in believing that the “winning” of the West was a glorious, even heroic endeavor? How does the real story of Western conquest differ from the one we were taught in grade school?

21. During its first war of foreign aggression, the United States seized many thousands of square miles of territory from Mexico. How should this historical fact shape the current debate over Mexican immigration–especially considering that the states most keenly affected by the immigration controversy (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) are the very states the United States appropriated from Mexico?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Just Too Good to Be True
E. Lynne Harris, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385492737

Summary
Brady Bledsoe and his mother, Carmyn, have a strong relationship. A single mother, faithful churchgoer, and owner of several successful Atlanta beauty salons, Carmyn has devoted herself to her son and his dream of becoming a professional football player. Brady has always followed her lead, including becoming a member of the church's “Celibacy Circle.” Now in his senior year at college, the smart, and very handsome, Brady is a lead contender for the Heisman Trophy and a spot in the NFL. As sports agents hover around Brady, Barrett, a beautiful and charming cheerleader, sets her mind on tempting the celibate Brady and getting a piece of his multimillion-dollar future—but is that all she wants from him, and is she acting alone?

Carmyn is determined to protect her son. She’s also determined to protect the secret she’s kept from Brady his whole life. As things heat up on campus and Carmyn and Brady’s idyllic relationship starts to crumble, mother and son begin to wonder about the other—are you just too good to be true?

A sweeping novel about mothers and sons, football and beauty shops, secrets and lies, Just Too Good to be True has all the ingredients that have made E. Lynn Harris a bestselling author: family, friendship, faith, and love.

The beloved bestselling author of Any Way the Wind Blows returns with this bold, irresistible novel of football, family, and secrets. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—June 20, 1955
• Reared—in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
• Died—July 23, 2009
• Where—Los Angeles, California
• Education—B.A., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
• Awards—James L. Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence

Jackie Collins has kept the literary romance world well stocked with claws-out, upper-crust melodramas. But until E. Lynn Harris came along, the genre lacked a little...diversity. Harris brought diversity and then some, with his now-trademark “buppie” characters, questions about sexuality, and hopelessly (but deliciously) complicated relationships.

Written from both male and female points of view and featuring recurring characters, Harris’s books can be read as a veritable soap opera. The cycle begins with Invisible Life, the story of Raymond Winston Tyler Jr.— a character Harris has acknowledged bears many similarities to himself. Raymond grapples with his sexuality, developing a relationship with a man he meets in law school and jeopardizing one with his girlfriend. His coming-of-age continues over the next two novels in the trilogy, Just As I Am and Abide with Me, as he struggles with losses of friends to AIDS, the ending of a relationship with an actress, and the beginning of a new one with a man.

Another recurring Harris character, Basil Henderson, is the man readers love to hate. An arrogant, badass football player-turned-sports agent, Basil beds both women and men until he meets up with his female (and later, male) counterparts. His story is mainly told in Not a Day Goes By and Any Way the Wind Blows.

It's true that in the Basil Henderson books, Harris is taking a saucy cue or two from his female romance novel predecessors; but the author claims to be more heavily influenced by writers such as Maya Angelou and Terry McMillan, and it would be misleading to pigeonhole his books as purely guilty pleasures. Particularly in his earlier books, Harris brought to a mainstream readership the issues that many gay and bisexual men face, and added a new voice to the portrayal of black, upwardly mobile characters. And in books such as If This World Were Mine and the young adult novel Diaries of a Light-Skinned Colored Boy, he has addressed issues of race and self-realization.

Given his themes, it may seem surprising that the majority of Harris's readers are straight women; but it's also a testament to his ability to write about love and self-discovery with humor, not to mention a little steaminess.

Extras
• Harris worked as a salesman for IBM, and earned a following by self-publishing Invisible Life before getting a book deal.

• He was tapped to write the screenplay for an update of the 1976 movie Sparkle, to be produced by Whitney Houston's production company. But with the death of Aaliyah, who was attached to star, the project's future is uncertain. (From Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
[Harris] tucks in plot twists bound to keep his readers turning pages late at night.
Washington Post

The storyline involving the exploitation of star athletes—a hot-button topic to be sure—is excellent.
Chicago Sun-Times

What's got audiences hooked? Harris's unique spin on the ever-fascinating topics of identity, class, intimacy, sexuality, and friendship.
Vibe

Harris has stimulated a dialogue within the African-American community desperately needed for so long about the complicated issues of sexuality.
Southern Voice

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Just Too Good to Be True: 

1. Is Brady...well, just too good to be true? In other words, does Harris paint him as a realistic character? Is he fully developed, flaws and all, as a human being?

2. How about Barrett's character? What are her motivations? Has Harris portrayed her as a stereotypical vamp? Or has he given her more depth than is first apparent? Do we come to see something more human beneath her shallow exterior by the end of the book?

3. Carmyn and her secret: what does Harris seem to be suggesting about secrets—their ability to corrode the soul or compromise relationships based on love and truthfulness.

4. Usually people don't reveal secrets out of shame...is that a plausiable explanation for Carmyn's deception? How do you feel about Brady's reaction to his mother when the truth is revealed? Can...should forgiveness trump deception?

5. Harris explores issues surrounding the exploitation of young African-American athletes. What pressures are young players subjected to? Do you find that world unscrupulous?

6. A couple of storylines seemed to have been dropped. What happened to Naomi and the baby? Or Brady's best friend and mother? Were you annoyed that their stoylines were never concluded?

7. Then there's May Jean—and especially that email message. Funny?

8. Was the ending predictable? Or were you pleasantly surprised by how events were resolved?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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