Kathleen Marple Kalb's Blog, page 2

MY LADY AT HOME

You may be at home in the afternoon, but you’ve probably never been “at-home.”
Unless you happen to be a Victorian or Edwardian matron, in which case, I need to buy you a cup of tea right now!
The “at-home” was the fullest expression of society matrons showing off for each other. Ladies would be at-home to visitors on a weekday afternoon, offering their peers, or would-be peers, with a few light treats, not to be mistaken for a tea, and exchange twenty minutes or so of light conversation.
It’s as ritualized as it sounds.
Each matron would carefully choose her time, to prevent or instigate conflicts with other matrons, and callers would time their visits for maximum social value. Some might not even visit at all, but leave a card. Cards, and the folding and leaving thereof, are an entire ecosystem of their own, requiring a separate post, and a fair amount of headache medication!
Holding an at-home was the society matron’s high-wire act.
She was putting herself out there on the line for everyone to judge her home, her clothes, her hospitality, and her social standing. It’s not a rookie event. To be able to carry it off, she needed a suitable home, suitably decorated, know which refreshments to offer and how much of them, and how to present herself appropriately.
This is the big leagues. A single mistake or one unsuitable item, could raise a question about one’s status, or destroy it entirely.
All of this is in the room when the new Duchess of Leith, a lady you may know as Ella Shane, holds her first at-home a third of the way through A FATAL WALTZ. With the help of her mother-in-law, dresser, and staff, she’s ready.
But she also has an entirely unaccustomed case of what we would recognize as impostor syndrome.
A bit later in the story, one of her visitors from the at-home, Knickerbocker matron Aunt Cecily, gives her the cure: Act as if the chair is there.
You see, says Aunt Cecily, Queen Victoria and Empress Eugenie were at the opera, and it was time to sit. Eugenie looked for the chair. Victoria, born royal, knew it would be there…or else.
So, if you can always act as if the chair is there, no one will ever suspect otherwise.
It’s good advice at-home…and outside, as well!

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WHEN THE PRINCE CAME TO TOWN

We may have fought a war to get away from George III, but Americans have become awfully fond of his descendants, and that’s largely thanks to Queen Victoria and her family. Victoria’s reign, from ingenue queen to model wife and mother to regal matriarch, changed the way Britons thought about the Royals – and it had the same effect across the pond.
By the mid-19th century, the British Royal family was giving a very relatable middle-class vibe, a complete turnaround from Georgian debauchery. The royals were a lot like us, they were starting to think, just with the extra fairy dust of titles and such.
The newspapers and magazines of the time took great interest in the royal family, following their activities in the deep-dive detail we would recognize in modern royal coverage. From Christmas trees to holiday retreats to bonnets, Victoria, Albert, and their nine children were a consistent draw.
So, when Victoria sent her eldest son on a goodwill trip to North America in 1860, it was a sensation. The first full-scale Royal tour outside the British Isles, it was an enormous undertaking, pushing the limits of travel at the time, from the July day the Prince’s ship left Plymouth England, through much of Canada and the northern U.S. until he finally returned in November.
The trip pushed the limits of the star attraction, too. Eighteen-year-old Albert, Prince of Wales, known in the family as Bertie, may have been the heir to the throne, but he had grown up as anything but the favored son. His older sister, Victoria, Princess Royal, was book-smart, charming, and their father’s favorite, leaving him very much in the shade as the family ne’er do well.
Since the Crimean War, Canadian leaders had been urging the Queen to visit, and failing that, one of her sons. Finally, when Bertie was eighteen, her advisors prevailed upon the Queen to send him. He had a long, packed itinerary, starting in Newfoundland and moving west through Canada. It was September by the time he took the ferry from Windsor to Detroit, heading east, drawing huge, cheering crowds everywhere he went, from Chicago to St. Louis to Pittsburgh and ultimately to Washington D.C.
Along the way, the young prince showed he was more than up to the task, showing gracious royal demeanor as he toured sites, greeted dignitaries, and performed the countless social obligations imposed on him. He also showed some strength of character in the one notable controversy of the trip: he flatly refused to take a side trip to a plantation in the South.
In October, toward the end of the tour, came one of the highlights: several days in New York, including a grand ball at the Academy of Music. From cheering crowds to twittering society matrons, most of the City was delighted to welcome him. An Irish-American regiment boycotted his parade, which makes perfect sense, considering many if not most Irish-Americans at the time would have had a first-degree connection to the Great Hunger.
The New York stop, and what might have happened during it, are the central mystery in A FATAL WALTZ. Ella Shane’s new husband, the Duke, is doing “a favor for a friend,” forty years later, trying to determine if the Prince might have had an entanglement with a young lady he danced with at the Academy of Music Ball (the waltz of the title!) – and what might have come of it. No spoilers, but the matter could threaten the succession to the British Throne, and some people will do anything to keep those secrets in the past. The Duke, and eventually Ella, will have their hands full!

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ROCK THAT BONNET!

Whatever spring holiday you’re observing (if any!), they mean different things to different people. But there’s one thing New Yorkers can agree on: Easter also means the Parade on Fifth Avenue.
No one seems to have an exact date for the first time some fashionable lady New Yorkers put on pretty hats and went for a promenade outside their church, but it apparently grew out of an earlier tradition. Many of the biggest and most socially prominent churches in town would put up extravagant floral decorations for Easter, and eventually, folks would walk from their own building to the next, to see what the other faithful had done.
It’s only a short step (sorry!) from there to an official promenade.
By the 1890s, it wasn’t just for fun or showing off. It was a big economic engine for the City’s fashion industry too. Even as the ladies strolled through the finer areas of town, department stores, milliners and more would show off their nicest spring wares.
If you’re getting a Fashion Week vibe, I won’t argue!
In the early 19th century, Easter was primarily a religious holiday, marked with joyful – but relatively quiet – family and church celebrations. But with the help of the New York Easter Parade and similar events, it became a key date on the shopping calendar, as the point where everyone wanted to show off their spring fashions. Shopkeepers and the new, growing department stores were more than happy to oblige.
While we associate the Irving Berlin song with the event, it was very much a late add: the song was part of a 1933 Broadway revue, and was later used in the famous scene in the movie Meet Me in Saint Louis featuring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. If you’ve seen the film, it’s no accident that they’re wearing 1890s clothes; yes, the film is set in that time period, but that never stopped a Hollywood costumer who wanted to make a point. The Easter Parade outfits are a deliberate celebration of the event’s heyday.
Even today, the parade is very similar to the earlier versions. It’s not an organized march like many other New York celebrations, but rather just a chance for people to put on their goofy hats and wander around on Fifth Avenue, which is closed near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. For a lot of New Yorkers, it’s just fun to come out and watch the scene.
Of course, during the pandemic, no one was coming out for any scene. The Easter Parade, like so many other big New York traditions, moved online, and the virtual festivities kept the party going until it was safe to return.
As for Ella Shane, even though she’s a proud New Yorker, and generally throws herself into every City celebration with glee, she’s probably not going to be found wandering down Fifth Avenue in a fancy bonnet. She and her cousin Tommy might well go out to have a look – and Ella would definitely enjoy seeing all the new fashions for spring. But Ella gets quite enough attention onstage, and has no need to seek out any more.
Besides, her reporter friend Hetty MacNaughten would never forgive her for celebrating hats!

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FOR APRIL SHOWERS

Umbrellas have been around pretty much as long as humans have been able to grab a big leaf and try to keep the rain off their heads. We know they had them in Ancient Egypt and China, and you can see them popping up in art through the ages. By the late 19th century, though, umbrellas and parasols were classic lady’s accessories, with all kinds of interesting resonance.
It’s not surprising that the parasol, particularly, became a status symbol. Elaborate sun or rain shades were the prerogative of all kinds of very important people in the ancient world and other cultures, too. Priests, royals, viziers and more all had a shade and somebody to carry it for them.
What’s intriguing about our Victorian lady’s parasol is that she’s carrying it…and that she looks so good and determined doing it. Fashion plates and illustrations from the time show just about every outdoor costume accompanied by its own matching parasol, which would have been quite an investment in money and effort. Not only that, they show women holding those parasols in very strong and confident poses…especially striding forward, using the parasol almost as a fancy walking-stick.
That’s especially interesting because those fashion drawings were intended for women; they’re sending a clear message about how a woman is supposed to look, and feel, in her outfit. It’s very much the New Woman idea; she’s an independent lady walking through her day and carrying her own parasol, thank you!
Still, though, parasol also lends itself to more demure scenes, and there’s plenty of that too: a miss shyly shielding herself from prying eyes, or peering flirtatiously out from the safety of her shade. Of course, we now know the safety was quite literal: the parasol was the only way you had to protect yourself from a burn in an era before effective sunscreens. Practicality, though, wasn’t the issue for a lot of illustrators; a pretty woman appearing both shy and interested was.
Umbrellas have their own whole set of considerations. Women in the fashion illustrations are very clearly carrying parasols – the items are much too small to be intended as protection against the rain. Umbrellas aren’t really fun and feminine the way a parasol is. Made of sturdy oiled cloth rather than frilly light fabrics, they’re determinedly functional.
Fun isn’t really a consideration with an umbrella, at least not if you’re just trying to walk to work without getting drenched. Unlike parasols, umbrellas usually appear in very practical scenes, ads touting the virtues of a particular model, or as part of a larger display of rain gear. There’s nothing especially flirty about fighting the wind to keep your umbrella right-side-out.
Well, with one notable exception. A gentleman could, in perfect propriety, offer to share his umbrella with a lady on a wet day. Of course, sharing an umbrella requires one to be far closer to her swain than the usual walking arm-in-arm, and pulls the couple into what is essentially a closed space. There’s a reason umbrella scenes were popular in books, and later movies, for so long. You’ve got a perfectly legitimate reason for your romantic leads to be in close quarters with nowhere for all of that chemistry to go. Something’s going to happen!
Now that you mention it, I guess I’m going to have to find a way to send some characters out on a rainy day!

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LOVE ME, LOVE MY SQUIRREL

If you think about squirrels and pets in the same sentence, you’re probably trying to stop your dog from chasing one. For centuries, though, squirrels were beloved
pets, companions to Colonial children, models for early photographers, and even serving as First Pet – twice! Even more interesting, they’re wild animals now because of a very deliberate effort about a century-and-a-half ago.
Squirrels were fashionable pets at least as far back as the medieval period, when folks in Europe kept native red squirrels as lap animals…and also used their pelts for trim on clothing. It’s probably as nasty as it sounds, but the unfortunate pets turned decoration apparently had their revenge: red squirrels carried and shared leprosy bacteria.
When people arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they soon started keeping the native gray squirrels. They were cute, sometimes cuddly, and people enjoyed watching the buzz around. Initially, they were a status pet, shown in portraits of upper-class children, and sometimes grownups. Unlike cats to kill vermin or dogs to herd livestock or hunt birds, a squirrel was a pet only for companionship and pleasure. A real status symbol.
By the 1800s, squirrels had worked their way down the social strata a bit to become a popular pet for middle class children. Advice books explained how to select the right young squirrel and care for it. People preferred baby squirrels because they had a better chance of raising them to be a good companion instead of a tiny household terror. That, though, led to people just climbing up into squirrel nests and absconding with the wee ones.
Along with the advice books went the merch: cages with wheels that would make a modern hamster proud, tiny leashes and harnesses to control and deck out your buddy. From the surviving paintings, prints, and photos, it looks like the animals did not usually wear a collar, and the harness and leash was for outdoor activities. To which anyone who’s been at a park with a dog would say: good luck.
Good luck for the squirrel, I mean. Benjamin Franklin’s famous ode in memory of the squirrel he sent his niece included references to the sharp teeth of “Ranger,” the dog who made short work of poor little Mungo.
Mungo was immortalized by a Founding Father, but he was far from the only famous squirrel. While ordinary pet squirrels were past their heyday by the 20th century, three of the best-known ones brought a last spotlight. Presidents Warren Harding and Harry Truman each had squirrels named Pete (not the same one!) and Elizabeth Taylor, during her tenure as a 1940s child star, was so fond of her pet Nibbles that she – or a studio ghostwriter – wrote a book about him.
By then, though, most people’s idea of a pet wasn’t an uncontrollable ball of fuzz with constantly growing teeth and needle-sharp claws. The realization that squirrels are actually wild animals had gradually taken hold…which helped lead to the next development: squirrels in parks.
At first, escaped or released squirrels were a curiosity when they showed up in parks – a renegade pet captivated New York in 1856. Philadelphia was the first to deliberately set up a squirrel colony in a park, in 1847, but other cities eventually followed suit, with the idea that wild animals are a key part of the newly important shared green space.
Even now, people do sometimes keep squirrels as pets. Many states, though, consider them exotic animals and ban them or impose very strict restrictions. And abandoned babies, or otherwise vulnerable ones are often the purview of wildlife rehabilitators.
But, when there are already many, many cats and dogs in need of homes out there, you’ll do much better to head down to your town animal shelter for a much more congenial companion.

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LOVE AND PROPERTY

“Marriage is a rotten deal for a woman.”
When Ella Shane says this to Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, in a key scene in her first outing, A FATAL FINALE, set in the spring of 1899, she’s not flirting or exaggerating; she’s just stating a simple fact of 19th century life, at least from her point of view.
She’s also giving the main reason it takes her three books, several murders, and a brush with death to decide to marry the Duke. Marriage seems like prison to Ella, an Irish-Jewish Lower East Side orphan who’s clawed out an independent life and career as an opera singer specializing in “trouser,” male soprano, roles.
It was certainly the end of legal freedom for most women at the time.
Even in the late 19th century, when a woman married, she essentially ceased to exist as an independent person. The legal doctrine was called “femme couvert,” literally translated as “covered woman,” meaning the woman’s rights were covered by her husband’s power. You can see how that could lead to all sorts of trouble.
All of a woman’s money and property, not to mention her person – and her children – were (at least legally) under her husband’s control. She could earn money, but he decided how it was spent. She would bear the children and raise them, but they, too, were his property.
Laws were starting to address the idea that married women might inherit or earn property of their own, but on the ground, men still had close to absolute power over their wives.
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, divorce was just barely possible in particularly egregious cases of abuse or financial neglect – and men could ditch an unfaithful wife. But a woman could not expect to take her children with her if she left a bad marriage, even a horrifically abusive one.
In less extreme cases, women just had to put up with the daily knowledge that they weren’t real people in the eyes of the law, with little or none of the power that a man had. A woman could do almost nothing without her husband’s consent – and that didn’t change for decades. There are plenty of women today old enough to remember having to ask their husbands to co-sign on their credit cards.
Women like Ella, single and making a living on her own, were rare in the Victorian era, but not unknown. Often, they lived with parents or family, as Ella does with her cousin Tommy, and often (based on advice writing and fiction of the time) the families vexed about having an independent woman around, and what to do with her.
Until then, a woman alone with money was usually a widow, and people knew how to handle that. She was taking care of her late husband’s estate for the benefit of her children, and needed some legal and social room for the purpose. A single woman? Who knows what she might do?
The one thing she certainly could do, though, is run her own affairs without anything more than advice from a man. Ella is well aware of that, and while she’s glad to have Tommy as friend, protector and manager, she also prizes her independence.
Independence she won’t surrender in a match with any man, never mind a worthy one who is her equal. If a clerk expects his wife to stop working and tend to his home, how much more would a powerful and well-off man expect? The answer, of course, is everything. Women with careers, whether on the stage or elsewhere, generally gave them up when they married.
Ella has no interest in becoming a bird in a gilded cage.
All of this is in the room when the Duke makes his reply to Ella’s comment: “Depends on who’s setting the terms.”
The terms are what makes all the difference, and why Ella and Gil finally married in A FATAL RECEPTION. And they’ll still be working out the terms in the next book – this spring’s A FATAL WALTZ. But that’s a story for another Throwback Thursday!

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LADY KILLERS AND KILLER LADIES

Women who wanted to vote were scary enough for the Victorians, but what about women who kill?
Some people – not all of them clueless males – were unwilling to even admit that such women existed. The very idea that the “Angel in the House” might turn on her charges was more than a significant number of 19th century people could handle.
Even when they could wrap their brains around it, they usually had a very specific idea of the woman killer: a “bad” woman who used poison to achieve some conventionally female goal, like an advantageous marriage, or to benefit her children.
Lady poisoners were definitely a thing. Since women were in charge of feeding, tending, and nursing, the idea that there might be a generous dose of arsenic in that comforting cup of tea was especially unsettling – and especially thrilling to newspaper readers when it actually happened.
People snapped up the extras and pored over every detail, with husbands assuring themselves that it couldn’t possibly happen in their house, and wives remaining diplomatically silent.
A woman poisoning her husband, or someone else who got in her way – maybe even a bunch of someones (there were a few lurid cases of boardinghouse owners disposing of tenants) was still just barely within the Victorian understanding of females. Poison, after all, had been considered a woman’s weapon for centuries.
An ax, not so much.
You knew we were going to get to Lizzie Borden.
A great deal of ink was, is, and will be spilled over whether Miss Borden did indeed chop her father and stepmother to death on that hot August day in 1892. Some modern observers— including me! —are pretty sure she was acquitted because the jurors just couldn’t imagine a nice lady picking up that ax.
Even historians who aren’t willing to go that far will admit that Lizzie got a great big benefit of the doubt from the Victorian ideal of womanhood. Make that reasonable doubt.
And of course, we’re still arguing about whether she did it.
But not, in 2025, about whether she was capable of it.
THAT was the question that led to the acquittal.
It’s also a question the Victorian characters in my historical mysteries spend a lot of time consdering. In A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, diva Ella Shane and her friends sit around the tea table discussing whether a woman on trial for murder did indeed stab her husband 40 times. Their conclusion – entirely in keeping with the time: she could have killed him, but the stabbing seems out of character.
The issue comes up again in A FATAL OVERTURE. This time, a predatory man is found stabbed to death in a bathtub at his parents’ hotel. Ella and her friends have no trouble believing that his demise has something to do with his poaching on young maids at the hotel.
But even Father Michael, though he knows Ella is capable of defending herself against all comers, thinks the culprit is the brother or father of one of the maids. Almost all of our observers make assumptions based on their ideas of what women are, and what they can do…and a big twist proves them very wrong. (That’s the only hint you get!)
By the time Ella and her husband the Duke are looking into a mystery involving the succession to the British Crown in their upcoming adventure, A FATAL WALTZ, they really should have a good idea of what even nice women are capable of doing. And yet…
If there’s one thing we can agree on in Women’s History Month – and hopefully the rest of the year, it’s that it is a very bad idea to underestimate a woman.

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TOUGH MOTHERS

Fight like a mother.
You’ve probably seen the t-shirts – and may even own one. (Mine says “Tough Like A Mother.”)
The idea of the feisty mama fighting for her family wasn’t even a gleam in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s eye in the 19th century…but even then, a mother was allowed to do otherwise unacceptable things to protect her children.
In a time when women and children were the legal property of their men, there was only one scenario when a woman was allowed – and sometimes even encouraged – to exercise real economic or social power: as a widowed mother. As the protector of her children, a woman might be allowed to run her, and their, affairs in ways that she would never be permitted to when a man was around.
Not that she wasn’t still on a leash. Usually, there was some male relative floating around to “watch over” mom, because she was still a woman, after all.
Even so, motherhood was one of the few areas where a 19th century woman got the benefit of the doubt. She was assumed to be acting in the interests of her children, unless she proved herself to be an “unnatural mother” in some way, which usually required a good bit of effort.
Motherhood didn’t just confer economic strength, either.
Sometimes it meant superhuman strength in a more literal way.
Women were allowed to step away from the hearth for a bit and protect their children more directly if there was a serious threat. Sensational, and much enjoyed, stories of brave pioneer women who scared off grizzly bears, colonial goodwives who saved their crops from the Redcoats, or just a lady who pulled her toddler out of the path of a runaway grocery wagon, were all a far cry from the Angel in the House.
But they all ended the same way. Mama plays the heroine and wards off the threat…and then hugs her cherubs, picks up her embroidery and returns to her spot by the fire. People – especially male people – were just barely comfortable with the idea that a woman might occasionally have to do something un-womanly in the defense of her family…but not with the idea that she would make a regular thing of it.
They didn’t call her the Avenging Angel in the House, after all!
No, they called her “Mother, Queen of Home.” That’s a real 19th century song, with a hearts-and-flowers picture of a lovely woman cuddling an infant and more adorable (clean and non-cranky, too!) children clustering adoringly about her. The Queen of Home might take up arms to defend her castle, but no one’s going to talk about that unless they have to!
Still, women were very well aware of who and what they were; more than a few referred to themselves as lionesses defending their cubs when they had to take some action on their children’s behalf. But they also knew that they’d have a much better chance of ensuring happy lives for themselves – and their children – by playing the Queen of Home right up to the moment the lioness had to take over.
Tough like a mother, indeed!

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WELL BEHAVED WOMEN

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
You’ve probably seen or heard the Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote at least once – with or without proper credit – and you may even have a mug or t-shirt with the words emblazoned on it. I know I do: it’s the shirt I wear when I need a little extra steel in my spine.
But do you know where it comes from?
I’ll never forget where I was when I read it for the first time: a college freshman, I’d talked my way into a course on women’s history in early colonial New England, and we were reading Ulrich’s classic GOOD WIVES. I’d been devouring the stories of real women who were worlds away from the granite Puritans I expected, when the author moved into a discussion of some of the ways women could run afoul of the law or the church, which were essentially the same thing.
Getting into trouble, you see, was one of the very few ways a woman’s name would come down to us as more than a birth, marriage or death record.
Remember, women were essentially the legal property of their father or husband in most cases. The only woman who might have some limited public agency of her own was a widow, or a wife running her husband’s business under his name and with his approval. So you just didn’t see many females in the record. Church and court archives are a very big source for historians in premodern times, especially before the era of wide literacy, because most folks weren’t keeping diaries – never mind documenting their daily on Insta.
So in one sense, it’s a simple and perfect statement of fact. Well-behaved women, those who don’t break or challenge the rules, but stay home and raise their families without getting into any kind of trouble, aren’t going to show up in the record. They don’t make history.
But of course, it’s also an incredibly memorable line, and female empowerment at its finest. Even I knew that, as a clueless late-adolescent.
Ulrich knew it too. She originally wrote it in a 1976 journal article on Puritan funeral customs, and used it again later in that book I read in college. Eventually, she got the questionable pleasure of seeing her words attributed to everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Eleanor Roosevelt. It got so weird that in 2007, she actually wrote a book about the quote, and real, not always well-behaved, women who made history.
Which brings us to another truth: it’s really all about the line.
You can propose the perfect academic thesis, lay out years of elaborate research, and write reams of copy about your very important findings…but if you don’t describe it in a memorable way, it won’t get much attention. My newsroom colleagues say: It doesn’t matter how important it is, if it’s not interesting, nobody cares.
So credit also goes to Professor Ulrich for nailing the line.
Which brings us to one last thing. Credit. As a journalist, and now an author, myself, I’m a little finicky about this one. If you’re going to use someone’s work, you credit them. So the next time somebody admires your “Well-Behaved Women” shirt, mug, or bumper sticker, make sure you tell them who said it first. Thank you, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich!

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BEYOND BLACK HISTORY MONTH

If Black History Month has piqued your interest in reading books about and by African-American authors, there’s plenty of great work to enjoy. And plenty of folks who are ready to steer you to good reads.
Many reading sites, bookstores, and organizations are offering reading lists for the month. Start with a site you like, and chances are, you’ll like the reading suggestions too.
For a wide list of intriguing titles from the past year or so, you can’t do much better than Library Journal’s. Split into fiction and non-fiction, it includes everything from thrillers and pop fiction to a new biography of Zora Neale Hurston, thoughts for Black writers – and even poetry.
Speaking of poetry – a shout-out here to one of my favorite working poets, Marcia Lynn Paul. Her collection, WHIRLWIND OF MOSAIC PIECES, is magnificent…and even better, she posts very short poems and haiku on her social media regularly. Follow her to enjoy a daily dose of positivity and creativity.
Readers with an academic bent can check out the Association of Black Women Historians (motto: Forty Years of Truth Telling) at abwh.org. Their “Foundations of a Black History Reading List” points you to dozens of books on all kinds of topics. If you’re interested in Own Voices academic work, this is your starting point.
Of course, there are many, many wonderful Black authors writing in just about every fiction genre you can name, from fun romance romps to important literary work.
Mystery is a particularly rich area for African-American writers, from Walter Mosley’s hard-boiled classics to Esme Addison’s contemporary paranormal cozies, and everything in between. Sisters in Crime takes considerable interest in elevating the work of Black authors as part of its mission to support under-represented crime writers. Frankie Y. Bailey, SinC’s first African-American president, started a list of crime writers from marginalized communities, and it’s now kept as a searchable database at www.sistersincrime.org/FrankiesList. It’s a terrific place to rediscover old favorites or find new ones.
SinC’s quarterly “Read Like a Writer” book club is also focusing on African-American writers right now. The book is Shades of Black, a short-story anthology edited by the late Eleanor Taylor Bland. The club is doing a critical close read of three stories and discussing them in a March 8th event. (You can join and register at www.sistersincrime.org.)
Speaking of Eleanor Taylor Bland, submissions are open now for SinC’s annual award named in her honor. Each year, SinC gives an emerging crime writer of color a $2000 grant – and a major career boost…many winners are now published authors, and more additions for your reading list! See Yasmin Angoe, Mia Manansala and more!
Bottom line: Black History Month may be a short month, but you can come away with a good long reading list. Fill up your TBR, enjoy…and learn a lot, too!

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