Lisa Lieberman's Blog, page 2

Burning Cold is on Sale

Desecrated synagogue in Mád, Hungary. A key scene of Burning Cold is set here.

Cara and Gray venture into Budapest during the 1956 revolution in search of their half-brother Zoltán, the forgotten son of their father’s first marriage. They track him to Mád, a small town in the Tokaj wine region on Hungary’s eastern border, a place I chose simply because of the potential for wordplay. Then I learned the fate of Mád’s once-thriving Jewish community.

Some three hundred men, women, and children were locked in the town’s synagogue when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, deprived of food and water for three days, then herded into cattle cars with the help of the Arrow Cross (Hungarian militia). Most perished in Auschwitz.

–From "Travels with Cara," Mystery Scene magazine


I'm running a promotion with Fussy Librarian this week. You can get the e-book of Burning Cold for .99 through April 21.

Grand Hotel

Garbo got me into the building, but she’s not the reason I stayed. Her tired Russian ballerina falls for the same kind of man she would fall for as a humorless Russian revolutionary in Ninotchka. Can I help it if I found the revolutionary more enchanting?

Read the full review on Deathless Prose.

The Boy with Green Hair

Because we can all use a smile today.

I was prepared to like this film. Really, I was. But I cringed the whole way through, starting with the chorus singing “Nature Boy” over the credits. “Nature Boy” was Nat King Cole’s first hit. Everyone recorded it. There’s even an unforgettable version by Leonard Nimoy. (Just try and forget it. . .)

Read the full review, including song links, on Deathless Prose

The Cimarron Kid

Another Western, you say? But why this one? Even the director, Budd Boetticher, admitted it wasn’t very good. Audie Murphy wasn’t right for the part of the Cimarron Kid.“ He’s sensitive, he’s got taste, and guts.” Presumably those qualities weren’t wanted for Bill Doolin, the character Murphy plays. Doolin comes across as a reluctant outlaw, a crack shot who takes no pleasure in using his weapon and seems pained to be leading a life of crime. Other members of his gang have cool, tough guy nicknames like Bitter Creek and Dynamite Dick. . .

Read the review on Deathless Prose.

An Italian Thanksgiving

You might have thought life as a college professor was challenging enough, teaching history while trying to finish a book, with three small children at home, but my husband and I could never resist an adventure. We’d spent the first year of our married life in England and France, researching our doctoral dissertations in fusty libraries and taking advantage of student travel discounts to see as much of those two countries as we could, but jobs were scarce for academic couples and we ended up stuck in small towns with little hope of escape.

So when I was offered the opportunity to direct a study abroad program in Bologna, Italy, we didn’t hesitate.

Read the rest at Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers. Recipe included!

The Random Factor

Gustave Flaubert was inspired to write Madame Bovary by a brief notice he read in a provincial newspaper: the wife of a public health officer by the name of Delamarre poisoned herself. What in the world could have driven a middle-class woman out in the sticks to take her own life? True, she’d been carrying on an adulterous affair and was deeply in debt, but Flaubert found it incongruous for the wife of a public health officer—not even a doctor!—to harbor self-destructive impulses.



Read the rest here.

NetGalley Promotion

The second Cara Walden mystery will be out September 12. I'm running a NetGalley promotion for the next two months.

Download a free review copy here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...

The Shanghai Gesture

The Shanghai casino run by Mother Gin Sling is like Disneyland for the depraved. “It smells so incredibly evil,” says Gene Tierney, who’s there to do a little slumming. “I didn’t think such a place existed except in my own imagination. . . Anything could happen here.”

Read the rest on Deathless Prose

NetGalley Promotion

The e-book of the first Cara Walden mystery will be released on July 27. I'm doing a promotion on NetGalley RIGHT NOW.

Go there and request your free review copy: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...

Strangers on a Train

I like this poster from Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller, Strangers on a Train, because it highlights the film’s zaniness. Robert Walker’s character is clearly a psychopath. And yet, you can’t help smiling in the scenes where Bruno appears. Like Guy, you’re drawn in, just as Hitch intended.



Read the Review