Mary Yukari Waters' novel "The Favorites" brings to mind the Japanese notion of ma, which refers to negative space – the gap between objects, the silence between events. In the book's maze of family secrets, what is left unsaid often weighs more...
Just about a decade ago, Valerie Wolzien, who was then a housewife, began composing her first mystery novel on a warped old card table in her basement. All her subsequent whodunits pay implicit tribute to that hard-won apprenticeship: Each of...
Stealing things from people who had upset her was something Polly did quite a lot. There was her Aunt Pauline; a girl at school; a boyfriend who left her; and there was the man on the plane…Humiliated and scared, by a total stranger, Polly does...