Southern Arizona authors get personal with new works

“Cold, Colder, Coldest” by G. Davies Jandrey. Cortero. 241 pages. $21.99 paperback; Kindle available.

Tucsonan G. Davies Jandrey adroitly blends three cold cases in this third police procedural featuring Tucson Police Department’s homicide detective, Marie Stransky. One case involves a 14-year-old girl; the second, an elderly, homeless Yaqui woman; the third, that of a man long buried under a concrete slab in an Armory Park backyard. As acting head of the homicide department, Stransky makes assignments. She’s put her old partner, Det. Torrence Stedman, in charge of cold cases. He needs a partner, so — over Stedman’s protests — she assigns to him novice detective Ed Johnson.

That sticky partnership is one of several interpersonal issues Jandrey plays out in the novel. At the forefront are Stransky’s, who, already the mother of four, finds herself pregnant again, much to the irritation of her husband, and, probably, the delight of their too-available, sexy neighbor. There’s the private investigator Coco Labatt, who previously saved Stransky’s bacon, struggling to pass one final physical test in the police academy. And these coalesce when Stransky and her family become targets of revenge-driven former homicide division head Carl Lingrin.

To her considerable credit, Jandrey successfully juggles investigative and personal threads, with their multiple characters, through the book. Her main characters are distinctive and nicely developed; Tucson settings are authentically gritty; and action is tight and suspenseful. It’s an engaging read.

— Christine Wald-Hopkins

“The Poison Pen” by Paige Shelton. Minotaur Books. 289 pages. $9.99 paperback; available as e-book.

Delaney Nichols “the redhead from the States who caught Tom,” is back with another Edinburgh-set Scottish Bookshop cozy mystery in “The Poison Pen.” It’s shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and Scots are saddened: they loved the monarch who so loved Scotland. Even Kansas girl Delaney feels it.

Into this atmosphere enters once-beautiful, aging aristocrat, Jolie Lannister. Jolie is in possession of a potentially priceless sword, and Delaney’s boss sends her to Jolie’s estate to examine it. What Delaney finds is a mansion in disrepair, a classic hoarder, a pushy lawyer, and … soon, a body. It will fall to her to investigate not only the sword and murder, but also the patrimony of Jolie, who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Edward VIII, after he abdicated the throne.

“Cozy” aptly describes “The Poison Pen”. Readers are comfortable with antiquarian, book-loving Delaney, her co-workers at the Cracked Spine, handsome husband Tom and his bar, Edinburgh with its charms, and its leisurely pace.

— Christine Wald-Hopkins

“We Survived: A True Story of Control and Mental and Physical Abuse” by Sandra L. Buehring. Page Publishing. 203 pages. $18.95 paperback.

She was a junior at Catalina High School in the 1960s when Sandra L. Buehring (now Sandra Fatovich) discovered she was pregnant. Her boyfriend from Wisconsin had come out to visit and raped her. As abortion was not a consideration, they married. She was 17. She dropped out of school to keep house, and her husband began an immediate, abusive control: He refused to tell her parents what hospital she was in when she was delivering the baby. He decided the couple should move back to Wisconsin, where his family was, without consulting her. He deposited all their money into a bank account with only his name on it. He moved them into his parents’ house, where she soon realized that her husband had learned his behavior from his patriarchal family. Wives were possessions who weren’t allowed to drive or handle their own money. And then came the physical abuse.

Buehring stayed in this marriage, she writes, suffering mental and physical abuse and protecting her four children for 13 years. Talked out of divorce twice, she finally picked up her young family and fled to Tucson.

Buehring speaks directly to her audience in this book. She says she wants to alert readers to the warning signs of partner abuse and manipulation. Her writing is practical and unadorned — the voice of the high school graduate and administrative assistant she eventually became.

— Christine Wald-Hopkins

“Autumn’s On Its Way” by Nancy Elliott. Fulton Books. 206 pages. $18.95. Kindle $9.49.

This evocative portrayal of post-Civil War Arizona offers a self-possessed heroine in a historical old West setting vibrant with authenticity.

Scottish by heritage and hard-nosed by nature, Rose MacKenzie embodies rugged individualism. When her husband dies of grief after their daughter’s kidnapping, Rose buries his remains herself to spare the four sons she must now raise alone. She’s widowed, but clearly not helpless. On the contrary, the savvy businesswoman — unafraid of brawling with cattle rustlers and rumored to carry a lethal knife — maintains her tight rein on the family’s MK Ranch, because anything the indomitable Rose MacKenzie doesn’t know about ranching probably isn’t worth knowing. But as the years pass and her hopes of finding her daughter go unrealized, the arrival of a scarred Civil War veteran from back East adds a new dimension to her life, her family relationships, and the future she thought was a given.

Readers will be beguiled by author Nancy Elliott’s fully-realized characters and the dramatic twists and turns of her plotting. A singer-songwriter who performs nationally, Elliott has recorded four albums of mostly original music in the genre she has coined “Southwestern Americana.” This is the Sonoran Desert resident’s first book; hopefully, it is not her last.

— Helene Woodhams

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“Postmarked Bombay: True Tales of a Texan in British Colonial India, 1937-1945” by Harriet Claiborne. WestBow Press. 298 pages. $43.62; $20.99 paperback; $4.99 Kindle.

The stories of her parents’ time in British Colonial India so captivated the kids and grandkids that they clamored for a book. Harriet Claiborne obliged, and in the process produced an enchanting volume with reader appeal that extends far beyond the family circle.

Harry Witt was a 24-year-old graduate of Rice Institute in 1937 when he accepted a position with an international company that would take him halfway around the world. It was a heady prospect, except for the fact that he would be separated from his sweetheart, Idie, for the entirety of his three-year assignment. But as their transoceanic letters — the basis for the book — charmingly demonstrate, love conquered distance. They wed in Bombay two years later.

However, this is much more than a wartime-era love story. With his journals and notes as a guide, Claiborne’s narrative is written in her father’s voice. Vividly, and often humorously, he describes how, as a young man, he learned to live, do business and flourish in this exotic locale, traveling everywhere from tiny rural villages to the Taj Mahal and the Gardens of Shalimar. Claiborne, brings to life her parents’ adventures in a bygone time and place with grace and dexterity. The author lives in Tucson.

— Helene Woodhams

“Shattered” by Jenell M. Jones. Author House. 192 pages. $26.34; $22.95 paperback. $8.99 Kindle.

It’s an ominous but revealing title for an adoption story. For Jenell Jones, the compassionate matriarch of her own blended family and an early education specialist, the challenges of adoption were not unknown. But nothing in her experience — including her own less-than-ideal childhood — prepared her for the shattering experience of raising and advocating for her adopted daughter, Mercy.

By age 8, Mercy had been continuously shifted between foster situations and shelters, culminating in a heart-wrenching episode in which she was physically torn away from her twin brother in an overcrowded foster home. Finding the Jones family was the answer to a prayer, but years of trauma, neglect and abuse in both her birth family and the dysfunctional foster system had left Mercy profoundly damaged, mentally ill and in desperate need of help.

With her professional background, supportive family and church community, Jones tried to address the critical needs of her beloved daughter, but was stymied at every turn by a broken adoption system and unresponsive insurance. Where she had been promised assistance, she says, she found none. In this volume of vignettes, she describes the ongoing healing journey she is on with her daughter and the current state of adoption laws and practices.

— Helene Woodhams

Briefly noted

“A Beach Less Traveled: From Corporate Chaos to Flip Flop Perfumer“ by John Berglund. Perfume Aura, Inc. 298 pages. Paperback, $15.99 — This second edition of “A Beach Less Traveled” chronicles Midwestern lawyer and lobbyist John Berglund’s decision to bag the corporate life and move to paradise — in this case, the French and Dutch Caribbean colony of St. Martin. There, he developed craft perfumes. The book includes travel and perfume tips. — Christine Wald-Hopkins

“Arivaca Out Yonder: A Novel of the Bar-V-Bar Ranch” by Jim Clarke. The JBC Group. 398 pages. $18.97 — Idahoan Jim Clarke has deep Southern Arizona and Tucson roots. This engaging account of the early 1900s lives of his grandparents, Irishman Phil Clarke and schoolteacher Gipsy Harper Clarke, is bigger than life: from near poverty in Arivaca to mercantile enterprise, land acquisition, cattle ranging and banking — with all the inevitable ups and downs, joys and sorrows, such ambitious lives comprise. — Christine Wald-Hopkins

“The Law of Small Things: Creating a Habit of Integrity in a Culture of Mistrust” by Stuart H. Brody. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 240 pages. $16.74; $19.99 audio CD; $11.99 Kindle — Embracing truthfulness to live authentically can be personally transformative and have far-reaching implications for the national political landscape, says the author. He wrote this book to help readers identify and address seemingly inconsequential moral compromises and create the habit of integrity. A lawyer and adviser to prominent political figures, Stuart H. Brody is the founder of Integrity Intensive. — Helene Woodhams

“The Vagus Nerve in Therapeutic Practice: Working with Clients to Manage Stress and Enhance Mind-Body Function” by Ann Baldwin. Handspring Publishing. Illustrated edition. 232 pages. $46.96; $31.29 Kindle — Intended for complementary medicine practitioners and holistic healers, Baldwin offers techniques for stimulating the vagus nerve to improve mind-body health and help clients experiencing low-level inflammation and emotional stress. She accompanies these techniques with case studies from Tucson-based practitioners. Baldwin, director of Mind-Body-Science is a recently-retired professor of physiology at the University of Arizona. — Helene Woodhams