Laura Lippman
Tess Monaghan wants to like the Children's Bookstore. It's bright, cozy, and packed with the kinds of books that she is dying for her daughter to fall in love with. But no matter how badly she wants to support this adorable local business, the owner's attitude stops her in her tracks. What kind of children's bookseller hates children? What's eating Octavia,...
High-school student Beth, like everyone else in Belleville, has been following the fires – she has plenty of time between her monotonous day job at the deli and solitary nights at home while her mom works late. The fires...
Men in Laura Lippman's haunting and suspenseful stories can be terrified witnesses, unwitting victims, or bemused perpetrators. In "Pony Girl and Black-Eyed Susan", young African-American men find themselves bystanders to horrific crimes central to local celebrations. In "What He Needed", a happily married magazine editor recounts the end of her marriage to a depressed, possibly dangerous husband. "A Good Fuck Spoiled" reveals a man terrified by
...Laura Lippman's beloved Baltimore private investigator, Tess Monaghan, has been featured in several short stories, including "Ropa Vieja", "The Shoeshine Man's Regrets", and "The Book Thing*". Another story, "The Every Day Housewife", provides the first look into the inner life of Tess's mother as a young newlywed in the 1970s. As a bonus, there is also a "profile" of Tess—bylined by former journalist Laura Lippman-—that appeared in
...Heloise is a suburban madam who flies under the radar in her affluent Maryland community by claiming she's a lobbyist. Featured in Laura Lippman's novel And When She Was Good, Heloise first appeared in two short stories, "One True Love" and "Scratch a Woman". In a third story, "Form 95", a police detective spins a web that not even the vigilant Heloise suspects. Available singly or as a collection.
Laura Lippman has long been fascinated by the dangerous vulnerability of teenage girls. In "The Babysitter's Code"—the inspiration for her critically acclaimed novel, To the Power of Three—an adolescent girl decides to take a gun to school. In "Hardly Knew Her," Lippman's homage to Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, a tomboy learns that growing up means learning how to lie and deceive. And in "Ice*"—a prequel to The
...Meet some of the most dangerous women master of psychological suspense Laura Lippman has ever created in works so dark that her husband observed that most of her short stories center on betrayals between men and women. These stories include a senior citizen porn star ("Femme Fatale"); two twenty-somethings deranged by calorie deprivation ("The Crack Cocaine Diet"); a petulant tourist deceived by love in Dublin ("Honor Bar"); and a mysterious Good
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