Wednesday, 31 January 2024
Tuesday, 30 January 2024
Meditations And Devotions by Cardinal John Henry Newman
About the book: To pray is to be a Christian, to be a Saint is to have prayed often. John Henry Cardinal Newman was a man of prayer and this book contains the culmination of his prayers and devotions, divided into three sections.
The first and second parts contain the vocal prayers he wrote for public use, the litanies - the Stations of the Cross and short meditations. The long meditations in the third part of the book are intended for private use, which draw one into a deeper sense of intimacy with our Lord.
The prayers are also a testament to his particular devotion to Our Lady with moving commentaries on her several titles from the Litany of Loreto. These are tender and profound, yet without any trace of sentimentality.
Newman's meditations are full of doctrine. Doctrine is the expression of Truth, and above all things, Newman longed to bear witness to the Truth. It is from the Scriptures, the Church Fathers and the living Church that Newman drew his doctrine, and in his meditations he made it his own.
In this work (Baronius Press Limited, 2010), Newman's heart speaks to our hearts.
About the author: John Henry Newman CO (1801-1890) was an English theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal. He became an important and controversial figure in the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to restore to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.
Newman was also a literary figure: his major writings include Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865–1866), Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865), which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light", "Firmly I believe, and truly", and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" (the latter two taken from Gerontius).
Newman is the fifth saint of the City of London, after Thomas Becket (born in Cheapside), Thomas More (born on Milk Street), Edmund Campion (son of a London bookseller) and Polydore Plasden (of Fleet Street). (Source: Wikipedia)
Queen K by Sarah Thomas
About the book: 'She thirsted for everything but the clear stream of her own life, flowing hidden in the grass.' - Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions
On a balmy evening in late March, an oligarch's wife hosts a party on a superyacht moored in the Maldives. Tables cover the massive deck, adorned with orchids, champagne bottles, name cards of celebrities. This is what Kata has wanted for a long time: acceptance into the glittering world of high society.
But there are those who aim to come between Kata and her goal, and they are closer to home than she could have imagined.
Witness to the corruption and violence underneath the shiny surfaces is Mel, a young English woman employed to tutor Kata's precocious daughter, Alex, and navigate her through the class codes of English privilege. Now the closest Mel gets to such privilege is as hired help to the wealthy, and she is deeply resentful.
Exquisitely written and deliciously unreliable, Queen K (2023) takes the reader to some of the most luxurious places in the world, from the slopes of Courchevel, the terraces of Monaco and the deck of a superyacht in the Indian Ocean. Perpetually overlooked by their masters, Mel and Alex will find their invisibility offers them the opportunity to wield a destructive power of their own. A dark refrain sounds from the very beginning of the story and grows towards its operatic finale: a novel about insatiable material desire can only ever be a tragedy.
About the author: Sarah Thomas was born in Scotland, grew up in Kenya, and lives in London. She spent years travelling the world working as a tutor to the super-rich, and has written and performed for TANK, Art Review, EPOCH, Loewe and others. Queen K is her first novel.
Rating: 3/5
Sunday, 28 January 2024
Thursday, 25 January 2024
Cell 22 by Monica Smit
About the book: Founder of 'Reignite Democracy Australia', Monica Smit, became a well-known activist during the COVID era. She spoke out against the government’s handling of the pandemic and her political stance and human rights advocacy saw her arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement for 22 days.
But Monica was not always a strong, outspoken activist. In fact, it was only through a long journey of shameful mistakes and personal suffering that she became a woman of conviction, and a person who dared stand up and fight for justice.
Monica’s tell-all expose is a real, raw, and courageous account of how a former party girl became a political prisoner during the world’s longest and harshest lockdowns and what she learnt about life and humanity along the way.
You won’t find Cell 22 on Amazon or elsewhere. The only shipping point is from Australia specifically from Monica Smit's website. Monica ships her book worldwide but bear in mind overseas shipping can be expensive. Every book is printed and packed with love by people Monica knows personally. When you buy a book, you are supporting families, not corporations.
About the author: Monica Smit has been on the front line of Australia’s freedom movement since August 2020 when she founded ‘Reignite Democracy Australia’. She hit the international stage after spending 22 days in prison for refusing to sign draconian bail conditions after being charged with incitement. Her ‘crime’ was publishing an anti-lockdown protest poster on social media. Yes, you read that correctly. She recently self-published her book, Cell 22 and toured Europe for five months, meeting with as many freedom lovers, groups, and organizations as possible. She is currently touring Australia and at the same time, running global campaigns and projects. She has a large database and can be contacted to plan an event, a meeting or interview at contact@monicasmit.com
Wednesday, 24 January 2024
Monday, 22 January 2024
Leaving by Roxana Robinson
About the book: 'What does love demand of us, and who must pay the price?’
High school sweethearts, Sarah and Warren, have grand plans for an adventurous future together, but when a misunderstanding causes them to part ways, they end up marrying other people.
When they meet again at sixty, their lives have been carved into very different shapes. Sarah lives outside New York; Warren lives in Boston. Sarah is divorced, Warren still married, and both have grown up children.
When they reconnect, they feel the rekindled spark of love and desire – a spark that has been dead for so long.
But are they willing to risk destroying all that they have built separately for the chance of a future together?
Leaving (2024) charts a passage through loyalty and desire as it builds to a shattering conclusion. In her boldest and most powerful work to date, Roxana Robinson demonstrates her “trademark gifts as an intelligent, sensitive analyst of family life” (Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune) in an engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves.
About the author: Roxana Robinson is the award-winning author of seven novels, three collections of short stories and a biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Her books have been chosen as New York Times Notable Books and as New York Times Editors' Choices. Her books have been published in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Barnes & Noble "Writers for Writers" Award.
Roxana Robinson has received fellowships from the National Education Association, the MacDowell Colony, and the Guggenheim Foundation and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the president of the Authors Guild from 2013 to 2017. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. She lives in New York City and Connecticut and spends as much time as she can in Maine.
Rating: 3/5
Saturday, 20 January 2024
The Second Coming Of Christ (Translated): A Fourth-Century Lecture by St Cyril of Jerusalem
About the e-book: In the middle of the fourth century, a young priest, Cyril (315–86), was ordained bishop of Jerusalem, a see first led by St James, a kinsman of the Lord Jesus.
St Cyril is most famous for his twenty-three catechetical lectures, the first eighteen of which were delivered to prospective converts during Lent. St Cyril’s fifteenth lecture, printed here (2014), is devoted to the Lord Jesus’ second coming.
This new work is a substantial revision of the translation found in the elegant but somewhat archaic Library of the Fathers edition (1839), a text in the public domain but not as widely available online as the translation found in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers edition (1893).
Numerous editorial revisions have been made in order to foster ease of understanding, and over one hundred biblical citations have been added to the body of the text.
The Latin word for teacher is doctor, and Pope Leo XIII declared St Cyril a Doctor of the Church on 28 July 1882, with the publication of a Mass and Office in the saint's honour. Let us join the catechumens of that Lent of nearly seventeen centuries ago, and sit beside them in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, and listen to St Cyril’s teaching on Christ’s second coming.
Friday, 19 January 2024
I Got A Name: The Murder Of Krystal Senyk by Eliza Robertson with Myles Dolphin
About the book: I Got A Name (2023) was an instant national bestseller.
How can a dead woman speak?
Why does she have to be dead in order to be able to speak?
And what is speech in a book of murder? - Mieke Bal
I Got A Name tells a vivid and meticulous true-crime story that exposes the deep fractures in a system that repeatedly fails to protect women, while tracking the once-cold trail of a murderer still at large.
Krystal Senyk was the kind of friend everybody wants: a reliable confidant, a handywoman of all trades, and an infectious creative with an adventurous spirit. Most importantly, she was tough as nails. So when her best friend needed support to leave her abusive husband, Ronald Bax, Krystal leapt into action.
But soon Krystal became the new outlet for Bax’s rage. He terrorized and intimidated her for months on end, and finally issued a chilling warning to her and his ex-wife: the hunt is on. Krystal was scared but she was smart: she reached out to the RCMP for a police escort home. The officer brushed her off.
Bax’s threat had been all too real. At 29 years old, the woman who seemed invincible - who was a beloved sister, daughter, and friend - was shot and killed at her home in the Yukon.
Ronald Bax disappeared without a trace.
Three decades later, Eliza Robertson has re-opened the case. In compelling, vibrant prose, she works tirelessly to piece together Krystal’s story, retracing the dire failings of Canadian law enforcement and Bax’s last steps.
I Got a Name uses one woman’s tragic story to boldly interrogate themes of gender-based violence and the pervasive issues that plague our society.
In this riveting true-crime story about victimhood, power, and control, Robertson examines the broken system in place, and asks: if it isn’t looking out for the vulnerable, the threatened, the hunted - who among us is it protecting?
About the authors: Eliza Robertson attended the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the 2011 Man Booker Scholarship. In 2013, she won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize and Journey Prize. Her novel, Demi-Gods, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Her first story collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award and selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice. In 2015, she was named one of five emerging writers for the Writers’ Trust Five x Five program. She lives in Montreal.
Myles Dolphin is a communications specialist and a former journalist in all three Canadian territories. Newspapers he has worked for include the Hay River Hub, Nunavut News and Yukon News. He currently lives in Victoria, BC with his wife Aimee and Pomeranian Bobbi. I Got a Name is his first book collaboration.
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
The Devil's Harvest by Jessica Garrison
About the book: This suspenseful true story - The Devil's Harvest: A Ruthless Killer, A Terrorized Community, and the Search for Justice in California's Central Valley (2021) - of a drug cartel hitman who got away with murder after murder in California's Central Valley over three decades reveals how the criminal justice system fails our most vulnerable immigrant communities.
On the surface, fifty-eight-year-old José Manuel Martínez did not seem evil or even that remarkable - just a regular neighbour, good with cars and devoted to his family.
But in between taking his children to Disneyland and visiting his mom, Martínez was also one of the most skilled professional killers police had ever seen.
He tracked one victim to one of the wealthiest corners of America, a horse ranch in Santa Barbara, and shot him dead in the morning sunlight, setting off a decades-long manhunt. He shot another man, a farmworker, right in front of his young wife as they drove to work in the fields. The widow would wait decades for justice. Those were murders for hire. Others he killed for vengeance.
How did Martínez manage to evade law enforcement for so long with little more than a slap on the wrist?
Because he understood a dark truth about the criminal justice system: if you kill the "right people"- people who are poor, who are not white, and who do not have anyone to speak up for them - you can get away with it.
Melding the pacing and suspense of a true crime thriller with the rigour of top-notch investigative journalism, The Devil's Harvest follows award-winning reporter Jessica Garrison's relentless search for the truth as she traces the life of this assassin, the cops who were always a few steps behind him, and the families of his many victims. Drawing upon decades of case files, interrogation transcripts, on-the-ground reporting, and Martínez's chilling handwritten journals, The Devil's Harvest uses a gripping and often shocking narrative to dig into one of the most important moral questions haunting our politically divided nation today: Why do some deaths - and some lives - matter more than others?
Martínez confessed to an estimated 36 murders and was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison without the possibility of parole.
"Meticulously researched and tightly woven, The Devil's Harvest is an important story because it tells us that if [this] can happen in one place, then it can happen in any place. And that's damn scary." - Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author of The Closers, The Lincoln Lawyer, and The Night Fire
About the author: Jessica Garrison is an investigations editor for BuzzFeed News and spent more than a decade as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She has previously covered Los Angeles City Hall, courts, education and the environment. As a reporter, her work has won a National Magazine Award for Public Service, among other honours. Work she has edited has won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Goldsmith Prize. Her book, The Devil’s Harvest, told the story of a contract killer who stalked Central Valley farm towns for years while authorities failed to bring him to justice. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley.
Saturday, 13 January 2024
Thursday, 11 January 2024
Gertrude Of Helfta: The Herald Of The Memorial Of The Abundance Of Divine Love
About the book: As iron when it is plunged into fire becomes itself fire, this soul, all on fire with divine charity, became herself charity, desiring nothing but that all men might be saved. - Book 1, Chapter 4 (The Herald of Divine Love)
From her entrance to the Benedictine abbey of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony, as a child of four in 1260, until her twenty-sixth year, Gertrude lived what she was later to consider a lax and worldly life, following the monastic observance outwardly, but applying her brilliant mind and boundless enthusiasm to secular studies.
Then, when she was twenty-five, all was changed.
The Lord appeared to her in the form of a beautiful youth inviting her to a conversion of life and to close union with himself.
Thenceforth for Gertrude God was all, and her neighbour all in God, and she flung herself into his service with the same wholeheartedness which she had previously brought to her secular studies.
She was continually granted extraordinary mystical favours, including an intense awareness of God's loving presence in her soul; and despite her great humility and consequent reluctance she understood that she had been granted these graces for the good of others and was therefore required to make them known.
Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love (1993) is translated and edited by Margaret Winkworth and is dedicated to His Holiness Pope John Paul II.
About Gertrude of Helfta: Gertrude the Great (or Saint Gertrude of Helfta) (1256-c1302) was a German Benedictine, mystic, and theologian. She is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, and is inscribed in the General Roman Calendar, for celebration throughout the Latin Rite on November 16.
Little is known of the early life of Gertrude. Gertrude was born on the feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 1256, in Eisleben, Thuringia (within the Holy Roman Empire). At the age of four, she entered the monastery school at the monastery of St Mary at Helfta (with much debate having occurred as to whether this monastery is best described as Benedictine or Cistercian), under the direction of its abbess, Gertrude of Hackeborn. It is speculated that she was offered as a child oblate to the Church by devout parents. Given that Gertrude implies in the Herald that her parents were long dead at the time of writing, however, it is also possible that she entered the monastery school as an orphan.
Gertrude was confided to the care of St Mechtilde, younger sister of the Abbess Gertrude, and joined the monastic community in 1266. It is clear from her own writings that she received a thorough education in a range of subjects. She, and the nun who authored Books 1 and 3-5 of the Herald, are thoroughly familiar with scripture, the Fathers of the Church such as Augustine and Gregory the Great, and also in more contemporary spiritual writers such as Richard and Hugh of St Victor, William of St Thierry, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Moreover, Gertrude's writing demonstrates that she was well-versed in rhetoric, and her Latin is very fluent.
In 1281, at the age of twenty-five, she experienced the first of a series of visions that continued throughout her life, and which changed the course of her life. Her priorities shifted away from secular knowledge and toward the study of Scripture and theology. Gertrude devoted herself strongly to personal prayer and meditation, and began writing spiritual treatises for the benefit of her monastic sisters. Gertrude became one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher St Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called "nuptial mysticism," that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ.
Gertrude died at Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony, around 1302. Her feast day is celebrated on 16 November, but the exact date of her death is unknown; the November date stems from a confusion with Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn.
Wednesday, 10 January 2024
Tuesday, 9 January 2024
Life And Witness Of Saint Iakovos Of Evia by Dr Nicholas Baldimtsis
About the book: То many а modern man, holiness seems an exceptional, if not exotic, possession of а bygone age.
Even when modern day saints emerge, modern man struggles to connect their lives with his own, to bring the lessons learned from them alive in his own life. This struggle is made "easy'' and the "yoke" of true life in Christ is made light upon encountering the life and witness of Saint Iakovos of Evia.
From holy roots in Asia Minor, where а rich spiritual treasure was inherited from holy ancestors, to his ascetic struggle on the island of Evia, where rich spiritual fruit was borne forth, Saint lakovos' life is pure inspiration for the spiritual athlete.
Herein one will hear his life told in the first person, from his own perspective and in his own way: how his family established а new home as refugees, how God called him from childhood on the path to monasticism and His Grace poured through him for the edification of аll around him; how he lived as а hieromonk and spiritual father to many.
The narrator of this true life is the saint's close spiritual child and physician, an "eye-witness" of the mystery and the miracle that is the theanthropic life incarnate in man. Не helps make this book а bridge to the other side of life, the one hidden in Christ, allowing us insight into the saint's own experience of clinging to reverent piety, cultivating Orthodox faith in Christ, and pursuing holiness even amidst the malaise of modernity.
Life And Witness Of Saint Iakovos Of Evia (2023) is translated from the Greek by Father Nicholas Metrakos. The translator has emended some quotations to better reflect the original Greek text.
Glory be to God in all things. Amen.
Monday, 8 January 2024
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
About the book: Besides being a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, The Storm We Made (2024) is one of the “most anticipated books of 2024”. This spellbinding, sweeping novel features a Malayan mother who becomes an unlikely spy for the invading Japanese forces during WWII - with shocking consequences for her family, and her country.
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.
Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.
A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.” Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction - and she will do anything to save them.
Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.
About the author: Vanessa Chan was born and raised in Malaysia. Her short stories have been published in Electric Lit, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, and more. She was the 2021 Stanley Elkin scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference and has also received scholar awards to attend the Bread Loaf and Tin House writers’ conferences. The Storm We Made is her first novel.
Rating: 4/5
Saturday, 6 January 2024
Friday, 5 January 2024
Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege And The Murdaugh Family Murders by John Glatt
About the book: In Tangled Vines (2023), bestselling true crime author John Glatt reconstructs the rise of the prestigious Murdaugh family and the shocking double murder that led to the downfall of its patriarch, Alex Murdaugh.
Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power.
A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight.
On 7 June 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh (pronounced Ellick Murdock) discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside.
But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light. The Murdaughs, it turned out, were feared as much as they were loved. And they would not hesitate to wield their influence to protect one of their own; two years before he was killed, a highly intoxicated Paul Murdaugh was at the helm of a boat when it crashed and killed a teenage girl, and his light treatment by police led to speculation that privilege had come into play.
As bombshells of financial fraud were revealed and more suspicious deaths were linked to the Murdaughs, a new portrait of Alex Murdaugh emerged: a desperate man on the brink of ruin who would do anything, even plan his own death, to save his family’s reputation.
The trial in the fourteenth circuit of the South Carolina Circuit Court began on 25 January 2023, and ended on 2 March 2023 with a guilty verdict on all four counts. Murdaugh, who had pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to two life sentences to run consecutively without the possibility of parole. Murdaugh's attorneys have filed a notice of appeal.
Local media called the trial South Carolina's "trial of the century" and "arguably one of the most high-profile and sensational cases in South Carolina legal history".
There have been TV episodes, podcasts, and documentaries about the case. Some notable examples include Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal (2023; Netflix).
About the author: English-born John Glatt is the author of more than thirty books including The Lost Girls and My Sweet Angel, and has over thirty years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. He has appeared on television and radio programs all over the world, including Dateline NBC, Fox News, ABC’s 20/20, BBC World News, and A&E Biography.
Wednesday, 3 January 2024
Tuesday, 2 January 2024
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, And The Violent Crime Of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale
About the book: On 31 May 2014, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two twelve-year-old girls attempted to stab their classmate to death. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier’s violence was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they committed their crime under the influence of a figure born by the internet: the so-called “Slenderman.”
Yet the even more urgent aspect of the story, that the children involved suffered from undiagnosed mental illnesses, often went overlooked in coverage of the case.
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls (2022) tells that full story for the first time in deeply researched detail, using court transcripts, police reports, individual reporting, and exclusive interviews. Morgan and Anissa were bound together by their shared love of geeky television shows and animals, and their discovery of the user-uploaded scary stories on the Creepypasta website could have been nothing more than a brief phase.
But Morgan was suffering from early-onset childhood schizophrenia. She believed that she had been seeing Slenderman for many years, and the only way to stop him from killing her family was to bring him a sacrifice: Morgan’s best friend Payton “Bella” Leutner, whom Morgan and Anissa planned to stab to death on the night of Morgan’s twelfth birthday.
Bella survived the attack, but was deeply traumatized, while Morgan and Anissa were immediately remanded into jail, and the severity of their crime meant that they would be prosecuted as adults. There, as Morgan continued to suffer from worsening mental illness after being denied antipsychotics, her life became more and more surreal.
Slenderman is both a page-turning true crime story and a search for justice. It is the first full account of the Slenderman stabbing, a true crime narrative of mental illness, the American judicial system, the trials of adolescence, and the power of the internet.
About the author: Kathleen Hale grew up in Wisconsin, attended Harvard University and is a crime writer based in Los Angeles. Her reporting has been featured in Vanity Fair, among other outlets. Hale’s article on Gabby Petito was Vanity Fair’s most read piece of 2022. Slenderman is Hale's first true crime book. Slenderman was nominated for an Edgar Prize and won the 2023 Midland Writers Award for Non Fiction. Her other books include two Young Adult murder mystery novels and one essay collection. She is also a writer and producer for Outer Banks (3 seasons) on Netflix. Her favourite authors are Shirley Jackson and Ann Rule.
While Idaho Slept: The Hunt For Answers In The Murders Of Four College Students by J Reuben Appelman
About the book: From the author who brought you The Kill Jar (2018), who also happens to be a PI and a trusted source on true crime, While Idaho Slept (2023) is rich with fresh insights and a unique lens into the investigation and the case built around the murders. It is a rewarding read for fans of the genre.
The author of the acclaimed true-crime memoir, The Kill Jar, tells the inside story of the “University of Idaho Murders,” offering a memorable, thoughtful dive into our societal fascination with true crime, the media’s seeming blood-frenzy, and the future of homicide investigations, while cultivating an intimate look into the minds and hearts of the victims and their suspected killer alike.
Just after 4:00 am on 13 November 2022, four University of Idaho students were viciously stabbed to death in an off-campus house. The killings would shake the small blue-collar college town of Moscow, Idaho, dominate mainstream news coverage, and become a social media obsession, drawing millions of clicks and views.
While a reticent Moscow Police Department, the FBI, and the Idaho State Police searched for the killer, unending conjecture and countless theories blazed online, in chatrooms and platforms from Reddit and YouTube to Facebook and TikTok. For more than a month, the clash of armchair investigators and law enforcement professionals raged, until a suspect - a 28-year-old PhD candidate studying criminology - was arrested at his family home 2,500 miles away in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania on the day before New Year’s Eve.
While Idaho Slept is a thought-provoking, literary chronicle of a small-town murder investigation blistering beneath the unceasing light of international interest, as traditional investigators, citizen sleuths, and the true-crime media acted - sometimes together, often in conflict - to uncover the truth.
As J Reuben Appelman brings this terrible crime into focus, he humanizes the four victims, examining the richness of their lives, dissects the mind and motivations of their presumed killer, and explores the world of northern Idaho, a rugged, deeply conservative stronghold steeped in Christian values and American patriotism.
Going deep inside the case, Appelman addresses a crucial question: With so many millions of citizens armed by access and hungry to take part in a true crime hunt of their own, has the nature of homicide investigations permanently changed? Rising above the sensational, While Idaho Slept illuminates the intrinsic connection between today’s media, citizen sleuths, our societal mania for murder tales, and an impatient public’s insatiable appetite for spectacle as never before. Running beneath, the pulse of the story is a heartbreaking narrative of the people we love, the dreams we all share, and the uncertain time left for sharing them.
At the time that this book went to press, Bryan Kohberger was awaiting trial for the King Road homicides and had maintained his innocence. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty for his alleged crimes.
About the author: J Reuben Appelman's true-crime crime memoir, The Kill Jar, was published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster in 2018 and was among the first of the new true-crime memoir genre. Published in all formats, The Kill Jar inspired the popular Hulu docuseries, “Children of the Snow” (2020), with Appelman serving as on-camera investigator and Executive Producer. The TV Series based on Appelman’s book has streamed tens of millions of times in America and abroad, and The Kill Jar was noted as among the best true-crime books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Elle, Oxygen, Bustle, Crime Reads, and the USA Today network of newspapers.
Appelman has also written for a variety of successful film projects, including the Netflix-streamed documentaries, Jens Pulver | Driven and Playground: The Child Sex Trade in America, produced by George Clooney, Steven Soderberg, and Abigail Disney and now used as a tool for law enforcement studying the commercialized sex industry. Appelman’s scholarly research and practical experience in the field have earned him a multi-year guest lectureship on the issue of Human Trafficking for the Honor’s College at Boise State University, where he received his MFA. He has published across all genres, is a two-time State of Idaho Literature Fellow, and has been labeled a “full-grown oracle of language” by National Public Radio literary critic, Andrei Codrescu.
His additional film and TV content has streamed on many major platforms, including Netflix, Hulu, Discovery+, and Amazon Prime.
Appelman spent five years working as a rigidly vetted fraud investigator, packaging felony-level referrals for prosecution in the states of Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada. A native Detroiter, he currently works as a private investigator from his base in Boise, Idaho, where he has lived for almost 25 years.
Monday, 1 January 2024
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