A Frosty Start to the Year

Hi everyone.

Portland has had a rough start to the year.  The general strike happening on Friday, Jan 30, speaks volumes about the void of removal that threatens to tear apart our communities.

The Green Hand Bookshop is participating in the strike.  We will be closed on Friday January 30th, along with many other businesses in Portland.  We will be paying our on-shift workers, and they can opt to do whatever they feel is most important for them on that day.  

We encourage our fellow business owners to do the same.  The damage that is being inflicted on our city by the incursion of outside aggressors is not in any way acceptable, considering that they do not seem to be interested in following the laws that all the rest of us try to keep to.  Our fellow business owners and fellow workers are among those under attack.

What our participation in the strike speaks to, in my opinion, is a refusal to remain quiet in the face of this unprecedented invasion of our rights, and our neighbors' rights.  We are all suffering - let's not pretend otherwise.

Our participation speaks to the fact that we are paying attention to what is going on.  It speaks to the fact that what is going on is NOT NORMAL AND NOT OKAY WITH US.  

We are the ones who live here.  This is our home.  We built it up through our own hard work - all of us, including New Mainers.

NOTE:   I do recognize that some businesses are in such a precarious position that they cannot participate. However, there are many of us that can hang in and take this one-day blow on top of the other current blows. I hope as many of us that can participate without jeopardizing ourselves or our employees will do so. 

What is normally a slow month has ground to a halt.  (scroll down for a personal note on this.)  The Green Hand Bookshop, as well as other businesses on the 600-block of Congress Street - and elsewhere intown! - all feel the pinch of January each year.  But this year we face additional barriers to survival.

Local New Mainers, our neighbors and co-workers, are realistically worried about the risk of being accosted and snatched off Portland streets, and watching as their friends and family disappear.  No one tells them where they are taken, or what has happened to them.  

If you have people in your life that are concerned, this authorization form should help surmount obstacles when family and friends try to find out where they disappeared to:  https://www.ice.gov/node/60831 (ICE Form 60-001: Privacy Waiver Authorizing Disclosure to a Third Party)  Please have them fill it out for you, and keep it handy in case of emergencies.

Here's a good place to send documentation if you witness ICE misbehavior: citizenreporting.OAG@maine.gov 

Maine's Attorney General is requesting citizen documentation and monitoring Maine ICE interactions for potentially actionable violations of both Maine and Federal Constitutions, and laws such as the Maine Civil Rights Act. 

We here in Portland, Maine, are upset and outraged. But we are following legal behavior routes. These "officials" are not. And the results are horrifying, and affecting all our neighbors on a daily basis. We are a city of immigrants, a city of hard workers. 

We have put our lives, our blood, sweat, and tears, into the State of Maine. It is a good place to live, and raise a family. We are watching our friends and neighbors, and their children, be needlessly attacked in a manner that goes against everything that we and the rest of America stand for. 

To remain silent and do nothing is to be complicit. This is your home. Eyes up, everyone. Voices strong and loud. 

Together we stand, divided we fall. HANG TOUGH. Help your neighbors. 

We're really, truly, all in this together. 

On a personal note, the Green Hand Bookshop has suffered business loss for the last few years due to the unfriendly scaffolding that obscures our shopfront.  The shop income is down, and expenses are up.  I continue to do my best to pay my few employees a living wage, rather than the "minimum."

I hold my space on the 600-block as a safe community gathering place, a place where people can find interesting books, interesting ideas, and room to roam amongst the shelves without worry for a few brief moments, or find the tools they need to keep going in the difficult world outside.  It is a place for exploration, learning, and connection with ideas and other people.  We cannot be everything to everyone, but we do our best with what we know to be good, and what we know our community needs more of.

This January, so far, has been a heavy struggle financially.  It has been a heavy struggle emotionally and civically with what the city of Portland, Maine, is experiencing economically and socially, spilling over from 2025 (which was expensive and exhausting, and seemed a very long year indeed).  It has been a heavy struggle personally, as I am not able to be there intown while helping my father-in-law with 24/7 with hospice care and Alzheimers care, 5 hours north in Aroostook County.  

This carries over to my employees, who are helming the bookshop in my absence, and holding down the fort.  This also means that our fellow peeps, half a block over at Coast City Comics, are also under this same duress.  Tristan, my husband, is the owner, and the t-shirt printer that silkscreens all those shirts you love with his own two hands, and creates shirt designs and a weekly newsletter out of his own wildly creative brain (and I do mean wild), not to mention a couple of podcasts for fun (because what is life without fun?).  His crew is likewise holding on for dear life as he tangles with the grief of watching his remaining parent die.

Our Portland family runs wide and deep.  Downtown Portland is where we live and work, and have for decades.  Our extended family, built alongside the work we've done in these streets and businesses, is epic and amazing.  

Starting with the current day and moving back in time, between the two of us, Tristan and I work arm-in-arm with people we love from many backgrounds: Congress Street's 600-block, the Parkside neighborhood (where we have lost many neighbors, both to ICE and to economic factors), our family that is part of the Portland music scene (Tristan is the drummer for Covered in Bees, and has played in many other bands including Man-Witch, Eggbot, Tin Tin's Rocket, and Dead Airbourne Goats), my Maine College of Art and Portland Public Library and Maine Historical Society cohorts, our buddies at the long-defunct and much depleted Granny's Burritos family, our University of Southern Maine classmates and colleagues, and 

... nestled in the heart of our history, our family at Videoport, the place where Tristand and I met, became friends, and eventually fell in love.

For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, we are all bound to Portland, and to Maine.  Nobody said it would be easy.  But nobody here is going to give up what we fought so hard to build.  It has been hard to see the city we love grow a rich upper crust that has pushed out most of our friends, and tried to push us out too.  In the last decade, this city (or parties within it) seems hell-bent on destroying and exiling the majority of the people that built it into the creative gem it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, and convinced the city to turn its eye to leer single-mindedly at the gleam of filthy lucre, forgetting that many of us here simply want to make a living.

There have been many moments in the last decade when I have thought about whether it is worth it to keep holding the line at the corner of Avon and Congress Streets.  I honestly don't know how long I can hold on.  But this hill, the hill where we Mainers meet outside forces, massing to attack and remove our neighbors forcibly and illegally, is a hill I must stand on, because it is a hill built on basic human rights, and the rule of legitimate American law vs. the laws of fearmongering, bullying, and greed.

You will all make your own choices.  Look to your hearts and minds to guide you.  Face the fear and do what you know is right anyways. 

The Lightness of Holiday-Reading-to-Come

The air nips at your nose and makes you wonder where last year's winter gloves have gotten to.  The store shelves are rife with pumpkin spice products in forms you never thought you’d see (Pumpkin Spice Red Vines?!!).  With any luck the snowtires are on the car (somehow, magically?).  The weather is promising to be cold and/or messy soon, and the lure of curling up indoors with a good book glows in the back of your mind.

If you (like me) are regularly distracted, now is the time to start snagging a few fun titles for your holiday reading list, so you don’t get caught empty-handed.
 

My holiday reading usually includes a continuing thread of mystery and horror books, lashed with some purely wintry reads, because who actually finishes books in a reasonable amount of time?  Not me. 

I didn’t "do" Christmas reading until I spent the holidays north in Aroostook County.  Winter up there is a whole other thing than in southern Maine – all-encompassing, buried in snow and fierce cold.  Patty, my mother-in-law, was all-in on Christmas.  To walk into their house was to be surrounded by Christmas magic I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid.  

It was once upon a time ago, back when I worked at the Portland Public Library, that inspiration hit on the eve of our annual Aroostook pilgrimage – what better way to eat, sleep and breathe Christmas than to also read Christmas???  And so I went out to the stacks in search of wintry fiction, and came back bearing Van Reid’s Daniel Plainway: Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League. 

Oh, happy day!  I had never read Van Reid before, and boy was I in for a treat.  Historic Maine fiction set in and around many places I knew, with the irascible crew of the Moosepath League -- good company on the journey to solving whatever mystery presented itself each time.  And while the Moosepathian sense of humor is dry, Reid’s writing never is.  

That one book set me off, and to this day, I always try to set aside a few good candidates for holiday reading each year (sometimes more ahead-of-time than others, sometimes a title or two lingering from the prior year’s seasonal TBR pile).  AND as the years went on, I read all of Van Reid's Moosepath League books, too.
 

With the pleasures of holiday reading in mind, I will be posting some recommendations for you in early December.  There should be some really fun stuff in the stack, and a smattering of magical unknowns to look forward to.  Happy holidays!
 

May your season be full of nice people, great books, interesting conversations, and tasty foods.

EVENT: Stevie's Poem Store! live typewriter poetry at the Green Hand

Hi folks!

We are super-psyched to be hosting Stevie's Poem Store here at the Green Hand Bookshop next week.

Please stop by on

Saturday, Nov 8

between 12:00 noon and 3:00pm 

if you are poetry curious!

Live typewriter poetry created in the moment --

human magic with words!!

Here, in those moments, you may request a custom typewriter poem to be written about anything you’d like. Answer a few questions and watch as your poem is created before your eyes. 

Each poem is made from scratch, one of a kind, and written just for you.  

Pay what you want, suggested price ranges from $10-30, depending on your wish. 

And if you won't be until town until later on Saturday, you can catch up with Stevie down the block at Novel. 

Old friends with a new twist - 2 fun mysteries!

Mystery Club #7

Mastering the Art of French Murder & Murder at Mallowan Hall

I often have doubts when I run across pastiches, or books that lift well-known characters and put them to their own uses.  However, I have been pleasantly surprised by a couple of these books recently.  The funny thing is, as it turns out, they’re both written by the same author – Colleen Cambridge.

I received an advance copy of Mastering the Art of French Murder from Kensington Books, and was hoping it would be a fun read, although I knew it could go either way.  I was surprised and delighted to find myself swept up in the story before long.

Mastering the Art of French Murder is written from the perspective of Tabitha Knight.  She has recently moved to mid-century Paris, struggling to its feet in the wake of WWII.  Tabitha is adapting to life in the legendary city under the watchful eyes of her grandfather and his partner, Oncle Rafe.  Tutoring a few students in English helps to pay the bills, and her neighborhood is made more entertaining (and delicious) by the friendship of the young and gregarious Julia Child and the rest of her nearby household.

When a young woman is found murdered in the basement of Julia’s apartment house, and the murder weapon turns out to be one of Julia’s own sharp kitchen knives -- and the woman one of her late night party guests -- the story takes a deadly turn.  Bit by bit, clue by clue, Tabitha finds herself led on a mysterious mission as she tries to discover who among Julia’s charming party guests is actually the murderer. 

The clues lead to adventures, and the adventures lead to suspense, and charming but hair-raising mishaps, and as always seems to be the case in Paris, a chance at romance.  The pacing is perfect, and peppered with glimpses of everything that makes one yearn for Paris.

In pursuing the killer, Tabitha meets many people in her new city, from ex-patriates who run a nearby theater, to the deceptive spouses of her English students, to the mostly-reasonable Inspector Merveille – and day by day Tabitha learns more about Paris and all its shadowy corners – and the mysteries of how to manage to cook a chicken properly, with Julia’s help, of course.

Mastering the Art of French Murder is slated to be part of an ongoing series, titled An American in Paris.  The second and third books have already been released, and the fourth will be released in 2026. With these the scene of murder shifts to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, where Julia has been struggling to master her cooking skills under the watchful eyes of the instructors, then a haute couture fashion atelier in the era of Christian Dior's "New Look."  The fourth book will tread into the world of spiritualistic mediums, as well as Grand-père and Oncle Rafe's history as members of one of the cells of the French Resistance underground.

A few months after finishing the first delectable book in this series, another title caught my eye -- Murder at Mallowan Hall.  I’m a long-time fan of Agatha Christie, and I’ve seen a lot of adaptations, many good, but plenty mediocre or worse.  This was a little more risky – my love for Christie’s works has deep roots in my childhood, when my mother recommended her novels to me.  I have a lot more invested in my love for her works than in Julia Child, who I came to appreciate only in the last decade or two (man, that woman can slap a fish around)!  So once again I wasn’t expecting much.

But Colleen Cambridge delivers!  Let’s be clear, here -- I’m not saying these are literary masterpieces, but they are smart and well-written, fun, with compelling characters and intriguing twists, and in addition to all that, I really think they have heart.  They're the perfect antidote if you find yourself feeling like you're in a deep dark hole of doom-laden fiction (or life).

Murder at Mallowan Hall introduces us to another understated but feisty female with a penchant for inquiring into mysteries.  This time we are in the extremely capable hands of Phyllida Bright, who runs the household at Mallowan Hall circa 1930.  This is the (fictitious) home of Agatha Christie, murder mystery maven supreme, and her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan.  Here they live happily, ensconced in the buxom Devon hills, far enough away from the eyes of all the dratted London reporters – most days.

Phyllida is in charge of making sure everything in the house runs smoothly, from morning to night, from the small niceties to the big picture.  And this morning… things are not going as planned.  The prior evening, a sizable gaggle of guests arrived for a house party, and in their wake, a journalist who claimed an appointment with the great author for an interview.  Unable to be other than gracious, Ms. Christie welcomes all to the house, and arranges a last-minute room for the surprise guest.

However, the surprise in the end is his, because at some point after everyone is in bed asleep, this man dies spectacularly in Agatha’s house library.  He certainly wasn’t expecting that.  Phyllida, on top of her usual duties, now must contend with bloodstains on the carpeting (and some of the books – horrors!), and with a growing number of unanswerable questions about who this man really was, and what had brought him to Mallowan Hall.

Phyllida gives Miss Marple a run for her money as she manages to install herself into every turn of the investigation, and her sharp eyes and little gray cells must jump her through hoop after hoop as the mystery moves outward in growing circles from the library where the body was found.  Luckily for us, she is up for the task, and with her sense of humor and rather tart wit, she navigates us through the twists and turns of the house, seeking the man with the squeaking shoes (among other clues), and doing her best to avoid the watchful eyes of Inspector Cork.

This series, now known as the Phyllida Bright Mysteries, is about to launch its fifth book, so if you try the first one and like it, you'll be set for a while.

I’m looking forward to reading more from Colleen Cambridge, and if you’re looking for some fun, smart reads set in the early- to mid-20th Century world, you might like to give one of these a try yourself. 

Cornell Woolrich dresses everyone in black

Mystery Club #6

For this post, I will be peering into the dark corners of Cornell Woolrich’s writing, both his first published novel The Bride Wore Black (1940) and other work.  Woolrich is a noir master, gritty and dark, with a spin to his tales that seems truly unique and which will get under your skin.  

There is so much I want to talk about in this book that can’t be discussed without spoilers, so this writeup will be shorter and less complete than it could be.  If you'd like to read along, you can order a copy of the book on my shop's website, or get it from a terrific bookseller or library near you!

https://greenhandbookshop.com/products/the-bride-wore-black-by-cornell-woolrich

I peeled through The Bride Wore Black in about a day, a rare occurrence in my reading life.  Then I had to read it again to take notes, because it was a full throttle ride when I was in it first time ‘round!  The edition I read was the current in-print edition from American Mystery Classics, which has a good introduction by Eddie Muller. He relates a quote from Woolrich, tossed off as a description of his writing goals: “All I was trying to do was cheat death.”  And so he has. 

Muller aptly describes Woolrich’s works, which “taken individually are nerve-jangling diversions; as a life’s work they added up to a towering wall of existential malevolence not even Sartre or Camus would dare scale.”  He also recommends consuming Woolrich’s work “in a feverish rush,” as “that’s how you feel the undertow…”  It’s certainly how I read The Bride Wore Black, and “The Night Reveals,” a short story written under his most popular pseudonym, William Irish.  The torrent of his words sweeps you before its tide, disbelieving yet unable to resist.

First of all, you must brace yourself for our detective’s name: Lew Wanger.  Perhaps the prototype for today’s ever-present Jack Reacher and Harry Hole?  Anyways, he’s a steady worker, and becomes an expert on this book’s killings, for all the good it does him.  As off-the-cuff as our protagonist’s name is, he has a serious job ahead of him. 

Second of all, you need to aware that these murders are done by killers who are determined, smart, and dedicated.  As fast a read as the book is, the cases are spaced out over a couple of years.  Are they even connected?  Lew Wanger thinks so.

At our very first death scene, a blanching member of the public who sees too much is dismissed by an officer on-duty who says, “Well, what’d y’expect, violets?”  Buckle up, everyone.  The gloves are off already.

But that doesn't mean this is a page-turner with no literary flesh on its bones.  Sunlight creeps between narrowly paced buildings, “at an angle that was enough to break its back.”  We attend a mysterious, unnamed play.  A word or phrase that someone hates, but which is never clarified, hangs in the background.  The reader is given puzzles of their own that will never be unraveled.

Children observe adult foibles in their unique way.  We are left knowing there are unseen clues, nothing more.  And grateful that the child was spared.

The casualties left behind in the wake of this often-creative and always-brutal wave of destruction are many and random.  Wanger observes the real-world effects on the victims left behind, the wives, girlfriends, and children: “The murder hadn’t been in the closet out there; it was in here on her face.”  Some noir is cold and hammers like newstype, but while his delivery of events may seem staccato, Woolrich gives us a glimpse below the action that echoes the shift towards victim awareness we see today in better true crime podcasts, like Maine's Murder She Told (https://www.murdershetold.com/).  

Our killers deal with brutal men in a wonderfully adept manner, dismissing them in myriad ways, all summed up in one line: “You have nothing that I want.”  These men, discarded and lucky enough to survive, have no idea how to deal with their fate.

Women fare similarly.  “Then what is she?” one acquaintance cries in frustration.  Best you do not know. 

While this book inspired Tarantino’s Kill Bill, it could just as easily have been Final Destination.  You’ll never know until it hits you, though.

On Shorter Works:

I read some of Woolrich’s short stories (always a good idea for introducing yourself to a new author), including “The Night Reveals.” This tale is part of a short story collection, written under the pseudonym William Irish, titled After-Dinner Story (1944).  I was bowled over after reading it. 

I will say just a little about “The Night Reveals” here, but it is serious proof of Woolrich’s creative skill in storytelling, and of the way he can draw you into the most innocuous life and remind you that we are all pieces of the puzzle. 

The narrator, a hard-working and earnest fire insurance adjustor, takes us through this awful tragedy step by step, doubting his own eyes at every turn.  As Woolrich says himself: “There was no melodrama in the way he said it…” 

And that is how this story sneaks up on us, step by step, inch by inch, and forces us to bear its final, fatal blow with our eyes wide open.

Sprinkled through the story are heartbreaking moments of clarity.  The narrator sees around him the perfect coziness of his own home, but in the world outside sees New York City in its late-WWII realness: “…decrepit, unprotected tenements, all crammed from basement to roof with helpless sleepers…”  He sees the decay, but he also sees the vulnerable human lives stacked within it, as vacant buildings intersperse each packed block like zombies among the living homes.  He is all too aware that some people must make their abodes in the deserted buildings, because life is hard.

Suffice it to say he lives in a world of contrasts.  Teeming life vs. empty windows, black shadows and mold vs. the harsh light of destruction vs. the clean, civilized light of safe well-maintained buildings, like his own family's cozy apartment.

In his world, fire is an ungovernable devil, capable of any monstrosity even in its wild natural state – but in the hands of someone directing it?  Just as crazy, but more satanic in its dance. 

This story is in no way simple.  It would sound basic if I summed it up, but the variety of human conditions embedded in it are rich fodder for the reader's observation and comprehension -- for viewing with compassion, knowing eventually you will be forced to glance back at it for fast clear decision-making.  Woolrich makes nothing clearer than the fact that we are surrounded by gray areas, but that there will be critical moments when we must instead see everything in black and white.  We are all flammable.  There are flashpoints.

And also, as a very random sidenote, I now have to go look up the word “beanery,” because I feel like I’m missing out on a mid-century phenomena I’ve never heard of.  

Thank you Cornell Woolrich, and good night!