Tag Archives: Laura Catherine Brown

NYMysteries June 8, 2019

It’s been a busy week.

It began on Monday, June 2. I went to The Bowery Poetry Club to hear a reading by Laura Catherine Brown who read from her delightful, off-beat novel, Made by Mary. She was followed by other prominent female writers.  Such fun to be in the new and old Bowery.

Next day I went to Washington D. C. to visit my Washington family. I hadn’t been in the capitol in years and felt like a hick coming to the

View from the Court of Appeals chambers 
View from the Court of Appeals Chambers

big, beautiful, clean city with a metro that was so efficient it might have been Swedish. I visited the open court of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to witness my nephew, a judge, who was appointed by President Obama in 2013. The two mornings I was there the different judges discussed patent cases, a veteran who claimed his healthcare benefits were inadequate  and the building of a road from a private New Mexico property across federal land. Although this court deals primarily with patent law its case load is hodgepodge. My nephew said this was done so that the judges did not develop too narrow a focus. 

The 70th Anniversary of D Day came up. I recalled going to Omaha Beach. Have you been there? It rubbed me the wrong way. It was gaudy, triumphant, very much in the MGM musical mode. I expected Gene Kelly to tap dance out of a grave. My friend and I then went to the nearby German military cemetery. As dark as Omaha Beach was light. From MGM to Dante’s Inferno. It reeked of defeat and death. It’s near Mont Saint-Michel.

Back in NYC, a friend and I went to a trendy East Village restaurant, Van Da. Its specialty is modern Vietnamese cuisine. It’s new, in the toddler stage with lots of explanation about the menu and philosophical musing, “Our culinary journey just began.” I give it a year. 

On Friday, yet another friend and I went to Hearth. I admit I entered with a chip on my shoulder because of the signs stressing the freshness of their food/ how to treat the earth etc. Surprise, surprise, the food and wine were delicious.  

 

 

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

April 8 – April 14

 

Attention! @Generation Women is sharing secrets on April 25. Come, please come, to story telling by women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each participant has seven minutes -7- seven minutes to tell her secret and the fun begins at 7 pm. It’s at the Caveat Theatre, a  new New York speakeasy, on 21 A Clinton Street. 

 

I went to a book launch. Laura Catherine Brown and Sweta Vikram introduced a Blue Stockings packed audience to their latest books.  Laura’s Made By Mary will be out in May and Sweta’s louisiana catch was available that evening.  Surrounded by friends, fans and family, Laura and Sweta read and discussed their works of fiction. Mary, In Made by Mary, bears a child for her daughter who was born without a uterus. In louisiana catch, Ahana, an abuse survivor, flees New Delphi for New Orleans.    

 

 

Book Launch: Laura Brown and Sweta Vikram
Made by Mary pin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweta Vikram’s louisiana catch

 

 

The Frick Collection’s April 8th concert was given by the Mozart Piano Quartet. However, they didn’t play Mozart and there were not four pianos. Instead, there was one piano, one violin, one viola and a cello. And lovely selections by Dvorak and Brahms.

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case?  It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.