A Blue Vengeance Norwood Flats Mystery

In the spring of 1964, troubled teenager Cookie Blue is found dead in the Red River. Blue Vengeance follows her younger brother Danny and Cookie's friend Janine through a lazy Winnipeg summer, as they plot to kill the despised teacher they blame for Cookie's death. Danny's father is long gone, and his mother suffers from a debilitating medical condition. Her illness and self-medicated state free Danny from certain constraints traditionally put upon a young teenager by a parent...like committing murder. Like Hamlet, Danny Blue is bent on revenge but struggles with his conscience. As he grapples with grief and love, loyalty and betrayal, and the loneliness at the heart of being human, Danny comes to understand that his life, and his choices, will never be simple again. Alison Preston is a truly original writer and Blue Vengeance is a zinger of a coming-of-age tale, a mix of comedy, suspense, and poignant beauty that only she could create. ? Catherine Hunter (author of The Dead of Midnight)

Summer is just arriving in Inspector Frank Foote's quiet Winnipeg neighbourhood when a dead baby is discovered in his neighbour's rain barrel. The tiny body has evidently been in the rain barrel for some time, and there are no obvious leads in the case. Frank is a cop, and he's seen a lot of crime scenes, but this one is a little too close to home. Meanwhile, Gus Olsen, who made the gruesome discovery, is a little worried about a mysterious woman who is cruising their quiet neighbourhood in her Lincoln Town Car. He's been meaning to talk to Frank about her, but somehow there never seems to be an opportune moment. Gus doesn't want to bother Frank, who already has his hands full trying to take care of his household and his three children while their mother dries out in an addiction treatment centre. Frank is a good father, he tries to be a good husband, and he hopes he is a good cop. But, like all of us, Frank has a few old secrets he is ashamed of. And when Ivy Grace suddenly resurfaces after a long absence, one thing is certain: before this summer ends, Frank will have to confront his past.

After leaving the Winnipeg Police force, former Inspector Frank Foote has gone into home renovations, but when he and his partner discover the skeleton of a young female behind one of the walls of the house they are working on, he finds himself following the leads to a photographer who specialized in taking photos of the recently deceased for their families.

One summer afternoon in 1954 a jealous four-year-old girl named Cherry Ring bites her baby brother Pete on the cheek. She bites him so hard that little Pete needs a skin graft to repair the damage and will have a scar for the rest of his life. Cherry knows what's she's done is wrong, and she really is sorry. But sorry isn't going to be good enough. The bite marks the beginning of a troubled relationship between the siblings that will last a lifetime. As Pete gets older he perfects an ability to completely ignore his sister. It scares Cherry, the way he looks right through her, and she chooses to leave him alone. Cherry can't seem to find her way into her mother's affections either. Her father is the only one who seems able to love her, but when she is only nine years old he dies suddenly, leaving her to manage as best she can in her dysfunctional little family. Cherry is in university when her mother decides to remarry and move away, taking Pete with her. Cherry isn't sorry to see them go. She finally starts to feel like her life is going somewhere. But on a sultry summer night in 1995 disturbing incidents begin to occur around her house and Cherry realizes she has not managed to leave her past behind. Luckily that nice police inspector Frank Foote lives in the neighbourhood. Maybe he can help her. The story unfolds in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Norwood Flats, which readers have come to know in Preston's other mysteries, The Rain Barrel Baby, The Geranium Girls, Sunny Dreams, The Girl in the Wall, and Blue Vengeance.

Beryl Kyte, a letter carrier who lives in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Norwood Flats, goes out for a hike one beautiful spring Sunday and literally trips over a body in the woods of the St. Vital Park. It's a dead woman with mushrooms sprouting in her mouth. In a panic, Beryl struggles out to the main road and manages to hail a cellphone-toting passerby who notifies the police. Among the many officers who arrive on the scene is Inspector Frank Foote, whom she has seen around her neighborhood. A badly shaken Beryl is questioned and escorted home. It isn't long, however, before another body turns up and then another. As she follows the horrific discoveries in the Winnipeg Free Press, Beryl thinks she sees a pattern emerging. Beryl hadn't been of much help to the police in the case of the first dead woman -- she'd only tripped over the body, after all -- but when things begin happening around her own home, she wishes they could be of some help to her. But she can't even make the call, for the crimes taking place in her yard -- someone has been deadheading her lobelia and someone has put a pretty little collar on her cat -- will just make the police think she's crazy. Except maybe that nice Inspector Frank Foote.

On a spring morning in 1925 Sunny Palmer disappears from her baby carriage in Picardy's restaurant in downtown Winnipeg. It happens in seconds when big sister Violet and her mother are choosing their treats from the dessert display. As those first minutes turn to days, months, then years, the Palmer family collapses and gradually glues itself back together in a new form. A decade later, the Dirty Thirties are in full swing: one hot summer day two drifters looking for work turn up in the Palmers' back yard. They are among the legions of men crisscrossing the country looking for work. Violet's father, Will Palmer, a local attorney with few construction skills, invites the men to pitch their tent and stay on to build a garage for his new Buick. But he's on his guard. One of the men, Jackson Shirt, seems a little too well-educated and much too handsome to ring entirely true. He's just Violet's age, seventeen, but Will senses he has more than his share of secrets. A wayfaring friend of the drifters drops by occasionally to watch them work. If anything blameworthy occurs in the neighbourhood -- theft, noise, even illness -- these three outsiders come under close scrutiny. When polio strikes that August, suspicion turns to savagery. And Jackson Shirt's secrets are revealed. The story takes place in the Norwood Flats section of Winnipeg, the same setting as Preston's previous novels. This time, though, the action is mostly in the Depression year of 1936 and we meet Fraser Foote, the father of Frank, who has played a part in previous books.

Joseph Mitchell was a legendary New Yorker writer and the author of the national bestseller Up in the Old Hotel, in which these two pieces appeared. What Joseph Mitchell wrote about, principally, was New York. In Joe Gould, Mitchell found the perfect subject. And Joe Gould's Secret has become a legendary piece of New York history. Joe Gould may have been the quintessential Greenwich Village bohemian. In 1916, he left behind patrician roots for a scrappy, hand-to-mouth existence: he wore ragtag clothes, slept in Bowery flophouses, and mooched food, drinks, and money off of friends and strangers. Thus he was able to devote his energies to writing "An Oral History of Our Time," which Gould said would constitute "the informal history of the shirt-sleeved multitude." But when Joe Gould died in 1957, the manuscript could not be found. Where had he hidden it? This is Joe Gould's Secret. "[Mitchell is] one of our finest journalists."--Dawn Powell, The Washington Post "What people say is history--Joe Gould was right about that--and history, when recorded by Mitchell, is literature."--The New Criterion

»The Adventure of the Norwood Builder« is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, about the brilliant Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in 1903. SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE [1859-1930], was a Scottish physician and author, best known for his stories about the groundbreaking master detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle wrote a total of 56 short stories and four novels about Sherlock Holmes and his constant companion Dr. Watson.