Here are two debut novels from talented Twin Cities-based authors and a new thriller from an award-winning Minnesota series writer. All perfect summer reading.
(Courtesy of the author)
“The Sirens of Soleil City”: by Sarah C. Johns (Random House, $18)
Donna swam too slowly, leading to Phyllis bumping into her, which led to Donna stopping to curse Phyllis out. When the order was reversed, Ilona got kicked in the back by Donna, which led to Dale jumping in between them to prevent a physical altercation. A bird flying above would have seen chaos. Wet, angry women who couldn’t swim together in a simple shape. — from “The Sirens of Soleil City.”
Sarah C. Johns (Courtesy of the author)
It’s a writer’s dream to have their debut novel published by one of the biggest publishers in the country. St. Paulite Sarah C. Johns made it happen with “The Sirens of Soleil City,” which she’ll launch Tuesday, publication day, in Minneapolis.
There is so much right in this novel about three generations of women in one family at different stages of life. The setting is West Palm Beach., Fla., in 1999 where senior citizen women live in a slightly run-down apartment building. They are a bonded group, even though there is bickering. They are on either side of 70, and they’ve lived full lives. Now they’re content to gather around the pool at sundown, gossiping and keeping track of one another’s well-being. There is a tenderness to Johns’ treatment of these women. Yes, they have aches and pains, but they are mostly tough and not surprised by much of anything. They are worried about the possibility of leaving Soleil City because the building needs repairs and the manager does nothing about it.
Among the residents is Dale, who’s led a colorful life. Dale left her daughter, Cherie, when the child was 5 so she could go to Mexico. Cherie grew up to be a fixer, a problem-solver to whom people turn when they need help. She has money and she is well-organized but nobody knows that she’s having second thoughts about her marriage. Then there’s Marlys, who also lives at Soleil City, the woman who raised Cherie. Marlys is dying but nobody will talk about it. Pregnant Laura, Cherie’s daughter, is leaving her husband just a few months before her baby’s birth.
When Cherie arrives at Soleil City to visit her “two mothers,” she already has a plan. Could the women form a synchronized swim team and win enough money to have the apartment building repaired? So Cherie recruits daughter Laura to be the team’s reluctant coach.
The story is told in alternating voices of Dale, Marlys and Laura. Their lives are revealed in intimate conversations and there is hilarity in the Soleil City women’s efforts to learn the basics of team swimming, including kicking aged legs high out of the water.
This is a delightful book with everything you want in a story — an intricate plot, lively and well-drawn characters, good dialogue, humor, and three generations of love.
Johns, who lives in St. Paul, is a writer and video producer who studied in South Africa, Hungary, Israel and Germany, graduating from McGill University in Canada before attending film school in Australia. She will launch her novel at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 9, at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with award-winning Gretchen Anthony, author of “Tired Ladies Take a Stand” and “The Kids Are Gonna Ask.” The program is free but registration is required. Go to magersandquinn.com/events.
(Courtesy of the author)
“City of Secrets”: by P.J. Tracy (Minotaur Books, $28)
They veered off in different directions, always staying within sight of each other as they went room-to-room. All their senses were honed to painful clarity by the slipstream of adrenaline that was carrying them both. Nolan’s heart had climbed up to her throat, and with every step, every breath, it hammered harder, threatening to suffocate her. — from “City of Secrets”
P.J. Tracy launches (Courtesy of the author)
A lot has happened to Los Angeles police Detective Margaret Nolan since she debuted in P.J. Tracy’s “Deep Into the Dark” in 2021. Nolan didn’t much like other humans when the series began. She was an emotionally cold cop who teamed up with Sam Easton, a Gulf War vet whose face was mangled by an IED explosion. In “City of Secrets,” fourth in the Nolan series, Maggie and Sam are both in better places in life. Nolan is drawn to a colleague, Remy, and Sam is in a relationship with Melody, a recovering alcoholic who was a major character in the first Nolan thriller. Thanks to Melody, Sam has mostly overcome his PTSD and no longer cringes when people look at his ruined face. He’s also a consultant for the police department’s SWAT team.
But crime never goes away in Los Angeles, and Remy is thinking of leaving law enforcement because of it. He thinks the city “had a shrill, dangerous hum that hadn’t existed five years ago, and it scared him.”
As “City of Secrets” begins the body of a man is found in his car in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Why was a well-to-do guy there in the middle of the night? Nolan and her partner, Al Crawford, learn the victim was the head of a pet food company about to sell for millions. He was also a sex addict so there were plenty of women who might have wanted him dead.
A day after the body is found, the wife of the man’s partner is kidnapped. The partner, a sweet guy who would never hurt anyone, hasn’t been involved with the company for years. Then, he’s also abducted. Remy, meanwhile, is pursuing a street rumor that the Angel of Death has returned. At the center of the plot seems to be someone known only as Mimi, an elusive woman whose motives aren’t clear. The case gets murkier, and more violent, as the team finds connections going all the way to an aristocratic family’s winery in Spain and a brutal betrayal.
Tracy, who lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, writes spot-on dialogue, and her characters are complex She brings the beauty and ugliness of Los Angeles alive as her characters move from the elegant Bel-Air hotel to the seedy neighborhoods where murder is nothing new.
P.J. Tracy is the pen name of Traci Lambrecht, who wrote eight books in the Monkeewrench series with her mother, P.J., and two more after P.J.’s death. Books in the series won almost every mystery/thriller national award. Other titles in the Margaret Nolan series are: “The Devil You know,” “Desolation Canyon” and “Deep Into the Dark.”
Tracy and Allen Eskens, award-winning author of nine novels, including “The Life We Bury,” will tag team in a lively discussion about their work at Minnesota Mystery Night at 7 p.m. Monday, July 15, Axel’s Restaurant, 1318 Sibley Memorial Highway, Mendota. The program is free, but reservations are required at 651-686-4840. Pre-program dinner is available. Those making reservations should mention Minnesota Mystery Night. For information go to minnesotamysterynight.com. Tracy’s book, to be published in August, and Eskens’ forthcoming novel “The Quiet Librarian,” due out in February, 2025, are available now for pre-publication sale.
(Courtesy of Third State Books)
“Edison”: by Pallavi Sharma Dixit (Third State Books, $29.95)
…he returned to his apartment of men with the thought that he was cursed by the principal paradox of his country: an obsession with big-screen love stores matched only by the inordinate amount of time spent arranging marriages and forbidding dating. How could practically every Hindi movie ever made involve the subject of love when love was wholly prohibited by parents across the country and throughout the diaspora? — from “Edison”
Pallavi Sharma Dixit (Courtesy of the author)
All the immigrant Indians in Edson, N.J., thought Prem Kumar was just a “pumpwalla” who worked at a gas station. They didn’t know Prem came from one of India’s wealthiest families and ended up in Edison because Prem’s father got tired of him sitting around watching Hindi films all day. Prem was tired of people telling him he needed a plan for his life, so he found himself in Edison, sometimes called Little India because it was a center of the Indian diaspora.
Prem didn’t do well at first. Just off the plane he was robbed by two guys, one of whom even felt sorry for this clueless nerd. He lived in an apartment with other guys, sleeping on a mattress under a bag of onions. Then he got a job at a nearby grocery and fell in love at first sight with the owner’s daughter, Leena, who returned his loving looks. For a while they found ways to be together, but her father found out about their relationship and told Prem he could marry Leena when he made a million and one dollars. (The extra dollar is for luck.) For the next decade Prem loves Leena, even though he rarely sees her and her engagement is announced. Prem, always a lover of Hindi movies, becomes a prominent producer of shows featuring major Indian film stars but life is meaningless without Leena.
In her debut novel, Dixit takes us into the lives of Prem’s friends, all of whom want to become entrepreneurs. These are not immigrants from India who came in the first flood — doctors and lawyers — but men and women who work hard to grab their part of the American dream. Woven through the story are glimpses of the future in which these newcomers make their dreams come true.
This is also a story of the town of Edison, where the author grew up and where her parents still live. She describes how the the city morphed into Indian-owned businesses as Edison became “the name that became synonymous among expatriate Indians and those in the homeland as a homeland in America.” For instance, Indian-owned businesses moved into Pizza Hut and Dairy Queen without changing the buildings’ basic architecture. One of Prem’s most lovable friends, Beena, runs a catering business out of her apartment, constantly chopping vegetables while Prem curls up on her sofa when he’s despondent even after the successes of his big shows.
This is a fun, happily-ever-after story the publisher calls “a Bollywood-style love story in the guise of literary fiction.” There are lots of references to Indian films, stars and music, but the author translates the titles into English when necessary.
Publishers Weekly describes Dixit’s novel as an “effervescent debut. This romp is one to savor.” Kirkus praised: “A sparkling epic worthy of Bollywood’s silver screens.”
“Edison” is so lively, and Prem is such an endearing character, the reader is happily transported to Little India with all its zest for life, including the foods and colors these good-hearted folks brought to the United States.
Dixit, who was born in India, won the first annual Asian American Writers’ Workshop Pages in Progress prize, co-sponsored by Third State Books. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has been aided by grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board and others. She lives with her husband and two children in Minneapolis.
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