BLOG TOUR STOP~AN ILLUSTRATED DEATH By Judi Culberton
Title: An Illustrated Death
Author: Judi Culberton
Genre: Mystery
Publication Date: October 1, 2013, (ebook only) by Witness Impulse, an imprint of HarperCollins
Event organized by: Literati Author Services, Inc.
Synopsis
When bookseller Delhi Laine gets the opportunity to appraise the late Nate Erikson’s personal library, she jumps at the chance. It’s not every day a bookseller gets to peek into the mind of a famous illustrator, not to mention his fascinating collection of rare books. Invited to spend time with the artistic Erikson clan at the family compound in the Hamptons, Delhi is intrigued by their eccentric and eclectic ways.
But when death visits the family once more and another Erikson is found dead, dark family secrets come to light—including the death of Nate Erikson himself. Surrounded by the charmed family not quite as idealic as they once seemed, Delhi is determined to solve the murders once and for all. But digging up truths can get you dirty…and Delhi is about to discover how far some will go to keep them buried.
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GUEST POST
Keeping Books Under Control
When I was three years old, a babysitter I disliked was coming to take care of me, a girl who lived on the floor above us. I had a tantrum, yelling and kicking my feet on the books at the bottom of my crib. “You mustn’t do that!” my mother cried. “Books are your friends.”
I believed her. When I went to kindergarten I told my classmates, “You mustn’t hurt books! Books are your friends.” Everybody laughed.
Books have continued to be my friends. And why not? A book never leaves wet towels on the bathroom floor. A book never looks askance when you put on that pair of jeans. A book never looks you in the eye and says, “We have to talk.”
What books do have is a tendency to multiply and take over. They never just leave quietly. So as grateful as I am to have them, I’ve had to devise a way of keeping them under control. I’ve identified the categories of books I can say goodbye to without feeling bad:
Books that I “just couldn’t get into.” Maybe I bought a book because it sounded interesting or won the National Book Award or a friend raved about it. I held onto it, thinking that something would change. But since the book wouldn’t, it would have to be me
Books that are outdated. Travel guides, medical references, textbooks, computer manuals, encyclopedias, cookbooks with recipes that call for a stick of butter.
Books I enjoyed, but know I’ll never read again. When I look at these books there isn’t any chemical reaction, that frisson of feeling that lets me know a book still has something to give me.
Coffee table books that are attractive but too general. The pictures are pretty, but there’s no hard information. How can there be when it’s trying to cover the whole history of architecture or Ireland or dolls?
Books that I thought were valuable but turned out not to be. It’s easy to check prices on abebooks or via Libri or eBay.
The best thing about the book is that it’s inscribed to me. It’s hard to get rid of something that has been personalized. But I do it if the author is not someone famous and I know I’ll never read the book again.
There are other kinds of books to say goodbye to as well; books that are physically falling apart, books where your interests have changed and you have moved past their infomation, books where the chemistry just isn’t there.
The good news is that there will soon be better books ready to step up to take their place.
About the Author  |
Judi Culbertson graduated from Hampton DuBose High School in Florida, and majored in creative writing at Wheaton College in Illinois. After two years in Philadelphia she moved to Long Island where her son Andy was born. Here she published GAMES CHRISTIANS PLAY (Harper & Row, 1967), followed by THE LITTLE WHITE BOOK ON RACE (Lippincott, 1970) with a friend, Patti Bard.
In 1970 Judi began working for the Suffolk County Department of Social Services, working with families at risk, children in foster care and, finally, in the Court Unit where she wrote petitions to free children for adoption. During this time she was writing articles for Glamour, The New York Times, Newsday, Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, Working Mother, and others and travel stories for major newspapers.
In 1986, after a trip to Paris, Judi and her husband, Tom Randall, wrote a travel story that developed into PERMANENT PARISIANS,An Illustrated Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of Paris, published in 1987 by Chelsea Green Press. This was followed by four more: PERMANENT NEW YORKERS; LONDONERS; CALIFORNIANS; and ITALIANS.
After earning an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College, Judi published THE NURSERY (St. Martin's Press, 1996). By then she had started speaking professionally on a subject that had long fascinated her, people's attachment to stuff. This led to two books: SCALING DOWN, Living Large in a Smaller Space, written with Marj Decker (Rodale 2005) and THE CLUTTER CURE (McGraw-Hill, 2007).
Judi left social work in 1999 to pursue her interest in selling used and rare books on the Internet.
It is this background that helped create the Secondhand Prose Mystery Series. A NOVEL DEATH is the first book, published by Avalon Books in June 2011. AN ILLUSTRATED DEATH will be published on October 1, 2013 by Harper/Collins. When not writing, she and Tom travel extensively and enjoy their twin grandchildren, Andrew and Emily, as well as the three cats they live with: Ignatz, Vladimir, and Pangur.
Ten (10) ecopies of An Illustrated Death. Winner must have access to Bluefire Reader and have an Adobe account to receive free download.
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