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|  | | Dorothea in the Mirror, a Jill Szekely mystery
It seems the ultimate irony that Jewish pianist Zoltan Szekely is arrested for the murder of Dorothea Granger. Has he escaped Hitler's grim assault only to become enmeshed in the American legal system? The police feel they have incrontovertible evidence that they have found their murderer. Only Zoltanm's estranged wife, Jill, is in a position to pursue an investigation that might prove his innocence. But Jill, disillusioned by years of struggle to make their marriage work in the face of a musicians poverty, has left him. Will she come through for him after all?
This book is character-driven rather than action-packed. Immigrants in flight from Hitler, the Szekelys were not part of the huddled masses longing to breathe free. They were highly educated people; their gifted son Zoltan, a concert pianist since the age of eight, had performed with symphony orchestras and entertained the troops during WWII. It was hard to think of such people in connection with murder. Yet by a twist of fate, after their years of flight, of adjustment to a new land, of struggles to relate to their children's American spouses, they find themselves involved when their | |  | | I'll Meet You in Syracuse
A follow-up story about Del Kingsley, who has married the wrong man, and on realizing the fact, has become a runaway bride. In this sequel, she contacts her real love and tries to right the wrongs of her life.
At the end of Petoskey Stones, Del had finally admitted to herself that she married the wrong man. It's a hard fact to face because it involves so many decisions which her family will violently oppose.
The year is 1948, that transition moment when women were still Daddy;s problem until marriage made them Hubby's problem, when the goal of every young woman was marriage, when the engagement ring on the finger was the ultimate status symbol. Del's parents had finally, after years of struggle, persuaded her to marry her long-time wannabe lover, Bradley Boynton. The last thin | |  | | Night of the Humpbacked Moon, a Jill Szekely mystery
Newly graduated and lacking experience in social work, Jill Szekely is hired as Acting Director of a crisis house for women. A murder occurs on her first day of work.
Who stays at a women's shelter? Females, from the homeless to the battered, to the formerly wealthy and newly destitute. What happens when these diverse types are thrown together? Everything from unusual friendships to strong hatreds, from mayhem to murder.
In 1949, with WW II over and gone, the EsCa crisis house for stranded Navy wives is seeking a new mission. When Jill Szekely takes over as Acting Director, temporarily replacing pregnant Mar Roberts, the house is experimenting with accepting teenagers rescued from the streets. With no experience, Jil | |  | | Oops, I Lost my Sense of Humor
Death came for me in 2001 in the form of pancreatic cancer. Doctors advised against surgery due to my age--but I felt that even an extra year or two is worth fighting and suffering for. Now it's been ten years and counting. Oops includes a description of the operation and recovery along with my thoughts, memories, and experiences at the time. My hope is that it may also prove inspirational to those who fear they are too old for the operating table, and choose to bypass the operation.
I faced a hard decision about a major cancer operation. Doctors warned that I could die on the operating table. The odds were against me--no one at that time had survived pancreatic cancer, and at age 81, I was a poor risk. I was warned that I could expect future pain, since I would lose many of my digestive organs and would suffer much gastric distress.
I just didn't feel ready to die. I decided that whatever chance there might be, I wanted it. My life at that time was an unfinished book with many things pending. I was just beginning to return to writing, and had an unfinished | |  | | Petoskey Stones
In the second and third generation of women who grew up in the house called Stormland, there is much dysfunction. Rebellious Della Eloise, or Weezy, the grandchild of young Edgar, had been kidnapped away from the family by her mother and resents the fact. Cousin Del had fled a mother-arranged marriage to go and work in New York. The cousins meet on a train and travel together to a family reunion in Michigan where they both struggle to come to terms with family problems and reintegrate with their roots. Was Weezy wrong to rebel against her mother and seek out her birth father? Was Edgar indeed the black sheep of the family, a man to be avoided? Or did she need to find her way out of her proper Bostonian upbringing and return to the free-spirited man who'd loved her mother? Did her cousin Del need to come to terms with the marriage approved by her family, or should she elope with the glamorous and exotic folk dancer with whom, according to her mother, she was "off the deep end?"
In the fast-paced world of career life in New York City, both women struggle to come to terms with their dilemmas,one seeking more or less conventional solutions, the other continuing to rebel and attempt to find a more unique direction. And their problems take a whole new direction when they discover that their parents too are wrestling with this type of problem, still coping with their rebellions against the social niceties of their own parents.
World War II is finally over and woman's role in society has undergone a drastic change. Women during wartime have learned how it feels to have their own jobs, their own income. They are no longer willing to depend on men's good nature to give them spending money. Yet around them, everyone from employers to media are trying to convince them to go back to the kitchen.
Delia Kingsley confronts a new marriage with a man she does not love, a man her mother considers ideal and eminently suitable for her, a stable man with a rising career as organist and choirmaster o | |  | | The Brook Farm Murders, a Jill Szekely mystery
Within an hour of Jill's arrival at the university, her old friend Renee Corliss goes missing, taking one of her children with her and abandoning the other child. This is doubly puzzling since Renee had looked forward to visiting with Jill.
Strange things were already happening at the Brook Farm Co-op when Jill arrived to do graduate work. There had been two recent deaths and the apparent kidnapping of a neighbor's baby. So when Jill's old friend Renee goes missing, along with her three-year-old child, Ethan, Jill knows she must do something about it. Though a reluctant sleuth, Jill feels she is at least more knowledgeable than her friend Alison, who proposes to find their mutual friend by using Tarot cards.
Jill soon becomes enmeshed in the swirl of events at her new home, as Renee's Missing in Action boyfr | |  | | The House of Music
Opera star Philippe Weintrob of Vienna shares with an American woman a recurring dream of a house of music where groups regularly perform. Philippe is convinced this means they shared a former life and love, but she can generate no memories of any such former connection.
Sure that his memories are correct, that in a former life he was a cellist named Jean Pierre and that he was deeply in love with a woman named Elise, Philippe pursues the woman who shares his commen dream of the House of Music. Unfortunately, she has no such memories. She has a life in the present which includes a career she likes and a good deal of involvement with her grandchildren. She rejects his advances--until she learns that he is in a sanitarium suffering from TB, when she feels a sudden urge to rush off and nurse him back to health.
On his recovery, he accompanies her | |  | | The Women of Stormland
How can one person bring himself to enslave another? One way is to denigrate the enslaved person as less than human. Ashley Pennington, of mixed race, knows this trauma in her own soul. Ashley has faced a lifetime of struggle to find her place in society. Does she belong in the black world or the white?
Sent by her family to learn about her white roots, she must live with relatives less than eager to accept a black cousin. As she researches her family's past, she flip flops in her search for identity, and her uncertainty is reflected in her relationships with the men she is beginning to care for. Of the two enigmatic charmers in her life, she feels she can't possibly choose. Black or white? Either way, her loyalties to the other side interfere with her decision.
Ashley Pennington had no idea what she might encounter when she began reading--under protest--the diaries and letters of her forebears. Of mixed race and deeply resentful of the fact, Ashley felt their lives as white women couldn't possibly interest her. Yet she is soon caught up in surprising discoveries of the difficulties the women of an earlier generation faced in both their career paths and their love lives.
How does a young woman who's never been allowed to learn anything about sex handle the first man who gets her out on a lonely road in a buggy and makes a pass at her? |
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