Wish You Were Here: A Murdered Girl, a Brother’s Quest and the Hunt for a Serial Killer

By John Allore and Patricia Pearson

(Random House Canada, September 2020)

• A Toronto Star National Bestseller

As compelling as Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark or Stevie Cameron’s On the Farm, Wish You Were Here is the story of a brother’s lifelong determination to find the truth about his sister’s death, a police force that was ignoring the cases of missing and murdered women, and, to the surprise of everyone involved, a previously undiscovered serial killer.

In the fall of 1978 teenager Theresa Allore went missing near Sherbrooke, Quebec. She wasn’t seen again until the spring thaw revealed her body in a creek only a few kilometers away. Shrugging off her death as a result of 1970s drug culture, police didn’t investigate.

Patricia Pearson started dating Theresa’s brother, John, during the aftermath of Theresa’s death. Though the two teens would soon go their separate ways, the family’s grief, obsession with justice and desire for the truth never left Patricia. Little did she know, the shockwaves of Theresa’s death would return to her life repeatedly over the next 40 years.

In 2001, John had just moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his wife and young children, when the cops came to the door. They had determined that a young girl had been murdered and buried in the basement. John wondered: if these cops could look for this young girl, why had nobody even tried to find out what happened to Theresa? Unable to rest without closure, he reached out to Patricia, by now an accomplished crime journalist and author, and together they found answers far bigger and more alarming than they could have imagined—and a legacy of violence that refused to end.

****

“Wish You Were Here is at once a riveting mystery, an astute analysis of sexual violence, an investigation of a police force and a study in grief and loss. On all levels it succeeds brilliantly. An engrossing, heartbreaking and necessary book.”
—Don Gillmour, author of The River, winner of the 2019 Governor-Generals Award

“Wish You Were Here is an investigation intimate and mournful in nature, yet heroic in its level of forensic detail. By bearing witness to how a malefactor slips through the cracks of a haphazard, morally bankrupt system, infected by misogyny and cronyism—and how the legacy of that injustice connects to further calamity—the brave authors take back some of what is lost, bringing some measure of justice to an unending spiral of tragedy.”
—Bob Kolker, author of Lost Girls and Hidden Valley Road

“Infuriating, gripping and devastating, Wish You Were Here is…a heartfelt memorial to Theresa, and a testament to her family, who have never stopped seeking justice for her and many others who were stolen.”
—Jessica McDiarmid, author of Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice

****

John Allore is the creator and host of the podcast Who Killed Theresa, which concentrates on unsolved murders in Quebec, and other criminal and social-justice issues. He launched one of the first crime blogs, and the website theresaallore.com not only documents the search for his sister’s killer but a trove of information on other unsolved cases in Canada and the US. He’s created a database for all such cases in Canada that uses software to identify clusters and serial predator patterns. He lives with his family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Patricia Pearson is an award-winning author and the recipient of three Canadian National Magazine Awards, the Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian nonfiction crime writing, and a North American Travel Journalism Association award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Toronto Life, Reader’s Digest, the Toronto Star, National Post, The Guardian, the New York Times, More, the Globe and Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Business Week, NPR, CBC Television, The History Channel, and TV Ontario, among many others. In 2003, she was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, Canada’s version of the Mark Twain prize.

The Darkest Hearts: A D Hunter Mystery

By Nelson George

(Akashic Books, August 2020)

In the fifth book of Nelson George’s D Hunter mystery series, the eponymous former bodyguard has moved full-time to Los Angeles, becoming a talent manager and trying to put his past in New York City behind him. Business is good for D Hunter: he has signed a hot Atlanta rapper named Lil Daye for management and negotiated a huge endorsement for Daye with a liquor brand. It’s a big payday for both of them.

Along the way, D finds out that Samuel Kurtz, the liquor company’s CEO, has some unsavory sexual habits and deeply reactionary political views. D worries that he has sold his soul and wonders what to do about it. Back in Brooklyn, a body has been found in the waters near the Canarsie Pier, a body that connects D and the retired hit man Ice to incidents from back in The Plot Against Hip Hop, the second book in the series. Because of this discovery, an FBI agent wants to speak to D, which is making Ice nervous. And Ice is not a man you want worrying about you.

Meanwhile in London, Serene Powers, a vigilante and sometimes collaborator with D, breaks up a human trafficking ring. In the process, she makes some new, unlikely allies. When Serene returns to the US, D asks her for assistance with a sensitive and volatile matter in Atlanta involving Lil Daye, his wife, his mistress, and a thug on his payroll named Ant.

The Darkest Hearts is a crime-fiction novel that reflects the challenges of being a black businessperson in an era when the rules of entrepreneurship are constantly shifting due to technological advancements and an increasingly polarized political environment.

****

“This action-packed crime novel both educates and entertains.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Thoroughly satisfying reading.”
—Booklist

“A showcase of different approaches to values, business, and hip-hop seen through a lens that feels personal.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Once again, my brother Nelson George comes through in the clutch like he’s batting clean-up. I’ve known Nelson over 30 years and he has been our cultural storyteller for that length of time. Keep telling. Keep writing our stories. I know I will keep reading them too.”
—Spike Lee

****

Nelson George is an award-winning author, filmmaker, television producer and critic with a long career in analyzing and presenting diverse elements of African American culture. His books have been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Before Columbus Foundation. As a filmmaker, George was a producer on the Emmy Award-winning The Chris Rock Show (HBO) and directed Queen Latifah to a Golden Globe in the HBO film Life Support, which he also co-wrote. He was also a writer/producer on The Get Down (Netflix), which ran from 2016-2017. Currently, he is working as an executive producer on a documentary series about Tupac Shakur being directed by Allen Hughes. He is based in New York City and Los Angeles.

Space Is The Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

By John Szwed

(Duke University Press, May 2020)

Space Is The Place is the definitive biography of Sun Ra, a.k.a. Herman Poole “Sonny” Blount (1914-1993), a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, poet, and self-claimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. As the leader of the “Intergalactic Arkestra,” a band of more than 30 musicians, he was unparalleled for his purposeful outlandishness and exerted a powerful influence over a vast array of artists. Considered by many to be the founding figure of Afrofuturism, he composed a musical philosophy that extends beyond the international to the interplanetary. Space Is The Place reveals the life, philosophy, and musical growth of one of the 20th century’s greatest and most outrageous avant-garde musicians.

Reissued over 20 years after its original printing, the 2020 reprint edition of Space Is The Place brings Sun Ra into the 21st century. A lengthy new preface considers the musician’s life within the context of Afrofuturism and the current state of race politics.

****

“One of the great jazz biographies.”
—The Guardian

“The achievement of this biography is that it carefully articulates Ra’s views of life and art at the same time that it provides hard data and analysis to locate his theories in historical context. . . . [Ra’s] story is told with brilliance and grace in this deeply simpatico biography.”
—Washington Post

“Szwed reveals the breadth and depth of Sun Ra. . . . It’s more than a biography. Reading this book, like encountering Nietzsche or Zen, can make you rethink everything.”
—L.A. Weekly

“One of the best books ever written about anything.”
—The Idler

“Quite possibly the most inspirational music biography ever written – Essential.”
—Muzik

****

John Szwed is Adjunct Senior Research Scholar in the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. He is the former John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, and Film Studies at Yale University. He has authored or edited 18 books, including the highly acclaimed Billie Holiday: The Musician And The Myth (Viking 2015), Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded The World (Viking 2010), and Jazz 101: A Complete Guide To Learning And Loving Jazz (Hyperion 2000). Szwed’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, and many other publications. He has received fellowships from the John M. Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Szwed has produced several recordings and has appeared in a number of documentaries and television specials. As a jazz musician, he played the bass and trombone professionally for over a decade. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Ohio State University and lives in Philadelphia.

Switched On Pop: How Popular Music Works, and Why it Matters

By Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding

(Oxford University Press, December 2019)

Pop music surrounds us—in our cars, over supermarket speakers, even when we are laid out at the dentist—but how often do we really hear what’s playing? Switched on Pop is the book based on the eponymous podcast that has been hailed by NPR, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Entertainment Weekly for its witty and accessible analysis of Top 40 hits. Through close studies of sixteen modern classics, musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding shift pop from the background to the foreground, illuminating the essential musical concepts behind two decades of chart-topping songs.

Despite the importance of pop music in contemporary culture, most discourse only revolves around lyrics and celebrity. Switched on Pop gives readers the tools they need to interpret our modern soundtrack. Each chapter investigates a different song and artist, revealing musical insights such as how a single melodic motif follows Taylor Swift through every genre that she samples, André 3000 uses metric manipulation to get listeners to “shake it like a Polaroid picture,” or Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee create harmonic ambiguity in “Despacito” that mirrors the patterns of global migration.

Replete with engaging discussions and original illustrations, Switched on Pop brings to life the musical qualities that catapult songs into the pop pantheon. Readers will find themselves listening to familiar tracks in new ways—and not just those from the Top 40. The timeless concepts that Nate and Charlie define can be applied to any musical style. From fanatics to skeptics, teenagers to octogenarians, non-musicians to professional composers, every music lover will discover something ear-opening in Switched on Pop.

****

“Switched on Pop weaves these meta-analyses [of songs] into its more clinical breakdowns, creating a reading experience as multidimensional as the songs they describe. Readers come away from each chapter understanding not just the building blocks of a particular song or why those are so satisfying to listeners, but also how each of those elements — and the song itself — fit into the arc of American music history.”
—The Atlantic

“Sloan and Harding’s ode to popular music reintroduces the Billboard Top 100 to the field of musicology and the snobbiest of vinyl collectors. A necessary addition to any music collection.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“Sloan and Harding take great care in helping us understand why pop music sounds the way it does, and why pop music is important in your life, no matter who you are…They’re not just two guys—they’re experts.”
—Paste

****

Nate Sloan is a musicologist, performer and educator based in Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and currently teaches at the University of Southern California. Nate is co-host of the music podcast Switched on Pop and a pop music panelist on Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) Radio’s Day 6. Nate is also an award-winning performer and composer. His two-man vaudeville act “The Gideon and Hubcap Show” has played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at the Soho Theatre in London, and Nate composed the score for the 2014 SXSW Short Doc prize film Slomo.

Charlie Harding is the co-host of Switched On Pop, a songwriter and longtime musical collaborator with his co-host Nate Sloan. Charlie also works in the humanitarian sector, serving as the Director of Product Management at Ushahidi, which builds crowdsourcing software to help people raise their voices. Previously, Charlie worked for Google and Google.org where he worked on internet access software and infrastructure projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world. He also co-founded Runa, a social enterprise tea company that works with over 2,000 indigenous farming families. He is based in Los Angeles.

Time Is Tight: My Life, Note by Note

By Booker T. Jones

(Little, Brown, October 2019)

The long-awaited memoir of Booker T. Jones, leader of the famed Stax Records house band, architect of the Memphis soul sound, and one of the most legendary figures in music.

From Booker T. Jones’s earliest years in segregated Memphis, music was the driving force in his life. While he worked paper routes and played gigs in local nightclubs to pay for lessons and support his family, Jones, on the side, was also recording sessions in what became the famous Stax Studios-all while still in high school. Not long after, he would form the genre-defining group Booker T. and the MGs, whose recordings went on to sell millions of copies, win a place in Rolling Stone’s list of top 500 songs of all time, and help forge collaborations with some of the era’s most influential artists, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave.

Nearly five decades later, Jones’s influence continues to help define the music industry, but only now is he ready to tell his remarkable life story. Time is Tight is the deeply moving account of how Jones balanced the brutality of the segregationist South with the loving support of his family and community, all while transforming a burgeoning studio into a musical mecca.

Culminating with a definitive account into the inner workings of the Stax label, as well as a fascinating portrait of working with many of the era’s most legendary performers-Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Tom Jones, among them-this extraordinary memoir promises to become a landmark moment in the history of Southern Soul.

****

“Booker T. Jones composed some of the finest music of the last century, and now he’s given us one of the finest music books of this one.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Booker T. will forever be known as the Booker T. from Booker T. and the MGs. But this book reveals so much more of the man.”
—Bob Dylan

“Booker T. is a great producer, a great musician, and a great friend. Those three ‘greats’ together pretty much let you know how I feel about Booker. He and I worked together on many projects, all were fun-just like this book, which is as joyful to read as Booker’s music is to listen to.”
—Willie Nelson

“Booker is simply one of the tenderest-hearted people I’ve ever met and I’m so honored to have ever been in his company. This beautiful memoir is a near perfect reflection of the man I would walk a million miles for: engaging, unforgettable, and deeply creative.”
—Sinéad O’Connor

****

As the keyboardist for the Memphis-based quartet Booker T & the MGs, Booker T. Jones performed R&B and funk hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave, and, as a member of the house band for Stax Records, helped define the sound of Southern soul music. Booker T & the MGs are also known for original hit singles like “Green Onions,” and for being one of the first integrated instrumental groups. In 1992, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they received a Grammys’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

Janis: Her Life and Music

By Holly George-Warren

(Simon & Schuster, October 2019)

• Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.

Janis Joplin has passed into legend as a brash, impassioned soul doomed by the pain that produced one of the most extraordinary voices in rock history. But in these pages, Holly George-Warren provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn’t all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it. She was a woman who pushed the boundaries of gender and sexuality long before it was socially acceptable. She was a sensitive seeker who wanted to marry and settle down—but couldn’t, or wouldn’t. She was a Texan who yearned to flee Texas but could never quite get away—even after becoming a countercultural icon in San Francisco.

Written by one of the most highly regarded chroniclers of American music history, and based on unprecedented access to Janis Joplin’s family, friends, band mates, archives, and long-lost interviews, Janis is a complex, rewarding portrait of a remarkable artist finally getting her due.

****

“[Janis] performs a service by stripping away a lot of the noise around Joplin . . . and telling her story simply and well, with some of the tone and flavor of a good novel.”
—The New York Times

“In encapsulating Joplin’s dual nature so concisely, George-Warren delivers the definitive portrait of one of pop culture’s most misunderstood martyrs…. [In] dwelling so sympathetically on her tangle of talents, contradictions, and mythology, Janis brings one of rock’s most enduring legends down to earth while holding her justly up to the light.”
—NPR.com

“[Janis] is sober and thorough, and it amounts to the last word on a brief candle of an existence, a life whose peaks and valleys make your average mountain range look as flat as an acre of Texas farmland.”
—The Washington Post

“Never before the revelatory new book Janis: Her Life and Music has [Janis Joplin] been fully recognized as a groundbreaking musician charting a fresh course for the blues, for rock, and for women, while, at the same time, obliterating the line between the performance of a song and essence of her soul.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Joplin was a swashbuckling, pleasure-seeking, polyamorous trailblazer in her music and lifestyle… Janis is not just biography, but social history too, a loose chronicle of America’s late-Sixties counterculture, with cameo appearances by Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, George Harrison, Leonard Cohen, Otis Redding, Jim Morrison and more… As a rounded portrait of an explosively exciting artist, George-Warren’s book is never less than engaging.”
—The Times

****

Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer and music consultant. As editorial director of Rolling Stone Press from 1993-2001, she created over forty books, including New York Times bestsellers and ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award-winners. She has worked as a curator for the GRAMMY Museum, which opened in L.A. in December 2008, and currently serves on the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A two-time Grammy nominee, she teaches Arts Journalism at the State University of New York in New Paltz, NY.

Cooking South of the Clouds: Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province

by Georgia Freedman

(Kyle Books, September 2018)

China’s Yunnan Province is the most geographically, biologically, and ethnically diverse region in China. Stretching from the Himalayan plateau to the subtropics, the province is home to thousands of species of plants and animals as well as twenty-four of China’s minority groups. As a result, Yunnan is one of the most culinary interesting and delicious places on earth, with a wide variety of cuisines and flavors all packed into one small province.

COOKING SOUTH OF THE CLOUDS: Recipes and Stories from China’s Yunnan Province, by food and travel writer Georgia Freedman, offers a tour of Yunnan’s many foods, from the famed Crossing the Bridge Noodles to dishes like spiced chicken grilled in banana leaves, which will introduce cooks to a side of Chinese cooking still relatively unknown outside of the country itself.
Continue reading →