We had the good fortune to talk with Marcia Clark and John Valeri about TRIAL BY AMBUSH, Marcia’s first foray into the true crime genre, for which John served as her researcher. TRIAL BY AMBUSH is an investigation into the 1953 trial of Barbara Graham, a petty criminal whose life took a hard turn the night of a home burglary that ended in murder.

Graham’s trial was sensational, and the press coverage was a circus. Who better than famed prosecutor Marcia Clark to be the first to dig into the records to find out what really happened during the trial? Should Graham have ended up on death row? During Clark’s investigation, her prosecutorial hero, J. Miller Leavy, surprisingly ends up on trial himself.

Neither Chris nor Emily is a true crime reader, but we were both riveted to the pages of TRIAL BY AMBUSH and think you will be, too!

Emily has been carrying on with her short story project and discusses four stories:
“The Statue and the Bust” from THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF SHIRLEY HAZZARD edited by Brigitta Olubas
“Let the Chips Fall” by Emily Ross from the collection DEVIL’S SNARE: Best New England Crime Stories by 2024 edited by Ang Pompano, Leslie Wheeler, and Susan Oleksiw
“Debris” from the collection A KIND OF MADNESS by Uche Okonkwo
“Good Enough” from the collection A SMALL THING TO WANT by Shuly Cawood

Chris finally finished her #Victober book, ARMADALE by Wilkie Collins, and then read two picture books, WHAT FEELING DO WHEN NO ONE’S LOOKING by Tina Oziewicz, illustrated by Aleksandra Zajac and translated by Jennifer Croft and SOMETHING, SOMEDAY by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Christian Robinson.

Some other books we discuss are:
THIS CURSED HOUSE by Del Sandeen
SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner
THE NEW MENOPAUSE by Mary Claire Haver, MD
WHERE THEY LAST SAW HER by Marcie R. Rendon

Chris also read A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY by Brian D. Kennedy. She loved it but doesn’t discuss it in detail as it’s our fourth quarter readalong. To join our Zoom discussion on December 8th at 7 pm ET, please email us (bookcougars@gmail.com). The conversation is free and open to all.

As always, we discuss biblio adventures we’ve gone on and more books than we can include here. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Happy Reading!