Random Books from the Bookshelf

The Goddess of Fried Okra by Jean Brashear

The first page reads:

Nothing else could have put me on the road again, not after eighteen years of being dragged all over creation. The road was Mama’s perpetual escape clause for boyfriends, bill collectors or just boredom.

Sister, she used the road to save me.

All those years, I swore up and down that once I was old enough, I would find a spot and no force on earth would budge me.

But I didn’t count on Sister.

Sister gave up everything for me, see, and I owed her. She was only sixteen when Mama died; I was eight. Life could have been so much easier on her if she’d let the social services people have me like they wanted. Instead, she even chased off her no-good daddy Alvin when he showed up saying he would take care of us. She understood lighting-quick that what he really meant to do was lay on his sorry behind. Only get up long enough to take the child welfare money and buy lottery tickets. Sure as shooting, he would have let Sister do all the work.

Killer Hair by Ellen Byerrum

The first page reads:

Lacey Smithsonian looked down at the unfortunate woman in the coffin and thought, Oh my God, that is the worst haircut I’ve ever seen.

And they say you can’t die from a bad haircut. Even as that sentiment percolated through her brain, she added, You are such a bitch, Lacey. But she couldn’t help it. It really was a bad haircut.

The haircut belonged to Angela Woods, “Angie” to her friends at Stylettos, the trendy Dupont Circle salon where she had worked until just a few days ago. Now Angie was the guest of honor in the polished maple casket at Evergreens Mortuary in the Nation’s Capital.

At only twenty-give, Angie’s sweet round face wasn’t going to get any older. And that hairdo wasn’t going to get any better. The deceased looked peaceful, if a little sad, laid to rest in the satin-lined box. She wore a dark rose silk jacquard dress with a lace collar that conflicted wildly with those strange short rainbow-colored clumps of fair sticking up in between patches of bruised bald scalp.

Look Closely by Laura Caldwell

The first page reads:

Seated at a table near the back, Caroline Ramsey lifted her champagne flute an inch off the table. “Cheers,” she murmured halfheartedly, toasting the bride and groom for what seemed like the fiftieth time. Almost immediately, she set the glass back down.

Her husband, Matt, leaned toward her. “Anything wrong?” he said. Through his glasses, his brown eyes looked only mildly concerned.

The groom was a distant relative of Matt’s, and in order to compensate for knowing so few people, he’d gone into his social mode, dancing to every silly wedding song and striking up conversations around the room. He always became vivacious and outgoing in these situations, something Caroline loved about him, since she was more reserved. Yet now she almost wished that he were more of a watcher, like her, someone who hung on the fringes. If that were true, maybe he would wonder now, maybe he would look deeper.