Great Reads

Crime thrillers, scandals and canine adventures
are vying for your springtime reading pleasure

Ripple, A Long Strange Search for a Killer, Jim Cosgrove, 224 pages, nonfiction, Steerforth Press, softcover (6 by 9 inches), $16.

A 26-year-old Kansas City man went missing in 1982, and this is a true-crime tale of a family friend and investigative journalist’s quest to find the missing man.  

Country Colors, City Colors, Betty Farber, 28 pages, children’s fiction, Houts & Home Publications, softcover (8 by 8 inches), $9.98.

This retelling of Aesop’s fable about the town and country mouse is by an author, who grew up in New York but lived in Missouri from 1968 to 1975, and illustrated by Ann Hogue, who grew up and lives at Albany.  

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Bone Deep, Charles Bosworth Jr. and Joel J. Schwartz, 376 pages, nonfiction, Citadel Press, Kensington Publishing Corp., hardcover (6 by 9 inches), $28.

This true-crime thriller reveals the story behind NBC’s mini-series, The Thing About Pam. Coauthor Schwartz is the St. Louis attorney who spent almost four years proving the husband didn’t kill his wife in their home at Troy. A 16-page color insert contains 50 photographs.

Faith and Finley Tour Missouri, K.L. Hale, 32 pages,  children’s nonfiction, Finley River Publishing (self-published), softcover (6 by 9 inches), $15.

The dog Finley and her mom, Faith, journey through the state, sharing fun facts and challenging young readers or listeners to find hidden arches. The author lives at Reed’s Spring and the illustrator, Gage Becker, lives at Branson. 

Storied & Scandalous St. Louis, Jo Allison,  352 pages, nonfiction, Globe Pequot, softcover (6 by 9 inches), $19.95.

Written under her pen name by Linda Harris Dobkins, who grew up in Joplin and was the first woman to do television news there, this book presents shocking and surprising stories in short, bite-size takes about breweries, baseball, prejudice, and protest in St. Louis.

Some examples: she writes about gentlemen and honor in the bloody nineteenth century and rich girls behaving badly in the twentieth century.