Dear TCL Readers:

Well, it was a summer. So much, too much, happened, and frankly my head is still spinning as the sun sets earlier, the temperatures cool, and the High Holidays approach (how is Rosh Hashanah starting this Friday night? How?) But to sum up: the six-week Yiddish language intensive at the YIVO Summer Program was everything I hoped for and more. I loved being back in a learning environment, attending classes five days a week for between 6 and 8 hours with the best of all possible teachers, even if it was also a humbling environment.

My Yiddish has improved enormously — my mother certainly says so! — but there are still many gaps to be filled (particularly with respect to the rules of grammar, sigh. Verb tzvei!) But it feels just that much easier to engage with Yiddish texts, especially handwritten letters and documents, and that will prove useful for future research projects.

Singing a Yiddish folk song at the siem, or graduation, was really great, and a zillion thanks to my musician friends (and fellow zumerprogram students) who accompanied me — Ira Temple on piano, Raffi Boden on cello, and Chelsea Simon on clarinet.

August was a travel month, with much-needed vacations to Los Angeles and Montreal (and a few days with my mom and brother in Ottawa) and I’m only settling back in. Here’s what else I was (and will be) up to in the meantime:

• I reviewed Izabella Scott’s complex and brilliant new book The Bed Trick, on an extreme case of sexual deception that also put gender, race, sex, class and storytelling on trial, for The Atlantic. (I also highly recommend Olivia Laing’s essay for The Guardian timed to the book’s UK publication last spring.) Many thanks to June Thomas for tipping me to the book and suggesting I read it, and to everyone at the Atlantic, especially my editor, Boris Kachka, fact-checker Elise Hannum, and particularly the copyediting and legal teams, for making sure this piece threaded all the proper needles and got it right.

• For Flaming Hydra, where I’m writing more regularly these days on topics that drift away from my usual crime beat, I had a blast putting together this essay on two of my favorite albums (by Madonna and Robyn) and finding oneself going out dancing more in middle age, and am excited to share the next piece when it’s ready to run.

• The summer Crime & Mystery columns recommended a number of new releases, but you cannot get me to stop talking about Heather by Caitlin Mullen. I was so pleased she got profiled by Elisabeth Egan, too.

• I am in conversation with two very different authors this month. On Tuesday, September 15 at 7 PM, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library hosts historian Sara McDougall and me for her new book Justice for Jehanne, a revelatory study of a medieval rape investigation that I was fortunate to read early (and recommend unreservedly.) And on Sunday, September 20 at 3 PM, I’ll be interviewing the great Richard Osman for his newest crime adventure novel We Chase Shadows for a ticketed event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble.

• No surprise that my pleasure reading fell off in a significant way over the summer. (Immersion in another language plus travel will do that.) But I was captivated by Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say on the flight home last week, and bowled over by Han Ong’s Fixer Chao (2001, newly reissued by Outsider Editions.) I also finally read Outwitting History (2004) by Yiddish Book Center founder Aaron Lansky. Why did it take me so long? Sometimes there’s no real reason, except that books wait for you to be ready for them, and this one was well worth it.

• Finally, Coyote vs. Acme is a genuinely good time! I saw it with my mom and my brother, the bona fide Warner Bros. cartoons expert (whose new book is available for pre-order!) and we all liked it. Zany, well-written and emotionally moving in the most unexpected ways.

Happy New Year, Shana Tova, and a gut gebentsht yor.

Until next time, I remain,

The Crime Lady