Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery

by Lucha Corpi

Overview

Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a “dark gift,” an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. When she is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in California’s Shenandoah Valley, Gloria finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. But soon she realizes that there’s more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit Joaquín Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A woman’s gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a Witches’ Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed. Corpi weaves the rich history of California's Gold Country with a suspensful mystery in this installment of her Gloria Damasco Mystery series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611926118
Publisher:	Arte Publico Press
Publication date:	09/30/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	243 KB

About the Author

Lucha Corpi is an internationally renowned poet, novelist, and children’s book author. In addition to a memoir, Confessions of a Book Burner: Personal Essays and Stories (March 2014), she is the author of several mystery novels published by Arte Público Press: Death at Solstice: A Gloria Damasco Mystery (2009), Eulogy for a Brown Angel (2002), Black Widow’s Wardrobe (1999), Cactus Blood (1995), and Crimson Moon (2004). Loa a un angel de piel morena (2012) is the pioneering first installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series now availbale in Spanish. Her first poetry collection, reissued by Arte Público Press in 2001, is entitled Palabras de mediodía / Noon Words (2001). A Piñata Books picture book for children, The Triple Banana Split Boy / El niño goloso was published in 2009. Copri is the recipient of numerous awards and citations, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Prize in fiction, and the Multicultural Publishers Exchange Book Award of Excellence in Adult Fiction. She was a tenured teacher in the Oakland Public Schools Neighborhood Centers Program for over 30 years.

Editorial Reviews

Gloria Damasco, Corpi's Chicana detective, puts her clairvoyant powers to good use in her third case. Newly married, Gloria is enjoying life with husband Justin, who is also a partner in her detective agency. When Gloria's sister-in-law calls and asks her to help a friend who owns a winery in the Gold Country, she reluctantly agrees. Upon arriving at the winery, she finds far more than the burglary of some heirloom jewelry. Her recurrent dream of dark eyes watching her, a phantom horse and rider, a woman pleading for help, and the sensation of being trapped underwater may well be linked to the strange happenings at the estate. Mysterious accidents, the disappearance of a woman who may be a saint, and a ghost horse supposedly belonging to Joaquin Murrieta, a notorious bandit, are only the beginning. This multilayered plot full of California history and Latin American lore will interest a wide variety of mystery readers.

Booklist

In her fourth outing (after Black Widow's Wardrobe), Chicana sleuth Gloria Damasco has no idea that the road to finding stolen jewelry in the wine country of California's Shenandoah Valley will lead to murder, kidnapping, and great danger. VERDICT Corpi has constructed a twisting story line that confounds her intelligent detective and the reader at every turn. This will please readers looking for a fast-paced tale with a Hispanic cultural background.

Library Journal