James Stewart's Blog
April 13, 2022
Promo - $1.99
Open Road Media is doing an ebook promo on 4/16/22. For that one day only, the price of the Mystery at the Blue Sea Cottage ebook will drop to $1.99.
December 22, 2021
Starred Kirkus Review
Hey, I just got a starred review from Kirkus!
“Stewart uses…primary sources to bring Mann—and the rapidly changing times in which she lived—alive in a fast-paced, thoughtful true-crime work that contextualizes the dancer’s demise within the sociocultural climate of Prohibition-era America.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re....
“Stewart uses…primary sources to bring Mann—and the rapidly changing times in which she lived—alive in a fast-paced, thoughtful true-crime work that contextualizes the dancer’s demise within the sociocultural climate of Prohibition-era America.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re....
September 30, 2021
Book Giveaway
Hi,
My book will be published next week, 10/05/21. We are giving away 20 eBook copies. Entries will be accepted October 4- November 1. Check it out.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
My book will be published next week, 10/05/21. We are giving away 20 eBook copies. Entries will be accepted October 4- November 1. Check it out.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
August 5, 2021
Mystery at the Blue Sea Cottage
Hi Everybody,
My new book, MYSTERY AT THE BLUE SEA COTTAGE, A True Story of Murder in San Diego's Jazz Age, will be published by Wild Blue Press on 10/05/21. It is a narrative nonfiction book about the tragic death of a young interpretive dancer named Fritzie Mann in 1923. She left home one evening to meet a mysterious man and turned up dead on lonely Torrey Pines beach the next day. The crime scene baffled the cops. Their investigation uncovered intriguing suspects, Frizie's Hollywood connections, a clandestine meeting at a beach cottage on the night of her death, and secrets that threatened to ruin her killer. This case has something of a cult status around San Diego as an historical unsolved mystery--a woman at San Diego History Center called it "San Diego's Black Dahlia case." I don't know about that but it's a fascinating unsolved case set at one of the most interesting times in U.S. history--the Jazz Age. During my research I found evidence not available to the jury in 1923 that sheds new light on the mystery and, I believe, effectively solves it. The investigation took place in a setting characterized by rampant Prohibition vice and corruption, yellow journalism, notorious Hollywood scandals, and a culture war between Jazz Age liberalism and Victorian traditionalism with the same rhetoric and the same flash points--gender, abortion, race, immigration--as the current culture war. I hope you like it.
My new book, MYSTERY AT THE BLUE SEA COTTAGE, A True Story of Murder in San Diego's Jazz Age, will be published by Wild Blue Press on 10/05/21. It is a narrative nonfiction book about the tragic death of a young interpretive dancer named Fritzie Mann in 1923. She left home one evening to meet a mysterious man and turned up dead on lonely Torrey Pines beach the next day. The crime scene baffled the cops. Their investigation uncovered intriguing suspects, Frizie's Hollywood connections, a clandestine meeting at a beach cottage on the night of her death, and secrets that threatened to ruin her killer. This case has something of a cult status around San Diego as an historical unsolved mystery--a woman at San Diego History Center called it "San Diego's Black Dahlia case." I don't know about that but it's a fascinating unsolved case set at one of the most interesting times in U.S. history--the Jazz Age. During my research I found evidence not available to the jury in 1923 that sheds new light on the mystery and, I believe, effectively solves it. The investigation took place in a setting characterized by rampant Prohibition vice and corruption, yellow journalism, notorious Hollywood scandals, and a culture war between Jazz Age liberalism and Victorian traditionalism with the same rhetoric and the same flash points--gender, abortion, race, immigration--as the current culture war. I hope you like it.
