Jonnie Jacobs: creates mystery series with female sleuths.
Three local authors speak at luncheon
AAUW plans its annual Authors' Lunch event
By Shari Kaplan
The Los Gatos-Saratoga branch of the American Association of University Women invites all interested women--and men--in the community to attend its annual Authors' Lunch on Jan. 31, beginning at 11:30 a.m. at the Saratoga Country Club, 21990 Prospect Road in Saratoga.
This year's three guest authors are Jonnie Jacobs, Lillian B. Rubin and Terry Ryan. The women, all Bay Area residents, will talk about their recent books, answer audience questions and sign their books after the presentations.
Jacobs, who lives in Piedmont with her husband and two sons, is a former practicing attorney who now writes full time when not giving lectures on the topics of writing and mystery fiction. So far, she has written eight mystery novels in two ongoing series, both of which contain female protagonists and both of which are set in California--specifically Jacobs' native Bay Area.
The Kate Austen books feature, as Jacobs describes it, a "wry take on murder, malice and motherhood" because Kate is both a sleuth and a mother. Jacobs is also known for weaving tongue-in-cheek social commentaries into the Kate Austen books. Her other series follows Kali O'Brien, who works as an attorney when not solving mysteries. Jacobs describes Kali with a bundle of disparities: tough, tenderhearted and unpredictable.
Lillian Rubin: draws non-fictional matter from many fields.
Rubin is an internationally recognized author, lecturer and sociologist and a practicing psychotherapist in San Francisco. Rubin, who has published 10 books in the past two decades, uses her interdisciplinary schooling and experience to approach writing from many different perspectives.
Among the books for which she is best known are Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class Family, Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self and Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers and the Crucible of Aging. The latter, her most recent book, combines three themes: mother-daughter conflict and resolution, the rise of a contemporary woman from an urban ghetto, and how a society obsessed with youth deals with aging.
Terry Ryan: influenced by her mother's ingenious life.
Ryan, a San Franciscan, is the author of two collections of poetry, The Prize Winner of Defiance and Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less. The latter is a true story of her mother Evelyn, who in the 1950s and '60s entered and won hundreds of corporate-sponsored contests involving jingles, slogans and poems. In this manner, Evelyn helped support her family of two adults, 10 children, a cat, a roster and a sparrow.
Along with serving up a slice of American life, Ryan complements it with the personal angle that comes from her life and family. The book is currently under consideration for production as a film. When not working on books or poetry, Ryan also serves as the writer for T. O. Sylvester, a long-running cartoon in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tickets to the Authors' Lunch are $45 per person. Proceeds support the AAUW's programs for girls and young women, the Eleanor Roosevelt program for teachers, self-development and research projects. For reservations or more information, call Mary Henderson at 408.867.1928 or Nancy Hobbs at 408.395.4045.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
