Here are three options for summer reads by Hawaii
authors:
“Murder Frames the Scene:
A Hawaii Mystery”
Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl
University of Hawaii, $16.99
The author of “The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu” and other political plays, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl lets her hair down in pithy, amusing detective novels set in 1930s Honolulu. In her third mystery, “Murder Frames the Scene,” Ned, a local part-Samoan playwright, goes to Shanghai to help an American friend and his Chinese wife. Back home, Ned and his pal spy on the Japanese Embassy while Cecily, Ned’s part-Hawaiian fiancee, covers the local arts scene. Love affairs between artists and socialites are interrupted by murders, which Ned and Cecily attempt to solve. Kneubuhl provides evocative period atmosphere.
“Holy Moli: Albatross
and Other Ancestors”
Hob Osterlund
Oregon State University, $18.95
Laysan albatrosses, which mate for life, including same-sex pairs, changed author Hob Osterlund’s life, inspiring her to nest here. She moved from the mainland to Kauai in 1979 after seeing her great-aunt Martha Beckwith, the local author of “Hawaiian Mythology,” in a dream. In this funny, frank and uplifting memoir, Osterlund, whose work has appeared in National Geographic Explorer, Nature and elsewhere, reflects on humankind’s inhumanity to one another — and to nature — and what we can learn from her beloved, endangered birds.
“How to Party With an Infant”
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Simon &Schuster, $26
The sarcastic, irreverent voice we loved in “The Descendants” is back in Kaui Hart Hemmings’ new novel, whose heroine, Hawaii-born Mele Bart, lives in San Francisco as a single mom raising toddler Ellie, “a wonderful mistake.” Other parents in their Panhandle park play group are also profiled in “How to Party With an Infant,” a funny, incisive tour de force that takes on the pretensions and foibles of these haute-bourgeois, narcissistic urbanites. The marriage of Ellie’s father motivates Mele to enter a cookbook-writing contest sponsored by the San Francisco Mother’s Club, and reawakenings ensue. Joyful and sexy.
