Murder Under the Fig Tree Is a Lambda Finalist

Great news!

Murder Under the Fig Tree has been selected as one of eight finalists in lesbian mystery for the Lammy, or Lambda Literary Award, given annually by the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing LGBTQ literature. The finalists were chosen from nearly 1,000 submissions and over 300 publishers. Submissions came from major mainstream publishers and from independent presses, from both long-established and new LGBTQ publishers, as well as from emerging publish-on-demand technologies. Previous winners include Victoria Brownworth, Katherine Forrest and Jessica L. Webb.

Winners will be announced at a gala in June in New York City.

Lambda finalists (including me) will be reading on Tuesday, April 24 at the San Francisco Main Library at 6:00 pm (reception at 5:30).  Hope you can join us!

Breaking news: Murder Under the Fig Tree is also a finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES, the awards given annually by the respected journal, Foreword Reviews.  Fig Tree is a nominee in both Mystery and Multicultural Fiction. Foreword INDIES winners will also be announced in June.

As I explored previously, it’s unclear whether awards have an effect on sales or not, but it is really nice to be recognized and definitely helps me get motivated to get to work on Book 3.

Advertisement

Today Is My Book’s Birthday

Today is the official birthday of my second novel, Murder Under the Fig Tree. I hope those of you who enjoyed Murder Under the Bridge will read it and share your thoughts with me. It picks up a few months after the end of Murder Under the Bridge, after the elections that brought Hamas to power in the Palestine Authority (and before the coup that left them only in control of Gaza). Chloe is out of the country, but when she hears that Rania has been arrested, she rushes back, and another adventure in forging cross-cultural sisterhood begins. This book looks at some of the shifts in social mores taking place within Palestinian society, while always foregrounding the impact of Israeli military occupation on the people of the West Bank.

I have been depressed and outraged recently. Once I thought that outrage was a defense against depression, but it turns out they can indeed coexist. I am outraged about the rise of the overtly fascist right in our country and in Europe, and I’m depressed that the left seems unable to agree upon – or even dialogue productively about – the best tactics with which to defeat it. I am outraged over the ongoing destruction and massacres in Syria, and depressed that it is rarely even in the news any more. I am outraged over US-Saudi bombings in Yemen, which keep killing civilians “accidentally” and depressed by the absence of any movement in this country to hold our leaders accountable for these deaths. I am outraged that the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act is rising again, just as Medicare for All was starting to be a thing, and depressed that all of our activism for single payer over the last twenty years has gotten us — here. I am outraged that my friend Herman Bell, who has been a political prisoner for more than forty years, was assaulted by a prison guard last week, damaging his eye, and depressed that now HE has been charged with assault and put in solitary confinement.

I am both outraged and depressed that there is no water in Gaza, that the United Nations has said it is “unlivable” and yet the Israeli blockade continues and the Palestinians are the ones called terrorists. I am outraged that Israel has authorized the construction of 4,500 additional units of housing for Jews only on illegally occupied Palestinian land in Jerusalem, while more than 40 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel because they were built without permits. And I’m depressed that consecutive US presidents, while calling settlement construction “unproductive,” have increased the amount of military aid we give to Israel to over $4 billion each year.

I am outraged that climate change is getting worse, that people in the Caribbean and Mexico are facing homelessness and death because of the greed of US capitalists. And I am depressed because my outrage does nothing to help them get housed or fed or stay alive, and because even all our efforts to reverse US climate policies, should they somehow succeed, may be too little too late.

And in the midst of all this, I am supposed to start promoting another book? How can another little mystery make any meaningful contribution to a world in such dire chaos?
I don’t know. I don’t kid myself that a book, even a much better book than mine, with much wider distribution, can do more than plant a tiny seed in the mind of someone new to the issues of Israeli occupation and Palestinian freedom. I think about Picasso, painting his reaction to the massacre at Guernica. I imagine it did not feel like a very adequate response. But generations later, many of us only know about Guernica because of Picasso.

I’m not suggesting I am like Picasso. But as a friend said, Picasso didn’t know he was Picasso either. I can only hope my book plants a seed that grows into a tree from which blooms justice and peace.

Or barring that, that people enjoy it and want to read the next one. Find out how to buy it at https://katejessicaraphael.wordpress.com/books/buy-the-book/

Murder Under the Fig Tree – Chapter 2

The days were getting warmer, but the evenings were still cold in Ramallah. Even in his leather jacket, Daoud shivered. The nearer he got to the looming Wall with its high watchtowers, the colder he felt. He zipped the jacket up to his neck.

He hung back for a while, watching people come and go. To his left, people moved easily, returning from Jerusalem to Ramallah without interference. At this hour, people poured out of taxis and teemed through the open gate, stopping to shop at the makeshift roadside stands where you could buy everything from warm bread to bathmats. Old Palestinian cars zoomed through, dust mingling with exhaust. The drivers leaned on the horns when passersby were slow to move aside or when traffic snarled in the narrow intersections. Just beyond, he could see the minarets of Qalandia refugee camp, a quarter mile away, but off-limits to Palestinians without Jerusalem ID.

To his right, cars stretched as far back as he could see, two abreast, with more arriving all the time. They too honked, but only to blow off steam. The new arrivals knew there was nothing the other drivers could do to speed up the checkpoint. He watched as a VW Rabbit with half its fender torn off veered around an orange taxi piled high with luggage on top. The taxi driver stubbornly refused to pull back and let the VW in.

Even this chaotic assembly looked orderly, compared to the crush of bodies pressing toward the turnstile where the pedestrians went through—if they were lucky. Those like him, who had no permit for Jerusalem, could wait for hours only to be turned back, or worse. It was six o’clock and still light out. Next week, the time would change, and then it would be light even later. The longer days were a blessing for the farmers and for people who had a long way to travel to and from work. It was not so good for him, though. Under cover of darkness, he could often still find a way around the checkpoint—a hole in the fence, a place where the Wall was not quite finished, or where the sections had been wedged ever so slightly apart. Six months ago, even in broad daylight, he could always find a way through to Jerusalem. But in the last months, the Israelis had sealed up the Wall around al-Ram and Qalandia, and, now, increasingly, the only ways through were the official ones, which were closed to him.

The two turnstiles, each as heavily fortified as a medieval castle, loomed in front of him like a dare. The old, handwritten signs had recently been replaced with brown, metal placards proclaiming the right line for foreigners and people with blue Jerusalem IDs, the left for Palestinians with green West Bank ID cards.

Daoud would not get through either turnstile legally. He edged closer to the crowd, looking for a young mother he could perhaps befriend. Men and women went through separately, but, if a woman had several small children, and he offered to carry a couple of them through, she might be grateful enough to protest that he was her husband, that one of the babies was sick and they needed to get to a hospital quickly quickly, the soldiers would be impressed with his love for his children and wave him through.

No good candidates for that ruse presented themselves tonight. He looked up at the ugly, concrete Wall looming on both sides. It seemed to grow higher and thicker every time he came, its towers rising ever more menacingly. Not for the first time, he imagined coming here with some sticks of dynamite and lighting the fuses, watching the stone crumble. It would not make any difference. They would build it again the next day, twice as high and twice as deep. But he would not care, because he would be dead and, before he died, he would have known what it was to be free for just one minute.

He shoved the fantasy aside. Bombs and such were not for him. He had considered it, of course, while he was in high school. All the boys in his circle had. A few of them had actually joined the militant resistance, picked up guns, blown themselves up, taking an Israeli settler or soldier or two with them. One of his best friends was in prison now; he had meant to be a bomber, but had been caught on the way to detonate his belt. Probably Daoud would never see him again. He put his friend out of his mind. He could not dwell on such miseries when he was on his way to entertain, to make the audience love him, and be made love to in turn.

He abandoned the turnstiles and instead strode up the line of cars. In between the turnstiles, two soldiers hunkered back to back in a metal booth piled high with sandbags. Each balanced a long rifle on one shoulder, aiming it at the window of the first driver in line, ready to shatter both the window and the driver’s head if the car moved prematurely. Daoud leaned against a light post and smoked a cigarette. Four soldiers worked the cars in teams of two. One of the teams was methodical, doing everything just the same with each car, taking this out, then that, asking the same questions of each person. The other team obviously enjoyed mixing it up. They would sometimes look in the trunk, sometimes tell everyone to get out, now take the driver’s keys, turn the radio to a Hebrew station and turn it up loud. He needed to avoid those two like rotten meat.

He examined the others, the quiet ones. One was tall and the other short. The tall one had sunken cheeks and a bushy beard; the shorter one was muscular and clean-shaven. His cocoa-colored face was impassive, and he spoke to the people in broken Arabic, using the respectful terms haj and haji for older people.

When the musc man stretched between searching cars, Daoud cleared his throat. The man looked up at him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“To go to Jerusalem. To Adloyada.”

“Adloyada?” Daoud was sure the soldier knew what Adloyada was. He just wanted to play naïve.

“I have to get there soon. I’m JLo Day-Glo.”

A flicker of a smile passed over the young man’s lips, but, as quickly, it was gone.

“Do you have a permit?”

“Would I be standing here if I did?”

“Sorry, it’s not possible.”

“Perhaps we can go there together.”

“I’m on duty.”

“Gadi,” called the taller soldier. “Yalla.”

Daoud grimaced. He hated that the Israelis had appropriated the Arabic “let’s go” into their stupid language. Gadi, as his partner had called him, might have noticed Daoud’s expression or maybe he was just annoyed by Daoud’s familiarity. He grabbed Daoud roughly by the arm.

“Come over here,” he snarled.

Daoud felt panic welling up inside him. What had he done? He was flirting, sure, but if the guy wasn’t interested, he could pretend he didn’t understand. Was he a closet case, a homophobe, or both?

“Let me go,” he hissed. “I didn’t mean anything. Forget it, I’m leaving.”

Gadi ignored him, twisting Daoud’s wrist so that he yelped. He frog marched him away from the cars to a green metal hut, shoved him inside, and closed the door. The smell of urine and rancid beer assaulted his nose. His stomach churned, and he choked back a little vomit. It was pitch dark, and something squished under his foot. He hoped it was chewing gum or the remains of a chucked-out sandwich. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to die in this tin can, and no one would ever know what had become of him. The cell was too short for him to stand without stooping. He put his jacket on the ground and sat on it, folding his long legs up under his knees and hugging them. He didn’t like the idea of his prized leather jacket being soiled with whatever might be on this filthy floor, but better the jacket than his pants.

The metal of his jail rattled, making a hollow thwang. Latches slid back with a loud creak. Quick, think, what to say? What to offer, what to beg for? He had to get out of here. A slot in the door opened, and a shaft of light pierced the blackness. The harsh glare illuminated a shaft of flesh, Gadi’s penis, he assumed. Daoud shifted on the floor until his mouth was in the right place. He said a quick prayer before opening his mouth and taking the prick inside.

He could smell and taste the contempt of the prick’s owner. Once again, he almost gagged. He wondered if the soldier had put his gun on the ground, or if he was even now standing with his hand on the trigger. Daoud sucked and sucked and finally felt the squirt in his mouth. He gave a final lick and pulled away. He hoped the soldier could hear him spit the sperm on the ground. Too late, he considered that Gadi wouldn’t be the one who had to sit in it. It would be the next poor guy who tried to get through the checkpoint. He should have done it in the corner. How much longer would he be here? He needed to get to Adloyada.

The door flew open. “Come on,” Gadi said. Daoud could see no sign in his face of what had just happened. He wondered if it was a nightly occurrence, like drinking coffee. Gadi took his arm, a little less roughly than before, but not gently. He led him to the front of the line of cars and opened the door of a cab.

“Do you have room for one more?” he asked. The cab was full, five adults and two children, but a woman took one of the kids on her lap, and the other passengers good-naturedly shifted around to make room. Gadi waved them through.

Daoud glanced at the two young men sharing the back seat with him. They were nicely dressed for a night out, black slacks and polo shirts. They gave each other a high five. No doubt, they had been anticipating a problem at the checkpoint too. Daoud hugged himself, wondering if the sour smell was coming from the jacket or his own skin, The cab dropped him off at the top of the Mount of Olives. He caught a servees down to Damascus Gate and, from there, walked quickly down HaNevi’im Street and ducked into the small alley called Shushan. When he caught sight of the gray stone oasis, he thrust the memory of Gadi and his moments of panic and humiliation behind him. He opened the door, and a rush of warm air, pungent with beer, wafted to greet him. Mordecai, an elfin, Jewish Israeli with sparse, brown hair, danced over and kissed him on the lips.

“JLo, thank God. You’re on in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”

“You had no problems with the checkpoint?”

Daoud hesitated for one second. His friend’s eyes had already wandered to the bar, where the bartender was pouring vodka into a row of shotglasses.

“Not too bad,” he said.

Hooked?  Sign up for my newsletter to find out about advance giveaways and more.

Preorder Murder Under the Fig Tree

Murder Under the Fig Tree – Chapter 1

March, 2006

“Rania in prison.”

Tina’s text caught Chloe in mid-glide. She looked around at the skaters, volleyball players, jamming musicians, couples walking with kids licking ice cream cones in their strollers. It was the first clear Sunday in weeks. Golden Gate Park was packed with people thronging to the azalea gardens and the arboretum. A minute ago, she had felt in sync with them all. Suddenly, she was on a different planet. She spun around on her rollerblades and took the hills as fast as her forty-year-old legs would carry her.

Barely a week later, she watched the ground come closer and closer as the plane circled over Ben Gurion Airport. She felt each successively smaller circle gnawing its way into the pit of her stomach. This is a mistake, her brain whispered. They’ll never let you in. You should have gone over land, from Jordan or Egypt. Then when they refused you entry, you would have been nearby; maybe you could have appealed, tried again. But, in reality, fifteen miles might as well be fifteen thousand when the Israeli border stood in your way. If she was going to get sent home, she would rather the rendering be swift and brutal. The doors were opening now, and the impatient passengers were shoving toward the steep stairs leading to the tarmac. She let everyone go ahead of her. At least she could give herself a few more minutes.

She parked herself in the mob under the All Others sign and waited, practicing her lines over and over. To her right, Israeli passport holders breezed through the turnstile, joking with the passport control officers in Hebrew.

To distract herself, she imagined Tina pacing around the huge airport lobby, waiting for Chloe to emerge from the secured area. Since getting the news about Rania’s arrest, Chloe had been so obsessed with getting her friend out of prison, she had not really considered that she would also be renewing her relationship with Tina. What should her first words be? Would they even still like each other? Theirs had been a whirlwind courtship in the context of a big adventure which had ultimately forced Chloe to leave Palestine. They had spent fewer than ten days in each other’s arms, though the intensity had made it seem much longer. Not much to base a relationship on. But Tina had encouraged her to come, so that had to mean something.

To her left, a motley mix of women who resembled her mother and kids who resembled her camp counselors danced a hora under a sign reading Welcome New Olim. The Olim, Jews coming to claim the birthright of Israeli citizenship bequeathed to them by Israeli law and the United Nations, stood in the center of the circle, clutching pet carriers and household appliances and looking shell-shocked.

She felt a moment of envy, which she quickly stowed in a tightly locked closet in her mind. Even now, despite all that had happened, if she told the immigration officer she wanted to immigrate to Israel—to “make Aliyah,” they would whisk her off to a special area reserved for Jews “returning” and help her sign up for government-paid Hebrew classes. In junior high school, she had imagined doing it. She had pictured herself strong in olive fatigues, an Uzi slung over her shoulder, like the two soldier girls just now strolling past her, laughing. She thought one of them glanced her way.

Chloe took deep breaths, or tried to. She should have brought a fashion magazine, as a friend had suggested, to make herself seem harmless. Like that would help. There were agents everywhere whose job was to watch out for people just like her, people who were not what they seemed.

What she seemed to be was a middle-aged American with an unmistakably Jewish countenance and wild dark curls flecked with gray. She wore jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, like 80 percent of the others in this line. Hers clung to her zaftig middle, creating dark patches where tension was making her sweat. She wished she had a hair dryer, but of course she hadn’t even packed one.

She made a game of distinguishing all the languages her fellow tourists were speaking. She picked out snatches of conversation in French, German, and languages she didn’t recognize, probably Dutch, Polish, Serbian. Directly in front of her, a group of Christian pilgrims joked in German, all tall, rugged blondness, the crosses around their necks mildly clashing with their grunged-out clothing. If she got in, she would no doubt run into them in the Old City, eating hummus at Abu Shukri’s famous shop.

In front of the pilgrims was a South Asian Muslim family, the woman in a lavender headscarf, the father with a long, black beard and white cap. Chloe guessed they were Indian, and the Indian government was a close ally of Israel, so maybe that would help them, but she predicted they would be in for some rigorous questioning. She examined the three children, the oldest not more than five, dancing and hopping around while their mother tried to contain them by clinging to their hands. How would they hold up under the interrogation of the airport authority? she wondered. And if they were taken aside for questioning and background checks, would that help or hurt her own chances? Was there a quota of harassment they had to meet every day? A limited number of people available to conduct strip searches and other invasive procedures? She had no idea. She silently apologized to the Indian family—if that’s what they were—for hoping that they would occupy the suspicious slot for this line.

Her turn finally came to walk up to the counter. She watched the Muslim family be herded through an iron door, flanked by two police, one male and one female. One of the kids turned to look back, her pigtails flying out around her head. The policewoman gently but firmly prodded her toward the invisible back room.

Chloe’s legs would hardly hold her up. She braced a knee against the bottom of the counter, so the young woman behind it would not see her shaking. She leaned over slightly to make sure the Star of David around her neck dangled into the clerk’s line of sight.

“What is the purpose of your trip?” asked the young woman, between chews of gum.

“Visiting friends and family,” Chloe replied. Her eyes burned as she tried to keep them from shifting away.

“Family? What family do you have here?”

What should she say? She couldn’t name the second cousins she had never even met. The people she considered family were not going to do her any good in this encounter.

“My cousin Nehama,” she said. “In Givatayim.”

She should have called Nehama and made a plan to say they were cousins. The older woman would surely have agreed. What else had she neglected to do? She had been half-crazed, worrying about Rania, dreaming of Palestine; she had barely gotten it together to find someone to take care of her cat.

As long as the agent didn’t ask for Nehama’s phone number, it would be okay. If Chloe got to make the call herself, her friend would back her up.

“Nehama what? Her name is Rubin also?”

“No, it’s Weiss. She’s my mother’s first cousin.” Might as well lay it on.

“Where does she live?”

“I told you, Givatayim. It’s a suburb of Tel Aviv.” Of course the woman knew where Givatayim was. She was just testing, to see if Chloe would crack.

“What street?”

“Keren Kayemet.”

The young woman chomped noisily on her gum. She swiped the passport’s magnetic stripe through the machine, and they both waited impatiently. A flood of information splashed across the blue screen. Chloe couldn’t see it, but she imagined she knew what it said, chronicling the trouble she had caused for the Israeli military last time she was here. The woman made faces at it, her hand hovering over the telephone to her right. This is it, Chloe thought. She was going to call the police to come get Chloe and take her into that back room. Chloe instinctively took hold of the Star of David, rubbed it a little for luck. The young woman took her hand off the phone and held the passport with both hands in front of her face.

“How long do you plan to stay?”

“At least until Pesach.”

The woman lowered the passport and studied Chloe’s face. Chloe concentrated on appearing as middle-aged and nonthreatening as she possibly could. She wished she had gum, so she could chomp like the agent was doing.

Stamp, stamp, stamp. The agent’s hand moved rapidly, and now she was holding the passport out to Chloe to take. Improbable as it seemed, her use of the Hebrew name for the Jewish holiday of Passover, coming up in four weeks, had worked like a secret handshake. She was in. Chloe walked away, mentally shaking her head over her dumb luck. In minutes, she was holding Tina’s long, lithe body in her arms, burying her nose in her lover’s neck.

* * *

Rania perched on one end of the narrow cot and concentrated on carving into the plaster wall with her hardiest fingernail. When she was done, she counted the tick marks, as if she didn’t know them by heart. As if she had not already counted three times today, and it was not even noon. At least, she assumed it was not, because the policewoman had not come to bring her lunch. A lunch she would not want to eat, but probably would, because the boredom was too much to tolerate on an empty stomach.

Here came the young woman now: the one they called Tali, her freckled, copper face glowing with health and rest. From counting the ticks, Rania knew it was Sunday, Yom il ahad. Yesterday would have been the regular guards’ day off, the Jewish Sabbath. She tried to remember who was here yesterday. She could not conjure up a face. She could not keep the days from blurring one into the other, while she sat here, day after day, looking at these same four walls and wishing wishing wishing herself at home with Khaled and Bassam.

Rania turned her face to the gray wall before the policewoman got to her cell. She would not let the police see her crying for her former life, which seemed so far away now. She could barely remember what Khaled had looked like the day before they took her away. Of course she knew what her own son looked like; she knew his face better than her own, but, at seven, he was changing so fast, becoming more himself every day. Sitting here, she could remember how he had looked as a tiny infant in her arms, as a three-year-old soberly watching her separate the clothes for washing, last month at the party for his cousin’s engagement. But she could not remember exactly what he had worn the last day after he came home from school, or if his face had furrowed over his English homework.

“Hakol bseder?” Tali asked as she shoved the tray into the space between the bars. The unappetizing smell of overcooked beef quickly filled the little cell.

The guard didn’t wait for an answer, but moved on to the next cell even as the words, Are you okay?, were coming out of her mouth. There was no reason she should wait. Rania had never said a word in reply, in the weeks they had been bringing her the miserable Israeli hummus and the runny, tasteless cheese they served instead of labneh. The thought of it made Rania’s stomach lurch. They couldn’t even make salad right.

“Lo, hakol lo bseder,” she said suddenly. The words sounded so strange coming out of her mouth. Not only because she rarely spoke Hebrew, but because she had not heard her own voice in three long weeks. She, who seldom went three minutes without talking. When they had first brought her here, she had worried that she would break under interrogation, just because she loved to talk. She needn’t have worried. There had been no interrogations. No one wanted her to talk. They wanted to shut her up.

She was so used to being alone with her own thoughts, she forgot that she had spoken out loud. Now, the startled young woman was back and watching her with annoyance in her eyes. Rania vaguely traced the irritation to the fact that Tali had asked a question she had not registered, unused as she was to conversation.

“Did you say something?” Rania asked.

“You speak Hebrew?” The question sounded vaguely accusatory, as if Rania must have stolen the language.

“Ken, ktzat,” yes, a little.

“Ma habeayah?” What’s the problem?

What to say? She was not going to tell this Israeli cop that she wanted to see her son or that she wanted to know what was going to happen to her, how long she would be cooped up in this nothing place. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they had broken her down, and she couldn’t trust them with the knowledge of what was important to her. She thought of her friend Samia, back in the refugee camp in Bethlehem, who had been arrested when they were seventeen. She had been tortured and raped, but she had not named one member of their group.

“Nothing,” Rania said in English. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem.” Tali swung away from her, back to the cart of lunch trays she had to deliver.

When she was gone, Rania almost regretted her resolve. It had been nice just to be in the presence of another person, for those few minutes. That tiny bit of interaction had made her feel a little more human. What would it have hurt to have a little conversation with the girl, ask her about her weekend, about the weather, if she had a boyfriend? But, then again, what would it have helped? It would simply have postponed the inevitable agony, when she would be alone again, to sit here trapped with her own thoughts and recriminations.

Ten months ago, Rania had learned dangerous secrets held by two of Israel’s top military men. She thought she had outsmarted them, but, all this time, they had been waiting for their chance to lock her away with their secrets. When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election, the Israelis had rounded up dozens of Palestinian police and others they considered dangerous. She should have been spared; she had been a member of Fatah, President Abbas’s party, since she was fifteen. Her enemies, though, had seized the opportunity to put away someone they personally considered dangerous. She had no idea how long they could hold her. If her enemies had anything to say about it, it could be forever.

That thought brought the tears to her eyes again, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. However long she was going to be here, she would not spend it moping. She stood and stretched up on tiptoe, then bent and touched her toes. Her body felt uncharacteristically stiff, her back aching with inaction. In the normal course of her life, she got lots of exercise, but now she thought maybe she should do some of the calisthenics they used to do in school. She removed the heavy, dark jilbab, revealing a red, long-sleeved pullover and black, stretchy pants. She felt ridiculously exposed, though there was no one here to see. She did a few jumping jacks, ran in place for five minutes. While she ran, she hummed one of the marching songs that had played everywhere during the First Intifada.

“Singing is forbidden.” Tali was back.

“Why?” Rania was not in the mood to be conciliatory. What more could they do to her?

“Those are the rules.”

“If you care about rules, why do you break international law by keeping me here?”

The policewoman walked away, shaking her head. Rania felt surprisingly cheered. In those few minutes, she had recouped a little piece of herself she had been missing since the night they took her away. She would spend the day crafting a campaign of minor resistance.

Read Chapter 2

Hooked?  Sign up for my newsletter to find out about advance giveaways and more.

Preorder Murder Under the Fig Tree