Sarah Weinman Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Women Crime Writers: Library of America Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Sarah Weinman is a renowned American author and journalist. She is best known for the editorial work she has done on anthologies like ‘Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives’. Her efforts also extend to the compendium ‘Women Crime Writers’.

+Biography
Sarah Weinman’s writing efforts are most commonly associated with ‘The Real Lolita’. ‘Lolita’ was written by Vladimir Nabokov. And because it became one of the most notorious novels ever published, few readers know that it was based on the real-life abduction of an eight-year-old girl called Sally Horner.

Sarah Weinman’s ‘The Real Lolita’ uses a suspenseful crime narrative to tell Sally Horner’s full story.
Weinman used the extensive investigations that were done at the time, not to mention legal documents and interviews with Sally’s remaining relatives to reveal just how much Vladimir Nabokov knew of the abduction case.

Weinman wrote the book because she saw Sally Horner as a desperate little girl that history had silenced but who the author was determined to give a voice.

That has been the primary factor that has driven Sarah Weinman’s literary efforts over the course of her career. At some point in her life, she decided that she would make it her business to drag history’s most important women and girls in the arena of mystery and suspense into the contemporary spotlight.

Sarah Weinman began her young adult life as a forensic scientist in training. She was so serious about pursuing forensic science as a career that she acquired an M.S. in the field from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Weinman was fortunate enough to secure an internship at the office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York. The author had spent many years exploring the biological aspect of forensic science.

Her internship allowed her to dip her toes into the investigative side of things. The experience blew her mind. The 9/11 attacks happened around that time and they drove Weinman to reevaluate her life.

The time she spent doing her thesis research made her realize that she did not have the passion required to spend the rest of her life doing lab work. So she changed directions and slowly but surely wormed her way into the publishing field.

Beyond her own contributions to crime fiction, Sarah Weinman has written articles, essays, and columns for publications like ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Washington Post’, and ‘Publishers Marketplace’ to mention but a few.

Interestingly enough, Weinman has refuted claims that her experience with forensic science influenced her decision to write and edit mystery novels and anthologies. Even when her love for forensic science was at its strongest, she never felt any urges to write about crime or forensic science or death.

Weinman was always drawn more to the psychological aspects of crime than the mysteries or even the investigative processes. And once she actually began writing her own stories, she noticed that she was always chronicling the stories of women who were caught up in extraordinary situations.

Though, ultimately, people are drawn to Weinman more for her editorial work than her writing. In fact, the author came to fame because of ‘Troubled Daughters’, a mystery suspense anthology that she edited.

‘Troubled Daughters’ was designed to resurrect the renown of female authors from the golden age of mystery and suspense fiction whose popularity had waned so drastically that they generally went unmentioned in conversations about mystery and suspense authors from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

The idea for the anthology came to Weinman when an editor approached her and then asked her to contribute some content to a literary magazine issue that would focus on the mystery and suspense genres.

In trying to fulfill her obligations to the editor, Weinman began to realize that while the publishing industry had been littered with female crime novelists during the Second World War and in the years and decades that followed, none of them were ever mentioned in critical conversations about crime fiction.

People were quick to mention the likes of Hammett and Chandler, and for good reason; but no one ever spoke of Marie Belloc Lowndes.

Elizabeth Sanxay was all but forgotten and, despite the fact that she started publishing books before Ross Macdonald and garnered significant critical and commercial acclaim in the process, Margaret Millar was always an afterthought in conversations that involved her husband.

Having concluded that female crime novelists had been largely neglected by contemporary audiences, she spoke so enthusiastically about the issue to an editor from Penguin that he was thoroughly convinced that Sarah Weinman had to tackle the issue through an anthology.

She hadn’t even conceived of the notion before he mentioned. But once the words left his mouth and he asked her to send him a proposal, the author leaped at the opportunity with considerable fervor.

She made her pitch to Penguin and they bought it. Weinman was quite fortunate at the time that ‘Gone Girl’ had just become a critical hit. She was able to sell her anthology on the notion that anyone who loved ‘Gone Girl’ would appreciate ‘Troubled Daughters’.

Weinman has since become a staunch advocate for the proliferation of female authors in the crime fiction genre.

+The Dame
The Dame was written by Richard Stark, a pen name for Donald E. Westlake. Westlake wrote some of the greatest crime fiction novels ever to hit the publishing landscape.

One of his more renowned creations was Alan Grofield, a character who appeared in the famous Parker universe on numerous occasions. Even though he would occasionally partner with Parker, Grofield was his own man.

He stood out because he wasn’t as calculating or self-controlled as Parker. The Dame finds Grofield in Puerto Rico. Grofield is working as a detective. A rich, demanding woman sequestered away in a jungle villa has hired him to protect her.

This book has a foreword from Sarah Weinman.

+The Kidnapping of Sally Horner
Vladimir Nabokov made quite the name for himself when he wrote and published Lolita, a notorious novel whose events were actually based on a real-life abduction case.

This Sarah Weinman boo digs into the publication history of Lolita. It aims to give Sally Horner a place of prominence in the history of Nabokov’s most popular work.