X (novel)

"X" is the twenty-fourth novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" series of mystery novels and features Kinsey Millhone, a private eye based in Santa Teresa, California, a fictional version of Santa Barbara, California. The novel, set in the late 1980s, finds Kinsey pursuing a sociopathic serial killer. The novel, was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, was released in the United States on August 25, 2015.

Development history

Publication history

Explanation of the novel's title

Beginning with "A" Is for Alibi in 1982 and continuing with "B" Is for Burglar in 1985 through "U" Is for Undertow in 2009, Grafton's "Alphabet" series of mystery novels has been published in alphabetical order with a new book coming out every 12 to 24 months. The name of each upcoming book has been an ongoing source of speculation among fans and in the press. In May 2009, Grafton told Media Bistro that she is "just trying to figure out how to get from "U" Is for Undertow to "Z" Is for Zero" (in 2019) and that "just because she knows the endgame title for Z [...] doesn't mean she knows what V, W, X, and Y will be".

Novel

A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.

The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,

Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.

The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."

Ilyasah Shabazz

Ilyasah Shabazz (born July 22, 1962) is the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. She is an author, most notably of a memoir, Growing Up X, community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker.

Early life

Shabazz was born in Queens, New York, on July 22, 1962. She was named after Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, the religious and Black nationalist group to which her parents belonged.

In February 1965, when she was two years old, Shabazz was present, with her mother and sisters, at the assassination of her father. She says she has no memory of the event.

Shabazz had an apolitical upbringing in a racially integrated neighborhood in Mount Vernon, New York. Her family never took part in demonstrations or attended rallies. Together with her sisters, she joined Jack and Jill, a social club for the children of well-off African Americans. She considered an acting career, though her mother was not supportive. Her mother instead took interest in trying to keep her father's presence alive, and baked her cookies, which she would break a piece off to give the impression that her father had eaten it before she came.