Here’s a science fiction novel for people who never read science fiction. There are no aliens, no space ships–just an ordinary Chicagoan who is trying to deal with a situation he doesn’t understand, in a world that’s forever changed.

Sometimes every day seems just like the one before. Sometimes, it really is the day before.

Strange things have been happening to Tim for a while now. Lately, his friends have learned to treat him very gently until he comes out of one of his spells. His girlfriend, Natalie, decides a Rhine River cruise will be just what the two of them need to get things back to normal, but at the last minute, Tim is left to sail on his own. That’s when things get really weird. While he stares, yet again, at the very same clumps of algae in the very same stretch of the Rhine he’s been looking at for days, something finally clicks. Now the only problem is–how to fix it.

The Bella Sarver Mystery Series

Death on the Danube: a Bella Sarver Mystery

It was meant to be an idyllic cruise on the Danube, filled with castles and romance. But first, the omelet maker disappeared, and then a body was found in the refrigerator, and Bella Sarver and her new husband, Art Halperin, were suddenly up to the necks in murder – again. Past history and drama play havoc with the present in this newest adventure of artist-turned-amateur sleuth, Bella Sarver.

All forms of art are connected to each other, and my latest artistic expressions include four recently published mystery novels having to do with art, history, travel and even a little romance.

All artist Bella Sarver really wants to do is paint and teach and enjoy her post-retirement career, but somehow she and her friends keep finding themselves in the midst of murder. Thanks to her knowledge of art, Bella manages to point the way to ‘whodunnit.’

Painting Lessons: a Bella Sarver Mystery

A painting holiday in Tuscany turns deadly.
Bella Sarver is leading a painting workshop for a group of Americans from Chicago in scenic Tuscany. All goes even better than she expected, until one of the group gets murdered. Who done it and why? Is the long-ago past reasserting itself? And what about the sudden appearance of an undiscovered Rembrandt? Bella never planned to play detective, but she knows a lot about painting. So when certain facts just don’t add up, she can’t help but put the pieces together in a new way that reveals ‘whodunnit.’

Brush With Death: a Bella Sarver Mystery

Who knew art fairs could be so dangerous? Not Bella Sarver, but the painter’s first foray into the world of summer art fairs proves more complicated than she bargained for. It’s not every day an artist finds a corpse in her tent, is it?

Paint a Murder: a Bella Sarver Mystery

Bella Sarver is teaching a painting class at an Over-55 Community when one of the residents breathes her last. As Bella discovers, it turns out these ‘active adults’ are keeping a lot of secrets. The third in the Bella Sarver Mystery series shows there’s a lot more to painting than meets the eye. And what about Art Halperin?

All 6 books are available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle versions.

By Barbara Lipkin

Everyone in the United States today is an immigrant or descended from immigrants, with the exception of Native Americans whose ancestors were here before Columbus. Between 1880 and 1920, people from Eastern and Southern Europe poured into the United States by the millions. They were Russians and Poles, Czechs and Romanians, Italians, Greeks and Ukrainians. All of our ancestors came from someplace else. Riva’s Journey explores the reasons why one large group of people, Jews who’d been born in the Russian Pale of Settlement, decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States, and how they adjusted to becoming Americans. Riva’s Journey tells the story of one woman, and one family, who made the trip.

There’s a curse, erroneously attributed to the Chinese, that goes, “May you live in interesting times. Riva’s Journey is the fictionalized memoir of a woman whose life spanned the start of the Industrial Revolution in Tsarist Russia to the post-war prosperity of the United States—my grandmother. She lived in very interesting times.

It was a time of vast social and political changes in the area defined as the Pale of Settlement, established by Catherine the Great of Russia about 1791, after Russia took over large parts of what had been Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and more, and incorporated those areas into the Russian Empire. Jews were forbidden to establish new settlements outside the Pale, nor could they live in most major cities such as Moscow.  The May Laws of 1881 further severely limited Jewish rights to own land, to access education, and to engage in business. The majority of Jews relocated to various large towns and cities, pursued livelihoods in trades and small businesses, or found jobs in the newly established factories that sprouted up as industrialization of Russia progressed.

And many immigrated to America….