FICTION · BANKERS
Emma Lathen
Also known as: R. B. Dominic, Lathen, Emma pseud.
Emma Lathen was the pen name of two American businesswomen: an economist Mary Jane Latsis (July 12, 1927 – October 29, 1997) and an attorney Martha Henissart (born 1929), who received her B.A. in physics from Mount Holyoke College in 1950 (Wikipedia). They also wrote under the pen name R. B. Dominic.
How /odd you humans are.
— from A Stitch in Time
Most acclaimed
A Stitch in Time
For nearly a decade Garak has longed for just one thing—to go home. Exiled on a space station, surrounded by aliens who loathe and distrust him, going back to Cardassia has been Garak's one dream. Now, finally, he is home. But home is a world whose landscape is filled with death and destruction. Desperation and dust are constant companions and luxury is a glass of clean water and a warm place to sleep. Ironically, it is a letter from one of the aliens on that space station, Dr. Julian Bashir, that inspires Garak to look at the fabric of his life. Elim Garak has been a student, a gardener, a spy, an exile, a tailor, even a liberator. It is a life that was charted by the forces of Cardassian society with very little understanding of the person, and even less compassion. But it is the tailor that understands who Elim Garak was, and what he could be. It is the tailor who sees the ruined fabric of Cardassia, and who knows how to bring this ravaged society back together. This is strange, because a tailor is the one thing Garak never wanted to be. But it is the tailor whom both Cardassia and Elim Garak need. It is the tailor who can put the pieces together, who can take a stitch in time.
Murder Against the Grain
1967
Murder Against the Grain won the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award in 1967. When a million-dollar bank robbery tips the new Soviet-American wheat treaty off-balance, Wall Street banker-detective John Putnam Thatcher steps in to even accounts with a thief dead set on Murder Against the Grain** John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of the august Sloan Guaranty Trust, loathes crime, but crime has an ingenious way of seeking him out. This time he cannot by any means ignore it, for someone has had the effrontery to steal a million dollars from the Sloan itself. And to make matters worse, the missing million was a Russian down payment for American wheat. According to far too many public officials, it is John Thatcher's patriotic duty to avert an international crisis, even if it means that the Sloan is rooked. In a matter of days he is dutifully embroiled with the Secretary of State, the Soviet Embassy, eccentric wheat farmers, striking longshoremen, and a team of pugnacious Russian astronauts, as he gamely attempts to recover the money and rescue the faltering Soviet-American wheat treaty. Before Thatcher can get with the grain of the mystery, he has to answer some rather peculiar questions: What was the Cuban Navy doing in New York harbor? How did the American Potato Chip Institute become involved? Why was the Leningrad Symphony practicing on a basketball court? How on earth did a performing troupe of Russian otters that drink only vodka, dance the mazurka, and merrily assemble a three-stage rocket get into the picture? And above all, who, from the dizzying cast of characters, has assigned himself the role of grim reaper?