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Georgia Jeffries joins Sarah and Carolyn to discuss The Younger Girl, a supernatural thriller based on a true crime.

Georgia is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “standing ovation television.”

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A DARK LABYRINTH OF FAMILY BETRAYAL

Based on a true crime, The Younger Girl, by trailblazing, award-winning writer Georgia Jeffries combines historical fiction and supernatural suspense to unravel a thrilling tale of family deception and long-denied redemption.

In 1933, Chicago tabloids trumpeted the death of twenty-year-old town belle Aldine Younger.

“HEIRESS SLAIN, MARRIED MAN HELD.”

In the aftermath of Aldine Younger’s tragic death, her grieving brother Owen suspects that their wealthy uncle orchestrated a sinister murder plot to cover up the theft of Aldine’s inheritance. Fast forward to 1996, when an aging Owen, burdened by the weight of the past, is compelled to discover the truth before he dies. His daughter, Joanna, becomes the key to unraveling the family’s twisted history.

Father and daughter journey back to Pontiac, Illinois, to claim Owen’s rightful bequest. They find themselves caught in a labyrinth of lies born of family greed and treachery crossing three generations. Amidst violent storms and dramatic revelations, Owen’s sanity teeters on the edge as he confuses Joanna with the sister he lost. Joanna, racing against time, unearths secrets that could shatter her world and discovers a psychic bridge linking past, present, and future. But at what cost? And who will survive the revelations?

Georgia Jeffries is a writer of Emmy Award-winning drama and acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes, and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “standing ovation television.”

Born in the Illinois heartland, Georgia worked as a journalist for American Film before writing and producing the groundbreaking female-driven dramas Cagney & Lacey, China Beach, and Sisters. Her screenwriting career has been distinguished by extensive field research, from patrolling the mean streets of Rampart with the LAPD to crashing a Vegas bounty hunters’ convention to reporting from a Walter Reed Army Hospital surgical bay. Each investigation was the basis for one of her many docudramas and series pilots for CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO, and Showtime.

Her short stories have appeared in national suspense anthologies, including Mystery Writers of America’s Odd Partners and Sisters in Crime’s The Last Resort. She has also written biography and historical profiles for HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, and University of California Press. A cum laude UCLA graduate, Georgia Jeffries is a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she created the first BFA Television Thesis program at an American university.

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Shana Kelly began her career as a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York and London for 10 years. She currently works as a documentary screenwriter, book editor, writer, and publishing consultant. She also teaches at Denver-based Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

In 2024, Shana won an Emmy for writing A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps, a historical documentary that aired on PBS in 2023. She is currently writing a historical documentary about the League of Women Voters.

Shana Kelly joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Learn more below!

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Reader Response: Did you enjoy Rebecca? Had you read it before, or was this your first time?

Gothic Setting

• Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present (Je Reviens). Reminders of the past, like ruined buildings, signify a previously thriving world that’s decaying.
• In the narrator’s dream, Manderley is overtaken by unnatural growth: “Nature had come into her own again and … in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive.”
• In the dream, she sees plants, once cultured. “No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom.”
• Daphne du Maurier uses the weather to signal and even drive the events in the novel. The wind is often a friendly presence, and stillness brings with it a sense of doom. The fog plays a role in the shipwreck that exposes Rebecca’s boat and corpse. Many characters hope for rain throughout the book. There are repeated references to fire as well, which seems connected to Rebecca (as well at the color red, see below).
• They enter Manderley up a serpent drive (it reminds her of the forest path in a Grimm’s fairy tale, surrounded by bloodred rhododendrons (powerful monsters). There is no sense of beauty in this jungle growth. “That tangle of shrubs there should be cut down to bring light to the path. It was dark, much too dark. … The birds did not sing here.”
• How is Daphne du Maurier using Gothic tropes in the book? What are your thoughts about the sense of loss and physical/spiritual exile in the opening pages?

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We are beyond excited to be starting our fourth year, and to share with you the books we have on tap!

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Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a mystery and thriller podcast and book club for people obsessed with mysteries and thrillers. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller, starting in the mid-19th century onward. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.

Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, and doubts, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to entertain you, dear friend. We want you to experience the joys of reading the best mysteries and thrillers ever written.

We’ll read and explore ideas about the book and about ourselves. And we’ll start at the very beginning with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe.

We’re excited to read these books. And we’re excited that you’ll be reading these books. Please share your ideas early and often. We want to hear from YOU.

Follow us month to month or jump in anywhere you like. You’re our people, and we’re glad we found you (and vice versa). We’re thrilled to have you join us anywhere on this marvelous journey through the best mysteries, thrillers, and detective stories ever written.

On a final note, with your encouragement and support, we’re getting better at this podcasting adventure each and every day. Our goal: Make Tea, Tonic & Toxin a mystery and thriller podcast and book club that provides a forum for introspection, good conversation, and inspiration.

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