This past weekend I attended the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and Festival. By day, jacaranda trees were in bloom; I’d never seen trees that purple before. Saturday night, will wonderments never cease under the stars of heaven, Dry Bones in the Valley took the prize in the Mystery/Thriller category. At the ceremony, the UCF string quartet played the winners on and off the stage. I don’t usually crow about the book on this particular page, but hey, it felt and still feels just as strange and dreamlike as anything else …