Anne Perry’s acclaimed Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels have made London’s exclusive world of wealth and power an addictive literary destination for readers everywhere. This new masterpiece, a haunting story of love and treason, invites us not only into the secret places of Britain’s power but also into the innermost sanctums of the fin de siècle Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Thomas Pitt, once a lowly policeman, is now the powerful head of Britain’s Special Branch, and some people fear that he may have been promoted beyond his abilities. He, too, feels painful moments of self-doubt, especially as rumors reach him of a plot to blow up connections on the Dover-London rail line—on which Austrian duke Alois Habsburg is soon to travel to visit his royal English kin.

Why would anyone destroy an entire train to kill one obscure Austrian royal, or are the rumors designed to distract Pitt from an even more devastating plot? He must resolve this riddle at once, before the damage is done.

Meanwhile, in a London sickroom, an old Italian woman—at the end of a romantic career as a revolutionary spy—is terrified that as she sinks into dementia, she may divulge secrets that can kill. And a beautiful young Croatian woman, married to a British power broker, hoards her own mysteries. Apparently all roads lead to the Continent, and Pitt suspects that between them these two fascinating women could tell him things he desperately needs to know. But as the hours tick by, it seems that the only woman Pitt can count on is his clever wife, Charlotte.

No one sustains mesmerizing suspense better than Anne Perry.  In Pitt’s trial by fire, his wrenching moral dilemma, and his electrifying moment of decision, the beloved bestselling author gives us a climax never to be forgotten.

About Anne Perry

Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England:  the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Treason at Lisson Grove and Buckingham Palace Gardens, and the William Monk novels, includingAcceptable Loss and Execution Dock. She is also the author of a series of five World War I novels, as well as nine holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Homecoming, and a historical novel, The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Ottoman Empire. Anne Perry lives in Scotland.

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Editorial Review

Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, the wise and knowing aunt of Pitt’s wife Charlotte, is right to be concerned about her old friend Serafina Montserrat. It’s not just that Serafina’s life is drawing to a close; her illness makes her mind wander, and oftentimes she says things she shouldn’t—and, according to her niece, Nerissa Freemarsh, things that just aren’t true. But Serafina speaks very much to the point when she tells Vespasia that she’s afraid “they’ll kill me” because “I know too much.” Sure enough, the next time Vespasia comes to visit, Serafina has already died. Pitt, who’s already been put on high alert by the hints about very contemporary terrorist threats Serafina has intimated to Vespasia, ascertains that the cause of death was an overdose of laudanum quite impossible for Serafina to have administered to herself. Whodunit? And even more important, why? It doesn’t take long for Pitt (Long Spoon Lane, 2005, etc.) to focus his concern on Duke Alois Habsburg, a decidedly minor noble whose upcoming visit to his cousins in England seems increasingly likely to end with his assassination. But which of the slippery bureaucrats Pitt must deal with in his new capacity as head of Special Branch is the traitor behind the plot? And how can Pitt, who continues to be superstitiously reverent toward his alleged social superiors, smoke out the traitor and deal with him? – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: ‘Dorchester Terrace,’ by Anne Perry

The Washington Post Book Review – May 18, 2012 (Excerpt)

“Downton Abbey” addicts take heart! Season three of that luscious Edwardian bonbon may still be months away from delivery, but mystery dowager Anne Perry stands at the ready with her latest gaslit costume drama, “Dorchester Terrace.”

Speaking of costumes, Perry’s fashion-forward heroines give the Crawley ladies a run for their entailed money: For a soiree at Buckingham Palace, one well-heeled dame dons a billowing pink ball gown with daringly deep decolletage; another soberly struts a deep indigo wool day dress suitable for visiting shut-ins; a third decks herself out in exquisite jet jewelry to mutely signify mourning.

“Upstairs Downstairs”-type class tensions waft through Perry’s swank London townhouses as thickly as they do the passageways of Downton. (Indeed, the solution to one of the murders in this novel emerges after Perry’s detective hero, Thomas Pitt — himself the son of a gamekeeper — has a confidential chin-wag over a pot of tea with the housekeeper in a prominent household.) And, most ominously, the approaching storm of World War I twists nerves taut in both the British soap opera and Perry’s stately page-turner.

“Dorchester Terrace” is the 25th suspense novel featuring Perry’s married sleuths, Charlotte and Thomas Pitt. Through adventure after adventure, Thomas has diligently risen through the police ranks to finally ascend, here, to the apex: the august position of head of the Special Branch. Unfortunately, he barely has time to bask in that honor before the sky falls down. [Read the full article...]

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A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

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Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is offered a bit of luxury by friends and supporters within the Party – a week’s vacation at a luxurious resort near Lake Tai, a week where he can relax, and recover, undisturbed by outside demands or disruptions. Unfortunately, the once beautiful Lake Tai, renowned for its clear waters, is now covered by fetid algae, its waters polluted by toxic runoff from local manufacturing plants. Then the director of one of the manufacturing plants responsible for the pollution is murdered and the leader of the local ecological group is the primary suspect of the local police. Now Inspector Chen must tread carefully if he is to uncover the truth behind the brutal murder and find a measure of justice for both the victim and the accused.

About Qiu Xiaolong

QIU XIAOLONG is a poet and author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen as well as Years of Red Dust, a Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2010.  Born and raised in Shanghai, Qiu lives with his family in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Editorial Review

Chen Cao, veteran of the Shanghai Police Bureau and renowned writer, is unexpectedly called away from a conference outlining “new responsibilities for Communist Party officials” to visit Wuxi Cadre Recreation Center, noted for its lush natural surroundings. In order to avoid being bothered by his protégé Sergeant Huang Kang and other detectives seeking help, he keeps his respite at the coveted getaway a secret. Ironically, Wuxi has devolved into a shabby resort, its legendary Tai Lake now brackish with pollution, the result of industrial development in the region. Chen finds a kindred intellectual soul in Shanshan, a young woman who proves to also be a font of information about local business in general and the chief polluter in particular: Liu Deming, representative of the People’s Congress of Zhejiang Province and owner of The Wuxi Number One Chemical Company. After Liu is found murdered, the investigative tables are turned when Huang catches the case, forcing Chen to play Watson to his unsteady Holmes. Huang’s slowness is a constant test of Chen’s patience, but he develops an effective strategy of convincing Huang that the suggestions he plants are Huang’s own. A wronged wife and unhappy employees top the list of suspects, with Shanshan a ubiquitous presence. – Kirkus Reviews

Qiu Xiaolong’s ‘Don’t Cry, Tai Lake’ has a political edge, but endearing innocence

The Washington Post Book Review – May 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

When Qiu Xiaolong, the author of this odd, charming and quite political detective novel, was a teenager in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, the only way he could read Sherlock Holmes stories was to hide his book beneath the red-plastic cover of “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.”

After the madness passed and reading was more permissible, Qiu entered college and studied Chinese and English literature. He particularly loved the poetry of  T.S. Eliot . In 1988, a fellowship took him to St. Louis — Eliot’s birthplace — where Qiu and his family still live and where he has since written seven novels about the poetry-loving Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai police.

Chen’s crime-fighting successes have brought him fame as an eccentric but brilliant detective. His eccentricities include the fact that, even in the middle of an investigation, he might pause to dash off a poem. He’s an honest cop who roots out corruption, which can put him at odds with Communist Party officials. Fortunately, he has the protection of his mentor, Comrade Secretary Zhao, one of the most powerful men in Beijing.

“Don’t Cry, Tai Lake” begins when Zhao declines a vacation at the Wuxi Cadre Recreation Center, a luxury resort for senior party officials, and sends Chen in his place. The resort is not far from Shanghai and overlooks the huge, once gorgeous Tai Lake. Now the lake is ringed by factories and severely polluted by toxic wastes. That fact, denied by the party faithful and regretted by Chen and a few environmentalists, is the crux of the novel — and Tai Lake is the author’s symbol of the widespread pollution throughout China. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again.

Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him—the White Man with no fear of snakes—and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?

Interweaving memory and desire, hope and despair, salvation and damnation, this is a hypnotic, compelling, and brilliant return to a terrain about which no one has ever written better than Theroux.

About Paul Theroux

PAUL THEROUX is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include A Dead Hand and The Mosquito Coast, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

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Editorial Review

As a young man, Ellis Hock loved teaching in Malawi for the Peace Corps, happiest years of his life. (Theroux did a hitch there; see his early novel Jungle Lovers.) Then he had to return to suburban Boston to run the men’s-clothing store he’d inherited. Thirty-five years later, the store and his marriage having failed, he returns to Malawi for a nostalgia-induced vacation. He’s warned on arrival that people are hungry and only want money, but he heads into the bush with a bagful of it, another mzungu (white man) who knows best. Malabo, the remote riverbank village where he’s remembered as the mzungu who helped build the school and clinic, gives him a warm welcome, but Hock’s disillusion sets in fast. The school is a ruin; the visiting doctor is a quack; AIDS is rampant; requests for money are constant. The villagers keep him under surveillance at the direction of the headman Manyenga, who is all smiles and lies. One bright spot is his reunion with Gala, the woman he loved, and the presence of her 16-year-old granddaughter Zizi, who waits on Hock and is fiercely loyal to him. The snakes, too, are a blessing. They terrify the villagers, but Hock handles them fearlessly, using them as protection once he realizes he is being held captive. He makes three escape attempts. The second takes him downriver into Mozambique. There Hock runs into a community of starving but deadly children and a food drop, horribly bungled by white Westerners; these scenes are devastating. All his escapes are foiled by the formidable Manyenga. The suspense is enriched by Theroux’s loving attention to local customs and his subversive insights. As Hock weakens in body and spirit, Zizi just grows stronger. Could she be his savior?  - Kirkus Reviews

Retracing His Steps - ‘The Lower River,’ a Novel by Paul Theroux

The New York Times Book Review – May 18, 2012 (Excerpt)

The central character in Paul Theroux’s latest novel, “The Lower River,” is an American named Ellis Hock who decides to return to Africa after an absence of almost 40 years. Life in his own country has become tiresome and frustrating, but there’s a village in Malawi where, during his Peace Corps days, Hock had once been happy and useful. He wants to be useful again. So he prepares to say goodbye to his failing men’s wear store in Medford, Mass., along with his embittered ex-wife and his grasping, heartless daughter.

Before Hock has even left the United States, he hears about a woman in a nearby town who takes her rock python to bed with her. This python has been behaving oddly, flattening itself beside its owner, stretching the length of her sleeping body. Hock knows what’s going on: the snake is getting ready to eat her. What he doesn’t know is that this is a portent of what will happen to him: he’s about to be consumed by the people in the village he once loved. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

An automaton, a man and a woman who can never meet, two stories of love—all are brought to incandescent life in this hauntingly moving novel from one of the finest writers of our time.

London 2010: Catherine Gehrig, conservator at the Swinburne museum, learns of the sudden death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must struggle to keep the depth of her anguish to herself. The one other person who knows Catherine’s secret—her boss—arranges for her to be given a special project away from prying eyes in the museum’s Annexe. Usually controlled and rational, but now mad with grief, Catherine reluctantly unpacks an extraordinary, eerie automaton that she has been charged with bringing back to life.

As she begins to piece together the clockwork puzzle, she also uncovers a series of notebooks written by the mechanical creature’s original owner: a nineteenth-century Englishman, Henry Brandling, who traveled to Germany to commission it as a magical amusement for his consumptive son. But it is Catherine, nearly two hundred years later, who will find comfort and wonder in Henry’s story. And it is the automaton, in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life, that will link two strangers confronted with the mysteries of creation, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

About Peter Carey

PETER CAREY is the author of eleven previous novels and has twice received the Booker Prize. His other honors include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for twenty years.

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Editorial Review

The latest from the renowned and prolific Carey (Parrot and Olivier in America, 2010, etc.) is too fanciful to pass as realism yet too inscrutable for parable or fable. Though all of it (or at least half of it) concerns a grieving woman’s attempt to re-engage with life after the death of her married lover, the prevailing spirit is comedic, even whimsical, rather than tragic. And the prevailing metaphor is that of clockwork, the mechanical precision of the museum where she serves as a curator, with “a considerable horological department, a world-famous collection of clocks and watches, automata and other wind-up engines,” a place where “for years I thought clockmaking must still any turmoil in one’s breast. I was so confident of my opinion, so completely wrong.” To keep protagonist and occasional narrator Catherine from going haywire, her supervisor assigns her an archival task: to study the diaries of a man who had commissioned a mechanical duck for his ailing son more than a century earlier. Some chapters are all Catherine, some are from the diaries of Henry and his adventures with the mechanical duck, and some mix the two, though the reader must make leaps of conjecture to connect the writing of Henry and the response from Catherine. Then the plot thickens, as it appears that the circumstances surrounding her affair were more complicated than Catherine had realized, and she comes to suspect that the pages she reads were written specifically for her: “He anticipated someone would watch him through the wormhole, that was clear. He wrote for that person.” While reading about the attempts to construct a mechanical duck that would appear animated, practically alive, Catherine feels herself turning into a machine: “Ingest, I thought, digest, excrete, repeat.” – Kirkus Reviews

‘The Chemistry Of Tears’ And The Art Of Healing

NPR Book Review – May 16, 2012 (Excerpt)

Peter Carey’s dazzling new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, encompasses heartbreak, the comfort of absorbing work, the transformative power of beauty and the soul of an old machine. If you’ve never read the Australian-born, two-time Booker Prize–winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang — or, most recently, Parrot and Olivier in America — his 12th novel is a terrific introduction to his work. Once again, Carey demonstrates an artful ability to capture a two-way interplay between past and present that is part historical, part fanciful and completely wonderful.

The day after BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, Catherine Gehrig, a tall, elegant, 40-something London museum conservator specializing in horology — clocks and windup automatons — learns of the sudden death of her beloved, miserably married lover. Because their blissful 13-year affair was a secret, there is no one she can turn to in her grief. Her boss, a friend of her darling Matthew who condoned their relationship, sets her up with a new project in the museum’s isolated annex, away from prying eyes. He hopes the complex reassembly of a magnificent, mid-19th century automaton of a silver swan will distract and buoy her. He also provides a phenomenally able if unbalanced young assistant, whose spying presence Catherine resents from the get-go. Catherine and the pretty girl lock into exquisitely rendered terse, tense battles over the import and control of their project. [Read the full article...]

The Mechanics of Loving and Grieving

The New York Times Book Review – May 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

Peter Carey has said that he worked backward to create his latest novel, “The Chemistry of Tears.” He assembled an inventory of seemingly unrelated elements that intrigued him, then found ways of stitching them together. On top of it all, he added an eerie sensuality: “I would rather scrub your bones and place them in the open air, scrub your sternum, labor at your spine, scrub and scrub, with love, each vertebra, as particular as a nose, and lay you in the grass amongst the bluebells.” That heady blend of sex and death is almost enough to keep the seams from showing.

Mr. Carey’s wild hybrid novels are always intriguing, sometimes transporting, never ordinary. But concocting a narrative out of found objects can be forced and awkward. In the case of “The Chemistry of Tears,” the mixture winds up more mystifying than magical, and all too easy to resist.

Among this book’s ingredients: Engines. Automatons. The BP oil spill. Fairy tales. Charles Babbage, the 19th- century inventor and mathematician who conducted groundbreaking experiments with computing machines. Horology. Cuckoo clocks. A city with a layout shaped like a wheel. And a little German boy who was a child when much of this two-tiered book takes place, but whose name, Benz, still resonates in the auto industry today. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Absently, I threw some fluffy white kernels on the floor for Dante, who snapped them up with his tongue as though he were starving to death, and then looked expectantly up at me for more. He had wolfed down his share of spaghetti earlier, and didn’t complain that the sauce had come out of a jar something he would never have served were he human, as he’s part Italian. I was convinced that he’d had plenty to eat — for a dog. I quickly reminded myself he’d gone through a lot in the past forty-eight hours, and I didn’t blame him for being overly hungry.

Earlier, when I’d arrived, Jena and Tera both had thrown their arms around Dante as soon as they saw him. From all the excitement generated by “the dog,” I was certain that it would be difficult to get them to bed. But they had gone obediently up to bed about an hour after dinner, and I’d read from one of their story books while Dante lay on the floor beside us with his head between his paws. It wasn’t long before the girls had dozed off.

Dante made one of his soft “woof” sounds, startling me, when I quit throwing him popcorn.

“It’s gone,” I said. “See? You ate more than me.” I tipped the empty bowl toward him, and he stuck his head into it, and licked it. I yanked it away from him and set it on the table. He stuck his head in and licked the bowl again.

“No!” I jumped up and grabbed the bowl before he knocked it off the table, and took it into the kitchen, placing it in the sink. Dante followed me the whole way, tail wagging, then followed me back out. He jumped up on the couch with me and knocked me back. I half-giggled and half-grumbled at him for it. He was in a playful mood, and I had to tussle with him some before he settled down. He was a heavy dog, probably a sturdy, solid eighty pounds of muscle. I tried to push him off, but he would have none of it, so I lay there with a large, black dog sprawled half-way on top of me, wondering how this would look if Randy and Constance came through the door just then. At least he hadn’t tried to hump me. He was still a gentleman, even in dog-form.

Then he became uncharacteristically still. I studied him. He looked as if he were going to be sick.

“Oh, God. Don’t be sick all over me,” I said, desperately trying to push him off.

With a loud whimper, his body made a sudden jerk.

“Dante, what’s wrong?” I tried to keep my voice down. The open oak stairs weren’t far from where I sat, and the girls might hear us. I didn’t want them to come down wondering what was happening, and then see something they shouldn’t.

Dante made another heart-wrenching sound, and then something happened. Right in front of me—and on top of me—he shifted. The bones in his body moved with an awful bone crunching sound that made me grit my teeth. I felt his body elongate, then his head reshaped itself, and I actually saw his dog form change, the entire molecular restructuring happening right before my eyes. The next thing I knew I was drenched in something warm and liquid-y. I didn’t understand it. My brain thought blood, but I looked and saw that it was clear, warm, gelatinous liquid.Ewww, yuck!

The jaguar’s eyes glinted, they were a beautiful green with dilated pupils. With his large paws on my chest — much larger than the dog’s — he stared down at me and made a loud purring. I saw his long tail whip around behind him. A moment later, he made another more vicious sound, and I saw a flash of huge, dagger-like teeth. Oh, crap. I hoped he wasn’t hungry. My heart thudded inside my chest. I held my breath as he dipped his head toward me.

Stiffening, I snapped my eyes closed and felt a big, raspy tongue lick up my neck and over my face, again and again. Then, he licked lower, to my chest and arms. I looked to find that he was actually cleaning the viscous liquid off me. Relief flooded me.

“Good kitty,” I said, my voice shaking. I hoped he didn’t sense that he’d scared the pee out of me. They say animals know when you’re frightened of them. I didn’t want the jaguar to become too interested in me.

Very, very slowly, I brought my hand up to his head. He didn’t seem to mind that I touched him as I smoothed my hand over his beautiful, soft fur. This was the first time I’d ever seen him up close and personal as his chosen animal. His coat wasn’t totally black. I could see some iridescent purple coloring as spots, over his body. The bright green eyes contrasted like jewels against black velvet. He was a gorgeous animal. I thought that if I were a lady jaguar I’d be into him. I admonished myself for the devilish ideas that evolved from that one little innocent thought. I never knew what exactly we’d done that first night I had shifted into my Were-animal, and he’d turned into a wolf. For all I knew, we had a fantastic time, werewolf-style.

His tongue slid over my face, not as wetly as a dog’s tongue, it felt like a soft version of a rasp. In fact, I thought he’d taken some skin with it from the way it had felt. Nothing like getting exfoliated by a jaguar.

“Damn it, Dante, get off me. You’re heavy!” He was. I thought he must weigh in at two hundred pounds of cat easily. If he were a wild cat, he’d have chowed down on me right there in my brother’s living room.

Then, something happened, and I saw the cat throw its head back and let out a loud, primal screech. Stunned, I pressed myself back, beyond imagining what more terrifying might occur at this point.

Again, I felt his body shift. The icky bone crunching, sliding sounds associated with his shifting filled my ears. Once again, the warm liquid coated me. While my feminine side was worried about cleaning up the yuck, my more logical side wondered what animal he had shifted into, and worried it would eat me because it would undoubtedly be hungry after shifting so many times in such a short time.

I heard a gasping above me, felt strands of silk touching my skin at my neck and face. I realized I had shut my eyes and now opened them to look up into Dante’s face. The silk had been his beautiful long black hair, only, it was wet with the slime.

I pulled in a sharp sound of marvel. “Oh, my God! You’re back!” I shrieked, grasping his face in my hands. I wanted to pull him into a fierce hug, but first things first.

I was suddenly aware that I had a naked man on top of me — his eyes tightly closed and his face pulled into a grimace as though still feeling the effects of shifting — but a naked man. No matter what, an animal on top of me would have been a whole lot easier to explain away — naked man, not so easy. I feared that one, or both girls could be spying on us right at that moment, and I strained my neck to scan the stairs. I didn’t see any little pair of hands on the open railings, no little faces peering out at us. I eased out a sigh of relief — we were okay, for now.

Dante lifted himself up on elbows and knees, and looked down at himself as though checking to make sure all his equipment was intact. It was, I assure you, and he was awfully glad to be with me, and that one detail was not lost on me, believe me.

“Oh, hell,” he groaned as his body sagged back down, and his head rested on my shoulder. I was awash with the shifting goo again.

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

In the third novel from the bestselling female writer in Sweden—and for the first time in English—the mysterious drowning of a little girl threatens to tear apart the town of Fjallbacka.

The remote resort town of Fjallbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But this was no accidental drowning . . .

Local detective Patrik Hedstrom has just become a father. It’s his grim task to discover who could be behind the murder of a child both he and his partner Erica knew well. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjallbacka, spanning generations, ripping aside its idyllic façade,perhaps forever.

About Camilla Läckberg

Camilla Läckberg worked as an economist in Stockholm until a course in creative writing triggered a drastic career change. Her novels have all become #1 bestsellers in Sweden. Her thriller The Ice Princess, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for Best International Crime Novel, has been published in over twenty-five countries. She lives in Stockholm with her husband and five children.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Now that his live-in girlfriend, writer Erica Falck, has presented him with a child, Patrik Hedström ought to be finding a better balance between his personal and professional responsibilities. But his sympathies as both father and cop are demanded by the murder of Sara Klinga, the daughter of Erica’s new friend Charlotte. Who would dump a seven-year-old near a wharf after drowning her, according to forensic evidence, in a bathtub? As Patrik surveys the wreckage of Sara’s extended family, from the pathological philandering of Charlotte’s husband, Dr. Niclas Klinga, to the unaccountable cruelty of Niclas’ mother Lilian Florin, whose name Niclas rejected in favor of his wife’s upon his marriage, Läckberg (The Ice Princess, 2010, etc.) parcels out hints of the tragedy’s roots in the loveless marriage some 75 years ago between flirtatious heiress Agnes Stjernkvist and Anders Andersson, the stonecutter she’d captivated and planned to leave before her father discovered her pregnancy and forced the couple to wed. Meanwhile, back in the present, Patrik and his mostly incompetent colleagues on the Tanumshede police force focus their suspicions on imperious Lilian, who seems to loathe everyone but Stig, the bedridden husband she nurses so assiduously; Kaj Wiberg, the neighbor with whom she’s long feuded over every pretext she can find; and Kaj’s son Morgan, a computer game designer with Asperger’s Syndrome who’d be poorly equipped to take the air even in a much sunnier spot than Fjällbacka. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: ‘The Stonecutter’ by Camilla Lackberg

The Washington Post Book Review – May 13, 2012 (Excerpt)

It’s got to be something in the fjord water. Or maybe lingonberries are an unacknowledged superfood. How else to explain all the superlative Swedish crime writers who have swarmed into the mystery arena since the mid-1960s? Indeed, the greatest unsolved mystery in the mystery world is no longer what happened to Agatha Christie during her 11-day disappearance in 1926, but, rather, “What’s up with the Swedes?”

And, speaking of Dame Agatha, here’s a young Swedish writer who’s being hailed as “the Swedish Agatha Christie.” Purists out there will snort in derision, but Camilla Lackberg is very, very good. Her novels are outselling those of her late countryman Stieg Larsson, and if she keeps producing mysteries as richly textured and downright breathtaking as her latest, “The Stonecutter,” who knows? Maybe, one day, we might be identifying Agatha Christie as “the British Camilla Lackberg.”

“The Stonecutter” is one of those mysteries that ruin a vacation. Take it to the beach and your eyes will be so locked on its pages, you’ll never even know there’s an ocean in front of you. There are two primary and at least five subsidiary story lines in this thick novel: All of them have to do with doomed relationships and fatally fractured families; all of them slither seamlessly in and around each other in one big snake pit of warped desire. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

A stunning debut reminiscent of the beloved novels of John Hart and Tom Franklin, A Land More Kind Than Home is a mesmerizing literary thriller about the bond between two brothers and the evil they face in a small western North Carolina town.

For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can’t help sneaking a look at something he’s not supposed to—an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess’s. It’s a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he’s not prepared. While there is much about the world that still confuses him, he now knows that a new understanding can bring not only a growing danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance as well.

Told by three resonant and evocative characters—Jess; Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience; and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past—A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. These are masterful portrayals, written with assurance and truth, and they show us the extraordinary promise of this remarkable first novel.

About Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash is from western North Carolina. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and teaches English at Bethany College. He lives with his wife in West Virginia. This is his first novel.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Cash’s debut novel explores Faulkner-O’Connor country, a place where folks endure a hard life by clinging to God’s truths echoing from hardscrabble churches. With Southern idiom as clear as crystal mountain air, Cash weaves the narrative from multiple threads. Jess Hall is the 9-year-old son of Ben and Julie and beloved younger brother of gentle Stump, his mute, autistic sibling. Clem Barefield is county sheriff, a man with a moral code as tough, weathered and flexible as his gun belt. Adelaide Lyle, once a midwife, is now community matriarch of simple faith and solid conscience. Carson Chambliss is pastor of River Road Church of Christ. He has caught Stump spying, peering into the bedroom of his mother Julie, while she happened to be entertaining the amoral pastor. Julie may have lapsed into carnal sin, but she is also a holy fool. Chambliss convinces Julie to bring Stump to the church to be cured by the laying on of hands. There, Stump suffers a terrible fate. Cash’s characters are brilliant: Chambliss, scarred by burns, is as remorseless as one of his rattle snakes; Addie, loyal to the old ways, is still strong enough to pry the church’s children away from snake-handling services; Barefield is gentle, empathetic and burdened by tragedy. Stump’s brother Jess is appealingly rendered—immature, confused and feeling responsible for and terrified by the evil he senses and sees around him. As lean and spare as a mountain ballad, Cash’s novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could easily have been expanded to epic proportions. – Kirkus Reviews

Wiley Cash’s ’A Land More Kind Than Home’

The Washington Post Book Review – May 8, 2012 (Excerpt)

In the harrowing opening scene of Wiley Cash’s compelling first novel, “A Land More Kind Than Home,” the minister at the River Road Church of Christ in Signs Following takes up a copperhead, prays over it and hands it to an elderly church member, who holds it “like a baby” to show the strength of her faith. The snake strikes her twice, the second time sinking its fangs into her hand so deeply that the preacher and two deacons have to pry it loose. Thereafter, she’s carried away and left to die alone in the tomato patch behind her house. This is the first, though by no means last, instance in which the charismatic minister, Carson Chambliss, a man with a shady past, turns faith into a deadly weapon.

Like his fellow North Carolinian Ron Rash, Cash adeptly captures the rhythms of Appalachian speech, narrating his atmospheric novel in the voices of three characters: 81-year-old Adelaide Lyle, who represents the moral conscience of the community; the adolescent Jess Hall, who has a dangerous knack for discovering things adults would rather keep hidden; and the middle-aged sheriff Clem Barefield, who has never recovered from a loss he suffered years ago. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

I should give up reviewing books, and I am sure, after this review is done, I won’t receive any more free copies. My problem is, I am a publisher myself, and I compare whatever I read with the writing of my authors, and my authors come up (yet again) on top.

Needless to say, but I consider my reading the first 60 or so pages of Lis Wiehl’s Eyes of Justice a waste of time. Yes, I gave up after 60 pages, because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Sorry, but I am not a hardcore Lis Wiehl fan. As a matter of fact, I’d never heard of her (excuse my ignorance) until I received a review copy, but I was looking forward to a good read.

From the inside flap:

Cassidy, Allison, and Nicole fight for justice everyday–Cassidy as a crime reporter, Nicole as an FBI agent, and Allison as a federal prosecutor. Together they’re a Triple Threat to be reckoned with. A force that, together, has solved the toughest mysteries.

Until a ruthless killer finds a way to isolate and murder one of the three.

When the authorities keep the survivors at arm’s length in the investigation, the women’s desire for justice goes into overdrive. They find an unexpected ally in a quirky private investigator named Ophelia whose unorthodox methods seem to offer a possible breakthrough in the case.

Yet just as the police appear to have the killer in custody and justice within sight, the murderer strikes again. Not knowing whom to trust, the team must engage in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse where nothing can be taken at face value…and nothing will ever be the same.

A riveting Triple Threat mystery that will leave readers shocked and satisfied.

Well, I am shocked, but unsatisfied, because that description alone contains three incomplete sentences and one sentence ending with a preposition.

But, first of all, let’s have a look at the book itself: It is a hardcover with text printed in large fonts with double spacing, apparently in an attempt to pump up the spine size to 308 pages where 200 would have been sufficient. The price: A mere $26.99, meaning, in combination with the sloppy writing style, it’s a rip-off.

Let me quote the first paragraph:

When the authorities questioned Channel Four’s receptionist later about the phone call, Marcey King couldn’t recall a single distinguishing characteristic about the voice of the person who had made it. Age, accent, attitude–all she could remember was that it belonged to a man. A man insisting that he had to speak to Cassidy Shaw, the TV station’s crime reporter.

- Source: Eyes of Justice by Lis Wiehl with April Henry

Sorry, but “A man insisting that he had to speak to Cassidy Shaw, the TV station’s crime reporter.” is not a complete sentence. However, this is one of the not-quite-so-bad sentences. There are worse examples. Really. There are. Examples. Yes, I am kidding, but it represents the sloppy writing style. And yes, as an author you can take some liberties. Some. But not. All the time.

Well, let’s keep an open mind and say that this is just Lis Wiehl’s (with April Henry’s) writing style, and let’s assume that this is not entirely Ms. Wiehl’s work but merely her brain-child completed by Ms. Henry. It has been done before (Tom Clancy comes to mind) , but it is also a certain sign of declining quality due to lack of authenticity and originality.

Add to this the similarities to James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club or Tess Gerritsen’s Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, and it becomes clear that someone is copying ideas and scraping a story line for the purpose of raking in the money. The victims are those people who actually spend $26.99 – Amazon has already reduced the price by 39% to get the price into a competitive range, and that may be what the publisher had in mind. It’s a common trick to keep the profit high.

All this wouldn’t be so bad wasn’t there the more-than-boring story line. After 60 pages (possibly more, but I didn’t get there) TV reporter Cassidy Shaw was still dead and… well, nothing more. There was no substance, no tension, no surprises, but plenty of “fillers.” “Fillers” are  those words that extend a sentence with a number of fitting, but effectively unnecessary words, you know those words that provide more substance, but could be left out, because you already got the meaning, but it needs to be emphasized to fit more words into the novel and reach the much desired minimum of 300 pages that the industry considers a standard… Did you get that? Imagine a book full of such sentences, and you get the picture. But again. There are. Incomplete Sentences. All over the book.

I am sure, somewhere in the book comes the big twist, the big surprise, but it’s probably like a firework that ends after a mere ten seconds. After all, there are not enough pages left to get you on a roller coaster ride. Again. Sloppy Work. Boring.

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

New York, 1933. The city and the nation are in the depths of the Great Depression. The crime families of New York have prospered in this time, but with the coming end of Prohibition, a battle is looming that will determine which organizations will rise and which will face a violent end.

For Vito Corleone, nothing is more important that his family’s future. While his youngest children, Michael, Fredo, and Connie, are in school, unaware of their father’s true occupation, and his adopted son Tom Hagen is a college student, he worries most about Sonny, his eldest child. Vito pushes Sonny to be a businessman, but Sonny-17 years-old, impatient and reckless-wants something else: To follow in his father’s footsteps and become a part of the real family business.

An exhilarating and profound novel of tradition and violence, of loyalty and betrayal, The Family Corleone will appeal to the legions of fans who can never get enough of The Godfather, as well as introduce it to a whole new generation.

About Ed Falco

Ed Falco is the author of three novels, four story collections, and numerous plays, poems, essays, and critical reviews. Among his many awards and honors are an NEA fiction fellowship, and the Southern Review‘s Robert Penn Warren Prize. He is a professor of English at Virginia Tech, where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Editorial Review

Playing around in the Godfather universe is a tightrope act. The original novel is a pulpy, popular synthesis of influences, while its film adaptation is a timeless classic. The video games are slushy Grand Theft Auto knock-offs, and Mark Winegardner’s sequels are labyrinthine marathons with epic casts. This time, the franchise falls back on more workmanlike writer Falco (Saint John of the Five Boroughs, 2009, etc.), who reels the story back to its roots though moments resurrected from unproduced scripts by Mario Puzo. It’s 1933, and the Don is at the height of his power. Peter Clemenza is Vito’s capo and Genco Abbandando remains consigliere. Michael and Fredo squabble underfoot but it’s Sonny’s explosive temper that film fans will recognize. Meanwhile, dutiful college student Tom Hagen is having a harmless fling—that turns out to be not so harmless when psychotic Luca Brasi decides to kill Tom for messing with his broad. In other boroughs, Giuseppe Mariposa conspires with Emilio Barzini and Phillip Tattaglia in his slow tango with the Corleones, while a pair of Irish brothers adds a new element to this dangerous mix. What works well is Falco’s depiction of Vito Corleone, which captures both the cool reserve of young Vito and the insight he demonstrates as Don. “To understand the truth of things,” he cautions Sonny, “you have to judge both the man and the circumstances. You have to use both your brains and your heart. That’s what it’s like in a world where men lie as a matter of course—and there is no other kind of world, Santino, at least not here on earth.” More obsessive fans also get a reveal about a member of the Don’s family, as well as a juicy unveiling of Luca Brasi’s back story pulled from The Godfather. – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: ‘The Family Corleone,’ by Ed Falco, a prequel to ‘The Godfather’

The Washington Post Book Review – May 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

Mario Puzo (1920-99) was one of 12 children born in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to two illiterate Neapolitan immigrants. Puzo graduated from City College, loved the novels of Dostoyevsky and in his 20s began writing stories for pulp magazines. He published two little-noticed novels, and then, in his late 30s, deeply in debt (he gambled) and with a wife and five children, he set out for entirely mercenary reasons to write a novel about the Mafia, an organization about which he knew almost nothing.

I remember reading “The Godfather” when it was published in 1969. Like millions of others, I couldn’t put it down. Puzo had drawn brilliantly on the pulps and Dostoyevsky to create a crime story like no other. His powerful narrative carried violence to shocking new levels (even horses weren’t safe). Most strikingly, in Puzo’s fictional universe, leaders of the Mafia, previously regarded as ignorant, homicidal thugs, were transformed into men of honor, men of respect, American businessmen who were sometimes obliged to do harm to others, although the best of them, such as Puzo’s Don Vito Corleone, deeply regretted that necessity. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.

HHhH: “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, or “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich”. The most dangerous man in Hitler’s cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the “Butcher of Prague.” He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible—until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.

Who were these men, arguably two of the most discreet heroes of the twentieth century? In Laurent Binet’s captivating debut novel, we follow Jozef Gabćik and Jan Kubiš from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England; from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich’s car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church.

A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet’s remarkable imagination, HHhH—an international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman—is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Laurent Binet

Laurent Binet was born in Paris, France, in 1972. He is the author of La Vie professionnelle de Laurent B., a memoir of his experience teaching in secondary schools in Paris. In March 2010, his debut novel, HHhH, won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. Laurent Binet is a professor at the University of Paris III, where he lectures on French literature.

Editorial Review

Picture a man being driven to work in an open-top car, taking the same route every day. He is feared and loathed by passersby, yet he has no bodyguard. This is Heydrich in Prague in 1942: the Nazi Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, supremely powerful, supremely vulnerable. He is Binet’s anti-hero. His projected assassination is Binet’s story, and Heydrich’s would-be assassins (Gabcík the Slovak and Kubiš the Czech) are Binet’s heroes. “Two men have to kill a third man.” Simple, no? But the narration is not. Binet’s alter ego narrator is a zealous amateur historian. Like all amateurs, he makes mistakes; disarmingly, he admits them. “I’ve been talking rubbish,” he exclaims. He retracts some of his assertions; he regrets his inadequacy as a historian. Yet in fact he does a good job of putting the assassination in a geopolitical context. He excoriates the spinelessness of the British and French governments in acceding to Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. He convincingly profiles Heydrich, aka the Blond Beast and the Hangman of Prague. This monster was Himmler’s deputy in the SS (the goofy title refers to the belief that he was also Himmler’s brain) and the principal architect of the Final Solution. The assassination, dubbed Operation Anthropoid, was the brainchild of Beneš, head of the Czech government-in-exile in London. He needed a coup to restore the morale of the Czech anti-Nazis. Gabcík and Kubiš parachute in. The arrival of these modest yet extraordinary patriots is like the first hint of dawn after a pitch-black night. They are embedded with the Czech resistance while they plan tactics. The account of the assassination attempt and its nail-biting aftermath is brilliantly suspenseful. – Kirkus Reviews

Operation Anthropoid - ‘HHhH,’ a Novel by Laurent Binet

The New York Times Book Review – April 27, 2012 (Excerpt)

The nameless narrator of “HHhH” has serious misgivings about the novel he is writing. Like Laurent Binet, the book’s French author, he has spent years examining the murder of the SS general Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942 with a view to retelling the story as a thriller. But now he decides it is dishonest to invent descriptions, dialogue, thoughts and feelings on a subject as serious as this. The best he can do, he concludes, is to provide a running commentary on the truth (or otherwise) of what he is writing. “I just hope that, however bright and blinding the veneer of fiction that covers this fabulous story,” he writes, “you will still be able to see through it to the historical reality that lies behind.”

He need not sound apologetic. By placing himself in the story, alongside Heydrich and his assassins, the narrator challenges the traditional way historical fiction is written. We join him on his research trips to Prague; we learn his reactions to documents, books and movies; we hear him admit that he sometimes imagines what he cannot possibly know. And, in the end, his making of a historical novel brings a raw truth to an extraordinary act of resistance. This literary tour de force, now smoothly translated by Sam Taylor, earned Binet the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman in 2010. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Christopher Fowler’s acclaimed Peculiar Crimes Unit novels crackle with sly wit, lively suspense, and twists as chilling as London’s fog. Now the indomitable duo of Arthur Bryant and John May, along with the rest of their quirky team, return to solve a confounding case with dark ties to the British theater and a killer who may mean curtains for all involved.

For the crew of the New Strand Theatre, the play The Two Murderers seems less performance than prophecy when a cast party ends in the shocking death of the theater owner’s son. The crime scene is most unusual, even for Bryant and May. In a locked bedroom without any trace of fingerprints or blood, the only sign of disturbance is a gruesome life-size puppet of Mr. Punch laying on the floor. Everyone at the party is a suspect, including the corrupt producer, the rakish male lead, the dour set designer, and the assistant stage manager, who is the wild daughter of a prominent government official.

It’s this last fact that threatens the Peculiar Crimes Unit’s investigation, as the government’s Home Office, wary of the team’s eccentric methods, seeks to throw them off the case. But the nimble minds of Bryant and May are not so easily deterred. Delving into the history of the London theater and the disturbing origins of Punch and Judy, the detectives race to find the maniacal killer before he reaches his even deadlier final act.

Whip-smart and endlessly entertaining, The Memory of Blood is an ingeniously intricate mystery from the deliciously inventive Christopher Fowler.

About Christopher Fowler

Christopher Fowler is the acclaimed author of seventeen previous novels, including the award-winning Full Dark House and seven other Peculiar Crimes Unit mysteries: The Water Room, Seventy-Seven Clocks, Ten Second Staircase, White Corridor, The Victoria Vanishes, Bryant & May on the Loose, and Bryant & May off the Rails. He lives in London, where he is at work on his next Peculiar Crimes Unit novel.

Editorial Review

The Peculiar Crimes Unit (Bryant & May Off the Rails, 2010, etc.) celebrates its new digs in Caledonian Road by investigating a murder whose leading suspect is Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy fame.

The party to celebrate the opening of Ray Pryce’s The Two Murderers, critically panned but highly commercial, comes to a crashing end with the news that theater owner Robert Kramer’s 1-year-old son Noah has been hurled from his nursery window. Marks from the hands of a life-size puppet of Punch lying nearby are around the infant’s neck; the nursery door is locked from the inside; and the window is utterly inaccessible from the outside. If the puppet didn’t throttle and shake the baby to death, who did, and how did he or she make his escape? Called to the scene by the bizarre nature of the crime, Arthur Bryant and John May find many outsized egos—including handsome leading man Marcus Sigler, flamboyant assistant stage manager Gail Strong and snarky reviewer Alex Lansdale, all hiding guilty secrets—but no answers to the obvious questions. To make matters worse, Anna Marquand, the freelance transcriber to whom Bryant has been dictating his memoirs, dies shortly after being mugged outside the door of her flat. Nor is the killer of Noah Kramer content to call it a day. Three more partygoers will die, winnowing the list of suspects without casting any more illumination, before a final brainwave at a reprise of the fatal party leads to an arrest. – Kirkus Reviews

Michael Dirda reviews Christopher Fowler’s ‘The Memory of Blood’

The Washington Post Book Review – April 25, 2012 (Excerpt)

To my mind, the highest form of mystery novel is the “locked room” murder or “impossible crime.” While Agatha Christie is the mistress of misdirection with an unequaled gift for plotting, John Dickson Carr remains the master of those howdunits involving what is sometimes facetiously referred to as a “hermetically sealed chamber.” For example, in Carr’s masterpiece, “The Three Coffins,” two murders are committed by seemingly supernatural means. In one, a man is shot at point-blank range while standing in a courtyard covered with freshly fallen snow. His are the only tracks in the snow. Moreover, there are eyewitnesses who can swear that they saw no one near the victim at the time of the shot and that it wasn’t suicide. How was he killed?

If you like such puzzles, especially when they are spiced with a little screwball-comedy dialogue and a touch of the occult, don’t miss “The Memory of Blood,” Christopher Fowler’s eighth novel about London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. This police team tackles only cases involving sensitive issues that are also a “high risk to public morale.” Like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, the PCU books feature a half-dozen characters but focus particularly on its senior detectives, in this instance, Arthur Bryant and John May. Now getting on toward retirement, the two friends complement each other, May being more sociable than his partner, knowledgeable about technology and susceptible to any pretty woman who comes along. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Driven is the sequel to Drive, now also an award-winning film. As we exit the initial novel, Driver has killed Bernie Rose, “the only one he ever mourned,” ending his campaign against those who double-crossed him. Driven tells how that young man, done with killing, later will become the one who goes down “at 3 a.m. on a clear, cool morning in a Tijuana bar.” Seven years have passed.

Driver has left the old life, become Paul West, and founded a successful business back in Phoenix. Walking down the street one day, he and his fiancee are attacked by two men and, while Driver dispatches both, his fiancee is killed. Sinking back into anonymity, aided by his friend Felix, an ex-gangbanger and Desert Storm vet, Driver retreats, but finds that his past stalks him and will not stop. He has to turn and face it.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About James Sallis

JAMES SALLIS is the author of the popular Lew Griffin novels and over a dozen other books, including the biography “Chester Himes, “a “New York Times “Notable Book. He has been short-listed for the Anthony, Nebula, Edgar, Shamus, and Gold Dagger awards. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Editorial Review

He’s been calling himself Paul West for seven years. That’s the name by which his fiancée, Elsa Jorgenson, knew him when she died, killed by a pair of goons Driver swiftly dispatched. But everyone outside Elsa’s family (“we are your family,” her father mournfully tells him) still calls him Driver. It’s presumably Driver, not Paul West, that the men sent to follow him are interested in. Acquiring an innocuous-looking Fairlane 500 and tweaking its engine, Driver begins to make more and more adventurous forays outside Phoenix, where he’s settled. He shares portentous conversations with his hardheaded buddy Felix and his screenwriter friend Manny. He hooks up with law student Stephanie Cooper, whose ex-cop father Bill is sitting in a nursing home indulging in even more cryptic exchanges with ex–Special Forces visitor Wendell. He takes a meeting with self-anointed problem solver James Beil, who hints that Driver’s problems may be closely akin to his own. He works his way up the food chain to post-Katrina carpetbagger Gerald Dunaway and big wolf Bennie Capel in a search for whoever’s sent the interchangeable guys who’ve been dogging his tracks. All the while, Sallis (The Killer Is Dying, 2011, etc.) is using his mouthpieces to dispense nonstop nuggets of existential wisdom (“We think we make choices. But what happens is the choices walk up, stand face to face with us, and stare us down”) that both prepare and compensate for the inconclusiveness of the plot. – Kirkus Reviews

In Sequel To ‘Drive,’ Sallis Delivers A Thrill Ride

NPR Book Review – April 25, 2012 (Excerpt)

James Sallis says he had no intention of writing a sequel toDrive, his 2005 neo-noir thriller that, with the help of dreamy lead Ryan Gosling, later became one of the moodiest films of 2011. But after telling his agent as much over the phone one day, Sallis couldn’t shake the vision of “a woman leaning against a wall, bleeding out,” an image that eventually became the opening scene of Driven. “I wrote the first page and was hooked,” he said in an interview.

Driven, a switchblade of a little novel, picks up about seven years after Drive. Again, it centers on Driver, the quiet, enigmatic Hollywood stuntman who, in the first book, moonlighted as a getaway driver on heists. “I don’t take part, I don’t know anyone, I don’t carry weapons,” he uttered. “I drive.” But when one of those heists went south, Driver barely made it out of the game with his life.

Now, having assumed the identity of Phoenix vintage auto shop owner Paul West, Driver believes he’s left his past behind him. That is, until it comes calling one day. While out on a walk with his fiancee Elsa, Driver is jumped by two guys. He handles them both, but Elsa isn’t as lucky — and Driver goes off the grid in an attempt to set things right. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

In The Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King returns to the rich landscape of Mid-World, the spectacular territory of the Dark Tower fantasy saga that stands as his most beguiling achievement.

Roland Deschain and his ka-tet—Jake, Susannah, Eddie, and Oy, the billy-bumbler—encounter a ferocious storm just after crossing the River Whye on their way to the Outer Baronies. As they shelter from the howling gale, Roland tells his friends not just one strange story but two . . . and in so doing, casts new light on his own troubled past.

In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt-ridden year following his mother’s death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-shifter, a “skin-man” preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day’s trials by reciting a story from the Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother often read to him at bedtime. “A person’s never too old for stories,” Roland says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, never too old. We live for them.” And indeed, the tale that Roland unfolds, the legend of Tim Stoutheart, is a timeless treasure for all ages, a story that lives for us.

King began the Dark Tower series in 1974; it gained momentum in the 1980s; and he brought it to a thrilling conclusion when the last three novels were published in 2003 and 2004. The Wind Through the Keyhole is sure to fascinate avid fans of the Dark Tower epic. But this novel also stands on its own for all readers, an enchanting and haunting journey to Roland’s world and testimony to the power of Stephen King’s storytelling magic.

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About Stephen King

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His most recent include 11/22/63, Full Dark, No Stars, Under the Dome, Just Past Sunset, and Lisey’s Story. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Editorial Review

Though King has expanded his thematic terrain and elevated his critical reputation in recent years (11/22/63, 2011 etc.), he remains a master of fantastic stories spun from a very fertile imagination that seek to do nothing more (or less) than entertain. Some readers might be surprised at this return to the narrative that King had apparently concluded with the massive The Dark Tower (2004), the seventh book in the series. Yet rather than extend and revive the plot in this installment, he mines a seam from earlier in the series, suggesting that “this book should be shelved between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla…which makes it, I suppose Dark Tower 4.5.” He also makes a point of reassuring readers new to the series that they can start here, that the novel can be understood as a stand-alone title (with just a little contextual background, which he summarizes in a couple of paragraphs). Short by King’s standards, the novel draws inspiration from tales of knighthood and Old West gunslingers, as its story-within-a-story (within a story) details the rite-of-passage heroism of Roland Deschain, who saves a terrified boy in Mid-World from a shape-shifting marauder. “These tales nest inside each other,” explains Roland at the outset, as he prepares to recount a story through which its characters drew courage and inspiration from a story. If it weren’t for the profanity which liberally seasons the narrative, it could pass as a young adult fantasy, a foul-mouthed Harry Potter (with nods toward The Wizard of Oz and C.S. Lewis). It even ends with a redemptive moral, though King mainly concerns himself here with spinning a yard. – Kirkus Reviews

Stephen King: ‘The Wind Through the Keyhole,’ a new Dark Tower novel

The Washington Post Book Review – April 23, 2012 (Excerpt)

The story of Roland Deschain and his quest for the Dark Tower has been a part of Stephen King’s literary agenda from the beginning. The opening sections were written in 1970, when King was an ambitious, unknown 22-year-old. The seventh and final volume, “The Dark Tower,” appeared in 2004 and brought the story — all 4,000 pages of it — to a startling conclusion. It’s therefore both a pleasure and a surprise to encounter “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” a new, largely independent narrative set in a previously unexplored corner of Roland’s universe.

For those new to the series, Roland Deschain of Gilead is a gunslinger, the last of a dying breed sworn to maintain order in a rapidly decaying world. Roland’s life has been shaped by his obsession with the Dark Tower, an enigmatic structure that binds together an infinite number of parallel worlds. The Tower has come under attack by an entity known as the Crimson King, who plans to overturn the Tower and rule forever in the ensuing chaos. Roland’s attempts to prevent that disaster form the centerpiece of this long, discursive saga, which is informed by such diverse influences as Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” and the Western films of Sergio Leone, notably “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” The result is an epic fantasy unlike anything else in its overcrowded field. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

One night, after the first snowfall of the year, a boy named Jonas wakes up and discovers that his mother has disappeared. Only one trace of her remains: a pink scarf, his Christmas gift to her, now worn by the snowman that inexplicably appeared in their yard earlier that day.  Inspector Harry Hole suspects a link between the missing woman and a suspicious letter he’s received. The case deepens when a pattern emerges: over the past decade, eleven women have vanished—all on the day of the first snow. But this is a killer who makes his own rules . . . and he’ll break his pattern just to keep the game interesting, as he draws Harry ever closer into his twisted web. With brilliantly realized characters and hair-raising suspense, international bestselling author Jo Nesbø presents his most chilling case yet—one that will test Harry Hole to the very limits of his sanity.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Jo Nesbo

Jo NesbØ is a musician, songwriter, economist, and author. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Glass Key, the Riverton Prize, and the Booksellers Prize, and one of his Harry Hole novels was voted best Norwegian crime novel of all time by Norwegian readers. He lives in Oslo.

Editorial Reviews

The Snowman, Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s U.S. debut, should please even the most die-hard Stieg Larsson fans. On the first day of snow, a child wakes up to find his mother has disappeared during the night. Outside, a snowman has appeared out of nowhere, the calling card of one of the most terrifying serial killers in recent fiction. A letter from the perpetrator draws Detective Hole further and further into the case, and together with his new partner, Katrine Bratt, he hunts the Snowman through twists and turns that become increasingly personal and may drive Hole to the brink of insanity. Brilliantly crafted, this credible and dark page-turner fully fleshes out the characters, especially Hole, a hardened detective with sharp instincts and real heart. What is the link between the victims? Is the Snowman a suspicious doctor, a notorious playboy, or one of Hole’s peers on the force? The police keep thinking they’ve caught the criminal, but Hole’s astute observations may steer him around the red herrings and right into the hands of the cold-as-ice killer. –Miriam Landis, Amazon.Com Review

I once watched as mystery master Mary Higgins Clark teased a packed auditorium of her fans with this question: “What’s the scariest sound you could imagine hearing if you were marooned in an empty house on a dark and stormy night?”

“A scream!” “A gunshot!” “The house alarm going off!” No, no, no. Finally, Clark put an end to the audience’s agony: “The scariest sound you could hear in the middle of the night in a supposedly empty house is a toilet flushing.”

I thought of Clark’s brilliant observation as I was reading Jo Nesbo’s latest thriller, The Snowman. Snowmen are jolly creatures, right? They stand in front of houses wearing gumdrop grins and colorful scarves. But, what if that snowman were turned around, so that, instead of facing the street, it was staring at your house? All of a sudden the ordinary becomes ominous. – NPR Book Review

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor in town seeking psychotherapy for a troubling ailment of a sexual nature, becomes caught up in a feverish affair with a beautiful, enigmatic woman. When she goes to the police to press charges of rape, however, he is stunned, and his few months of passion come to an abrupt end. Only a carefully plotted escape—with the help of two mysterious British diplomats—saves him from trial.

But the frenzied getaway sets off a chain of events that steadily dismantles Lysander’s life as he knows it. He returns to a London on the cusp of war, hoping to win back his onetime fiancÉe and banish from memory his traumatic ordeals abroad, but Vienna haunts him at every turn. The men who helped coordinate his escape recruit him to carry out the brutal murder of a complete stranger. His lover from Vienna shows up nonchalantly at a party, ready to resume their liaison. Unable to live an ordinary existence, he is plunged into the dangerous theater of wartime intelligence—a world of sex, scandal, and spies, where lines of truth and deception blur with every waking day. Lysander must now discover the key to a secret code that is threatening Britain’s safety, and use all his skills to keep this murky world of suspicion and betrayal from invading every corner of his life.

Moving from Vienna to London’s West End, from the battlefields of France to hotel rooms in Geneva, Waiting for Sunrise is a mesmerizing journey into the human psyche, a beautifully observed portrait of wartime Europe, a plot-twisting thriller, and a literary tour de force.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About William Boyd

WILLIAM BOYD is the author of A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; RestlessM/em>, winner of the Costa Novel Award; and Ordinary Thunderstorms, among other books. He lives in London, England. Visit him online at williamboyd.co.uk.

Editorial Review

A handsome young English actor has a sexual problem: He cannot ejaculate. Which is why Lysander Rief is in Vienna in the summer of 1913: He’s a patient of an English psychoanalyst with a crackpot theory, Parallelism. Lysander needs his problem cleared up before he marries his fiancée, the lovely leading lady Blanche Blondel. Soon enough, Lysander discovers that underneath Vienna’s decorum runs a “river of sex.” A fellow patient, Hettie Bull, seduces him, and to his delight Lysander performs well; hey, the theory works! Lysander enjoys trysts with the volatile Hettie, an English sculptor, until one day, to his astonishment, he is arrested on rape charges; Hettie has betrayed him to her menacing common-law husband. Military attachés at the British embassy bail him out, sheltering him and devising his escape. The actor improvises a disguise to leave Vienna which so impresses the attachés that a year later, now the Great War has begun, they recruit him to track down a high-placed traitor in the British war machine. Subterfuge has been a recurrent theme in Boyd’s work. Lysander’s mission entails a dangerous visit to the front, followed by a tricky confrontation with the traitor’s German contact in Geneva. Even in another outrageous disguise, Lysander is almost shot dead by another British agent due to a misunderstanding. Back in London, the intrigue becomes even denser. Boyd parodies the convolutions of the genre but retains its suspense, while that river of sex flows like the Thames. A contrite Hettie re-appears. Lysander enjoys himself with her before finding true fulfillment with Blanche, who has survived a Zeppelin attack, and dispatching the traitor with the help of his gay uncle (don’t tell the boss). – Kirkus Reviews

Book World: William Boyd’s ‘Waiting for Sunrise’

The Washington Post Book Review – April 17, 2012 (Excerpt)

In the early pages of “Waiting for Sunrise,” William Boyd’s cunning tale of espionage in World War I, a Viennese soldier warns Lysander Rief, the book’s naive hero, not to be fooled by the apparent placidity of the Austrian capital. Below the surface, he warns, flows a powerful “river of sex,” capable of sweeping away anyone who wades too deeply into its waters.

Rief appears in particular danger of going under. The young English actor has traveled to Vienna to seek treatment for anorgasmia, the inability to achieve climax during sexual congress. His doctor is a fellow British expatriate named Bensimon, part of a legion of psychoanalysts mushrooming in Freud’s fertile shadow throughout the city. In Bensimon’s waiting room, Rief makes the acquaintance of two patients who will play decisive roles in his life. The first, a free-spirited sculptor named Hettie Bull, soon becomes his lover. The second, a military attache at the British consulate named Alwyn Munro, will become a perhaps even more intimate figure: his spymaster. [Read the full article...]

Paging Dr. Freud: A Viennese Espionage Thriller

NPR Book Review – April 18, 2012 (Excerpt)

Waiting for Sunrise, William Boyd’s 12th novel, opens on the streets of Vienna in August 1913, on the eve of World War I. Lysander Rief, a young actor, arrives in the birthplace of psychoanalysis to seek a cure for his sexual ailment, only to embark on an odyssey of sexual discovery. He begins treatment with one of Freud’s disciples — and an affair with a fellow patient, the volatile Hettie Bell — all the while exploring the depths of his Oedipal relationship with his glamorous mother, Lady Anna Faulkner. Things take a sinister turn when Bell accuses Rief of rape, and he is drawn into an intricate web of espionage and deceit.

And this is just to begin with. The plot of Waiting for Sunriseis convoluted, but the story does not so much twist as merely meander. Despite all that occurs in the first 250 pages (and plenty happens), the action feels like preamble. For all the mystery and intrigue that Boyd serves up, there is a distinct lack of suspense in the proceedings, and the author’s formal strategies only serve to exacerbate the tedium.

The novel is composed in brief chapters, most only a few pages long, each elaborately titled, as with “A Young, Almost Conventionally Handsome Man” or “A Gross Insult to the Bard.” The chapters splice up the text to the point where immersion in plot or character is repeatedly thwarted. [Read the full article...]

The Spy Who Came in From the Couch

The New York Times Book Review – May 4, 2012 (Excerpt)

Strolling through Vienna in “lemony sunshine” on a mild August day in 1913, Lysander Rief, a “young, almost conventionally handsome man” with “brown, breeze-blown hair” and a “sportsman’s build,” stops dead, compelled by a luscious but disturbing advertisement for an opera. In the poster, he beholds a distraught goddess, naked but for the merest scrap of filmy gauze, who recoils from a glowering serpent, “cowering, hands pressed to her sizable breasts, cupping them protectively.” She is “young, beautiful, vulnerable,” he thinks as he stares at the poster, “confronted by some squamous, no doubt phallic monster about to ravish her.”

This arresting opening to “Waiting for Sunrise,” a tantalizing, fast-paced spy novel by the prolific William Boyd, reminded me of the first book I read by this curiously engaging author, roughly 20 years ago. The protagonist of “Brazzaville Beach,” Hope Clearwater, began her tale by confiding, “I never really warmed to Clovis — he was far too stupid to inspire real affection — but he always claimed a corner of my heart, largely, I suppose, because of the way he instinctively and unconsciously cupped his genitals whenever he was alarmed or nervous.” Clovis, lest anyone get the wrong idea, was a chimpanzee. Hope had left behind a painful marriage in England with a complicated man to travel to Africa and lose herself in the consoling study of simpler primates (although they turned out to be far less simple than would have been optimal). Then, as now, Boyd showed a marked gift for getting and holding a reader’s attention — particularly a reader intrigued by his unmistakable respect for, and admiration of, the female sex. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

A stunning literary thriller set in rural Vermont from the much praised author of Nightswimmer and Clara’s Heart

Once a major reporter for a national newspaper, Catherine Winslow has retreated to the Upper Valley of Vermont to write a household hints column. While out walking during an early spring thaw, Catherine discovers the body of a woman leaning against an apple tree near her house. From the corpse’s pink parka, Winslow recognizes her as the latest victim of a serial killer, a woman reported missing weeks before during a blizzard.

When her neighbor, a forensic psychiatrist, is pulled into the investigation, Catherine begins to discover some unexpected connections to the serial murders. One is that the murders might be based on a rare unfinished Wilkie Collins novel that is missing from her personal library. The other is her much younger lover from her failed affair has unexpectedly resurfaced and is trying to maneuver his way back into her affections.

Elegant, haunting and profoundly gripping, Cloudland is an ingenious psychological trap baited with murder, deception and the intricacies of desire.

About Joseph Olshan

Joseph Olshan is the award-winning author of ten novels including Nightswimmer and The Conversion. He spends most of the year in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

“Cloudland is a beautiful and original novel. Murder, darkness and snow – we immediately felt at home. The depth is painted with precise brushstrokes. The language is as light as snowflakes swirling across a frozen field. The characters are alive, constantly interesting and very cleverly drawn. The murder mystery is deep and intricate. It was genuine and moving. As readers, we’d love to linger in this book, but the story forces us forward. This is true quality crime fiction.” –Lars Kepler, New York Times bestselling author of The Hypnotist

“In Cloudland, Joseph Olshan has written a truly involving thriller with the bones and brain of a serious work of literature, which gives great depth and resonance to the well-wrought thriller plot. This is so difficult an accomplishment that to my knowledge it has been managed only once before in this century. Cloudland could also be thought of as a tribute to Wilkie Collins, as much one of Olshan’s grandfathers as he is of mine. It’s a lovely knockout, this book.” –Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and A Dark Matter

“A thriller in the widest sense of the word — where not only does the reader wonder what happens next, they wonder why it will happen. Written in consistently elegant prose, with memorable psychological acuity, Cloudland  is both exciting and compelling and will keep readers turning pages energetically.” –John Katzenbach, international bestselling author of The Wrong Man

Joseph Olshan’s ‘Cloudland’: Protagonist feels unauthentic in mystery novel

The Washington Post Book Review – April 15, 2012 (Excerpt)

In a remote corner of Vermont, the spring snowmelt reveals something besides the year’s first snowdrops and crocuses: the corpse of a woman, propped against a tree , a Seventh-Day Adventist pamphlet stuffed in her pocket. The body is that of Angela Parker, the local phlebotomist, who’s been missing for months — and Angela is not the first woman to be found murdered in this remote corner of the country. Nor will she be the last.

So begins Joseph Olshan’s “Cloudland,” which introduces Catherine Winslow, an oddly diffident protagonist. Catherine is a former investigative reporter who’s now a syndicated household-hints guru. In most suspense novels, a thawing corpse could do worse than to turn up in the yard of an investigative reporter, but Catherine seems content to cede the mystery to an out-of-town detective, Marco Prozzo, as well as her neighbor on Cloudland Road, forensic psychiatrist Anthony Waite. [Read the full article...]

Advertisement

THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests with care. All are high-ranking Party members and each is a suspect in a crime as yet to be committed: the murder of Heydrich himself.

Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich’s staff, found dead in his room, the door and windows bolted from the inside. Anticipating foul play, Heydrich had already ordered Bernie Gunther to Prague. After more than a decade in Berlin’s Kripo, Bernie had jumped ship as the Nazis came to power, setting himself up as a private detective. But Heydrich, who managed to subsume Kripo into his own SS operations, has forced Bernie back to police work. Now, searching for the killer, Gunther must pick through the lives of some of the Reich’s most odious officials.

A perfect locked-room mystery. But because Philip Kerr is a master of the sleight of hand, Prague Fatale is also a tense political thriller: a complex tale of spies, partisan terrorists, vicious infighting, and a turncoat traitor situated in the upper reaches of the Third Reich.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr is the author of seven previous Bernie Gunther novels, most recently Field Gray, which was a New York Times bestseller and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2011. Its predecessor, If the Dead Rise Not, was a finalist for the Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Fiction. As. P. B. Kerr, he is the author of the young adult series Children of the Lamp. Kerr lives in London.

Editorial Review

September, 1941, and here’s Bernie back in Berlin from the Eastern Front, where he’s seen enough horror to preclude easy sleep for the rest of his life. More than ever he despises everything the Nazis stand for, and just as much as ever he’s under their thumb. The good news is, he’s out of the army and once again a Kripo homicide detective, but the job is far from what it was in the days before Germany became Hitler’s, a time when Bernie relished the work and took justifiable pride in his hard-earned expertise. And of course the bad news is, Kripo is now controlled by that arch villain, and boss of the SS, Reinhard “the Hangman” Heydrich, meaning that an investigation is only what Heydrich wants it to be. Suddenly that’s precisely the kind of dubious investigation Bernie finds himself conducting. From Hradschin Castle in Prague, where the newly appointed Reichsprotector holds court, has come a summons to appear immediately. It seems someone has attempted to poison Heydrich; that being the case, Bernie, the designated Reichsprotector’s detective, is required to nail the brazen culprit. At the moment, 39 high-ranking Nazis are guests at the castle. Knowing how little love is lost among those prominent in Hitlerian circles, Bernie figures he’s got 39 prime suspects, though it strikes him as a bit on the foolhardy side that the attempt should be made in the Hangman’s own stronghold. And yet, he decides, in a house “full of murderers, anything is possible.” – Kirkus Reviews

‘Prague Fatale’: ‘Downton Abbey With SS’

NPR Book Review – April 14, 2012 (Excerpt)

Philip Kerr is a British novelist, born a decade after the end of World War II, who has written a series of compelling thrillers about crime in wartime Nazi Germany. His hero — mostly a hero — is a tough and cynical Berliner, a cop named Bernie Gunther. The newest book is the eighth in the series; it’s called Prague Fatale.

Kerr tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer that he decided to move the action from Berlin to Prague because it was a good, unexplored route into a familiar story: the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the notoriously cruel SS boss of Bohemia and Moravia.

“Not much was actually known or written about Heydrich in the months leading up to his death,” Kerr says. “I thought it would be, well, a good wheeze to have Bernie turn up in Prague at Heydrich’s request.”

In the novel, Heydrich is familiar with Bernie Gunther from his time as a police official in Berlin. He brings Bernie to Prague as a protector, but also someone who understands the minds of murderers.

“When Heydrich became the governor or protector of Bohemia, as they persisted in calling Czechoslovakia, he had a little sort of weekend party to celebrate at his country house,” Kerr says. He visited the house, which still exists, on a trip to Prague. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

When you open your eyes things already seem to be happening without you. You don’t know who you are and you don’t remember where you’ve been. You know the world has changed, that a catastrophe has destroyed what used to exist before, but you can’t remember exactly what did exist before. And you’re paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don’t remember that either.

A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn’t quite add up. You’ve got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you’ve got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out.

Before you know it, you’re being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don’t seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don’t understand that may well end up being the death of you.

Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai…

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Brian Evenson

Brian Evenson has written several works of fiction, including The Wavering Knife, for which he was awarded IHG Award for best story collection, and The Open Curtain, an Edgar Award finalist. His most recent novel, Last Days, won the ALA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009 and was on Time Out New York’s list of top books of 2009. Evenson is the director of Brown University’s Literary Arts Program and is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize and an NEA fellowship. He has also written Dead Space novels under the name B. K. Evenson.

Editorial Review

In this combination of two classic science fiction tropes—the post-apocalyptic future and the protagonist who has no memory—a man who may or may not be named Josef Horkai wakes from what he is told has been 30 years of cold-sleep storage. Following the Kollaps, the landscape is pocked with craters, scarred by violence and poisoned by radiation; only a few scattered groups cling to survival in shelters and caves. Rasmus, the leader of the group, tells Horkai that he is the group’s “fixer,” needed to retrieve a mysterious cylinder that has been stolen by a rival group. Horkai’s legs are useless and, according to Rasmus, he needs regular injections in his spine to stop a lethal disease spreading upwards to his brain. To get Horkai where he needs to go, two “mules,” placid, literal minded individuals of limited intelligence, will carry him. Qanik and Qatik, the mules, don radiation-resistant suits, but Horkai needs none; more, he can heal from any injury and seems to be immortal. According to Qatik and Qanik—they refer to their group as the “hive,” and neither expects to survive the trek—there are other, similar, survivors. It’s a formidable what’s-going-on scenario, told from the point of view of a character who has every reason to be unreliable, that merited further development rather than just a slam-dunk ending. – Kirkus Reviews

Surviving ‘Immobility’ And End Times

NPR Book Review – April 12, 2012 (Excerpt)

Stories about the end of the world are as old as literature itself. From the tale of Noah’s Ark to the plague-ravaged landscapes of Mary Shelley’s controversial 1826 novel The Last Man, writers have long held a morbid fascination with the possibility of a future apocalypse.

It was all fantasy, of course, until August 1945, when the world learned the threat of widespread destruction was much more real than anyone could have imagined. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, post-apocalyptic literature, and humanity itself, would never be the same. As Josef Horkai, the anti-hero of Brian Evenson’s new novelImmobility, reflects: “We say no to sixty-six thousand dead in a single bomb blast over a defenseless foreign city, and then we do it again, a hundred thousand this time. … Humans are poison. Perhaps it would be better if we did not exist at all.”

Immobility takes place years after “the Kollaps,” an unspecified cataclysm that decimated the planet, leaving only a handful of people barely alive and the world transformed into a hellscape: “no living thing, not even a cockroach, nothing but wrack and ruin … marks of calamity, terror, distress.” Josef Horkai doesn’t remember much about what happened — he’s been kept in suspended animation for years, possibly decades, and awakened by a mysterious group of survivors keeping shelter in the ruins of a university. He’s paralyzed from the waist down, but that doesn’t stop the group’s leader from asking him to go on a cryptic mission to steal a vitally important cylinder from a mountainside fortress, miles away. With the help of two men who take turns carrying him, Horkai reluctantly sets out across the desert to find the precious container. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

Lisa Scottoline has delivered taut thrillers with a powerful emotional wallop in her New York Times bestsellers Save Me, Think Twice, and Look Again. Now, with her new novel, Come Home, she ratchets up the suspense with the riveting story of a mother who sacrifices her future for a child from her past.

Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter’s lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her—though it is stressful—and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team.

But Jill’s life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news: Jill’s ex-husband is dead. Abby insists that he was murdered and pleads with Jill to help find his killer. Jill reluctantly agrees to make a few inquiries and discovers that things don’t add up. As she digs deeper, her actions threaten to rip apart her new family, destroy their hard-earned happiness, and even endanger her own life. Yet Jill can’t turn her back on a child she loves and once called her own.

Come Home reads with the breakneck pacing of a thriller while also exploring the definition of motherhood, asking the questions: Do you ever stop being a mother? Can you ever have an ex-child? What are the limits to love of family?

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Scottoline is a New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of eighteen novels. She has served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and her recent novel Look Again has been optioned for a feature film. She is a weekly columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and her columns have been collected in two books and optioned for television. She has 25 million copies of her books in print in the United States, and she has been published in thirty countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets. Visit her at www.lisascottoline.com.

Editorial Review

Pharmaceutical rep William Skyler blamed his divorce on his wife, Dr. Jill Farrow. He told his daughters, Victoria and Abby, that Jill had cheated on him and forbade them to keep in touch with her or her own daughter Megan. Now, three years later, William is dead, overdosed on prescription medications Abby is convinced he didn’t take himself. What’s Jill supposed to do when Abby drives unannounced to the home she shares with diabetes researcher Sam Becker, drunk, weeping hysterically and begging for help? Nothing, maintains Sam, who tells Jill that she’s choosing continuing loyalty to Abby (and to Victoria, who makes it witheringly clear at William’s funeral that she still wants nothing to do with Jill) over her commitment to him and his son Steven. Nothing, say the Philadelphia police, who insist that William’s death was no homicide. Nothing, Jill’s penny-pinching medical-practice manager Sheryl Ewing says—or would surely say if Jill, already playing out a losing hand in office politics, ever brought it up to her. Naturally, Jill, protesting, “What’s a mother, or a stepmother?…Isn’t it forever?,” takes it upon herself to investigate anyway. Scottoline backs her increasingly beset supermom (“It wasn’t a juggling act, it was a magic act”) into sleuthing mode with practiced expertise, giving her exactly the right motivations and qualifications for the specific questions she asks. And there’ll be a lump in every throat when Abby disappears and when Jill fights to diagnose a baby who keeps getting ear infections. As usual with Scottoline, though, the complications are a lot more satisfying than the windup, in which reason and plausibility take a back seat to tearful family affirmations. – Kirkus Reviews

Sleuth Soccer Moms Tackle Bad Guys And Stereotypes

NPR Book Review – April 11, 2012 (Excerpt)

In the most vital essay on crime fiction ever written — Raymond Chandler’s 1944 apologia “The Simple Art of Murder” — Chandler paid this tribute to his hard-boiled predecessor, Dashiell Hammett: “Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley.”

Had Chandler been able to peer into one of those dirty crystal balls used as props by the counterfeit mystics of crime fiction, he might have outlined the future of the detective novel thusly: “Ross Macdonald went on to take murder out of the alley and dropped it into the suburban country club. And then Lisa Scottoline took murder out of the suburban country club and plopped it into the grammar school cafeteria and the back seat of a working mom’s SUV.”

Scottoline, as her multitude of fans well know, started out writing crime fiction in 1994 with her novel Everywhere That Mary Went, which introduced the fictional all-female Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates. The danger-prone dames of that series are still going strong (Think Twice, which came out in 2010, pitted the firm’s boss, Bennie Rosato, in a gothic battle against her evil twin). Of late, however, Scottoline has also been writing terrific stand-alone suspense novels in which the more workaday situations of, say, your middle-aged soccer mom morph into mayhem. Her newest book, Come Home, is a masterpiece of maternal unease that fits squarely into this latter genre of making the familiar strange. [Read the full article...]

THE SABRINA STRONG SERIES by LORELEI BELL

Book One: Vampire Ascending [More Info...]

Book Two: Vampire’s Trill [More Info...]

On a sweltering day in August, a small town drunkenly celebrates its six-hundredth anniversary with a funfair when an anonymous tip leads police to find a young woman brutally beaten, raped, and thrown under the floorboards of the very stage on which her attackers had just played a polka. An eight-member brass band composed of respectable family men with respectable day jobs is charged with the crime. A neophyte defense lawyer, still wet behind the ears and breaking in his attaché case, takes on the trial, only to lose his innocence in the process.

So begins Guilt, Ferdinand von Schirach’s tense, riveting collection of stories based on real crimes he has known. In these brief, succinct tales, von Schirach calls into question the nature of guilt and the toll it takes—or fails to take—on ordinary people. In “The Illuminati,” the popular mean crowd at an all-boys’ boarding school wages a vicious attack against an outsider schoolmate, and ends up accidentally killing the boy’s beloved teacher. Attempting to hurdle through a midlife crisis, a housewife begins to steal trivial things no one will miss, an act that gives her a rush and staves off depression in “Desire.” And in “Snow,” an old man whose home is used as a way station for a heroin ring agrees to protect the identity of the lead drug runner, who receives his comeuppance in due course.

Compassionate and seen with the same cool, controlled eye that propelled Ferdinand von Schirach’s debut collection, Crime, onto best-seller lists, Guilt is a stunning follow-up from one of Germany’s finest new writers.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Ferdinand von Schirach

Ferdinand von Schirach was born in Munich in 1964. Since 1994, he has worked as a criminal defense lawyer in Berlin. Among his clients have been the former member of the Politburo Günter Schabowski, the former East German spy Norbert Juretzko, and members of the underworld.

Editorial Reviews

“Von Schirach describes each case in a straightforward, unemotional manner that makes each story all the more searing. The emotional impact of these tales is powerful; no crime novelist could invent stories more unsettling . . . The question of guilt and innocence, how an individual’s case adjudicated in court, and the consequences of being involved—even tangentially—in a criminal act, will resonate.” —Library Journal

“These are compressed, matter-of-fact accounts which…often read like existential parables that probe the limits of the law in exploring the mysteries of the human heart and psyche . . . Though the narratives are often as terse as the best hard-boiled crime fiction, the most compelling tales have a philosophical dimension reminiscent of Kafka or Camus.” —Kirkus

Off the Hook - ‘Guilt,’ Stories by Ferdinand von Schirach

The New York Times Book Review – April 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

Ferdinand von Schirach is both a German criminal defense lawyer and an exceptional prose stylist, as evidenced by his devastating new volume of stories, a sequel to a similar and even stronger collection called “Crime.” That book was a critical and commercial success in Germany and received fine notices when it was published here last year.

There’s a trick to many of von Schirach’s stories, one that works every time. A narrator describes a terrible crime in a controlled tone that withholds judgment and even verges on amusement. That tone is von Schirach’s great achievement: understated, resigned, worldly, hard-boiled. Then, near the end of the tale, often very late, there is a shift from third-person narration to first, from the literary to the legal. A lawyer takes control, describing the modest steps he has made to guide the case toward an invariably unsatisfactory conclusion. The effect is unsettling; it underscores not only the horror and absurdity of what happened early on, but how little the legal system can do to establish facts or assign blame, much less set things right. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Mark Mills, bestselling author of Amagansett, The Savage Garden, and The Information Officer, is renowned for blending riveting history, rich atmosphere, and thrilling suspense. Now, in House of the Hunted, Mills deftly unfolds a story of betrayal, love, and the inescapable pull of the past as an ex-spy finds himself drawn back into his treacherous former life.

Côte d’Azur, France, 1935: As Europe moves inexorably toward war, Tom Nash feels pleasantly removed, pursuing a quiet writing career on an idyllic stretch of the French Riveria. A former intelligence operative for the British government, Tom now finds refuge among the lively seaside community of expats and artists, hoping to put the worst deeds from his job—and memories of the woman he once loved—far behind him. But Tom’s peaceful existence is shattered when an unknown hit man tries to kill him in his sleep. Tom is sure that somebody knows his secrets, and that this attempt on his life won’t be the last.

Relying on his instincts for self-preservation, Tom suspects everyone of double-dealing, even people he considers his friends: the Russian art dealers from Paris, the exiled German dissidents, even his former boss and closest confidant. And as he plunges further into his haunted past, Tom feels himself turning into the person he used to be—a dangerous man, capable of anything.

Combining vividly drawn characters and gripping acts of espionage, House of the Hunted is a superbly crafted novel by an exceptional and versatile storyteller.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Mark Mills

Mark Mills is a screenwriter and the author of The Information Officer, The Savage Garden, and Amagansett. His first novel, Amagansett, was published in a dozen countries and received the British Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award, and The Savage Garden was  a #1 bestseller in the United Kingdom. A graduate of Cambridge University, he lives in Oxford with his wife and their two children.

Editorial Review

Petrograd, Russia, is a risky place to be in 1919. Thomas Nash is there on secret business for the British, and he kills a man before barely escaping execution by the Bolsheviks. His lover Irina, he hears, is executed in her attempt to leave the country with him. Sixteen years later, he lives quietly on the French coast, long out of the spy game. He sails, enjoys close friends and dotes on his beautiful goddaughter Lucy. All is well until his dog Hector disappears and an intruder attacks Tom in the middle of the night. Clearly this is not a robbery; someone wants Tom dead. But why, after all these years? The botched attempt on his life will not be the last, so he has to get to the bottom of this in a hurry. Plenty of twists and turns follow, including an especially well done car chase. The story turns back on itself to weave in colorful background—most of it necessary and entertaining, but some of it rather a drag on the pace one might expect from a thriller. Tom is an appealing hero: flawed, but decent at his core, a man who is tough only because he has to be. The supporting characters such as Lucy and her mother are well drawn and believable, while the villains’ motivations might be a bit of a stretch. Yet the Leninist thuggery caused so many senseless deaths that plausible reasons for murder may not be necessary. All in all, the book paints a convincing picture of a man whose past returns to haunt him and who must face it while he keeps his wits and protects the people he loves. – Kirkus Reviews

Blood in the Sea - ‘House of the Hunted,’ by Mark Mills, and More

The New York Times Book Review – April 6, 2012 (Excerpt)

Picture it: An Art Deco villa on the French Riviera in 1935. A witty crowd of expats caught up in a mad whirl of dinner parties, tennis parties, boating parties and scavenger hunts. Noël Coward might have set a delicious comedy in this sophisticated milieu. Agatha Christie would have executed a discreet murder mystery and dispatched Hercule Poirot to solve it.

Mark Mills has chosen this seductive setting for HOUSE OF THE HUNTED (Random House, $26), a romantic thriller about a former British spy who reluctantly gets back into the game when an assassin comes calling in the middle of the night. Tom Nash quit secret service work after a soul-destroying mission in Russia and has been passing himself off as an “impecunious author of travel books” who happens to own a hunk of prime real estate on the Côte d’Azur.

Tom sheds this identity “like a snake” when he kills that foreign assassin and disposes of the body by dumping it in the sea. “The senses and instincts he’d worked so hard to blunt were still there, and they seemed to be sharpening themselves by the hour,” he reflects, after dispatching another hired killer in a fiery car “accident.” Those instincts also warn him that someone in his social circle has betrayed him. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

Acclaimed novelist of The Kind One and screenwriter of such films as One False Move and The Gift, Tom Epperson brings the violence-soaked world of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and the heroism of Jack Schaefer’s Shane together to create an iconic action thriller for the twenty-first century.

Gina fell for the wrong guy. Joe came into her life promising her everything, and he gave it to her, along with a world of hell.

But Gina was stronger than Joe realized. After years of suffering the terror of being married to a criminal, she took the one thing he ever gave her that she wanted—her son, Luke. Then she turned the bastard in.

With her husband behind bars, her father-in-law will stop at nothing for revenge.

He wants his grandson back, the heir to his criminal empire. With a vast network that stretches across the country, every favor is called in to kill Gina and return Luke to his grandfather.

Gina can trust no one. Even the U.S. Marshall assigned to keep Gina and Luke safe is on the payroll.

So with a gun and stolen diamonds in her purse, and derelicts, the law, and hit men on her tail, Gina takes Luke and runs.

Los Angeles was only supposed to be a quick stop—sleep, eat, and continue running—but then they meet Gray….

He says he’s a sailor, but he seems to be hiding a lot. And when the time comes, he’s the only thing standing between her and the grave.

About Tom Epperson

Tom Epperson is the cowriter, with Billy Bob Thornton, of A Family Thing (starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones, nominated for the Humanitas Prize), One False Move (named as one of the year’s best films by a number of top critics), and The Gift (directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, and Hillary Swank). Epperson’s first book, The Kind One, was nominated for an Edgar and a Barry Award in 2009. He lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

“Sailor is a modern-day fable, compelling and heartbreaking. It will grab you from page one and keep you a grateful hostage until its surprising and moving conclusion.”
—Robert Crais, New York Times bestselling author of The Sentry

“Employing spare, almost hallucinatory prose, and a keen eye for detail, Tom Epperson has created an unforgettable cast of characters set against a sun-bleached noir background. By turns frightening and darkly comic, Sailor is the literary equivalent of a Coen brothers film.”
—Eric Van Lustbader, New York Times bestselling author of Blood Trust

“Simply a great thriller—full of action but about people, tough but not bleak, fast and yet thoughtful. Highly recommended.”  —Lee Child

Book review: ‘Sailor’ by Tom Epperson

The Los Angeles Times Book Review – April 4, 2012 (Excerpt)

If I were a damsel in distress fleeing a past and people who wanted me dead, like Gina Cicala in the modern noir thriller “Sailor” by Tom Epperson, I’d want to meet a guy like Gray too. And if I were Gray, a mysterious stranger with a tortured past, the kind of guy who rescues dogs from their abusive owners, meeting an on-the-lam beautiful woman with a preternaturally bright son would just make perfect sense.

And meet they do when Gina rolls into King Beach, a fictionalized coastal town in Southern California whose location beneath the LAX takeoff route is a thinly disguised Playa Del Rey. She and her son Luke are on the run after an attempt on her life — which results in considerable collateral damage — in a small town in Oklahoma, where mother and son had been placed in witness protection.

Gina is running because she can’t go to the authorities for help. She’s definitely no innocent victim (she packs a Glock), and her situation is anything but typical. Gina entered witness protection after helping put her mobster husband — and the father of her son — in prison. Before joining the WitSec program, she also helped herself to a substantial amount of her husband’s ill-gotten gains. Needless to say, her father-in-law is quite anxious to both eliminate Gina and reclaim his grandson, and the U.S. marshal assigned to her case wants the bounty the father-in-law is offering as well as the loot she absconded with.

While this makes for a cozy partnership between the old mob don and the bent U.S. marshal, it leaves Gina and Luke nowhere to turn in this tale of revenge and greed. So mother and son, with the U.S. marshal close behind, drive until they run out of continent. [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?

Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.

But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.

And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.

In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Barry Lyga

Barry Lyga is the author of several acclaimed young adult novels, including his debut, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl. He knows way too much about how to dispose of a human body. Barry lives and writes in New York City. His website is www.barrylyga.com.

Editorial Review

After witnessing many of the crime scenes of his father’s 123 official kills in ways the police wish they could, 17-year-old Jasper “Jazz” Dent is glad his father’s in prison. Life with crazy Gramma, who raised “Dear Old Dad,” is hard enough, and now it’s in jeopardy thanks to Jazz’s social worker. When police discover a body in a field near town, Jazz becomes certain it’s a new serial killer. In spite of the objections of Lobo’s Nod Sheriff G. William Tanner, Jazz and his best friend, hemophiliac Howie, run their own investigation and uncover a pattern as bodies quickly pile up. Can Jazz help the cops find this new monster without becoming a suspect himself? YA rebel-author Lyga switches from goths and superheroes to serial killers and sociopaths with this grisly teen thriller. Jazz’s heightened self-consciousness is both believable and entirely in tune with regular teens. Readers of Dan Wells’ John Wayne Cleaver novels (I Am Not a Serial Killer, 2010, etc.) will find echoes of them here, though the writing is not as tight and the creep factor is lower. Also, the certain-sequel open ending is a bit of a letdown. – Kirkus Review

Not Just for Kids: ‘I Hunt Killers’ by Barry Lyga

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – April 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

A generation ago, young horror fans had to “read up” to adult authors such as Stephen King. Now novelists such as Barry Lyga are tailoring gore for a teen audience.

In “I Hunt Killers,” Lyga attempts one of the more daring concepts in recent years by a young-adult author. His multiple-murder mystery focuses on the son of a notorious serial killer who is forced to confront his fears that he will follow in his dad’s footsteps and must also reconcile his attraction to grisly deaths.

This extreme and utterly alluring narrative about nature versus nurture opens with the discovery of a naked woman’s body in a field on the outskirts of town. Seventeen-year-old Jazz Dent is observing the investigation from afar using a pair of binoculars he received as a gift from his dad before he was locked up — after committing 123 murders over a span of 21 years — for consecutive life sentences.

Jazz’s upbringing was alarmingly unusual. Raised on a steady diet of murder, he “had witnessed crime scenes the way the cops wished they could — from the criminal’s point of view.” The “trophies” in the Dent household included a lipstick, an iPod, a driver’s license and other mementos that were stashed in the basement rather than displayed on the mantle. Jazz’s brain felt “like a slasher movie.” [Read the full article...]

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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
- 2 Timothy iv. 7

The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]

The Bleeding Hills is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Nobel, and any other good bookstore.

A spectacularly original thriller about a professional torturer who has a strict code, a mysterious past, and a dangerous conviction that he can save the life of an innocent child

Geiger has a gift: he knows a lie the instant he hears it. And in his business—called “information retrieval” by its practitioners—that gift is invaluable, because truth is the hottest thing on the market.

Geiger’s clients count on him to extract the truth from even the most reluctant subjects. Unlike most of his competitors, Geiger rarely sheds blood, but he does use a variety of techniques—some physical, many psychological—to push his subjects to a point where pain takes a backseat to fear. Because only then will they finally stop lying.

One of Geiger’s rules is that he never works with children. So when his partner, former journalist Harry Boddicker, unwittingly brings in a client who demands that Geiger interrogate a twelve-year-old boy, Geiger responds instinctively. He rescues the boy from his captor, removes him to the safety of his New York City loft, and promises to protect him from further harm. But if Geiger and Harry cannot quickly discover why the client is so desperate to learn the boy’s secret, they themselves will become the victims of an utterly ruthless adversary.

Mesmerizing and heart-in-your-throat compelling, The Inquisitor is a completely unique thriller that introduces both an unforgettable protagonist and a major new talent in Mark Allen Smith.

About Mark Allen Smith

Mark Allen Smith is a successful television and documentary film producer and screenwriter. The Inquisitor, featuring the controversial hero known only as  Geiger, is his first novel. Mark’s experience investigating features for the acclaimed ABC-TV news magazine program, “20/20,” planted the seed for his debut thriller when he was involved with a story dating from the 1970s about the remarkably brutal torture and murder of a 17-year-old in Paraguay, the last true dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere.  He was further inspired to action by the shocking death of Lisa Steinberg at the abusive hands of her adoptive father; this event uncorked ongoing interest in the corrosive effect of physical and psychological pressure on children and other innocents.  His journey of research convinced him that the novel was his best way to bring his story to the largest possible audience.

A long-time resident of Westchester County, Mark Allen Smith now lives in New York City’s Harlem with his wife, Cathy, and a blended family of six children. He is presently working on the sequel to The Inquisitor, also featuring Geiger.

Editorial Reviews

“This is one of the best and most engrossing debut novels I’ve read in years, and also one of the most original. Mark Allen Smith has created an unusual hero named Geiger whose occupation is torturing the truth out of people. Geiger is good at what he does, and so is Mr. Smith. The Inquisitor will keep you locked in a room for days.”—Nelson DeMille

“Information retrieval takes on a sinister cast in Smith’s mesmerizing thriller debut… [Geiger is] a fascinating piece of work… This may be the most unusual and talked about thriller of the season.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[Geiger is] one of the most utterly distinctive protagonists in a recent thriller, and one of the most unexpectedly sympathetic… Smith invests his first novel with psychological dimensions you might expect in a third or fourth book… A breezy, involving thriller that handily overcomes any resistance to its grisly premise and leaves you hoping for the return of its oddly winning hero.”—Kirkus (starred review)

“An adrenaline-fueled cat-and-mouse game… [Geiger] is a fascinating protagonist with a revealing backstory. A compelling debut thriller that blurs the lines between the good and bad guys.”—Library Journal (starred review)

Book World: ‘The Inquisitor’ by Mark Allen Smith

The Washington Post Book Review – April 1, 2012 (Excerpt)

Mark Allen Smith clearly likes to take chances. In his remarkably assured first novel, “The Inquisitor,” he introduces one of the most unsettling, potentially alienating creations in recent popular fiction: a professional torturer. With unobtrusive skill, Smith transforms this unpalatable material into a swiftly paced narrative as disturbing as it is compelling.

The novel’s eponymous protagonist is Geiger, a man with no first name, no known past and a gift for the art of “information retrieval.” Geiger is a human cipher who came to consciousness, a fully formed adult, aboard a Greyhound bus in New York’s Port Authority terminal. He was, at the moment of his awakening, no more than “a scarred, aching body with an unencumbered mind, a human machine without a memory card.” In the years since, he has invented himself from scratch, constructing a lucrative career out of two interrelated talents: an uncanny ability to distinguish truth from falsehood and a bone-deep understanding of the variety and uses of pain. Acting on behalf of wealthy and ruthless clients, he tortures people for money, extracting whatever information those clients require. At the same time, Geiger maintains a strict personal code, refusing to ply his peculiar trade on children or on those too old or infirm to withstand the rigors of interrogation. [Read the full article...]

Twisted Business - ‘The Inquisitor,’ by Mark Allen Smith, and More

The New York Times Book Review – April 20, 2012 (Excerpt)

The protagonist of Mark Allen Smith’s weird but transfixing first novel, THE INQUISITOR (Holt, $27), takes great pride in his work. He does his research, attends to details, keeps scrupulous records and, all things considered, gives honest value for his services. The chosen name of this consummate professional is Geiger, and the awkward thing is, he’s in the torture business.

Geiger, who has an uncanny gift for separating truth from lies, deals in “information retrieval” for an assortment of corporate clients and shady individuals, but he has little use for electroshock or waterboarding or any of the extreme methods employed by other practitioners of his grim trade. His peculiar specialty is psychological torture — the whispers in the dark, the subtle threats, the promise of punishment — and he’s so good at it that his C.I.A. code name, “the Inquisitor,” elevates him to “the royalty of torture.” Not even Harry Boddicker, the nebbishy guy who serves as his business manager, knows where Geiger came from or how he acquired his skills. But there are broad hints (“Pain had made him who he was”) that he knew violence as a boy, which may explain why he refuses to interrogate children. [Read the full article...]

THE LONDONDERRY AIR

Testament of an Ulster Gunman
A Novel by Garrad Gawler 

It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.

With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.

The Londonderry Air is available at Amazon.Com, Amazon Kindle (US), Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Kindle (UK), Barnes & Noble, smashwords.com, and any other good bookstore.

For more information on Garrad Gawler and to read an excerpt of “The Londonderry Air,” please see the author’s section on this website.

An aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father—and preserve the Catholic faith from Cromwell’s ruthless terror. The year is 1537. . .

Joanna Stafford, a Dominican nun, learns that her favorite cousin has been condemned by Henry VIII to be burned at the stake. Defying the sacred rule of enclosure, Joanna leaves the priory to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with the king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, is sent to the Tower of London.

The ruthless Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, takes terrifying steps to force Joanna to agree to spy for him: to save her father’s life she must find an ancient relic—a crown so powerful, it may hold the ability to end the Reformation. Accompanied by two monks, Joanna returns home to Dartford Priory and searches in secret for this long-lost piece of history worn by the Saxon King Athelstan in 937 during the historic battle that first united Britain.

But Dartford Priory has become a dangerous place, and when more than one dead body is uncovered, Joanna departs with a sensitive young monk, Brother Edmund, to search elsewhere for the legendary crown. From royal castles with tapestry-filled rooms to Stonehenge to Malmesbury Abbey, the final resting place of King Athelstan, Joanna and Brother Edmund must hurry to find the crown if they want to keep Joanna’s father alive. At Malmesbury, secrets of the crown are revealed that bring to light the fates of the Black Prince, Richard the Lionhearted, and Katherine of Aragon’s first husband, Arthur. The crown’s intensity and strength are beyond the earthly realm and it must not fall into the wrong hands.

With Cromwell’s troops threatening to shutter her priory, bright and bold Joanna must now decide who she can trust with the secret of the crown so that she may save herself, her family, and her sacred way of life. This provocative story melds heart-stopping suspense with historical detail and brings to life the poignant dramas of women and men at a fascinating and critical moment in England’s past.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

About Nancy Bilyeau

Nancy Bilyeau is a writer and magazine editor who has worked on the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good Housekeeping.  She lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Visit her website www.nancybilyeau.com, friend her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

Editorial Reviews

“Bilyeau weaves her breathtaking story though a string of events to a pleasing conclusion while giving the reader a more thorough understanding of a complicated bit of history. Historical fiction as it should be.” – Florida Times-Union

“Bilyeau deftly weaves extensive historical research throughout, but the real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal.” – O, The Oprah Magazine

“The right sort of action to lure fans of historical fiction: righteous nuns, evil bishops, real-world figures and a potential burning at the stake.” – Time Out New York

Tudor England beckons debut author

The Chicago Tribune Book Review – March 22, 2012 (Excerpt)

Like many journalists, Nancy Bilyeau dreamed of writing a novel. She even managed to eke out a few chapters, melding her two great loves of Tudor history and mystery thrillers.

But whenever she would make a little headway, the real world — her demanding job as a magazine editor, a husband and two kids — had a way of intervening. Bilyeau was afraid that “author” was one aspiration that would always remain a bit beyond her reach.

But in 2008 — with the housing market, the banks and her own New York media world all teetering around her — she found her inspiration and momentum.

“I was working at the Time Inc. building in midtown Manhattan, and Lehman Brothers had just gone under, and the sight of all these people walking down the street carrying boxes of their belongings is an image I will never forget,” she said. “I had been working on this chapter where my protagonist felt the world shift below her feet. I dealt with fears of disintegration by writing about another dissolution — only one that happened 500 years earlier.”

Then the deputy editor of InStyle magazine, Bilyeau began getting up at 5 a.m. every day to write. That was the only way she could propel herself to tell the story of “The Crown” (Touchstone) about an aristocratic young nun who must find a legendary crown to save her father and preserve her Catholic faith from Thomas Cromwell’s reign of terror. [Read the full article...]

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QUEEN OF MISFORTUNE
A Lady Jane Grey Novel by Peter Carroll

A Love Story of Shakespearean Dimension!

Queen Of Misfortune is the fictional story of Lady Jane Grey as told by her beloved tutor, John Aylmer. At the time of her execution a stranger is recorded to have assisted her when, blind folded, she lost her way upon the scaffold. Was it the same strange who was also recorded to have visited her when she was imprisoned in the Tower? Little is known of this unfortunate girl who was beheaded for treason in the 16^th Century. She was only 16. She is omitted from the list of monarchs but was actually queen for nine days. Author Peter Carroll, in his novel, follows John Aylmer’s close relationship with Jane as her tutor and later, as she grows up, her lover. [More...]

Available at Amazon.Com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and any other good bookstore.