Poisoned Fiction Review

A Ghost Story

2008-07-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

The CrossRoad by Chris Grabenstein
ZACK, HIS DAD, and new stepmother have just moved back to his father’s hometown, not knowing that their new house has a dark history. Fifty years ago, a crazed killer caused an accident at the nearby crossroads that took 40 innocent lives. He died when his car hit a tree in a fiery crash, and his malevolent spirit has inhabited the tree ever since. During a huge storm, lightning hits the tree, releasing the spirit, who decides his evil spree isn’t over . . . and Zack is directly in his sights.

Award-winning thriller author Chris Grabenstein fills his first book for younger readers with the same humorous and spine-tingling storytelling that has made him a fast favorite with adults. Chris is signing at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore on Thursday, August 21 at 7 pm. He will be speaking and will sign Crossroads and his new mystery Hell Hole the 4th case for John Ceepak of the Jersey Shore series.

You can read the first 2 chapters here

Hear Poisoned Pen Press Authors Internet Voices Radio

2008-07-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight begins a run of Poisoned Pen Press authors on Vicki Delany's Radio program, Internet Voices Radio. Beverle Graves Myers is on tonight, so please listen in if you get a chance. The show can be heard at www.internetvoicesradio.com . It starts at 8:35 and goes until 9:05.
Vicki Delany is the author of In the Shadow of the Glacier
Trouble is brewing in the small, bucolic mountain town of Trafalgar, British Columbia. An American who came to Trafalgar as a Vietnam War draft dodger has left land and money to the town but there’s a catch: the money must be used to build a garden to honor draft dodgers. This bequest has torn the close-knit, peaceful town apart. Then the body of a leading opponent is found in an alley, dead from a single blow to the head.

Constable Molly Smith is assigned to assist veteran Detective Sergeant John Winters in the investigation. But Winters doesn’t want the help of the enthusiastic rookie, and suspects that he’s been assigned Smith for political reasons – her mother, a life-long activist, is the leader of the group arguing for the park.

Egged on by a muck-raking TV personality, outside agitators from both sides are soon streaming into Trafalgar, while Smith and Winters search through small-town secrets for a killer.

Beverle Graves Myers is the author of The Iron Tongue of Midnight

In September 1740, singer Tito Amato receives a curious invitation. The German composer Karl Johann Weber is rehearsing a new opera at an isolated villa on the Venetian mainland. Would Tito accept the lead role? Puzzled by the air of secrecy that enshrouds the production, but attracted by a generous fee, Tito agrees. Artist Gussie Rumbolt, Tito's friend and brother-in-law, has also been summoned to paint scenes of the estate.

The two men find the countryside awash with the golden hues of autumn, but the bucolic mood turns menacing when a notorious figure from Tito's past shows up at the villa. That night, at the stroke of twelve, a soprano stumbles over a stranger who has been beaten to death with a pendulum ripped from the long-case clock.

With the local constable away on a boar hunt, the midnight murderer continues to strike with impunity, raising terror in the villa to a fevered crescendo. Ever faithful to the ideals of truth and justice, Tito pursues his own quest for answers--a quest that leads him into the painful secrets of his heart and beyond.

All the interviews are available in the archives for listening and downloading.

From Patrick

2008-07-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Victor Gischler. Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse
"That damn Gischler has really outdone himself this time. How can you not read a book with this title? Fellow admirers of Cormac McCarthy's The Road will get a decidedly lighter take on the inevitable ruin that we've created in this hilarious satire of post-apocalyptic life. Join Mortimer Tate as he emerges from nine years of self-imposed exile in a remote Tennessee cave to discover that various global catastrophes have all but wiped out civilization. The local survivors hang out at Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go strip club, where the well-endowed dancers are protected by heavily armed bouncers. Irresistible fun and who knows, this may be more accurate than we realize."
You can read more here. or you can Read an Except Here.

Julie Kramer and Tana French

2008-07-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

Inside the desperate world of TV ratings, an investigative reporter discovers that a serial killer is targeting women named Susan and killing one on the same day each year.

Television reporter Riley Spartz is recovering from a heart-breaking, headline-making catastrophe of her own when a longtime police source drops two old homicide files in her lap in the back of a dark movie theater. Both cold cases involve women named Susan strangled on the same day, one year apart. Last seen alive in one of Minneapolis's poorest neighborhoods, their bodies are each dumped in one of the city's wealthiest areas. Riley senses a pattern between those murders and others pulled from a computer database of old death records. Now the deadly anniversary is approaching.

But not just lives are at stake—so are careers.

November is television sweeps month, and every rating point counts. Riley must go up against a news director who cares more about dead dogs than dead women, a politician who fears negative stories about serial killers will hurt the city's convention business, and the very real possibility that her source knows more about the murders than he is letting on.

When Riley suspects the killer has moved personal items from one victim to the next as part of an elaborate ritual, she stages a bold on-air stunt to draw him out and uncovers a motive that will leave readers breathless.
Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer

The Likeness by Tana French. The Likeness is Tana's second book She won an Edgar for In the Woods.(The first in the Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox series)

Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She's transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O'Neill, but she's too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin. The dead girl's ID says her name is Lexie Madison - the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective - and she looks exactly like Cassie.

With no leads, no suspects, and no clue to Lexie's real identity, Cassie's old undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime. They can say that the stab wound wasn't fatal and send Cassie undercover in her place to find out information that the police never would and to tempt the killer out of hiding. At first Cassie thinks the idea is crazy, but she is seduced by the prospect of working on a murder investigation again and by the idea of assuming the victim's identity as a graduate student with a cozy group of friends.

As she is drawn into Lexie's world, Cassie realizes that the girl's secrets run deeper than anyone imagined. Her friends are becoming suspicious, Sam has discovered a generations-old feud involving the old house the students live in, and Frank is starting to suspect that Cassie's growing emotional involvement could put the whole investigation at risk. Another gripping psychological thriller featuring the headstrong protagonist we've come to love, from an author who has proven that she can deliver.
You can meet Irish author Tana French at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore on August 1st at 7 pm where she will speak and sign.
The American edition is the first this time.
Need a Reading Guide?

Need a Summer Read?

2008-07-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

Check out the thriller Rules of Deception by Christoper Reich
Dr. Jonathan Ransom, world-class mountaineer and surgeon for Doctors Without Borders, is climbing in the Swiss Alps with his beautiful wife, Emma, when a blizzard sets in. In their bid to escape the storm, Emma is killed when she falls into a hidden crevasse.
Twenty-four hours later, Jonathan receives an envelope addressed to his wife containing two baggage-claim tickets. Puzzled, he journeys to a remote railway station only to find himself in a life-and-death struggle for his wife’s possessions. In the aftermath of the assault, he discovers that his attackers --- one dead, the other mortally wounded --- were, in fact, Swiss police officers. More frightening still is evidence of an extraordinary act of betrayal that leaves Jonathan stunned.

Suddenly the subject of an international manhunt and the target of a master assassin, Jonathan is forced on the run. His only chance at survival lies in uncovering the devastating truth behind the secret his wife kept from him and in stopping the terrifying conspiracy that threatens to bring the world to the brink of annihilation. Step by step, he is drawn deeper into a world of spies, high-tech weaponry, and global terrorism --- a world where no one is whom they appear to be and where the end always justifies the means.

RULES OF DECEPTION is a brilliantly conceived, twisting tale of intrigue and deceit written by the master of the espionage thriller for the twenty-first century.

Or try City of Thieves

A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won’t talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.

Lev Beniov considers himself 'built for deprivation.' He’s small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible. A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

Garden of Last Days
One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works.

Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely.

From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus's #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog—and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

Get your signed copy of Brad Thor's Last Patriot

2008-07-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

We have the new thriller by bestselling author Brad Thor, Last Patriot signed first edition.

Publishers Weekly:
In bestseller's Thor's intriguing seventh Scot Horvath novel, Scot, a former navy SEAL who's recently quit working for Homeland Security, pursues a mystery involving a recently discovered ancient Koran. Differing from the original, this Koran suggests a secret exists that, if revealed, will change the entire nature of the warlike extremist versions of Islam. Furthermore, it has links to Thomas Jefferson and his war on Muslim pirates (think: "to the shores of Tripoli" in the Marine Corps hymn), handwritten notes in Jefferson's first-edition copy of Don Quixote and other clues hidden in Jefferson's Monticello home. First, Scot has to make up with his boss, President Jack Rutledge, who used him badly in his previous outing, The First Commandment, but once that's done, Scot finds himself in the thick of a furious battle. Fortunately, Scot's romance with girlfriend Tracy Hastings remains offstage. A stunning revelation on the last page will surprise even the most savvy thriller readers. 10-city author tour.(July)
Click Here to Read an Excerpt

We had a wonderful Afternoon Event with Rhys Bowen

2008-07-12T21:56:00.001-07:00

This afternoon Rhys Bowen was at The Poisoned Pen for a lovely event where she signed Royal Pain her new mystery featuring penniless aristocrat Lady Georgie.
A character Jacqueline Winspear calls "a feisty new heroine to delight a legion of Anglophile readers”

Rhys recommended a debut by G.M. Malliet Death of a Cozy Writer. She said "The traditional British cozy is alive and well. Delicious. I was hooked from the first paragraph."

From deep in the heart of his eighteenth century English manor, millionaire Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk writes mystery novels and torments his four spoiled children with threats of disinheritance. Tiring of this device, the portly patriarch decides to weave a malicious twist into his well-worn plot. Gathering them all together for a family dinner, he announces his latest blow – a secret elopement with the beautiful Violet... who was once suspected of murdering her husband.

Within hours, eldest son and appointed heir Ruthven is found cleaved to death by a medieval mace. Since Ruthven is generally hated, no one seems too surprised or upset – least of all his cold-blooded wife Lillian. When Detective Chief Inspector St. Just is brought in to investigate, he meets with a deadly calm that goes beyond the usual English reserve. And soon Sir Adrian himself is found slumped over his writing desk – an ornate knife thrust into his heart. Trapped amid leering gargoyles and stone walls, every member of the family is a likely suspect. Using a little Cornish brusqueness and brawn, can St. Just find the killer before the next-in-line to the family fortune ends up dead?

We have Captian America signed by David Morrell

2008-07-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

New York Times best-selling author and creator of Rambo David Morrell has written the stand-alone comic series that follows Captain America’s involvement with a war-tired U.S. marine unit in Afghanistan.

"As the creator of Rambo, Morrell is known for heroes who've been trained to handle action and danger. He is a master of weaving action into a thought-provoking plot with more than a few twists, and I am eager to see the thrills he has in store for the newest installments of Captain America," said Joe Quesada, Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics.

"I want the characters to feel real," says David Morrell. "In particular I want the reader to believe in Captain America. Also, I want to explore the major theme of what it means to be a hero in this troubled modern world. I hope the story is deeply moving as well as exciting."
Captain America the Chosen by David Morrell

Here is a great article on Rambo Creator Reinvents Captian America

Stella is back! Dont miss her new book, Illegal Action

2008-07-09T17:50:00.001-07:00

Dame Stella Rimington was formerly Director General of the Security Service (MI5), the first woman to take the post and the first person to be publicly named while in office.

"When Dame Judi Dench plays super-cool spy chief "M" in the James Bond movies, she's tough as nails and has a woman's intuition.

When Dame Stella Rimington took over Britain's super-secret MI5 security service, she was the first woman ever to hold the top spy post -- and a tough, cool player herself. Dench's model, we're told, for "M."

Now Stella Rimington is out of the spy game, but still very much in the world, writing thrillers that catch the new tang of Russian oligarchs and post-Cold War skullduggery."

Meet Dame Stella Rimington Friday, July 18 at 7 pm at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore where she will talk and sign her new book Illegal Action the new installment in Stella Rimington’s series of “frighteningly authentic” espionage thrillers (Chicago Tribune) featuring the fiercely intelligent, ambitious MI5 officer Liz Carlyle.

Liz has been transferred to counter-espionage—the hub of MI5 operations during the Cold War, which has been scaled back as anti-terrorism has gained priority. But there’s plenty for her to do: there are more spies operating in London in the twenty-first century than there were during the height of East-West hostilities. Even the Russians still have a large contingent, although now they spy on the international financial community and on the wealthy ex-pat oligarchs who make England their domain.

In her new assignment, Liz quickly uncovers a plot to silence one of these Russians: Nikita Brunovsky, an increasingly vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin. The Foreign Office is adamant about forestalling a crime that could become a full-blown international incident, but there’s not a single clue as to how the assassination will be carried out—and Liz is solely responsible for averting disaster. So she goes undercover, attaching herself to Brunovsky’s retinue: racing against the clock to determine who betrayed him and suddenly facing a wholly unexpected second task—unmasking a Russian operative working undercover alongside her.
Read a Lovely Article Here

A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen

2008-07-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

Award-winning author Bowen returns with the second in her funny series of books about a minor royal in 1930s England, A Royal Pain. Part zany comedy, part social commentary on the British class system, and part bloody good mystery!Another hilarious mystery featuring penniless aristocrat Lady Georgie, “a feisty new heroine to delight a legion of Anglophile readers” (Jacqueline Winspear).

The Queen of England has concocted a plan in which Georgie is to entertain a Bavarian princess— and conveniently place her in the playboy Prince’s path, in the hopes that he might finally marry.But queens never take money into account. Georgie has very little, which is why she moonlights as a maid-in-disguise. She must draw up plans: clean house to make it look like a palace; have Granddad and her neighbor pretend to be the domestic staff; un-teach Princess Hanni the English she’s culled from American gangster movies; cure said Princess of her embarrassing shoplifting habit; and keep an eye on her at parties. Then there’s the worrying matter of the body in the bookshop and Hanni’s unwitting involvement with the Communist Party. It’s enough to drive a girl crazy...

Meet the author Saturday, July 12 at 5pm. Show your royal flair by coming dressed in your best hat (we are having a contest!) and enjoy a glass of cold champagne and some strawberries. It will be A Royal Affair.

"This smashing new series set in 1930s London stars smart and spunky Lady Georgiana, who is thirty-fourth in line to the throne. She has a lot on her plate but very little in her cupboards. In fact she's flat broke. So when the queen asks her to entertain a visiting German princess, she's in a real pickle. The queen doesn't know she has no servants and is moonlighting as a maid. And the princess is not going to be easy: she's learned her English from American gangster movies, she shoplifts and she's throwing herself at Darcy O'Mara, the love of Georgie's life. And what about the body in the communist bookshop. Will Georgie be singlehandedly responsible for starting WWII?"

Summer Adventures

2008-07-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

Raven Rise (Pendragon Series #9) by D. J. MacHale
This is where it begins. The showdown for Halla. At stake is nothing less than all that ever was and all that will be.
There's only one thing missing--Bobby Pendragon.
While Bobby remains trapped on Ibara, the battle moves to his home territory: Second Earth. Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde are left on their own to defend Second Earth against the forces of Saint Dane. They must face off against a charismatic cult leader who has risen to power by revealing a shattering truth to the people of Earth: They are not alone.
The Convergence has broken down the walls. The territories are on a collision course. The final phase of Saint Dane's quest to rule Halla is under way.
And Bobby Pendragon is nowhere to be found.

Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer
Artemis's mother has contracted a deadly disease -- and the only cure lies in the brain fluid of African lemurs. Unfortunately, Artemis himself was responsible for making the lemurs extinct five years ago. Now he must enlist the aid of his fairy friends to travel back in time and save them. Not only that, but he must face his deadliest foe yet...his younger self.

The Fire Eternal by Chris D'Lacey
Five years have passed since David Rain, now a bestselling author, disappeared mysteriously in the Artic. Slowly the ice is changing; bears are starving; dragons are rising; and the spirit Gaia, goddess of the Earth, is restless, wanting to act upon these changes. But all living things may suffer if she does. As the weather grows wilder and the ice caps melt, all eyes turn from the north to David's daughter, Alexa. She is the key to stopping it. . . . Can one girl save the world from the forces of evil before she disappears like her father?

IMPERIAL CHINA

2008-07-05T20:53:00.001-07:00

Cotterell, Arthur. Imperial Capitals of China (Overlook $28). As early as the 3rd Century, Chinese emperors tried to engage the Immortals with cosmologically pleasing urban planning, their capitals displaying religious preoccupations (ley lines) and building designs. The British scholar's resulting dynastic history of the Celestial Empire, "the oldest continuous civilization in existence today," is filled with charming illustrations and site maps, wonderful for browsing.

Menzies, Gavin. 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance (Morrow $27). Menzies reexamines history with all the excitement of an adventure novel. Read with 1421: The Year China Discovered America ($16).

Pan, Philip P. Out of Mao's Shadow (Simon Schuster $28). "The struggle for the soul of a New China." Will the Party leaders remain autocrats?

See, Lisa. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Peony in Love ($14 each). Two novels drawing on stories of women in Imperial China and dealing with such issues as secret language, bound feet, arranged marriages, anorexia, and definitions of family and friendship.

Van Gulik, Robert. Chinese Maze Murder ($13) and many other titles in the remarkable Judge Dee series set in the Tang Dynasty but written in an elegant 18th century narrative structure. And good mysteries, besides.

Wood, Frances. China's First Emperor (St Martins $25). By unifying, or eliminating, six states (258-210 BC), he created imperial China. He stressed the rule of law but suppressed all opposition, burning books and burying scholars alive. His military achievements are reflected in the astonishing terracotta soldiers, the army that guards his tomb (still unopened). His Great Wall still fascinates the world. When he died, his body was carted about on ice as it was rightly feared chaos would follow.

THE TUDORS

2008-07-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

Gardner, Laurien. Plain Jane ($14 reissue). A novel of Lady Jane Seymour, third wife to Henry VIII, mother of his son, sister to ambitious brothers, and died too young.

Kyle, Barbara. Queen's Lady ($15). In 1527, Honor Larke, choosing to serve Catherine of Aragon rather than to marry, agrees to carry letters to the queen's allies and thus tangles with a reckless gentleman….

Lofts, Norah. The Concubine ($15 reissue). Norah Lofts brings to life the danger, romance, and intrigue of Anne Boleyn's era.

Ronald, Susan. Pirate Queen ($16). A look at Elizabeth I and building empire as she worked her network of daring merchants, brazen adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council to anchor her throne.

Don't Miss These Magical Titles

2008-07-02T10:24:00.001-07:00

Just because you're grown up doesn't mean your life can't be filled with fantasy and magic. Remember the first time you traveled to Narnia? Rediscover the joy of fantasy with these June 2008 tiles:

The Secrets of Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Filled with sultry orchard nights that are sure to have readers clamoring for more, this sequel to the bestselling "Peaches" reunites three Georgia girls who had spent one magical summer together.

How to Be Popular by Meg Cabot

From the national bestselling author of the Princess Diaries series. Steph Landry may just be the most unpopular girl in her high school until she discovers the book that will change her life--"How to Be Popular." It turns out the book works--until she breaks the book's cardinal rule of keeping old friends.

Dingo by Charles de Lint
High school senior Miguelas life is turned upside down when he meets new girl Lainey, whose family has just moved from Australia. With her tumbled red-gold hair, her instant understanding of who he is, and her unusual dogaa real Australian dingoasheas unforgettable. And, as he quickly learns, she is on the run from an ancient bargain made by her ancestors. Thereas no question that Miguel will do whatever he can to help herabut what price will each of them have to pay? "Dingo" is quintessential Charles de Lint, set close to his beloved, invented city of Newfordaa mixture of darkness and hope, humor and mystery, and the friendship within love.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
In a world unseen by mortals, the forces of Summer and Winter are at war. Two Faery Courts have been seeking the Summer Queen for more than nine centuries--one to restore the power of Summer and the other to banish it--in this gritty, modern fairy tale. Marrcontinues her tales of Faery in a dark, ravishing story of temptation and consequences, and of heroism when least expected. The Ink Exchange.

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
What is Un Lun Dun?
It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of strange delights where all the lost and broken things of London end up . . . and some of its lost and broken people, too-including Brokkenbroll, boss of the broken umbrellas; Obaday Fing, a tailor whose head is an enormous pin-cushion, and an empty milk carton called Curdle. Un Lun Dun is a place where words are alive, a jungle lurks behind the door of an ordinary house, carnivorous giraffes stalk the streets, and a dark cloud dreams of burning the world. It is a city awaiting its hero, whose coming was prophesied long ago, set down for all time in the pages of a talking book.
When twelve-year-old Zanna and her friend Deeba find a secret entrance leading out of London and into this strange city, it seems that the ancient prophecy is coming true at last. But then things begin to go shockingly wrong.
Time is running out as war between the Olympians and the evil Titan lord Kronos draws

Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar
Complex family and social conflicts clutter the pages of this scattershot romp from World Fantasy Award–winner Millar (The Good Fairies of New York). Kalix MacRinnalch, a poorly socialized, laudanum-addicted teenage werewolf, has violently assaulted her father, thereby adding outcast to her list of defining traits. Suddenly and inexplicably supported by two preternaturally patient new friends, Daniel and Moonglow, the young werewolf skulks around London and struggles with anxiety and eating disorders while scores of subplots merrily explode around her. As Kalix's relatives bicker and backstab to establish a new leader, a cast of thousands shoehorns its way into the narrative, stealing story space for a sorcerous fashion designer with spy problems, werewolf twins with a terrible punk band that can't get a gig and a romantically mercenary transvestite. Overly reliant on luck and coincidence and populated by unsympathetic characters with unconvincing motives, Millar's urban fantasy epic swiftly dissolves into a tragedy of contrived errors.
Check out the website

The Battle of the Labyrinth The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan, Camp Half-Blood grows more vulnerable as Kronos's army prepares to invade. To stop them, Percy and his demigod friends set out on a quest through the Labyrinth.

Order the New by Stephen J. Cannell

2008-07-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

At First Sight: A Novel of Obsession by Stephen J. Cannell available 7/8/08, Stephen is signing The Poisoned Pen Bookstore on 7/15/08 at 7 pm.

Meet Chick Best--a middle-aged, self-absorbed, disaffected, California dot-com millionaire. Other than his house and high-priced foreign cars, Chick's most expensive possession is his trophy wife, Evelyn. Evelyn is good at spending Chick's money, money that has pretty much run out. Another problem is his drug-addled sixteen-year-old daughter, Melissa. Though concerned about his life and family, Chick has resigned himself to a miserable state of acceptance. That is, until he, Evelyn and Melissa take a Christmas vacation in Maui. With this, Chick's life changes...

Chick experiences unrequited love at first sight when he observes Paige Ellis emerging from the hotel swimming pool. His obsession, exceeded only by his need to possess her, isn't diminished when he learns that she is happily married. Instead he befriends Paige and her near-perfect husband, Chandler. A short time later, back from Hawaii, Chick's obsession compels him to drive to Paige's house where he runs down and kills Chandler in a drugstore parking lot. But this is just the beginning of Chick's nightmare as his life spirals homicidally out of control resulting in the destruction of everything he holds dear. Will Paige learn the truth about Chick before it's too late?
Read more at Stephen's site.

Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole Novel by Robert Crais

2008-06-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Elvis Cole is Back--In a Desperate Fight to Clear his Name... And we have them signed!
It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down.
Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero.
But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder -- did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives?
Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death -- a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be.
Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing.

From Patrick

2008-06-29T22:33:00.000-07:00

This week's pick from Patrick is Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski. (St Martins $14). "What would you do if you showed up for a special Saturday meeting at the office only to learn that the company you were working for was really a secret intelligence agency, that it was being dissolved, and that the entire staff, including yourself, was being exterminated? That's the fate that befalls seven staff members of a Philadelphia financial company. All exits to the high-rise office have been rigged with deadly sarin gas, all communication lines cut, cell phone signals dead. The panicked bloodbath that follows as they all scramble for survival is pure mayhem and Swierczynski pulls out all the stops. And don't miss the noir classic, The Wheelman ($13), a great summer read."
Click Here to Read More About Duane.

Place your orders for the New Robicheaux

2008-06-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
Much beloved Louisiana lawman Dave Robicheaux is back again, this time in the brand new setting of the rugged Montana mountains.

CHAPTER 1

Clete Purcel had heard of people who sleep without dreaming, but either because of the era and neighborhood in which he had grown up, or the later experiences that had come to define his life, he could not think of sleep as anything other than an uncontrolled descent into a basement where the gargoyles turned somersaults like circus midgets.

Sometimes he dreamed of his father, the milkman who rose at three-fifteen a.m. and rumbled off to work in a truck that clinked with bottles and trailed a line of melting ice out the back doors. When his father reentered the house off magazine at midday, he occasionally carried a sack of Popsicles for clete and his two sisters. on other days, his face was already oily and distorted with early-morning booze, his victimhood and childlike cruelty searching for release on the most vulnerable members of his home.

Sometimes in his dreams clete saw a straw hooch with a mamasan in the doorway suddenly engulfed in an arc of liquid flame sprayed from a Zippo-track. He saw a seventeen-year-old door gunner go apeshit on a wedding party in a free-fire zone, the brass cartridges jacking from an m60 suspended from a bungee cord. He saw a navy corpsman with rubber spiders on his steel pot try to stuff the entrails of a marine back inside his abdomen with his bare hand. He saw himself inside a battalion aid station, his neck beaded with dirt rings, his body dehydrated from blood expander, his flak jacket glued to the wound in his chest.

He saw the city of New Orleans sink beneath the waves, just as Atlantis had. Except in the dream, New Orleans and the China Sea and perhaps a place in the Mideast, where he had never been, melded together and created images that were nonsensical. Blood washed backward off a sandy cusp of beach into a turquoise ocean. Soldiers who looked like people Clete had once known struggled silently uphill into machine guns that made no sound.

When he woke, he felt that his own life had been spent in the service of enterprises that today contained no learning value for anyone and would be replicated over and over again, regardless of the cost. A psychiatrist once told him he suffered from agitated depression and psychoneurotic anxiety. Clete asked the psychiatrist where he had been for the last fifty years.

His dreams clung to his skin like cobweb and followed him into the day. If he drank, his dreams went to a place where dreams go and waited two or three nights before they bloomed again, like specters beckoning from the edge of a dark wood. But on this particular morning Clete was determined to leave his past in the past and live in the sunlight from dawn until nightfall and then sleep the sleep of the dead.

It was cold when he unzipped his sleeping bag and crawled out of his polyethylene tent by a creek in western Montana. His restored maroon Caddy convertible with the starched-white top was parked in the trees, speckled with frost. In the distance the sun was just striking the fresh snow that had fallen on the mountain peaks during the night. The spring runoff had ended, and the stream by which he had made his camp was wide and dark and devoid of whitewater and running smoothly over gray boulders that had begun to form shadows on the pebble bed. He could hear the easy sweep of wind in the pine and fir trees, the muted clattering of rocks in the stream's current. For a moment he thought he heard a motorized vehicle grinding down the dirt road, but he paid no attention to it.

He made a ring of rocks and placed twigs and pinecones inside it and started a fire that flared and twisted in the wind like a yellow handkerchief and blew sparks and smoke across a long riffle undulating down the middle of the streambed.

The place where he was cooking his breakfast in an iron skillet set on top of hot rocks was the perfect site for a camp and the perfect place to begin wading upstream through canyon country, false-casting a dry fly over his head, watching it float delicately toward him on the riffle. He had not chosen this place but had found it by accident, turning onto the dirt road after he had found a snow gate locked across the asphalt two-lane. The countryside was grand, the cliffs sheer, the tops of the buttes covered with ponderosa pine, the slopes already blooming with wildflowers. Along the edges of the stream, there were no prints in the soft gravel except those of deer and elk. The air smelled of the woods and wet fern and cold stone and humus that stayed in shade twenty-four hours and the iridescent spray drifting off the boulders in the stream. The air smelled as though it had never been stained by the chemical agencies of the industrial era. It smelled as the earth probably had on the first day of creation, Clete thought.

He pulled his hip waders out of the Caddy and put them on by the side of the stream, snapping the rubber straps tight on his belt, looping a net and a canvas creel around his neck. He waded deep into the water, down a ledge, his feet slipping on moss-covered surfaces, until the drop-off sent the water over the edge of his waders. He whipped a dry fly over his head twice, then three times, the line forming a figure eight, whistling with a dull wet sound past his ear. With the fourth cast, he stiffened his wrist and let the fly float gently down on the riffle.

That was when he heard the sound of the truck again, mounting the grade just beyond a cut between two pine-covered hills.

But he kept his eyes on the fly floating down the riffle toward him. He saw an elongated shape break from behind a boulder, rising quickly into the light, the dark green dorsal hump roiling the surface. There was a flick of water, like a tiny splash of quicksilver, then the rainbow took the fly and went straight down into the shadows with it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Clete saw a bright red pickup with an extended cab and a diesel-powered engine crunch down the slope onto a bed of white rocks. Once stopped, the driver did not cut his engine, nor did he get out of the vehicle. Inside the canyon walls, the engine clattered like a vibrating junkyard...

From Wendy

2008-06-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Until It's Over by Nicci French

Looking for a fast paced, interesting mystery - with a surprising ending? Nicci French's British Novel, Until It's Over, is just that. Astrid Bell is a bicycle messenger who keeps ending up around dead bodies. Astrid shares a home with seven other people - some friends, some just acquaintances. The dynamics of this group plays an important part in the mystery. The central question is why are three women murdered and why is Astrid the last person to see them alive? The first two thirds are of the book are written in Astrid's voice while the last third is written in the voice of the killer - but you don't know who that is. I really enjoyed the setting and the characters in this book - I also loved the last third of the book where I really didn't know who the killer was. The description of the murders wasn't over the top so there wasn't a lot of blood (a good thing for me) and I felt like I was riding the roller coaster of Astrid's life a long with her. The book reads quickly and is a great summer escape!

Jeffery Deaver's Broken Window

2008-06-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Are you looking for a spooky read? Try Jeffery Deaver's Broken Window the latest Lincoln Rhyme novel and enter the world of identity fraud where a company with files on over four hundred million people can predict what a subject will do before the subject himself knows.

To read an interview click Here

Jeffery was also at Sunrise Mountain Library in Peoria. Lesa Holstine has posted a lovely account of the afternoon.

Or if you are looking for lighter fair we just got copies of Bones in the Belfry by Suzette A Hill. ($42UK $25US)
When Francis Oughterard, the contented vicar of Molehill, accidentally strangles a lady parishioner, a sleazy art dealer gives him an alibi. Of course he is called on to pay the price by storing stolen paintings in the church belfry. The intrigue mounts as hapless F.O. bumbles through confrontations. Maurice and Bouncer each contribute their version of events in this quirky read.

Or visit nineteenth-century Oxford inThe Ingenious Edgar Jones by Elizabeth Garner ($17). "A delightful read. Almost an elongated fairy tale. It could almost be prefaced by ‘Once upon a time, a long time ago…..’ The author gives us unusually gifted Edgar and his parents living in Oxford. His father is a strict and god fearing man trying to do his best for his son but not succeeding. Edgar, young, impulsive, and misunderstood gets embroiled with the creative use of decorative iron and other inventions. The Oxford University professor who uses his talents for his own ends also ultimately fails Edgar. Edgar is unfailingly resilient however much the odds are stacked against him. The ending is quirky and made me smile. Possibly leaving room for a sequel?
Garner has a flowing, heavily descriptive style. It keeps you engrossed. Delightful escapism in a modern novel and one to be recommended."

Need a New Book?

2008-06-25T10:43:00.001-07:00

Wow, We just got some great books in, signed first editions...
Carolyn Haines, Wishbones
The 8th Sarah Booth mystery. Southern gal Sarah Booth Delaney packs up her hound dog and her P.I. business and sets off for Hollywood to take a shot at stardom. No stranger to acting, she aces the screen test for a racy remake of the movie. Body Heat alongside leading man Graf Miliau. The chemistry between them is undeniable, and why not? Graf has already starred in one of Sarah’s previous affairs and is well on his way to landing a big part in the sequel.

Thrilled as Sarah is, her dream come true comes at a price. She has to leave behind her family’s ancestral home in Mississippi, her closest friends, and the possibility of settling down with her longtime love to film on location in Costa Rica. And it’s not long before rivalries flare, mysterious accidents occur, and this leading lady finds herself in some steamy tabloids without turning up in a single frame of film.

NM Kelby, Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill Is a mystery Publisher's Weekly is calling "Lyrical prose and Technicolor characters lift Kelby’s amusing, unconventional mystery set at a gated Florida beach community plagued by murder and mayhem... offers some unexpected wisdom."
Take a slasher-movie actress, a Scottish circus clown, an FBI school dropout, a blind heiress, a junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and a Buddha-quoting bluesman, add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill.

N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People, and the Atlantic Monthly. Carl Hiaasen has called her “a natural-born writer,” and Kirkus praised her “black humor that sizzles.” Sit back, put up your feet, and get ready to lose yourself in a rollicking good story.

Phillip Margolin, Executive Privilege

New York Times bestselling author Phillip Margolin is back, this time with a powerful tale of murder that snakes its way through Washington, D.C.'s halls of power, leading straight to the White House and the most powerful office on earth.

When private detective Dana Cutler is hired by an attorney with powerful political connections, the assignment seems simple enough: follow a pretty college student named Charlotte Walsh and report on where she goes and whom she sees. But then the unexpected happens. One night, Cutler follows Walsh to a secret meeting with Christopher Farrington, the president of the United States. The following morning, Walsh's dead body shows up and Cutler has to run for her life.

In Oregon, Brad Miller, a junior associate in a huge law firm is working on the appeal of a convicted serial killer. Clarence Little, now on death row, claims he was framed for the murder of a teenager who, at the time of her death, worked for the then governor, Christopher Farrington. Suddenly, a small-time private eye and a fledgling lawyer find themselves in possession of evidence that suggests that someone in the White House is a murderer. Their only problem? Staying alive long enough to prove it.

Executive Privilege, with its nonstop action, unforgettable characters, and edge-of-your-seat suspense, proves once again that Phillip Margolin—whose work has been hailed as "frighteningly plausible" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) and "twisted and brilliant" (Chicago Tribune)—belongs in the top echelon of thriller writers.

One From Wendy

2008-06-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

Church of The Dog by Kaya McLaren
I found myself wanting to highlight certain passages of Kaya McLaren's book, Church of the Dog. Don't let the title mislead you - there is a Church and there is a Dog but the book really isn't about either. The book is written in four voices. The main voice is that of Mara. Mara has just escaped a relationship and heads to a ranch in Oregon where she is "adopted" by an elderly couple.(Earl and Edith) Mara is an art teacher and is able to travel in dreams - sounds strange but in this book it works. Earl offers Mara a small cabin on the ranch and tells her to do whatever she wants with it. Mara begins her work on the cabin and Edith and Earl fall under Mara's spell. Edith finds herself doing things she never thought she would do at this stage of her life - dancing with Earl every night, making snow angels - naked, and laughing like all of the tragedy in her life is behind her. Earl also feels Mara's magic. Earl is ill and how he deals with is illness is an important part of this book. Earl and Edith have lost all of their children and desperately miss their beloved grandson, Daniel. Daniel returns to help with the ranch and he, too, is enchanted by Mara. What is Mara? A shaman? An angel? or just someone open and receptive to all of life? Daniel and Mara must each find their way - Mara knows no being passes through this life without making some impact - good or bad. Mara deals with Daniel and his messy emotions and wonders if she can make a difference. Mara and Daniel are brought together in a very unexpected way. Church of the Dog ends in a way that made me want more. I found the book to be one of those rare experiences where you really feel you know the characters and you want to know how they live the rest of their lives.

Doesn't Alaska sound nice?

2008-06-23T10:07:00.001-07:00

When it's this hot I like to take a reprieve and read Alaska.
Sue Henry, an Anthony and Macavity Award-winning author who lives and writes in Anchorage, Alaska, has a new Jessie Arnold Mystery Degrees of Separation.

Champion musher Jessie Arnold has been out of racing for a number of years, ever since she incurred a devastating knee injury. Now she's ready to get back into shape for this year's Iditarod. While taking her team on a practice run down a local trail she takes a snowy bump that's never been there before. It turns out to be a snow-shrouded body.

Now, Jessie and her boyfriend, Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen, are back chasing criminals. And the hunt is on for the killer of a supposed earthquake victim-whose death turns out to actually be a murder.

Or pick up a Dana Stabenow paperback A Deeper Sleep: A Kate Shugak Novel, and always good.

You are Invited!

2008-06-22T21:43:00.001-07:00

You are invited to Brent Ghelfi's national book launch for Volk's Shadow.
Wednesday July 2 from 6:30 pm (talk at 7:00)

This is a Preview Party for Phoenix author, Ghelfi and takes place in a private home in Paradise Valley: 5525 N. Camelback Canyon Drive, Phoenix

The party is free and open to all! So please come and join the party in celibration of this wonderful author.

We will set it up as usual (with a sound system) and take plenty of copies of Volk's Shadow (Holt $25) to sell.

If you are looking for delightful evening entertainment this hot summer, here is one opportunity.
Volk's Game ($14 pbk or $20 hardcover) was our top selling debut of 2007.

Did you miss An Incomplete Revenge?

2008-06-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Jackie was back and she signed more first editions!

Beloved author, Jaqueline Winspear hosted an event last wednesday with Meg Gardiner, an author she made time to champion. While she was here, she signed the latest Maisie Dobbs Novel, An Incomplete Revenge. So if you didn't get one before we sold out, here is your chance.

From Publishers Weekly
In Edgar-finalist Winspear's enjoyable fifth installment in her Maisie Dobbs series (after 2006's Messenger of Truth), the psychologist/investigator digs deep into a village's long-buried secrets. Maisie's benefactor, tycoon James Compton, wants to buy an estate in the bucolic hamlet of Heronsdene, but is wary after a string of mysterious fires. Maisie soon proves Compton's suspicions correct when she encounters the shady current landowner and a vaguely menacing band of Gypsies in town for the seasonal harvest. The locals are also curiously tight-lipped about Heronsdene's wartime tragedy, when a zeppelin raid wiped out a family. Teasing out Heronsdene's secrets will take all the intrepid former nurse's psychological skills and test her ability to navigate between the Gypsy and gorja (non-Gypsy) worlds. Winspear vividly evokes England between the wars, when the old order crumbled and new horizons beckoned working women like her appealing heroine. Even if a few of the plot twists prove predictable, this jaunt back to a bygone era is as satisfying as a spin in Maisie's MG.

And who is this author Jackie is hooting about?
Stephen King Calls Meg "the next suspense superstar".

From Publishers Weekly on Dirty Secrets Club
An intelligent and stubborn heroine who's just emotionally vulnerable enough to be empathetic lifts this novel from Gardiner (China Lake), a Californian now living in London making her U.S. debut. Dr. Jo Beckett, a forensic psychiatrist (or deadshrinker), performs psychological autopsies to uncover the truths behind grisly crimes. Recruited to consult on the possible suicide of prosecutor Callie Harding, who drove her BMW off a San Francisco bridge and struck an airport minivan on the road below, Jo discovers this accident is the latest in a string of high profile murder-suicides. As Jo and the SFPD's Lt. Amy Tang dig deeper, they uncover the Dirty Secrets Club, a shadowy group of citizens whose members include a noted fashion designer and a football star, both of whom committed very public suicides. Still coming to terms with her doctor husband's recent death, Jo struggles to pinpoint the club's origins, realizing that a former member may be systematically driving the remaining members to their deaths. Gardiner should win new fans on this side of the Atlantic with this adrenaline-filled thriller.