Join us for Venetian Tea, masks, give-a-ways, prosecco and biscotti!

*Feel free to let your inner Venetian out with attire and masks!

From Laurie:

Yes, my beloved Poisoned Pen Books in Scottsdale is sneaking in a special pre-launch launch party on the Saturday, a whole 3 days early.  And yes, you can get a copy of the hardback that very day, and have me deface it with my signature before you snatch it back to spend the rest of the weekend reading it on the Lido—or rather, by the pool at Scottsdale’s delightfully retro Valley Ho.

I’m not going to BoucherCon this year, so unless you’re going to Left Coast, you may not catch me at all [sad face]. But to tempt you to Scottsdale, we’re making this a biggish do. The Valley Ho offers us a king or double-queen room for just $99 a night (or $119 pool view).  We’ll either do a dinner get-together, or maybe Sunday brunch, more to come when we’ve had a chance to gauge interest.  To get the Ho’s special price for this, phone them at 866-987-2052 and let them know it’s the Poisoned Pen rate.

<<Click here to order a signed copy>>

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes untangle the slippery threads of insanity and deadly secrets as they investigate a disappearance in the New York Times bestselling series that Lee Child called “the most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.”

A June summer’s evening, on the Sussex Downs, in 1925. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are strolling across their orchard when the telephone rings: an old friend’s beloved aunt has failed to return following a supervised outing from Bedlam. After the previous few weeks”“with a bloody murder, a terrible loss, and startling revelations about Holmes”“Russell is feeling a bit unbalanced herself. The last thing she wants is to deal with the mad, and yet, she can’t say no.

The Lady Vivian Beaconsfield has spent most of her adult life in one asylum after another, yet she seemed to be improving”“or at least, finding a point of balance in her madness. So why did she disappear? Did she take the family’s jewels with her, or did someone else? The Bedlam nurse, perhaps?

The trail leads Russell and Holmes through a lunatic asylum’s stony halls to the warm Venice lagoon, where ethereal beauty is jarred by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, where the gilded Lido set may be tempting a madwoman, and where Cole Porter sits at a piano, playing with ideas…