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Joe Pan recently appeared at The Poisoned Pen to discuss his debut novel, Florida Palms. There are signed copies available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4mcIGWs

Thanks to Oline Cogdill for sharing her review of Florida Palms as it appeared in the South Florida SunSentinel.

Book review: ‘Florida Palms’ shows a fascinating part of the Sunshine State

‘Florida Palms’ by Joe Pan; Simon & Schuster; 480 pages; $29.99

Award-winning poet Joe Pan confidently delivers an uncompromising look at the criminal underworld of Central Florida in his fiction debut “Florida Palms.”

With the Space Coast as the backdrop, “Florida Palms” depicts a setting that would not draw tourists or residents. But even as Pan illustrates a gritty area, he also shows a fascinating part of the Sunshine State shaped by the aerospace industry that elevated the region and now, because of economics, is on the downslide.

“Florida Palms” is devoid of heroes, but works as a coming-of-age tale about two slackers dealing with a lack of jobs, ambition and their own limitations.

Newly graduated from high school, Eddy and Cueball don’t see much of a future. That’s actually all right, in a way. They’d much rather spend their time fishing off the Melbourne Causeway, smoking weed, getting drunk or watching TV. Their goals are less than minimal. The only reason they want a job is because they need cash to buy more booze or weed.

The two are offered a job by Cueball’s father, Bird, delivering furniture for his company. Bird, who was in prison for drug trafficking, seems to be operating a legitimate business. But instead, he’s just found a different way to run drugs.

Cueball and Eddy actually prove to be conscientious workers, making deliveries on time and being careful with the items. Then crime boss Seizer, for whom Bird used to work, sees the perfect cover — hide a new designer drug in the furniture being moved along the East Coast. Cueball and Eddy are unwittingly drawn into the scheme and pulled into a turf war between Seizer’s crew, which includes Bird, and a rival gang.

Pan shifts the focus from Cueball and Eddy to Bird. The teens come to understand the brutality of the business they’re being drawn into and of the men they are working with. Bird begins to take more control of the criminal enterprise as he tries to get more power. His capacity for violence has no limit as Pan unflinchingly delves into darker and darker territory. Pan’s eye for scenery works in tandem with the plot as “Florida Palms” moves from the towns of the Space Coast such as Satellite Beach, Melbourne and Cocoa, down to Miami to Georgia and environs.

Pan excels at making the reader care about Cueball and Eddy, who start out as naive, harmless slackers. It’s almost heartbreaking as they succumb to the lure of what seems to be easy money and drugs. They will need every bit of inner resolve to survive.

While other authors have used the Space Coast for individual scenes, this region of Florida remains an untapped area for mystery writers. Although a bit of trimming would have enhanced the story, “Florida Palms” ushers in a new talent.

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If you’d like to see Joe Pan’s conversation with Patrick Millikin from The Poisoned Pen, you can watch it here.

Barbara Peters recently welcomed J.T. Ellison and Megan Miranda to the Poisoned Pen. According to Peters, both books are set in the world of dark academia, and they have a lot in common. Ellison’s latest book is Last Seen. Miranda’s new book is You Belong Here, currently number 5 on the New York Times Bestseller list. You can order copies of both books through the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of Megan Miranda’s You Belong Here.

Memories fade, but on this campus, legacies are never forgotten…or forgiven. A new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again…

For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…

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Megan Mirandais the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls; The Perfect Stranger; The Last House Guest, which was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick; The Girl from Widow Hills; Such a Quiet Place; The Last to Vanish; The Only Survivors; and Daughter of Mine. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on X and Instagram, @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook, or visit MeganMiranda.com.

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Here’s the summary of Last Seen.

From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a twisted psychological thriller about the bonds of family and the disconnect between memory and the truth.

Come here. Come closer.

Halley James knows her marriage is over. But she’s not prepared for the rest of her life to fall apart too.

No one can hear you. No one can help you.

She just lost her job at the forensics lab. Her dad needs emergency surgery. But the biggest blow comes back home in Marchburg, Virginia, where she discovers her mother didn’t actually die in a car crash. Her mom was murdered—and her father lied about it all these years.

I have nothing to hide from you. Are you hiding something from me?

Since she was six years old, it’s been Halley and her dad. Now, she doesn’t know what to believe. Desperate for the truth, Halley chases down a lead in Brockville, Tennessee. But all there is not as it seems. Brockville’s utopian charm hides a chilling darkness. And Halley’s search for answers threatens to expose an unspeakable reality.

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J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty psychological thrillers and domestic noir novels, as well as the Emmy Award–winning cohost of A Word on Words on Nashville PBS. She also writes contemporary fantasy as Joss Walker, whose titles include the award-winning Jayne Thorne, CIA Librarian series. With millions of books sold across thirty countries, her work has earned critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and multiple TV options.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens—one of whom is a ghost—in Nashville, where she’s busy crafting her next suspenseful tale.

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Enjoy the conversation with J.T. Ellison and Megan Miranda.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Dan Fesperman back to the bookstore. Fesperman has appeared either in person or virtually at the bookstore since his first book came out in 1999. Peters calls Fesperman “An American John LeCarre”. There are signed copies of his new book, Pariah, available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3H2Mk65

Here’s the description of Pariah.

An adrenaline-fueled thriller about a disgraced comedian-turned-politician who takes on the role of a lifetime: infiltrating a corrupt Eastern European country to spy on their brutal dictator

Hal Knight, a comedian and movie star-turned politician, is no stranger to controversy. But after an embarrassing and humiliating encounter on set, Knight resigns from Congress, quits social media, and disappears to the tiny Caribbean island of Vieques to drink dirty martinis and nurse his wounds. Shortly after his arrival, he is approached by a trio of CIA operatives hoping to recruit him to infiltrate the power structure of Bolrovia—a hostile, Eastern European country whose despotic president, Nikolai Horvatz, happens to be a longtime fan of Knight’s adolescent male humor. Knowing that Horvatz plans to invite the disgraced star for an official visit, the CIA coaxes Knight to accept. Skeptical, but with little to lose, Knight accepts the challenge, sensing this might be his one chance to do something worthwhile, even if no one else ever finds out.

Upon arrival as President Horvatz’s guest of honor, Knight confronts his ultimate acting challenge. What begins as an assignment to keep his eyes and ears open quickly turns into a life-or-death battle of wits, with consequences reaching all the way to Washington. With Pariah, Dan Fesperman has crafted a heart-pounding thriller about espionage, entertainment, and one man’s pursuit of redemption.

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DAN FESPERMAN served as a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, based in Berlin. His coverage of the siege of Sarajevo led to his debut novel, Lie in the Dark, which won Britain’s John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first crime novel. Subsequent books have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller, the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers, the Barry Award for best thriller, and selection by USA Today as the year’s best mystery/thriller novel. He lives near Baltimore.

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Enjoy the conversation with Dan Fesperman.

Author Dana Stabenow recently reviewed A Jewel in the Crown by David Lewis. Check out her review below, and then you might want to order a signed copy of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/41fCZPh

A Jewel in the Crown
by David Lewis

The jewel in the crown in this case is not the crown jewels, although the crown jewels are stolen along the way of being hidden in case the Nazis are successful in invading Britain as World War II opens.

No, the jewel in the crown of England in this case is one Caitrin Colline, Welsh and one of the first members of Unit 512, a tippety-top secret organization which recruits only the best and most capable women available for whatever needs doing to win the war. In this case Winston Churchill decides that what needs doing is for Caitrin to pretend to be married to Hector, Lord Marlton (himself an agent of another secret agency) as they drive Britain’s Crown Jewels to a submarine in Scotland for transportation to Canada, there to sit out the war in safety.

Or so he says. They are also ferreting out spies and traitors among Britain’s nobility along their route, as some members of said nobility lean very eastward in their preferences and fully expect that nice Hitler fellow not to invade and even if he does not to dispossess any lords and ladies of their ancestral mansions. 

They would do no such thing. Hitler doesn’t want to fight us; we’re brothers. We negotiate peace; he leaves us alone and turns to fight the socialists and the Russian Bolsheviks in the east. We should help him with that before they come here in a great ugly tide…Instead of shooting each other, we English should be building bridges with the Germans, They are our true brothers, ot the French or the Poles.

Caitrin, as beautiful as she is intelligent, is a wee tad brighter than that and a red hot Socialist besides.

“…after the war, the aristocracy should be, will be, dismantled and the country estates divided up for the people. We will bring an end to centuries of inbred titled parasites doing nothing to validate their existence but feed off the people.”

All, and you knew this was coming, does not go as planned on Caitrin and Hector’s honeymoon trip, or at least not as they were told it was planned, and that’s all I’ll say about that so I don’t spoil. Hector is almost as much fun and almost as smart at Caitrin and together they’re more fun to hang out with than the entire cast of Monty Python. I’ve already order the second book in the series.

Dana

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed a long-time friend, Rhys Bowen, back to the bookstore for a virtual appearance. Today is release day for Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure. There are signed copies still available, and Peters assures readers the bookstore can get more signed copies if they need to do that. https://bit.ly/47la2VA

Here’s the summary of Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure.

Blindsided by betrayal in pre-WWII England, a woman charts a daring new course in this captivating tale of resilience, friendship, and new love by the bestselling author of The Rose Arbor and The Venice Sketchbook.

Surrey, England, 1938. After thirty devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband’s appeal for divorce. It’s Ellie’s opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She’s taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora—each needing escape—impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.

With the Rhône surging beside them, they have nowhere to be and everywhere to go. Until the Bentley breaks down in the inviting fishing hamlet of Saint Benet. Here, Ellie rents an abandoned villa in the hills, makes wonderful friends among the villagers, and finds herself drawn to Nico, a handsome and enigmatic fisherman. As for unexpected destinations, the simple paradis of Saint Benet is perfect. But fates soon change when the threat of war encroaches.

Ellie’s second act in life is just beginning—and becoming an adventure she never expected.

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Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including The Rose Arbor, The Paris Assignment, Where the Sky Begins, The Venice Sketchbook, Above the Bay of Angels, The Victory Garden, The Tuscan Child, and In Farleigh Field, the winner of the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel and the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. She is also the author of the Royal Spyness mysteries and several other series. Bowen’s work has been translated into many languages and has won sixteen honors to date, including multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. A transplanted Brit, Bowen divides her time between California and Arizona. For more information, visit www.rhysbowen.com.

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Enjoy the conversation with Rhys Bowen as she discusses her latest book.

John Charles from the Poisoned Pen recently welcomed Allie Pleiter to the bookstore. One Sharp Stitch is a Nimble Needle Mystery. There are signed copies of this one, Pleiter’s seventieth book. https://bit.ly/3UP8eg5.

Here’s the description of One Sharp Stitch.

When thirty-something Shelby Phillips returns to her quiet hometown just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, she reluctantly takes over her mother’s Nimble Needle needlepoint shop—and gets entangled in a murder investigation . . .

It’s only temporary. That’s what Shelby Phillips tells herself when she returns to excruciatingly harmless Gwen Lake after her graphic arts career—and the office romance blooming with it—get tossed like rejected design mockups. Her plan is as simple and fool-proof as a tent stitch: manage the family needlepoint shop during her parents’ RV vacation. It’s just a month. It’s not as if they’re retiring . . . right?

When Shelby becomes responsible for hosting a trunk show with local vendors, she’s determined to pull it off. Even if that means dealing with former classmate Kat Katsaros, a rising entrepreneur specializing in needlework scissors. Kat has changed since high school—and she’s angling to take over the Nimble Needle herself. The tension unspools when Shelby makes a terrible discovery on the morning of the event: Kat’s dead body.

Shelby can’t believe the death was an accident. That’s why she’s set on exposing who committed the murder with Kat’s own equipment. She finds help in a new friend, a potential crush, and the surprising support of her sister and the Nimble Needle stitchers. Still, Shelby must move quickly to stop the crafty culprit before her maybe not-so-temporary new life in Gwen Lake comes apart at the seams . . .

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Allie Pleiter is an internationally bestselling author, an accomplished productivity coach, and an avid knitter and needlepointer. In addition to 6 nonfiction books, she has written dozens of popular fiction, mystery, and romance novels with more than 1.6 million copies sold. The creator of The Chunky Method, a time management system, she teaches creative people how to be more productive and productive people how to be more creative through her coaching practice and nationwide speaking engagements. She also is a regular speaker within the crafting and knitting community, appearing at yarn and craft shops as well as national events including Stitches Midwest, Vogue Knitting Live, and the Wanderstitch Cruise onboard Norwegian Cruise Lines. An alumna of Northwestern University, she is a member of Sisters in Crime, the American Needlepoint Guild and the National Speakers Association. She lives with her husband and adorable dog near Charlotte, NC, and can be found online at AlliePleiter.com.

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Enjoy John Charles’ interview with Allie Pleiter.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, introduced Canadian author Daniel Kalla to the online audience. Kalla is the author of The Deepest Fake, a book available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4m4g6qm

Here’s the description of The Deepest Fake.

From internationally bestselling author Daniel Kalla, whose thrillers are “impossible to put down” (Amy Stuart, #1 bestselling author of Death at the Party), comes a razor-sharp psychological thriller about a CEO whose carefully curated life is falling apart. His wife is cheating, someone is stealing from his AI company, and he’s just been handed a fatal diagnosis. He’d end it all, if only he could trust his own reality.

Liam Hirsch has it all—a loving family, a thriving career as CEO of an AI company, financial security, and a bright future. But when he’s diagnosed with a terminal illness, just weeks after discovering his wife’s infidelity, his perfect life unravels. As he grapples with his fate, he prepares to face his final days on his own terms.

However, unexplained events inside his company make him question everything—including his diagnosis. In a world of deepfake videos, synthetic voices, and digital deception, couldn’t these technologies be weaponized against him? What if nothing is as it seems?

With time running out, Liam turns to Andrea DeWalt, a private investigator contending with her own feelings of betrayal, to help him uncover a conspiracy that threatens his life, his family, and their future. In a world where nothing is as it seems and every digital footprint can be manipulated, who can Liam trust?

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Daniel Kalla is an internationally bestselling author of many novels, including Fit to Die, The Darkness in the Light, Lost Immunity, The Last High, and We All Fall Down. Kalla practices emergency medicine in Vancouver, British Columbia. Visit him at DanielKalla.com or follow him on Twitter @DanielKalla.

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Enjoy the conversation with Daniel Kalla.

Author Dana Stabenow shared a review of The New Forest Murders by Matthew Sweet. There are a couple copies in stock if you would like to check the Webstore. https://bit.ly/45d5AFU

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The New Forest Murders
by Matthew Sweet

Jill Metcalfe’s brother Henry has just been killed in France on a mission to steal Abwehr documents. The news is brought to her and her father by American Army Captain Jack Strafford, who is on his own mission and not just to inform the bereaved. Henry had discovered a spy transmitting bombing coordinates to Germany right from their own village of Larkwhistle, and lived long enough to give Jack just enough information to come to Larkwhistle and ferret him or her out.

And then that very same afternoon the vicar’s son is found murdered in the New Forest at the foot of the tree featured in the children’s book that had made him famous, and Jill dragoons  Jack into taking her on as an aide-de-camp in solving both murders because it’s better than sitting around with her father thinking about Henry.

Unlike some of her contemporaries, Jill had lost a lot of pleasure to the war. Since Hitler crossed the Polish border, there had been little romantic glory to report…Tonight she was making an effort for a provincial dinner party at the home of a woman for whom she did not particularly care, on a mission that made her hot with uneasy excitement. What did one wear, exactly, if the object of the evening was to prove that the host was a German spy plotting to set Southern England ablaze?

Everyone, the vicar, his wife, the publican, his daughter, the invalided Army officer, his wife the author, the postmistress, all of whom Jill has known since she was a child, is a suspect with motives ranging from adultery to treason, and not one of them is entirely what their carefully maintained facade shows to the world.

He wasn’t that sweet little boy from the book, you know.

but to Jill

Peter was the boy at the altar, following his father, his surplice dazzlingly white. He was the consummate tree-climber of whom, she knew, her brother had felt mildly jealous. Or he was the young man who fell out with his father and was reconciled. All these versions of him, she now saw, had only a flat two-dimensional quality.

The mystery Henry leaves behind and the murder of the vicar’s son are both resolved and the lovers united by the end, but there is a quality about this novel that has haunted me since I finished it. Yes, it’s a mystery, or two, really. Yes, there are murders, two of them. One does hope the first murderer is shot by the French after the war, and while the solving of the second mostly due to Jill’s excellent detective work shows Jack just how worthy she is (“You’re wonderful” he says when she realizes that there are two keys to the code they are trying to break), this is more a story about small communities and the secrets they keep about themselves and each other, even in the face of the most horrible war in human history. Beautifully written, highly recommended.

Dana

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Deb Lewis from The Poisoned Pen Bookstore is a little busy right now, but she sent her current list of book selections. The links should take you to the page to see a longer annotation along with a purchase link. If not, here’s the Webstore link, https://store.poisonedpen.com/

The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa,  Jesse Kirkwood  

A subversively cozy Japanese crime novel with an ingenious Groundhog Day twist: a teenager’s time-loop race to solve—and possibly prevent—his grandfather’s murder!

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits in this masterful historical novel from the author of the “delicious puzzle-box of a novel” (The New York Times) and USA TODAY bestseller The Square of Sevens.

The Glass Man by Anders de la Motte  

The Leo Asker series, which will have you “hooked from the very first page” (Kyle Mills, #1 New York Timesbestselling author), continues with this second installment following wayward detective Leonore Asker on a chilling new murder case.

All The Words We Know by Bruce Nash

With wicked humor, genuine poignancy, and clever insight, this is an unforgettable novel about murder, secrets, and memory that is perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Fredrik Backman, and “will be loved by readers wanting to have their heart strings plucked” (The Guardian).

Dead of Summer by Jessa Maxwell

Years after her best friend mysteriously disappeared from a remote New England island, a young woman returns in search of answers in this atmospheric and scintillating thriller from Jessa Maxwell, nationally bestselling author of the “deliciously entertaining” (Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author) The Golden Spoon.

My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Strenner  

A missing child, two girls in search of their true identities–a stunning novel of mothers, daughters and best friends

Author Dana Stabenow sent her review of Tom Mead’s latest Joseph Spector locked-room mystery, The House at Devil’s Neck. You can order a signed copy of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/41kXb1T

Thank you, Dana.

The House at Devil’s Neck
by Tom Mead

Talk about a throwback–Tom Mead is channeling basically every Golden Age English crime fiction writer from Conan Doyle on here. Nothing is omitted, including the befuddled detective (named Flint, because of course), the always-smarter-than-everyone-else amateur, and a cast of characters with collectively more motive than everyone in that sleeper in Murder on the Orient Express, every single one of whom has a hidden identity. They are marooned together in a storm-bound haunted house (sticking with my Christie comparisons, shades of And Then There Were None) with secret passageways, spooky caretakers, a medium, a magician determined to expose them as a charlatan, and a generator that keeps going out at exactly the wrong moment. Or is it the right one?

Mead is good at channeling Golden Age writing, too, and uses vocabulary in the manner of Michael Gilbert Himself, as in

Like every other aspect of her life, she tended toward maximalism. Her dress was tentlike and funereal; her astrakhan coat as heavy as mammoth hide; a scarf was tied around her head and her throat was cluttered with paste jewellery.

and

Her hair was a tight, cinereous snare of curls, her eyes ringed by crow’s feet like cracked porcelain.

and

Mr. Lennox was bald and unimpressive, with a pinkly sclerotic face and a toothbrush moustache.

I had to look up a word in every sentence.

In Golden Age mysteries there is always a list of something that is missing something that only the amateur notices. There is such a list here, too, in which (also in line with Golden Age mysteries) only a male (and amateur) detective would spot. There is always a surprising motive: here, World War Two is about to begin, although Mead doesn’t refer to this interesting fact until page 84. Sneaky bastard. And then of course there is the gathering together of all the [surviving] cast for the denouement, when Spector (the gifted amateur) reveals all. 

Except there is another reveal later, in Flint’s office, involving a torturously involved explanation that changes a thought- to-be-suicide turned murder turned back into suicide but designed to look like murder…? No wonder Flint was confused. So was I.

I giggled a lot which might or might not have been Mead’s intention, but many readers will enjoy this trip back to the first half of the last century.

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Interested? You can also watch Barbara Peters’ interview with Tom Mead.