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It’s hard to believe it’s time for Deb Lewis’ book picks for July. Although each review should have a link to the Webstore, you can always check the Webstore at https://store.poisonedpen.com/.

The Goldens by Lauren Wilson

For fans of Netflix’s hit SIRENS, follow writer Chloe Hughes as she sinks deeper under the influence of model, socialite, and influencer Clara Holland. Unreliable narrator fans, dig right in!

Rage by Linda Castillo

The newest installment of the Edgar Award winning series featuring Chief of Police Kate Burkholder. I look forward to my yearly trips to Painter’s Mill and this installment delivers with tough gal Kate and all of her 5 man crew on the case of a baffling double homicide. Where else can you find a police procedural, newly wed love and insight into Amish culture? Signed copies available
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Etiquette for Lovers and Killers by Anna Fitzgerald Healy 

Readers who liked recent hits A Most Agreeable Murder and How To Solve Your Own Murder will love this darkly humorous, twisty and light hearted debut mystery set in 1960’s coastal Maine. Each chapter starts with a rule of etiquette from the 60’s and it’s great fun to follow amateur sleuth Billie McCadie as she unravels blackmail, murder, lobster and Jello Salad. 

All We Trust by Gregory Galloway

Perfect beachside read for noir-fans! This paperback original follows two small town crooks who get in over their heads: and is a fast paced romp with betrayal, kidnapping, double-dealing and tested loyalties. Wear your sunglasses while reading this one!

Everyone Is Lying To You by Jo Piazza

Influencers are becoming the norm in our daily life and this thriller takes a look at what happens when one disappears suddenly after inviting her former best friend to write a profile piece about her. Investigating a disappearance is much harder when everything you  know about the victim is a lie….paperback original format meant to be read in one big gulp. 

Fade In by Kyle Mills 

Thriller fans, rejoice! Kyle Mills has brought back fan-favorite hero Fade—presumed dead—just in time to tackle one of the deadliest crises our planet could face. If you like your hero fearless, conflicted, and a bad-boy ex-Navy SEAL, dive in. This one doesn’t disappoint and marks the beginning of an exciting new series!  

This is planning ahead. Dana Stabenow’s recent newsletter revealed the cover of her forthcoming book, The Harvey Girl. It comes out on Feb. 24, 2026, but it’s already available to pre-order signed copies through The Poisoned Pen. Here’s Stabenow’s note.

Ta dah! Here it is in all its blinding glory, courtesy of editor Greg Rees at Head of Zeus. We launch it at the Poisoned Pen on February 28, 2026. Click through the image above to pre-order your copy, or click here to do same. And here’s a teensy excerpt just for you…

“You won’t be entirely on your own, Miss Wright.”

“No?”

“No. I have hired some, well, you might call it freelance assistance. They are already in place in Montaña Roja.”

Clare felt a sense of foreboding. “Is this freelance help named?”

He told her, and she closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again she noticed Pinkerton looking particularly smug.

He really must think she would get herself killed this time. 

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Here’s the summary of the book.

From the award-winning author of the Kate Shugak Mysteries, a thrilling new detective series set during America’s wild boom time and frontier expansion of the nineteenth century.

WELCOME TO THE GILDED AGE. WHERE NOT EVERYTHING GLITTERS.

1890: the Gilded Age, a period of financial success and political corruption. The United States is growing at a breathless rate, with six new states recently added to the Union.

With expansion comes an influx of crime. Outlaw gangs hold sway on the frontier and heists and robberies are commonplace. A lot of businesses shrug off these depredations as the cost of success. Those who don’t hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to get their money back.

The Pinkertons’ newest operative is twenty-two-year-old Clare Wright. Highly educated, skilled with disguises, and handy enough in a fight, Clare’s future in the agency seems bright. But when she’s introduced to Fred Harvey, she finds herself thrown right into the heady mix of frontier life.

Harvey’s New Mexico hotel has been robbed and Clare is the perfect recruit to solve this mystery. Clare must infiltrate high society and win the confidence of killers like Butch Cassidy as she seeks the truth.

‘Let me recommend Dana Stabenow’ Diana Gabaldon

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Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised on a 75-foot fishing tender. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and found it in writing. Her first book in the bestselling Kate Shugak series, A Cold Day for Murder, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Follow Dana at stabenow.com

I would love to share the entire article from Publishers Weekly, “20 Years In, ThrillerFest Mixes Escapism with Engagement” by Lenny Picker. But, I don’t want to violate copyright. Instead, I’m going to share the section that mentions Barbara Peters and The Poisoned Pen Bookstore.

20 YEARS OF THRILLS

David Morrell and fellow ITW cofounder Gayle Lynds spoke with PW about ITW’s humble beginnings and two-decade journey. Lynds credited Barbara Peters, of the Poisoned Pen bookstore and press, with first putting together the conference of thriller writers two decades ago. The conference, along with Lynds and Morrell, featured the authors Lee Child, Clive Cussler, Vince Flynn, and Kathy Reichs.

“It was a wonderful writing conference, with outstanding authors teaching,” Lynds said. “Interestingly, instead of the attendees being dominantly aspiring writers, which all of us had expected, readers came, too—and outnumbered the writers.” That, for Lynds, was the “ah-ha moment. For the first time, we had evidence that readers wanted thriller gatherings, as did we writers. Those of us there talked seriously about starting an organization, which David and I agreed to honcho, and we became co-presidents.” She recalled it as “a wonderful, fascinating, busy time.”

Asked about the role ITW and ThrillerFest play in the business, Lynds responded that, when it began, “although thriller novels often filled bestseller lists, panels about thriller writing were seldom offered at writing conferences, and writing organizations seldom honored thriller novels with awards. So, from their beginning, ITW worked to integrate thrillers into conferences and to draw attention to our field as worthy to receive awards.” To date, Lynds said, “ITW’s growth has been amazing, and inspiring. Any time you start something, you can never be sure how it will turn out I’m proud of all the writers we’ve helped better their craft; the opportunities we’ve given writers to talk face-to-face with agents, publishers, and media people; and the writers who have worked so hard to write top-notch novels and can say ITW helped them in many ways.”

Morrell also recalled that initial gathering in Scottsdale, at the famed Arizona Biltmore hotel.”It occurred to everyone that we were mostly thriller authors at a mystery store event,” he told PW. “Gayle and I began to wonder about an organization for thriller writers. After a year of phone calls and help from many, many people, International Thriller Writers was born.”

Morrell admitted that he is surprised at what ThrillerFest has evolved into in 2025: “Membership and attendance have grown amazingly, as ITW provides a community for thriller writers, encourages new authors, and explores the possibilities of what thrillers can be.” He credited “the generous support of ITW’s members, their officers, committees, event volunteers, and anthology contributors. A lot of people give their time and enthusiasm to help one another and the thriller-author community. Our books may be filled with mayhem, but at ThrillerFest, there are a lot of smiles.”

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed authors Meg Waite Clayton and Laura Dave for a virtual event. Laura, author of The Night We Lost Him, acted as guest host as Clayton previewed her forthcoming book, Typewriter Beach. Typewriter Beach will be released July 1, but you can order signed copies through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/444lsvd

Here is the description of Typewriter Beach.

Set in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Hollywood, Typewriter Beach is an unforgettable story of the unlikely friendship between an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a young actress hoping to be Alfred Hitchcock’s new star. 

1957. Isabella Giori is ten months into a standard seven-year studio contract when she auditions with Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage, waiting and dreading. 

Meanwhile, next door, Léon Chazan is annoyed as hell when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. Soon, they’re together in his roadster, speeding down the fog-shrouded Big Sur coast. 

2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe full of secrets—raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was, and whether she can live up to his name. 

In graceful prose and with an intimate understanding of human nature, Meg Waite Clayton captures the joys and frustrations of being a writer, being a woman, being a star, and being in love. Typewriter Beach is the story of two women separated by generations—a tale of ideas and ideals, passion and persistence, creativity, politics, and family.

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Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous novels, including the Good Morning America Buzz Pick and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice The Postmistress of Paris, The Last Train to London, and The Wednesday Sisters. Her books have been published in twenty-four languages, and have been finalists for the Bellwether Prize (now the PEN Bellwether), the National Jewish Book Award, and the Langum Prize. She also writes for major newspapers and magazines, mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. She lives in California and Connecticut. 

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Enjoy the conversation with Meg Waite Clayton.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Megan Abbott to the bookstore to talk about her new book, El Dorado Drive, and movies. You can order a signed copy of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4ndKNKF

Here’s the description of El Dorado Drive.

Named a Best Book of Summer by The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, CrimeReads, and more!

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Turnout comes a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.

“Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre.” —NPR

All I want is to be innocent again. But that’s not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.

The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister Pam—currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband—and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club.

The Wheel offers women like themselves—middle-aged and of declining means—a way to make their own money, independent of husbands or families. Quickly, however, the Wheel’s success, and their own addiction to it, leads to greater and greater risks—and a crime so shocking it threatens to bring everything down with it.

Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about power, vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.

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Megan Abbott is the Edgar award-winning author of eleven crime novels, including You Will Know Me, Give Me Your Hand and the New York Times bestseller The Turnout, the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and the Wall Street Journal. Dare Me, the series she adapted from her own novel, now streaming on Netflix. Her latest novel, Beware the Woman, is now in paperback.

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Enjoy the conversation with Megan Abbott.

The International Thriller Writers (ITW) recently announced the 2025 Thriller Award Winners. Congratulations to the winners and nominees. Check out the Webstore for copies of the books by the winners. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here are the winners.

Best Standalone Thriller Novel
Jason Rekulak – THE LAST ONE AT THE WEDDING, Flatiron Books

Best Standalone Mystery Novel
Kellye Garrett – MISSING WHITE WOMAN, Mulholland Books

Best Series Novel
David Baldacci – TO DIE FOR, Grand Central Publishing

Best First Novel
Marie Tierney – DEADLY ANIMALS, Henry Holt & Co.

Best Audiobook
Kate Alice Marshall – NO ONE CAN KNOW, Macmillan Audio, narrated by Karissa Vacker

Best Young Adult Novel
Marisha Pessl – DARKLY, Delacorte

Best Short Story
Ivy Pochoda – Jackrabbit Skin, Amazon Original Stories

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest XX Awards Banquet:

• 2025 ThrillerMaster, John Grisham
• 2025 Silver Bullet Award, James Patterson
• 2025 Spotlight Guest, Oyinkan Braithwaite
• 2025 Spotlight Guest, Jennifer Hillier
• 2025 Thriller Legend, Neil Nyren
• 2025 ThrillerFan, McKenna Jordan

Elaine Viets launches a new mystery series with Sex and Death on the Beach. You can special order a copy through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/44qMxIR

Do you want to know a little more? Oline Cogdill reviewed the book for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and gifted us with a copy of the review.

Book review: ‘Florida Man’ antics add levity to murder mystery in ‘Sex and Death on the Beach’

‘Sex and Death on the Beach: A Florida Beach Mystery’ by Elaine Viets; Severn House; 240 pages; $29.99

Fort Lauderdale author Elaine Viets has a reputation for mysteries with a wide swath of humor but also with serious undertones. Viets continues that same approach with “Sex and Death on the Beach: A Florida Beach Mystery,” which launches a new, entertaining series.

On the surface, “Sex and Death on the Beach” should lean more toward comedy given the title and the bright, colorful cover. While humor is layered throughout the novel, Viets veers toward a more weighty plot about accepting others for who they are, the power of friendship and, especially, family — both your biological one and the one you make yourself.

As a bonus, Viets enlivens her novel with characters who are as realistic as they are quirky.

“Sex and Death on the Beach” revolves around the Florodora, an apartment building that’s more than 100 years old located on the beach in Peerless Point, a fictional beach town Viets puts between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. People would love to call this building home, but it’s doubtful it could exist in this current real estate market. The four-story Florodora has only eight rental apartments, each about 2,000 square feet, and with its “odd hideaways” and a secret staircase, is as much a character as the people.

The Florodora was built by current owner Norah McCarthy’s beloved grandmother, Eleanor Harriman, who was a Florodora Girl, “a superstar chorus girl” in 1920. Before she died, Eleanor asked Norah to never sell the place and rent to “only Florida Men and Women,” who will be longtime residents. Idiosyncratic is fine — in fact a requirement. Cruelty, bigotry or rudeness is not allowed.

So far, Norah has kept her promise to her grandmother, fending off developers and city inspectors bribed to condemn the Florodora. The residents, along with two full-time staff who live there, are a tight-knit group. Norah would rather keep an apartment vacant than rent to the wrong person.

The environment Viets has built well serves the story. The Florodora is threatened when the body of a local adult-entertainment actress is uncovered in a hole plumbers had dug to replace pipes. Sammie Lant was universally disliked by the residents at the Florodora, where she had repeatedly been denied renting an apartment. It wasn’t that the residents were prudish about her occupation. Rather, they objected to her nasty attitude and antics on the beach — as described in the title — that ruined a college student’s life.

Norah’s recent altercation with Sammie makes her a suspect, and the publicity brings out developers and inspectors eager to condemn the Florodora. The murder also draws the residents closer together, as they support Norah, who tries to find out who killed Sammie.

Viets adds bits of levity to “Sex and Death on the Beach” with frequent references to the real antics of Florida Man and Woman, literally ripped from the headlines. While there’s heft to her plot, she doesn’t overwhelm her novel. True to its title, “Sex and Death on the Beach” is a beach read.

That vacant apartment will likely be empty for some time as the series continues. Good tenants are hard to find, and Norah is a picky landlord, and an entertaining one.

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Patrick Millikin recently hosted Ivy Pochoda at The Poisoned Pen. Pochoda is the author of the horror novel/thriller, Ecstasy. There are signed copies available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4eatYvU

Here’s the description of Ecstasy.

A deliciously dark horror reimagining of a Greek tragedy, by Ivy Pochoda, winner of the LA Times Book Prize.

Lena wants her life back. Her wealthy, controlling, humorless husband has just died, and now she contends with her controlling, humorless son, Drew. Lena lands in Naxos with her best friend in tow for the unveiling of her son’s, pet project–the luxurious Agape Villas.

Years of marriage amongst the wealthy elite has whittled Lena’s spirit into rope and sinew, smothered by tasteful cocktail dresses and unending small talk. On Naxos she yearns to rediscover her true nature, remember the exuberant dancer and party girl she once was, but Drew tightens his grip, keeping her cloistered inside the hotel, demanding that she fall in line.

Lena is intrigued by a group of women living in tents on the beach in front of the Agape. She can feel their drums at night, hear their seductive leader calling her to dance. Soon she’ll find that an ancient God stirs on the beach, awakening dark desires of women across the island. The only questions left will be whether Lena will join them, and what it will cost her.

Ecstasy is a riveting, darkly poetic, one-sitting read about empowerment, desire, and what happens when women reject the roles set out for them.

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Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These  Women, and Sing Her Down which won the LA Times Book Prize. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the the Edgar Award, among other awards. For many years, Ivy has led a creative writing workshop in Skid Row Los Angeles where she helped found Skid Row Zine. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Enjoy the conversation with Ivy Pochoda.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Ashley Weaver for a virtual event. The two had talked about all the books in the Electra McDonnell series. The final book in the series in One Final Turn. There are still a few signed copies in the series available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4kLAnA9

Here’s the summary of One Final Turn.

The fifth and final installment in the Electra McDonnell series brings safecracker Ellie on a mission across World War II-era Europe to Lisbon, Portugal to rescue a key group of escaped POWs.

Ellie McDonnell is about to embark on her most perilous mission yet: go to Lisbon, Portugal to save her beloved cousin Toby who has reportedly escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. Toby has been missing since the Battle of Dunkirk and Ellie had all but lost hope in ever seeing him again until Major Ramsey, the British military intelligence officer she had been working closely with over the past few months, shared the news he’d intercepted.

Nothing will stop Ellie from finding her cousin, not even the awkward experience of having to travel to an unknown country with Ramsey after he’d dismissed her for being untrustworthy just as she’d realized she had fallen in love with him. Under the supervision of Captain Archie Blandings, a charming intelligence officer based in Lisbon, Ellie meets with undercover operatives to track down where Toby might be hiding from the Nazis and whether they are too late to safely recover him, all the while fighting her feelings for Ramsey and the incessant burden of war looming around her at every turn.

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Ashley Weaver is the author of the Amory Ames Mysteries and the Electra McDonnell series. When not writing, she works as an elementary and middle school librarian. A lifelong lover of books, Weaver has worked in libraries since she was fourteen and holds an MLIS from Louisiana State University. She lives in Central Louisiana.

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Enjoy the conversation with Ashley Weaver.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, passed on the following Award news. Check the Webstore for copies of the books. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

The winners of 2025 Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, were announced on Saturday at the 60th annual Nebula Awards Ceremony, in Kansas City, Mo.:

Novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW)
Novella: The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)
Novelette: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being by A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24)

Winners of the 2025  Reading the West Awards have been announced

Fiction: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (Harper)
Debut fiction: The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill (Harper)
Poetry: The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket by Kinsale Drake (University of Georgia Press)
General nonfiction: By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle (Harper)
Memoir/biography: Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home by Chris La Tray (Milkweed Editions)
Picture book: The Ballad of Cactus Joe by Lily Murray, illustrated by Clive McFarland (Silver Dolphin Books)
Young reader/middle grade: Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan (Nancy Paulsen Books)
YA/teen: The Glass Girl by Kathleen Glasgow (Delacorte Press)