If fall is the season for haunting crime fiction, it’s also the season for villainous thrillers. Check out Marisha Pessl’s “Our Villains, Ourselves: A Thriller Roundup” for suggestions for fall thrillers. https://nyti.ms/2zCy4bF

And, then check the Web Store if you want to pick up a book or two. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

October isn’t the only time of you to read haunting fiction, but there are a number of books that fall under the category Halloween Crime Fiction. Janet Rudolph, who blogs at Mystery Fanfare, posts lists of holiday crime fiction on her site whenever holidays are approaching. You can check out her entire list of books here. https://bit.ly/2zBerRr

Looking for Mark de Castrique’s Fatal Undertaking since he was just here at The Poisoned Pen? How about Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party? You can’t go wrong with Agatha Christie.

Check out Janet’s lists of Halloween Crime Fiction and Halloween Mystery Short Story Anthologies. Then, check out the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

From Halloween to Christmas. It’s not difficult to find books relating to the holidays. In fact, Soho Crime has the book that will be The Poisoned Pen’s December Fresh Fiction Club Pick, the collection The Usual Santas. It’s already available to order through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2gE02zW

Here’s the description.

Finally: the perfect stocking stuffer for the crime fiction lover in your life! With a foreword by CWA Diamond Award-winner Peter Lovesey, these eighteen delightful holiday stories by your favorite Soho Crime authors contain laughs, murders, and plenty more.

This captivating collection, which features bestselling and award-winning authors, contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming  reminders of the spirit of the season.

Nine mall Santas must find the imposter among them. An elderly lady seeks peace from her murderously loud neighbors at Christmastime. A young woman receives a mysterious invitation to Christmas dinner with a stranger. Niccolò Machiavelli sets out to save an Italian city. Sherlock Holmes’s one-time nemesis Irene Adler finds herself in an unexpected tangle in Paris while on a routine espionage assignment. Jane Austen searches for the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s stolen diamonds. These and other adventures in this delectable volume will whisk readers away to Christmases around the globe, from a Korean War POW camp to a Copenhagen refugee squat, from a palatial hotel in 1920s Bombay to a crumbling mansion in Havana.

Includes Stories By (In Order of Appearance):
Helene Tursten, Mick Herron, Martin Limón, Timothy Hallinan, Teresa Dovalpage, Mette Ivie Harrison, Colin Cotterill, Ed Lin, Stuart Neville, Tod Goldberg, Henry Chang, James R. Benn, Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis, Sujata Massey, Gary Corby, Cara Black, Stephanie Barron and a Foreword and story by Peter Lovesey.

‘Tis the season for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although the Poisoned Pen carries several editions, you might want to check out The New Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker and signed by Leslie S. Klinger. https://bit.ly/2yBN90u

Here’s the summary.

In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker’s contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact. Traveling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Klinger’s notes illuminate every aspect of this haunting narrative (including a detailed examination of the original typescript of Dracula, with its shockingly different ending, previously unavailable to scholars). Klinger investigates the many subtexts of the original narrative—from masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic, “dentophilic,” and even heterosexual implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological, and historical threads. Employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers.

*****

To give you a little more background, along with The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Mental Floss recently had an article by Kat Long, “The Charming English Fishing Village That Inspired Dracula”. Check It Out. https://bit.ly/2gWs7PN

Fans of Sara Blaedel’s Louise Rick series will be happy with the news recently reported in Shelf Awarness. https://bit.ly/2yWGqyC

Here’s their news report.

Bron Studios’ TV group has acquired rights to Danish author Sara Blaedel’s crime fiction book series featuring police detective Louise Rick. Deadline reported that “the plan is to adapt the novels as a TV series, with the first published Rick book The Forgotten Girls to serve as the backdrop for Season 1.” Bron’s Aaron L. Gilbert and Danielle Reardon will serve as executive producers.

“It has been a longtime dream to see Louise Rick on the screen, and I couldn’t imagine working with a more dynamic and creative team than Bron to realize this,” Blaedel said. “Louise is a tenacious and relentless investigator, but also deeply human and imperfect. Simultaneously tough and charming, watching her stories come alive on the screen will be enthralling.”

Reardon commented: “The Forgotten Girls is a spellbinding beginning to the suspenseful and addictive Louise Rick book series. We are thrilled to be working with Sara Blaedel to bring the character Louise Rick and her brilliantly brutal murder mysteries to television.”

You can order Blaedel’s The Forgotten Girls, and other books in the series, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2zBrJ0V

Here’s the summary of The Forgotten Girls, the first in the Louise Rick series.

#1 International Bestseller
THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS

The body of an unidentified woman has been discovered in a remote forest. A large, unique scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. Louise Rick, the new commander of the Missing Persons Department, waits four long days before pulling off a risky move: releasing a photo of the victim to the media, jeopardizing the integrity of the investigation in hopes of finding anyone who knew her.

The gamble pays off when a woman recognizes the victim as Lisemette, a child she cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette was a “forgotten girl”, abandoned by her family and left behind in the institution. But Louise soon discovers something even more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates more than thirty years ago.

Louise’s investigation takes a surprising when it brings her closer to her childhood home. And as she uncovers more crimes that were committed–and hidden–in the forest, she is forced to confront a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed. Set against a moody and atmospheric landscape, THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS is twisty, suspenseful, emotionally intense novel that secures Sara Blaedel’s place in the pantheon of great thriller writers.

When Joe Ide returned to the Poisoned Pen with his second novel, Righteous, he had just won the Anthony and Macavity Awards for Best First Novel for IQ. There are copies of both available through the Web Store, including signed copies of Righteous. https://bit.ly/2yXbUos

Now, Ide’s Righteous is the subject of Janet Maslin’s “Books of the Times” in the New York Times. The article is “In ‘Righteous,’ a Stand-Up Sleuth Investigates His Brother’s Murder.” Here’s the link. https://nyti.ms/2l5xtNx (And, remember, you probably heard about Joe Ide here first from Barbara Peters, owner of the Poisoned Pen.)

Con Lehane’s second 42nd Street Library Mystery, Murder in the Manuscript Room, isn’t scheduled for release until Nov. 21. You  might want to think about pre-ordering it through the Web Store, https://bit.ly/2yUdS8Y

Adam Wagner has already turned it into one of his .GIFNotes at Criminalelement.com. Before reading Wagner’s notes, you might want to read the summary.

The second in Con Lehane’s 42nd Street Library mystery series,Murder in the Manuscript Room is a smart, compelling mystery in which the characters themselves are at least as interesting as the striking sleuthing.

“Not to be missed.” —Megan Abbott

“A story utterly relevant to the real-life horror story unfolding in America’s immigration politics.”—Sara Paretsky

When a murder desecrates the somber, book-lined halls of New York City’s iconic 42nd Street Library, Raymond Ambler, the library’s curator of crime fiction, has a personal interest in solving the crime. His quest to solve the murder is complicated by personal entanglements involving his friend—or perhaps more-than-friend—Adele Morgan. Not only does Adele’s relationship with the young woman staffer who was murdered get in the way of Ambler’s investigation, more disturbing for himis Adele’s growing interest in a darkly handsome Islamic scholar.

Soon the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department takes over the case from NYPD homicide detective Mike Cosgrove, Ambler’s friend and sometimes partner-in-crime solving. Ambler suspects that the murder of the young woman, who’d been working at the library under an assumed name and the curious intervention of NYPD’s intelligence division are connected. The trail of intrigue leads to a seemingly unrelated murder in an upstate prison and a long ago murder of a trade union reformer.

No one else sees the connections Ambler is sure are there—not an unusual state of affairs for Ambler. But with the city’s law enforcement establishment determined to stop his investigation, the inquisitive and intrepid librarian faces challenges that may put his very life at risk.

*****

Now, you’re ready to read Wagner’s piece. https://bit.ly/2gRv4RR

And, if you missed Con Lehane’s own piece, he filled in on Sept. 29 when I was on vacation. He wrote about his summer reading. You can still catch it on the blog. https://bit.ly/2zmRFwm

The Poisoned Pen has signed copies of Wiley Cash’s The Last Ballad! (Can you tell I’m excited?) Cash’s latest novel is the Hot Book of the Week. You can order it through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2zxQZp3

Here’s the summary of the book.

“Wiley Cash reveals the dignity and humanity of people asking for a fair shot in an unfair world.”

– Christina Baker Kline, author of A Piece of the World and Orphan Train

The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood.

Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find.

When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town—indeed all that she loves.

Seventy-five years later, Ella May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929.

Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early twentieth-century America—and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash’s place among our nation’s finest writers.

I’ve already mentioned that John Sandford and Joe Ide (just awarded Macavity and Anthony Awards) were to appear at The Poisoned Pen. It’s too late. You just missed them, but you can still order signed copies of their latest books through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

And, Jackie K. Cooper’s review of Sandford’s Deep Freeze may just entice you to read the book. The review appeared in the Huffington Post. https://bit.ly/2yxv6Ir

Here’s Cooper’s closing comments to encourage you to try the book. “Sandford is an amazing writer. He has been creating best selling novels for some time now and his talent has not diminished one iota. Based on this story I would say it has even gotten better.”