By Patrick Millikin

Boston Teran has always been a bit of an enigma. For nearly 30 years, the pseudonymous author has created a body of work that defies easy classification. From contemporary novels such as God is a Bullet and 2023’s Big Island L.A to historical novels such as A Child Went Forth and Crippled Jack, Teran has forged his (or her) own path. Just out is The White Country, the long-awaited sequel to 2009’s The Creed of Violence.

Set in 1911, a time when Texas is rife with racism and unrest, The White Country follows John Lourdes, the first minority-born agent of the Texas Bureau of Investigation. As Mexico is ravaged by famine and political corruption, thousands of desperate people cross into Texas, igniting a wave of hatred and violence that would echo for generations. The border becomes a lawless land, plagued by bandits, drug smugglers, and hooded vigilantes led by a figure known only as “The Whiteman.”

Tasked with uncovering this mysterious leader, John Lourdes is sent on a dangerous mission to Laredo. With only a member of the clergy and a Spanish newspaper editor and his daughter as his allies, Lourdes must navigate a landscape of corruption and terror. His journey takes him through a leper colony in the desert, an assassination attempt during a performance of The Wizard of Oz, and into the heart of a destructive movement, threatening the soul of the nation.

Torn between justice and revenge, Lourdes faces not only external enemies but the demons of his own past, in a story of survival, identity, and the enduring battle against hate.

Patrick Millikin:  Your new book comes at an appropriate moment in time.  Why did you decide to write a sequel to The Creed of Violence now?

Boston Teran: Relevance… The headwaters of history are forever in play when it comes to relevance.  You may write with a testing solitude, with slow, steady wonderment, with untold passions, or fierce immediacy, but relevance has its own set of demands. And that’s because it is always there, waiting on a messenger to strike out and lay some claim on a wound in the world left as yet unattended.

Like the rock band CCNY in their 1970 classic wrote…We have all been here before…And it makes me wonder…What’s going on, under the ground…Relevance is a test, a challenge. It means for you to embrace conflict. It needs for you to embrace conflict. Relevance doesn’t exist without conflict. It cannot be resolved without conflict. And there’s no new type of conflict under the sun. They’ve all been seen before. But are no less deadly.

PM: 1911 is a fascinating period in our history. The spread of the railroads (and other factors, of course, such as the slaughter of the great buffalo herds, the decimation of our Native tribes, etc) helped put an end to the mythic “Old West” but vestiges of the of the frontier era remained, alongside new inventions like the automobile. What drew you to writing about this particular era?

BT: America was facing a preeminent clash of cultural profiles. New inventions, new ideas –  like loudspeakers, air conditioners, Victrolas that played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” The Wizard of Oz being performed in dusty auditoriums.

America was like a great young prizefighter trying to find his way, his place, with a world of promise around him. A world that also still feasted on everything from avarice to xenophobia. A country growing richer and more powerful in its social poverty. A country that could not shed itself of the myths that enticed it with greatness as much as held it back, kept it down.

Would America become Rawbone, or John Lourdes. Would it be forever both in timeless conflict?

PM:  Racial conflict and white supremacy are deeply embedded into the country’s DNA. This paragraph really sums it up well:

            “It was whiteness that meant power, it was whiteness that meant the rule of law. But more than the rule of law, it meant sanctity, it meant heaven and it meant God, and in effect it turned the Mexican-American into a dead rattlesnake.”

This connection between whiteness and God seems, sadly, to be gaining traction once again in this country. Is this an accurate statement, or thus has it always been?

BT:  It has always been. And always will be.

Even if there was no color white, no god to speak of. White and god would still exist in partnership as they do. There would be something else to take their place, to be their stand in. And why – because man is a creature of endless evil possibilities.

PM: The real heroes of the novel, alongside Lourdes, are of course Eduardo Barros and his daughter, Marisita. The Journalists who face grave danger and often make the ultimate sacrifice to tell the truth. A modern-day equivalent would be those fearless journalists in Ciudad Juarez back in the early 2000’s, and in Gaza, and in so many other places.

Can you talk a little bit about them?  Were they based on historical figures, or also composites?

BT: In July of 1907, A Mexican printer and political activist named Manuel Sarabia was kidnapped off the streets of Douglas, Arizona and illegally arrested. At the hands of local sheriffs and Pinkerton agents the activist was  delivered to rurales to collect the reward placed on his head by the Mexican government.

If it weren’t for a lone townsman responding to Sarabia’s dire cries this incident might have been left to an unmarked grave.

That dusty incident in the Douglas newspaper led me to a litany of political players on both sides of the border from Mother Jones and Jay Gould  to the people who would become Eduardo Barros and his daughter.

PM: Are there historians that you return to for inspiration, and are there writers (fiction or nonfiction) today who you cite as influences?  

BT: I scour rare books, journals, diaries, letters that are of a time and place. Books of photographs, particularly, books created by historical societies of towns and counties and the lives that passed on there. I find much that is literary in the world of photographers from the likes of Henri Cartier Bresson and Sebastiao Salgado. I look for moods as much as details, passed over facts, human moments, The Decisive Moment as it is defined. I read newspapers from all over the country, from every decade. One could cut and paste the front pages of a hundred together and they would resemble any front page of a newspaper – what’s left of them – that you read today. There is no shortage of humanpredicaments, it seems.

I make it my business to search without hunting, to discover while not looking. To be open to the elusive, and the jewel in mistakes.

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore and its customers are lucky enough to have a preview appearance for Laurie R. King’s latest Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novel. Knave of Diamonds. Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, welcomed King and author and Sherlock Holmes expert Leslie Klinger. And, Laurie mentioned the artwork that will accompany signed copies of the book from the Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/3HzxAvd

Here’s the description of Knave of Diamonds.

Mary Russell’s allegiances are tested by the reappearance of her long-lost uncle—and a tantalizing case not even Sherlock Holmes could solve.

When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere—until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first place: He was involved—somehow—in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.

It was a theft that shook a government, enraged a king, threatened the English establishment—and baffled not only the Dublin police and Scotland Yard, but Sherlock Holmes himself. And, now, Jake expects Russell to step into the middle of it all? To slip away with him, not telling Holmes what she’s up to? Knowing that the theft—unsolved, hushed-up, scandalous—must have involved Mycroft Holmes as well?

Naturally, she can do nothing of the sort. Siding with her uncle, even briefly, could only place her in opposition to both her husband-partner and his secretive and powerful brother. She has to tell Jake no.

On the other hand, this is Jake—her father’s kid brother, her childhood hero, the beloved and long-lost survivor of a much-diminished family.

Conflicting loyalties and international secrets, blatant lies and blithe deceptions: sounds like another case for Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

---

Laurie R. King is the award-winning bestselling author of eighteen previous Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries, a series featuring SFPD cold-case Inspector Raquel Laing, the contemporary Kate Martinelli series, the historical Stuyvesant & Grey stories, and five acclaimed standalone novels. She lives in Northern California, where she is at work on her next Raquel Laing mystery.

---

Enjoy the conversation with Laurie R. King, Leslie Klinger and Barbara Peters.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Kimberly Belle and Julie Clark to the bookstore to talk about their latest books. Belle’s new book is The Expat Affair. Julie Clark’s Hot Book of the Week is The Ghostwriter. You can order signed copies of the books in the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of Kimberly Belle’s The Expat Affair.

An American expat’s startling discovery plunges her into the deadly world of Amsterdam’s diamond industry. 

Rayna Dumont came to Amsterdam for a fresh start. She’s never been the type for a one-night stand, but this move is all about adventure, and Xander is handsome and successful and more than willing to go along for the ride. Until the morning after, when Rayna finds him dead, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds missing from his safe.

Willow Prins is captivated by the news. Her husband is Xander’s former boss and heir to a diamond house, and the scandal strains their already-rocky marriage. As the house comes under scrutiny, Willow wonders how much of the blame she can place on Rayna. Soon, the two women are dragged into the dark underbelly of the diamond market, where they’ll have to uncover the truth to survive. Who killed Xander? Where are the missing diamonds? And who can you trust in a city thousands of miles from home?

---

Kimberly Belle is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author with over one million copies sold worldwide, with titles including The Paris Widow, The Marriage Lie, a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and the co-authored #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows. She divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam. 

---

Here’s the summary of The Ghostwriter.

June, 1975.

The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies. Because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write.

After fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk about what really happened that night in 1975.

---

Julie Clark is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lies I Tell and The Last Flight, both of which were also #1 international bestsellers and have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and a goldendoodle with poor impulse control.

---

Enjoy the conversation with Kimberly Belle and Julie Clark.

There are a few technical difficulties with the recent video with James Lee Burke. Patrick Millikin from The Poisoned Pen had to talk to Burke via phone. Burke’s latest book is Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie. There are signed copies available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4kRaOxb

Here’s the description of Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie.

Bestselling author James Lee Burke tells his most thrilling and insightful story yet through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Bessie Holland

At the beginning of the twentieth century, as America grapples with forces of human and natural violence more powerful than humanity has ever seen, Bessie Holland yearns for the love that she has never known. She finds a soulmate and mentor in a brilliant but tormented suffragette English teacher, who inspires Bessie to fight the forces of evil that permeate her world.

Watching the vast Texas countryside being destroyed by an oil company and a menacing figure with a violent past, Bessie is prepared to defend her home and her family. But when she accidentally kills an unarmed man to defend her father Hackberry, she must flee to New York. There, her older brother introduces her to boys who will grow into gangsters, but as children admire and respect Bessie’s spirit and fortitude as she is cast into a gangland that yearns for justice and mercy.

A welcome return to the beloved Holland series and populated with characters both radiant and despicable, Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie is an epic story of a remarkable young girl who fights against potentially overwhelming forces.

---

James Lee Burke is a New York Times bestselling author, two-time winner of the Edgar Award, winner of the CWA Gold Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in Fiction. He has authored forty novels and two short story collections. He lives in Missoula, Montana.

---

As I said, please overlook the technical difficulties.

As of the time I wrote this, there were 965 signed copies of Badlands at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore. Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore said they’ll all be sold by the weekend, so order your copy now. https://bit.ly/43ZW21s. And, Peters said many of the books will be going to Spain. Preston said he’s been told they’re bestsellers in Bulgaria and Russia.

Here’s the summary of Badlands.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors Preston & Child return with a thrilling tale in which archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson, while investigating bizarre deaths in the desert, awaken an ancient evil more terrifying than anything they’ve faced before.

In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found—and the case is assigned to FBI Agent Corrie Swanson. The victim walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands—lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods. 

Is it suicide or… sacrifice? 

Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When a second body is found—exactly like the other—the two realize the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins, and long-lost rituals, they find themselves confronting a dark power that, disturbed from its long slumber, threatens to exact an unspeakable price. 

---

The thrillers of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “stand head and shoulders above their rivals” (Publishers Weekly). Preston and Child’s Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen by readers in a National Public Radio poll as being among the one hundred greatest thrillers ever written, and Relic was made into a number one box office hit movie. They are coauthors of the famed Pendergast series and the newer, popular Nora Kelly series, and their recent novels include Badlands, Angel of Vengeance, Dead Mountain, The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, Diablo Mesa, Bloodless, The Scorpion’s Tail, and Crooked River. In addition to his novels, Preston is the author of the award-winning nonfiction book The Lost City of the Monkey God. Child is a Florida resident and former book editor who has published eight novels of his own, including such bestsellers as Chrysalis and Deep Storm.

---

Enjoy the conversation with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Laura Lippman’s Murder Takes a Vacation is The Poisoned Pen’s Cozy Crimes Subscription Book of the Month. If you want a copy, you should order it now from the Webstore. https://bit.ly/43OdhSj

We’re lucky to have Oline Cogdill’s review of Murder Takes a Vacation, reviewed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Book review: A river cruise is more than a getaway in energetically entertaining ‘Murder Takes a Vacation’

‘Murder Takes a Vacation’ by Laura Lippman; William Morrow; 272 pages; $30

Travel broadens our horizons, as the adage goes. It educates us in the ways of the world and changes us, sometimes in small ways, other times in large, unexpected ways. All that, and a lot more, happens to Muriel Blossom, the Baltimore widow whose adventures fuel Laura Lippman’s energetically entertaining “Murder Takes a Vacation.”

In this stand-alone novel, Lippman manages to combine a light amateur sleuth story with a harder-edged thriller, combining both types of mysteries, which seldom intersect, into a cohesive, solid plot.

“Murder Takes a Vacation” is an homage to the joys of travel, of discovering new passions, of never giving up — with a bit of a nod to “The Maltese Falcon.” It also is a valentine to aging well, to older women who often feel invisible, and a plea to not fade away.

Muriel Blossom — she prefers to be called Mrs. Blossom, as Lippman does throughout — has been a widow for a decade. At 68 years old, she feels she’s led a good life and, when her husband was alive, “even an excellent one,” but it’s also been “a rooted-to-the ground kind of existence.” She’s lived in Baltimore and more recently Phoenix, helping her daughter with the children. But now her daughter’s family is moving to Japan, where her son-in-law has accepted a promotion, and Mrs. Blossom wasn’t invited. Feeling more than a little adrift, Mrs. Blossom decides to return to Baltimore. But before that move, her life changes again when she finds an $8 million lottery ticket in a convenience store parking lot. No one claims the ticket.

To celebrate, Mrs. Blossom books a river cruise in France, planning a few days in Paris before her lifelong best friend, Elinor, joins her for a seven-day tour. Because she can, she is treating Elinor to the trip. Mrs. Blossom’s meticulous planning should assure smooth sailing, and it starts well when she’s upgraded on her transatlantic flight. Another surprise — she strikes up a friendship with Allan Turner, a charming, fellow traveler. Mrs. Blossom believes romance is a thing of the past, figuring that her plus size and age are drawbacks. But Allan seems romantically interested. They spend a wonderful time in London after they miss their connecting flight to Paris, tentatively making plans to have dinner in Baltimore.

Then Allan is found dead in Paris, where he is not supposed to be. Mrs. Blossom can’t seem to shake a young man, Danny Johnson, who keeps following her around in Paris, insisting on showing certain sights. And her hotel room is searched. All that happens before she sets sail.

Lippman superbly keeps “Murder Takes a Vacation” on course, adding realistic tension, dialogue and events that could happen to anyone. More experienced travelers might be aware of stranger danger and know how to avoid Danny. But Mrs. Blossom is more naive than worldly, not used to traveling and certainly not in a strange country, or by herself. She is not self-conscious about her size but she is about eating in restaurants solo.

Mrs. Blossom knows to call private investigator Tess Monaghan, the heroine of Lippman’s 12-novel series who makes clever cameo appearances. Mrs. Blossom worked as an assistant to Tess, frequently doing surveillance, knowing that older women often seem invisible to others.

Mrs. Blossom is a charming, appealing character, who would make a great travel companion and a true friend. Her emotional growth and new outlook on life are realistic.

Like in real life, this is a cruise that ends too soon. Readers will wish Mrs. Blossom much luck as she begins her new life when the cruise docks.

About the author

Earlier this year, the Mystery Writers of America named Laura Lippman and John Sandford as 2025 Grand Masters, an honor that recognizes their work. Lippman debuted in 1997 with “Baltimore Blues,” which introduced Tess Monaghan, a reporter-turned-private investigator. Lippman’s bibliography includes 12 books in the Tess series, 13 standalone novels, a short story collection, two essay collections, and a children’s book with her daughter. The Grand Master interview with Lippman and Sanford may be viewed at YouTube.com.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Linwood Barclay for a virtual event at the bookstore. Because Barclay lives in Canada, the bookstore doesn’t have signed copies of Whistle, but they do have Canadian author bookmarks. You can order copies of the book through the Webstore, https://bit.ly/43lPzxM. His latest book has elements of horror and supernatural.

Here’s the description of Whistle.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Terrific.”— Stephen King on Whistle

New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay enters new territory with a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed.

Evil has a one track mind….

Annie Blunt has had an unimaginably terrible year. First, her husband was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident, then one of the children’s books she’s built her writing and illustrating career on ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her son Charlie to a charming small town in upstate New York where they can begin to heal.

But Annie’s year is about to get worse.

Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed on their property. Annie is glad to see Charlie happy, but there’s something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night—she could swear she hears a train, but there isn’t an active track for miles—and bizarre things begin happening in the neighborhood. Worse, Annie can’t seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children’s book.

Grief can do strange things to the mind, but Annie is beginning to think she’s walked out of one nightmare straight into another, only this one is far more terrifying…

---

Linwood Barclay is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous previous novels and two thrillers for children. His books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. He wrote the screenplay adaptation for his novel Never Saw It Coming and his books The Accident and No Time for Goodbye have been made into TV series in France. No Time for Goodbye was a global bestseller. A native of Connecticut, he now lives in Toronto with his wife, Neetha.

---

Enjoy Barclay’s discussion of Whistle.

Are you ready for a sneak peek at William Kent Krueger’s twenty-first Cork O’Connor mystery, Apostle’s Cove? Release date is Sept. 2. Krueger will be at The Poisoned Pen for the release that day, at 7 PM. You can pre-order signed copies of the book through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3T3qcKY

Krueger recently sent out a newsletter, “News About Spirit Crossing and Apostle’s Cove”. You can pre-order a paperback copy of Spirit Crossing. https://bit.ly/43pjd5a

Here’s what Krueger said about Apostle’s Cove in his newsletter.

 About Apostle’s Cove

The New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor Mystery series — a “master class in suspense and atmospheric storytelling” (The Real Book Spy) — continues with Cork O’Connor revisiting a case from his past and confronting mysterious deaths in the present.

A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O’Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that decades ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit.

Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case, but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.

At the same time, Cork’s seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the investigation: the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County…and it won’t leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood.

Deb Lewis from The Poisoned Pen has some June book selections, ones she enjoyed. There should be links from each book, but you can also check out all of them at the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

A Terribly Nasty Business by Julia Seales 

 A spectacular follow-up to her debut in A Most Agreeable Murder, our heroine Beatrice is once again solving crimes—this time in chic London and in her own inimitable style. Filled with sly wit and clever twists, this mystery proves that murder is never easy to solve in a class-conscious society. If Jane Austen had turned her hand to writing mysteries, this would be the result.  

Welcome to Murder Week by Karen Dukess

American Cath finds a mysterious ticket while sorting through her recently departed mother’s belongings: a pass to Murder Week in a small English village. Flanked by her two best friends, she sets off to uncover the story behind her mother’s curious purchase—and ends up discovering more about her mother, and herself, in this charming, escapist read.  

Signed copies available, event June 14

Death At The White Hart by Chris Chibnall

A small English village. An unexpected killing—the owner of the town pub. A very public murder of a man who knew everyone’s secrets. A straight-up twisty British police procedural, with plenty of breadcrumbs to keep the pages turning. Highly recommend this one.  

The Medusa Protocol by Rob Hart 

 Mark—known in the assassin world as The Pale Horse—retired from his career as the world’s deadliest killer in Hart’s previous book, Assassins Anonymous. While that book was clever, this one is a step up: the repeat characters are fully fleshed out, the pacing is rapid, and the story is infused with heart. Mark and his fellow reformed assassins, bound by a code loosely based on the Alcoholics Anonymous program, are forced to save one of their own on a deadly black-ops island—without breaking their vow not to kill.  

Signed copies available, event June 17 

Next To Heaven by James Frey

Next to Heaven is a page-turning whodunit about the murder of depraved and dashing playboy–retired athlete Alexander “The Great.” With no shortage of disagreeable suspects and no end to the outlandish events, it’s a beach read in a designer trench coat—written so tongue-in-cheek you’ll find yourself Googling which current rich celeb the characters might be based on. Recommended for readers who like their mysteries messy, their characters messier, and their plotlines outrageously unhinged. Sex, drugs, orgies, and murder included.