Erica Ferencik, Girl in Ice

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently hosted Erica Ferencik for her first appearance at The Poisoned Pen. Ferencik’s latest thriller is Girl in Ice. There are signed copies of Girl in Ice available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3tTyfNM

Here’s the description of Girl in Ice.

From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has been thawed from the ice alive.

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

Erica Ferencik is the award-winning author of the acclaimed thrillers The River at Night, Into the Jungle, and Girl in Ice, which The New York Times Book Review declared “hauntingly beautiful.” Find out more on her website EricaFerencik.com and follow her on Twitter @EricaFerencik.

There’s a short blip in the video, but you can still learn about the background of Girl in Ice.

Brendan Slocumb’s Debut, The Violin Conspiracy

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, along with author Tess Gerritsen, welcomed debut author Brendan Slocumb to the bookstore. His book, The Violin Conspiracy, was the bookstore’s pick for First Mystery Club Mystery for February. There are just a few signed copies left through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3t66XUQ

Here’s the description of The Violin Conspiracy.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK! “¢ In this riveting page-turner, Ray McMillian is a Black classical musician on the rise—until a shocking theft sends him on a desperate quest to recover his lost family heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world. This “galvanizing blend of thriller, coming-of-age drama, and probing portrait of racism … will do for classical music what The Queen’s Gambit did for chess” (Booklist).

“This novel, which will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page, is sure to be a favorite.” —The Washington Post

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. If he’s lucky, he’ll get a job at the hospital cafeteria. If he’s extra lucky, he’ll earn more than minimum wage. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. 
 
When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition—the Olympics of classical music—the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad … before it’s too late.
 
With the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray’s great-great-grandfather asserting that the instrument is rightfully theirs, and with his family staking their own claim, Ray doesn’t know who he can trust—or whether he will ever see his beloved violin again.

Brendan Nicholaus Slocumb was raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and holds a degree in music education (with concentrations in violin and viola) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For more than twenty years he has been a public and private school music educator and has performed with orchestras throughout Northern Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. He is currently working on his second novel.

This is a meaty conversation. Enjoy!

Phillip Margolin & The Darkest Place

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The Darkest Place is Phillip Margolin’s fifth Robin Lockwood novel. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, led the discussion with him. You’ll enjoy Margolin’s background story for Robin. You can order a signed copy of The Darkest Place through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3tPQ7J9

Here’s the description of The Darkest Place.

Defense attorney Robin Lockwood faces an unimaginable personal disaster and her greatest professional challenge in the next New York Times bestselling Phillip Margolin’s new legal thriller, The Darkest Place.

Robin Lockwood is an increasingly prominent defense attorney in the Portland community. A Yale graduate and former MMA fighter, she’s becoming known for her string of innovative and successful defense strategies. As a favor to a judge, Robin takes on the pro bono defense of a reprehensible defendant charged with even more reprehensible crimes. But what she doesn’t know—what she can’t know—is how this one decision, this one case, will wreak complete devastation on her life and plans.

As she recovers from those consequences, Robin heads home to her small town of Elk Grove and the bosom of her family. As she tries to recuperate, a unique legal challenge presents itself—Marjorie Loman, a surrogate, is accused of kidnapping the baby she carried for another couple, and assaulting that couple in the process. There’s no question that she committed these actions but that’s not the same as being guilty of the crime. As Robin works to defend her client, she learns that Marjorie Loman has been hiding under a fake identity and is facing a warrant for her arrest for another, even more serious crime. And buried within the truth may once again be unexpected, deadly consequences.

PHILLIP MARGOLIN has written over twenty novels, most of them New York Times bestsellers, including Gone But Not Forgotten, Lost Lake, and Violent Crimes. In addition to being a novelist, he was a long time criminal defense attorney with decades of trial experience, including a large number of capital cases. Margolin lives in Portland, Oregon.

It’s a fascinating conversation between Margolin and Peters. Check it out!

Sarah Weinman & Scoundrel

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Sarah Weinman recently returned virtually to The Poisoned Pen to discuss her latest true crime book, Scoundrel. Like Weinman, who is the crime columnist for The New York Times Book Review, Patrick Millikin from the Pen is a book reviewer, so they had the chance to talk about book reviewing as well as Weinman’s new book. You can order a copy of Scoundrel through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3pTOBVp

Here’s the summary of Scoundrel.

A Recommended Read from: The Los Angeles Times * Town and Country * The Seattle Times * Publishers Weekly * Lit Hub * Crime Reads * Alma

From the author of The Real Lolita and editor of Unspeakable Acts, the astonishing story of a murderer who conned the people around him—including conservative thinker William F. Buckley—into helping set him free

In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned.

So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again.

From the people Smith deceived—Buckley, the book editor who published his work, friends from back home, and the women who loved him—to Americans who were willing to buy into his lies, Weinman explores who in our world is accorded innocence, and how the public becomes complicit in the stories we tell one another.

Scoundrel shows, with clear eyes and sympathy for all those who entered Smith’s orbit, how and why he was able to manipulate, obfuscate, and make a mockery of both well-meaning people and the American criminal justice system. It tells a forgotten part of American history at the nexus of justice, prison reform, and civil rights, and exposes how one man’s ill-conceived plan to set another man free came at the great expense of Edgar Smith’s victims.

Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: A Lost Girl, an Unthinkable Crime, and a Scandalous Masterpiece, and the editor, most recently, of Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession. She is a 2020 National Magazine Award finalist for reporting and a Calderwood Journalism Fellow at MacDowell, and her work has appeared most recently in New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post. Weinman writes the crime column for the New York Times Book Review and lives in New York City.

If you’re a true crime fan, you’ll want to watch this virtual event.

David Rosenfelt, Dogs & Citizen K-9

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David Rosenfelt returns for a Poisoned Pen virtual event to talk about Citizen K-9. Of course, when Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, talks with Rosenfelt, you’ll get a discussion of dogs as well. You can still order a signed copy of Citizen K-9 through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3w0ClpM

Here’s the summary of Citizen K-9.

In Citizen K-9, bestselling author David Rosenfelt masterfully blends mystery with dogs and humor to create an investigative team that readers will be rooting for book after book.

The Paterson Police Department has created a cold case division, and they want to hire the private investigators known as the K Team to look into the crimes. After all, Corey Douglas and his K-9 partner, German shepherd Simon Garfunkel, recently retired from the force. Plus, another K Team member, Laurie Collins, used to be a cop as well.

Their first cold case hits home for the K Team. A decade ago, at Laurie’s tenth high school reunion, two of their friends simply… vanished. At the time Laurie had just left the force, and Corey was in a different department, so they had no choice but to watch from the sidelines. With no leads, the case went cold.

As the team starts to delve deeper into the events leading up to that night—reopening old wounds along the way—the pieces start to come together. But someone wants to stop them from uncovering the truth behind the disappearance, by any means necessary.

DAVID ROSENFELT is the Edgar-nominated and Shamus Award-winning author of more than twenty Andy Carpenter novels, including One Dog Night, Collared, and Deck the Hounds; its spinoff series, The K-Team; the Doug Brock thriller series, which starts with Fade to Black; and stand-alone thrillers including Heart of a Killer and On Borrowed Time. Rosenfelt and his wife live in Maine with an ever-changing pack of rescue dogs. Their epic cross-country move with 25 of these dogs, culminating in the creation of the Tara Foundation, is chronicled in Dogtripping.

If you’re a fan of dogs or David Rosenfelt’s books, you’ll enjoy this conversation.

Rick Bleiweiss, His Story & Historical Mystery

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Evidently, there was a small problem with the opening of the virtual event with author Rick Bleiweiss. That’s okay. Jump into the video when you have a chance to listen to a fascinating conversation with Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen. Bleiweiss’ historical mystery is Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives. You can order a copy of the book through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3vV1Vg4

Here’s the description of Pignon Scorbion & the Barbershop Detectives.

For fans of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, author Rick Bleiweiss’s quirky new detective and ensemble cast of characters set against the backdrop of small-town England in the 1910s will feel both comfortingly familiar and thrillingly new.

The year is 1910, and in the small and seemingly sleepy English market town of Haxford, there’s a new police Chief Inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion strikes something of an odd figure among the locals, who don’t see a need for such an exacting investigator. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective.

Luckily, Scorbion and the local barber are old acquaintances, and the barbershop employs a cast of memorable characters who—together with an aspiring young ace reporter for the local Morning News—are nothing less than enthralled by the enigmatic new police Chief Inspector.

Investigating a trio of crimes whose origins span three continents and half a century, Pignon Scorbion and his “tonsorial sleuths” interview a parade of interested parties, but with every apparent clue, new surprises come to light. And just as it seems nothing can derail Scorbion’s cool head and almost unerring nose for deduction, in walks Thelma Smith—dazzling, whip-smart, and newly single.

Has Pignon Scorbion finally met his match?

Rick Bleiweiss started his career in music as a rock performer, producer of over fifty records, songwriter, and record company senior executive, and worked with Clive Davis, Melissa Etheridge, the Backstreet Boys, Kiss, U2, Whitney Houston, the BeeGees, and other industry legends.   

Since 2006 as a publishing company executive, he has acquired works by bestselling and award-winning authors including James Clavell, Gabriel García Márquez, Rex Pickett, Catherine Coulter, and Nicholas Sansbury Smith, among others.  

In his latest creative endeavor, Rick has crafted the Pignon Scorbion historical mystery series—blending his love of the past with the twisty deliciousness of a whodunit. 

 Follow Rick and Scorbion at www.RickBleiweiss.com 

Enjoy the conversation, and the introduction to Rick Bleiweiss.

Roy Johansen discusses Killer View

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed author Roy Johansen for his first appearance for the bookstore. Johansen’s latest book is Killer View. Signed copies will be available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3J0zil4

Here’s the description of Killer View.

New York Times bestselling author Roy Johansen delivers a thrill-a-minute read featuring a fearless heroine for hire.

Kendra Michaels, blind before gaining her sight via a revolutionary surgical procedure, offers her razor-sharp senses to assist her friend Jessie Mercado in a baffling case. An army vet and former bodyguard for the rich and famous, Jessie has faced all kinds of danger but one thing the motorcycle-riding private investigator has never encountered before is an incarceration consultant.

Preparing wealthy people to go to prison is big business. When Owen Blake of Mamertine Consulting hires Mercado to find his missing partner, their suspect list is filled with recently released white-collar criminals, a few drug kingpins, and a couple of murderers to keep things interesting.

As witnesses turn up dead and car chases leave destruction in their wake, Jessie and Kendra learn just how far someone will go to keep the fate of one man hidden. But why? Together they must hunt down the lethal secrets of Blake’s company, hell-bent on staying one step ahead of disaster.

Here’s Roy Johansen’s fascinating biography.

Roy Johansen began his professional writing career with his original screenplay for “Murder 101,” for which he won the national FOCUS award, sponsored by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese. The movie stars Pierce Brosnan, and the script won the Edgar Allen Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America in the Best Television Miniseries or Movie category.

Johansen has also collaborated with comic book legend Stan Lee in creating The Accuser superhero character and has written screenplays for Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Disney, and MGM. His novels include The Answer Man, Beyond Belief, and Deadly Visions in addition to nine works co-authored with Iris Johansen.

To find out more, visit:
RoyJohansen.com
Facebook.com/RoyJohansen.Author
Twitter @RoyJohansen

Enjoy this conversation with Roy Johansen.

C.J. Box, in Person

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I’m always so excited when the authors appear in person for The Poisoned Pen lately. C.J. Box just appeared to talk about his new book, Shadows Reel. He chatted with the audience and Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen. You’ll want to hear the real story behind Shadows Reel, the story of a librarian and a donation. Then, you might want to order a signed copy of the book through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3KtsyN6

Here’s the description of Shadows Reel.

Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett and his wife Marybeth make separate discoveries that put the Pickett family in a pair of killers’ crosshairs in this thrilling new novel in the bestselling series.

A day before the three Pickett girls come home for Thanksgiving, Joe is called out for a moose poaching incident that turns out to be something much more sinister: a local fishing guide has been brutally tortured and murdered.  At the same time, Marybeth opens an unmarked package at the library where she works and finds a photo album that belonged to an infamous Nazi official. Who left it there? And why?

She learns that during World War II, several Wyoming soldiers were in the group that fought to Hitler’s Eagles Nest retreat in the Alps—and one of them took the Fuhrer’s personal photo album. Did another take this one and keep it all these years?  When a close neighbor is murdered, Joe and Marybeth face new questions: Who is after the book? And how will they solve its mystery before someone hurts them…or their girls? 

Meanwhile, Nate Romanowski is on the hunt for the man who stole his falcons and attacked his wife. Using a network of fellow falconers, Nate tracks the man from one city to another. Even as he grasps the true threat his quarry presents, Nate swoops in for the kill—and a stunning final showdown.

C. J. Box is the author of twenty-two Joe Pickett novels, six stand-alone novels, and a story collection. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38, and has been a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. A Wyoming native, Box has also worked on a ranch and as a small-town newspaper reporter and editor. He lives outside Cheyenne with his family. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He’s an executive producer of ABC TV’s Big Sky, which is based on his Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell novels, as well as executive producer of the Joe Pickett television series for Paramount Studios/Spectrum Originals.

Enjoy this terrific event. It was live, but it was filmed for all of us who couldn’t be there.

Brad Meltzer’s The Lightning Rod

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Brad Meltzer’s The Lightning Rod is his second Zig & Nola book, following The Escape Artist. When Meltzer spoke for The Poisoned Pen, it was his first appearance for this latest book. There are signed copies available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3ILAJDX

Here’s the description of The Lightning Rod.

“Nola is the most accomplished kicker of ass since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” —A. J. Finn

Zig and Nola are back—in the hugely entertaining, highly anticipated follow-up to Brad Meltzer’s #1 New York Times bestselling thriller The Escape Artist.

What’s the one secret no one knows about you?

Archie Mint has a secret. He’s led a charmed life—he’s got a beautiful wife, two impressive kids, and a successful military career. But when he’s killed while trying to stop a robbery in his own home, his family is shattered—and then shocked when the other shoe drops. Mint’s been hiding criminal secrets none of them could have imagined.

While working on Mint’s body before his funeral, mortician “Zig” Zigarowski discovers something he was never meant to see. That telling detail leads him to Mint’s former top secret military unit and his connection to artist Nola Brown. Two years ago, Nola saved Zig’s life—so he knows better than most that she’s as volatile and dangerous as a bolt of lightning.

Following Nola’s trail, he uncovers one of the U.S. government’s most intensely guarded secrets—an undisclosed military facility that dates back to the Cold War and holds the key to something far more sinister: a hidden group willing to compromise the very safety and security of America itself.

Trouble always finds her…

She’s the lightning rod.

Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve thrillers including The Escape Artist, and nonfiction books such as The Lincoln Conspiracy and the Ordinary People Change the World series. He is also the host of the TV show Brad Meltzer’s Decoded on the History Channel. He lives in Florida with his wife and three children.

Brad Meltzer tells the story behind these books. Enjoy the conversation with Barbara Peters, owner of the The Poisoned Pen.