Fiction Review

Join The Poisoned Pen on Facebook on Saturday, Jan. 30 at 4 PM (6 PM ET) for the virtual book launch of Donis Casey’s latest book, Valentino Will Die. Signed copies of Valentino Will Die, the second Bianca Dangereuse Hollywood Mystery, are available through the Web Store, along with copies of The Wrong Girl, the first in the series. Casey’s Alafair Tucker mysteries are also available. https://bit.ly/2F9BIwo

Here’s the summary of Valentino Will Die.

Donis Casey. Valentino Will Die (The Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, $15.99 Signed). WHO IS TRYING TO KILL THE WORLD’S GREATEST LOVER?

Though Bianca LaBelle, star of the wildly popular silent movie serial “The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse”, and Rudolph Valentino, the greatest screen idol of all time, have been friends for years, in the summer of 1926 they are making their first picture together, a steamy romance called Grand Obsession. One evening after dinner at Bianca’s fabulous Beverly Hills estate, a troubled Rudy confesses that he has received anonymous death threats. In a matter of days, filming comes to an abrupt halt when Rudy falls deathly ill. Could it be poison?

As Rudy lies dying, Bianca promises him that she will find out who is responsible. Was it one of his many lovers? A delusional fan? Or perhaps Rudy had run afoul of a mobster whose name Bianca knows all too well? She calls on P.I. Ted Oliver to help her investigate the end of what had seemed to be the charmed life of Valentino.

DONIS CASEY was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A third generation Oklahoman, she and her siblings grew up among their aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents on farms and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering state. Donis graduated from the University of Tulsa with a degree in English, and earned a Master’s degree in Library Science from Oklahoma University. After teaching school for a short time, she enjoyed a career as an academic librarian, working for many years at the University of Oklahoma and at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

Donis left academia in 1988 to start a Scottish import gift shop in downtown Tempe. After more than a decade as an entrepreneur, she decided to devote herself full-time to writing. The Old Buzzard Had It Coming is her first book. For the past twenty years, Donis has lived in Tempe, AZ, with her husband.

Kate Mosse, author of The Burning Chambers, continues her historical fiction series that covers 300 years, with the second book, The City of Tears. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, introduced Mosse to the audience for her virtual event, along with Brad Meltzer, who then hosted the rest of the event. Both books are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3aaDyye

Because the series begins with The Burning Chambers, let’s start with the summary of that book.

“For fans of juicy historical fiction, this one might just develop into their next obsession.”—EW.com

From Kate Mosse, the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of Labyrinth, comes The Burning Chambers, the first in an epic new series.

Power and Prejudice: France, 1562. War sparks between the Catholics and Huguenots, dividing neighbors, friends, and family—meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: She knows that you live.

Love and Betrayal: Before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, she meets a young Huguenot convert, Piet Reydon. Piet has a dangerous task of his own, and he will need Minou’s help if he is to stay alive. Soon, they find themselves on opposing sides, as forces beyond their control threaten to tear them apart.

Honor and Treachery: As the religious divide deepens, Minou and Piet find themselves trapped in Toulouse, facing new dangers as tensions ignite across the city—and a feud that will burn across generations begins to blaze. . .

“A masterly tour of history . . . a breathless thriller, alive with treachery, danger, atmosphere, and beauty.”—A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

Here is The City of Tears, the current book in a proposed quartet of books.

Following #1 Sunday Times bestseller The Burning Chambers, New York Times bestseller Kate Mosse returns with The City of Tears, a sweeping historical epic about love in a time of war.

Alliances and Romance

August 1572: Minou Joubert and her husband Piet travel to Paris to attend a royal wedding which, after a decade of religious wars, is intended to finally bring peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots.

Loyalty and Deception

Also in Paris is their oldest enemy, Vidal, in pursuit of an ancient relic that will change the course of history.

Revenge and Persecution

Within days of the marriage, thousands will lie dead in the street, and Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds . . .

If you’re a fan of history or historical fiction, you’ll enjoy the conversation about history and Kate Mosse’s books, the conversation between Kate Mosse and Brad Meltzer.

While Kwei Quartey’s latest Emma Djan Investigation, Sleep Well My Lady, is the Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen, Quartey himself is hot right now. On Monday, the first book in the series, The Missing American, was named a finalist for the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Novel. You can order signed copies of both books through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3pfRc9H

Here’s Sleep Well My Lady.

In the follow-up to the acclaimed series debut The Missing American, PI Emma Djan investigates the death of a Ghanaian fashion icon and social media celebrity, Lady Araba.

Hard-hitting talk show host Augustus Seeza has become a household name in Ghana, though notorious for his lavish overspending, alcoholism, and womanizing. He’s dating the imposing, beautiful Lady Araba, who leads a selfmade fashion empire. Fearing Augustus is only after her money, Araba’s religious family intervenes to break them up. A few days later, just before a major runway show, Araba is found murdered in her bed. Her driver is arrested after a hasty investigation, but Araba’s favorite aunt, Dele, suspects Augustus Seeza was the real killer.

Almost a year later, Dele approaches Emma Djan, who has finally started to settle in as the only female PI at her agency. To solve Lady Araba’s murder, Emma must not only go on an undercover mission that dredges up trauma from her past, but navigate a long list of suspects with strong motives. Emma quickly discovers that they are all willing to lie for each other—and that one may still be willing to kill.

Here’s the Edgar nominee, The Missing American.

Finalist for the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Novel

Accra private investigator Emma Djan’s first missing persons case will lead her to the darkest depths of the email scams and fetish priests in Ghana, the world’s Internet capital.

When her dreams of rising through the Accra police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her career. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. It’s not the future she imagined, but it’s her best option.

Meanwhile, Gordon Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington, DC, has found solace in an online community after his wife’s passing. Through the support group, he’s even met a young Ghanaian widow he’s come to care about. When her sister gets into a car accident, he sends her thousands of dollars to cover the hospital bill—to the horror of his only son, Derek. Then Gordon decides to surprise his new love by paying her a visit—and disappears. Fearing for his father’s life, Derek follows him across the world to Ghana, Internet capital of the world, where he and Emma will find themselves deep in a world of sakawa scams, fetish priests, and those willing to kill to protect their secrets.

Curious about the author?

Based in Pasadena, California, Kwei Jones Quartey, M.D. is a writer of African crime fiction. He practiced medicine for more than 20 years while simultaneously working as a writer, balancing the two careers by writing early mornings before clinic. However, in 2018, he made the decision to retire from medicine to write full time.

The son of a Black American mother and Ghanaian father, Dr. Quartey is a Ghanaian-American writer who grew up in both Ghana and the United States. His passion is to promote African American writers, African literature, African bestseller fiction, and African mystery writers.

Dr. Quartey feels that African mysteries (sometimes called “Sunshine Noir”) deserve a seat at the table of international thrillers and mysteries. His novels are the only contemporary West African mystery series issued by major international publishers such as Penguin-Random House and Soho Press in the United States, and Allison & Busby in the United Kingdom.

Join us at Facebook, Thursday, January 28 at 6 PM (8 PM ET) when Gregg Hurwitz discusses his new Orphan X novel, Prodigal Son, with guest host Isabella Maldonado.

Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times, #1 internationally bestselling author of 22 thrillers, including the ORPHAN X series, and two award-winning thriller novels for teens. His novels have won numerous literary awards, graced top ten lists, and have been published in 32 languages.

Gregg has written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios (including THE BOOK OF HENRY), and written, developed, and produced television for various networks. He is also a New York Times bestselling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel (Wolverine, Punisher) and DC (Batman, Penguin). He has published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare, taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and for Harvard in the United States and internationally. In the course of researching his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swum with sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults.

Additionally, Gregg is actively working to end polarization in politics and on college campuses. To that end, he’s produced several hundred commercials which got over a hundred million views on digital and TV platforms. His editorial pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Bulwark, and others.

You can order signed copies of Prodigal Son through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2Y7Dudb

Gregg Hurwitz. Prodigal Son (St Martins Press, $27.99 Signed). Forced into retirement, Evan Smoak gets an urgent request for help from someone he didn’t even suspect existed—in Prodigal Son, the next New York Times bestselling Orphan X book from Gregg Hurwitz.

As a boy, Evan Smoak was pulled out of a foster home and trained in an off-the-books operation known as the Orphan Program. He was a government assassin, perhaps the best, known to a few insiders as Orphan X. He eventually broke with the Program and adopted a new name—The Nowhere Man—and a new mission, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. But the highest power in the country has made him a tempting offer—in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do—live a normal life.

But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew—his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran—a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line—including his own life.

If you’d like to read an excerpt of Prodigal Son, check out the sneak preview on https://CriminalElement.com, https://bit.ly/2Mp0jpO.

One of the advantages of the virtual events at The Poisoned Pen is the ability to share virtual book launches and visit with authors on a national, and even international stage. Lisa Gardner’s latest book, Before She Disappeared, is the Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen. You can order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/39Qr1jq

The Poisoned Pen kicked off Gardner’s virtual book tour. Here’s the description of Before She Disappeared.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner, a propulsive thriller featuring an ordinary woman who will stop at nothing to find the missing people that the rest of the world has forgotten

Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will–searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking.

A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim’s wary family tells Frankie she’s on her own–and she soon learns she’s asking questions someone doesn’t want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

Riley Sager, author of Home Before Dark, interviewed Lisa Gardener for this event. Enjoy the conversation!

Yesterday, we lost Sharon Kay Penman, a bestselling historical novelist and friend to The Poisoned Pen.

Sharon Kay Penman was the author of nine critically acclaimed historical novels: The Sunne in Splendour, Here be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning, When Christ and his Saints Slept, Time and Chance, Devil’s Brood, Lionheart, and A King’s Ransom. Her tenth historical novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, was published in March of 2020.  She also wrote four medieval mysteries. Her first was The Queen’s Man, the queen in question being Eleanor of Aquitaine, a finalist for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery from the Mystery Writers of America. Her other mysteries are Cruel as the Grave, Dragon’s Lair, and Prince of Darkness.

Last year, she and I corresponded with the intention of posting an interview when The Land Beyond the Sea was published. Between deadlines and her health, she was never able to complete the interview, but she was so kind in her correspondence.

This was the announcement that appeared on Penman’s Facebook page yesterday morning.

“As many of you know, Sharon has been having various health issues for some time. In the past 18 months, things escalated, and she began to experience more symptoms and extreme fatigue. It was only recently she was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer that had already reached stage 4. On Monday of this week, she was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia. She passed away quietly, in her sleep, this morning. Her family grieves, and now those who loved her well along with you, her fans, join with them. News of a memorial is pending.”

May she rest in peace.

Just look at the schedule of authors coming to The Poisoned Pen via virtual events. The rest of January and February looks terrific. But, a word to the wide. If there’s a book you want from one of these authors, it’s smart to pre-order it from the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s that terrific calendar of events.

John Charles from The Poisoned Pen asks one of my favorite questions of authors. Who were you before you became an author? You’ll have to check the conversation to hear their answers. Christina Dodd, author of Wrong Alibi, and Jayne Ann Krentz, author of All the Colors of Night, answered Charles’ questions recently. You can find signed copies of their books in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s Christina Dodd’s Wrong Alibi.

Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd delivers an all-new thriller, featuring a bold and brash female protagonist.

WRONG JOB
Eighteen-year-old Evelyn Jones lands a job in small-town Alaska, working for a man in his isolated mountain home. But her bright hopes for the future are shattered when Donald White disappears, leaving her to face charges of theft, embezzlement—and a brutal double murder. Her protestations of innocence count for nothing. Convicted, she faces life in prison…until fate sends her on the run.

WRONG NAME
Evie’s escape leaves her scarred and in hiding, isolated from her family, working under an alias at a wilderness camp. Bent on justice, intent on recovering her life, she searches for the killer who slaughters without remorse.

WRONG ALIBI
At last, the day comes. Donald White has returned. Evie emerges from hiding; the fugitive becomes the hunter. But in her mind, she hears the whisper of other forces at work. Now Evelyn must untangle the threads of evidence before she’s once again found with blood on her hands: the blood of her own family…

“This is Dodd at her brilliant best.”
—Booklist (starred review) on Strangers She Knows

Dodd’s twisty suspense will have readers turning the pages and keeping the lights on at night.

Here’s the summary of All the Colors of Night by Jayne Ann Krentz.

An instant New York Times bestseller!

Two psychics plunge into a dark world of deadly secrets in this second installment in the Fogg Lake trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz.
 
North Chastain possesses a paranormal talent that gives him the ability to track down the most dangerous psychic criminals. When his father suddenly falls into a coma-like state, North is convinced it was caused by a deadly artifact that traces back to the days of a secret government program known only as the Bluestone Project. North knows his only hope of saving his father is to find the artifact. He is good when it comes to tracking down killers, but to locate the relic he’s going to need help from a psychic who knows the shadowy world of obsessive collectors, deceptive dealers and ruthless raiders.…
 
With her reputation in ruins after a false accusation, antiques expert Sierra Raines is looking for a fresh start. She turns to the murky backwaters of the paranormal artifacts trade, finding and transporting valuable objects with a psychic provenance. When North Chastain approaches her for help, Sierra takes him on as a client, though not without reservations. North represents the mysterious Foundation, the secretive organization established to police the underworld populated by psychic criminals and those, like Sierra, who make a living in the shadows of that world.
 
North and Sierra soon find themselves at the scene of the Incident, which occurred decades ago in Fogg Lake. The town and its residents were forever changed by the disaster in the nearby Bluestone Project labs. The pair unearths shocking truths about what happened that fateful night, but they are playing with fire—someone in town knows what they’ve discovered and will do anything to make sure the secrets stay buried.

If you enjoy these authors, you’ll appreciate the conversation between Jayne Ann Krentz, Christina Dodd, and John Charles.

Reavis Z. Wortham’s eighth Texas Red River mystery, Laying Bones, has just been released. Fellow Texas author Joe R. Lansdale stepped in to lead the conversation with Wortham for The Poisoned Pen. You can find Wortham’s books in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2yinlUS

Here’s the summary of Laying Bones.

The stakes don’t get much higher than murder…

It’s January 1969 in the small rural community of Center Springs, Texas. Constable Ned Parker suspects a larger mystery behind the seemingly accidental death of his nephew, R .B., who was found in his overturned pickup near Sanders Creek bridge. It appears that R. B. drowned in the shallow water, but something doesn’t add up for Ned, who begins turning over stones in search of what really happened the night R. B. died.

The mystery leads Ned to the Starlite Club, a dangerous honky-tonk recently constructed in a no-man’s land on the Lone Star side of the Red River. His investigations there uncover suspicious characters, drugs, and gambling, but even more troubling are a series of murders that seem designed to eliminate anyone who might know what really happened to R. B. on that cold January night.

As he works his way through the cover-up, Ned lands himself in a high-stakes game of consequences with no good end in sight. Are the good citizens of Center Springs conspiring against Constable Parker in his search for the truth?

In this thrilling addition to the historical Texas Red River Mystery Series, Constable Ned Parker bets big, but only time will tell if he’ll win justice or a grave of his own.

You can tell Reavis Z. Wortham and Joe R. Lansdale enjoy each other’s company. All you have to do is read Michael Barson’s interview with Wortham in Bookreporter. When asked about his favorite Texas novelists, Wortham mentions Lansdale among others. Here’s that interview. https://bit.ly/3ippRiM

Here’s the conversation about writing with Wortham and Lansdale.