All the news seems to be about authors whose books are being adapted for TV or Netflix lately. Earlier this week, it was about Harlan Coben. Now, it’s Lee Child’s news about adapting his Jack Reacher novels for TV. Of course, that isn’t the only news. The Guardian reports that Child is giving his papers to the British Archive for Contemporary Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA). You can read the entire article here. https://bit.ly/2PRS4Qv

Of course, you can find Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2opkoNy

Don’t forget, you can pre-order a signed copy of the November release, Past Tense, and learn more about Reacher’s family history.

John Larison’s Whiskey When We’re Dry is the current Hot Book of the Week at the Poisoned Pen. The book itself is quite hot, as you’ll see below, but you can order signed copies through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2wuqujx

Here’s the description of Whiskey When We’re Dry.

Named a Best Book by Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, Goodreads, Southern Living, Outside Magazine, HelloGiggles, Parade, Fodor’s Travel, Sioux City Journal, Read it Forward, Medium.com, and NPR’s All Things Considered.
 
“A thunderclap of originality, here is a fresh voice and fresh take on one of the oldest stories we tell about ourselves as Americans and Westerners. It’s riveting in all the right ways — a damn good read that stayed with me long after closing the covers.” – Timothy Egan, New York Times bestselling author of The Worst Hard Time 

From a blazing new voice in fiction, a gritty and lyrical American epic about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and heads west

In the spring of 1885, seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney finds herself orphaned and alone on her family’s homestead. Desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbors, she cuts off her hair, binds her chest, saddles her beloved mare, and sets off across the mountains to find her outlaw brother Noah and bring him home. A talented sharpshooter herself, Jess’s quest lands her in the employ of the territory’s violent, capricious Governor, whose militia is also hunting Noah–dead or alive.

Wrestling with her brother’s outlaw identity, and haunted by questions about her own, Jess must outmaneuver those who underestimate her, ultimately rising to become a hero in her own right.

Told in Jess’s wholly original and unforgettable voice, Whiskey When We’re Dry is a stunning achievement, an epic as expansive as America itself–and a reckoning with the myths that are entwined with our history.

Mark De Castrique is one of the authors participating in the Ian Rankin Celebration sponsored by the Poisoned Pen on Labor Day weekend. https://bit.ly/2Pf1gNF. If you miss him at the conference, though, you can still order copies of his older books, or a signed copy of his new release, Secret Undertaking. The books are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2L2fHmE

What’s Secret Undertaking about?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nfs9VLjoyY&w=560&h=315]

Here’s the description.

Towns like Gainesboro, North Carolina, may be small but go big on local traditions. When funeral director and part-time deputy sheriff Barry Clayton and his childhood nemesis, Archie Donovan, Jr., unite to create a fundraising float in Gainesboro’s annual Apple Festival Parade, what could go wrong? With Archie involved – anything!

First, the Grand Marshal, NC Secretary of Agriculture Graham James, is attacked by a gunman and Barry’s Uncle Wayne is critically wounded in the melee. The assailant is killed. Then, when the body of a convenience store owner is discovered less than an hour later with the gunman’s food stamp card in his wallet, the case escalates. Two men dead. What is the connection?

Barry and Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins swiftly learn their small town offers no protection against big-time crime. The body count rises as the scope of their homicide investigation crosses into the realm of the U.S. Marshals and their secretive Witness Protection Program. To penetrate its walls, Barry and Tommy Lee resort to a most unlikely ally: Archie. Is the insurance agent, generally a victim of his own hare-brained schemes, capable of breaking the case, or will Archie find a way to become another of its casualties?

The trio’s secret undertaking into a convoluted conspiracy becomes a fight for survival in a world filled with betrayals where it’s impossible to know which people to trust.

With Harlan Coben’s new deal with Netflix, you might want to catch up with his books. The deal includes his upcoming March release, Run Away. You can pre-order that book, and order other books by Coben through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2PHnWar

On Monday, Deadline Hollywood released the information about Coben’s deal for adaptations of this books.  https://bit.ly/2MVi1Qw

Congratulations to Sulari Gentill, Poisoned Pen Press author. Her novel, Crossing the Lines, published in Australia by Pantera Press, and in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press, was just announced as this year’s Ned Kelly Award winner for Best Crime Novel.

Here’s what the Australian Crime Writers’ Association said.

Here’s the cover of Crossing the Lines as published by Poisoned Pen Press. You can order a copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2DdMLE1

Check out the summary of Sulari Gentill’s award-winning novel, Crossing the Lines.

“As one for whom certain story lines and characters have become as real as life itself, Crossing the Lines was a pure delight, a swift yet psychologically complex read, cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.” –Dean Koontz, New York Times Bestselling author

Sulari Gentill, author of the 1930s Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, jumps to the post-modern in Crossing the Lines.

A successful writer, Madeleine, creates a character, Edward, and begins to imagine his life. He, too, is an author. Edward is in love with a woman, Willow, who’s married to a man Edward loathes, and who loathes him, but he and Willow stay close friends. She’s an artist. As Madeleine develops the plot, Edward attends a gallery show where a scummy critic is flung down a flight of fire stairs…murdered. Madeleine, still stressed from her miscarriages and grieving her inability to have a child, grows more and more enamored of Edward, spending more and more time with him and the progress of the investigation and less with her physician husband, Hugh, who in turn may be developing secrets of his own.

As Madeline engages more with Edward, he begins to engage back. A crisis comes when Madeleine chooses the killer in Edward’s story and Hugh begins to question her immersion in her novel. Yet Crossing the Lines is not about collecting clues and solving crimes. Rather it’s about the process of creation, a gradual undermining of the authority of the author as the act of writing spirals away and merges with the story being told, a self-referring narrative crossing over boundaries leaving in question who to trust, and who and what is true.

For fans of Paul Auster, Jesse Kellerman, Vera Caspary’s Laura, Martin Amis, Haruki Murakami, Marisha Pessl

On Wednesday, August 29 at 7 PM, Hank Phillippi Ryan will be at The Poisoned Pen to discuss her just-released standalone, Trust Me. She’ll be joined that evening by Steve Hamilton who will sign Dead Man Running. Signed copies of both books, as well as other books by the authors, are available through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com

If you miss Hank on Wednesday evening, you can always catch up with her next weekend. She’s participating in the mystery celebration as Poisoned Pen hosts Ian Rankin and others to celebrate his thirty years of publication in the United States.

It’s always fun to put this investigative reporter “In the Hot Seat”. Hank took time to answer questions about Trust Me, and a few other topics. Thank you, Hank. “Taking time from your busy schedule” sounds so trite, but if anyone has a busy schedule, it’s Hank Phillippi Ryan.

LESA: Hank, although you’ve “visited” the blog and the Poisoned Pen before, we still need an introduction. Tell us about yourself, please.

HANK: I lead a double life! By day I’m the investigative reporter for Channel 7 in Boston—and I’ve been a reporter for 40 years. (And have 34 Emmys to prove it. I just don’t know what happened those years…) I’ve worked as a legislative aide for a US senate Judiciary committee, and as a staffer at Rolling Stone magazine, editing a column called Capitol Chatter, and doing projects with Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Avedon. I’m married to a truly good guy, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney—he was one of Mohammed Ali’s lawyers in his Supreme Court case, and he does a lot of incredibly great work. But at age 55 (!) I got a terrific idea for a mystery. And I thought—yes. This is what I’ve always wanted to do! And that became PRIME TIME, which own the Agatha for best first mystery. And now, amazingly, TRUST ME is my tenth novel. And first standalone.

LESA: Tell us what you can about Mercer Hennessey.

HANK: Ah. Mercer Hennessey is a main character in TRUST ME. She’s a magazine writer, successful and smart, who quit a fancy magazine job to be a wife to her dear husband Dex and their precious daughter Sophie. But—so sad!–when Dex and Sophie were killed in a terrible accident, Mercer’s life collapses. As the book opens she is writing the number 442 in the steam fogging her bathroom mirror—the number of days since she lost her family. And she’s wondering if there’s a real reason ever get up in the morning again. We like her, very much, and we feel sorry for her. But…

LESA: I read Trust Me, so I know it’s a hard story to summarize without spoilers, and it’s even hard to introduce Mercer. Give us the elevator pitch, please, without spoilers.

HANK: Yeah. That’s what stopped me above. An obsessed journalist. A pony-tailed suburban mom. Two strong women facing off in a high-stakes cat and mouse game to prove their truth about a terrible murder—but which one is the cat, and which one is the mouse? Only one can prevail. I dare you to find the liar.

(And it’s been chosen as a Best Thriller by Real Simple Magazine, and PopSugar, and the New York Post, and BookBub, and Crimereads. So I’m pretty excited. A starred review from Booklist called it “a knockout.” )

You know, I sit in this little study every day by myself and write—so those raves are pretty lovely to hear. And yours ,too, Lesa! “Better than Gone Girl?” Whoa. I had a t-shirt made of that.

LESA: You’ve written two series, the Jane Ryland books and the Charlie McNally mysteries. Now, a standalone. What was difficult about writing a standalone after writing a series? Was there a freedom involved as well?

HANK: Oh, it’s amazing. Amazing. In my series—well, let’s put it this way. Jane Ryland, the man character of SAY NO MORE and the other Ryland thrillers, isn’t gonna die. Right? We know that, because she and Jake will be back in book six. So our suspense comes from participating in the dangerous investigation with her—and seeing how she can solve the crime and find the bad guy using her skills and intelligence. We know she’ll get in trouble—it’s a thriller after all. But she’s not gonna die. And that’s a challenge, right? Because the reader knows that.

But in a standalone? Whoa. Anyone could die. Anyone could be guilty. Anything could happen. It’s a full speed ahead crazy no-holds-barred adventure—because the reader has no idea how the story is going to turn out. Absolutely anything could happen. And, interestingly, I had no idea what the outcome would be!

Earlier I said I dare you to find the liar. That’s a real dare—because I’ll reveal to you, dear Lesa, that as I was writing, I had no idea who was telling the truth, or what the truth even was. So people say wow, the end of Trust Me, that really surprised me! And I say, I know, right? Talk about a surprise ending, I surprised myself. Truly? The reason I loved coming to my computer every day was that I could not wait to see what happened.

LESA: What’s next? What are you working on, or what have you recently finished?

Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, because you can always get me to reveal everything—I’m almost done, (truly editor Kristin, almost done) with my next psychological standalone, The Murder List. So we can talk about that next July! Ish.

LESA: What’s on your busy book schedule? What are you doing in conjunction with the Poisoned Pen’s Ian Rankin celebration? What are you doing at Bouchercon this year?

HANK: I’m hosting the Agatha Christie tea, can you believe it? And we’ll have an amazingly hilarious quiz, and I know Barbara Peters is going to try to get me to wear a fascinator. Don’t tell her, but I absolutely refuse. (Are you wearing one?) And trust me, I’ll be there for all the events. I mean—Ian Rankin! My hero. We were together at an event in Boston, and I billed it as Hank “˜n Rankin.

Bouchercon? You know, that’s SO exciting. Trust Me will have been out for about thirty seconds when Bouchercon time comes, so I’m so eager to share it with everyone. I’m hosting the Dolly Parton auction with the amazing Lisa Unger, and doing three panels—yikes!—one with you! SO looking forward to seeing everyone.

And then big book tour! My publisher Forge is incredible—I’m on the road for months. And treasuring every moment. I hope to see everyone—my schedule is at www.HankPhillippiRyan.com

LESA: Here’s a question I frequently ask authors, but I don’t think I’ve asked you. When visitors come, and you want to show off Boston, where do you take them?

HANK: Great question! The USS Constitution, for sure. It’s fascinating, and historic, and always kind of brings a tear to my eye. We go to Boston Common, where I keep thinking Sam Adams and Paul Revere and John and Abigail Adams walked. The swan boats in the gorgeous Public Garden. And the Old City Hall, where the founding fathers stood on the balcony, and first read the Declaration of Independence out loud to the colonists below. Then we get lobster rolls at The No-Name Seafood restaurant for lunch. Then the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum—with its empty frames signifying the massive and still-unsolved robbery—and then a stroll through Beacon Hill, with a visit to Spenser’s apartment. Finally , dinner somewhere, at one of Boston’s topnotch restaurants, or maybe, at my house. And then, a walk through the North End for espresso and cannoli. Are you up for it?

LESA: I’m ready, Hank! I love to visit new places. You’ve traveled quite a bit as a reporter, an author, and when you were President of Sisters in Crime. What city or country is still on your bucket list, and why?

HANK: Well, the US! Alaska, I’d really love to go! It seems so vast, and dangerous and beautiful and gorgeous. (It’s Kristin Hannah’s fault.) And the Amalfi Coast. And weirdly, I’ve never been to Venice. So, there.

LESA: I’ve never asked about your childhood reading. What books did you love as a child?

HANK: Aww. I read all the Edward Eager books, again and again. Magic or Not, and Half Magic, and Knight’s Castle, and still love them–they are truly still wonderful. The Mushroom Planet! Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton, my very very favorite. My parents lost me for an entire month as I devoted my life to reading all the Sherlock Holmes short stories and novellas. Agatha Christie—what a revelation! Brilliant. Life-changing. I was hooked. So I moved from that to the other Golden Age mysteries, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers. Whoa. And I fell in love, forever love, with mysteries. As a teenager, though, I was a thriller reader—Seven Days in May, Fail Safe, Alas Babylon, The Manchurian Candidate, On the Beach. And I sneaked Marjorie Morningstar.

LESA: I’ll end with a question I can always ask, because book piles change. What’s on your current TBR pile?

HANK: Ah. I’m judging for a contest so I cannot tell you. Trust Me. But my TBR is a dangerous thing. Isn’t yours?

Hank’s right. My TBR pile is dangerous, and I hope you’re going to be adding Trust Me to your own To Be Read pile.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, winning 34 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. Nationally bestselling author of 10 mysteries, Ryan’s also an award-winner in her second profession—with five Agathas, two Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and Mary Higgins Clark Award. Critics call her “a master of suspense.” Her novels are Library Journal’s Best of 2014, 2015 and 2016. Hank’s newest book is the acclaimed standalone psychological suspense thriller TRUST ME (August 28, 2018) “’ the Booklist starred review says “It’s a knockout.” It’s named one of the Best Thrillers of Summer 2018 by New York Post, BOOK BUB, PopSugar, CrimeReads and Real Simple Magazine.

TRUST ME

An obsessed journalist. A suburban mom.  Two strong women face off and a high-stakes cat and mouse game to prove their truth about a terrible crime. But which one is the cat, and which one is the mouse?  Only one can prevail. We dare you to find the liar.

Have you heard all the talk about Christina Dalcher’s debut novel, Vox? It’s available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2Nl41g8

Here’s the summary of Vox.

“[An] electrifying debut.”–O, Oprah Magazine
“The real-life parallels will make you shiver.”–Cosmopolitan

Set in a United States in which half the population has been silenced, Vox is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.

On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than one hundred words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can’t happen here. Not in America. Not to her.

This is just the beginning…

Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words each day, but now women have only one hundred to make themselves heard.

…not the end.

For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.

*****

You actually have two opportunities to hear Christina Dalcher’s voice, thanks to Penguin Random House. She’s talking in one video about what she’s reading. In the other, she presents this week’s Seven Sentence Story called “The Burden of Proof”.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44dbZ68o3c&w=560&h=315]

Reavis Wortham’s seventh Red River mystery, Gold Dust, will be released on September 4th. You can order a signed copy now through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2MJBWlj

If you’re signed up for the Poisoned Pen Conference/Rebusfest, scheduled for Sept. 2 and 3, you can meet Wortham there. https://bit.ly/2w7Lc9l

Mike Barson recently interviewed Reavis Wortham for Crimespree Magazine. Check out the interview here. https://bit.ly/2P3nlPp

Interested? Here’s the summary of Gold Dust.

As the 1960s draw to a close, the rural northeast Texas community of Center Springs is visited by two nondescript government men in dark suits and shades. They say their assignment is to test weather currents and patterns, but that’s a lie. Their delivery of a mysterious microscopic payload called Gold Dust from a hired crop duster coincides with fourteen-year-old Pepper Parker’s discovery of an ancient gold coin in her dad’s possession. Her adolescent trick played on a greedy adult results in the only gold rush in north Texas history. Add in modern-day cattle-rustlers and murderers, and Center Springs is once again the bull’s-eye in a deadly target.

The biological agent deemed benign by the CIA has unexpected repercussions, putting Pepper’s near-twin cousin, Top, at death’s door. The boy’s crisis sends their grandfather, Constable Ned Parker, to Washington D.C. to exact personal justice, joined by a man Ned left behind in Mexico and had presumed dead. The CIA agents who operate on the dark side of the U.S. government find they’re no match for men who know they’re right and won’t stop. Especially two old country boys raised on shotguns.

But there’s more. Lots more. Top Parker thought only he had what had become known as a Poisoned Gift, but Ned suffers his own form of a family curse he must deploy. Plus, there are many trails to follow as the lawmen desperately work to put an end to murder and government experimentation that extends from their tiny Texas town to Austin and, ultimately, to Washington, D.C. Traitors, cattle-rustlers, murderers, rural crime families, grave robbers, CIA turncoats, and gold-hungry prospectors pursue agendas that all, in a sense, revolve around the center of this small vortex called Center Springs.

Gold Dust seems to be fiction, but the truth is, it has already happened.

Patrick Millikin, Customer Service Manager at the Poisoned Pen, is the perfect one to write about George Pelecanos and his latest book, The Man Who Came Uptown. Patrick is the staff noir expert, as well as the editor of Phoenix Noir and The Highway Kind. Millikin’s latest article for Publishers Weekly is “George Pelecanos Knows Why Inmates Need Books.” The article can be found here. https://bit.ly/2ByckDy

Millikin’s article is timed just before the September 4 release of Pelecanos’ new book, The Man Who Came Uptown. The book will be the Poisoned Pen’s October Modern First Clubs Pick, however you can preorder a signed copy of that book, or copies of Pelecanos’ other ones through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2BKcQie

Here’s the summary of The Man Who Came Uptown.

In bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer George Pelecanos’ “taut and suspenseful” new novel, an ex-offender must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path (Booklist, Starred Review)

Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison’s librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael’s trial.

The current Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen is T. Greenwood’s Rust & Stardust. It’s based on the true crime story that inspired Nabokov’s Lolita. You can order a signed copy of Rust & Stardust through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2MpIRkd

Here’s the summary of Rust & Stardust.

“Greenwood’s glowing dark ruby of a novel brilliantly transforms the true crime story that inspired Nabokov’s Lolita. Shatteringly original and eloquently written….So ferociously suspenseful, I found myself holding my breath.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You

Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth’s, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says.

This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.

Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconic Lolita, this heart-pounding story by award-winning author T. Greenwood at last gives a voice to Sally herself.