Fiction Review

Daniel Price, author of The Flight of the Silvers and The Song of the Orphans, the first books in a science fiction trilogy, agreed to answer a few questions. He’ll be appearing at The Poisoned Pen on Thursday, July 6 at 7 PM. I enjoy the humor shown by so many science fiction and fantasy writers. I hope you check out Daniel’s answers.

Daniel, would you introduce yourself to readers?

Of course. My name’s Daniel Price. I was born and raised in New York City, but I spent most of my adult life in Los Angeles. Two years ago, I fell in love with a fellow writer and moved to Arizona to be with her. She promised I’d get used to the heat out there. That has yet to happen.

I’m a cancer survivor, a graphic designer, an unabashed liberal, and an incorrigible nerd. I also write novels. Penguin has published the first two volumes of my science fiction trilogy, and they’re waiting anxiously for the third one. I’m working on it. I swear.

Would you introduce us to Hannah and Amanda Given and their companions?

The main characters of my series are two sisters and four strangers who were all just ordinary people on our world. Then, without warning, the sky all over Earth turns a bright shade of white and begins descending in a sheet of solid force. Everything’s gone in a matter of moments, but our six heroes are saved by mysterious beings who slap a silver bracelet on each of their wrists.

Next thing they know, these Silvers (as their rescuers call them) have been transported to an alternate Earth, one where history took a sharp left turn in 1912. Now restaurants hover through the air like flying saucers and the fabric of time is manipulated by common household appliances. Our heroes have no idea where they are, what they’re doing, or why they all suddenly have freakish time-bending abilities, but they’re eager to find out. Unfortunately, there are no shortage of people on this world who want to kill them, study them, or simply get revenge. There’s one man who, thanks to extreme temporal manipulations, has a long and fractious history with the Silvers. They don’t remember him at all, but he remembers everything about them.

And just that’s the start of our heroes’ problems.

I’m sure it’s hard to summarize The Song of the Orphans without background information from The Flight of the Silvers.  What can you tell us, without spoilers?

The Flight of the Silvers serves as a frenetic introduction to our six main characters and the strange new world they find themselves on. It’s centered around their cross-country quest to find the one man who can help them sort out the mess they’re in.

In The Song of the Orphans, the Silvers are more firmly situated. They have a clearer sense of what’s going on and the stakes of the conflict they’ve been pulled into. But their enemies are getting smarter too, and the mysterious beings who saved our heroes from apocalypse didn’t just do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They have their own plans for the Silvers, and now they’re finally ready to act on them.

Wow. You’re right. It is hard to summarize this stuff. Just read the books, people. You won’t regret it. (Unless you do.)

I’m not going to ask you about the third book. Instead, I’m going to ask you to talk about the use of time in your books.

Yeah, there’s a lot of time-bending going on in my stories, either by superpowered people or by high-tech devices. In writing the Silvers series, I challenged myself to come up with as many different forms of temporal manipulation as I possibly could without relying on time travel. There’s a woman who can slow down time and move faster than everyone around her. There’s a boy who can see the past of any area and reproduce it as holograms. There’s a girl who gets handwritten notes from her future selves, both helpful and not-so-helpful. And those just a few of the ways I screw with time in my books.

More than that, I explore the complex relationship that human beings have with time. Our heroes all survived a devastating apocalypse and are now hunted people on a dying Earth. Needless to say, they’re thinking a lot about their own mortality. The big question is how do you spend your limited time? Do you aim for quality or quantity? Do you settle for contention or do you fight to live a perfect life, enemies be damned? The time-bending takes a back seat to the struggles of my characters.

When did you first realize you wanted to become a writer?

When I first saw Star Wars in the theaters. Like most kids at the time, I became fanatically obsessed with the world, the characters, the sheer emotional power of the story. I spent the next two years rewriting the screenplay in my head, mostly to incorporate myself into the plot. I was Luke’s plucky little brother (a Jedi, of course), with my own side story and character arc.

It turned out I really liked storyelling. There was nothing else I ever really wanted to do. I was writing my own sci-fi at the age of nine and I never stopped. If my critics are right, then I never improved either.

Tell us about your first experience at a Con.

It was the San Diego Comic-Con of 2004. I went into a restroom and saw a guy dressed as Batman helping a guy dressed as Joker with his lipstick. If that doesn’t sum up Comic-Con, nothing does. It also confirms some long-held theories I’ve had about the Batman/Joker dynamic.

What authors have inspired you?

Oh God. There are too many to count. I’ll just list three:

Kurt Vonnegut. One of my favorite authors of all time. He didn’t consider himself a sci-fi writer, but the Sirens of Titan ranks up there with the best SF classics. He also did some mindblowing time manipulation in Slaughterhouse Five. But between all his high-faluting concepts, Vonnegut never lost sight of the characters. Every one of his novels has something deep and profound to say about human nature. He was just a genius all around.

Chris Claremont. He wrote X-Men comics for Marvel for 17 years, and turned them into the greatest superhero team of all time. (Come at me, nerds. I can argue this for days.) There’s a lot of his influence in my Silvers series, from the superpowers to the group dynamics. It’s not easy to take a group of spandex-wearing mutants and make them seem like real people, but Claremont did it.

JK Rowling. Yeah, I know it’s cliché to cite her as an influence, but her Harry Potter books are a master class in storytelling, especially Books 4 and 5. Not only is she amazing at worldbuilding and characterization, she knows how to get out of her own way. One sentence into any chapter and you forget she’s there. By the second sentence, you forget you’re even reading a book. You’re in the scene. You’re there.

What author would you like to recommend who you think has been underappreciated?

My fiancée, Nancy Price. Four years ago, she wrote a time travel novel called Dream of Time that was absolutely fantastic. It got lost in the clog of Amazon indies, which is a shame. She brought the San Francisco of 1900 to life with insanely detailed research, and she wrapped the whole story around a smart and endearing main character. Her book also had one of the best endings I’ve ever read. She’s brilliant.

And if you’re wondering why my fiancée and I already have the same last name, it’s just odd coincidence. I’m trying to convince her to change her name to Price-Price when we get married. She’s stubbornly resistant to the idea.

And, now that you’ve moved to Arizona, where do you take people when they come to visit?

Inside, where it’s air-conditioned. Seriously, how do you people live in this heat?

As I mentioned, Daniel will be at The Poisoned Pen on Thursday, July 6 at 7 PM. You can order his books through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2ui7cuL

Daniel Price’s website is https://danielprice.info/

It’s a holiday weekend, so let’s have a little fun with C.J. Box’ forthcoming book. C. J. Box will be at The Poisoned Pen on July 31 at 7 PM. The final book in his Highway Quartet, Paradise Valley, comes out July 25.

Here’s the summary, as it appears in the Web Store.

She almost caught him once. Now, he’s back.

For three years, Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on a hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Cassie almost caught him… once.

Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff’s department, Cassie has set what she believes is the perfect trap and she has lured him and his truck to a depot. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and the blame falls on Cassie. Disgraced, she loses her job and investigation into her role is put into motion.

At the same time, Kyle Westergaard, a troubled kid whom Cassie has taken under her wing, has disappeared after telling people that he’s going off on a long-planned adventure. Kyle’s grandmother begs Cassie to find him and, with nothing else to do, Cassie agrees – all the while hunting the truck driver.

Now Cassie is a lone wolf. And in the same way that two streams converge into a river, Kyle’s disappearance may have a more sinister meaning than anyone realizes. With no allies, no support, and only her own wits to rely on, Cassie must take down a killer who is as ruthless as he is cunning. But can she do it alone, without losing her own humanity or her own life?

*****

And, here’s Adam Wagner’s .GIFnotes Summary as it appears on Criminal Element. “GIFnotes: Giving you the basic plot summary of an upcoming book with the help of the Graphics Interchange Format.” https://bit.ly/2u82qkk

We’re a month out, but, if our summary, or Wagner’s, entices you, you can pre-order a signed copy of Paradise Valley through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2usS9yF

 

Atlas Obscura always has such interesting articles. It seems that book clubs have always been about the social aspects, not just the discussion of books. Check out this fun article by Sarah Laskow.  “Even in the 1700s, Book Clubs Were Really About Drinking and Socializing.” https://bit.ly/2t9KKVk

Meg Gardiner, author of UNSUB, and Spencer Quinn, author of The Right Side, appeared together at The Poisoned Pen.

You can watch and listen as Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, talks with the authors on Livestream. https://livestream.com/poisonedpen/events/7512824

Gardiner talks a little bit about the background of UNSUB. For an in-depth article, check out the cover story in the July issue of BookPage. https://bit.ly/2toMA7E

You can order signed copies of The Right Side and UNSUB through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Stuart Neville has started a new series, set in America. He’s written Here and Gone under the pseudonym Haylen Beck.

Here’s the summary, as it appears in the Web Store.

Here and Gone is a gripping, wonderfully tense suspense thriller about a mother’s desperate fight to recover her stolen children from corrupt authorities.

It begins with a woman fleeing through Arizona with her kids in tow, trying to escape an abusive marriage. When she’s pulled over by an unsettling local sheriff, things soon go awry and she is taken into custody. Only when she gets to the station, her kids are gone. And then the cops start saying they never saw any kids with her, that if they’re gone than she must have done something with them…

Meanwhile, halfway across the country a man hears the frenzied news reports about the missing kids, which are eerily similar to events in his own past. As the clock ticks down on the search for the lost children, he too is drawn into the desperate fight for their return.

*****

The author recently appeared at The Poisoned Pen to discuss this book, and others, with Patrick Millikin. You can watch is on Livestream. https://livestream.com/poisonedpen/events/7539790

And, you can order a signed copy of Here and Gone through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2tleocy

Join us at The Poisoned Pen on Thursday, June 29 at 7 PM when Brad Thor returns to discuss his latest thriller featuring Scot Harvath, Use of Force.

Here’s the summary from the Web Store.

“With his latest pulse-pounding adventure, Brad Thor puts the rest of the genre on notice—Use of Force is the thriller to beat in 2017.”—The Real Book Spy

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor.

As a storm rages across the Mediterranean Sea, a terrifying distress call is made to the Italian Coast Guard. Days later, a body washes ashore.

Identified as a high value terrorism suspect (who had disappeared three years prior), his name sends panic through the Central Intelligence Agency.

Where was he headed? What was he planning? And could he be connected to the “spectacular attack” they have been fearing all summer?

In a race against time, the CIA taps an unorthodox source to get answers: Navy SEAL turned covert counterterrorism operative, Scot Harvath.

Hired on a black contract, Harvath will provide the deniability the United States needs, while he breaks every rule along the way.

Packed with pulse-pounding action, fascinating characters, and electrifying intrigue, Brad Thor does it again and proves why he is known around-the-world as the “Master of Thrillers.”

*****

Even better than the summary is the interview on The Real Book Spy. https://bit.ly/2sMIXqN. Check out the interview, followed by the review. If you can’t make it on Thursday night, we’ll have signed copies of Use of Force that can be ordered through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2udpCwL

Joseph Finder had an intriguing article in The Washington Post on Sunday. It’s called, “The Trump era is posing some major challenges for thriller novelists.” https://wapo.st/2t5kIES

However, Finder has a book out (written before the Trump era), and signed copies of The Switch are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2t5PWM0

 

Susan M. Boyer won the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel for Lowcountry Boil. Now, the sixth novel in the series is out, Lowcountry Bonfire. Susan was kind enough to agree to an interview.

Susan, would you introduce yourself to the readers?

Hey everyone! I’m Susan Boyer, and I write the Liz Talbot Mystery Series. I’m originally from North Carolina, but have lived in South Carolina for nearly thirty years. I’ve had a lifelong love affair with books, mysteries in particular. But before I wrote them, my day job was in computer business systems. My husband, Jim, and I have four grown children. We live in the Upstate of South Carolina, but spend a good bit of time in the Lowcountry, near Charleston.

I can’t believe you’re already up to #6 in the Liz Talbot series. Would you introduce us to Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews?

Liz Talbot was born and raised in the small town of Stella Maris, on the coast of South Carolina. She graduated from Clemson University (folks from South Carolina, I sent her brother, Blake, to Carolina) and she met her partner, Nate Andrews, there. After graduation, she and Nate interned with the same private investigator in Greenville, and later started their own firm. Nate grew up in Greenville, and he has some trouble with their eventual transition to the Lowcountry. Liz and Nate are very good at their job. But they have some challenges with her quirky extended family. Oh, and her best friend, Colleen, who’s been dead for eighteen years.  

Tell us about Lowcountry Bonfire, without spoilers.

Tammy Sue Lyerly, a Stella Maris resident, hires Liz and Nate because Tammy suspects her husband, Zeke, of infidelity. She’s hired them before, and they’ve caught Zeke red-handed engaging in some crazy shenanigans, but not adultery. But this time is different. The day after Liz and Nate deliver the incriminating photos, Tammy Sue piles his clothes inside his classic Mustang convertible and lights a match. When Zeke turns up dead, Tammy Sue is the prime suspect. Liz and Nate are hired by the town of Stella Maris to help with the investigation. They’re convinced Tammy Sue is innocent, but everyone liked Zeke. It’s a real puzzle who might’ve killed him.

Tell us about Stella Maris, please.

Stella Maris is an island in my imagination. It sits just north of Isle of Palms, near Charleston, South Carolina. The town that occupies the island is a quintessential small Southern town—a modern Mayberry—but it’s on a beautiful island. I created Stella Maris because I wanted Liz Talbot to have a small-town background, but I wanted her to live at the beach because I love the beach so much. I situated the town close enough to Charleston so that Liz could work many of her cases there. I knew I could only drop so many bodies in my small town before it became unbelievable.

Can you give us a hint about the next book in the series?

I’m working on that now. Lowcountry Bonfire takes place mostly in Stella Maris, with only a few scenes in Charleston. In the next book, Liz and Nate will be working in Charleston again. I have out my list of words that start with “bo” and I’m trying to zero in on a title. A couple I’m toying with are boondoggle and boomerang.

Your first book, Lowcountry Boil, won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Tell us about learning about the nomination. I’m sure you remember where you were, and how you reacted. Who did you tell first?

Oh my stars! I’ll never forget that as long as I live. Jim and I were at our friends’ house watching the Super Bowl. I left the room to take the call, which came to my cell phone. I was so stunned and excited. I was jumping up and down. Of course I told Jim and our friends. Then I called Kendel Lynn, my editor at Henery Press.

When did you first realize you wanted to become a writer?

It was my dream as a child. When it was time to go to college, I understood that I couldn’t study writing and then graduate and have a guaranteed paycheck publishing novels. Even then I knew publishing didn’t work that way. And I had no interest in journalism. I wanted to make things up. At first I thought I might teach English and write in the summer. But computer programming was more practical.

What authors have inspired you?

The list is so long. A few names that come immediately to mind are Charlaine Harris, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Sue Grafton.

It’s obvious you love South Carolina. Where do you take people when they come to visit?

In Greenville, we go downtown and have dinner in one of the Main Street restaurants, then drive up to the mountains. Sometimes we’ll see a musical at The Peace Center. In Charleston it’s usually the beach.

What author would you like to recommend who you think has been underappreciated?

I love Gretchen Archer’s casino capers. They’re hilarious escapism, but often she also works in thought-provoking topics. She’s sneaky like that.

*****

Susan M. Boyer’s website is https://www.susanmboyer.com/. Check the Web Store to order her books. https://bit.ly/2st2vPf

 

Miraculous Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards, is The Poisoned Pen’s Hot Book of the Week.

Here’s the summary from the Web Store.

Impossible crime stories have been relished by puzzle-lovers ever since the invention of detective fiction. Fiendishly intricate cases were particularly well suited to the cerebral type of detective story that became so popular during the ‘golden age of murder’ between the two world wars. But the tradition goes back to the days of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins, and impossible crime stories have been written by such luminaries as Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham.

This anthology celebrates their work, alongside long-hidden gems by less familiar writers. Together these stories demonstrate the range and high accomplishment of the classic British impossible crime story over more than half a century.

*****

Interested? You can order a copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2t3aSnB

Fiona Barton will be at The Poisoned Pen on Saturday, July 22 at 2 PM to discuss her new novel of psychological suspense, The Child.

Here’s the summary of the book from the Web Store.

One of Time‘s “Top 10 Thrillers to Read This Summer”

The author of the stunning New York Times bestseller The Widow returns with a brand-new novel of twisting psychological suspense.

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers a tiny skeleton, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but at a loss for answers, she can only pose a question: Who is the Building Site Baby?

As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier: A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found. Her heartbroken parents were left devastated by the loss.

But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn—house by house—into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. And she soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women—and torn between what she can and cannot tell…

*****

Interested? For a quick sneak peek of the July 22 event, you can watch Fiona Barton talk about writing on Author Shorts. https://bit.ly/2sPT0Mx

And, you can pre-order The Child through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2t2W7RQ