Fiction Review

Congratulations to the 2022 LOCUS Award winners and nominees. The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2022 Locus Awards on June 25, 2022, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend. Connie Willis emceed the awards ceremony. Check the Web Store for copies of the winning books and nominees. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

• WINNER: A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)

• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton; Harper Voyager US)
• Leviathan Falls, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey (Tor; Hodder & Stoughton)
• Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf; Faber & Faber)
• Noor, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW)
• We Are Satellites, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley; Ad Astra)
• You Sexy Thing, Cat Rambo (Tor)
• Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
• Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD; Fourth Estate)

FANTASY NOVEL

• WINNER: Jade Legacy, Fonda Lee (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

• Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki (Tor)
• The Witness for the Dead, Katherine Addison (Tor; Solaris)
• Black Water Sister, Zen Cho (Ace; Macmillan)
• Paladin’s Strength, T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
• Under the Whispering Door, TJ Klune (Tor; Tor UK)
• The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)
• Soulstar, C.L. Polk (Tordotcom)
• The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• No Gods, No Monsters, Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone)

HORROR NOVEL

• WINNER: My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan)

• Revelator, Daryl Gregory (Knopf)
• The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix (Berkley; Titan)
• Billy Summers, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton)
• Later, Stephen King (Hard Case Crime)
• Moon Lake, Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)
• A Broken Darkness, Premee Mohamed (Solaris)
• Sorrowland, Rivers Solomon (MCD; #Merky)
• The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling (St. Martin’s)
• The Book of Accidents, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey; Del Rey UK)

YOUNG ADULT NOVEL

• WINNER: Victories Greater Than Death, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen; Titan)

• This Poison Heart, Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury USA)
• The Infinity Courts, Akemi Dawn Bowman (Simon Pulse)
• The Gilded Ones, Namina Forna (Delacorte; Usborne)
• A Dark and Starless Forest, Sarah Hollowell (Clarion)
• Redemptor, Jordan Ifueko (Amulet; Hot Key)
• Chaos on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
• A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
• Terciel & Elinor, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin; Tegen; Hot Key)
• Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao (Penguin Teen; Rock the Boat)

FIRST NOVEL

• WINNER: A Master of Djinn, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom; Orbit UK)

• The Unbroken, C.L. Clark (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Machinehood, S.B. Divya (Saga)
• The All-Consuming World, Cassandra Khaw (Erewhon)
• A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
• Winter’s Orbit, Everina Maxwell (Tor; Orbit UK)
• She Who Became the Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor; Mantle)
• The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
• Wendy, Darling, A.C. Wise (Titan)
• Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao (Penguin Teen; Rock the Boat)

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed two authors, Paul Doiron and Sarah Stewart Taylor for a virtual event. Doiron, author of Hatchet Island, and Taylor, author of The Drowning Sea, have signed copies of their books, and they’re available in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of Hatchet Island.

The eerie, windswept Hatchet Island off the coast of Maine becomes the site of a double murder and a disappearance in this thriller from bestselling author Paul Doiron.

A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast. Stacey spent summers interning on the island, a sanctuary for endangered seabirds, and they are shocked by the atmosphere of tension they encounter when they come ashore. The biologists are being threatened and stalked by a mysterious boatman who they suspect is trespassing on the refuge late at night. And now the sanctuary’s enigmatic founder, whose mind has been slowly unraveling, has gone missing.

Camped on an islet for the night, Mike and Stacey waken to the sound of a gunshot. When they return to the refuge at dawn, their darkest fears are confirmed: two of the three researchers have been brutally murdered and the third has disappeared, along with the island skiff. Mike’s quest to find the missing man leads to a nearby island owned by a world-renowned photographer and his equally brilliant wife. The inhabitants of this private kingdom quickly close ranks, and Mike increasingly comes to believe that someone in the village knows more about the killings than they dare admit.

With no one to trust and miles from shore, Mike Bowditch must stop a ruthless murderer determined to make sure a terrifying secret never sees the light of day.

---

A native of Maine, bestselling author PAUL DOIRON attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English. The Poacher’s Son, the first book in the Mike Bowditch series, won the Barry award, the Strand award for best first novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. He is a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist.

---

Check out the description of Sarah Stewart Taylor’s The Drowning Sea.

In The Drowning Sea, Sarah Stewart Taylor returns to the critically acclaimed world of Maggie D’arcy with another atmospheric mystery so vivid readers will smell the salt in the air and hear the wind on the cliffs.

For the first time in her adult life, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is unemployed. No cases to focus on, no leads to investigate, just a whole summer on a remote West Cork peninsula with her teenage daughter Lilly and her boyfriend, Conor and his son. The plan is to prepare Lilly for a move to Ireland. But their calm vacation takes a dangerous turn when human remains wash up below the steep cliffs of Ross Head.

When construction worker Lukas Adamik disappeared months ago, everyone assumed he had gone home to Poland. Now that his body has been found, the guards, including Maggie’s friends Roly Byrne and Katya Grzeskiewicz, seem to think he threw himself from the cliffs. But as Maggie gets to know the residents of the nearby village and learns about the history of the peninsula and its abandoned Anglo Irish manor house, once home to a famous Irish painter who died under mysterious circumstances, she starts to think there’s something else going on. Something deadly. And when Lilly starts dating one of the dead man’s friends, Maggie grows worried about her daughter being so close to another investigation and about what the investigation will uncover.

Old secrets, hidden relationships, crime, and village politics are woven throughout this small seaside community, and as the summer progresses, Maggie is pulled deeper into the web of lies, further from those she loves, and closer to the truth.

---

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D’arcy series. Taylor grew up on Long Island in New York and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College in Dublin. She lived in Dublin, Ireland in the mid-90s and she now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

---

Enjoy the descriptions of the islands and books with Paul Doiron and Sarah Stewart Taylor.

We’re finishing up June and kicking off July with a terrific schedule of author appearances. Check it out, and then check out their books in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Somehow, I missed this in-person event when Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Boyd and Beth Morrison to the bookstore. The Lawless Land is the first Templar Knight adventure. Although Boyd is a bestselling thriller writer, this is Beth’s first novel. There are signed copies available through the Web Store. https://tinyurl.com/492j99bm

Here’s the description of The Lawless Land.

First in a fast-paced Templar Knight adventure series from New York Times-bestselling author Boyd Morrison and expert art historian Beth Morrison.

Canterbury, 1351.

Ex-communicated knight Gerard Fox is a battle-hardened warrior whose ancestral home was unjustly taken from him. Now, he roams across the known world of Europe looking for work as a man-at-arms. Equipped with only his Damascus-steel sword and war bow, Fox takes out tyrannical and dishonorable men in a land still blighted by the Black Death.

In his ongoing crusade to deliver justice, Fox comes to the aid of Lady Isabel, who is fleeing from her brutal betrothed. But she hasn’t told him the whole story. Isabel is guarding a priceless holy relic. One many men would kill for.

Fox and Isabel soon find they are being chased across the continent and try to evade those who seek the relic. But as more assassins close in, Fox realizes they will stop at nothing to possess the sacred treasure that Isabel has sworn to protect.

---

Boyd Morrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve thrillers, including six collaborations with Clive Cussler. His first novel, The Ark, was an Indie Next Notable pick and has been translated into over a dozen languages. He has a PhD in industrial engineering from Virginia Tech.
Follow Boyd on: @BoydMorrison IG: @BoydMorrisonWriter https://www.facebook.com/BoydMorrisonWriter

Beth Morrison is Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She has curated several major exhibitions, including ‘Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500’ & ‘Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World’. She has a PhD in the History of Art from Cornell University.
Follow Beth on: @BethMorrisonPhd IG: @BethMorrisonWriter https://www.facebook.com/BethMorrisonWriter

---

It’s a fascinating conversation about writing and history. Enjoy!

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed two authors for a virtual event. David Bell returns with The Finalists. Joshua Moehling’s debut thriller is And There He Kept Her. Both books are available through the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of The Finalists.

The competitive selection process for a prized college scholarship turns deadly in the latest thriller from USA Today bestselling author David Bell.

On a beautiful spring day, six college students with nothing in common besides a desperate inability to pay for school gather to compete for the prestigious Hyde Fellowship.
 
Milo—The front-runner
Natalia—The brain
James—The rule follower
Sydney—The athlete
Duffy—The cowboy
Emily—The social justice warrior
 
The six of them must surrender their devices when they enter Hyde House, an aging Victorian structure that sits in a secluded part of campus.
 
Once inside, the doors lock behind them. The students are not allowed to leave until they spend eight hours with a college administrator who will do almost anything to keep the school afloat, and Nicholas Hyde, the privileged and notoriously irresponsible heir to the Hyde family fortune. If the students leave before time is up, they’ll be immediately disqualified.
 
But when one of the six finalists drops dead, the other students fear they’re being picked off one by one. With a violent protest raging outside, and no way to escape, the survivors viciously turn on each other.
 
The Finalists is a chilling and profound look at the lengths both students and colleges will go to survive in a resource-starved academic world.

---

David Bell is a USA Today bestselling, award-winning author whose work has been translated into multiple languages. He’s currently a professor of English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

---

“A dark and complex mystery that will consume you.”—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight

They thought he was a helpless old man. They were wrong.

When two teenagers break into a house on a remote lake in search of prescription drugs, what starts as a simple burglary turns into a nightmare for all involved. Emmett Burr has secrets he’s been keeping in his basement for more than two decades, and he’ll do anything to keep his past from being revealed. As he gets the upper hand on his tormentors, the lines blur between victim, abuser, and protector.

Personal tragedy has sent former police officer Ben Packard back to the small Minnesota town of Sandy Lake in search of a fresh start. Now a sheriff’s deputy, Packard is leading the investigation into the missing teens, motivated by a family connection. As clues dry up and time runs out to save them, Packard is forced to reveal his own secrets and dig deep to uncover the dark past of the place he now calls home.

Unrelentingly suspenseful and written with a piercing gaze into the dark depths of the human soul, And There He Kept Her is a thrilling page-turner that introduces readers to a complicated new hero and forces us to consider the true nature of evil.

---

JOSHUA MOEHLING is a project manager and technical writer who lives in Minneapolis. And There He Kept Her is his debut novel.

---

Enjoy the conversation.

Fabian Nicieza’s The Self-Made Widow is the current Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen. Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, welcomed him for an in-person event. Fabian’s first mystery, Suburban Dicks, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and a Shamus for Best First PI Novel. There are signed copies of both books available through the Web Store. https://tinyurl.com/2p9hnaec

Here’s the description of The Self-Made Widow.

From the cocreator of Deadpool and author of Suburban Dicks comes a diabolically funny murder mystery that features two unlikely sleuths investigating a murder that reveals the dark underbelly of suburban marriage.

    After mother of five and former FBI profiler Andie Stern solved a murder—and unraveled a decades-old conspiracy—in her New Jersey town, both her husband and the West Windsor police hoped that she would set aside crime-fighting and go back to carpools, changing diapers, and  lunches with her group of mom-friends, who she secretly calls The Cellulitists. Even so, Andie can’t help but get involved when the husband of Queen Bee Molly Goode is found dead. Though all signs point to natural causes, Andie begins to dig into the case and soon risks more than just the clique’s wrath, because what she discovers might hit shockingly close to home.

    Meanwhile, journalist Kenny Lee is enjoying a rehabilitated image after his success as Andie’s sidekick. But when an anonymous phone call tips him off that Molly Goode killed her husband, he’s soon drawn back into the thicket of suburban scandals, uncovering secrets, affairs, and a huge sum of money. Hellbent on justice and hoping not to kill each other in the process, Andie and Kenny dust off their suburban sleuthing caps once again.  

---

Fabian Nicieza is a comic book writer and editor who is best known as the co-creator of Marvel’s Deadpool and for his work on titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, Cable, and Thunderbolts. He is the author of Suburban Dicks, a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author.

---

Fabian Nicieza has a fascinating background. Enjoy the discussion.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently hosted a virtual event featuring Rosalie Knecht, author of Vera Kelly Lost and Found. There are signed bookplates available if you order a book through the Web Store. https://tinyurl.com/mtf3bmer

Here’s the description of Vera Kelly Lost and Found.

Vera Kelly Series

It’s spring 1971 and Vera Kelly and her girlfriend, Max, leave their cozy Brooklyn apartment for an emergency visit to Max’s estranged family in Los Angeles. Max’s parents are divorcing—her father is already engaged to a much younger woman and under the sway of an occultist charlatan; her mother has left their estate in a hurry with no indication of return. Max, who hasn’t seen her family since they threw her out at the age of twenty-one, prepares for the trip with equal parts dread and anger. 

Upon arriving, Vera is shocked by the size and extravagance of the Comstock estate—the sprawling, manicured landscape; expansive and ornate buildings; and garages full of luxury cars reveal a privileged upbringing that, up until this point, Max had only hinted at—while Max attempts to navigate her father, who is hostile and controlling, and the occultist, St. James, who is charming but appears to be siphoning family money. Tensions boil over at dinner when Max threatens to alert her mother—and her mother’s lawyers—to St. James and her father’s plans using marital assets. The next morning, when Vera wakes up, Max is gone.

In Vera Kelly Lost and Found, Rosalie Knecht gives Vera her highest-stake case yet, as Vera quickly puts her private detective skills to good use and tracks a trail of breadcrumbs across southern California to find her missing girlfriend. She travels first to a film set in Santa Ynez and, ultimately, to a most unlikely destination where Vera has to decide how much she is willing to commit to save the woman she loves.  

---

Rosalie Knecht is the author of Who is Vera Kelly?, Vera Kelly is not a Mystery, winner of the Edgar Award, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, as well as a Relief Map, and a translation of Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind. She lives in Jersey City, NJ.

---

Check out the discussion with Rosalie Knecht.

Riley Sager’s latest novel, The House Across the Lake, is one of the hottest books this week. He appeared at The Poisoned Pen on publication day. He and Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, talked about his background and his new book. Signed copies of The House Across the Lake are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3Nf3QRv

Here’s the description of The House Across the Lake.

Named a most anticipated summer book by USA Today, People, E! News, Cosmopolitan, PureWow, CNN.com, CrimeReads, POPSUGAR, The Nerd Daily, BookTrib, Mystery Writers of America, Bookish, and Distractify

The New York Times bestselling author of Final Girls and Survive the Night is back with his “best plot twist yet.” (People, “Best Summer Books”)

Be careful what you watch for . . .

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of bourbon, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is powerful; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey immediately suspects Tom of foul play. What she doesn’t realize is that there’s more to the story than meets the eye—and that shocking secrets can lurk beneath the most placid of surfaces.

Packed with sharp characters, psychological suspense, and gasp-worthy plot twists, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake is the ultimate escapist read . . . no lake house required.

---

Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, most recently Home Before Dark and Survive the Night. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

---

Enjoy the conversation with Riley Sager.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, and a Stanford graduate, has a great deal of interest in Professor Richard White’s nonfiction book, Who Killed Jane Stanford? She hosted him for a recent event, along with some guests, including author and professor Paul Goldstein, along with authors Angie Kim and Francine Mathews. There are signed copies of Who Killed Jane Stanford? available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3Na6YOy

Here’s the description of Who Killed Jane Stanford?

A premier historian penetrates the fog of corruption and cover-up still surrounding the murder of a Stanford University founder to establish who did it, how, and why.

In 1885 Jane and Leland Stanford cofounded a university to honor their recently deceased young son. After her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford, a devoted spiritualist who expected the university to inculcate her values, steered Stanford into eccentricity and public controversy for more than a decade. In 1905 she was murdered in Hawaii, a victim, according to the Honolulu coroner’s jury, of strychnine poisoning. With her vast fortune the university’s lifeline, the Stanford president and his allies quickly sought to foreclose challenges to her bequests by constructing a story of death by natural causes. The cover-up gained traction in the murky labyrinths of power, wealth, and corruption of Gilded Age San Francisco. The murderer walked.

Deftly sifting the scattered evidence and conflicting stories of suspects and witnesses, Richard White gives us the first full account of Jane Stanford’s murder and its cover-up. Against a backdrop of the city’s machine politics, rogue policing, tong wars, and heated newspaper rivalries, White’s search for the murderer draws us into Jane Stanford’s imperious household and the academic enmities of the university. Although Stanford officials claimed that no one could have wanted to murder Jane, we meet several people who had the motives and the opportunity to do so. One of these, we discover, also had the means.

Richard White is the author of many acclaimed histories, including the groundbreaking study of the transcontinentals, Railroaded, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and lives near Palo Alto, California.

---

Here’s the fascinating story of Jane Stanford’s murder.

It doesn’t hurt to share the upcoming slate of authors at The Poisoned Pen. It sometimes changes, so check out the current schedule. Then, check for the books by your favorite authors, available in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/