Upcoming Events @ The Poisoned Pen

Have you seen the calendar of upcoming events at The Poisoned Pen? Most of them are virtual events. You can watch them on the Pen’s Facebook page live, and then many of them will be on YouTube at a later date. Check this schedule, and then the Web Store to order books from your favorite authors. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the schedule through July 7.

Elly Griffiths
Paul Doiron
Tapper / Baldacci
Steven Saylor
Hilary Davidson
Riley Sager/May Cobb
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
T.J. Newman
Charles Todd
Dan Fesperman/Francine Mathews

Donna Leon, In Depth

Soon after the publication of Donna Leon’s Transient Desires, Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, discussed the book with the author. You can still buy a copy of the book and other Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3cxq4w8

In case you missed it then, here’s the link to watch the virtual event.

And, here’s the summary of Transient Desires, the latest in the series.


In the landmark thirtieth installment of the bestselling series theNew Yorker has called “an unusually potent cocktail of atmosphere and event,” Guido Brunetti is forced to confront an unimaginable crime


In his many years as a commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native city, Venice, to discover the person responsible. Now, inTransient Desires, the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon’s masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it?

As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.

Donna Leon’sTransient Desires is as powerful as any novel she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits and forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth.

There’s a reason I’m recapping this event and the book. Neil Nyren just did an in-depth study of Donna Leon’s books for https://CrimeReads.com. The article is called, “Donna Leon: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics”. Anyone who truly wants to know the author’s body of work should check out this article. You can find it here. https://bit.ly/35S3LA7 If you’re a fan, you’ll thank me for the link to this outstanding article. Enjoy!

Introducing Allison Montclair

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, introduced author Allison Montclair as actually Alan Gordon. As Montclair, he’s written the three post-World War II novels featuring Sparks and Bainbridge. He talks about the changeover after the war, and said few people write about the women in England after the war. The two women start a marriage bureau to help rebuild British society as they rebuild their own lives. You can find all three books, including the latest, A Rogue’s Company, in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/35Q1HZp

Here’s the summary of A Rogue’s Company.

*A PW Pick of the Week!*

In Allison Monclair’s A Rogue’s Company, business becomes personal for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau when a new client, a brutal murder, two kidnappings, and the recently returned from Africa Lord Bainbridge threatens everything that one of the principals holds dear.

In London, 1946, the Right Sort Marriage Bureau is getting on its feet and expanding. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge are making a go of it. That is until Lord Bainbridge—the widowed Gwen’s father-in-law and legal guardian—returns from a business trip to Africa and threatens to undo everything important to her, even sending her six-year-old son away to a boarding school.

But there’s more going on than that. A new client shows up at the agency, one whom Sparks and Bainbridge begin to suspect really has a secret agenda, somehow involving the Bainbridge family. A murder and a subsequent kidnapping sends Sparks to seek help from a dangerous quarter—and now their very survival is at stake.



ALLISON MONTCLAIR grew up devouring hand-me-down Agatha Christie paperbacks and James Bond movies. As a result of this deplorable upbringing, Montclair became addicted to tales of crime, intrigue, and espionage. She now spends her spare time poking through the corners, nooks, and crannies of history, searching for the odd mysterious bits and transforming them into novels of her own. She is the author of the Sparks & Bainbridge historical mystery series, which begins with The Right Sort of Man.

If you enjoy writing, mysteries, and history, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.

Clare Mackintosh Discussing Hostage

Clare Mackintosh’s book release event for Hostage was held virtually at The Poisoned Pen. You can order a copy of this thriller through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3zYk4cr Clare Mackintosh brings her twelve years on the police force to her writing.

Here’s Hostage.

“Feels like a blockbuster movie.”—Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone

You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most…

From New York Times bestselling author Clare Mackintosh comes a claustrophobic thriller set over 20 hours on-board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems with her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination: “The following instructions will save your daughter’s life…”

Someone needs Mina’s assistance and knows exactly how to make her comply.

When one passenger is killed and then another, Mina knows she must act. But which lives does she save: Her passengers…or her own daughter and husband who are in grave distress back at home?

It’s twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

For fans of the locked-room mystery of One By One and the heart-stopping tension The Last FlightHostage is an explosively addictive thriller about one flight attendant and the agonizing decision that will change her life—and the lives of everyone on-board—forever.

Praise for Hostage:

“Surprising twists propel the story to an unexpected finale. Mackintosh has raised her game with this one.”
Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“Hypnotically good. Should be a hit, could be a classic…”
Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series

“Fiendishly clever.”
Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before She Disappeared

“A propulsive read.”
Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Wife

“A nail-biter of a thriller.”
Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

“A true page-turner that will have producers lining up with movie offers.”


CLARE MACKINTOSH is an award-winning New York Times and international bestselling author. She spent twelve years on the police force in England and has written for the Guardian, Good Housekeeping, and other publications. Translated into forty languages, her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide. Clare lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children. She can be found at claremackintosh.com, www.facebook.com/ClareMackWrites or on Twitter at ClareMackint0sh.


Enjoy Barbara Peters’ conversation with Clare Mackintosh, and a visit from surprise guest, Lee Child.

Taylor Adams in Conversation with Craig Johnson

Taylor Adams’ latest thriller Hairpin Bridge is The Poisoned Pen’s June Crime Book of the Month. Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire books, recently served as guest host for a conversation. You can still order signed copies of Hairpin Bridge through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3j60eWt

Here’s the summary of Hairpin Bridge.

From the author of the “full-throttle thriller” (A. J. Finn) No Exit—a riveting new psychological page-turner featuring a fierce and unforgettable heroine.

Three months ago, Lena Nguyen’s estranged twin sister, Cambry, drove to a remote bridge seventy miles outside of Missoula, Montana, and jumped two hundred feet to her death. At least, that is the official police version.

But Lena isn’t buying it.

Now she’s come to that very bridge, driving her dead twin’s car and armed with a cassette recorder, determined to find out what really happened by interviewing the highway patrolman who allegedly discovered her sister’s body.

Corporal Raymond Raycevic has agreed to meet Lena at the scene. He is sympathetic, forthright, and professional. But his story still seems a bit off. For one thing, he stopped Cambry for speeding just an hour before she supposedly leaped to her death. Then there are the sixteen attempted 911 calls from her cell phone, made in what was unfortunately a dead zone.

But perhaps most troubling of all, the state trooper is referred to by name in Cambry’s final enigmatic text to her sister: Please Forgive Me. Lena will do anything to uncover the truth. But as her twin’s final hours come into focus, Lena’s search turns into a harrowing tooth-and-nail fight for her own survival—one that will test everything she thought she knew about her sister and herself…


Taylor Adams graduated from Eastern Washington University with the prestigious Edmund G. Yarwood Award. His directorial work has screened at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival and he is an avid fan of suspenseful fiction and film. He lives in Washington state.


Enjoy the conversation between Taylor Adams and Craig Johnson.

Dream Girl, The Hot Book of the Week

Two days of The Poisoned Pen’s Hot Book of the Week. Although to be honest, when we share those author conversations, many of the books are hot. The current Hot Book of the Week is Laura Lippman’s Dream Girl. You can find signed copies of it in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2TWlymZ

Here’s the description of Dream Girl.

“With this tip of the hat to Stephen King’s MiseryDream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist.” —People

“My dream novel. I devoured this in three days. The sharpest, clearest-eyed take on our #MeToo reckoning yet. Plus: enthralling.” —Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and The Fever

Following up on her acclaimed and wildly successful New York Times bestseller Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman returns with a dark, complex tale of psychological suspense with echoes of Misery involving a novelist, incapacitated by injury, who is plagued by mysterious phone calls.

In the end, has anyone really led a blameless life?

Injured in a freak fall, novelist Gerry Andersen is confined to a hospital bed in his glamorous high-rise apartment, dependent on two women he barely knows: his incurious young assistant, and a dull, slow-witted night nurse.

Then late one night, the phone rings. The caller claims to be the “real” Aubrey, the alluring title character from his most successful novel, Dream Girl. But there is no real Aubrey. She’s a figment born of a writer’s imagination, despite what many believe or claim to know. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life?

And why does no one believe that the call even happened?

Isolated from the world, drowsy from medication, Gerry slips between reality and a dreamlike state in which he is haunted by his own past: his faithless father, his devoted mother; the women who loved him, the women he loved.

And now here is Aubrey, threatening to visit him, suggesting that she is owed something. Is the threat real or is it a sign of dementia? Which scenario would he prefer? Gerry has never been so alone, so confused ““ and so terrified.

Chilling and compulsively readable, touching on timely issues that include power, agency, appropriation, and creation, Dream Girl is a superb blend of psychological suspense and horror that reveals the mind and soul of a writer.


Since Laura Lippman’s debut in 1997, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the “essential” crime writers of the last 100 years. Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her daughter.

Hot Book of the Week

Have you checked out Beatriz Williams’ Our Woman in Moscow? There are signed copies available in the Web Store of this Hot Book of the Week. https://bit.ly/3gTTGHK

Here’s Our Woman in Moscow.

MOST ANTICIPATED NOVEL OF SUMMER 2021 ACCORDING TO BUSTLE, BUZZFEED, AND SHEREADS! INAUGURAL BOOK CLUB PICK FOR NEW PEACOCK SHOW “BOOKED”!

The New York Times bestselling author of Her Last Flight returns with a gripping and profoundly human story of Cold War espionage and family devotion.

In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?

Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.

But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.


Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of thirteen novels, including Her Last Flight, The Summer Wives, and The Golden Hour, as well as All the Ways We Said Goodbye, cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

John McMahon & David Ricciardi, in Conversation

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently hosted authors John McMahon and David Ricciardi for a virtual event. McMahon is the author of A Good Kill and Ricciardi wrote Shadow Target. Signed copies of both books are available at the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Here’s the description of A Good Kill.

An electrifying mystery featuring a troubled small-town police detective faced with three interwoven crimes that reveal sinister secrets about his community–and the deaths of his family, by the Edgar Award-and Thriller Award- short-listed author whose novels have been described by the New York Times Book Review as “pretty much perfect.”

In the years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons–both professional and personal. But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy.

As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government–including within the police force. The stakes in the case become increasingly high, culminating in a showdown that has Marsh questioning everything he knows, and wondering if some secrets are better left undiscovered.


John McMahon is the author of The Good Detective and The Evil Men Do. In his role as an ad agency creative director, he has won a Gold Clio for his work with Fiat, and he’s written a Superbowl spot for Alfa Romeo. He currently lives in Southern California with his family and two rescue animals.


Here’s Shadow Target.

Someone is assassinating CIA field officers and Jake Keller’s name is next on the list in the latest thrilling novel from the author Publishers Weekly calls “a fresh voice in the crowded spy thriller field.”

Jake doesn’t know who is trying to kill him and he doesn’t know why. Still, it’s a threat he can’t ignore.

When his small plane crashes in the Alps, Jake is the only survivor. A rescue helicopter soon arrives, but the men inside are not there to save anyone. They are determined to complete the murderous job they started.

Jake escapes from the mountainside deathtrap, but it won’t be the only attempt on his life. If he’s to have any chance at surviving, he’ll have to find out who’s behind the killings. But the circle of people Jake can trust is distressingly small as he suspects that someone inside the Agency is feeding his every move to the very people who are trying to end his life.

Jake’s quest takes him to the candle-lit cathedrals of Paris and the rain-slicked streets of London. He makes contact with old friends and new enemies along the way—but his true nemesis may be closer than he imagines.


A keen outdoorsman, David Ricciardi incorporates many personal experiences into his work. He’s backpacked through the mountains of the western United States and Alaska, received extensive training from law enforcement and U.S. special operations personnel, and once woke up for a two A.M. watch aboard a sailboat only to discover that it was headed the wrong way through the Atlantic sea-lanes in heavy weather, with one of the crew suffering from hypothermia. In addition to being an avid sailor, David is also a certified scuba-rescue diver and a former ski instructor.


Enjoy the conversation, shared on YouTube.

Benjamin Percy Discussed The Ninth Metal

Let’s talk science fiction, apocalyptic fiction, and comic books. That’s what host Patrick King from The Poisoned Pen discussed with Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal. That first book in The Comet Cycle is available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3wIgkK1

Here’s the summary of The Ninth Metal.

“[In THE NINTH METAL] debris from a comet drops a fabulously valuable new metal on Northfall, MN., turning it into a bloody, brawling boomtown. Great characters, fine writing, totally engrossing.”
—Stephen King

“Take one part dystopia, one part sci-fi, two parts apocalypse, then ride them roughshod through a bleak and bloody western, and it still wouldn’t get close to what Ben Percy does here, which is blow open the core of humanity’s dark heart.”
—Marlon James, Booker Prize award-winning author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Whether you choose to think of him as the Elmore Leonard of rural Minnesota or the Stephen King of Science Fiction, Ben Percy—with his extraordinary and unrelenting eye—dishes up humanity like some kind of otherworldly blue plate special, at once deeply familiar and wildly new.”
—Margaret Stohl, #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Caster Chronicles

“When Benjamin Percy publishes a novel, I have got to read that novel. The Ninth Metal continues his streak of thrilling, incisive genre bending goodness. It’s a sci-fi novel, a crime novel and a super-hero novel, too. Audacious and intelligent and exactly what I was dying to read.”
—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling


IT BEGAN WITH A COMET…

At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon.

John Frontier—the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall—returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community.

In this gut-punch of a novel, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all.


BENJAMIN PERCY has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast. He is the author of the novels The Ninth Metal, The Unfamiliar Garden, The Dark Net, The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding, three story collections, and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics. He lives in Minnesota with his family.


Enjoy the conversation with Benjamin Percy.

Kristan Higgins & Pack Up the Moon

John Charles from The Poisoned Pen introduces Kristan Higgins, author of Pack Up the Moon. (She will also introduce her dog in the video.) There are some signed copies of her book still available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/35wwF8G

Here’s the summary of Pack Up the Moon.

Every month, a letter. That’s what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she’s dying. Each month, she gives Josh a letter containing a task to help him face this first year without her, leading him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins.

Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they’re wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. 
 
As Lauren’s disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future–a future without the only woman he’s ever loved. He’s so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren.
 
But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It’s a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed…from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn’t Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren’s most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn’t follow a straight line. 
 
Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life’s greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight.


Kristan Higgins is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty novels, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, and dogs. If you want to know when Kristan’s next book will be out and hear news of her appearances, subscribe to her mailing list at www.kristanhiggins.com.


Enjoy John Charles’ discussion with Kristan Higgins.