Author Dolores-Gordon Smith talks about her new book, As If By Magic; the third Jack Haldean mystery

As If By Magic; the third Jack Haldean mystery by Dolores Gordon Smith

“Where do you get your ideas from?” is a question that’s often asked at book festivals and – be warned! – infuriates some writers. I don’t know why; I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.

I know exactly where the ideas for As If By Magic came from. Every Christmas the corporate world breaks out into a mass of dinners, dances and parties and I’m invited to a couple. This particular dinner featured a Magic show as an after-dinner entertainment. Members of the audience were invited to take part and, nothing loath, I joined in. I’d never been so close to a “real” magician before and I was struck by the edge between illusion and reality. There’s something else, too. The dove that the magician produces from the empty box is real; the box is real. It’s how they’re put together that makes the illusion. That thought stayed with me. Jack Haldean (who, oddly enough, has virtually the same thought when he sees a street magician!) uses it to work out what’s real and what’s illusory in the tangled web his poor friend George finds himself in.

George, you see, has it tough. Not only is he completely destitute, starving and on the verge of a serious illness, he also sees a beautiful woman apparently agree to her own murder in the deserted kitchen of a house in Mayfair. When the police arrive minutes later, the body has disappeared - as if by magic.

That was one plank of an idea in the story. The other idea came, quite simply, from a book. I was poking around in a second-hand bookshop in Manchester when I found All About The Aircraft Of Today written by one Frederick Talbot and published in 1921. I’ve always been interested in old aeroplanes and All About The Aircraft Of Today was a must. I was the first person to read it; I had to cut the pages. As I read the book, I realised that here was the other element I’d been looking for. Aviation and that great surge in civilian flying in the 1920’s, when another record was broken seemingly every month, was exactly the sort of background I was looking for. Not only that, but Frederick Talbot included a wonderful description of the Crossley Aircraft factory and this sort of detail was pure gold. I was so grateful to Frederick, I gave him a walk-on part in As If By Magic as an aviation reporter. As a matter of fact, I bet that’s what he was in real life.

The rest of the book is, of course, where the Plot happens and Plots, which I brood over like an old mother hen, are where the real hard work kicks in. It’s absorbing though and a real thrill when it all comes together and you know it works. That takes a year or so, writing, discarding, trying it again, but at the end – well, it’s Magic!

If you’d like to know more about Jack and catch up on the latest news, I’d be delighted if you visited my website, www.doloresgordon-smith.co.uk

I Love Librarians

by Jane K. Cleland

All of my nieces are librarians. Isn’t that odd? Any family can have a librarian in it... heck... I bet some families have two... but all? Okay... we’re a small family... I only have three nieces... but still... all of them are librarians. Lucky me. Librarians are a remarkable breed of people. They’re curious, knowledgeable, smart, and helpful. No wonder I love librarians.
One of my nieces is a communications expert, researching ways and means of framing and disseminating her clients’ messages. Another is a cognitive expert, assisting scientists in researching issues surrounding thinking and assimilating information. My third niece is an elementary education expert, working with youngins to instill a love of reading and learning. I’m in awe of all three.
I come by my attitude of respect and appreciation honestly; my mother loved librarians, too. When I was a mere slip of a girl she taught me that if you wanted to know something you could always consult a librarian because they either know everything or they know where to find out everything.
When I was in sixth grade, I consulted a librarian as to whether Paul Revere’s horse was a mare. (I needed it as a rhyme in a poem, and being an honest girl, I couldn’t just say it was a mare if it was, in fact, a stallion. Note of interest: She found a contemporary reference stating that Paul Revere’s horse was a mare; I thought you’d want to know.) When I was in eighth grade, a librarian held me enraptured as she discussed the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. (Yes, you read that right. Twenty-one people died a gruesome death, asphyxiated by molasses.)

To this day, I love working with librarians as I work to introduce readers to my protagonist, antiques appraiser, Josie Prescott. As an author, I’m in the enviable position of getting to do just that—a lot. As many of you know, I tour extensively [http://www.janecleland.net/htm/appearances/schedule.htm ] as I work to introduce readers to Josie.
I also work with Deborah Hirsch, a principal librarian at the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the New York Public Library to coordinate a series of monthly programs for the Midtown Branch in my role as chair of the Library Committee for the Mystery Writers of America/ New York Chapter. [http://www.mwa-ny.org/library.php#events ]
In fact, even when I’m traveling overseas, it’s not uncommon for me find myself in a library, like this one I just visited in Grenada.


I love the buildings. I love the books. I love the reverence implicit in the hushed conversations. But mostly, I love the librarians.
http://www.janecleland.net/

Stephen King calls Charlie Huston’s book a terrific new novel,

From Stephen King:
There are some things you never wonder about until someone--usually someone whose mind lives on Weird Street--brings them to your attention. Who cuts the barber’s hair? How does a guy wind up with the job of test-smelling armpits for a deodorant company? Or de-wrinkling dress shoes before they’re put on sale? Why does one kid become a college dean while another grows up to be a key grip? And just what is a key grip, anyway?

Here’s another one. Who scrubs down the scene after a spectacularly messy death--a guy who shoots himself in the head, let’s say, or dies of natural causes in a hot back room and then goes undiscovered for a couple of weeks? What sort of janitorial problems would such work entail? It turns out there are firms that specialize in those problems, and in the Weird Street world of Charlie Huston, a couple of these companies might even do battle over the smelly, maggoty spoils of war.

“Trauma scene and waste cleaning is a growth industry,” remarks Po Sin, the owner/operator of Clean Team. The observation comes early in Charlie Huston’s terrific new novel, which is about just what the title suggests: getting rid of the messy stuff after the deal goes down.

When The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death opens, Webster Fillmore Goodhue--another in a long line of likeably slack Huston protagonists--is sponging off his friend Chev, who runs a sleazier-than-thou tattoo parlor. Enter the proprietor of Clean Team, who knows Web from Web’s previous life as an elementary school teacher (a career that ended badly). Po Sin needs help in his particular growth-industry. Web agrees to a little blood- and brain-scrubbing not because he particularly wants a job but because he’s suffered his own trauma and finds cleaning up other people’s end-of-life messes strangely soothing.

Enter Soledad, a beautiful young girl whose father just aired out his brains with a 9mm. Also enter Jaime, her half-bright half-brother who imagines himself a Hollywood playa but can’t get out of his own way. There are many things to love about Charlie Huston’s fiction--he’s a brilliant storyteller, and writes the best dialogue since George V. Higgins--but what pushes my personal happy-button is his morbid sense of humor and seemingly effortless ability to create scary/funny bad guys who make Beavis and Butthead look like Rhodes Scholars.

There are a lot of those in this book, and several I-can’t-believe-I-laughed-at-that scenes of grue (I can’t even talk about the pipe-bomb thing, not on a family website), but the best thing about Mystic Arts is how decency and heroism rise to the top in spite of everyone’s best efforts to crush them under heel.

Web wanders from the nightmarish underworld of body clean-up into the equally nightmarish worlds of hijacking and smuggling; he endures cross, double-cross, and triple-cross; he pees his pants while trying to shield his girlfriend from a bullet. He’s scared but never cowardly, down but never completely out. He is, in short, a guy worth watching.

So’s Charlie Huston. He’s written several very good books (including the Caught Stealing trilogy and the Joe Pitt novels, which concern a PI who’s also a vampire), but this is the first authentically great one, a runaway freight that feels like a combination of William Burroughs and James Ellroy. Mystic Arts is, however, fiercely original--very much its own thing.

Besides, admit it: you’ve always wanted to know how to get blood out of a deep-pile carpet.

Erik Larson on The Fifth Floor

—Erik Larson, author of The Devil In the White City
wrote “In The Fifth Floor, Michael Harvey gives us a tale of murder, bare-knuckle mayoral politics, and historical catastrophe–in short, the perfect Chicago detective story, complete with a loving tour of the city’s funkier locales that’ll make any displaced Chicagoan long for home.”

The Fifth floor, is a sizzling follow-up to The Chicago Way ('A magnificent debut that should be read by all'-John Grisham; 'This book heralds the arrival of a major new voice'-Michael Connelly) opens with a murder in contemporary Chicago and winds its way back to Mrs. O'Leary's cow and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.: When PI Michael Kelly is hired by an ex-flame to tail her abusive husband, he expects trouble of a domestic rather than a historical nature. Life, however, is not so simple. The tail leads Kelly to an old house on Chicago's North Side. Inside it, the private investigator finds a body and, perhaps, the answer to one of Chicago's most enduring mysteries: who started the Great Chicago Fire and why. The ensuing investigation takes Kelly to places he'd rather not go, specifically, City Hall's fifth floor, where the mayor is feeling the heat and looking to play for keeps. Ultimately, Kelly finds himself in a world where nothing is quite what it seems, face-to-face with a killer bent on rewriting history and staring down demons from a past he never knew he had.: A fast-stepping, intricately woven narrative, rich with the history and atmosphere of a great city, The Fifth Floor is a worthy successor to Harvey's critically acclaimed debut. : About the Author: : Michael Harvey is a journalist, documentary film producer, and writer, as well as the co-creator and executive producer of the television series Cold Case Files. His work has won many national and international awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination. He lives in Chicago.

Laurie R King on Why the Mystery?

The classic mystery, the Christie-esque whodunit, is built upon a crime and its resolution. However, since many non-mystery novels begin with a similar foundation, as an aid to the beleaguered bookseller who just wants to know where to shelve the things, the publishing world sweeps together an often mismatched lot of books and classifies them as “Mysteries.” The childlike simplicity of the move leaves one gasping.

What do we do when an established mainstream writer such as, say, Jane Smiley or Ron Hansen or, rumor has it, Michael Chabon produces something that in other hands would be shelved in the genre section? Do we call it simply a dark novel that happens to deal with a crime? Or worse, what are we to think when a known multiple offender of crime fiction such as Josephine Tey or Peter Dickinson comes up with a perfect literary gem that has only the most tenuous dependence on the form?

The whole genre question is further complicated by the undeniable fact that a great deal of crime fiction is simply pap, predigested and undemanding, suitable for the reader who either lacks the inner fortitude necessary for tackling something with fiber (moral or otherwise) or who simply doesn’t feel like chewing his or her way through something substantial after a hard day’s work. Many writers, good writers who ought to know better, focus so tightly on the structure demanded by a crime story that they lose track of the fact that they are writing a novel. Accusations of both sensationalism and trivialization are, alas, often justified.

(Since we are concerned here with the mystery field, I shall politely refrain from pointing to the pap in mainstream fiction, those books where Nothing Happens aside from 300 pages of kvetching about a divorce. True, most mainstream pap gets thrown out before it sees print, whereas with a mystery, there’s always the hope that someone will fall for a gaudy cover. The point I’m making is not who has the worse record, but the difficulties in categorizing a book.)

A crime novel is about some thing; a mainstream story can be about anything. Knowing that a book is assigned to a genre makes the world-be reader feel snug, or smug, depending on how that reader feels about the genre. To those who buy my books in order to curl up in the story, I can only say, thank you. To the smug deprecator of the mystery novel, I have to shake my head and say, You’re missing some fine writing.

So why the mystery? Because it is a strong form that nonetheless allows me to do what I wish with it, possessing both rigid structure and immense freedom. On its bones I can hang a story about things that matter, about death and pain and the dark side of the human mind, about fear and triumph and joy and the price we pay for justice. A story about the full gamut of human response.

The mystery novel, because the form is as big as I need it to be, and as intimate.

The mystery, because it’s human.

Amazon Exclusive Essay: Christopher Reich on Thrillers

For me they’re all thrillers. The Day of the Jackal, Eye of the Needle, The Bourne Identity , Noble House, and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. My life stopped when I picked up each of those books and it didn’t start again until I finished the last page. I didn’t actually read them so much as disappear between their covers. That was me trying to catch the Jackal before he assassinated Charles De Gaulle, and me again at the wheel of a Jaguar XKE convertible racing down the Peak in Hong Kong. The fact is that for me life is somehow better when I’m reading a great book. Richer, more exciting…heck, I don’t know, just better.

About two years ago, I decided that it was my turn to write the thriller I’d always wanted to read. I knew exactly where to start. All I had to do was "write what I know." These days, I know a lot about the intelligence community. Not the stuff you read about in the papers -- the stuff you never read about. Over the years, I’ve made a lot of friends in Washington and overseas. Diplomats, spies, soldiers, politicians – men and women at the highest levels of government. And, I can assure you that what they’ve taught me about how the world really works is a lot more interesting and a lot more frightening than you’d ever imagine.

That’s where my newest book, Rules of Deception comes in. It’s a story about an honest and courageous doctor named Jonathan Ransom. He’s a surgeon who works for Doctors Without Borders in some of the toughest parts of the world. He’s a happily married man with a big heart and a beautiful English wife he deeply loves named Emma who works with him. What Jonathan doesn’t know is that nothing about his life is what it seems. In fact, it’s all a web of lies and he’s caught in the middle of something extraordinarily dangerous.

I can’t say more than that, and I shouldn’t have to, because if I’ve done my job right, when you get to page five you’ll be hooked and you won’t come up for air until it’s all said and done.

--Christopher Reich

Lee Child on Rules of Deception

I discovered Christopher Reich exactly ten years ago. His first book came out around the same time my second book was published. The modest prosperity that one’s first book deal brings allowed me to pick up hardcovers that caught my eye. And Numbered Account caught my eye. And it lived up to its promise. It was fast, fresh, glossy, and very exciting. I thought: Reich is a keeper.

And then he got better. It was always clear that he had talent to burn, but he chose to accompany it with a real work ethic. His second, third and fourth books built and built until the release of the next one was an event to be anticipated. (And right there is my only complaint: Reich doesn’t write fast enough.)

His fifth book The Patriot's Club was a real achievement. It was a slam-dunk winner of the International Thriller Writer’s first annual Best Novel award. Awards are often awkward. There’s usually a measure of grumbling, because often people don’t agree with the choice of winner. But not a word was heard against "The Patriot’s Club." In fact nothing was heard, because the applause was too loud.

So I was really looking forward to Rules of Deception. I got an advance copy. I cracked it open. I started reading. Mostly I read like any other reader, but a small part of me reads like a writer. I think all writers experience the same thing. We sense things between the lines, especially energy and inspiration.

And ambition.

Rules of Deception starts with a short prologue, and then the first chapter introduces Jonathan Ransom, the main character. Two pages, and then nine pages. The prologue is a teaser. It baits the hook. It’s a two-page masterpiece. It’s intriguing, and then it’s really intriguing. It promises big things ahead. Then chapter one introduces the guy who’s going to have to deal with them. And why, indirectly.

Eleven pages. The reader in me wanted to race ahead. But the writer in me had to pause a moment. Because between the lines I was sensing something. Maybe because it’s an Olympic year I can only explain it like this: picture the high jump event. Six competitors are still in. Then five, then four. Then three. Then the gold, the silver, and the bronze are settled. But the rules of track and field allow the winner to go on. The bar is raised. A personal best. The Olympic record. The bar is raised again. World record height. The stadium goes quiet. The jumper stills himself on the runway. Intense concentration. The gold medal is already in the bag. Uncharted territory. The jumper rocks from foot to foot, his mind on nothing except jumping higher than he has ever jumped before.

That’s exactly the between-the-lines feeling I was getting from Reich, eleven pages into Rules of Deception - a world-class writer preparing to accomplish something truly noteworthy.

There are a further 377 pages. They live up to the promise.

--Lee Child

Josephine Tey and Nuala Anne McGrail

From Author Andrew Greeley.

The Daughter of Time has always been one of my favorite mysteries. Josephine Tey links the solution of a mystery in the late middle ages (the murder of the two young princes in the Tower) with a solution of a contemporary mystery. After looking for a "hook" on a similar story, I decided that the murder of Irish revolutionary hero Michael Collins was a perfect fit.

My detective would be a certain Dermot Michael Coyne whose beloved grandparents left shortly after the death of Collins and would never talk about "the troubles." Dermot is a big, likeable young man who turned down a football scholarship to Notre Dame and flunked out of the school. Then he went two years to Marquette and studied theology, but did not manage to graduate. His family bought him a seat on the board of trade where he barely survives until on the basis of a mistake he earns a million dollars.

Dermot, you see, loves to read and think and write poetry but he's not long on work. Well, he turns his gains over to a shrewd investment manager and goes on the grand tour of Europe which ends up in Dublin. Dermot tries to explore his grandparents' role in the death of Collins and is warned off by the police. Three toughs jump him off Stephens Green and he throws them through a plate glass window. As his mother says, Dermot becomes angry only when someone tells him there's something he can't do. So he phones his brother, a priest in Chicago and asks for a copy of the diary that "mom" (as the grandmother is called) kept during the troubles.

Alas, they are written in the Irish language and an archaic script. He must find a translator. I had decided that this translator would be a young woman from Trinity College whom he hires to do the translation. He wanders one evening into O'Neill's pub on College Green (which has been pavement as he tells us for at least a hundred years) and encounters a beautiful young woman who is studying a text book on World Economics. She dismisses him as "friggin' rich Yank" (using even harsher language). Dermot is smitten and decides she will be the translator. She brushes him off. The pub crowd demands a song from her. She produces a small Irish harp and sings the melancholy story of poor Mollie Malone. Dermot falls completely in love. She is, he tells us, is a black-haired Irish goddess (one of which he admits he has never met) and her voice has the sound of bells ringing over the bogs.

So this young woman, Nuala Anne McGrail (in her native Irish: Maire Phinoulla Ain MacGreil), enters the story with an assignment to a secondary role. Dermot Coyne's life will never be the same and neither will mine. Before he knows what has happened, he becomes her spear carrier and she becomes his Dr. Watson, Captain Hastings, and M. Flambeau all rolled up in one. She sings, she acts, she's an accountant and, oh yes, she's fey. She sees things ("dings" in her Irish brogue)—like the gender of a new baby even before the child is conceived—and excels as an ally, fighter, and as a reader of the auras around people (Dermot's silver blue, save when he is having dirty thoughts about her—then it becomes, she assures him, like the flame of an acetylene torch).

She may be in some weird contact with his "Ma." She is also given to the issuance of orders about what Dermot should do to solve the mystery. She is as much in love with him as he is with her, but—sick from pneumonia and fed up with her bossiness—he ignores her and flies home after she has solved the mystery for him. I added an ending to Irish Gold (Forge, 1994) in which he imagines meeting her at O'Hare Airport when she arrives to assume her job at Arthur Anderson and taking her home to meet his family.

That I thought was the end of the lovely and contentious young woman. But there was no way to really get rid of her. Readers had fallen in love with her, including my publisher. What happened next? they demanded.

So the Nuala Anne series began and continued through ten volumes, in each of which there is a mystery from the past, either in Ireland or among the Irish in Chicago, as well as one in the present. We also witness the courtship of Dermot and Nuala Anne (Irish Lace), their marriage (Irish Whiskey), their honeymoon in Ireland, including the acquisition of their first snow white Irish wolf hound (Irish Mist), and their first child (Nellie Coyne, now thirteen going on sixty and also fey and known by her baptismal name Mary Anne) in Irish Eyes.

She experiences postpartum stress, gives birth to another little girl, Sorca Marie, who is not fey, but weighs a pound and half at birth (Irish Stew) and, at her husband's insistence, becomes a nationally famous concert singer. Now going on thirty-two with four kids, a cook, a nanny, and two wolfhounds, and of course poor dear Dermot (as she calls him) to take care of, Nuala Anne (and Mary Anne) take up martial arts, earning black belts in tae kwan do. She cannot quite explain why, but says she knows she must do it.

I confess that I don't fully understand the woman, but I don't have to. Readers dote on her and apparently don't mind that the links between past and present are thin and herself sometimes seems much larger than life.

To which complaint I reply, "of course she is!"

Some also complain about the intensity of the sexual love between Nuala and Dermot. After all those years of marriage, they contend, sometimes in anger, there's no room for romantic love. Such objections tell more about the people that make them than it does about married love.

The begrudgers don't like her Irish twists in her speech. The Irish don't answer a question by asking another. Don't they now?

While all this is going on and Dermot and Herself—sometimes with the help of her good friend Blackie Ryan—solve mysteries from the past: in Chicago the mystery of the Camp Douglas "rebellion," the sinking of the Lady Elgin, the Hay Market Massacre, the Cholera epidemic in the 19th century; and in Ireland, the Risings of '98 and '02, the emergence of the Land League, the Galway trial of tribal leaders for murder, and the Irish Ambassador in Berlin during the war. Irish Linen, the story about the last mystery, features Klaus Stauffenberg, the Catholic who led an abortive revolution against Hitler. My current effort, Irish Tweed, recounts how Nuala and Mary Anne take on bullies in the schoolyard,
There are twelve stories so far in the series: Gold, Lace, Whiskey, Mist, Eyes, Cream, Linen, Love, Stew, Crystal, Tiger (Forge, Feb 2008) and Tweed. My publisher wants more, and with the help of God and the Chicago River not turning permanently green I will continue to write about her.

Authors I Like from Claire M. Johnson

This is from
Claire M. Johnson's blog. She is the author of Beat Until Stiff and Roux Mourgue. Claire is Smart and Funny and I love her. You should give her a try. I bet you will love her too.

"I'm going to start a new "series" here, listing authors that I like and why. Reading is on the decline in the United States, and while I'm assuming that most people who read this blog love books, there's always the chance that I might snag someone who was here for the recipe(s).

My favorite mystery author is James Lee Burke. There is a lyricism, a poetry, about his writing that is unusual in crime fiction. On the negative side, his women tend to be one-dimensional (except for the prostitutes and lowlifes), and he also has one plot: one man (with a little help from his friends) fighting internal and external demons. But I never let that stop me. Burke has a tremendous amount to say about institutionalized racism in the south, corruption so widespread it's almost genetic, the raping of the environment. His latest book, The Tin Roofblow Down another in the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Detective Dave Robicheaux series, deals with the corruption and destruction in the wake of Katrina; it is a stunning read, a love letter to Louisiana and its citizens.

My favorite book of his has kind of a woo-woo factor. I don't know how well it sold, but I imagine it's probably not one of his best sellers because of the ghost aspect to it. His publishers probably pulled him aside and said, "Jim, cut the supernatural shit." I recommend it highly: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. If you're an American reading this, it says so much about the Civil War, the people who fought it, the guilt of the survivors (us), the honorable men who fought an dishonorable war, the stupidity, and the slaughter.

Writer envy meter: five stars"

Don't miss Swan Peak. Robicheaux and his partner, Clete Purcel, head off for the mountains of Montana for some much-needed healing. But while Montana might seem an unspoilt paradise, Dave and Clete soon find that there is evil luring in the wilds too.

Stephen King calls Meg Gardiner "the next suspense superstar"

Recently Stephen King devoted an entire Entertainment Weekly
column to Meg Gardiner, proclaiming her "as good as Michael Connelly and far better than Janet Evanovich." How is it possible, he wondered, that this Californian was published only in Britain? Starting now, suspense fans on this side of the pond can get their fix right here: Dutton is proud to introduce Gardiner's brand-new series heroine, Jo Beckett, in The Dirty Secrets Club.

An ongoing string of high-profile and very public murder-suicides has San Francisco even more rattled than a string of recent earthquakes: A flamboyant fashion designer burns to death, clutching the body of his murdered lover. A superstar 49er jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. And most shocking of all, a U.S. attorney launches her BMW off a highway overpass, killing herself and three others.

Enter forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett, hired by the SFPD to cut open not the victim's body but the victim's life. Jo's job is to complete the psychological autopsy, shedding light on the circumstances of any equivocal death. Soon she makes a shocking discovery: All the suicides belonged to something called the Dirty Secrets Club, a group of A-listers with nothing but money and plenty to hide. As the deaths continue, Jo delves into the disturbing motives behind this shadowy group—until she receives a letter containing a dark secret Jo thought she'd left deep in her past, and ending with the most chilling words of all: "Welcome to the Dirty Secrets Club."
Stephen King - If you read Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, or Nelson DeMille, you're going to think Meg Gardiner is a gift from heaven....the next suspense superstar. Last November I had to do a book tour in England, which I looked forward to with the enthusiasm I have for emergency root canals. For an airplane read, I pulled China Lake, the first of Meg Gardiner's Evan Delaney series, from the Someday Bookcase. It was the first book I saw by my own U.K. publisher there (yes, Uncle Stevie can brown-nose with the best of them). And the type was big. That was the true deciding factor.

I barely noticed the plane ride (save that one patch of turbulence when I was convinced, as always, that death was approximately three minutes away). China Lake had me from page 1, on which a vicious religious cult called the Remnant pickets a funeral with charming signs reading ''God Hates Sluts'' and ''AIDS Cures Whores.'' Seven hours and 470 pages later I landed in England, convinced I had found the next suspense superstar. This book had everything. It came complete with an ultra-tough SoCal heroine (think Kinsey Millhone, only punk rock and in combat boots) and a climax which involves defusing a ticking time bomb and a stampeding brush fire. Entertainment Weekly

The Pop of King: The Secret Gardiner
Learn More About Meg

You can meet Author Meg Gardiner June 18 at 7 PM at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore

From Kim Harrison

Kim Harrison's favorite book of ALL time: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Can’t wait to read the sequel – Farewell Summer!

"Ray Bradbury's moving recollection of a vanished golden era remains one of his most enchanting novels. Dandelion Wine stands out in the Bradbury literary canon as the author's most deeply personal work, a semi-autobiographical recollection of a magical small-town summer in 1928.

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole wide world that lies beyond the city limits. It is a pair of brand-new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley's bell on a hazy afternoon. It is yesteryear and tomorrow blended into an unforgettable always. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals whose mystical power holds time at bay. It can be a best friend moving away, a human time machine who can transport you back to the Civil War, or a sideshow automaton able to glimpse the bittersweet future.

Come and savor Ray Bradbury's priceless distillation of all that is eternal about boyhood and summer."

To read an excerpt Click Here

The Book That Made Me a Reader

Michael Connelly’s favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960.
“Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.”

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."

Stephen King's Pick

Stephen is reading: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (By David Wroblewski) A meaty family melodrama forthcoming from Ecco Press this fall. It's got that Thousand Acres/Jane Smiley vibe.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle explores the deep and ancient alliance between humans and dogs, and the power of fate through one boy’s epic journey into the wild.

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar’s lifelong companion. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar’s uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelle’s once-peaceful home. When Edgar’s father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm–and into Edgar’s mother’s affections.
Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father’s death, but his plan backfires, spectacularly. Edgar flees into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm. He comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father’s murderer, and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs, turn Edgar ever homeward.

Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes–the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a ghost made of falling rain–create a family saga that is at once a brilliantly inventive retelling of Hamlet, an exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.

Charlaine Harris reviews Charlie Huston

Charlie Huston’s Already Dead: A NOVEL is a hard-boiled detective book that happens to be about a vampire. This tough-guy novel is reminiscent of Andrew Vachhs’s Burke novels and Jon Merz’s Enforcer books, though it’s Huston’s own unique creation. Joe Pitt, trying hard not to be affiliated with any of New York’s very territorial vampire gangs, is treading a fine line between them; employed by at least two gangs for strong-arm work, he is protected by neither.

What are some of Joe Pitt’s activities? Well, he tracks and kills zombies, finds missing heiresses, and admires a bartender named Evie, who is infected with the HIV virus. Evie doesn’t know Joe Pitt’s true nature, and naturally assumes she can infect him with the virus if they have sex. So it’s not your regular hard-boiled detective novel relationship.

Usually, novels written in the present tense really irritate me, and unconventional punctuation does, too. Charlie Huston is such a good writer that I don’t mind the way he constructed this book. HALF PAST DEAD would be a special treat for readers who specialize in books about New York, because it draws completely on the city for its ambience. There’s even a vampire street gang map of Manhattan, which is just a great idea; I wish I had it in poster form. I’d like to point out that I visit New York as seldom as possible, and I loved this book, anyway. It’s well worth a walk on the hard-boiled side.

It's a Hard-Knock Medieval Life by Diana Gabaldon

AND A LAST WORD ON FALCONES

It's a Hard-Knock Medieval Life By Diana Gabaldon,
Washington Post Wednesday, May 7, 2008; Page C04
CATHEDRAL OF THE SEA By Ildefonso Falcones Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor Dutton. 611 pp. $26.95
Mark Twain's description of the art of storytelling consisted of a laconic "Oh, I chase the characters up a tree and then throw rocks at them." Ildefonso Falcones has evidently taken Twain's correspondence course.
Life for Arnau Estanyol, Catalan hero of Falcones's international bestseller, starts out rocky: The local lord rapes Arnau's mother on her wedding night and then, not wanting his wife to accuse him of fathering yet another bastard, forces the young woman's husband to have sex with her immediately -- with witnesses -- to confuse the issue.
A fortuitous birthmark establishes the husband as Arnau's father, but now the noble lord is infuriated because he thinks his manhood has been impugned. He forces mother and child into his castle, leaving the husband bereft. From there things go downhill for the Estanyols.
"Cathedral of the Sea" could be subtitled "Nobles Behaving Badly." Whenever an aristocrat enters a scene, expect Big Trouble. Arrogant knights, debt-ridden barons, conniving wives, greedy kings -- it's soap opera on a grand scale, made believable and enthralling by the inclusion of the commonplace brutalities and small compassions of life in medieval Barcelona. Watching Arnau's rise from literal rags to riches is frequently like watching a series of train wrecks; you're horrified but can't look away.
Between disasters, we're treated to exegeses regarding the political affairs of Pedro the Cruel, Pedro the Ceremonious and Pedro the Third, with Phillippe the Bold, two or three Infantes and King Jaime of Mallorca thrown in for comic relief. We also get descriptions of the financial and legal complexities of money-lending and Mediterranean trade, and occasional lessons in the history of Barcelona and Catalonia. Readers who don't read historical novels for educational purposes might be tempted to skip these passages. Don't: All of them have something to do with the plot, which is so beautifully structured that the last 60 pages detonate like a string of firecrackers.
Stylistically, Falcones is a minimalist. He rarely describes what characters look like, and here is virtually his entire description of an important sea battle: "At dawn, Pedro the Cruel ordered the attack. His fleet approached the sandbanks, and his men began to fire their crossbows and to shoot stones from catapults and bricolas. From the other side of the banks, the Catalan fleet did the same. Many men died from the crossbow bolts fired from both armies."
Though uncomplicated, the prose is powerful, no doubt due in part to the skill of the translator, Nick Caistor; the simplicity allows us to appreciate the riveting story without the distraction of ornamental language. Falcones has an eye for the singular, telling detail, and if his characters are simply drawn, they're believable.
Arnau is not quite your stereotypical hero. He's not all that bright, and most of his successes are the result of sheer luck or of falling in with people who are much smarter than he is. But he is good-hearted and stubborn about the few things he believes in.
Falcones's women really are all madonnas or whores and sometimes both at once, with the odd scheming harpy thrown in. Oddly, while most of the men in the book, other than the horny nobles, are celibate, many of the women are seething masses of molten desire. This was, of course, exactly the view of women promulgated by the Catholic Church at the time. Falcones's women eloquently make the point that for much of human history, women had no value other than sex and thus no power aside from it. And sex, as anyone -- especially Arnau -- can tell you, is a double-edged weapon.
Given Arnau's involvement with the ongoing construction of the cathedral of the title (a real one, Santa Maria del Mar) throughout the book, comparisons with Ken Follett's architectural historical novels, "The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End," are inescapable, but aside from length and the central concept of architecture as metaphor, Falcones and Follett are entirely different in style, structure and theme. Follett merely describes the medieval mind-set to a modern audience; Falcones enters it, complete with its acceptance of brutality and embrace of religious sensibility.
"Cathedral" deals with the right of an individual -- a serf, a slave, a Jew or a woman -- to be recognized as a human being. This wasn't a popular concept in medieval Catalonia, but Arnau stands by it. While his principles frequently get him beaned with an authorial rock or arrested by the Inquisition, they also see him through. Arnau is the common man, and his eventual victory is one that every reader will celebrate.