May 312016
 

Cover for Freedom of the Mask by Robert McCammonThe year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional “problem solver,” is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he’s been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril. Following his hunch, Greathouse retraces Matthew’s steps only to find him first presumed dead, then accused of murdering a young woman and apparently en route to London with a devious Prussian count last encountered on Professor Fell’s Pendulum Island.

Little does he know that Matthews’s circumstances are growing worse by the second. For when Matthew arrives in the bustling squalor of Londontown, he’s come shackled, charged for the murder of Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren. No matter the lack of body, presumed lost to the ocean. He soon finds himself locked up in the infamous Newgate prison, and has drawn the interest of a mysterious mask-wearing vigilante accused of several gruesome murders. Greathouse and the woman Matthew loves, Berry Grigsby, travel across the high seas to England to aid their friend, but it is impossible to know whether they will reach him in time to save his life.

Freedom of the Mask is the sixth installment in bestselling author Robert McCammon’s acclaimed series of standalone historical thrillers featuring the exploits of a young hero the USA Character Approved Blog has called “the Early American James Bond.” The most surprising and ambitious volume to date, this is a novel filled with unpredictable twists and a note-perfect depiction of early 1700s London. Fans will not want to miss Matthew Corbett’s most dangerous adventure yet.

 May 31, 2016  Tagged with: ,
May 242016
 

Ann Claycomb’s THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER, about a promising opera singer plagued by stabbing pain in her feet, who slowly discovers she is 8 generations removed from the original Little Mermaid in Hans Christian Andersen’s story and is given the same awful choice all the women in her family faced: kill yourself and end the pain, or kill your true love and return to the sea, to Rebecca Lucash at William Morrow, for publication winter 2017, by Cameron McClure.

 May 24, 2016  Tagged with: ,
May 242016
 

Cover for Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and JusticeIn the vein of Alice Sebold’s Lucky, comes a compelling, real-life crime mystery and gripping memoir of the cold case prosecution of a serial rapist, told by one of his victims.

On the morning of September 12, 2013, a fugitive task force broke down the door of Arthur Fryar’s apartment in Brooklyn. His DNA, entered in the FBI’s criminal database after a drug conviction, had been matched to evidence from a rape in Pennsylvania years earlier. Over the next year, Fryar and his lawyer fought his extradition and prosecution for the rape—and another like it—which occurred in 1992. The names of the victims, one from January, the other from November, were suppressed; the prosecution and the media referred to them as Jane Doe.

Now, Jane Doe January tells her story.

Emily Winslow was a young drama student at Carnegie Mellon University’s elite conservatory in Pittsburgh when a man brutally attacked and raped her in January 1992. While the police’s search for her rapist proved futile, Emily reclaimed her life. Over the course of the next two decades, she fell in love, married, had two children, and began writing mystery novels set in her new hometown of Cambridge, England. Then, in fall 2013, she received shocking news—the police had found her rapist.

This is her intimate memoir—the story of a woman’s traumatic past catching up with her, in a country far from home, surrounded by people who have no idea what she’s endured. Caught between past and present, and between two very different cultures, the inquisitive and restless crime novelist searches for clarity. Beginning her own investigation, she delves into Fryar’s family and past, reconnects with the detectives of her case, and works with prosecutors in the months leading to trial.

As she recounts her long-term quest for closure, Winslow offers a heartbreakingly honest look at a vicious crime—and offers invaluable insights into the mind and heart of a victim.

 May 24, 2016  Tagged with: ,
May 172016
 

Cover for Runtime by S.B. DivyaThe Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg’s Tour de France. Rich thrill-seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a day-long race across the Sierra Nevada.

Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race. But the Minerva Challenge is the only chance she has at a better life for herself and her younger brothers, and she’s ready to risk it all.

 May 17, 2016  Tagged with: ,
May 042016
 

Cover for Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and JusticeLibrary Journal: This eloquent memoir will be appreciated by anyone interested in cold case investigations and victim advocacy as well as true crime fans. In 1992, novelist Winslow (The Whole World) was a theater major at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, when she was raped in her apartment by an unknown assailant. The cold case opened again in 2013, when DNA evidence unexpectedly pointed to serial rapist Arthur Fryar, and a loophole in the statute of limitations allowed him to be prosecuted. Winslow, designated “Jane Doe January” in the court records, begins a diary of her thoughts about the assault, its aftermath, and the preparation for the trial that follows. An active participant in the prosecution taking place across the Atlantic (she lives in England), the author researches the suspect, contacts people involved in the original investigation, and maintains constant correspondence with the prosecutors. It is a long journey of starts and stops, delays, disappointments, and loss. Mostly, it is full of kind, helpful people whose refusal to give up heartens Winslow through the frustrating process. This important chronicle answers the question, does it serve justice to put a man on trial for a 20-year-old crime? For the victim, it absolutely does.

 May 4, 2016  Tagged with: ,
Apr 202016
 

Cover for Camille Griep's New Charity Blues.Publishers Weekly:  Griep dives into the dystopian genre in this outstanding novel, which challenges preconceptions of the genre. After a plague ravages a once-thriving world, a harsh rivalry emerges between two immune communities: the decaying City, and the idyllic New Charity. Cressyda, a New Charitan fleeing her former life, is caught up in a political struggle when she returns to New Charity in the wake of her father’s mysterious death. Cressyda clashes with her childhood friends, Len and Cas Willis, as she tries to understand the dangerous thrall New Charity is under. Griep’s writing is fresh and intense, imbued with suspense. She excels at the rich imagining of a world where magic, science, and politics intertwine. The spunky heroine is doubtful and questioning, and those who are vital to the oligarchical power structure might also topple it. Most vividly, Griep plumbs questions of what home means, and what it means to have a safe place in the midst of chaos.

 April 20, 2016  Tagged with: ,
Apr 152016
 

Cover for Camille Griep's New Charity Blues.Library Journal: A plague has decimated the planet’s population. Former ballerina Cressyda resides in the City, a community of survivors that remains a collapsed ruin compared to New Charity. This society stands strong behind its wall, with a hydroelectric dam that ensures no one from the City can access that water. When Syd learns she has inherited her father’s New Charity ranch, she returns both to the family she left behind years ago and to her then best friend, Casandra. Cas, a seer and acolyte to the Spirit, knows that Syd wants to open the dam for everyone, whatever the cost to New Charity. The two women realize that the dam draws on strange magic that, if tampered with, could be dangerous. Syd must find a way that allows both settlements to survive, despite her unearthing of the depth of New Charity’s corruption—and the facts of her own father’s murder. VERDICT In a story of family and betrayal, community and survival, Griep (Letters to Zell) reimagines a post-apocalyptic Trojan War that brings new life to a classic epic.

 April 15, 2016  Tagged with: ,
Apr 122016
 

Cover for Camille Griep's New Charity Blues.In the wake of a devastating plague, two communities emerge as bastions of survival. One is called the City, and its people scrabble for scraps in the wasteland. The other, New Charity, enjoys the bounty of its hydroelectric dam and refuses City denizens so much as a drop of precious water. When City-dweller Cressyda inherits her father’s ranch within New Charity, she becomes intent on opening the dam to all—no matter the cost.

But when Syd reunites with her old best friend, Casandra, a born seer and religious acolyte, she realizes that her plans could destroy the fragile lives they’ve built in order to survive. What’s more, the strange magic securing the dam’s operations could prove deadly if disturbed. Yet when Syd discovers evidence that her father might have been murdered, she is more determined than ever to exact revenge on New Charity’s corrupt.

Pitted against Cas, as well as her own family, Syd must decide how to secure the survival of both settlements without tipping them over the brink to utter annihilation. In this intense and emotional reimagining of the Trojan War epic, two women clash when loyalty, identity, community, and family are all put to the ultimate test.

 April 12, 2016  Tagged with: ,
Apr 082016
 

Cover for J.A. Pitts' Night Terrors, book 4 in the Sarah Beauhall series.Magic has a cost. Sarah Beauhall, blacksmith and dragon slayer doesn’t know just how high. Her lover, Katie Cornett, has finally been overwhelmed by this spiraling cost and her spirit is blasted from her body and flung into a world of nightmares and monsters.

As Katie’s coma deepens and her chances of survival fade, Sarah’s spirit must make a journey of its own through a world of crystalline eaters and malevolent spirits who exist only to hunt and to consume.

Night after night Sarah delves beyond the hidden paths, going from crystalline landscapes into the wild lands and lost worlds far beyond the great sea of dreams.

When the spirit of a long dead murderer—known only as the Bowler Hat man—begins gathering an army in the forgotten lands, Sarah discovers that more than eaters and feeders pursue her.

 April 8, 2016  Tagged with: ,
Mar 252016
 

Cover for Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and JusticePublishers Weekly:  With remarkable emotional insight and precision, mystery writer Winslow turns to memoir to narrate the long-delayed prosecution of the man who raped her two decades ago….Her story is profoundly troubling, but the legitimate care and consideration of Winslow’s legal support system is powerfully redemptive. Her account bravely illuminates a process many survivors of rape must endure.

Read Publishers Weekly’s full review of Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice here.

 March 25, 2016  Tagged with: ,