Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

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Our latest bestseller list is brought to you by crisp apples, warm cinnamon, and our affiliate sales data. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher Amazon | B&N | Kobo Every Rogue Has His Charm by Susanna Craig Amazon | B&N | Kobo At Your Service by Sandra Antonelli Amazon | B&N | Kobo The “I Do” Dilemma by Jayci Lee Amazon | B&N | Kobo Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep Amazon | B&N | Kobo Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest Amazon | B&N | Kobo Wicked Beauty by Katee Robert Amazon | B&N | Kobo How to Fake It in Hollywood by Ava Wilder Amazon | B&N | Kobo A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross Amazon | B&N | Kobo The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker Amazon | B&N | Kobo I hope you weekend was all sorts of cozy! View the full article

First Assignment – Story Statement Elwin needs to survive the coming revolution long enough to earn enough money to escape out of Luxton’s poorest neighborhood – without getting her friends killed first. Second Assignment – Antagonist The Governor – Silk to his friends, the number of which he could count on one hand – had been a thief, merchant and spy before the Goddess had plucked him out of his normal life. The divinity had given him one job: protect the girl until she could fulfill her destiny. And they had – he, Palston, that half mad witch, completely mad wizard, and besotted princeling. They’d put her on the throne and gotten her up the mountain where she’d stuffed the Emperor and his Demon Lord back into the seven hells. As a reward, the girl had made him Royal Governor of Luxton. Silk vowed to hold it. The Emperor was gone, but his Empire remained, plotting revenge. The kingdom needed Luxton’s armories and charm makers to defend its borders. No collection of apprentices, workers, and nuns who didn’t understand their place in the world was going to upset the ordered running of those industries, not while Silk breathed. If that meant meeting protests with demons, Church Guards, and other holy instruments of violence, so be it. He promised to hold the city for his Queen and his Goddess and he would – whether they approved of his methods or not. Third Assignment – Titles The Fire of Fools and Knaves Gunpowder Demons No Kings. No Masters. No Demons. Fourth Assignment – Comps Foundryside – Robert Jackson Bennet. Second world fantasy with a mix of technology and magic, and thief who ends up thrust into politics against her will. Blocktongue Thief – Christopher Buehlman. Second world fantasy with a sense of humor, focused on a character interested in their own advancement whose self-interest draws them into bigger struggles. Fifth Assignment – Log Line A thief and magic taster stumbles upon an item that everyone in her revolution torn city wants – its her way out of poverty if she can survive long enough and if she can stomach the amount of innocent blood she’ll have to spill to cash in. Sixth Assignment – Core Conflict Life as a thief in the Wreck has taught Elwin that people like her can merely hope to make their way in the world, nit make the world better, whatever her old friend Beanpole and his revolutionaries think. So when she steals a charm that every side in the conflict is willing to pay for, she jumps at the chance to turn it into enough coin to escape the grinding poverty of her life. But politics is a bloody game, and the more she tries to simply make her way out, the more her friends pay the price. Ultimately she has to decide: is making her way instead of making the way better worth the cost in innocent blood? Seventh Assignment –Setting Luxton is the largest city on the continent. Nestled in the lowest pass separating the plains form the Empire and resting on the Great Lake, it is a natural commercial and immigration hub. The influx of people form all over the continent, and Gnomes fomr the mountain, have made it the magic, cultural and industrial center of the continent, a jewel fought over for centuries. The wealthy merchants build towering mansions to their egos, the First Families spend their inherited fortunes on gambling, plays and artists, pretending not to notice the industrialists buying their way into power and prestige. The Wreck is everything Luxton does not wish to believe itself to be – poor, desperate, violent. It is the home of forgotten shops, forgotten religious orders, and forgotten people. Run by gangs, ignored by the city’s rulers, its citizens make their way in the world as best they can with only a few dreaming of making the way better.

We usually wait to share book reviews for our interview days here at Writer Unboxed, but this morning our dear friend and one of my two extremely appreciated assistant editors, Vaughn Roycroft, received his first review. And I just can’t help but share it, and not just because I know how much heart and perseverance went into this series for Vaughn, but because I just can’t help but think YOU would also want me to share it as well. Bonus: The FINAL cover is revealed at the end. Email readers, you can access the YouTube video, titled, One of the best self-published fantasies I’ve read: Vaughn Roycroft’s The Severing Son, directly HERE. Enjoy! About Therese WalshTherese Walsh (she/her) co-founded WU in 2006 and is the site's editorial director. She was the architect and 1st editor of WU's only book, Author in Progress, and orchestrates the WU UnConference. Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot. Sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to learn about her new projects (or follow her on BookBub). Learn more on her website. Web | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | More Posts [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

“Many patients, in times of stress, will recount dreams haunted by images of their bodies falling apart. Sometimes they tell me stories of paralysis, or rotten extremities dangling by thin skeins of flesh. Most commonly, they talk about their teeth, painlessly and inexplicably falling from their gums. These dreams never fail to horrify their dreamers, and I can understand the discomfort in watching one’s parts detach. But never do these dreamers experience what it’s like to be the limb that rots away, to be the tooth that falls from the mouth.” Hiron Ennes’ debut novel Leech (2022) is a remarkable and original work of speculative horror. Essentially a novel about a mind-controlling parasite from the point of view of the parasite, Leech successfully combines elements of the gothic, body horror and post-apocalyptic science fiction to create something strange and new. Ennes’s creation draws from the New Weird of works like Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (2014), and from the post-New Weird experimentation of works like Tade Thompson’s Rosewater (2016) and Aliya Whitely’s The Beauty (2014), in how its experimental narrative decentres the human experience, opening up a wider posthuman alien perspective. Ennes also effectively integrates traditional gothic motifs, given new and disturbing twists by dint of their strange context and Ennes’ febrile imaginings. Beyond all the possible comparisons though, Leech is striking for its stark originality, its willingness to use science fiction and horror to explore the very fringes of what the genre can do. I doubt I will read anything quite like it anytime soon. Leech is told from the perspective of the Interprovincial Medical Institute, its bland corporate name hiding that it is a hive mind parasite that has spent generations infecting young humans, controlling their brains and replacing all human physicians so that in return for providing medical care for humanity it will not be detected or fought against. When one of its bodies dies in mysterious circumstances, the Institute sends one of its bodies on the train from Inultus, the metropolis that houses its vast libraries, up to the frozen northern wastes of Verdira and the Baron’s forbidding castle to investigate. Once there, they discover that their predecessor succumbed to another parasite, a mass of black fungal tendrils enmeshed in the old doctor’s orbital socket which they name Pseudomycota emilia. Incubated in the wheatrock mines, the new parasite has been released and is spreading through Verdira, moving in on the Institute’s territory. As the winter grows ever more harsh and the inhabitants of the castle are isolated by the storms, the Institute’s body finds itself alone for the first time, fighting an implacable enemy as the web of lies and deceit holding the Baron’s family together begins to warp under the pressure. Soon they find themselves haunted by memories of their previous life as an individual human as the castle around them collapses into chaos. The mind-infecting parasite is an old science fiction trope, dating back at least as far as 1950s invasion narratives like Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1951) and Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (1955). In these works, the parasites are a mysterious and threatening alien Other, something to be feared and destroyed. Ennes’ remarkable innovation in Leech is to write from the parasite’s perspective, giving the reader the inner thoughts and motivations of a terrifying hive-mind brain-controlling entity, and thus allowing us to think of it as a person. Ennes has clearly thought very deeply about how a multi-bodied hive mind organism would think and operate, and the Institute’s perspective is a fascinating one, able to converse with its various bodies in different parts of the world. Although it is a parasite, because we get its perspective we come to understand its concern for its own survival and evolution, and the strange affection it shows its patients and victims. This is contrasted with its body’s emerging memories of growing up as a young girl called Simone, suffering from epilepsy in the working class environs of Satgarden, before she was accepted into the Institute as payment for medical treatment. Ann Leckie similarly explored the hive mind Ancillaries in Ancillary Justice (2014), and protagonist Breq discovering their own individuality after existing as part of a hive mind, but Leech goes further, both in its depiction of hive consciousness and in the split between the Institute’s body and Simone as an individual. This dual perspective, with the Institute and Simone in conflict with each other throughout the novel, opens up a more-than-human perspective whilst celebrating the individual fragility of humanity. Leech is told from the perspective of an organism entrenched in that world, and as a result the reader is expertly fed pieces of information organically as they encounter them. As the novel progresses, you slowly build up a picture of this incredible, far-future post-apocalyptic world, in which human civilisation has collapsed following various disasters, including alien spaceships crashing from the sky, leaving the survivors to fend for themselves in a world populated by horrors like the Institute and Pseudomycota, as well as the wrecks of autonomous machines, still carrying out their mysterious purposes long after whoever programmed them has gone, and mythical nightmares like the ventigeaux that stalk the Verdiran wastes. The origins of the catastrophe and all the weirdness that has emerged as a side effect are obscured in time, resulting in myths and legends arising to explain them. Ennes expertly shows us this strange and frightening world through the eyes of the people who inhabit it and the stories they tell each other to make sense of their surroundings. Leech is also full of memorable characters, from the Institute and Simone through the Baron and his horrendous family to the inhabitants of Verdira who get caught up in the crossfire. The novel draws heavily on the gothic, particularly in the Baron’s haunted castle and his creepy granddaughters who can speak to the ghosts. The castle is haunted by the atrocities perpetrated by the Baron and his family in order to maintain control over the dangerous but profitable wheatrock mines, the various forms of coercive control they have exercised over generations to keep the people of Verdira risking life and limb in dangerous mines to increase their own personal wealth. In their own way, the Baron and his family are as much parasites as the Institute or Pseudomycota, without the surface gentility of the Institute’s medical expertise. Ennes brilliantly ties together these different forms of parasitism, colonialism and stealing of agency, using the Weird to tease out profound and uncomfortable parallels. Leech is a brilliant and uncompromising novel, one that heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in speculative fiction. I very much look forward to seeing what Ennes does next. The post LEECH by Hiron Ennes (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/posts/hide-your-wallet.jpg If you’re new to Hide Your Wallet, this is where we list new releases we’re pretty excited for in the coming month. Each reviewer has a book maximum (five per person), and we’ve separated HYW into two parts. The first HYW of the month will cover books that release from the 1st to the 14th. The second HYW will cover books released from the 15th to the end of the month. We also think this will help us feature books from smaller publishers who don’t have buy links up as early as the bigger trade houses. As always, if we missed any books that you’re particularly looking forward to, tell us all about them in the comments. A Curse of Queens Author: Amanda Bouchet Released: October 4, 2022 by Sourcebooks Casablanca Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, Romance Series: The Kingmaker Chronicles #4 Discover an all-new adventure in USA Today Bestselling author Amanda Bouchet’s thrilling, white-hot fantasy series, The Kingmaker Chronicles! The queen has been cursed, and no one knows who’s behind the plot to threaten the realm’s fragile peace. Desperate to help, Jocasta hatches a plan to find Circe’s Garden, a fabled island where she hopes to discover an antidote. But she can’t do it alone. She needs the strong arm and unflinching bravery of the warrior she’s loved since childhood—her brother’s right-hand-man and captain of the guard, Flynn of Sinta. Together they can do the impossible. Yet with treachery brewing on Mount Olympus, one thing is clear: Thalyria and its new royals are still pawns in an epic game of power—one that might end in a War of Gods. Amanda: So excited to return to this world! Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want to order this one? We’ve got the links you need!. A Scatter of Light Author: Malinda Lo Released: October 4, 2022 by Dutton Books for Young Readers Genre: LGBTQIA, Young Adult Award-winning author Malinda Lo returns to the Bay Area with another masterful coming-of-queer-age story, this time set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage. And almost sixty years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Lo’s new novel also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath’s lives since 1955. Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends–one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West.Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s gardener. Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable–for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It’s the kind of summer that changes a life forever. I know readers are ready for more Malinda Lo sapphic longing! Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Find buy links for this book here.. A Turn of the Tide Author: Kelley Armstrong Released: October 4, 2022 Genre: Historical: European, Time Travel, Romance Series: A Stitch in Time #3 In Thorne Manor there is one locked door. Behind it lies a portal to the twenty-first century, and nothing is going to stop Miranda Hastings from stepping through. After all, she is a Victorian writer of risqué pirate adventures—traveling to the future would be the greatest adventure of them all. When Miranda goes through, though, she lands in Georgian England…and in the path of Nicolas Dupuis, a privateer accused of piracy. Sheltered by locals, Nico is repaying their kindness by being their “pirate Robin Hood,” stealing from a corrupt lord and fencing smuggled goods on the village’s behalf. Miranda embraces Nico’s cause, only to discover there’s more to it than he realizes. Miranda has the second sight, and there are ghosts at play here. The recently deceased former lord is desperate to stop his son from destroying his beloved village. Then there’s the ghost of Nico’s cabin boy, who he thought safe in a neighboring city. Miranda and Nico must solve the mystery of the boy’s death while keeping one step ahead of the hangman. It may not be the escapade Miranda imagined, but it is about to be the adventure of a lifetime. Aarya: I like the idea of time travel between two different historical eras (eliminating the 21st century altogether). Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? Here are helpful buy links.. Blackmail and Bibingka Author: Mia Manansala Released: October 4, 2022 by Berkley Genre: Mystery/Thriller Series: Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery #3 When her long lost cousin comes back to town just in time for the holidays, Lila Macapagal knows that big trouble can’t be far behind in this new mystery by Mia P. Manansala, author of Arsenic and Adobo. It’s Christmastime in Shady Palms, but things are far from jolly for Lila Macapagal. Sure, her new business, The Brew-ha Cafe, is looking to turn a profit in its first year. And yes, she’s taken the first step in a new romance with her good friend, Jae Park. But her cousin Ronnie is back in town after ghosting the family fifteen years ago, claiming that his recent purchase of a local winery shows that he’s back on his feet and ready to give back to the Shady Palms community. Tita Rosie is thrilled with the return of her prodigal son, but Lila knows that wherever Ronnie goes, trouble follows. She’s soon proven right when Ronnie is accused of murder, and secrets and rumors surrounding her shady cousin and those involved with the winery start piling up. Now Lila has to put away years of resentment and distrust to prove her cousin’s innocence. He may be a jerk, but he’s still family. And there’s no way her flesh and blood could actually be a murderer…right? This is the third in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series. Are you keeping up? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? Here are helpful buy links.. Hallows End Author: Kristen Proby Released: October 4, 2022 by Ampersand Publishing, Inc. Genre: Paranormal, Romance Series: The Curse of the Blood Moon #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristen Proby returns to tales beyond the natural and normal with her brand-new, captivating paranormal romance series that is sure to capture your heart and make you believe in magic. Returning to her beloved home of Salem after a trip away, Lucy Finch can’t shake the feeling of anxiety that suddenly plagues her. Nor can she shrug off her third eye’s urging that she has a mission she must undertake—a secret she must uncover. As a green witch, Lucy has always felt strongest and the most at home in the forest, surrounded by nature. But when a disturbing dream wakes her and sends her fleeing into the woods, she isn’t prepared for what she finds. She expected her element. Perhaps a message from spirit. She didn’t expect to cross paths with a sexy-as-sin man, straight out of a movie scene. Jonas Morley isn’t like the other residents of Hallows End. He knows the town’s secrets, as well as Salem’s, and it has been his honor and duty to protect them for as long as he can remember. But the gorgeous witch who graces the town’s hidden border shakes him and makes him second-guess his directive. She calls to him like no other. But can he save his home and those under his care and still make her his? Or will their union mean danger and destruction for not only them but also those who live within the town’s borders? Curses don’t discriminate, and the curse of the blood moon is the most determined and dangerous of all. Hallows End is the first book in the Curse of the Blood Moon Series. Aarya: Between this and Molly Harper’s audible original Witches Get Stuff Done, I have enough witch content to get in the Halloween spirit. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Find buy links for this book here.. Just Like Magic Author: Sarah Hogle Released: October 4, 2022 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance From the author of Twice Shy comes a sprightly Christmas novel, a rollicking romp through the absurdity of family holidays and the hope of new love. Bettie Hughes once knew the comfort of luxury, flaunting a ridiculous collection of designer shoes and a stealthy addiction to CBD oils. That is, until her parents snipped her purse strings. Long obsessed with her public image, Bettie boasts an extravagant lifestyle on social media. But the reality is: Bettie is broke and squatting in Colorado, and her family has no idea. Christmas, with its pressure to meet familial expectations, is looming when a drunk Bettie plays a vinyl record of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” backwards and accidentally conjures Hall, an unexpectedly charming Holiday Spirit in the form of a man. Once the shock wears off, Bettie knows she’s stumbled upon the greatest gift: a chance to make all her holiday wishes come true, plus a ready-made fiancé. But as the wiles of magic lose their charm, Bettie finds herself set off-kilter by Hall’s sweet gestures. Suddenly, Bettie is finding her heart merry and light. But the happier she gets, the shorter Hall’s time on earth grows. Can Bettie channel the Christmas spirit and learn to live with goodwill toward all men? Or will her selfish ways come back as soon as the holidays are over? Aarya: Really enjoyed Hogle’s first two books, but I might wait for December to get in the proper mood for this. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? We can help: buy links ahoy!. The Mountain in the Sea Author: Ray Nayler Released: October 4, 2022 by MCD Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future. Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android. The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves. But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it. A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy. Amanda: This gives me all the Arrival vibes! Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want to order this one? We’ve got the links you need!. So This Is Christmas Author: Jenny Holiday Released: October 4, 2022 by Avon Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance Series: A Princess for Christmas #3 USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday concludes her beloved royal Christmas series with an unforgettable romance about a confident American woman and the strait-laced royal advisor who falls hopelessly in love with her. Matteo Benz has spent his life serving at the pleasure of the Eldovian crown. His work is his life and his life, well…he doesn’t have much of one. When he is tasked to aid a management consultant who has been flown in to help straighten out the king’s affairs, he is instantly disturbed by her brash American manner–as well by an inconvenient attraction to the brainy beauty. Cara Delaney is in Eldovia to help clean up the king’s financial affairs, but soon finds herself at odds with the very proper Mr. Benz. As intrigued by his good looks as she is annoyed by his dedication to tradition for its own sake, she slowly begins to see the real man behind the royal throne. As they work together to return Eldovia to its former glory during the country’s magical Christmas season, Matteo discovers he is falling hopelessly in love with the unconventional American. But a man who has devoted his life to tradition doesn’t change easily. Can he become the man Cara needs, or will their love be another sacrifice to the crown? Elyse: A royal holiday romance sounds like the feel good read I need. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? Here are helpful buy links.. Station Eternity Author: Mur Lafferty Released: October 4, 2022 by Ace Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy Series: The Midsolar Murders #1 From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide. But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board… Amanda: I’ve been on a murder mystery kick lately and I love seeing this mix in other genres like fantasy and sci-fi. Sarah: I’m so, so excited to read this, and not just because of the absolute charming cleverness of “Midsolar Murders.” Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? Here are helpful buy links.. Such Sharp Teeth Author: Rachel Harrison Released: October 4, 2022 by Berkley Genre: Horror A young woman in need of a transformation finds herself in touch with the animal inside in this gripping, incisive novel from the author of Cackle and The Return. Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby’s father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she’s attacked. Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She’s unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver—and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She’s changing into someone else—something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she’s putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance? This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability. Amanda: I think Rachel Harrison is doing such fun things with fantasy and horror. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? We can help: buy links ahoy!. The Belle of Belgrave Square Author: Mimi Matthews Released: October 11, 2022 by Berkley Genre: Historical: European, Romance Series: Belles of London #2 A London heiress rides out to the wilds of the English countryside to honor a marriage of convenience with a mysterious and reclusive stranger. Tall, dark, and dour, the notorious Captain Jasper Blunt was once hailed a military hero, but tales abound of his bastard children and his haunted estate in Yorkshire. What he requires now is a rich wife to ornament his isolated ruin, and he has his sights set on the enchanting Julia Wychwood. For Julia, an incurable romantic cursed with a crippling social anxiety, navigating a London ballroom is absolute torture. The only time Julia feels any degree of confidence is when she’s on her horse. Unfortunately, a young lady can’t spend the whole of her life in the saddle, so Julia makes an impetuous decision to take her future by the reins—she proposes to Captain Blunt. In exchange for her dowry and her hand, Jasper must promise to grant her freedom to do as she pleases. To ride—and to read—as much as she likes without masculine interference. He readily agrees to her conditions, with one provision of his own: Julia is forbidden from going into the tower rooms of his estate and snooping around his affairs. But the more she learns of the beastly former hero, the more intrigued she becomes… Claudia: I really enjoyed this one! Heroine suffers from social anxiety and it’s well handled here. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Find buy links for this book here.. Butt-dialing the Billionaire Author: Annika Martin Released: October 11, 2022 Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance Series: Billionaires of Manhattan #7 It was just some silly fun. A goofy imitation of the faceless mega-billionaire who owns our faceless international mega-corporation. And yes, there was laughter. Possibly a few hoots and screams. How was I to know that Dave from accounting had sat on the speakerphone, butt-dialing said mega-billionaire? Or that he’d listen to me make fun of him for ten straight minutes. Ummm…he could’ve announced himself! They say he’s a notorious rake. A paparazzi-punching scoundrel. An international jet-set bad boy. And now I hear he’s determined to track down the jokester. Me. Eep! But we’re tight like family in this office—no way will my co-workers rat me out, in spite of the pressure from the top. Plus, who brings the cookies? Moi! Things die down after a few months, and I’m pretty sure I’m safe. Thank goodness, because I have my hands full with our lazy, arrogant new office gopher. He has the worst work ethic I’ve ever seen—how did he even get hired? He doesn’t know how to work a vending machine, and he’s baffled when we send around a card to be signed for somebody’s birthday. It’s as if he’s never set foot in a place of business in his life. But little by little, we’re drawing closer. He’s funny. Sexy. Wicked. Still, he’s all wrong for me. I like respectable men with a work ethic. Also, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s hiding something… Aarya: The most recent installment wasn’t my cup of tea, but I reread a couple books via audio in September and they’re as fun as I remembered (The Billionaire’s Wake-up-call Girl is my favorite). Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? We can help: buy links ahoy!. Hard Pressed Author: Aurora Rey Released: October 11, 2022 by Bold Strokes Books Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance For Mira Lavigne, cider is about tradition, elegance, and class. She has little respect and even less patience for self-anointed mavericks who think their ticket to fame and fortune is throwing the rulebook out the window. Dylan Miller is one of those people. The only thing she loves more than pushing the envelope is finding ways to make cider, perry, and a few things she hasn’t even named yet more delicious and more accessible to everyone. When Mira and Dylan are tapped to co-chair Finger Lakes Cider Week, neither can pass up the publicity and prestige of the role. But professional compromises raise personal stakes, and Dylan and Mira are hard-pressed to keep their businesses—and their hearts—out of harm’s way. Tara: I don’t think I’ve read a romance with a cider maker before and now I want to! Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Find buy links for this book here.. Mistakes Were Made Author: Meryl Wilsner Released: October 11, 2022 by St. Martin's Griffin Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance From the critically acclaimed author of Something to Talk About comes Meryl Wilsner’s Mistakes Were Made, a sharp and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend’s mom. When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup—it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom—the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they’d met. To make things worse, Erin’s daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin’s better judgement—how could sleeping with your daughter’s friend be anything but bad?—she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night. What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost? Tara: I love age gap romances and cannot wait to see how this one plays out. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want to order this one? We’ve got the links you need!. The Spare Man Author: Mary Robinette Kowal Released: October 11, 2022 by Tor Books Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal blends her no-nonsense approach to life in space with her talent for creating glittering high-society in this stylish SF mystery, The Spare Man. Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis, and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling– And keep the real killer from striking again. Sarah: I’m going to read this and Station Eternity and hang out in space for hours. This looks so freaking good. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want to order this one? We’ve got the links you need!. Velvet Cruelty Author: Eve Dangerfield Released: October 11, 2022 by Dangerous Press Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance Once upon a time I was promised to a powerful man. I was raised to be dutiful and innocent. But on my wedding day, I’m stolen by four men. Men who loathe my fiancé. They’re going to use me to fulfill their vendetta. One of them only wants my body. One of them wants me as his wife. Another one offers freedom… at a price. And the last wants me dead. I was raised to be a good society wife. Now I’m facing a battle of wits and breathless desire. My only hope is to set aside my innocence. Or learn to use it as a weapon. Author’s Note: VELVET CRUELTY is a scorching romance between a woman and four beautifully dangerous men in which she never has to choose. Read at your own discretion. Welcome to the Midnight Dynasty… The warring Morelli and Constantine families have enough bad blood to fill an ocean, and their brand new stories will be told by your favorite dangerous romance authors. WARNING: This book is intended for readers eighteen years old and over. It contains material that some readers could find disturbing. Enter at your own risk… Amanda: Excited for Dangerfield’s return to dark, sexy romances. Still holding out she’ll finish the Silver Daughters Ink series. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → Want this book? Here are helpful buy links.. View the full article

Kings of the Wyld RECOMMENDED: Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames is $2.99 and part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals! Queen Beverly Jenkins recommended this one on a previous podcast: The book is amazing! It’s laugh-out-loud funny in some parts. The writing is wonderful. Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best — the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld. Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk – or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay’s door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for. It’s time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Velvet Was the Night Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno Garcia is $1.99 and another KDD! This is a noir/mystery novel set in Mexico during the 1970s. I believe this was also a Hide Your Wallet pick and I remember being super excited. Also, what a cool damn cover. From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a “delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir” about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman they’re both desperate to find. 1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he comes to observe Maite from a distance—and grows more and more obsessed with this woman who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart. Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets—at gunpoint. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes by Alexa Martin is $1.99! This came out in September of last year and is more women’s fiction about two best friends. I don’t remember hearing much about this one when it originally dropped. Have you read it? Two best friends say I do to living together, for better or worse, in this bold women’s fiction novel from Alexa Martin. Jude Andrews is famous. Well, at least on Instagram. Her brand is clean eating, good vibes, Pilates, and casually looking like a sun-kissed goddess. In real life, however, she’s a total disaster. She has a strained relationship with her fame-hungry mom and her latest bad decision emptied out her entire savings account. Lauren Turner had a plan: graduate medical school and become the top surgeon in the country. But when she became unexpectedly pregnant, those plans changed. And when her fiancé left her, they changed again. Now navigating the new world of coparenting, mom groups, and dating, she decides to launch a mommy podcast with all the advice she wishes someone had given her. Jude and Lauren don’t have much in common, but maybe that’s why they’ve been best friends since the third grade. Through ups and downs, they’ve been by each other’s sides. But now? They’re broke, single, and do the only thing that makes sense–move in together, just like they talked about when they were teenagers. Except when they were younger, the plan didn’t include a five-year-old daughter and more baggage than their new townhouse can hold. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Eternal Rider Eternal Rider by Larissa Ione is 99c! This is book one in the Lords of Deliverance series. I read this one back in 2011 and gave it 2 stars on Goodreads, though left no notes. I do remember preferring Ione’s paranormal demon hospital romance a bit more. They are here. They ride. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His name is Ares, and the fate of mankind rests on his powerful shoulders. If he falls to the forces of evil, the world falls too. As one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he is far stronger than any mortal, but even he cannot fight his destiny forever. Not when his own brother plots against him. Yet there is one last hope. Gifted in a way other humans can’t-or won’t-understand, Cara Thornhart is the key to both this Horseman’s safety and his doom. But involving Cara will prove treacherous, even beyond the maddening, dangerous desire that seizes them the moment they meet. For staving off eternal darkness could have a staggering cost: Cara’s life. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Saint Ignatius of Loyola Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photograph by Nheyob, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. In my hometown of New Orleans, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, certain men I know go periodically to a Catholic retreat up the river. They go there to repent. Probably they contemplate goodness. And goodness is a lot more interesting than it sounds. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are used as the format for these pursuits. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a womanizer, purportedly—like a lot of the saints. So probably he wanted to repent, too. My friends growing up in New Orleans were all Catholic girls, and I’ve often wondered about their Catholic qualities. They seem to have less vinegar in their veins than Jewish girls (like me). It fascinates me to delineate the character traits informed by their religion. I’m drawn to its organized tenets. I’d read the Catholic catechism just for kicks. But you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. They are a set of prayers and practices divided into tantalizing rubrics such as Three Classes of Men, Three Kinds of Humility, Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Daily Examination of Conscience, etc. Their goals are constructive: to overcome disordered inclinations; to seek indifference and humility; to elicit courage, discipline, and perseverance. Just take Jesus out of it and there you go. I took Jesus out of all those phrases, which would otherwise include the strange concept that you’re doing all this for his sake—rather than for your own sake, just to be more worthy. I don’t know why you need Jesus to aspire to this quest. So it’s not like I’m some sort of religious maniac. The Spiritual Exercises can get a little weird, though they still speak to me: you’re supposed to ask for shame and confusion. So if you feel shame and confusion, don’t worry, you’re on the right track! Because it’s about remorse—when you know you are bad, it is good. It is half the battle won. I also revel in The Palace Papers by Tina Brown, with its effortless intelligence and command of a wide array of royal facts and concepts, even when at the end Brown suddenly descends into bathos about Queen Elizabeth, as people sometimes tend to do. But I read that book before the queen’s death, so I must now add prescience to Brown’s powers of discernment—the emotional conclusion, the sudden eulogy—though I guess you didn’t have to be a genius to realize the queen was on her last legs. She seemed immortal, though. Like one’s mother, sort of. A few days before she died, I had bought the latest issue of Tatler, which was entirely devoted to the queen, with quaint, sepia-tinted photos telling her life story, etc. I kept thinking, Why did I buy this, and/or, Do I have to keep reading this. But something kept me from throwing it away, for which, afterward, I was glad. Nancy Lemann is the author of “Diary of Remorse,” published in issue no. 241 of the Review. View the full article

You read that right. Not what are you reading, but who. To me, that subtle change reveals an ongoing seismic shift in reading and, by extension, in writing. Who an author is has come to matter intensely in what readers choose to read (or not to read). To be clear, this is not about a reader choosing a specific author’s books because of what they write—a preferred genre; a favorite topic or theme; a beloved story-telling style; the characters; the voice; the beauty of the writing. This is about a reader choosing a specific author’s books because of who that author is—their lived experiences, their personal characteristics, their opinions. Book selection based on an author’s identity has been the mainstay of non-fiction (particularly celebrity memoirs) for a long time, but it has been less of an influence in fiction. Until now. Readers now intentionally expand (or limit) their reading selections based on the perceived diversity or conformity of an author or on the perceived legitimacy of an author to write a specific story. In many cases, choosing who to read pulls readers out of their usual reading habits and boundaries. By altering reading patterns, this shift alters writing and publication patterns. It also alters the job of being a writer. It means that who the writer is, as a person, determines what stories that specific writer can credibly tell. A writer with a good story and a compelling life story can be vaulted into the limelight. On the other hand, social media responses to any perceived mismatch between author identity and story can be (and have been) astonishingly cruel. But if who an author is limits the stories they are allowed to tell, however they choose to tell it, then the line between fiction and reality has been sundered. If the work of art—the story–is no longer seen as separate from the creator of the art, writing becomes a matter of self-presentation and self-awareness as much as putting words on the page. This shift is not a bad thing. It is also not an unequivocally good thing. It can make new, once-silenced voices audible; but it can also limit what any one voice can say. It can break down barriers, encouraging readers to expand their author list, adding more diversity and variety. It also has the capacity to harden existing boundaries. What is less obvious is exactly what this shift will mean for writers. Writing is no longer just a job, not what you do; it’s who you are. The emphasis on author identity makes writing, all writing, inherently political and inherently personal. And in this age of polarization, there is no middle ground. No anonymous author. Pen names are no protection in this world of outing and social media policing. Writers become public figures. Unable to hide behind the scenes. I believe writers are aware of this shift, down to their very bones, and that it influences daily decisions about what to write, how to write it, and (consciously or subconsciously) how to defend it. Writing, while simultaneously trying to assess how your ‘authority’ to write any particular line, character decision, or story arc might be interpreted or misinterpreted by any number of interested social groups, is debilitating. Being proactive—writing intentionally to generate or provoke reactions—highlights the power of writing, but rarely plays out according to plan. The consequence: writers either become self-aware and intentional about who they are in public and private and how that matches what they write or risk dismissal or misinterpretation. One clear example of how this works is the ongoing public push-pull debate over whether ‘un-diverse’ authors can write about ‘diverse’ characters or the reverse. Google the phrases ‘white authors writing black characters’ and ‘black authors writing white characters’ and thousands of pages of discussion and advice on how it should or shouldn’t be done are overwhelming. If a writer is only able to write about personal experience, grounded in lived actuality, then are we left only with memoir? Or are all writers required to become scholars, exhaustively researching the ‘reality’ underlying their ability to tell a story? Is fiction dead? I am writing this piece because I think writers need to acknowledge this shift is happening, face it head on, and chart a course through it with intentionality. I have no absolute answers, but I am deeply aware how powerfully it has influenced my writing. It has made me want to be more sensitive and inclusive in how and what I write. It has made me fearful to do so. I have a blog for my nonfiction work that is about old hospitals, but I haven’t posted anything new in years. Partly because, well, life. But also partly because in writing about hospitals, I have to write about diversity – how persons of color were housed and treated differently. How doctors and nurses interacted with each other in sexist ways. And putting that out there, at this point in time, as a writer not representative of the groups under study, is intimidating. How much research do I need to support my ability to tell someone else’s story? Did I get it right? Is there a way I could get it right? But the bottom line remains: if I don’t tell the story, regardless of who says I can or can’t tell it, then it will remain untold. And that silence, that untelling, is not a writer’s choice. I’m not here to say whether this shift is going to make writing (and reading) more or less equitable, inclusive, influential, or transformative. I simply want to start a conversation (or at least spark some awareness) about what it means to be a writer in this day and age. Can a writer be someone who sends their work out into the world while remaining safely behind the scenes? Or is a writer out there in the world, waving their ‘freak flag’ or ‘normal flag’ high, standing next to their works and ready for all the public scrutiny and debate? And yes, that is a provocative and polarized contrast. Who do you want to be as a writer? And who will be your readers? How do you handle the issue of writing about characters that do not share your personal characteristics or backgrounds or experiences? About Jeanne KisackyJeanne Kisacky trained to be an architect before going back to her first love--writing. She studied the history of architecture, has written and published nonfiction, and has taught college courses. She is the author of the recently published book, Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870-1940. She currently fights valiantly to keep her writing time despite the demands of a day-job, a family, and a very particular cat. More Posts [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

It’s just about October, which means your streaming services are going to be packed full of horror, but for the avid crime watcher there’s still quite a bit to look forward to, as long as you don’t mind a tinge of fright in your weekly viewing, or else you’re a fan of British mystery in particular, in which case you’re in luck, because there are some gems headed across the Atlantic in the weeks ahead. Here, a few highlights on the calendar. Sherwood (Britbox / Premieres October 4) Set in a Nottinghamshire mining village, Sherwood tracks an investigation into two murders in a community still processing the legacy of a miners’ strike decades before. Clues point to one of the victim’s suspicions about secret police infiltration and disruption in the miners’ ranks, and possibly an ongoing coverup. Alaska Daily (ABC / Premieres October 6) Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) is back to the world of investigative reporting. This time Hilary Swank plays the dogged journalist, summoned from New York to Alaska to work on a story about women from indigenous communities gone missing. She’s paired up with a local to help her navigate the ins-and-outs of the uncanny north. Surprising that this one should land with ABC, but McCarthy has a history of working on prestige features and network hits. A Friend of the Family (Peacock / Premieres October 6) Nick Antosca (Channel Zero, The Act) is the creator by this incredibly sinister story based on true events, with Jake Lacy getting the turn as a psychopath who insinuates himself into the neighbor’s family and kidnaps the daughter multiple times over a span of years. The Midnight Club (Netflix / Premieres October 7) It’s the annual Mike Flanagan repertory production on Netflix, and I for one am pretty happy to have it. This time around Flanagan is co-creating with Leah Fong, adapting from the book by Christopher Pike, which depicts a group of young people in a hospice home who try to out-scare one another with late night story sessions, who soon find themselves at the center of a terrifying plot. Shantaram (Apple TV+ / Premieres October 14) Charlie Hunnam is playing an Australian bank robber who goes on the lam to India. That’s really all I need to know to give this one a chance. Looks like it has some pretty atmospheric location shooting, too. Magpie Murders (PBS / Premieres October 16) In what appears to be a truly perfect marriage, Masterpiece is bringing us an adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, a lovely meta-mystery about a novelist who dies with the whereabouts of his final book’s last chapter unknown, setting his editor off on a scramble to solve the real crime and piece together the whodunnit. Here’s hoping we see even more from this series on PBS. View the full article

CrimeReads editors select the best new nonfiction crime books from September and August. Barbie Latza Nadeau, The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women (Penguin) Barbie Latza Nadeau’s new study brings us inside the mafia clans of Italy to draw a revealing portrait of the women who prop up these family structures, and who sometimes build power bases of their own, to violent ends. The book is in large part the story of Pupetta Maresca, the Naples woman who, at eighteen, avenged her husband’s gangland murder, served time in prison, and later became a media sensation. But The Godmother is also about the largely misunderstood role women play in organized crime in Italy, and what that role reveals about contemporary society. –DM Greg King, Penny Wilson, Nothing but the Night (St. Martin’s) In this compelling historical narrative, King and Wilson reexamine one of the nation’s most famous cases and come up with an alternative interpretation of the relationship between Leopold and Loeb. They also offer a vivid sketch of Clarence Darrow, the lion of the American bar, finding a complex humanity that drove him toward the case and into one of the most celebrated summations in the annals of American jurisprudence. –DM Beverly Lowry, Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta (Knopf) In Beverly Lowry’s hometown, when she was a small child just beginning to learn the horrific history of the American South, an elderly white woman known for being hateful was murdered with great violence. Her daughter tried to blame the crime on a Black man, but was instead put on trial herself—he attack was too brutal and lengthy for the townsfolk to ascribe such violence to the vulnerable Black community; what’s more, the daughter was suspected of a too-close relationship with a schoolteacher and this, combined with her mannish courtroom outfits, signaled her to be a gender rebel and thus a probable murderess. The daughter found herself convicted, but unending support from her loving husband (the contra-indicator for her suspected lesbianism) and the class differences between this upper-class wife and mother and her lower-class prisonmates eventually convinced the governor to secure her release back into the community that had so rejected her during the trial. –MO Andy Kroll, A Death on W Street (PublicAffairs) In 2016, a young DC staffer named Seth Rich was killed on his way home from work. The death was presumed to be in connection with a robbery, but when no arrests were made, a world of online conspiracy theorists and propaganda operatives stepped in with an elaborate lie about the Clinton family and a criminal coverup (and some much stranger, dark theories, of course). In Kroll’s new book, he chronicles Rich’s real life and death, as well as the dark forces that interrupted his family’s grief and made their tragedy into an online fascination and a hideous, dangerous distortion of reality. –DM Joe Pompeo, Blood and Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime (William Morrow) The 1922 murder of a prominent reverend and a woman from the church choir serves as the basis for Pompeo’s Blood & Ink, which takes a fresh look at the grisly murder. A new media landscape was emerging at the time of the crime, and Pompeo does an admirable job of linking up the mystery to the wider cultural forces at play. –DM Kathleen Hale, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls (Grove Press) Kathleen Hale initially wrote about the Slenderman case for Hazlitt, an article that still stands out from the general sensationalist coverage of the case for its enormous empathy for all involved. When two middle schoolers stabbed another middle schooler in the woods in 2012, they claimed to do it on behalf of a mysterious figure known as Slenderman. Hysterical parenting sites spread a moral panic about CreepyPasta, the website where stories of Slenderman originated and then became memes, but undiagnosed schizophrenia, midwestern stoicism, and intense friendship dynamics are much more to blame for the attack, as Kathleen Hale illustrates in both the original article and now a full-length title. –MO T. J. English, Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (William Morrow) T.J. English’s newest slice of American noir culture is a sweeping history of the long, entangled tradition of jazz and organized crime, from the early days of Storyville, with Black performers and Sicilian club owners operating a complicated network of protection, endorsement, exploitation, and wild, creative invention. In cities across America, jazz musicians often found their homes in connected clubs and performing venues. Some believed it was to their benefit, but as the century rolled on, divisions within the arts community began to spread, as some musicians no longer wanted to play along for the mobsters who had a taste of their careers and profits. So in the end, the story becomes a distinctly American one, of course: of racial inequality, economic injustice, and the immortal art form that sprang from this hotbed of corruption and striving. –DM View the full article

I am obsessed. I can’t escape it. My thoughts are dominated by the evil, the mystery, the cruelty of one eccentric episode in modern history: The Cold War. It’s what I read. It’s what I write. It’s my lens for the world. And, even though the Cold War was pronounced dead with the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989, I see evidence of the Cold War around me daily, lurking like some half-seen figure in the shadows. The war in Ukraine? The daily propaganda messages from the Kremlin, amplified by China’s supportive posturing against the West, is the mirror image of events from the Korean War of the 1950s, when China was the combatant and the Soviet Union was the supporter. Strange theories about Covid or Monkeypox hatched in secret labs? Reminds me of the fears of bioterrorism immediately following WWII that led to the creation, for military purposes, of what today is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fear, mystery, hidden forces, alien powers, random chaos pushing people towards nihilism, those are the key issues of the Cold War. And they remain alive and well-fed in 2022, fueling a renewed interest in the Cold War in literature, film and television. To be clear, I take a broader view of the Cold War than simply defining it as the era of Soviet-American tensions between 1945-1989. That is the true Cold War. But to me, the broader, literary idea of the Cold War extends to any era in which enemies unknown threaten the stability, the livelihood and existence of regular people in a period where, officially, no war exists. George Orwell’s 1984, published in England in 1948? Absolutely Cold War. Amazon Prime’s 2015-2019 series The Man in the High Castle, based on Phillip K. Dick’s 1962 alternate history in which America loses WWII and is subjugated by the victors, Japan and Germany? Totally Cold War. There was a time in the late 1970s through the 1980s, when Cold War spy stories dominated the book trade like massive nuclear-armed missiles on the horizon. John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Len Deighton’s Game, Set, Match series, and others were the epic novels of the era, lovingly and painstakingly turned into television miniseries with big budgets and headline actors. But all that faded away for a few decades when the Cold War was said to have ended. Cold War, dead. Spy stories, out. But, like radioactive dust, the winds have blown life back into the Cold War. One of the best detective thrillers of 2021, according to Stephen King: Five Decembers, a brilliant saga by James Kestrel, set in Hawaii and Hong Kong spanning pre-Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII. The book is crammed with mysterious espionage forces and clandestine military preparations when neither America nor Hong Kong were officially involved in war. New Cold War thrillers out this year include Joseph Kanon’s The Berlin Exchange, the story of a spy swap, and Anika Scott’s The Soviet Sisters, also set in Berlin, but from a distinctively Eastern perspective. Here’s my bet: We are going to see a continued rise of new Cold War books, especially Noir tales, in the next two years. Just as the Kennedy assassinations in the 1960s, the Watergate break-in and coverup in 1972, and the CIA-backed coup and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973 led to a slew of government conspiracy-laced thrillers, like James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor and Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File, I think we are ripe for an exploration of unsettling forces loose in the world today. Why? Because literature becomes a go-to, partly for solace to heal and explain modern tensions through the lens of history, and partly to echo and reinforce themes of alienation, anxiety and social distress, much like a tongue probing a chipped tooth. After all, when Mickey Spillane’s private eye antihero Mike Hammer decried his essence as a government-trained, war-inured, legalized killer in One Lonely Night, published in 1951, he was reflecting back more than a decade of turmoil, doubt and repercussions from World War II. And readers loved it. From my scan of the horizon, there are a handful of wild forces at play that are unlikely to be tamed any time soon: mistrust for government, fear of war, whether conventional war or cyber-war, and fear of increasingly powerful and seemingly malevolent technology. After all, who isn’t, deep down, afraid of what Google or the NSA knows about them? Throw in a few conspiracy theories smoldering on the internet and you’ve got the seeds for a new crop of Cold War novels. My own novel, The Man from Mittelwerk, is set in California in 1950, with a traumatized World War II vet facing his worst nightmare, the appearance of Nazi scientists in America. (This really happened: The U.S. imported 1,600 top German Scientists under a secret program called Operation Paperclip.) I don’t want to spoil the story here, but I will say, even though it’s a Cold War thriller with spies and codes and a few murders, it’s actually a critique of our modern obsession with technology. As a writer, the Cold War is an extra character that serves as the best sort of Noir villain, hidden, cruel, unpredictable, like a poison gas in the air. I was inspired by Philip Kerr’s brilliant Berlin Noir trilogy, a Chandler-style detective story transplanted from the mean streets of Los Angeles to the madness of Nazi Berlin. Nobody beats Kerr in describing the daily life for Germans under Hitler. Kerr painted a picture of the attempt to normalize the oppression of the Nazi regime across all aspects of daily life, from the “volunteer” donation drives to the suddenly booming business for his lead character, ex-cop Bernie Gunther, in searching for missing persons, usually Jews, usually dead in the river. On the surface, Kerr wrote detective stories in homage to Chandler, but in reality, he portrayed an epic battle of good versus pervasive evil. Whether that evil represented war or a political force or technology gone wild doesn’t really matter. It’s the struggle that keeps the reader’s interest. In the tumultuous time we’re in, the winds of cold war continue to chill us. There are battles being fought in undeclared wars, some we know about, some we may never know. It’s in these times that people turn to Cold War noir to help them understand the world we’re in. Decades after it was pronounced dead, the Cold War lives on for readers, for writers, for all of us. *** View the full article

“It feels, indeed, as if the characters and everything that happens to them exist in some limbo of the imagination, so that what I am doing is not inventing them but getting in touch with them and putting their story down in black and white, a process of revelation, not of creation.” Nobody could put it better than that. The quotation comes from the inimitable P. D. James, in Talking About Detective Fiction. And that’s what it’s like for me: the characters are there, somewhere in that limbo, and I check in with them whenever I want to see what they’re up to. So, character is, to me, the most important element of a story. And I must have succeeded to some extent: I get very strong reactions to my three main characters: Monty Collins, Father Brennan Burke, and Maura MacNeil. With respect to Monty, I attended a book club one time, and one reader referred to Monty; she said quite heatedly that she would never advise her children to go to a lawyer like Monty! I said, “You would if you wanted them acquitted of murder.” Some people find Maura MacNeil a little too lippy; she does have a mouth on her, no question. Brennan Burke once said, “She has a tongue in her head that could slit the hull of a freighter.” Father Burke inspires the strongest and most frequent reactions. I’ve had everything from love — “What church is he at? I’m a single woman and I’d like to meet him.” — to outrage about his boozing and his (only occasionally) breaking of his vows, in particular, the promise to live a life of chastity. One reader declared: “He is not fit to do anything but get down on his knees and scrub the floor of his church!” I’ve even had readers worry about him: “What’s he going to do about this?” Or, “You can’t let that happen to Brennan!” This tells me that I have created (or, citing P.D. James, I am in touch with) a character who is not bland or forgettable; my readers are not indifferent to him. In order to portray a believable and compelling character, a writer has to have an ear for dialogue. I love writing dialogue, and regional dialects. If I sit at a table with a group of people, I may not be able to remember afterwards what anybody was wearing. But I can recall conversations, often word for word, and I can bring back the accents, the tone and cadence of the voices. I find in some writers’ books that the dialogue doesn’t ring true and the attempts at humour fall flat. It’s not all that easy to do, or not easy to do well. An intelligent, witty character should sound it; an old lag doing hard time in a cell should talk like one. Inseparable from all this is the “voice”, the voice in which the story is told, whether it’s a character speaking in the first person, or the voice of the author/narrator. Sometimes the voice alone, if the writing is particularly fine, is enough to hook me on a story or a series. It could be the wit of Caroline Graham in her Midsomer Murders series, the unapologetic erudition of Dorothy L. Sayers in the Lord Peter Wimsey books, or the evocative, poetic writing of R.J. Ellory in A Quiet Belief in Angels. Or John Brady, rightly commended in this New York Times review of his Matt Minogue series: “Although he writes with realistic precision of Irish police procedures, Mr. Brady adopts a tone of battered lyricism for Minogue’s keening thoughts about the spiritual corruption he sees around him. It’s a sad sound, the lamentations of a decent man’s conscience, but it’s the music that keeps drawing us back to this haunting series.” How many writers could ever hope to reach that pinnacle of achievement?! Having said all that, it’s interesting to recall the importance that P.D. James accorded to setting. “Place, after all, is where the characters play out their tragicomedies, and it is only if the action is firmly rooted in a physical reality that we can enter fully into their world.” Of course, she portrays setting brilliantly in her novels. Setting is important to me, as well. Not surprisingly, my stories are set in places that hold great interest for me, e.g., my own city of Halifax, Nova Scotia; Dublin and other cities in Ireland; Italy; and Germany. My most recent novel, Fenian Street, was inspired directly by the street of that name in Dublin. Historically, and at the time of my novel — the 1970s — it was a street of tenements, called the Corpo Flats there, meaning public housing for the poor and working classes. My main character, Shay Rynne, is a lad from the Corpo Flats in Fenian Street, who wants to succeed in the Garda Síochána, the Irish police, despite the prejudice against him because of his background. Now, here are a few of my most cherished writers, who excel in the elements of setting and character. With such an illustrious history of writing and storytelling, Ireland has so many great writers that a list would fill volumes. I’ll mention only a few of my favourites. Liz Nugent is exceptional at creating character and suspense, from Unraveling Oliver through to Little Cruelties. For a brilliantly written police series set in Dublin, see Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, beginning with In the Woods. A recent standalone novel is The Searcher. And we have Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series. The books are set in McKinty’s native town, Carrickfergus, and the surrounding areas, including Belfast. McKinty transports you right into the turmoil of Northern Ireland. There are six books in the Duffy series, with the seventh expected soon: The Detective Up Late. Another great crime writer from the North of Ireland is Stuart Neville. He was born in Armagh and, like McKinty, knows all about the dark side of life in his native land. He has an excellent series of crime novels starting with The Ghosts of Belfast (a.k.a. The Twelve) and, most recently, a standalone novel, The House of Ashes. Ironically, Neville has revealed, when he first started writing about his home country and seeking to publish his work, he was told that setting stories in Northern Ireland was “death for sales” and he should try to disguise or play down the setting in promotional materials! His first novel had to be titled The Twelve for sales in the U.K. instead of The Ghosts of Belfast. Neville and McKinty have certainly overcome that particular prejudice. And, interestingly, the two of them are the editors of a collection titled Belfast Noir. Moving on to Italy. Donna Leon writes a wonderful series set in Venice, featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. Brunetti is a wonderfully drawn character, one I keep coming back to. And the secretary in the Questura, Signorina Elettra, is one of a kind; she is a genius at doing things for Brunetti on the sly, mining her computer and digging up any information Brunetti needs, often information that is meant to be inaccessible. Leon, via Brunetti, has an uncanny ability to penetrate people’s minds, revealing with wit and asperity aspects of the characters’ behavior and thoughts that the characters do not know they are revealing. And her descriptions of Venice make you feel you are right in the centre of that legendary city. The most recent book, number 31(!) in the series, is Give Unto Others. Finally, we turn to Germany, and one of the greatest-ever writers of historical fiction, Robert Harris. He has set stories in ancient Rome, England, France, and Russia among other places. I particularly like his books about Germany, namely Fatherland, Munich and V2. His recreation of places and past times is incomparable. He has a new book out, Act of Oblivion, about the 1649 murder of King Charles I. And now I’ll return to my own city, Halifax, which suffered catastrophic damage in the explosion of December 6, 1917, an event which has inspired many writers of fiction and non-fiction, and I intend to be one of them. *** View the full article