Connie Hambley: The Wake Sunday, Sep 3 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:41 am

Please welcome guest author Connie Hambley, who has the third book out in her Jessica Trilogy, The Wake:

When we talked last year on your blog, I was deep into the polishing touches of my third book, The Wake, and completing The Jessica Trilogy. It never fails that the journey to publication is also a journey of personal growth. What is it about the process of writing that changes a person?

Authors are often changed by what we learn to write our lies. I became less ignorant of the struggles of Northern Ireland to rid itself of British rule and how the Troubles affected my family. I took the threads of those facts and wove them into my books. But, our goal is not to change ourselves. We want to somehow reach our readers and alter something about them.

When a reader begins a conversation with “I had no idea that. . . ” and proceeds to tell me how my story prompted them to look further into a topic, I know I scored! I’m gratified when readers tell me they learned about Irish history or became aware of how American involvement – both legal and illegal – supported unification efforts. I love it when readers tell me of their search for ancestral roots and how learning the truth of blood ties changed them.

So, for my new book? I’m hearing, “I had no idea horses could play such a huge role in therapy.”

Huh?

A new thread in my book builds upon the main character’s backstory of being a world-class equestrienne. No spoilers here, but hippotherapy – physical or behavioral therapy with licensed practitioners that utilizes the unique attributes of the horse – plays a large role in a character’s life after a catastrophic event at the Atlanta Olympics. (Could the injury be related to the Centennial Park bombing? A horrific fall on the devilish cross-country course? Like I said, no spoilers!)

I knew I had my research and writing right when my book received an endorsement from the CEO of the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship, International. My inspiration to write about hippotherapy sparked from volunteering at a therapeutic riding center. I’ve been around horses all my life, but my focus was able-bodied.

I’m satisfied by my readers’ surprise because it mirrors my own learning curve. I was changed by real life “research.” My readers are changed through reading about my newfound knowledge via my story.

I consider that a win/win.


CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY grew up on a dairy farm in New York and had plenty of space to ride one of her six horses. All would have been idyllic if an arsonist hadn’t torched her family’s barn. Bucolic bubble burst, she began to steadfastly plot her revenge against all bad guys, real and imagined. After receiving her law degree, she moved to Boston and wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nature and other wonky outlets as she honed her skills of reaching readers at a deep emotional level. Her high-concept thrillers feature remarkable women entangled in modern-day crimes. Connie delights in creating worlds where the good guys win–eventually. Her short story, Giving Voice, won acceptance in New England’s Best Crime Stories: Windward, published by Level Best Books. The third book in The Jessica Trilogy, The Wake, joins The Charity and The Troubles, the 2016 Best Fiction winner at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City. She keeps horses in her life by volunteering as a horse handler at a therapeutic riding center. Connie is a board member and Featured Speaker of Sisters in Crime.

THE WAKE: A shattered heiress’ family secret is exploited by her spurned lover to blackmail her into engaging in international terrorism.
World-class equestrian, Jessica Wyeth, is thrust into the middle of a game of geopolitical warfare. Reeling from revelations of her connection to the violent struggles to expunge Britain from Northern Ireland, she’s blocked by unseen forces from returning to the United States.
The facts of Jessica’s birth become her deepest secret. Her late mother was considered by Northern Ireland to be a terrorist and her father is a key negotiator between violent Irish Republican Army (IRA) factions in Belfast and the British Government.
Jessica vows to keep her father’s identity hidden at all costs.
Only one man knows Jessica’s truth. Michael Connaught, heir to an international crime family who profits from political uprisings, struggles with his own legacy. He is torn between protecting the woman he loves or using her secrets as a catalyst for inciting global unrest.
When a catastrophic event happens at the Atlanta-based Summer Olympic Games, Jessica is forced to fight for her life in ways she never dreamed.
SOCIAL LINKS:
WEBSITE: http://www.conniejohnsonhambley.com
FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/facebookcjhambley
BLOG: http://bit.ly/outofthefog
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ConnieHambley
PINTEREST: https://www.pinterest.com/cjhambley/
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conniejhambley/

BUY LINKS:
THE CHARITY: http://www.amazon.com/Charity-Connie-Johnson-Hambley-ebook/dp/B009E7TUYM/
THE TROUBLES: http://www.amazon.com/The-Troubles-Jessica-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00VYV8X08/
THE WAKE: https://www.amazon.com/Wake-Jessica-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B073NQ1HK5/

 

New in Paperback: Weaver, Gross, Hart, Thomas, Dorion, Harris and Mayor Friday, Sep 1 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:32 am

One of the highlights of summer is a ton of great reads from last season are now available in paperback, and here’s a roundup of some of the best ones, varied types for different reading tastes:

the 1930s come alive in Weavers’ series featuring amateur sleuth Amory Ames and her husband, Milo. In A Most Novel Revenge, the couple are summoned by her cousin Laurel to the estsate of Reginald Lyons. The assorted company includes the author of a fictionalized account of a murder that took place on the estate years ago, and now plans a sequel tell-all about what really happened that night.

Andrew Gross’ The One Man takes the thriller writer into a historical place, as a US intelligence officer must infiltrate the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz to find Professor Alfred Mendl. Not only must Nathan Blum sneak in, he must find the professor and sneak back out with him. Facing evil is heaert-pounding and makes this absorbing.


Elsa Hart’s The White Mirror takes readers to 18th-century China, where a traveling librarian and a storyteller team up to solve the murder of a Tibetan monk. Culturally and historically intriguing.

Hell Bay is Will Thomas’ Barker and Llwewllyn tale, where the Victorian-era private detectives undergo an assignment for the government to provide security for a top-secret meeting taking place on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, including a sniper murder and a stabbing. A classic closed-environment mystery.


Paul Doiron’s Widowmaker continues his Maine series with game warden Mike Bowditch. It’s a complicated tale of family dysfunction with a beautiful woman at its heart, and raises the ghosts Bowditch was trying to tamp down. His search for the truth takes him to an unlikely fortress hidden in the wilderness where he find more than the answers he’d hoped for. A multiple award-nominated author, Doiron won the Barry and the Strand awards for Best First Novel with the The Poacher’s Son and the series continues at a fine pace.


Prolific author Charlaine Harris has five series in print. She returns to her earlier Aurora Teagarden series with All the Little Liars. Aurora has married crime writer Robin Crusoe, and the newly pregnant Aurora is infanticipating when four children disappear from the school soccer field–and Aurora’s 15 yr-old brother is among the missing. With a dead body complicating matters at the last place the youths were known to have gathered, the newlyweds run their own investigation to find Phillip and his friends. A bit darker than the earlier series but just as entertaining.


Archer Mayor’s Presumption of Guilt brings Vermont Investigator Joe Gunther a cold case when a 40 yr-old skeleton is found encased in concrete. Things heat up quickly for a cold case, with a fresh murder and a kidnapping, and Gunther and his team are stretched thin with tension. Well-plotted and compelling.

 

Donna Andrews: Gone Gull Thursday, Aug 31 2017 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:34 am

With it’s clever twist on the title, Donna Andrews’ newest Meg Langslow cozy, Gone Gull, keeps up the promise of this long-running series with her trademark delightful humor. Meg has the honor of being a blacksmith; her Michael runs the children’s drama class, and their twin sons are along for the ride.

Classes are off to a good start, until vandals interrupt what should be a summer idyll. Grandmother Cordelia worries the students will demand their money back.

Meg worries there are almost too many suspects for her to follow: a rival craft center could be the culprit; so could the resort developers who want to push Cordelia into selling so they can keep to their plans for Biscuit Mountain?

And then there’s Meg’s grandfather, who is convinced the non-greenies have it in for him. Dr. Blake’s ornithology background has him searching for a rare gull.

Meg keeps watch on the studios to be certain they are locked against intruders, and its on one her rounds that she finds the body of the most difficult artist she’s encountered, Edward Prine.
Prine has insisted he has seen a species of gull thought to be extinct. What’s the truth of the situation? While staff and students alike might agree the womanizing artist wasn’t everyone’s favorite, it’s hardly grounds for murder.

And then a second body is found. . .

Meg’s eccentric family are front and center in this charming outing, which has a light, breezy pacing and interesting story.

 

Louise Penny: Glass Houses Tuesday, Aug 29 2017 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:02 am


Louise Penny’s 13th Inspector Gamache novel takes readers back to Three Pines in a most creative way.

Readers are introduced to a trial in process with Gamache as a prime witness. But who the defendant and the victim are is parsed out in a way that heightens the suspense in the first part of the book.

But that’s not the only challenge that Penny has up her sleeve. By going back to the beginning of this crime, Gamache and the other Three Pines residents tell the story of a dark figure who suddenly appears on the village’s green. Cloaked in black and with its face hidden behind a mask, the figure causes a disruption in the town, but since it has done nothing illegal, Gamache is powerless to do anything.

Readers learn the unusual history behind this kind of figure, and not long after it disappears is when the victim’s body is found.

Gamache almost appears on trial, as the animosity between him and the prosecutor on the case is quite evident. His every move and action is questioned. It’s a tense standoff, and there’s more at the bottom of this than meets the eye.

It’s difficult to explain more without giving away the plot, but it involves old friends in a reunion, the bounding drug culture, drugs being transferred, and the feel that Quebec is losing its footing against the drug barons. How these disparate things tie in to Three Pines is once again the genuis that is Penny’s, and the difficult decisions she visits on Gamache.

There will be real threat and pain to those he loves before it’s over, and even then the outcome will be devastating on several levels. Absorbing and complex, the richly layered plot is highlighted by Penny’s trademark details and the wry humor that creeps in, despite the enormity of the situation.

It’s a fine balance that tackles a real life issue with an insprired and controversial solution. Highly recommended.

 

Jorn Lier Horst: Ordeal Thursday, Aug 24 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:11 am


Chief Inspector William Wisting heads this solid Norwegian police procedural, one of a series being translated into English. Ordeal begins with a thoughtful two-page summary of Wisting’s life up to this stage, as this book is fifth in a series of ten.

Once a senior investigating officer himself, Horst gets those details just right, but it’s the interplay of the man’s detective nose with his sensibilities and his own emotions that make this a great read.

Wisting’s daughter, Line, has moved near him to await the birth of the child that will make him a grandfather and his daughter a single mother. She becomes friends with a young mother nearby, living in an inherited house with her little girl.

It’s a good fit for the two women, one pregnant and the other alone and new to the area. The house Sofie Lund has inherited belonged to her grandfather, a man who thwarted police efforts to tie him to several criminal activities.

There is also a missing mand, a taxi driver, whose case appears to have grown cold with leads. Then a locked safe in the basement of her grandfather’s house reveals secrets that put everyone connected in danger.

It’s a dance Wisting must make with his bosses as he fights the bureaucracy and the media while trying to protect his daughter.

Horst writes fully realized characters and well-plotted book that doesn’t race along but rather meanders in a totally realistic way as most police investigations do. Readers will be looking for the next translation to appear, even as the series is developed for Danish television.

 

J. D. Tafford: Little Boy Lost Wednesday, Aug 23 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for and Uncategorized Auntie M Writes Crime 12:29 am

J. D. Tafford departs from his Michael Collins series to introduce Justin Glass, a mixed-race lawyer trying to get out from the depression that has plagues him since his young wife’s death. Raising his daughter alone, he’s also under the shadow of his political family. His black senator father, a civil rights proponet, and state congressman brother are pressuring him to run for office. His law practice suffered greatly after his wife’s death, and Justin is squeaking by as a public defender, while he and his daughter live in the carriage house of his white mother’s family home with her judge father.

Into his sweltering St. Louise office on a hot summer day comes an 8 yr-old girl with a jar full of change. Tanisha Walker wants to hire him to find her missing brother. With racial tensions high in the area between the African-American and the mostly white police department, Glass reluctantly takes her case and soon finds himself on the receiving end of police mistreatment. It’s a rude awakening, but doesn’t prepare him for when the brother’s body is found buried in the woods, along with over a dozen other teens.

Soon Justin finds many missing teens’ families lined up outside his offic asking for help for locating the “Lost Boys,” the media’s name for the missing boys. The common thread at first is that all had been troubled youths. As he juggles issues with his daughter at school and tries to make decisions about his future, he hires an assistant who smartens his office and gets him organized. And then his searching turns up another commonality that will leave Justin in jeopardy, and all bets are off.

Tafford covers topical issues without over-preaching. His own legal background makes the court system echo with reality. St. Louis simmers in the hot summer and readers will feel they are immersed in the city and in a great mystery.

 

Stephen Leather: Light Touch Sunday, Aug 13 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and Uncategorized Auntie M Writes Crime 12:23 am

The prolific Stephen Leather had two books out last week: the paperback version of Takedown, his stand-alone, and the newest Spider Shepherd thriller.

In Takedown, Charlotte Button, ex-MI-5, has been seen before in Leather’s series, and is now tasked with taking out a rogue Special Forces soldier. He’s already hatched one deadly plot. What she needs to do if figure out his next plan and stop him before he can act.

She has help in the form of Lex Harper, who assembles a team who are capable of stopping the rogue soldier before the massive attack they fear he’s planned. Readers of the Shepherd series will know Lex, and here they’ll see another side to him.

Having these two previously seen characters in their own book brings a fresh look to this kind of adventure-filled thriller.

While this is whirling, Charlotte finds that two of three flash drives, hidden in secret places, have been stolen. Containing information on dirty government operations from the past, their loss means her life is on the line if they can get to the third. Who is after her and why?

And while you’re investigating this one in case you missed it when it first came out, Light Touch brings Dan “Spider” Shepherd back with a tough case that is topical and swiftly paced.

MI5 send Spider in when one of their undercover operatives stops giving them information on a drug lord with international smuggling on his resume. Spider needs to find out if Lucy Kemp has shifted to the dark side in her dealings with Marcus Meyer.

It’s an intriguing and delicate situation, made all the more difficult when he finds an SAS assassin is planing revenge killings for his sister’s overdose. Only Spider can find and stop Matt STanding and conviince him there’s another way to deal with all of this–Spider’s way.

With a theme built around trust, this is a filled with action and twists, with little rest on the horizon.

Leather’s skills in action have been noted by the cinema world, too.

Two of Leather’s novels have been adapted for film: The Chinaman, one of Leather’s Mike Cramer series, has been made into the movie THE FOREIGNER which opens this fall starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan. TANGO ONE has been made with Vincent Regan and Sophie Colquhoun, directed by Ssacha Bennett, and is awaiting a release date.

 

Susan Sloate: On Historical Research Sunday, Aug 6 2017 

Award winning novelist and great read and historical saga Auntie M Writes Crime 12:22 am


Please welcome Susan Slaote, to explain about the historical research she loves!

It’s Not Laziness—It’s Research!!

I love, love, LOVE American history, and have been reading and studying it all my life. I’ve also written a fair number of books based on history: 5 biographies (Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, two books about Ray Charles), a book about baseball (BASEBALL’S HOTSHOTS: Greats of the Game When They Were Young), a history of Alcatraz Island (MYSTERIES UNWRAPPED: The Secrets of Alcatraz), and in later years, a time-travel thriller about the JFK assassination (FORWARD TO CAMELOT).
When I’m looking into a subject that fascinates me, like the Earhart disappearance, days and weeks can go by before I come out of the fog. I dive into old books, magazines, photographs, films, and everything that comes up on YouTube. I’ve traveled to Oklahoma City (home of the 99’s, the women’s aviation group) to read rare documents about Amelia Earhart. I’ve flown to Chicago and Dallas to attend forums about the Kennedy assassination. I even married a guy I met at a JFK assassination symposium, even though I guess that’s a little extreme.
As I said, I can easily get lost in mountains of facts and not surface until I’ve had my fill of information. (The latest one is about a conspiracy surrounding the Titanic, which will be my next book.) I keep digging for facts, until I usually have enough to write at least two books on the subject.
All this research, I hope, results in some very good books. Sometimes, I even manage to find an obscure fact so interesting that I build an entire book around it.
A case in point is my research for FORWARD TO CAMELOT, when in my reading I came across a paragraph in William Manchester’s DEATH OF A PRESIDENT, about LBJ taking the presidential oath of office on Air Force One in Dallas on November 22, 1963, with his hand on a Bible belonging to President Kennedy. According to Manchester, the Bible disappeared completely right after the ceremony, and no one had seen it since.

That was all I needed. I’d found the ultimate McGuffin, lost in history, and wasted no time deciding that my heroine, a time traveler, would travel back in time SPECIFICALLY to recover JFK’s lost Bible at the very moment when it was lost. (It took about two years to figure this out, but once we knew we were sending her back in time for the Bible, we got a lot more clarity on the storyline.) I checked, just to be sure, with the JFK Presidential Library in Boston, who said no, they didn’t have it, and no, they didn’t know where it was.
The book was published, in its original edition, in 2003, and a few years later, my co-author, Kevin Finn, called me in great agitation. “We have to pull the book,” he told me.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I know where the Bible is,” he said. “It was the answer to a question on Jeopardy!”
Turns out the Bible had been given to Mrs. Johnson after the swearing-in, and she in turn gave it to Liz Carpenter, her press secretary, so she could show it to reporters who asked about the ceremony.
Except nobody asked. Nobody ever cared. The story was the dead president, not the new president (which must have been a real kick in LBJ’s massive ego). And when the LBJ Presidential Library was being built in Austin, Texas, the Johnsons offered the Bible (actually a Catholic missal, or prayer book) to the Kennedys, who said they felt it belonged in the Johnson presidency, not with Kennedy, who didn’t even own it for very long.
It’s on display, as it has been for years, in the LBJ Presidential Library, complete with JFK’s initials on the stamped leather. And it was never a McGuffin at all.
But we kept the book in print, until we re-edited and re-published it in a new edition in 2013. We kept the same storyline, and even kept the Bible as the McGuffin. No one has been the wiser.
Among the other fantastic tidbits of info we came up with, through diligent research, were that Joe Kennedy kept medicines for JFK stashed in multiple safe-deposit boxes in banks around the country, so no one would learn of his Addison’s disease. And Lee Oswald’s being a terrific dancer. All those endless hours of reading and research have paid off big-time, with most readers unable to determine what is fact and what is fiction in FORWARD TO CAMELOT.
And after all, isn’t that the whole point??


SUSAN SLOATE is the award-winning, best-selling author of 20 published books, both fiction and nonfiction. STEALING FIRE, her 2013 autobiographical love story, went to #2 in its category on Amazon, was a Hot New Release for its first 90 days and was honored in the 2014 Readers’ Favorite Book Award competition. FORWARD TO CAMELOT (co-authored with Kevin Finn), which was first published in 2003 and re-published in 2013, took honors in 3 literary competitions, went to #6 on Amazon and was optioned for film production by a Hollywood company. For REALIZING YOU (co-authored with Ron Doades), she invented a new genre: Self-Help FICTION.

“Susan lives in South Carolina, coaches aspiring authors and speaks frequently at writers conventions. Visit her online at www.susansloate.com.

 

Simon Toyne: The Boy Who Saw Friday, Aug 4 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:07 am


Simon Toyne introduced Solomon Credd in The Searcher, the man whose identity is unknown except for a label stitched into his jacket: “This suit was made to treasure for Mr. Solomon Creed.”

It was a startling device for the new thriller series and in the sequel, Solomon decides he must track down the tailor who made the suit, believing he holds the key to his identity. With roots in the Holocaust, he’s traveled to France to find Josef Engel.

It’s a fool’s errand, when Solomon finds the man’s murdered body, a Star of David crudely carved into his chest, his body torn apart. The man’s granddaughter and her son remember the grandfather’s stories from the past, as well as tales of the man who saved them from the concentration camps.

The police suspect Solomon, that strange-looking pigment-free pale man in the murder. He must escape and find refuge with Marie-Claude, who is seeking her own refuge from an abusive husband, and her son, the adorable Leo.

If it wasn’t an interesting enough premise, Toyne ups the interest by having Leo and Solomon have something in common: a synesthesia, which in Solomon takes the form of smelling danger, while in Leo, allows him to see emotions as colors. It’s an intriguing and often useful element for Solomon, who’s been described as a genius high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic, one whose toxic memories have been removed by use of an implanted device in his shoulder.

The unlikely trio flees across France, avoiding Engel’s killer while still trying to solve his murder. Elements of the paranormal will keep you guessing if they are imagined or can be explained away. A rocking good ride.

 

THE GOLDEN HOUR: A Nora Tierney English Mystery #4 Monday, Jul 31 2017 

amateur sleuth and Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 3:01 pm


THE GOLDEN HOUR is Auntie M’s 4th Nora Tierney English Mystery. It’s always exciting bringing out a new book, akin to birthing a baby. After the initial first draft, that lump of clay goes through multiple revisions: workshopping with colleagues to find the story; more revisions after beta readers chime in and point out areas that don’t make sense or need fixing; more rewrites after the “Britspeak” is corrected by wonderful UK friends. P D James told Auntie M years ago that “the real writing gets done in revision,” something she repeats to herself as a mantra when the going gets tough.

While the book tour isn’t until October into November, you can order trade paperbacks now on Amazon or through Bridle Path Press, and she recommends that latter if you’d like a signed copy! http://www.bridlepathpress.com.

Thanks to the talented Giordana Segneri who did the layout and that lovely domestic cover design; to Becky Brown, copyeditor; to Eagle Eye Pam Desloges; and to Beth Cole who did the Kindle files.

The book will be on Kindle later this week and this fall, in conjunctin with the tour, on Audible, with the wonderful British narrator, Nano Nagle, who’s done a wonderful job on the others in the series.

This one’s a bit different from her usual and Auntie M hopes you will enjoy it as much as Ausma Khan, Elly Griffiths and Sarah Ward, who all gave her cover blurbs. Great crime writers all, and she’s chuffed to have their names on her cover~

 

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