Our Summer 2015 Newsletter is done!
Copies are back from the printer and available here, as well as up on the website. Have fun with it and let us know if what you’d like.
Memorial Day
Modified Hours on Monday, May 25th, for Memorial Day: 10am – 3pm
We hope to be reading in the shade.
How ’bout you?
Links of Interest:
Agatha Christie's 'forgotten' Syrian memoir gets new lease of life
TNT enters the limited-run series by signing upCary Fukunaga (director of HBO’s “True Detective”) to adapt Caleb Carr’sThe Alienist for TV
Monica Bellucci on being a“Bond Woman”
In My Own Words: Mexican Drug Wars:Don Winslow
Destination morgue:James Ellroy spills LA's crime scene secrets – in pictures (just so no one is surprised or shocked, these are actual LAPD CRIME SCENE PHOTOS)
'True face of Shakespeare' appears in botany book
Alexander McCall Smith wins Wodehouse prize for comic fiction
And to end on a happier note: J.A. Jance writes of New Motherhood and a new puppy
While we specialize in mystery and crime books, we can order virtually any new book that you might want, no matter what its topic.
New Signings(with authors who will be visiting the shop):
Wednesday June 17th at Noon - Jon Talton signs High Country Nocturne
(Poisoned Pen tpo $14.95, hardcover $24.95 by special order). 8th David Mapstone, who is left without answers when his business partner disappears at the same time a load of diamonds are stolen. Has Mapstone been betrayed or is something more complicated going on?
Tuesday September 8th at 11am - J.A. Jance signs Dance of the Bones
(Morrow hc, $26.99). A convict that Sheriff Brandon Walker put away years before now insists Walker clear him. To do that, the retired Walker will have to travel to the wet Northwest, where he’s introduced to a State cop now out of a job – a guy named Beaumont. First pairing for these two.
[A Reminder: Reserving ahead of time – such as in next few days – is HIGHLY recommended. For the most part, we’ll be ordering only enough for those who reserve. You don’t have to pay until you pick it up or we mail it. Ask us to hold a copy for you!]
See the calendar of all currently-scheduled events on our website. The website calendar contains plot synopses. At the bottom of it is the updated, complete list of signed copies that we’ll be getting from other sources. Click Here.
Tina Connolly, May 23
Ace Atkins, May 27 – 12:30!
Colin Cotterill, June 2
Ron Lovell, June 6
Craig Johnson,June 20
Carola Dunn, June 27
Ingrid Thoft, June 30
Roger Hobbs, July 7
Don Winslow, July 9
Yasmine Galenorn, July 11Drop-by!
Mike Lawson, July 11
Jenny Milchman, July 30
Kevin O’Brien, Aug 1
Richard Kadrey, Aug 25
Yasmine Galenorn, Oct 31
And there are always more on the way!
Remember, too, that while it is always fun to come in and meet the author in person, that isn’t always possible. So reserve a signed copy to be mailed to you or for you to pick up later. Those who reserve in advance get the copies in the best condition!
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Gift Certificates:
They’re available in Whatever Denomination You Want.
They Don’t Expire.
You can Order Them by Phone, e-mail or through the Website, and we can Mail them directly to the recipient if you’d like.
Word of the Week:
awe (n.): From c. 1300,aue, "fear, terror, great reverence," earlieraghe, c. 1200, from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norseagi "fright;" from Proto-Germanic *agiz- (cognates: Old Englishege "fear," Old High Germanagiso "fright, terror," Gothicagis "fear, anguish"), from PIE *agh-es- (cognates: Greekakhos "pain, grief"), from root *agh- "to be depressed, be afraid" (see ail). Current sense of "dread mixed with admiration or veneration" is due to biblical use with reference to the Supreme Being.To stand in awe (early 15th C.) originally was simplyto stand awe.Awe-inspiring is recorded from 1814. (thanks to etymonline.com)
You can browse our collectable and hard-to-find books, as well as signed copies from earlier author events, on Biblio.com. You do not have to place an order through them, especially if you’re a long-time customer and we have your ordering info. Just email us to order.
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What We’ve Been Reading:
Amber Recommends:
My 52 Weeks With Christie:Classics Corner – Mignon Eberhart
Gail Carriger -Prudence
Genre: Steampunk & Mystery
Summary: The last time we’d seen Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama was at the end ofTimeless when she was a toddler who was not overly fond of her name. It’s now twenty-something years later and we meet her again, she still doesn’t like her name but has learned to live with it…mainly by using a nick-name - Rue.
The other thing she’s learned to work with/around is all of her parents, especially Dama (Lord Akeldama, our dandy vampire rogue) who is beginning to feel that Rue may benefit from some travel - to widen her horizons - and India is just lovely this time of year. The fact that he’s having some trouble with the locals over his tea interest and believes Rue may be able to sort things out…Well that’s just a bonus!
Review: This is a terrifically fun book to read!
Now here’s the fly in the ointment….You don’t have to read the Parasol Protectorate series (Soulless,Changeless, ect.) in order to read this book. However I think you get significantly more out of this book if you put in the extra bit of time and do read them. Why? The core of the crew of The Custard Protocol (i.e.Prudence) are the children of the key players in The Parasol Protectorate series. It is seriously entertaining to read how our original series characters are filtered through the eyes of their children - who really only have the vaguest of notions about who their parents are outside of being their parents. Ivy’s children haven’t a clue how she became a vampire. Rue has zero clue how much of a hellion her mother was/is - and how alike they really are. Quesnel Lefoux? Just as French, inscrutable and as mad an inventor as his mother…
In addition to just watching this entertaining child/parental dynamic, we also meet some other very old friends again, which makes me hope that we will see more of the old crew again in the second book inImprudence (the cover art for the book is finished, however Carriger says the book isn’t written yet so the release date the publisher has of January 2016 is a bit plastic at moment). Now while there are hints of the old, Rue and her crew are their own people and find their way into new and unique trouble. Which is really fun to read!
Carriger does stick with her general formula - an outrageous lead, with a lady-like(ish) best friend, plus a love interest and a massive amount intrigue & ingenuity. While these standard elements appear in this entry in the canon, Carriger spins the story with a sufficient amount of new material that the formula doesn’t distract from the reading.
Overall this is an amusing book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading!
Would I Recommend To A Friend: Yup!
Rating: 4/5
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.miner©2015
Richard Kadrey -Sandman Slim
Signing August 25th at Noon - Reserve Your Copy Today!
Summary: Richard Stark is a man on a mission. Revenge.
In a bid to boost their power, Stark’s frenemies sent him to Hell eleven years before in a trade with creatures unknown. However Stark’s talents which were considerable on earth prove to be unusually useful in Hell and Stark becomes very difficult to kill. Which proves advantageous since Stark becomes the most feared assassin in Hel. What keeps him there is the assurance that the woman he left behind, the love of his life, is safe so long as he does as he is told.
When she is brutally murdered by one the circle which sent him to Hell, Stark will stop at nothing to make sure they all pay. If he also happens to save the world, a punk tiki bar and a video store - well that’s just icing on the cake.
Review: When my brother was little he had a bit of a tough time. When he was five he looked like a seven or eight year old, so when he acted like a five year old people would always get a bit testy with him - because they didn’t think that he was acting his age. Which was crap, but strangers didn’t realize that, they just thought he was misbehaving. I find myself remembering these incidents while I was reading Sandman Slim, because Stark was 19 when he was sent to Hell, where he was beaten, raped and fought in vicious arena battles. Survival was the name of the game for him for eleven years, emotional growth not so much. So when he emerges from Hell a cynical thirty year old, his impulse control isn’t high, patience is non-existent and big picture focus just isn’t there.
So when I was reading his exploits I constantly felt like hitting Stark upside the head and saying, “Dude, seriously chill the hell out! Make a plan!” But of course this is fiction and I am not a Jursification agent so he can’t hear me. Stark constantly is making the wrong choices in his quest for revenge. Unable to avoid the temptation of the seemingly easy mark even when it puts others in danger - he can only see his target, which at times makes this book a bit difficult to read. I am rooting for Stark to take his revenge out on these sadistic people, but he just can’t quite seem to get it together to do so. He’s gained power and knowledge while working in Hell; he just hasn’t gained the maturity to know you don’t always have to beat, blow-up or muscle your way to your goals. This is where he reminds me of my brother from all those years ago - his friends all want him to take a more subtle approach to his raison d’etre but they don’t realize he doesn’t possess the maturity (or impulse control) to do so.
That is both why I loved and hated this book at the same time and the reason why I will work my way through the rest of the series. I want to seem him hone his rage into something fine and controlled, instead of the blunt instrument it is now. I want to see him save the world just once on purpose. And I want to know why Stark’s called ‘Sandman Slim’! While Sandman Slim feels a touch slow in its doling out a lot of information, you need in order to understand how Heaven and Hell interact, how magic works in this version of our world and why we should care about Stark’s fate. All in all I really liked it and I cannot wait to read the next book!
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2015
Fran Recommends:
I have an overwhelming fondness for gothic tales. The down-on-her-luck governess, the child in need of help and protection, the mysterious and aloof master of the house, all out on the moors where something dreadful is going to take place? Love it, have since I was a teen. And I know it's contrived and cliched but it still makes me happy. Give me spunky, intrepid Jane Eyre and brooding Mr. Rochester over Catherine and Heathcliff any day. (Heresy to some, I know, but that's how I roll.)
So when I realized, within the first chapter of Tina Connolly's Ironskin (Tor $14.99,signing Saturday, May 23rd, noon) that not only was this a gothic tale but that its very bones were Jane Eyre's story, you can imagine how delighted I was. And somewhat nervous. I love Jane Eyre, and I hoped Ms. Connolly could do her justice.
And she does! Oh my yes. You've got Jane Eliot, Edward Rochart and his daughter, Dorie, in a crumbling house on the moors. Perfect! Adding in fey magic could have taken the story in a strange direction, but it actually brought new life to a classic story line, and I was quite pleased. I can't wait to read the next two books in the trilogy, just to see how it all works out.
Now, in all fairness, this isn't the book that Tina Connolly is coming in to sign. I haven't read Seriously Wicked (Tor hc, $17.99) - yet - but I will, and it sounds like huge fun. Here's what the blurb says:
This book contains:
1 sweet boy-band boy
1 dragon who lives in an RV garage
1 demon who occasionally imitates Elvis
1 hidden phoenix that’s going to explode on Halloween
1 witch who just wants to run the whole city, sheesh, is that too much to ask?
1 girl named Cam trying to fix it all
It's a 21st century mother/daughter situation with magic, ancient spells and high school drama. Honestly? It sounds like huge fun! I can vouch for Ms. Connolly's storytelling skills, so I bet this is going to be another good one!
JB Recommends:
Signing July 9th at Noon - Reserve Your Copy Today
Don Winslow’s books are always terrific. But there are two that are a step above terrific, and he’ll be here to sign them.
Back in 2005, he published The Power of the Dog, an opus about the bloody drug violence along the US/Mexico border. He concentrated on three figures – Art Keller of the DEA and the Barrera brothers who run the most powerful cartel south of the border. It was a heartbreaking book, following these characters as stand-ins for larger horror of the drug war. The toll the war takes on them and their loved ones mirrors the toll it has taken on the countries. One reviewer referred to it as a ‘biblical’ saga, and I think that’s right. If it were to have been filmed, it would have to have been tackled by Lean or Coppola.
Now he’s returned to this despoiled and destroyed land with The Cartel, and the personal war between Keller and Adán Barrera. Both carry on a crusade to stop the other with any means possible and to kill the other in the end. Can they? The book is filled with scheming and maneuvering, with double-crosses and duplicity, as they dance toward one another, lying to themselves and deceiving anyone they need to to meet their ends. Around them swirls the corruption and infighting endemic to such a battle. As the leaders take their worlds into warfare, the collateral damage is catastrophic, inevitably.
The wonderment of the book is that these two figures are neither angels nor demons. It is a remarkable achievement that Winslow has crafted such fully sculpted humans out of words. And his words are clear and cutting, leaving no one – not Mexico and not the US – spared of guilt for the death and horror. About a narcothug’s send-off he writes: “Alberto’s funeral was ridiculous, a display of hypocrisy that would have made a Louisiana televangelist blush.”
The Cartel covers the last decade of the border’s war on drugs – the kidnappings, the beheading, the bombings and firefights. Death and destruction and doom. Story lines will sound familiar to you if you’ve been paying attention to the news. There’s a nauseating déjà vu to the book in that as bad as things are as the novel opens, you know it is going to get much, much worse. No one can get out of the horror. No one can escape.“Satan can only tempt you with what you already have.” There is just too much money at stake, too much power, and too much hatred.
Winslow spares no one – not the gunmen, not the cartel lords, not the DEA, not the police, the governments, the users, and not us readers. He shows us what has happened and, inevitably, what will continue. There’s no past or future, in The Cartel, there is just what is.“He’s heard it said that life is a river, that the past flows downstream. It isn’t true – if it flows, it flows through the blood in your veins. You can no more cut yourself away from the past than you can cut out your own heart.”
Read The Cartel (Knopf hc, $27.95), it’s a killer of a story, beautiful, bloody and belligerently brave. It will be in your face and in your head where it deserves to be. But read The Power of the Dog (Vintage, $15.95) first. Read it now so you can start reading The Cartel as soon as he’s signed your hardcover.
We have two Tumblr blogs, in addition to our regular shop blog:
Hardboiled, maintained by JB – pulp covers, film noir and other images of crime and mystery, and
Reviews and Events – just what it sounds like!
On This Date:
May 25, 1934 -The Thin Man premiered
May 25 - from Hollywood: Claude Akins (1918, Nelson, GA), Ian McKellen (1939, Burnley, England) and Mike Myers (1963, Scarborough, Canada)
May 25, 1949 – Seattle thriller writer James Thayer was born in Eugene, OR
May 25, 1951 – on his 38th birthday, Donald MacLean, along with Guy Burgess, vanished - Soviet agents for whom it got too hot
May 25, 1978 - first of 16 home-made bombs exploded at Northwestern University, injuring a campus policeman, sent by the person later known as “The Unibomber”
May 26, 1637 – the “Mystic Massacre” took place during the Pequot War, Captain John Mason lead English settlers and Narragansett and Mohengan allies against a fortified Pequot village and wiped it out in retaliation for previous Pequot attacks
May 26, 1647 - Alse Young, the first person to be executed for being a witch, was hung
May 26, 1897 –Dracula was published by Archibald Constable and Co.
May 26 - Hollywood: John Wayne (1907, born Marion Robert Morrison) Peter Cushing (1913), James Arness (1923) and Pam Grier (1949)
May 26 - Born: Lea Wait (1946), Carol O’Connell (1947), and James Carlos Blake (1947)
May 26, 1950 – journalist and espionage writer David Ignatius was born in Cambridge, MA
May 26, 1972 – the White House Plumbers’ first break-in at the Watergate Complex in to find ‘The Cuban Dossier’
May 27, 1836 - future robber baron Jay Gould was born in Roxbury, NY
May 27, 1837 - James Butler Hickock was born (Wild Bill to you and me) in Troy Grove, IL
May 27, 1894 – Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County, MD
May 27, 1900 - pulp illustrator Rudolph Belarski was born in Dupont, PA
May 27, 1918 – birth of Kam Tong Chun. After years on the Honolulu police force, he’ll join the cast of ‘Hawaii 5-0’ as Chin Ho Kelly
May 27, 1921 – Caryl Chessman was born in St. Joseph, MI. After spending most of his adult life in prison, he would was convicted of being the ‘Red Light Bandit’ – 17 counts of robbery, kidnapping and rape. His struggles against being executed began the movement to ban capital punishment
May 27 – future journalist and novelist Tony Hillerman was born in Sacred Heart, OK (1925), the multi-talented Harlan Ellison was born in Cleveland (1934), and Sarah Caudwell was born Sarah Cockburn (1939) – she was the half-sister of political writers Alexander, Andrew and Patrick
May 27 - from Hollywood: Vincent Price (1911, St. Louis), Christopher Lee (1922, Belgravia, England), Louis Gossett Jr (1936, Brooklyn) and Bruce Weitz (1943, Norwalk, CT)
May 27, 1964 –From Russia with Love premiered - watch out for Rosa Klebb’s shoe!
May 28, 1644 – in Lancashire, the Parliamentarian town of Bolton was stormed and captured by Royalist forces during the British Civil War and up to 1,600 of the town’s defenders were massacred
May 28, 1842 – Joyce Emmerson Preston Maddock was born. By that name, he was known as a journalist. But as Dick Donovan he was one of the most popular of the early mystery writers in Victorian England
May 28, 1886 – future Florida mob boss Santo Trafficante Sr. was born in Cianciana, Italy
May 28, 1908 - Ian Fleming, future spy, journalist and novelist – a man who knew how to use a long cigarette holder, was born in London. This is also the birthday of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Bond’s arch-nemesis and head of SPECTRE
May 28, 1921 – Herbert Resnicow was born in NYC
May 28, 1972 – second of the Watergate burglaries. They didn’t get caught that night
May 5– early Happy Birthday to long-time customer John Schwartz, master of the nasty joke
May 29, 1874 – Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London. Father Brown first appeared in print in 1910
May 29, 1906 – Delano Ames was born in Knox County, OH
May 29, 1893 - Frederick Faust was born here in Seattle. He was known for creating Dr. Kildare. Under a pseudonym, he also wrote mysteries, but was most famous for his westerns. He wrote them as Max Brand
May 29, 1917 – John F. Kennedy was born
May 29, 1928 - Edgar-winner and Puget Sound resident Willo Davis Roberts was born
May 29: two Hitchcock’s movies were released: Dial M for Murder in 1954 and Vertigo in 1958
May 29, 1955 – future lunatic John Hinckley Jr. was born in Ardmore, OK
May 29 – from Hollywood: Ted Levine (1957, Bellaire, OH) and Annette Bening (1958, Topeka)
And Have a Relaxing and Book-Filled Weekend!