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Bookreporter.com Newsletter |
February 29, 2008
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Happy Leap Day!
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Today is Leap Day, and I decided to have some fun coming up with a new holiday to celebrate it. You can read my blog about it here.
Monday night the awards ceremony for Books for a Better Life was held at the Hudson Theatre in New York. I was asked to present three awards that evening, which was a lot of fun. Meredith Viera of "Today Show" fame introduced me for my segment, and I confess to being thrilled. I practiced "Thank you, Meredith" a few times before the evening to be sure I had the right tone and inflection.
I have been on the nominating committee for this award for two years now, and that evening when we get together to discuss literally hundreds of possible contenders for the award is always a great conversation with interesting editors and contributors from trade and consumer magazines. I love hearing their comments about the books and interjecting my own. We celebrate books that actually make a difference in people's lives, and the acceptance speeches that night made the previous evening's Oscar winners look like amateurs. You can see the complete list of winners here. This is not just an illustrious book evening but also a benevolent one, as proceeds from this awards event support national research, as well as vital services and medical programs for those with multiple sclerosis in the metropolitan area.
Over the past few months we have been working with a truly lovely author, Frances Richey, on her website. Richey has written a beautiful memoir, THE WARRIOR: A Mother's Story of a Son at War. It's 28 poems dedicated to her son, Ben, who served two tours of duty in Iraq. Most of this book was written while he was deployed. Writing became her refuge and a source of hope while she waited for him to come home. This Sunday (March 2nd) The New York Times Magazine will be publishing one of her poems. No matter what your feelings are on the war, this loving tribute from a mother will tug at your heart. Frances welcomes comments from readers at her website, so please write her there if you choose.
For three days, ending tonight at midnight, Random House is offering a free download of BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN by Charles Bock. This story offers a glimpse into a microcosm of America as a couple copes with the disappearance of their son. You can find out more about the book and this special offer by clicking here.
I am thrilled to share that our newest featured author is Linda Fairstein, whose latest thriller, KILLER HEAT, follows a Manhattan D.A.’s desperate hunt for a serial killer. The book hits stores on March 11th. Linda has become a friend to Bookreporter.com over the years, and I always love my conversations with her about books and writing. She is smart, vivacious and just lovely --- and she writes a terrific story. Also, on a personal front, she loves bright colors as much as me, and I always love to see what she is wearing when we get together! We have 20 copies of KILLER HEAT to give away to readers who would like to preview the book and comment about it. If you are interested, please fill out this form by Friday, March 14th.
We have received advance reader responses for THE ANATOMY OF DECEPTION by Lawrence Goldstone, a forensic thriller taking place in 1880s Philadelphia. You can read their comments here. We also received responses to OBEDIENCE by Will Lavender, a psychological thriller about a group of college students and one very unusual class. You can see our advance readers' comments here. In addition, Beverly Barton, author of THE MURDER GAME, has responded to our advance readers’ questions. Click here to read their questions and her responses.
This week we have two great prizes in our Word of Mouth contest: FIVE readers each will win a copy of CHANGE OF HEART by Jodi Picoult and A PRISONER OF BIRTH by Jeffrey Archer. Tell us what you are reading and rate the titles 1-5 by noon on March 14th to ensure that you are in the running to win these books.
In our new poll, we ask about your buying habits when book shopping, while our question focuses on your favorite bookstore. I always look forward to hearing what you have to say. You may respond to our poll by clicking here and answer our question here.
I am in Florida for Sleuthfest, the convention sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America Florida chapter. Lee Child is being honored as well as Doug Lyle. I am looking forward to hearing both of them speak and participate in the conference. Joan Johnston, who we have been featuring on Bookreporter.com, is speaking, and I look forward to getting to meet her in person.
It's been chillier in Florida than I would like, but yesterday I did snag some pool time and it was nice just to be outside again. As I joked with a friend on the phone, the entire pool staff was dressed in windsuits, while I happily was wearing my bathing suit. The pool was heated like a hot tub, and so long as my towel was right nearby, the swimming was glorious. May it heat up here as I am in town until Sunday! I will get some reading-by-the-pool time.
Enjoy your Leap Day and the week ahead. Make some time for reading.
Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)
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Need more details about Word of Mouth? Click here.
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Bookreporter.com Talks to Michele Martinez, Author of NOTORIOUS
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Former lawyer turned suspense/thriller author Michele Martinez has written four novels --- including the newly released NOTORIOUS --- that revolve around Melanie Vargas, a New York City prosecutor who specializes in narcotics-related crimes. In this interview with Bookreporter.com’s Joe Hartlaub, Martinez explains how heavily this latest book was influenced by her real-life experiences and ponders the future of her protagonist, who may not make an appearance in her next novel. She also shares her recent literary discoveries, offers advice to struggling first-time authors and briefly discusses her return to the legal profession.
NOTORIOUS by Michele Martinez (Thriller)
About to take a controversial rap star to trial for a past crime, Melanie Vargas receives an important piece of information from a friend of hers --- the rapper's attorney. When he is killed moments later, Melanie becomes determined to find the culprit. But the more she digs, the more she finds troubling about the charismatic defense lawyer. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
-Click here to read a review of NOTORIOUS.
-Click here to read an excerpt from NOTORIOUS.
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Click here to read our interview with Michele Martinez.
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Bookreporter.com Talks to Andrew Britton, Author of THE INVISIBLE
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Andrew Britton has been making a name for himself in the international thriller genre with the publications of THE AMERICAN, THE ASSASSIN and the newly released THE INVISIBLE, which continues the exploits of CIA agent and counterterrorism operative Ryan Kealey. In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Joe Hartlaub, Britton discusses the real-life events and circumstances that sparked the idea for this latest novel and shares what current situation will be explored in his upcoming work. He also recalls his roundabout path to becoming an author, describes the most challenging aspect of the writing process and reveals what changes he would make in the White House if given the opportunity.
THE INVISIBLE by Andrew Britton (Thriller)
For more than a decade, Ryan Kealey has been a key player in the war on terror --- first, as a captain in the U.S. Army’s third Special Forces Group, then as a contract operative with the CIA. His actions have saved thousands of lives, including that of the U.S. President. Now once again, Kealey receives the call of duty --- only this time, the odds for success are slim to none. And he will have to risk everything, including the woman he loves, to save the life of one person. Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub.
-Click here to read a review of THE INVISIBLE.
-Click here to read an excerpt from THE INVISIBLE.
-Visit the author's website, www.AndrewBrittonBooks.com.
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Click here to read our interview with Andrew Britton.
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Now in Stores: DEEP DISH by Mary Kay Andrews
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DEEP DISH by Mary Kay Andrews (Fiction)
Local cooking show hosts Gina Foxton and Tate Moody face off in a reality show competition. The prize is the starring role in his or her own series on the Cooking Channel. As much as Gina and Tate yearn to win, they reluctantly find themselves distracted by their attraction to each other, in this hilarious and delightful romp from bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews. Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon.
-Click here to read an excerpt from DEEP DISH.
-Visit the author's website, www.MaryKayAndrews.com.
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Click here to read a review of DEEP DISH.
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Now in Stores: REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella |
REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella (Fiction)
Having survived a car accident, 28-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital to discover that she has lost a big chunk of her memory --- three years to be exact. Finding herself much better off than she remembers herself being, Lexi gets wind that this new life may not be as perfect as it seems. So she struggles to make sense of it all and find out who she really is. Reviewed by Jana Siciliano.
-Click here to read an excerpt from REMEMBER ME?
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Click here to read a review of REMEMBER ME?
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New Featured Suspense/Thriller Author: Linda Fairstein, Author of KILLER HEAT
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Bestselling author Linda Fairstein is one of America's foremost legal experts on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence. In her latest thriller, KILLER HEAT, Fairstein orchestrates a page-turning mix of cutting-edge legal issues and forensics, New York City history and spine-tingling suspense.
We have 20 copies of KILLER HEAT to give away to readers who would like to preview the book and comment about it. If you are interested, please fill out this form by Friday, March 14th.
-Click here to read Linda Fairstein’s bio.
-Visit the author’s official website, www.LindaFairstein.com.
More about KILLER HEAT:
It’s August in New York, and the only thing that’s hotter than the pavement is Manhattan D.A. Alex Cooper’s professional and personal life. Just as she’s claiming an especially gratifying victory in a rape case, she gets the call: the body of a young woman has been found in an abandoned building. The brutality of the murder is disturbing enough, but when a second body, beaten and disposed of in exactly the same manner, is found off the Belt Parkway, the city’s top brass want the killer found fast, before the tabloids can start churning out ghoulish serial killer headlines. |
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Click here to read more about Linda Fairstein and KILLER HEAT.
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Featured Suspense/Thriller Author: Stephen White, Author of DEAD TIME |
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Stephen White is a clinical psychologist and the New York Times bestselling author of the Alan Gregory novels, which include DRY ICE and KILL ME. In his new thriller DEAD TIME, available in stores on March 4th, Colorado psychologist Alan Gregory is pulled into a mystery that reaches back years to a camping trip at the Grand Canyon where a young woman mysteriously vanished.
-Click here to read an excerpt from DEAD TIME.
-Click here to read fast facts about Stephen White.
-Click here to read Stephen White’s bio.
-Visit the author’s official website, www.AuthorStephenWhite.com.
-Click here to see our advance copy winners.
More about DEAD TIME:
After the shocking developments in DRY ICE, Colorado psychologist Alan Gregory is struggling to deal with his newly adopted son and repair his shaky, though generally improving, marriage. But then Alan’s ex-wife, Meredith, reappears, seeking help she feels only he can give. Suddenly Alan is pulled into a mystery that reaches back years to a camping trip at the Grand Canyon involving Meredith’s fiance and five friends whose lives were changed forever when a young woman mysteriously vanished from the Canyon floor.
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Click here to read more about Stephen White and DEAD TIME.
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Featured Romantic Suspense Author: Lisa Jackson, Author of LOST SOULS
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Lisa Jackson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 75 novels ---including ABSOLUTE FEAR and SHIVER --- delivers another harrowing thriller. In LOST SOULS, which hits stores on March 25th, a young woman’s determined hunt for a serial killer draws her into a twisted psychopath’s terrifying web.
-Click here to read fast facts about Lisa Jackson.
-Click here to read Lisa Jackson’s bio.
-Visit the author’s official website, www.LisaJackson.com.
-Click here to see our advance copy winners.
More about LOST SOULS:
Kristi Bentz wants to write true crime. All she needs is that one case that will take her to the top. She finds it when she enrolls at All Saints College after learning that three troubled girls have disappeared in one term. When the bodies are found, all blood drained from their bodies, rumors abound that vampires are on the loose. Are they? Or is there a new serial killer in New Orleans --- one more cunning than any that Detectives Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya have gone up against before?
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Click here to read more about Lisa Jackson and LOST SOULS.
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Featured Romantic Suspense Author: Joan Johnston, Author of A STRANGER'S GAME
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From New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston comes a new Bitter Creek novel. A STRANGER’S GAME, which hits stores on March 11th, features all of the passion and intrigue in Texas high society mixed with an explosive, spine-tingling tale of murder, wrongful imprisonment and a woman who counts no cost too high to see a killer brought to justice.
-Click here to read a second excerpt from A STRANGER'S GAME.
-Click here to read fast facts about Joan Johnston.
-Click here to read Joan Johnston’s bio.
-Click here to see Joan Johnston's backlist.
-Visit the author’s official website, www.JoanJohnston.com.
-Click here to see our finished copy winners.
More about A STRANGER’S GAME:
With just five days until the president arrives in Austin, Texas, the last thing the FBI needs is a serial killer on the loose, much less a terrorist suspect who will stop at nothing to clear her name. It’s a strange game alright, but why does Agent Grayhawk suspect he’s missing some of the pieces?
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Click here to read more about Joan Johnston and A STRANGER'S GAME.
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Now in Stores: WIFE GOES ON by Leslie Lehr
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WIFE GOES ON by Leslie Lehr (Fiction)
THE FIRST WIVES CLUB meets SEX AND THE CITY (with major baggage) in this bitingly witty, insightful novel, in which four women navigate the choppy waters of divorce. |
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Click here to read more about WIFE GOES ON.
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Now in Stores: ALWAYS GRACE by Tim LaHaye and Gregory S. Dinallo /font> |
ALWAYS GRACE by Tim LaHaye and Gregory S. Dinallo (Romance)
In trade paperback for the first time, New York Times bestselling authors Tim LaHaye and Gregory S. Dinallo’s parable of love and faith spans two continents and three decades as it tells the unforgettable story of soul mates separated by fate and circumstances. |
Click here to read more about ALWAYS GRACE.
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Now in Stores: MY SOUL TO KEEP by Melanie Wells |
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MY SOUL TO KEEP by Melanie Wells (Thriller)
A joyful summer afternoon goes south when a little boy is snatched from a neighborhood park. Exploding light bulbs, the deadly buzz of a Texas rattlesnake and the vivid, disturbing dreams of a little girl are just pieces in a long trail of tantalizing clues leading Dylan Foster in her dogged search for the truth.
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Click here to read more about MY SOUL TO KEEP.
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Now Available in Paperback: LOST MEN by Brian Leung
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LOST MEN by Brian Leung (Fiction)
Westen Gray was just eight years old when his Caucasian mother died and his Chinese father, Xin, sent him away to be raised by her relatives. More than 20 years later, after a lifetime of estrangement, Westen receives an invitation from his father to travel with him to China. The future of their relationship hinges on the trip and on the contents of a sealed letter written by Westen’s mother before her death --- a letter that threatens to answer the lifelong question neither of them has dared to ask.
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Click here to read more about LOST MEN.
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New in Paperback for February
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February’s roundup of New in Paperback fiction titles includes NINETEEN MINUTES by Jodi Picoult, in which the residents of a small town must come to terms with the role they played in a shocking tragedy; PEONY IN LOVE, Lisa See’s follow-up to SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN that tells of three women in 17th-century China who become emotionally involved with a famous opera known to cause lovesickness and even death; CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT, an ambitious novel from Anne Rice about the early years of Jesus Christ; Sandra Dallas’s TALLGRASS, which revolves around Japanese internment camps during World War II; KOCKROACH, the classic tale of an immigrant's search for the American dream as seen from a new perspective, as Tyler Knox turns Kafka's “The Metamorphosis” on its head; and THE ASSASSIN, Andrew Britton’s second political thriller, in which maverick CIA agent Ryan Kealey must fight against his own agency while the clock is ticking on a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Among our nonfiction highlights are GRACE (EVENTUALLY), Anne Lamott’s third book on faith (following TRAVELING MERCIES and PLAN B), an examination of the ways we're caught in life's most daunting predicaments; IN AN INSTANT, a dual memoir by ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and his wife, Lee, who share their never-before-told story of romance, resilience and survival following the tragedy that transformed their lives; and HARD CALL, in which presidential candidate John McCain and Mark Salter describe the anatomy of great decisions in history by telling the remarkable stories of men and women who have exemplified composure, wisdom and intellect in the face of life's toughest decisions.
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Click here to see our New in Paperback roundup for February.
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This Week's Reviews
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FRIEND OF THE DEVIL by Peter Robinson (Thriller)
Peter Robinson brings readers the chillingly complex FRIEND OF THE DEVIL, the 17th installment in his series featuring Chief Inspector Alan Banks. As Banks is trying to find out who brutally raped and murdered a college student, Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot must determine who slit the throat of a young quadriplegic woman and abandoned her atop a cliff. Reviewed by Ray Palen.
-Click here to read an excerpt from FRIEND OF THE DEVIL.
DAKOTA by Martha Grimes (Fiction)
In this sequel to Martha Grimes’s BITING THE MOON, a drifter and an amnesiac named Andi Oliver is hired at Klavan’s, a massive pigfarming facility that specializes in the dark art of modern livestock management. As Andi begins to uncover the truth about Klavan’s and a slaughterhouse called Big Sun, two men are on her trail --- a gunman hired to kill her, and someone who has followed her across three states demanding something from her forgotten past. Reviewed by Roz Shea.
DIABLERIE by Walter Mosley (Fiction)
Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mystery series, has written a novel about the dark side of human nature. In DIABLERIE, Ben Dibbuk watches his comfortable, if routine, middle class world implode as he is forced to face dangerous secrets from his past. Reviewed by Tom Callahan.
THE NIGHT FOLLOWING by Morag Joss (Psychological Thriller)
This psychological thriller --- more Ian McEwan than Agatha Christie --- is an intense evocation of lives falling apart in the wake of a hit-and-run accident. The car’s driver, trying to atone, and the victim’s husband, struggling to survive her death, find a curious, spooky rapprochement. Reviewed by Kathy Weissman.
THE SOUL THIEF by Charles Baxter (Fiction)
In Buffalo, New York, in the early 1970s, graduate student Nathaniel Mason goes looking for a place to drink beer and discuss politics with other students and begins to lose his identity. Charles Baxter’s lyrical writing style, quirky characters and dark humor make THE SOUL THIEF an unusual yet engaging novel that ponders the question of self-identity. Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt.
HARRIET AND ISABELLA by Patricia O'Brien (Historical Fiction)
Nineteenth-century celebrities, a riveting sex scandal and the accompanying media frenzy frame a gripping story of family division and loyalty in this novel based on the real-life adultery trial of famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon.
A PERSON OF INTEREST by Susan Choi (Fiction)
Susan Choi offers readers an elegant, captivating meditation on fame, notoriety, terror and alienation in A PERSON OF INTEREST. This masterful novel is a compelling portrait of a most unlikely hero, a humble man whose brush with infamy highlights his outsider status. Reviewed by Norah Piehl.
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Read this week's reviews here.
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As always, here are a few housekeeping notes. If you are seeing this newsletter in a text version, and would prefer to see the graphics, you can either read it online or change your preferences below.
Those of you who wish to send mail to Bookreporter.com, please see the form on the Write to Us page. If you would like to reach me, please write Carol@bookreporter.com. Writing any of the respond buttons below will not get to us.
Those who are subscribed to the Bookreporter.com newsletter by February 29, 2008 automatically are entered in our Monthly Newsletter Contest. This month one winner will be selected to win the following five books: DEEP DISH by Mary Kay Andrews, FIREFLY LANE by Kristin Hannah, LADY KILLER by Lisa Scottoline, REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella and STRANGERS IN DEATH by Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb. Lisa from Garrison, NY was last month's newsletter winner. She won THE APPEAL by John Grisham, DUMA KEY by Stephen King, PLUM LUCKY by Janet Evanovich, THE SECRET BETWEEN US by Barbara Delinsky and THE WINTER ROSE by Jennifer Donnelly.
Happy reading! Don't forget to forward this newsletter to a friend or to visit our other websites from TheBookReportNetwork.com: ReadingGroupGuides.com, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com, FaithfulReader.com, AuthorYellowPages.com, Teenreads.com, and Kidsreads.com.
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