Clive Cussler Signs Spartan Gold at The Pen

Nevada Barr talking about her latest novel 13 1/2

Diana Gabaldon - Launch party for An Echo in the Bone

For a small independent to launch such a highly anticipated book is quite a task. The phones literally rang pretty much without stop for the last 4 weeks. For all those that have dealt with us, thank you for your patience and continued support. It is nice to get to chat with people all over the country.

Having been at The Poisoned Pen for two years, I have gotten to meet plenty of authors and Diana is by far one of the nicest and most easy going ones to come into the store. Being a writer and interfacing with the public has always been difficult for artists. Federico Fellini, the Italian director said about his art "Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know" referring to the opinions of people and the critics. Diana, however, is touring throughout the year, talking about her books, answering questions, and placing no space between her craft and her fans.

On September 22nd, at the Arizona Biltmore, Diana spoke to an estimated 800 people, taking the time to inscribe the books of all that desired it.

I've heard nothing but great things about An Echo in the Bone as well, some saying it is as good as Outlander, and maybe better. As Diana mentioned one day during her routine signings at the store, she finished this novel in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. Maybe there is something to that?

To order a signed, first edition copy of An Echo in the Bone, click here.

The clip above is a brief piece of Diana speaking to her throngs of fans.

Echo is not the only new publication for Diana this year. She is also a contributor to Phoenix Noir published by Akashic Press and edited by our very own Patrick Millikin.

Michael Connelly and Reed Farrel Coleman interview each other!

We got this compliments of Murder by the Book

Mystery Author Interviews

Michael Connelly and Reed Farrel Coleman interview each other!

Reed Farrel Coleman: For years I’ve quoted you at almost every event I’ve ever done. You’ve been reported to have said that, “It’s not how the detective works on the case, but how the case works on the detective.” Did you say it? And if you did, was this something you thought of before you began writing mystery fiction or did you always have it in mind?

Michael Connelly: Well, I guess you can now start quoting Joseph Wambaugh. (Who will be at the PP on Dec 2 at 7 pm) I do say that quite a bit but try to always credit Joe. I heard that this was the edict handed down from on high to all writers working on the old Wambaugh TV show Police Story. I think it really succinctly states what writing in this genre is all about.

RFC: Can you walk me through the evolution of Harry Bosch? Did you know Harry before you started writing him or did he evolve as you wrote the first novel?

MC: I had previously written two books that went nowhere beyond the bottom drawer of my desk. My take on them was that the protagonist in each was not fully realized and therefore would be unable to connect in any meaningful way to the reader. So it was two years before I tried a third time. In that time i did a lot of collecting of character nuances. So when I started writing Harry Bosch in that third effort I had a pretty good sense of the character and what I wanted to say about him. Of course, I got lucky and got to write more books about him so he has continued to evolve.

RFC: How do you keep your writing fresh after so many years at the top of the game?

MC: That is nice of you to say on two different counts. The answer is, I don't know. What do any of us know? My guess is that you can never have the character go static, you can never have him feeling fulfilled, and you must always keep him searching for answers on many levels. I think if you do all of that you give the character momentum. Velocity always wins the day.

RFC: There are obvious ways in which your background as a journalist have been a great benefit to your work, but are there any subtle ways your background helps that a reader or a non-journalist like myself might miss?

MC: I think the entry into the world I write about is the obvious thing. But on a less obvious but very important level, my journalism experience taught me a lot about writing and about the velocity I mentioned above. I write short sentences that generate momentum in reading. I use dialogue that contains information that moves the story forward. These are all tricks of the journalism trade. And lastly, I spent a number of years working at a paper that put out several editions a day. I sometimes had to write the same story four times a day, using the the same facts but telling the story differently so it would look like each edition had something new to say. (Another trick of the trade.) This taught me to embrace and value rewriting. I think the key to whatever success my books have is in the rewriting. I believe nothing I write is sacred. It can always be torn apart and made better. I start everyday by tearing apart what I wrote the day before.

RFC: Do you ever think about your legacy as one of the most enduring and popular mystery writers of the last twenty years?

MC: I don't because I really don't think it's true. I think the world has changed so much and it moves so fast that nothing is permanent. I am not sure there are going to be enduring classics from this era. We live in disposable times. I write very contemporary stories that I hope hit in the time they are published and then can disappear in ten years because they won't be relevant, let alone fifty. Case in point is my book The Poet. Published in 1997, it is already obsolete. In the book they track a bad guy because he uses a rare photographic device—a digital camera. That was cutting edge for about five minutes.

For More Click Here

Michael Connelly is the #1-selling author of the Harry Bosch, Jack McEvoy, and Mickey Haller novels. Reed Farrel Coleman is the two-time Edgar Award-nominated author of the Moe Prager mysteries. They will sign their latest books at The Poisoned Pen, Tuesday, October 13, 12 p.m. For more on their new books and the signing event, please go here.

Join our Celebration! SATURDAY OCTOBER 3 Phoenix Noir 6:00 pm/ Our 20th Birthday Party

Today is Patrick's birthday what could more fitting than hosting a party for Phoenix Noir Edited by Patrick Millikin. Akashic, $15.95 paper (304p)
Congratulations, Patrick!

This title just earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly: "The 16 stories in this stellar volume in Akashic's noir series paint a vivid portrait of the underside of Phoenix, where the gulf between rich and poor ensures "[c]rime, and lots of it," as Millikin observes in his introduction. The writers make superb use of locale so that the sprawl, desert, history and especially the heat become "characters" in their fiction. Among the standouts are Robert Anglen's "Growing Back," an unforgettable journey through a prisoner's consciousness, from the hell of his crimes and incarceration to the incestuous bed he shared with his mother; Luis Alberto Urrea's "Amapola," in which a teenage lothario makes the possibly fatal mistake of falling for a drug lord's daughter; and Laura Tohe's "Tom Snag," an updated version of the Native American shape-shifter myth as visited upon a hammered, horny barfly. Other contributors include Gary Phillips, Don Winslow, Lee Child, James Sallis and Megan Abbott. This book is an absolutemust-read for noir fans."

Don't miss our party and your chance to meet the authors who will be here to sign their stories in Phoenix Noir :Jon Talton
Diana Gabaldon
James Sallis
Dogo Barry Graham
Chuck Kelly
Stella Pope-Duarte
Laura Tohe
Robert Anglen
Kurt Reichenbaugh
David Corbett

New Signed Books at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore

Flynn, Vince. Pursuit of Honor ($29) Available Oct 13

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR VINCE FLYNN RETURNS WITH HIS MOST EXHILARATING POLITICAL THRILLER TO DATE, A PULSE-POUNDING TALE OF ESPIONAGE, COVERT INTELLIGENCE, AND COUNTERTERRORISM.

The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friends or foes of the agents who stepped between the enemy's bullets and countless American lives regardless of the legal consequences. Not for the first time, Rapp finds himself in the frustrating position of having to illustrate the realities of national security to politicians whose view from the sidelines is inevitably obstructed.

Meanwhile, three of the al Qaeda terrorists are still at large, and Rapp has been unofficially ordered to find them by any means necessary. No one knows the personal, physical, and emotional sacrifices required of the job better than Rapp. When he sees Nash cracking under the pressure of the mission and the memories of the horrors he witnessed during the terrorist attack, he makes a call he hopes will save his friend, assuage the naysayers on Capitol Hill, and get him one step closer to the enemy before it's too late. Once again, Rapp proves himself to be a hero unafraid "to walk the fine line between the moral high ground and violence" (The Salt Lake Tribune) for our country's safety, for the sake of freedom, for the pursuit of honor.

Mayor, Archer. The Price of Malice A Joe Gunther Novel ($27)

Wayne Castine was found brutally murdered and the murderer remains at large. Castine, a suspected child predator, was killed in Brattleboro where he was involved with a tangled network of an extended family living in a local trailer park. Any member of the clan would have had the opportunity to kill him, and, as he was involved with both the mother and her 12 year old daughter, reason to commit the murder. At the same time, Joe Gunther has learned that his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s fisherman father and brother, believed lost at sea off the coast of Maine, might have actually been murdered. Without enough solid information to warrant law enforce ment involvement, Lyn returns to Maine to try and investigate Gunther’s findings. Gunther periodically puts his on-going murder investigation on hold—irritating his colleagues and angering his bosses —to go and help Lyn in Maine. It appears increasingly possible that her father and brother weren’t the good guys that Lyn always believed them to be and that they might have been involved with vicious smugglers who murdered them—and might do the same to Lyn if she keeps pushing. Torn between his conscience and his heart, a murder invest - igation and a personal search for the truth, Gunther finds that betrayal and loyalty are often a matter of viewpoint.

McCaffrey, Vincent. Hound ($24)

"Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living."

A bookhound, Henry Sullivan buys and sells books he finds at estate auctions and library sales around Boston and often from the relatives of the recently deceased. He’s in his late thirties, single, and comfortably set in his ways. But when a woman from his past, Morgan Johnson, calls to ask him to look at her late husband’s books, he is drawn into the dark machinations of a family whose mixed loyalties and secret history will have fatal results.

Hound, the first novel featuring Henry Sullivan, is the debut work of a longtime Boston bookseller. It is a paean to books, bookselling, and the transformative power of the printed word. Even as it evolves into a gripping murder mystery, it is also a reminder that there are still quiet corners of the world where the rhythms of life are calmer, where there’s still time for reading, time for getting out for a beer with friends, time to investigate the odd details of lives lived on the edges of the book world.

As the true story unfolds, its mysteries are also of the everyday sort: love found and love lost, life given and life taken away. At the center is Henry himself, with his troubled relationships and his love of old books. There’s his landlady Mrs. Prowder whose death unsettles Henry’s life and begins the sequence of events that overturns it. There’s the secret room his friend Albert discovers while doing "refuse removal," a room that reveals the story of a woman who lived and loved a century ago.

And throughout the novel are those of us whose lives revolve around books: the readers, writers, bookstore people, and agents—as well as Henry, the bookhound, always searching for the great find, but usually just getting by, happy enough to be in the pursuit.

“McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut.”
—Publishers Weekly