Michael Palmer wears two hats – bestelling author and doctor (he is associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program).  While a premed major at Wesleyan University, he got a “G” on his first freshman English paper (“as in A, B, C, etc.” he writes on his Web site).  His revenge?  In one of his books, he named the villain after that professor.  SMP reports 510,000 copies in print of The First Patient.

Click here to get a copy of is 2009 release The Second Opinion.

See all signed books by Michael Palmer at www.vjbooks.com

David Morrell‘s next novel, THE SHIMMER, will be published in July 2009.  “It’s my longest book in a while—an epical action/suspense story that’s set in the present but features scenes from 1889, 1916, 1945, 1956, and 1980.  The main character is a policeman who’s a private pilot (hence the flight training I’m taking).  There’s also a strong military special-ops element—not to mention a mass murder and a government conspiracy that dates back to the early years of the twentieth century, involving mysterious events in Texas that are based on real occurrences. Much of the book was inspired by fact” says David.

See signed books by David Morrell at www.vjbooks.com

Imagine the worst that can happen. Then imagine again. The stunning new Doc Ford novel by the New York Times-bestselling author.

Winter in New York City: Amid sleet and snow, Doc Ford is at the Explorers Club with his new friend, former (and maybe current) British agent Sir James Montbard, researching a jungle expedition, and awaiting the arrival of an attractive U.S. senator with whom Ford has become more than friendly. Her car pulls up, she starts to get out, and the unthinkable happens: an assassination attempt right before their eyes. Ford engages, critically injuring one of the attackers, but the senator vanishes – dead, authorities fear – until they receive her kidnapper’s ultimatum.

Ford goes on the hunt, with the help of his friend Tomlinson, on an odyssey that moves to the Florida Keys and beyond. If what happened before was unthinkable, it’s nothing compared to what they discover. The senator’s captor has a definite agenda, and to make sure she isn’t rescued before his thirty-six-hour deadline is up, he’s put her someplace he’s sure no one will find her: he’s buried her alive . . .

Randy Wayne White’s novels have always won praise for their remarkable imagination, intrigue, and some of the best characters in suspense fiction. Nothing, however, will prepare his readers for the extraordinary chilling events of Dead Silence.

Order your signed copy from www.vjbooks.com today!

Amarylis Coltraine had recently transferred to the New York City police force from Atlanta-but she’s been a cop long enough to know how to defend herself against an assailant. When she’s taken down just steps away from her apartment, disarmed, and killed with her own weapon, for Eve, the victim isn’t just “one of us.”

Her friend, Chief Medical Examiner Morris, and Coltraine had started a serious relationship, and from all accounts, the two were headed for a happy future together. But someone has put an end to that with a stunner to the detective’s throat. After breaking the news to Morris, Eve starts questioning everyone from Coltraine’s squad, informants and neighbors; while her husband, Roarke, helps by digging into computer data on Coltraine’s life back in Atlanta. To their shock, they discover a connection between this case and their own painful, shadowy pasts.

The truth will need to be uncovered one layer at a time, starting with the box that arrives at Cop Central addressed to Eve, containing Coltraine’s guns, her badge, and a note from her killer: “You can have them back. Maybe someday soon, I’ll be sending yours to somebody else. “Eve doesn’t take too kindly to personal threats. She is going to break this case, whatever it takes. And that’s a promise.

See signed first edition books by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) at www.vjbooks.com

Christopher Moore was born in Toledo, Ohio and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. His father was a highway patrolman and his mother sold major appliances at a department store. He attended Ohio State University and Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. He moved to California when he was 19 years old and lived on the Central Coast until 2003, when he moved to Hawaii.

Before publishing his first novel, Practical Demonkeeping in 1992, he worked as a roofer, a grocery clerk, a hotel night auditor, and insurance broker, a waiter, a photographer, and a rock and roll DJ. Chris has drawn on all of these work experiences to create the characters in his books. When he’s not writing, Chris enjoys ocean kayaking, scuba diving, photography, and sumi-e ink painting. He divides his time between Hawaii and San Francisco.

Moore’s novels typically involve conflicted everyman characters suddenly struggling through supernatural or extraordinary circumstances. Inheriting a humanism from his love of John Steinbeck and a sense of the absurd from Kurt Vonnegut, Moore is a best-selling author with major cult status.

According to his interview in the June 2007 issue of Writer’s Digest, the film rights to Moore’s first novel, Practical Demonkeeping, were purchased by Disney even before the book had a publisher. Nevertheless, the cinematic manifestation of Moore’s novels is yet to be fulfilled: during his book-tour for You Suck (early 2007), in answer to repeated questions from fans over the years, Moore stated that all of his books have been optioned or sold for films, but that as yet “none of them are in any danger of being made into a movie.”

As of June 2006, Moore has been living in San Francisco, California, after a few years’ residence on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.

See Christopher Moore signed first edition books at www.vjbooks.com

This stunning stand-alone from bestseller Lippman (Baltimore Blues) examines the extraordinary power and fragility of memories. Writer Cassandra Fallows achieved critical and commercial success with an account of her Baltimore childhood growing up in the 1960s and a follow-up dealing with her adult marriages and affairs. The merely modest success of her debut novel leads her back to nonfiction and the possibility of a book about grade school classmate Calliope Jenkins. Accused of murdering her infant son, Jenkins spent seven years in prison steadfastly declining to answer any questions about the disappearance and presumed death of her son. Fallows (white) tries to reconnect with three former classmate friends (black) to compare memories of Jenkins and research her story. In the process, she discovers the gulf (partially racial) that separates her memories of events from theirs. Fallows’s pursuit of Jenkins’s story becomes a rich, complex journey from self-deception to self-discovery. 20-city author tour. (Mar.)

See signed books by Laura Lippman at www.vjbooks.com

Bernard Cornwell was born in London in 1944 – a ‘warbaby’ – whose father was a Canadian airman and mother in Britain’s Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. He was adopted by a family in Essex who belonged to a religious sect called the Peculiar People (and they were), but escaped to London University and, after a stint as a teacher, he joined BBC Television where he worked for the next 10 years. He began as a researcher on the Nationwide programme and ended as Head of Current Affairs Television for the BBC in Northern Ireland.

It was while working in Belfast that he met Judy, a visiting American, and fell in love. Judy was unable to move to Britain for family reasons so Bernard went to the States where he was refused a Green Card. He decided to earn a living by writing, a job that did not need a permit from the US government – and for some years he had been wanting to write the adventures of a British soldier in the Napoleonic wars – and so the Sharpe series was born. Bernard and Judy married in 1980, are still married, still live in the States and he is still writing Sharpe.

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, John Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby of writing his first novel.

Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.

One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was (more…)

Opening paragraph from Patterson’s Sundays at Tiffany’s:  “Michael was running as fast as he could, racing down, thickly congested streets toward New York Hospital – Jane was dying there – when suddenly a scene from the past came back to him, a dizzying rush of overpowering memories that nearly knocked him out of his sneakers.  He remembered sitting with Jane in the Astor Court at the St.  Regis Hotel, the two of them there under circumstances too improbable to image.”

His next bestseller, Run For Your Life, is pubbing February 2; it was #239 on Amazon Jan. 15, while Sundays was #1271