(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 16)

De Jonge, a James Patterson coauthor (Beach Road), delivers his first solo effort, a routine crime thriller set in New York City. NYPD Det. Darlene O’Hara, “beautiful and thirty-four, with wavy red hair and the kind of freckles men try to lick off shoulders,” is looking for missing NYU student Francesca Pena, “a very pretty teenage girl with long jet-black hair and bottomless brown eyes,” when she learns that Pena’s brutally beaten body has been found in East River Park. While her professional colleagues soon focus on David McLain, Pena’s hometown friend who initially reported her missing, O’Hara doubts McLain is guilty. As the evidence against McLain mounts, she persists in her search for the real killer, a quest that leads her to cross lines, risk her job and become a wanted person herself. Predictably, O’Hara’s digging reveals Pena had a secret life. Few readers will be surprised that the detective manages to crack the case in the nick of time. (Apr.)

Order your signed copy of Shadows Still Remain by Peter de Jonge at www.vjbooks.com

Dear Friends,

Booksellers often boast of the authors they can call “friends,”  and I must confess that even VJ Books is presumptive enough to refer to a writer or two with that familiarity.  Rare is the bookseller though who turns the world upside down and is labeled as friend by the authors.  This is indeed Dennis McMillan.

(baltimoresun.com, Feb. 15, Diane Scharper)

For the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, the Mystery Writers of America have published this collection of 16 of Poe’s best works with often-insightful commentary by well-known mystery writers. As editor Michael Connelly explains it, Poe’s death in Baltimore in 1849 is shrouded in mystery, as is much of his literary output. Ill, incoherent and dressed in clothes that were not his, 40-year-old Poe could have been mistaken for several of the protagonists of his short stories. Poe’s bad temper, excessive drinking and unpredictable nature would fit perfectly into the plots of narratives included here, like “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” But Poe was much more than a reprobate. As Stephen King, Laura Lippman and others discuss their indebtedness to Poe, one realizes the extent of his greatness. Even literary giants like D.H. Lawrence, who admired Poe’s impassioned probing of the human soul, fell under his sway.

Order your copy of In the Shadow of the Master from www.vjbooks.com

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 9)

The 1921 rape/manslaughter trial of silent film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle provides the gritty backdrop for Atkins’s outstanding crime novel, in which Dashiell Hammett, then a Pinkerton operative living in San Francisco, plays a significant role. A wild party Arbuckle throws at San Francisco’s posh St. Francis Hotel results in tragedy after an actress, Virginia Rappe, is mysteriously injured and later dies. As the author explains in a “behind the story” introduction, the future creator of Sam Spade was actually assigned to help the defense on the Arbuckle case. With enviable ease, Atkins (Wicked City) brings to life Hammett, Arbuckle, William Randolph Hearst and other real figures of the period. Those familiar with the historical case will be impressed by how well the book meshes fact and fiction. Genre fans who enjoy the grim realism of James Ellroy‘s post-WWII Los Angeles will find a lot to like in Atkins‘s Prohibition-era San Francisco. (Apr.)

Order your signed copy of The Devil’s Garden by Ace Atkins at www.vjbooks.com today!

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 16)

Bestseller Scottoline (Lady Killer) scores another bull’s-eye with this terrifying thriller about an adoptive parent’s worst fear—the threat of an undisclosed illegality overturning an adoption. The age-progressed picture of an abducted Florida boy, Timothy Braverman, on a “have you seen this child?” flyer looks alarmingly like Philadelphia journalist Ellen Gleeson’s three-year-old son, Will, whom she adopted after working on a feature about a pediatric cardiac care unit. Ellen, who jeopardizes her newspaper job by secretly researching the Braverman case, becomes suspicious when she discovers the lawyer who handled her adoption of Will has committed suicide. Meanwhile, Will’s supposed birth mother, Amy Martin, dies of a heroin overdose, and Amy’s old boyfriend turns out to look like the man who kidnapped Timothy. Scottoline expertly ratchets up the tension as the desperate Ellen flies to Miami to get DNA samples from Timothy’s biological parents. More shocks await her back home. Author tour. (Apr.)

Order your signed copy of Look Again by Lisa Scottoline from www.vjbooks.com

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 9)

Myron Bolitar takes on international terrorists in bestseller Coben’s fast-paced ninth thriller to feature the sports and entertainment agent (after Promise Me). With his romantic relationship with 9/11 widow Ali Wilder on the rocks, Myron is free at a moment’s notice to accept the invitation of his former lover, Terese Collins, a TV newswoman who dropped out of his life years earlier, to join her in Paris. There Terese tells Myron her investigative reporter ex-husband, Rick, whom Myron never knew about, recently got back in touch with her and hinted at an earthshaking revelation. Rick’s murder plunges Bolitar into a frenzied, often violent chase across Europe in an effort to learn Rick’s secret. Aided by his upper-class sidekick and bodyguard, Win, Bolitar builds up an impressive body count as he attempts to prove he didn’t kill Rick—and foil a terrorist plot that’s as imaginative as it is preposterous. Bolitar fans will cheer their hero every step of the way. (Apr.)

Order your signed copy of The Long Lost by Harlan Coben at www.vjbooks.com today!

(thrillerwriters.org, Jeff Ayers)

Far north in the Arctic Circle, a team of scientists uncovers the frozen remains of a large animal.  Soon after their discovery, a documentary film crew arrives to record their find for a large audience.  Then the movie director decides that they will thaw the animal out on live television.  While the “ancient animal buried in the ice” has been done before, chronicling the find from a documentary perspective felt original and brought back memories of Geraldo.

Lincoln Child has the ability to manipulate the reader in surprising ways.  In his previous novel, Deep Storm, he lead the reader to believe the characters were heading to Atlantis (spoiler alert: they weren’t).  Child commented, “I think it must spring from the novelist’s always-on desire to surprise and confuse. If you can do something completely out of left field, completely unexpected, you’ll keep the reader on edge, going forward.”

How does Child write such an organized read?  He responded, “I generally write the first third basically off the top of my head. I’ll have thought that far (more…)

(Publisher’s Weekly, Dec. 6)

Set in an unnamed city, Berry‘s ambitious debut reverberates with echoes of Kafka and Paul Auster. Charles Unwin, a clerk who’s toiled for years for the Pinkerton-like Agency, has meticulously catalogued the legendary cases of sleuth Travis Sivart. When Sivart disappears, Unwin, who’s inexplicably promoted to the rank of detective, goes in search of him. While exploring the upper reaches of the Agency’s labyrinthine headquarters, the paper pusher stumbles on a corpse. Aided by a narcoleptic assistant, he enters a surreal landscape where all the alarm clocks have been stolen. In the course of his inquiries, Unwin is shattered to realize that some of Sivart’s greatest triumphs were empty ones, that his hero didn’t always come up with the correct solution. Even if the intriguing conceit doesn’t fully work, this cerebral novel, with its sly winks at traditional whodunits and inspired portrait of the bureaucratic and paranoid Agency, will appeal to mystery readers and nongenre fans alike.

Order your signed copy of The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry at www.vjbooks.com!

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 9)

Neil Gaiman won the Newbery Medal last month for The Graveyard Book, which was already on our bestseller charts; now it takes the #1 position (for Children’s Fiction Bestsellers).  When PW asked Gaiman how it felt to become the new Miss America of children’s literature, he laughed in response.  “There is definitely this sense of responsibility, the sort of thing where I keep thinking I really mustn’t rob a bank this year,” he said.  “The news headline would inevitably be ‘Newbery Winner Robs Bank.’  I have to stay away from Ponzi schemes, too.” 

See signed titles by Neil Gaiman at www.vjbooks.com

(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 16)

Veteran espionage novelist Littell (Vicious Circle; The Company; etc.) trades cold war spies for interwar Russian poets in his wonderful new novel. In 1934, real-life poet Osip Mandelstam struggles to get published in the totalitarian state. A battered idealist who has witnessed his share of Stalin-orchestrated horrors, Mandelstam feels writers have “an abiding responsibility to be truth tellers in this wasteland of lies.” Much to the despair of his fellow poets, Osip writes an epigram likening Stalin to a ruthless killer, leading to Osip’s arrest, brutal interrogation and exile. The robust narrative employs an array of narrators, including Osip’s devoted wife, Nadezhda; his disloyal lover, actress Zinaida Zaitseva-Antonova; and Stalin’s personal bodyguard, Nikolai Vlasik. The most intriguing voice heard is that of Fikrit Shotman, a weightlifter turned circus strongman who shares a cell with Osip and whose journey from Moscow prison to Siberian gold mine perfectly captures the absurdity of life under tyranny. Littell is unflinching in his portrayal of Osip’s tragic arc, bringing a troubled era of Russian history to rich, magnificent life. (May)

Order your signed copy of The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell from www.vjbooks.com