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Where the Devil Can't Go
Kiszka and Kershaw Book 1
Author: Anya Lipska
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The naked body of a girl washes up on London’s Thames foreshore - the only clue to her identity a heart-shaped tattoo…
Janusz Kiszka is unofficial 'fixer' to East London’s Polish community – and a man with his own distinctive moral code. When he takes on the apparently routine case of a missing waitress he has no idea that he is dabbling in matters with their roots in Poland’s dark communist past.
Enter police detective Natalie Kershaw: a rookie trying to prove herself in a man’s world. As she investigates deaths of two Polish girls she becomes convinced that Kiszka is the guilty man. With the cops and a psychopathic gangster on his tail, Kiszka escapes to Poland, determined to find the real killer. There he uncovers a terrible secret that reaches across the decades to reveal why the two girls were murdered.
But is he too late to save the life of a third?
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction
Website: Anya Lipska
Twitter: @AnyaLipska
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Author Description:
Anya Lipska is the pen name of a British crime writer married to a Pole. 'I chose Lipska because my real surname is impossible to pronounce...' she says. Living in East London with its big Polish community gave her the inspiration to create Kiszka, a Polish private detective/fixer, who came to the UK to escape communist rule in the Eighties, and is now in many ways a Londoner. A journalist by background, Anya was able to draw on contacts among murder detectives, pathologists and lawyers. 'Sometimes those research conversations in the pub get overheard and we get some very funny looks!'
The series quickly won critical acclaim leading to Anya being chosen for 'Queen of Crime' Val McDermid's New Blood panel at Theakstons Crime Festival - Europe's biggest crime writing event - in 2013. Originally trained as a journalist, Anya now writes and produces documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, and international broadcasters like Discovery Channel. She's made programmes on everything from Leonardo da Vinci to plane crashes; mammoth cloning to Cleopatra's lost tomb. "I consider myself incredibly lucky to have such an interesting job," says Anya, 'It keeps me buzzing with ideas that I can work into my fiction, but nothing matches the excitement of creating characters and weaving plot."
Desperate Housedogs
Author: Sparkle Abbey
Price: $ 0.99
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When Caro Lamont, former psychologist turned pet therapist makes a house call to help Kevin Blackstone with his two misbehaving German Shepherd dogs, she expects frantic dogs, she expects a frantic dog owner, she even expects frantic neighbors. What she doesn’t expect is that two hours later the police will find Kevin dead, his dogs impounded; and that as the last person to see Kevin alive (well, except for the killer) she is suddenly a person of interest, at least according to Homicide Detective Judd Malone.
Author Genre: Mystery, Crime, Humor And Comedy
Website: Sparkle Abbey - pampered pet mysteries
Author's Blog: Sparkle Abbey
Twitter: @sparkleabbey
E-Mail: SparkleAbbey@gmail.com
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Author Description:
Our author picture is a shot of us with the real Sparkle and the real Abbey. Don't you love the stare down? Our real names are Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter. We write the Pampered Pets mystery series together. We're also friends and neighbors so you'll often find us writing at ML's dining room table or at our local Starbucks.
We chose to use Sparkle Abbey as our pen name on this series because we liked the idea of combining the names of our two rescue pets - Sparkle (ML's cat) and Abbey (Anita's dog).
We live in the Midwest, but if we could write anywhere, you would find us on the beach with our laptops and depending on the time of day either an iced tea or a margarita.
We have had so much fun writing this series and we hope you enjoy Caro and Mel's adventures!
Final Witness
Author: James Scott Bell
Price: $ 0.99
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A cold-blooded killer is destroying all who oppose him. Will there be a final witness to the truth?
Young, idealistic law clerk Rachel Ybarra has just been handed a career-making opportunity––helping in the prosecution of an infamous leader of the Russian Mafia. But when the star witness turns up dead, Rachel discovers the case is not merely a battle for the truth––it's a battle for her life.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Website: James Scott Bell
Author's Blog: Kill Zone
Twitter: @jamesscottbell
E-Mail: jsb@JamesScottBell.com
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Author Description:
For notifications and deals about JSB's new releases, sign up for his occasional update at www.jamesscottbell.com (the signup box is on the left side of the screen). Your mail box will never be overstuffed nor will your address be shared with anyone else.
JAMES SCOTT BELL is a bestselling and award winning suspense writer, and one of the top writing coaches in the country. He writes in both the traditional and indie publishing realms. Writing as K. Bennett, he is the author of the Mallory Caine, Zombie-at-Law series, which begins with PAY ME IN FLESH. In 2012 he became the first writer to have a self published work nominated for the prestigious International Thriller Writers Award (for the novella ONE MORE LIE). He was the fiction columnist for Writer's Digest magazine and has written four popular books for the Writers Digest line: Plot & Structure, Revision & Self-Editing, The Art of War for Writers and Conflict & Suspense. Jim taught novel writing at Pepperdine University and continues to teach at numerous writers conferences in the United States, Canada and London. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied writing with Raymond Carver. He lives and writes in L.A. He blogs weekly at Kill Zone -- www.killzoneauthors.blogspot.com
No Honor Among Thieves
An Ali Reynolds Novella
Author: J.A. Jance
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“A semi’s gone over the embankment.” The call wakes Sheriff Joanna Brady in the middle of the night, but what brings her fully alert is the rest of the story. The driver didn’t drift off to sleep and cross the center line—he was shot, multiple times, by someone with serious firepower. And when the truck crashed through the guardrail, its payload wound up scattered all over the road—boxes upon boxes of Legos.
Legos that are being tracked by B. Simpson’s security firm to reduce black market sales—and Ali Reynolds is just the woman to get to the bottom of the crime. She has the tech and the intel to follow the money (or, in this case, the Legos), which makes her a valuable asset to Joanna’s team. Soon these two strong women realize that they’re not just sharing a case, they’re kindred spirits—which is paramount, because the killer they’re up against is anything but child’s play.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Website: J.A. Jance
Author's Blog: J.A. Jance - NYT Bestselling Author
Twitter: @JAJance
E-Mail: jajance@jance.com
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Author Description:
J.A. Jance is the top 10 New York Times bestselling author of the Joanna Brady series; the J. P. Beaumont series; four interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family; and eight books featuring Ali Reynolds.
As a second-grader in Mrs. Spangler’s Greenway School class, I was introduced to Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series. I read the first one and was hooked and knew, from that moment on, that I wanted to be a writer.
The third child in a large family, I was four years younger than my next older sister and four years older than the next younger sibling. Being both too young and too old left me alone in a crowd and helped turn me into an introspective reader and a top student. When I graduated from Bisbee High School in 1962, I received an academic scholarship that made me the first person in my family to attend a four year college. I graduated in 1966 with a degree in English and Secondary Education. In 1970 I received my M. Ed. In Library Science. I taught high school English at Tucson’s Pueblo High School for two years and was a K-12 librarian at Indian Oasis School District in Sells, Arizona for five years.
My ambitions to become a writer were frustrated in college and later, first because the professor who taught creative writing at the University of Arizona in those days thought girls "ought to be teachers or nurses" rather than writers. After he refused me admission to the program, I did the next best thing: I married a man who was allowed in the program that was closed to me. My first husband imitated Faulkner and Hemingway primarily by drinking too much and writing too little. Despite the fact that he was allowed in the creative writing program, he never had anything published either prior to or after his death from chronic alcoholism at age forty-two. That didn’t keep him from telling me, however, that there would be only one writer in our family, and he was it.
My husband made that statement in 1968 after I had received a favorable letter from an editor in New York who was interested in publishing a children’s story I had written. Because I was a newly wed wife who was interested in staying married, I put my writing ambitions on hold. Other than writing poetry in the dark of night when my husband was asleep (see After the Fire), I did nothing more about writing fiction until eleven years later when I was a single, divorced mother with two children and no child support as well as a full time job selling life insurance. My first three books were written between four a.m. and seven a.m.. At seven, I would wake my children and send them off to school. After that, I would get myself ready to go sell life insurance.
I started writing in the middle of March of 1982. The first book I wrote, a slightly fictionalized version of a series of murders that happened in Tucson in 1970, was never published. For one thing, it was twelve hundred pages long. Since I was never allowed in the creative writing classes, no one had ever told me there were some things I needed to leave out. For another, the editors who turned it down said that the parts that were real were totally unbelievable, and the parts that were fiction were fine. My agent finally sat me down and told me that she thought I was a better writer of fiction than I was of non-fiction. Why, she suggested, didn’t I try my hand at a novel?
The result of that conversation was the first Detective Beaumont book, Until Proven Guilty. Since 1985 when that was published, there have been 21 more Beau books. My work also includes 14 Joanna Brady books set in southeastern Arizona where I grew up, and seven Ali Reynolds books, set in Sedona, AZ. In addition there are four thrillers, starting with Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, that reflect what I learned during the years when I was teaching on the Tohono O’Odham reservation west of Tucson, Arizona.
The week before Until Proven Guilty was published, I did a poetry reading of After the Fire at a widowed retreat sponsored by a group called WICS (Widowed Information Consultation Services) of King County. By June of 1985, it was five years after my divorce in 1980 and two years after my former husband’s death. I went to the retreat feeling as though I hadn’t quite had my ticket punched and didn’t deserve to be there. After all, the other people there were all still married when their spouses died. I was divorced. At the retreat I met a man whose wife had died of breast cancer two years to the day and within a matter of minutes of the time my husband died. We struck up a conversation based on that coincidence. Six months later, to the dismay of our five children, we told the kids they weren’t the Brady Bunch, but they'd do, and we got married. We now have four new in-laws as well as six grandchildren.
When my second husband and I first married, he supported all of us–his kids and mine as well as the two of us. It was a long time before my income from writing was anything more than fun money–the Improbable Cause trip to Walt Disney World; the Minor in Possession memorial powder room; the Payment in Kind memorial hot tub. Eventually, however, the worm turned. My husband was able to retire at age 54 and took up golf and oil painting.
One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that everything–even the bad stuff–is usable. The eighteen years I spent while married to an alcoholic have helped shape the experience and character of Detective J. P. Beaumont. My experiences as a single parent have gone into the background for Joanna Brady–including her first tentative steps toward a new life after the devastation of losing her husband in Desert Heat. And then there’s the evil creative writing professor in Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, but that’s another story.
Another wonderful part of being a writer is hearing from fans. I learned on the reservation that the ancient, sacred charge of the storyteller is to beguile the time. I’m thrilled when I hear that someone has used my books to get through some particularly difficult illness either as a patient or as they sit on the sidelines while someone they love is terribly ill. It gratifies me to know that by immersing themselves in my stories, people are able to set their own lives aside and live and walk in someone else’s shoes. It tells me I’m doing a good job at the best job in the world.
A Darker Domain
Author: Val McDermid
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She’s already investigating a case from the same year. At the height of the miner’s strike, Mick Prentice broke ranks to join ‘scab’ strike-breakers down south. But new evidence suggests Mick’s disappearance may not be as straightforward as that – and Karen’s investigations take her into a dark domain of secrets, betrayal and the ultimate violence! Past and present intertwine in a novel of taut psychological suspense that explores the intersection of desire and greed.
Author Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
Website: Val McDermid
Twitter: @valmcdermid
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Author Description:
I never imagined when I started on this journey that I would have the success that has come my way. All those novels, radio plays, short stories, non-fiction and even a children’s book make a significant pile that I have every intention of adding to.
I divide my year between writing and promoting my work at home and abroad, and when I’m not travelling, I divide my time between South Manchester and Edinburgh where I live with my partner and my son. Most days, I feel like one of the very lucky ones.
I didn’t have the practical skills to make a success of writing drama, and the agent I had then didn’t do anything to help me acquire them. In fact, he fired me because I didn’t make him enough money. (so who’s got the last laugh now?) So I decided to turn my hand to writing a crime novel, because I’d always enjoyed reading the genre, and I’d been very excited by the New Wave of American women crime writers, who made me wonder if I could write something similar with a UK setting.
Meanwhile, I was attempting to become a writer. I wrote my first attempt at a novel when I was working in Devon. The best thing I can say about it was that I actually finished it. It was a typical 21-year-old’s novel – full of tortured human relationships, love, hate, grief, angst, not to mention the meaning of life. It was, naturally enough, rejected by every publishing house in London. But an actor friend who read it thought it would make a good play.
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