FIRST THRILLS
Edited by Lee Child 2010Forge
This is another thriller anthology and it's got the big guns it. Ken Bruen, Lee Child, Rebecca Cantrell, Heather Graham, Gregg Hurwitz, John Lutz, Karin Slaughter and many more. All the stories are brand new and have not been anywhere else before. Some stand outs for me were: EDDY MAY by Theo Gangi, THE PLOT by Jeffery Deaver and UNDERBELLY by Grant McKenzie. As these are short stories I really can't say much without giving things away, but I'll tell you, there's not a clunker in the bunch, these are all stories by authors at the top of their game.
Jon Jordan

Author Scott Nicholson and Amazon are giving away two Kindles as part of his fall book blog tour. A Kindle DX will be given away through the participating blogs, and a Kindle 3 will be given away through the tour newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. A Pandora's Box of free ebooks will be given away through Nicholson's "hauntedcomputer" Twitter account.

"The digital era is great for connecting readers and writers," Nicholson said. "So it's perfect timing to embark on a digital tour and celebrate the book blogs, readers, and a device that has enhanced the joy and education of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide."

As a bonus, if Nicholson hits the Top 100 in the U.S. or U.K. Kindle Store during the tour between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, he will give away an extra Kindle 3 through the blogs. No purchase necessary, and the contest is international. Co-sponsored by Kindle Nation Daily and Dellaster Design. Details at www.hauntedcomputer.com.

The shortlist for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger was announced at a lunchtime ceremony at the The Crown Hotel, Harrogate during the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. This award is made in memory of CWA founder John Creasey, for first books by previously unpublished writers. As well as their dagger, the winner will receive a cheque for £1000.

CWA Chairman Tom Harper said: "The CWA Dagger Awards have always enjoyed huge prestige among crime fiction fans and authors. The shortlists this year are incredibly strong, and that for the John Creasey has some exciting new talents, all working at the top of their game."

The shortlisted books (more details here) are:

Acts of Violence, Ryan David Jahn (Pan)
Cut Short, Leigh Russell (No Exit Press)
Martyr, Rory Clements (John Murray)
Random, Craig Robertson (Simon & Schuster)
Stop Me, Richard Jay Parker (Allison & Busby)
Rupture, Simon Lelic (Picador)
The Holy Thief, William Ryan (Mantle )
The Pull of the Moon, Diane Janes (Robinson)

The CWA Dagger Awards are the longest established literary awards in the UK and are internationally recognised as a mark of excellence and achievement. This prize is sponsored by Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead. Louise Penny is author of the award-winning Armand Gamache series, and is herself a previous recipient of the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger.

More information at The Crime Writer's Association website.

ITW member Matt Hilton has two major launches of books on opposite sides of the Atlantic within two days of each other. On August 17th - Judgment and Wrath - the second in his Joe Hunter thriller series will be launched in the USA by William Morrow and Company. On 19th August, Hodder and Stoughton will publish the fourth book in the series, called Cut and Run, in the UK.

Matt is gearing up for two solid months of publicity, beginning with Thrillerfest V where his debut novel, Dead Men's Dust has been shortlisted in the debut novel of 2009 awards.

As part of the continuing partnership between ITW and Audible.com, Audible has just released Silent Screams, the first book in C. E. Lawrence's new thriller series with Kensington Press.  The book is read by veteran voice actor Christian Rummel.

Lawrence wrote most of the book in a secluded cabin at Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, in the woods of Ulster County.  She writes, "My 'security' consisted of a feeble hook and eye lock that a five year old could pry off with a screwdriver.  My Home Protection System was a fat, indolent tabby cat who was more interested in chasing chipmunks and coming home smelling of skunk than warning me of intruders."

She put in requests to the Woodstock Library for every book they had on serial killers, forensics, and other sordid topics.  "This was during the Bush administration, so I'm surprised they didn't flag my library card - I kept expecting a Lincoln town car to pull into my driveway with two Men in Black wearing and ear pieces and Ray Bans.  I imagined being whisked away by the FBI or the NSA to languish in an Egyptian prison, where I would finally give up the names of my "handlers" - Pia and her colleagues at the Woodstock Library, where they don't charge late fees, because, according to Pia, 'We tried it once, but it was too much trouble.'"

Silent Screams is now available through Audible Books.  The sequel, Silent Victim, due out in December, will also be available on Audible shortly afterwards.  Both books have also recently been sold to Piper Verlag in Germany.

You can listen to an excerpt of Silent Screams or purchase the recording at Audible's website.

Visit C. E. Lawrence's website at http://celawrence.com/.

Mystery author Angela Henry has signed a contract with Harlequin's new digital-first imprint, Carina Press, to publish her romantic thriller, The Paris Secret.

In a departure from her award-winning Kendra Clayton mystery series, Henry was inspired to write The Paris Secret after a solo trip to Paris in 2007. While touring the Palace of Versailles, she heard a tale about a love child born at the palace as the result of an affair between a French queen and her African lover.

"I was so intrigued by the story that I started researching it as soon as I got home," claims Henry, who says the resulting novel incorporates two things that she loves, history and mystery.

In The Paris Secret, librarian Maya Sinclair's Paris getaway goes horribly wrong when she ends up on the run after being targeted by a killer who thinks she holds the key to finding a priceless book hidden centuries ago by a French queen's secret daughter.

The Paris Secret will hit digital bookshelves in the fall of 2010 and be available wherever ebooks are sold. For more information, please visit www.angelahenry.com.

During a gala banquet and celebration held on Saturday, July 10 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of the 2010 Thriller Awards.

They are:

Best Hard Cover Novel:
THE NEIGHBOR, Lisa Gardner

Best Paperback Original Novel:
THE COLDEST MILE, Tom Piccirilli

Best First Novel:
RUNNING FROM THE DEVIL, Jamie Freveletti

Best Short Story:
A STAB IN THE HEART, Twist Phelan

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest V Awards Banquet:

Ken Follett, ThrillerMaster
in recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre

Mark Bowden, True Thriller Award

Linda Fairstein, Silver Bullet Award

US Airways, Silver Bullet Award (Corporate)

The board of directors and members of the International Thriller Writers wish to congratulates all the winners and nominees of the 2010 Thriller Awards.

The Macavity Award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats). Each year the members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favorite mysteries in four categories. The 2010 nominees are:

Best Novel

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
Tower by Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman (Busted Flush Press)
Necessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie (Wm. Morrow)
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, translated by Don Bartlett (HarperCollins)
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan (Minotaur)

Best First Novel

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (Delacorte)
Running from the Devil by Jamie Freveletti (Wm. Morrow)
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield (Minotaur)
The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn (Picador)

Best Nonfiction

L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City by John Buntin (Random House: Harmony Books)
Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James (Alfred A. Knopf) Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
The Line Up: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown & Co)
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (Penguin Press)
Dame Agatha's Shorts: An Agatha Christie Short Story Companion by Elena Santangelo (Bella Rosa Books)

Sue Feder Historical

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge)
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff (Minotaur)
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (Wm. Morrow)
Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson (Minotaur)
Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear (Henry Holt)

Best Short Story

"Last Fair Deal Gone Down" by Ace Atkins in Crossroad Blues (Busted Flush Press)
"Femme Sole" by Dana Cameron in Boston Noir (Akashic Books)
"Digby, Attorney at Law" by Jim Fusilli, (AHMM, May 2009)
"Your Turn" by Carolyn Hart in Two of the Deadliest (Harper)
"On the House" by Hank Phillippi Ryan in Quarry: Crime Stories by New England Writers (Level Best Books)
"The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away" by Marcus Sakey in Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (Mira)
"Amapola" by Luis Alberto Urrea in Phoenix Noir (Akashic Books)

Bestselling crime and thriller novelist Peter James's, new Roy Grace novel, Dead Like You has gone straight to No. 1 in the UK Sunday Times bestseller list on its first week of publication.  In a double celebration this week, Peter James's The Perfect Murder, the winner of last week's Quick Reads Award, is this week at No. 2 in the iBooks chart.

Geoff Duffield, Group Sales & Marketing Director, Pan Macmillan, said: "In Roy Grace, Peter has created one the great characters of crime fiction. Peter is probably the most connected author I've ever worked with, and there'll be many people in the media, retail and across the industry that will be totally thrilled for him."

Dead Like You  is the sixth in the Roy Grace series, which follows the investigations of Detective Superintendent Grace.  The books are all set in the buzzing city of Brighton, with Dead Like You  set in The Metropole Hotel.  After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room.  A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender and Detective Superintendent Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing.  Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced?

Peter James based Dead Like You on a real-life case that became known as 'The Rotherham Shoe Man'.   Between 1983-1986 over twenty women reported that they had been violently raped and their shoes taken.  It turned out that the rapist was a 49 year old man, a pillar of the community, happily married with a good job and two children. When investigated, police found 100 pairs of women's high quality shoes in his basement.  He is now serving a life sentence.

You can read more about the novel and Peter's other books on his website. 

To mark the 20th anniversary of its hardcover publication, To Speak for the Dead, Paul Levine's debut legal thriller, is now available as an e-book, with all proceeds going to charity.

The novel introduced Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer, who is as likely to punch out a witness as cross-examine him. In To Speak for the Dead, Lassiter defends a surgeon accused of malpractice after his patient dies during routine surgery. When evidence is uncovered that the surgeon was obsessed with his patient's wife, Lassiter suspects his client is innocent of malpractice...but guilty of murder.

To Speak for the Dead was translated into 18 languages and adapted into an NBC World Premiere Movie in 1995. All royalties from the e-book edition will go to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.

"I've had three dear friends lose a child or a spouse to cancer in the last few years," Levine says. "This is a cause close to my heart."

Seven Lassiter novels were published in the 1990's. Since then, Levine has written two stand-alone thrillers including last year's Illegal, plus the four-book Solomon vs. Lord series. Additionally, he wrote 20 episodes of the CBS military drama JAG, and co-created the Supreme Court show First Monday, starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna.

"If not for To Speak for the Dead," I'd still be handling 8 a.m. motion calendars in the Miami-Dade Courthouse," says Levine, a former trial lawyer. After signing his initial two-book contract with Bantam in 1988, Levine quit the practice of law and began writing full time.

"I'd read Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent and Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, plus all of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books," Levine says, from his Studio City, CA hillside home. "I was influenced by their rich characters and powerful themes, and in Carl's case, his subversive humor. Those books convinced me I wanted to be a writer."

Jake Lassiter will return in an original hardcover next year with the publication of Last Chance Lassiter.

More information at http://www.paul-levine.com