All posts tagged: Minotaur Books

Available Dark, by Elizabeth Hand

Published by Alexandra

DETAILS Title: AVAILABLE DARK Author: Elizabeth Hand Publisher: Minotaur Books ISBN: 0312585942 Genre: Mystery | Suspense BACK COVER BLURB Photographer Cass Neary is already wanted by the police for questioning when she receives a mysterious job offer that sends her to Helsinki, where an iconic fashion photographer shows her a trove of gorgeous photos depicting ritual killings. After narrowly escaping death herself, Cass flees  to Iceland, where she finds a former lover and a legendary, exiled musician. Soon, unsolved murders are multiplying faster than Cass can run. WHAT I THOUGHT I love a good thriller and murder mystery as much as the next reader, however, Available Dark is neither. And I certainly don’t know about scaring the dickens out of you, as quoted by Tess Gerritsen on the back cover. Really? A good ghost story might scared me, late at night. Available Dark, however, does little in the way of scare unless you are scared by the great unwashed who populate the dark underbelly on the fringe of society, self-absorbed in their own bellybuttons, and obsessed by all things …

Sworn to Silence, by Linda Castillo

Published by Alexandra

DETAILS Title: SWORN TO SILENCE Author: Linda Castillo Publisher: Minotaur Books ISBN: 978-1250161635 Genre: Murder-Mystery, Crime BACKCOVER BLURB Kate Burkholder has recently been appointed Chief of Police of the Amish community of Painters Mill, Ohio, where she grew up before leaving to study law enforcement in the outside world. Her knowledge of the Amish makes her the perfect candidate. When a serial killer whose spree sixteen years before was dubbed the Slaughterhouse Murders returns, Kate is determined to catch him. But she’s also desperate to keep a secret from her past that will make her task harder. WHAT I THOUGHT I finished reading this book late last night having read it in two sessions. I think I would have finished it faster if it wasn’t for a couple of missteps that were irritating and annoying. The first came about a third of the way in. And, up until that point, I would have given this book a 4-Star rating. But it seems, like many writers in not only this genre, but elsewhere, not content to …

Q&A with author Kathleen Kent

Published by Alexandra

First of all, would you like to tell us a little about yourself. I grew up in Texas and attended UT at Austin studying literature and history.  What I wanted to be was a writer, but my dad, who was a very practical man, convinced me that being a starving artist was not all it was cracked up to be.  Instead, he argued, I should study business, get a “real” job and write in my spare time.  Which is what I eventually did.  After college I lived and worked in New York for twenty years:  10 years working for the former Chairman of the Commodity Exchange, and then for another 10 years as a civilian contractor to the U.S. Department of Defense in Russia facilitating defense conversion work, converting military plants into civilian use.  I wrote a lot during those 10 years, but almost all of it was factual progress reporting to my coordinating CO in Washington. I did very little creative writing as my job was all consuming, leaving not much time, or energy, to commit to writing a …

The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny

Published by Alexandra

DETAILS Title: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST Author: Louise Penny Publisher: Minotaur Books ISBN: 9781250022103 Genre: Crime | Suspense | Mystery BACKCOVER BLURB Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn’t cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Québec village. But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal. Leads right to the door of an old poet. And now it is now, writes Ruth Zardo. And the dark thing is here. A monster once visited Three Pines. And put down deep roots. …

The 14th Colony, by Steve Berry

Published by Alexandra

DETAILS Title: THE 14TH COLONY Author: Steve Berry Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2016 ISBN: 978-1250113857 Genre: Thriller BACKCOVER BLURB Shot down over Siberia, ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is forced into a fight for survival against Aleksandr Zorin, a man whose loyalty to the former Soviet Union has festered for decades into an intense hatred of the United States. Before escaping, Malone learns that Zorin and another ex-KGB officer, this one a sleeper still embedded in the West, are headed overseas to Washington D.C. Noon on January 20th—Inauguration Day—is only hours away. A flaw in the Constitution, and an even more flawed presidential succession act, have opened the door to disaster and Zorin intends to exploit both weaknesses to their fullest. Armed with a weapon leftover from the Cold War, one long thought to be just a myth, Zorin plans to attack. He’s aided by a shocking secret hidden in the archives of America’s oldest fraternal organization—the Society of Cincinnati—a group that once lent out its military savvy to presidents, including helping to formulate three invasion plans of what was …