Crooked River, Valerie Geary’s debut novel, is a coming-of-age-story, a ghost story, and a literary tale of psychological suspense. Told in the alternating voices of 15-year-old Sam and her 10-year-old sister Ollie, the novel opens with them grieving the sudden death of their mother. They move to rural Oregon to live with their eccentric, teepee-dwelling, beekeeper father. When a young woman’s body is discovered in a nearby river, their father becomes the prime suspect and the sisters find themselves in the center of a suspense-filled storm.
The Carrier: A Talk With Sophie Hannah
Sophie Hannah, a British poet and novelist, is an internationally bestselling author of psychological crime fiction. Her novels have been published in 27 countries and have featured the detective couple, Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer. In 2013, it was announced that Hannah would pen an Agatha Christie novel featuring Hercule Poirot, the first new novel in 38 years to feature the world famous detective. The decision to write the novel was endorsed by Christie’s estate and publisher.
The Carrier, Hannah’s just released novel, begins when Gaby Struthers’s plane is delayed overnight. She is forced to share a hotel room with a young woman, Lauren Cookson. Lauren tearfully reveals to Gaby she is responsible for an innocent man being sent to prison for murder. Gaby soon suspects Lauren’s presence on her flight isn’t coincidental because the murder victim is Francine Berry, the wife of the only man Gaby ever truly loved. The mystery begins, and Simon Waterhouse knows there is far more to this case than first meets the eye.
“The Assassination Option” A Talk with W.E.B. Griffin
W.E.B. Griffin writes military and detective fiction and has more than 40 novels published under that name. He has published 200 books under 13 different pseudonyms.
He joined the U.S. Army in 1946 and was involved in counter-intelligence. After his army service, he began college, but his studies were cut short in 1951 when he was recalled to serve in the Korean War as a correspondent. At the end of the war, he continued working for the military in a civilian capacity. After his first three novels proved successful, he began writing full-time. In recent years, his son William E. Butterworth IV, previously editor of Boy’s Life, has co-authored the books.
“No Fortunate Son” A Talk with Brad Taylor
Brad Taylor spent more than 21 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces, including 8 years in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment, commonly known as Delta Force. His last assignment was teaching at the Citadel.
His seventh military thriller, No Fortunate Son features protagonists Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill, members of a top secret extralegal unit known as The Taskforce, created to contain terrorist plots and global threats. TaskForce members have been mobilized because relatives of key members of the U.S. government, including the Vice President’s son, have been kidnapped. The U.S. must face a terrible choice: stop counterterrorist operations or watch their loved ones die.
“Trust No One”: A Talk with Jayne Ann Krentz
Under seven different pseudonyms, Jayne Ann Krentz has written more than 120 romance novels. Many have been bestsellers. Now, she uses only three names: Jayne Ann Krentz when writing contemporary romantic-suspense; Amanda Quick for historical romance-suspense; and Jayne Castle when penning paranormal romance-suspense.
Trust No One, a contemporary romance-suspense novel, features Grace Elland, a creative marketing assistant to a Seattle-based motivational guru. Grace discovers her boss’s body, and after reporting it to the police, begins receiving cryptic and vaguely threatening emails. Strangely, they come from her dead boss’s computer. To make matters worse, when she was a teen-ager, Grace also found a dead body, an event that left her with night terrors and panic attacks. Even worse, it appears someone is trying to frame Grace for her employer’s murder.
‘Rain on the Dead” A Talk with Jack Higgins
Jack Higgins is one of the best-selling authors of popular fiction in the world. He is often considered the architect of the modern thriller. His breakthrough novel, The Eagle Has Landed, written in 1975, sold more than 50 million copies. He’s penned more than 83 novels which have sold over 150 million copies and have been translated into 55 languages.
Rain on the Dead, featuring the recurring hero Sean Dillon, finds Dillon in the crossfire of an Al Qaeda attack on a former American president. The assassination attempt is thwarted, but an elusive terrorist known as The Master is intent on obliterating his target. Dillon must stay a step ahead of the terrorist in a world where the rules of war have changed, and everyone can be marked for annihilation.
Tom Clancy, “Full Force and Effect” A talk with Mark Greaney
Mark Greaney, co-author with the late Tom Clancy, of three previous Jack Ryan novels, now has written Full Force and Effect, a novel demonstrating prescience about world events.
In the book, North Korea’s unstable young dictator wants to get his hands on the money needed to acquire a nuclear missile capable of hitting the mainland United States. But first, he must eliminate the man who stands between him and his goal—President Jack Ryan. He must also deal with the operatives working for the under-the-radar security agency known as The Campus.
“Woman with a Gun” : A Talk with Phillip Margolin
Phillip Margolin graduated from the New York University School of Law School and worked for many years as a criminal defense attorney, a profession inspired by his having read the Perry Mason novels. An Edgar-nominated novelist (even while working as an attorney), he became a full-time writer in 1996. He is well-known for his short stories; the Amanda Jaffe and Brad Miller series; and for his many standalone novels.
In Woman with a Gun, an aspiring novelist, Stacey Kim, is mesmerized by a photograph at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The image captures Stacy’s imagination and raises compelling questions in her mind. Obsessed with finding answers, Stacey learns the woman in the photograph was suspected of having killed her millionaire husband on their wedding night, but the ten-year old murder remains unsolved. Stacy decides to explore this mystery as fodder for her novel.
Flesh and Blood: A Fascinating Talk with Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author of 33 books, the most famous and widely read being the 22 novels of the “Kay Scarpetta” series.
In Flesh and Blood, Kay Scarpetta notices seven shiny pennies, all dated 1981, placed on the wall behind her Cambridge house. She soon learns of a shooting death nearby, where copper fragments are the only evidence left at the crime scene. Scarpetta links the murder to two other deaths in which the victims were killed by a serial sniper. The victims had nothing in common, but seem to have a connection to Scarpetta herself.
Naming Characters in Your Novel
We’re familiar with Shakespeare’s famous lines from Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet says the names of things don’t matter; the important thing is what they are.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
While that’s very true in botany, in fiction, characters’ names may matter a great deal. A name can become a device by which a reader visualizes, hears, and even senses a particular character. The name hopefully becomes the essence of a character as the reader traverses the story’s arc.
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