Monday 27 July 2015

International Thriller Award Winners

The winners of the 2015 International Thriller Writers (ITW) Awards have recently been announced:

BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL
Megan Abbott – The Fever (Little, Brown and Company)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Laura McHugh – The Weight of Blood (Spiegel & Grau)

BEST SHORT STORY
Tim L. Williams – “The Last Wrestling Bear in West Kentucky” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)


BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
Elle Cosimano – Nearly Gone (Kathy Dawson Books)

BEST E-BOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL
C.J. Lyons – Hard Fall (Legacy Books)


As noted on the ITW website, "[t]he International Thriller Writers is an honorary society of authors, both fiction and nonfiction, who write books broadly classified as 'thrillers'. This would include (but isn’t limited to) such subjects as murder mystery, detective, suspense, horror, supernatural, action, espionage, true crime, war, adventure, and myriad similar subject areas."

For the full list of award nominees, please see the announcement in Crimespree Magazine .

Congratulations to all of the winners.

Monday 20 July 2015

A Review of Inner Sanctum by Darlene Oakley

It's always a pleasure to support other authors, especially ones who live almost next door to you, so The Overnight Bestseller is pleased to review Inner Sanctum, the debut novel of Darlene Oakley


Review of Inner Sanctum

Ms. Oakley is an experienced editor and author of numerous articles so it is not surprising that she is able to shape words in an engaging first novel.

Inner Sanctum is the story of people who have led a subterranean existence to escape the wars raging on the surface of the earth in the mid-2100s. The flight underground has originally preserved a society, but now that society is facing its own threats of extinction through early death and disease. Draconian measures such as an enforced limit of two children per family, early sterilization, and termination of “defective” pregnancies have failed to address the issue of the declining population.

The metaphorical and literal door to freedom is suddenly discovered during an excavation, and the heroine of the novel, Aurora Cassle, urges the mayor and city council to take advantage of this exit to once again become surface dwellers who have the benefit of the sun to sustain their lives. Branded a traitor and abandoned by her husband, Aurora, along with her long-time friend Den, leads a group from the underground to the dawn of a new civilization.

Inner Sanctum is categorized as a “Christian dystopia,” and the parallels with the Biblical themes of escape and exile are well-developed in the novel and add a unique twist to the story because Christian values will provide the basis for the rebuilding of society on the surface.

Ms. Oakley has written a novel that will appeal to a wide audience, including readers of Christian and speculative fiction, as well as lovers of suspense and romance. This is Book 1, and we're looking forward to more in this series.

Inner Sanctum is available at http://www.amazon.ca/Inner-Sanctum-Darlene-Oakley-ebook/dp/B00Q1R6MDA/.

Monday 6 July 2015

Book Review of A Sporting Murder by Lesley A. Diehl


 
Once again The Overnight Bestseller is pleased to participate in a Tribute Books Blog Tour. Today we welcome Lesley A. Diehl, author of the cozy mystery A Sporting Murder.


 A Sporting Murder Book Summary


It's smooth sailing for Eve Appel and her friend Madeleine, owners of Second to None Consignment Shop in rural Florida's Sabal Bay, land of swamps, cowboys, and lots and lots of 'gators. Eve and her detective boyfriend Alex have joined Madeleine and her new beau David Wilson for a pleasure cruise on his boat. But cloudy, dangerous waters lie ahead. A near fatal encounter with Blake Reed, David's supremely nasty neighbor, is soon followed by a shooting death on the dividing line between David and Blake's land. Both men run sport-hunting reserves, but Blake imports "exotics" from Africa and promotes gator killing, while David stays within the law, pointing clients toward the abundant quail and turkey as well as the wild pigs that ravage the landscape. Nevertheless, when a mutual client is killed, it is David who is arrested and charged with murder.

Blake's nastiness is only exceeded by that of his wife, Elvira, who forces Eve and Madeleine out of their shop, intending to replace it with a consignment shop of her own. It seems that bad luck looms over them all, even Eve's brawny and hard-to-resist Miccosukee Indian friend Sammy, whose nephew has disappeared. As the case against David grows stronger and his friends' misfortunes multiply, Eve and her strange and diverse group of friends, including her ex, a mobster, her grandma, and Sammy's extended family, band together to take on the bad guys. But the waters are getting muddier and more troubled, and Eve and Madeleine may end up inundated in every sense of the word.

Price/Formats: $4.95 ebook, $13.95 paperback
Genre:
Cozy Murder Mystery
Pages:
250
Publisher:
Camel Press
Release:
July 15, 2015
ISBN:
9781603819398

Buy Links

Amazon
Barnes and Noble


Lesley A. Diehl's Bio



Lesley A. Diehl retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida--cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office. Back north, she devotes her afternoons to writing and, when the sun sets, relaxing on the bank of her trout stream, sipping tea or a local microbrew.



 The Overnight Bestseller's Review of A Sporting Murder

This is the third in  Lesley A. Diehl's Eve Appel cozy mystery series, and she provides us with an entertaining mix of characters, an engaging setting, and two unsolved murders that baffle the reader until their resolution at the end of the novel.

Her intrepid amateur sleuth Eve Appel is reminiscent of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum with her lively sense of humor, her unresolved love life, and her uncanny ability to get into--and out of--trouble.

At the same time, Diehl touches upon serious themes in the novel, including the mistreatment of foreign workers, prejudice towards Aboriginal peoples, and the illicit trade in endangered species for "trophy" collections.

This novel will appeal to lovers of cozy mysteries everywhere, who will also want to check out Diehl's other series.


Related Sites

Lesley A. Diehl's Web Site:
http://www.lesleyadiehl.com/

Lesley A. Diehl's Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/lesley.diehl.1?fref=ts

Lesley A. Diehl's Twitter:
https://twitter.com/LesleyDiehl
 
Lesley A. Diehl's Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3414925.Lesley_A_Diehl

Lesley A. Diehl's Blog:
http://lesleyadiehl.com/blog/

A Sporting Murder Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25506068-a-sporting-murder

Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-Books-Blog-Tours/242431245775186


A Sporting Murder blog tour site:
http://asportingmurder.blogspot.com


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