Guest Blogger: MARK ARSENAULT

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2009 Nation Book Festival fast approaching!

Just wanted to give out some updates on the National Book Festival. It's Saturday, September 26th in Washington DC and will be featuring fabulous authors like Baldacci, Grisham, Picoult, Alvarez, Blue, Burns, and Irving. Sadly, I can't go but I can get text messages updating me on all the events and so can you. By texting BOOK to 61399, book lovers can receive text updates and news for the Festival straight to their mobile device.

Also, the LOC has been releasing some great new podcast interviews with some of this year’s participating authors. Podcasts, images, author schedule and other goodies at www.loc.gov/bookfest.

Finally, LOC is also tweeting away at @librarycongress, as well, and planning to host an NBF Tweet Up on the National Mall.


pictured: John Irving

Guest Blogger: JERI WESTERSON

Keeping it Clean in the Middle Ages

By Jeri Westerson

My medieval mystery series is styled a “medieval noir;” hard-boiled detective fiction set in the middle ages. The second in the series, SERPENT IN THE THORNS (featuring my ex-knight turned detective, Crispin Guest), will be in bookstores on September 29th.

Back in the day before I was published and I was trying to peddle my own brand of medieval mysteries to agents, I came upon an astonishing bias. One agent rejected my manuscript because she couldn’t get past the notion that my protagonist would be intimate with someone with all that “lack of hygiene.” She said it made her skin crawl.

Wha?

But she wasn’t the only one. Seems that if you aren’t a regular reader of things medieval, you are stuck in the rut of thinking that medievals never bathed or brushed their teeth. In which case, I might agree with that agent that rejected it. In a word, “Eww.”

So what about it? Without indoor plumbing were medieval people stinkier? Were they, in fact, the Great Unwashed?

Well, no. They rather enjoyed bathing. While it’s true that the average person did not have the servants to provide for heated water to be hauled into a tub for a full immersion bath (and these were great occasions for noshing. Think of sipping wine with nibblies as you sit in your Jacuzzi), there were certainly bath houses for this purpose, which also served as a social meeting place. Both men and women. And yes, naked! Because they were religious people, we tend to give them a Victorian sense of their bodies, but this was not true. They had a pragmatic approach. And though no woman would dream of wearing a gown at calf-length, they weren’t afraid to bare a little. Everyone was certainly aware of bodily functions. And anatomy.



In England, the City of Bath was built because of the natural hot springs. Bath was considered a very holy place by the early Celtic people. Think about it. It’s bloody cold in England and here is hot water simply bubbling out of the ground. It’s a miracle! Hallelujah! The Romans added buildings and the innovation of pipes to fill many bath spaces at once.

But even if you didn’t travel to Bath, there were streams and rivers and a good old-fashioned bucket in which to wash yourself. In the winter when fuel was scarce and heating water for the purpose of spit baths would be wasteful, it was done cold. Brr.

Teeth were brushed with fingers, hazel sprigs, or cloth rubbed across the teeth. Bad breath was certainly noticed so the chewing of parsley and other herbs might be used to sweeten the breath.

Deodorants were not invented yet, but for wealthier patrons, there were perfumes and flower water to staunch some of the smellier aspects of life.

Foul odors were associated with evil and evil-doing and preventing them or masking them was important in society, though the lowlier you were the harder this was, foisting an unfair disadvantage on the poorer classes.

In the opposite end of the spectrum is the sweet-smelling, often attributed to the saintly person, their “odor of sanctity.” Indeed, a few saints were said to give off a sweet smell to show to the world their holiness. Incense in churches sweetens. Garlic does not.

So the next time you read about medieval protagonists in a clinch, remember that they might be hot and bothered, but they also probably did their best to smell good and stay clean.

You can read more about SERPENT IN THE THORNS on Jeri’s website www.JeriWesterson.com; or read her blog about history and mystery at www.Getting-Medieval.com

Guest Blogger: DAVID MORRELL

Rising Above it All: How Rambo's Creator Earned His Pilot's License
By David Morrell,
Author of The Shimmer

Readers familiar with my fiction know how much I love doing research. For Testament, I enrolled in an outdoor wilderness survival course and lived above timberline in the Wyoming mountains for 30 days. For The Protector, I spent a week at the Bill Scott raceway in West Virginia, learning offensive-defensive driving maneuvers, such as the 180-degree spins you see in the movies. I once broke my collarbone in a two-day knife-fighting class designed for military and law enforcement personnel.

Two years ago, I began the longest research project of my career. I was preparing to write a novel called The Shimmer, a fictional dramatization of the mysterious lights that appear on many nights outside the small town of Marfa in west Texas. When the first settlers passed through that area in the 1800s, they saw the lights, and people have been drawn to those lights ever since, including James Dean who became fascinated by them when he filmed his final movie Giant near Marfa in 1955.

The lights float, bob, and weave. They combine and change colors. They seem far away and yet so close that people think they can reach out and touch them. In the 1970s, the citizens of Marfa organized what they called a Ghost Light Hunt and pursued the lights, using horses, vehicles, and an airplane, but the lights had no difficulty eluding them.

Because an airplane was used, I decided to include one in The Shimmer. I'd never written about a pilot, and the idea of trying something new always appeals to me. The dramatic possibilities were intriguing. But a minute's thought warned me about the monumental task I was planning. As a novelist version of a Method actor, I couldn't just cram an airplane into my novel. First, I would need to learn how airplanes worked so that real pilots wouldn't be annoyed by inaccuracies. Real pilots. That's when I realized that it wouldn't be enough to learn how airplanes worked. I would need to take pilot training.

I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our small airport has a flight school: Sierra Aviation. I made an appointment with one of the instructors, Larry Haight, who took me up in a Cessna 172 on what's called a "discovery" flight. The idea was to "discover" whether I enjoyed the sensation of being in the cockpit and peering several thousand feet down at the ground. Flying in a small aircraft is a much more immediate and visceral experience than sitting in the cabin of a commercial airliner. Even in a Cessna, the canopy is huge compared to the tiny windows on an airliner. The horizon stretches forever.

It turned out that I more than enjoyed the experience. It was exhilarating and fulfilling. I realized that this was something I wanted to do not only for research but also to broaden my life. As a consequence, I eventually earned my private pilot's license and bought a 2003 172SP. The plane was based near Dallas, and my longest cross-country flight to date (600 miles) involved piloting it from there to Santa Fe. Truly, nothing can equal controlling an aircraft, making it do safely whatever I want while seeing the world as if I were an eagle.

In The Shimmer, I wanted the main character's attitude toward flying ("getting above it all") to help develop the book's theme. The following passage shows what I mean. You only need to know that Dan Page is a police officer. When I started pilot training, I figured that one day I'd be relaxing in the sky, listening to an iPod and glancing dreamily around. As we learn in this section, the actuality is quite different and more substantial.

"Non-pilots often assumed that the appeal of flying involved appreciating the scenery. But Page had become a pilot because he enjoyed the sensation of moving in three dimensions. The truth was that maintaining altitude and speed while staying on course, monitoring radio transmissions, and comparing a sectional map to actual features on the ground required so much concentration that a pilot had little time for sightseeing.

"There was another element to flying, though. It helped Page not to think about the terrible pain people inflicted on one another. He'd seen too many lives destroyed by guns, knives, beer bottles, screwdrivers, baseball bats, and even a nail gun. Six months earlier, he'd been the first officer to arrive at the scene of a car accident in which a drunken driver had hit an oncoming vehicle and killed five children along with the woman who was taking them to a birthday party. There'd been so much blood that Page still had nightmares about it.

"His friends thought he was joking when he said that the reward of flying was 'getting above it all,' but he was serious. The various activities involved in controlling an aircraft shut out what he was determined not to remember.

"That helped Page now. His confusion, his urgency, his need to have answers -- on the ground, these emotions had thrown him off balance, but once he was in the air, the discipline of controlling the Cessna forced him to feel as level as the aircraft. In the calm sky, amid the monotonous, muffled drone of the engine, the plane created a floating sensation. He welcomed it yet couldn't help dreading what he might discover on the ground. "

At one point a character asks Page, how high he intends to fly.

"Enough to get above everything," he answers.

"Sounds like the way to run a life."

That's an important lesson I learned from flying.

©2009 David Morrell, author of The Shimmer


Author Bio: David Morrell, author of The Shimmer, is the award-winning author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Creepers and Scavenger. Co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization and author of the classic Brotherhood of the Rose spy trilogy, Morrell is considered by many to be the father of the modern action novel.


For more information please visit www.davidmorrell.net


Learn more about The Shimmer at www.shimmerbook.com

Win a signed Level 26: Dark Origins book jacket!

Anthony Zuiker, creator of CSI-franchise and the author of Level 26: Dark Origins is giving away 500 hand-signed book jackets to people who pre-order the book now on Level26.com.

Level26.com, created by Web serial pioneers EQAL (lonelygirl15, Harper’s Globe), is the online counterpart to the upcoming 'digi-novel' thriller Level 26: Dark Origins. The site is now live and features daily blog posts by Anthony Zuiker, who gives a unique insider look to his experiences in the entertainment industry.

The entry is simple: pre-order the book online, email the proof of purchase to promotion@level26.com, and readers will receive a limited-edition, hand-signed book jacket from Anthony. Simple as that.


Good luck!

No Blurb from Blago

One of my favorite authors, David Ellis, has a new book coming out September 3. THE HIDDEN MAN is the first book of a series, and it's terrific. I'm not the only one who thinks so; it got a starred review from Publisher's Weekly too. But a certain ex-governor is refusing to blurb the book...

Impeachment trial believed to have soured relationship with House Prosecutor

Chicago, IL (AP)--Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), fresh off a media campaign to promote himself and influence his potential jury pool, has thus far refused to provide a favorable review of THE HIDDEN MAN, the new novel by the man who convicted him in the Illinois Senate, House Prosecutor David Ellis.
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"I'm sure he'd like a blurb," said Mr. Blagojevich. "But you just don't give it away for nothing."

Reached for comment, David Ellis expressed "disappointment" at the former governor's silence. "A blurb from him would have been f***ing golden," he conceded.

Guest Blogger: JEFF ABBOTT

Which Comes First?
By Jeff Abbott

It is the literary version of egg and chicken.

One of the questions I get asked the most as a writer is “which comes first, plot or character”? And I have to say I admire those writers who are so consistent in their answers that it’s always one or the other. I love their certainty how one element must pop the neurons of the brain first. My brain doesn’t work that way, though. I’ve had books grow from a seed of either: a character I can’t shake or a plot that promises to intrigue.

With Panic, I thought of the book while in the shower (no laughs as to why I might be “panicking” in the shower), and its plot could be summed up in one sentence: what if everything in your life was a lie? It’s not exactly a plot, it’s a premise, but that is the first step. I thought first, well, that’s an interesting question, what would the ramifications be? And for the next day or so I doodled, thinking out what the emotional ramifications, at a most basic human level, would be of a lifetime of deception. But at that point, it’s just brainstorming with no spine: the next question toward a book is saying who would be in this situation, and how does he or she get into this mess? To whom does this horror happen? And I decided the hero of this story would be a younger-than-typical suspense protagonist, a documentary filmmaker, someone dedicated to telling the truth about difficult subjects—until he must face the truth of a lifetime of lies. At that point, character begins to drive plot: a hero like Evan Casher is going to react to situations in his own way, guided by his own personality and his limited life experience as a 24-year old film maker who has been cocooned by his family. His choices as a hero drive the plot.

An opposite effect occurred with my next book, Fear. The character of Miles Kendrick came into my head full-blown: a good, decent man who blamed himself for the death of his closest friend, and was beset by the demons of post-traumatic stress disorder, to the point that his dead friend haunts most of his waking moments. I wrote down a lot of notes about Miles, unsure how to use him in a story. He would not let me go. Then asking myself a simple dramatic question opened the doors to a plot: what would be Miles’s greatest wish? To be mentally whole again. What if a new medicine offered this wish, but said medicine was worth billions to a pharmaceutical—and people were willing to kill to get the formula? From there, I knew the kind of action that Miles—haunted by his friend, hunted by killers—would have to take, and the book’s plot, born from the heart of Miles’s character, drove forward.

With my latest book, Trust Me, plot and character nearly arrived together. I thought first of writing a book where a young character, his father murdered in a random bombing, tries to answer the unanswerable: why do people commit evil acts? At the same time, I thought of a new kind of character for suspense fiction: a psychological profiler of extremists. (There have been so many profilers in books and film who solve serial killings, but I wanted to drive onto new ground.) Luke Dantry is determined to find a way to identify and stop the next Timothy McVeigh, the next Unabomber, the next suicide bomber. So he would come into conflict, somehow, with people on the verge of turning to terrorism and violence.

The avenue for him came from research. Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only sites having explosive growth: there are now over 50,000 sites tied to extremist and terrorist content. 50,000 videos—showing everything from indoctrination speeches to how to forge documents to how to build a bomb—have been uploaded to the web. These sites provide a place for the socialization that is so critical to extremism to blossom. McVeigh wandered the country for three years, talking with fellow extremists, hardening his positions, until he parked the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah building. Now extremist groups need not worry about establishing cells in distant cities—they only need the web site to reach those who feel marginalized and powerless.

Luke, working undercover, goes after these groups. He thinks he’s safe: until he’s kidnapped and it’s clear that the people he has targeted have now targeted him. Every element of the plot is driven by Luke’s character: he’s a quiet academic, ill-equipped for a violent world, but driven by a burning need to stop the kind of pointless violence that killed his dad. Every choice in the book is influenced by who he is.

I don’t think it matters if plot or character arrive first in a writer’s brain; I think it matters far more that they arrive together at the end of the story, seamlessly joined, walking (or preferably running) in lockstep.

Jeff Abbott’s eleven suspense novels include the national bestsellers Panic, Fear, and Collision. He is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Award and a two-time nominee for the Anthony Award. Two of his novels are in development at major film studios. Abbott lives in Austin , Texas , with his family.

POPE JOAN

POPE JOAN is one of my favorite books, so I am delighted to share some info about the upcoming movie, along with a contest to walk the red carpet at the opening.

Walk the Pope Joan Red Carpet with Donna Woolfolk Cross!

Join the author of Pope Joan and her family as they walk the red carpet on the night of the Pope Joan movie premiere!

Includes two tickets to the movie premiere, plus round trip airfare for two from any location in the continental United States or Canada, and one night hotel accommodation for you to share with your guest.

Simply buy a new, Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing paperback edition of Pope Joan by August 9 and send the author the original receipt. In August, she'll pick randomly from the pile of receipts to select someone and their guest to join her at the U.S. movie premiere in the fall (exact date still to be determined). All the details are here --

Take advantage of this offer by August 9th!

Here's the link to the movie info from Imdb

THE DEFECTOR by Daniel Silva

Silva's latest is out! Here is an excerpt to get you in the mood for the rest --

AN EXCERPT FROM
THE DEFECTOR
BY DANIEL SILVA

*************

PART ONE

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

Pyotr Luzhkov was about to be killed, and for that he was grateful.

It was late October, but autumn was already a memory. It had been brief and unsightly, an old babushka hurriedly removing a threadbare frock. Now this: leaden skies, arctic cold, windblown snow. The opening shot of Russia’s winter without end.

Pyotr Luzhkov, shirtless, barefoot, hands bound behind his back, was scarcely aware of the cold. In fact, at that moment he would have been hard-pressed to recall his name. He believed he was being led by two men through a birch forest but could not be certain. It made sense they were in a forest. That was the place Russians liked to do their blood work. Kurapaty, Bykivnia, Katyn, Butovo . . . Always in the forests. Luzhkov was about to join a great Russian tradition. Luzhkov was about to be granted a death in the trees.

There was another Russian custom when it came to killing: the intentional infliction of pain. Pyotr Luzhkov had been forced to scale mountains of pain. They had broken his fingers and his thumbs. They had broken his arms and his ribs. They had broken his nose and his jaw. They had beaten him even when he was unconscious. They had beaten him because they had been told to. They had beaten him because they were Russians. The only time they had stopped was when they were drinking vodka. When the vodka was gone, they had beaten him even harder.

Now he was on the final leg of his journey, the long walk to a grave with no marker. Russians had a term for it: vyshaya mera, the highest form of punishment. Usually, it was reserved for traitors, but Pyotr Luzhkov had betrayed no one. He had been duped by his master’s wife, and his master had lost everything because of it. Someone had to pay. Eventually, everyone would pay.

He could see his master now, standing alone amid the matchstick trunks of the birch trees. Black leather coat, silver hair, head like a tank turret. He was looking down at the large-caliber pistol in his hand. Luzhkov had to give him credit. There weren’t many oligarchs who had the stomach to do their own killing. But then there weren’t many oligarchs like him.

The grave had already been dug. Luzhkov’s master was inspecting it carefully, as if calculating whether it was big enough to hold a body. As Luzhkov was forced to kneel, he could smell the distinctive cologne. Sandalwood and smoke. The smell of power. The smell of the devil.

The devil gave him one more blow to the side of his face. Luzhkov didn’t feel it. Then the devil placed the gun to the back of Luzhkov’s head and bade him a pleasant evening. Luzhkov saw a pink flash of his own blood. Then darkness. He was finally dead. And for that he was grateful.

*************

PART TWO

LONDON: JANUARY

The murder of Pyotr Luzhkov went largely unnoticed. No one mourned him; no women wore black for him. No Russian police officers investigated his death, and no Russian newspapers bothered to report it. Not in Moscow. Not in St. Petersburg. And surely not in the Russian city sometimes referred to as London. Had word of Luzhkov’s demise reached Bristol Mews, home of Colonel Grigori Bulganov, the Russian defector and dissident, he would not have been surprised, though he would have felt a pang of guilt. If Grigori hadn’t locked poor Pyotr in Ivan Kharkov’s personal safe, the bodyguard might still be alive.

Among the lords of Thames House and Vauxhall Cross, the riverfront headquarters of MI5 and MI6, Grigori Bulganov had always been a source of much fascination and considerable debate. Opinion was diverse, but then it usually was when the two services were forced to take positions on the same issue. He was a gift from the gods, sang his backers. He was a mixed bag at best, muttered his detractors. One wit from the top floor of Thames House famously described him as the defector Downing Street needed like a leaky roof—as if London, now home to more than a quarter million Russian citizens, had a spare room for another malcontent bent on making trouble for the Kremlin. The MI5 man had gone on the record with his prophecy that one day they would all regret the decision to grant Grigori Bulganov asylum and a British passport. But even he was surprised by the speed with which that day came.

A former colonel in the counterintelligence division of the Russian Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, Grigori Bulganov had washed ashore late the previous summer, the unexpected by-product of a multinational intelligence operation against one Ivan Kharkov, Russian oligarch and international arms dealer. Only a handful of British officials were told the true extent of Grigori’s involvement in the case. Fewer still knew that, if not for his actions, an entire team of Israeli operatives might have been killed on Russian soil. Like the KGB defectors who came before him, Grigori vanished for a time into a world of safe houses and isolated country estates. A joint Anglo-American team hammered at him day and night, first on the structure of Ivan’s arms-trafficking network, for which Grigori had shamefully worked as a paid agent, then on the tradecraft of his former service. The British interrogators found him charming; the Americans less so. They insisted on fl uttering him, which in Agencyspeak meant subjecting him to a lie-detector test. He passed with flying colors.

When the debriefers had had their fill, and it came time to decide just what to do with him, the bloodhounds of internal security conducted highly secret reviews and issued their recommendations, also in secret. In the end, it was deemed that Grigori, though reviled by his former comrades, faced no serious threat. Even the once-feared Ivan Kharkov, who was licking his wounds in Russia, was deemed incapable of concerted action. The defector made three requests: he wanted to keep his name, to reside in London, and to have no overt security. Hiding in plain sight, he argued, would give him the most protection from his enemies. MI5 readily agreed to his demands, especially the third. Security details required money, and the human resources could be put to better use elsewhere, namely against Britain’s homegrown jihadist extremists. They bought him a lovely mews cottage in a backwater of Maida Vale, arranged a generous monthly stipend, and made a onetime deposit in a City bank that would surely have caused a scandal if the amount ever became public. An MI5 lawyer quietly negotiated a book deal with a respected London publisher. The size of the advance raised eyebrows among the senior staff of both services, most of whom were working on books of their own—in secret, of course.

For a time it seemed Grigori would turn out to be the rarest of birds in the intelligence world: a case without complications. Fluent in English, he took to life in London like a freed prisoner trying to make up for lost time. He frequented the theater and toured the museums. Poetry readings, ballet, chamber music: he did them all. He settled into work on his book and once a week lunched with his editor, who happened to be a porcelain-skinned beauty of thirty-two. The only thing missing in his life was chess. His MI5 minder suggested he join the Central London Chess Club, a venerable institution founded by a group of civil servants during the First World War. His application form was a masterpiece of ambiguity. It supplied no address, no home telephone, no mobile, and no e-mail. His occupation was described as “translation services,” his employer as “self.” Asked to list any hobbies or outside interests, he had written “chess.”

But no high-profile case is ever entirely free of controversy— and the old hands warned they had never met a defector, especially a Russian defector, who didn’t lose a wheel from time to time. Grigori’s came off the day the British prime minister announced a major terrorist plot had been disrupted. It seemed al-Qaeda had planned to simultaneously shoot down several jetliners using Russian-made antiaircraft missiles—missiles they had acquired from Grigori’s former patron, Ivan Kharkov. Within twenty-four hours, Grigori was seated before the cameras of the BBC, claiming he had played a major role in the affair. In the days and weeks that followed, he would remain a fixture on television, in Britain and elsewhere. His celebrity status now cemented, he began to move in Russian émigré circles and cavort with Russian dissidents of every stripe. Seduced by the sudden attention, he used his newfound fame as a platform to make wild accusations against his old service and against the Russian president, whom he characterized as a Hitler in the making. When the Kremlin responded with uncomfortable noises about Russians plotting a coup on British soil, Grigori’s minder suggested he tone things down. So, too, did his editor, who wanted to save something for the book.

Grudgingly, the defector lowered his profile, but only by a little. Rather than pick fights with the Kremlin, he focused his considerable energy on his forthcoming book and on his chess. That winter he entered the annual club tournament and moved effortlessly through his bracket—like a Russian tank through the streets of Prague, grumbled one of his victims. In the semifinals, he defeated the defending champion without breaking a sweat. Victory in the finals appeared inevitable.

On the afternoon of the championship, he lunched in Soho with a reporter from Vanity Fair magazine. Returning to Maida Vale, he purchased a house plant from the Clifton Nurseries and collected a parcel of shirts from his laundry in Elgin Avenue. After a brief nap, a prematch ritual, he showered and dressed for battle, departing his mews cottage a few minutes before six.

All of which explains why Grigori Bulganov, defector and dissident, was walking along London’s Harrow Road at 6:12 p.m., on the second Tuesday of January. For reasons that would be made clear later, he was moving at a faster pace than normal. As for chess, it was by then the last thing on his mind.

THE MATCH was scheduled for half past six at the club’s usual venue, the Lower Vestry House of St. George’s Church in Bloomsbury. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, arrived at a quarter past. Shaking the rainwater from his oilskin coat, he squinted at a trio of notices tacked to the bulletin board in the foyer. One forbade smoking, another warned against blocking the corridor in case of fire, and a third, hung by Finch himself, pleaded with all those who used the premises to recycle their rubbish. In the words of George Mercer, club captain and six-time club champion, Finch was “a Camden Town crusty,” bedecked with all the required political convictions of his tribe. Free Palestine. Free Tibet. Stop the Genocide in Darfur. End the War in Iraq. Recycle or Die. The only cause Finch didn’t seem to believe in was work. He described himself as “a social activist and freelance journalist,” which Clive Atherton, the club’s reactionary treasurer, accurately translated as “layabout and sponge.” But even Clive was the first to admit that Finch possessed the loveliest of games: fl owing, artistic, instinctive, and ruthless as a snake. “Simon’s costly education wasn’t a total waste,” Clive was fond of saying. “Just misapplied.”

His surname was a misnomer, for Finch was long and languid, with limp brown hair that hung nearly to his shoulders and wirerimmed spectacles that magnified the resolute gaze of a revolutionary. To the bulletin board he added a fourth item now—a fawning letter from the Regent Hall Church thanking the club for hosting the first annual Salvation Army chess tournament for the homeless—then he drifted down the narrow corridor to the makeshift cloakroom, where he hung his coat on the rollaway rack. In the kitchenette, he deposited twenty pence in a giant piggy bank and drew a cup of tepid coffee from a silver canister marked CHESS CLUB. Young Tom Blakemore—a misnomer as well, for Young Tom was eighty-five in the shade—bumped into him as he was coming out. Finch seemed not to notice. Interviewed later by a man from MI5, Young Tom said he had taken no offense. After all, not a single member of the club gave Finch even an outside chance of winning the cup. “He looked like a man being led to the gallows,” said Young Tom. “The only thing missing was the black hood.”

Finch entered the storage cabinet and from a row of sagging shelves collected a board, a box of pieces, an analog tournament clock, and a score sheet. Coffee in one hand, match supplies carefully balanced in the other, he entered the vestry’s main room. It had walls the color of mustard and four grimy windows: three peering onto the pavements of Little Russell Street and a fourth squinting into the courtyard. On one wall, below a small crucifix, was the tournament bracket. One match remained to be played: S. FINCH VS. G. BULGANOV.

Finch turned and surveyed the room. Six trestle tables had been erected for the evening’s play, one reserved for the championship, the rest for ordinary matches—“friendlies,” in the parlance of the club. A devout atheist, Finch chose the spot farthest from the crucifix and methodically prepared for the contest. He checked the tip of his pencil and wrote the date and the board number on the score sheet. He closed his eyes and saw the match as he hoped it would unfold. Then, fifteen minutes after taking his seat, he looked up at the clock: 6:42. Grigori was late. Odd, thought Finch. The Russian was never late.

Finch began moving pieces in his mind—saw a king lying on its side in resignation, saw Grigori hanging his head in shame—and he watched the relentless march of the clock.

6:45 . . . 6:51 . . . 6:58 . . .

Where are you, Grigori? he thought. Where the hell are you?

ULTIMATELY, Finch’s role would be minor and, in the opinion of all involved, mercifully brief. There were some who wanted to have a closer look at a few of his more deplorable political associations. There were others who refused to touch him, having rightly judged Finch to be a man who would relish nothing more than a good public spat with the security services. In the end, however, it would be determined his only crime was one of sportsmanship. Because at precisely 7:05 p.m.—the time recorded in his own hand on the official score sheet—he exercised his right to claim victory by forfeiture, thus becoming the first player in club story to win the championship without moving a single piece. It was a dubious honor, one the chess players of British intelligence would never quite forgive.

Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli spymaster, would later say that never before had so much blood fl owed from so humble a beginning. But even Shamron, who was guilty of the occasional rhetorical flourish, knew the remark was far from accurate. For the events that followed had their true origins not in Grigori’s disappearance but in a feud of Shamron’s own making. Grigori, he would confide to his most devoted acolytes, was but a shot over our complacent bow. A signal fire on a distant watchtower. And the bait used to lure Gabriel into the open.

By the following evening, the score sheet was in the possession of MI5, along with the entire tournament logbook. The Americans were informed of Grigori’s disappearance twenty-four hours later, but, for reasons never fully explained, British intelligence waited four long days before getting around to telling the Israelis. Shamron, who had fought in Israel’s war of independence and loathed the British to this day, found the delay predictable. Within minutes he was on the phone to Uzi Navot giving him marching orders. Navot reluctantly obeyed. It was what Navot did best.

KILLER SUMMER giveaway

Sun Valley, Idaho - playground of the wealthy and politically connected - is home to an annual wine auction that attracts high rollers from across the country, and Blaine County sheriff Walt Fleming must ensure it goes on without a hitch. The world's most elite wine connoisseurs have descended on Sun Valley to taste and bid on the world's best wines, including three bottles said to have been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. With sky-high prices all but guaranteed for these historic items, it's no wonder a group of thieves is out to steal them. Walt is responsible for all the security for the glitzy event, the safety of the dignitaries, the auction site, and the wines themselves.

Walt is enjoying a rare afternoon of freedom, fly-fishing with his nephew Kevin, when a passing truck catches his eye - and his suspicions throw him headlong into the discovery of a complicated plan to steal the rare wine.
When a bomb explodes just as the auction revs up, the investigation explodes as well, pulling Walt in a dozen different directions. He is caught in the middle of a heist of epic proportions - and not the heist he had prepared for - orchestrated by the ingenious mind of Christopher Cantell, a man who seems to have prepared for everything, including the way Walt's own sheriff's office will react.


"In Sheriff Fleming, Pearson has created a likable, sympathetic protagonist, forever challenged by ferocious weather, a feisty citizenry, and feral criminal minds." - Booklist (starred review) on Killer View

To win a Penguin tote bag with one signed copy of Ridley Pearson's KILLER SUMMER and two unsigned paperback editions of the previous two books in the series, KILLER WEEKEND and KILLER VIEW, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with "KILLER SUMMER" as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email. All entries must be received by July 31, 2009. Three (3) names will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. Each name drawn will receive the free Penguin tote bag with a signed copy of KILLER SUMMER, two unsigned paperback editions of the previous two books in the series, KILLER WEEKEND and KILLER VIEW, all by Ridley Pearson, courtesy of Penguin. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States and Canada. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, will be purged after winners are notified.

ITW Announces the 2009 Thriller Awards Winners!

ITW Announces the 2009 Thriller Awards Winners!
By Joe Moore

On the evening of Saturday, July 11th, 2009, the International Thriller Writers announced the winners of their literary awards at a gala celebration in New York City.

ThrillerMaster Award: David Morrell
In recognition of his vast body of work and influence in the field of literature

Silver Bullet Award: Brad Meltzer
For contributions to the advancement of literacy

Silver Bullet Corporate Award: Dollar General Literacy Foundation
For longstanding support of literacy and education

Best Thriller of the Year:
THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND by Jeffery Deaver (Simon & Schuster)

Best First Novel:
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central Publishing)

Best Short Story:
THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN by Alexandra Sokoloff (in Darker Mask)

Congratulations to the winners and all the nominees. For a complete list of the nominated authors including previous year's winners and nominees, click here.

2009 National Book Festival

The Library of Congress announced yesterday the list of authors who will be attending this year’s National Book Festival on September 26, 2009.

Bestselling authors David Baldacci, John Grisham, John Irving, Lois Lowry, Jodi Picoult, Judy Blume, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, Julia Alvarez, Ken Burns, Gwen Ifill – and even celebrity chef Paula Deen – will be among scores of authors presenting at the 2009 National Book Festival, which is organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress. A complete listing of the authors by pavilion below.

Now in its ninth year, this popular event celebrating the joys of reading and lifelong literacy will be held on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th Streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (rain or shine). The event, for which the Honorary Chairs are President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, is free and open to the public.

What: 2009 National Book Festival: www.loc.gov/bookfest

Where: National Mall (between 7th and 14th Streets), Washington, DC

When: Saturday, September 26, 2009 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. (rain or shine)


Authors slated to make presentations at the 2009 National Book Festival include:

Children’s authors

Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, Kate DiCamillo, Shannon Hale, Craig Hatkoff, Lois Lowry, Megan McDonald, Sharon Robinson and Kadir Nelson, Charles Santore, Jon Scieszka, David Shannon and Mo Willems

Teens & Children authors

Judy Blume, Pat Carman, Paula Deen, Carmen Agra Deedy, Liz Kessler, Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan, James L. Swanson and Jacqueline Woodson

History & Biography authors

Douglas Brinkley and David A. Taylor, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, Kirstin Downey, Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz, Gwen Ifill, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Taylor Kidd, Mark Kurlansky, Jon Meacham, Rickey Minor, Asar Nafisi, Annette Gordon-Reed, Simon Schama and Patricia Sullivan

Fiction & Fantasy authors

Sabiha Al Khemir, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, John Grisham, John Irving, Katherine Neville, Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks, Jeannette Walls, Colson Whitehead and David Wroblewski

Mysteries & Thrillers authors

David Baldacci, Lee Child, Mary Jane Clark, Michael Connelly, Craig Johnson and Walter Mosley

Poetry & Prose authors

Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, student winners in the Poetry Out Loud competition and Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress

Book Club Hustlers

Interesting piece from the Daily Beast --

"Enterprising fiction writers are marketing themselves to book groups in person, by phone, and over Skype to boost sales. Meet the new breed of literary types on the make..."

Daily Beast

For Jane Green fans!

The Penguin Group would like to invite you to join bestselling author Jane Green for a chat about her newest novel, Dune Road, on Monday, July 6th at 2 PM EST. You can join the chat by visiting The Water Cooler at the scheduled time.

Dune Road is the story of life in an exclusive beach town after the tourists have left for the summer and the eccentric (and moneyed) community sticks around—from the bestselling author of The Beach House. Warm, witty and gloriously observed, Dune Road is Jane Green at her best, full of brilliant insights into challenges that come with forging a new life.

The chat, which is the first in what will be a monthly feature in the newly launched “From the Publisher’s Office” network on the Penguin website, will allow readers to ask questions of the author, after having had the first three chapters of the book serialized on the site. The reading experience will be rounded out with a complete Readers Group Guide once the chat has been completed. If you can’t take part, all chats will be archived on the site, so check back at any time.

We’ll also be letting participants in on a special offer to express our thanks for taking part in the chat.

I can make it, I'm at work then but I'd love to hear about it if you do go!

Win a copy of BAD MOTHER!

BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America’s most outrageous writer.

In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.

Today we have only Bad Mothers.

If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re smothering. If you discipline, you’re buying them a spot on the shrink’s couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. If you buy organic, you’re spending their college fund; if you don’t, you’re risking all sorts of allergies and illnesses.

Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as “a bad mother”? Ayelet Waldman says it’s time for women to get over it and get on with it, in a book that is sure to spark the same level of controversy as her now legendary “Modern Love” piece, in which she confessed to loving her husband more than her children.

Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (Whose toddler can recite the planets in order from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, balancing the work-family dynamic, and the bane of every mother’s existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.

READ AN EXCERPT

To win your own copy of BAD MOTHER, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with "BAD MOTHER" as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email. All entries must be received by June 18, 2009. Five (5) names will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. Each name drawn will receive a free copy of BAD MOTHER by Ayelet Waldman, courtesy of Doubleday. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, will be purged after winners are notified.


Ayelet Waldman is the author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace , Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Daughter's Keeper and the Mommy-Track Mysteries. Her personal essays have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazine, including The New York Times, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Elle Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Cookie, Child, Parenting, Real Simple, Health and Salon.com. Her radio commentaries have appeared on "All Things Considered" and "The California Report."

Ayelet's missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel.

The film version of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is now in post-production, with Don Roos as screenwriter and director, Natalie Portman in the lead role, and Lisa Kudrow and Scott Cohen also starring.