There are eight novels in Barbara Parker’s gripping series of legal thrillers featuring Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana, who are frequently on opposite sides of the courtroom but seldom on opposite sides of the bed. For reasons too tiresome to relate E-Reads published volumes #1-6 and #8 but the seventh book, Suspicion of Madness, got left out.

Until today.

But now, Gail and Anthony are together at last and Parker’s “Suspicion” series is complete.

In Madness, a romantic trip to the Florida Keys turns deadly when a young former client of Quintana’s comes under investigation for murder. It seems like an open-and-shut case of innocence. But strange lies and more dead bodies lie hidden in the lush landscape of the Keys. As Gail and Anthony meet the island’s odd assortment of inhabitants, they find that everyone has a scheme of their own. Now, a tropical storm looms overhead, trapping them all in a tinderbox of explosive danger and deep passions.

Parker’s series really should be ready in the proper sequence to see Gail and Anthony’s relationship in all its ups and downs.  So click here to see them all.

In Dragon’s Winter, dragon-lord Karadur Atani – lately returned from a deadly battle – was finally able to take his true dragon form. But, can the peace he found in defeating his treacherous brother translate to peace within himself? In order to rule his kingdom, Karadur must find a balance between his desire to be a merciful leader and the destructive power of his dragon-changeling nature.

Perhaps love can provide the answer. As a lover, Maia–an herbalist from the Unamira clan of outlaws–can produce a dragon-changeling heir for Karadur. But, her half-brother Treion poses a threat to the kingdom. Can Karadur find compassion for the outlaw, or will his dragon aspect drive him toward the vengeful madness that overtook his father?

With Dragon’s Treasure, World Fantasy Award-winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn continues to build an imaginative medieval world filled with both magic on a grand scale and the very human complexity of daily life.

“Features full and pleasing measures of Lynn’s graceful prose and world-building talent.” — Booklist

Though agents and editors are expected to be enthusiastic about books they’re involved with, a steady diet of hyperbole can elicit tedium and skepticism. Of a particularly partisan agent an editor once sneered “He thinks every book he handles is Moby Dick.” For that reason, as regular readers of this column know, it has to be a truly prodigious book to make me depart from my natural caution.

Steven R. Boyett’s Mortality Bridge is a prodigious book.

Channeling Orpheus, Dante and Faust, Mortality Bridge is a stunning, brutal—and surprisingly funny—quest across a Hieronymous Bosch landscape of myth, music, and mayhem; and across an inner terrain of addiction, damnation, and redemption.

Cory Doctorow writes: “Mortality Bridge is a gutwrenching novel about loss and redemption, deserved guilt and betrayal, with an antihero whose quest is at once the stuff of cracking adventure stories and a tragic tale of facing up to one’s own cowardice and weakness…Niko’s race through Hell is one of the greatest supernatural adventure stories of recent memory, surpassing Niven and Pournelle’s classic Inferno (itself a very good novel on a similar premise, even if it does turn on the power of Hell to redeem one of history’s great monsters). It is not a mere allegory about sin and redeption, cowardice and nobility: it’s also a damned good story, which sets it apart from almost all existential allegories.”

Hugo award-winner John Scalzi writes: “Luminously tragic, darkly funny, and deeply moving, all in turns and sometimes all at once. Boyett is one of the very few writers who will make you eager to go into Hell, and not worry about whether you return.”

In a starred review Publishers Weekly declared: “Dark, grotesque, and eerie, Boyett’s behemoth reimagining of Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld blends Faust and Dante with Greek myth… Through unusual turns of phrase, violent and bloody imagery, heartrending introspection, and mythic tone, Boyett (Elegy Beach) explores themes of betrayal, redemption, and personal sacrifice in a tortured landscape of bedlam and pandemonium ”

Fantasy Literature reviewed Mortality Bridge in these terms:”Brilliant. An unforgettable tale of one man’s journey to Hell. The writing is filled with vivid sensory detail. I was pushed to my limits by this one. Immeasurably sad. Moments of transcendent joy and beauty and compassion. A very well-written book that made me feel intense emotion. I recommend it.”

And an Amazon reviewer wrote, awarding five stars, declared: “Mortality Bridge is the Steven R. Boyett book I’d been waiting for. I thought that book was coming last year when I heard a long-awaited sequel to Boyett’s wonderful fantasy novel, Ariel, was coming out. That sequel, Elegy Beach, was good but less intense than the original, like Boyett was trying to rekindle energy for a world that had enthralled him almost 30 years earlier. Like Nietzsche, I love only what a man has written with his blood, which Ariel was but Elegy Beach came a bit short of.

“But Mortality Bridge is the best Boyett so far. It has all the wonderful imagination in its plot as Ariel had, but it is far better written, simply beautiful prose. Boyett fuses two powerful myths, Faust and Orpheus, and sets them in modern times. Like Faust, the rock musician main character Niko has made a deal with the devil that costs him his beloved girlfriend’s life, and like Orpheus he descends into hell to retrieve her. The hell he describes is ghastly and spellbinding, and his journey through it has you turning pages faster than anything Stephen King ever wrote. The passage through hell, which constitutes most of the novel, is so vividly described, so mesmerizing, that I could visualize it as clearly as if it were a movie, and a great movie it would be.

“The best thing about the book, which raises it above even Ariel, is that it is the product of not only an intelligent but now a fully matured mind able to grasp the metaphysical implications of its profound subject matter. It takes on questions of immortality, the nature of the psyche, the forces that may or may not govern the universe and treats each with the astute wisdom it deserves. It seldom insists on any answers to these questions; rather, like all our best teachers, Boyett leads us to deeper questions. The finest book I’ve read in a long time.”

E-Reads is publisher of the e-book of Ariel, Boyett’s stunning debut novel.

Richard Curtis

Morgan Llywelyn’s Irish historical novels and Celtic fantasies have delighted fans for decades since publication of her first novel The Wind from Hastings and her bestselling The Lion of Ireland. And now she brings us The Isles of the Blest, a magical story of a war-weary king and the seductive allure of a peaceable kingdom whispered to him by a fey beauty.

The mighty Connla is weary from the tiresome and bloody battle fought in the name of his father, Conn, and his land, Erin. Willingly, he lets himself become intoxicated by the surreal beauty of a fairy-woman who offers to take him to a faraway, forbidden land where all his desires will be fulfilled. He welcomes the opportunity to be away from the gruesome war that has consumed his life for so long, but what price will the warrior pay to be in a land void of death, loss and pain? Does the pleasure of the company of the stunning stranger outweigh the price he must pay to remain in The Isles of the Blest?

Harvey Tattelbaum was a village rabbi. But what a village! And what a rabbi! He’s written a delightful book that makes a delightful gift for the host and hostess of your Passover seder. It’s available either in paperback or e-book format.

In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and “cool”: brownstones and beatniks, coffeehouses and college students, folksingers and freethinkers, poets and “prophets.” Into this fascinating mix of cultural archetypes came a young rabbi, Harvey M. Tattelbaum, who became known as the Village Rabbi of the Village Temple.

The spirit of Sholom Aleichem infuses his Tales of the Village Rabbi, a touching and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of his tenure at a small synagogue in the heart of Greenwich Village. Though his years in this magical place were productive and soul-filling, rabbinical training hadn’t exactly prepared him for the bikers, thieves, ex-cons, eccentric old ladies, drug-users, cleavage-baring brides and other Village denizens he encountered while serving the congregants of his spirited little temple.

Rabbi Tattelbaum shares his insider’s tales-both downtown and uptown-of wayward weddings (and funerals), contentious temple boards, irreverent interfaith shenanigans, heartaches and triumphs. But the Tales also reveal a deep personal struggle with some of the most profound philosophical problems of ancient and modern religion and are filled with a warm, humane and rational approach to spirituality and religious meaning.

RC

E-Reads is proud to release James R. Benn’s  thriller Souvenir for the first time anywhere. Benn is author of the popular World War II mystery series featuring Billy Boyle.

In Souvenir, secrets trail an American soldier from his Depression upbringing to the cold winter battles in the Ardennes Forest in the last months of World War II, and through the post-war decades, as he struggles to keep his family from being torn apart while keeping the truth buried close to his heart.

Clay Brock, proprietor of Jake’s Tavern, has endured terrible losses throughout his life. In 1964, he is working to build a life for his wife and son, only to see everything he’s worked for threatened by forces beyond his control. To keep his family from breaking apart, he must confront the very secret he has kept buried. For Clay, the war has never been over, and his foxhole buddy Jake Burnett never far from his thoughts. At two crucial points in his life, as a young father and later as an old man at the dawn of a new and unfamiliar century, his memories draw him back until he must confront them and speak the truth. But at what cost?

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James R. Benn is the author of the popular Billy Boyle World War II mystery series. The debut title, Billy Boyle, was a Dilys Award nominee and one of Booksense’s Top Five mysteries for 2006. Subsequent titles have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal and two have been tagged as “Killer Books” by the Independent Mystery Bookseller’s Association. He lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut with his wife, Deborah Mandel. For more information, visit his website at: www.jamesrbenn.com

James R. Benn’s thriller On Desperate Ground portrays larger-than-life men and women caught up in the death throes of Nazi Germany, struggling to maintain those things precious to them—life, an end to killing, and even sanity itself. Benn’s name will be familiar to fans of his Billy Boyle World War II mystery series,

Colonel Johann Faust has lost everyone he ever loved and feels he is going inexorably insane. He hears the haunting voice of his dead fiancée and the demons that roar through his mind as he perfects a plan to save Nazi Germany from defeat and insure a greater and deadlier new world war.

Captain Dieter Neukirk, once a protégé of Faust’s, is more concerned with saving the lives of his remaining men than in sacrificing them in a fanatical last stand. Meanwhile, Elsa Klein, Dieter’s lover and the chief social worker at a Berlin hospital, is engaged in her own dangerous work, providing medical care and identity papers to hidden Jews in the city.

American Captain Mack Mackenzie, pulled from a military hospital before his wounds are healed, is assigned to investigate reports of a secret Nazi operation. Wanting only to make it home alive, Mack finds himself in a life and death struggle with unlikely allies and a ferociously determined opponent.

Americans and Germans alike are drawn to a hilltop in the remote German countryside, where they find themselves between powerful armies and forced into a terrible decision that could end one war or begin a new one.

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James R. Benn is the author of the popular Billy Boyle World War II mystery series. The debut title, Billy Boyle, was a Dilys Award nominee and one of Booksense’s Top Five mysteries for 2006. Subsequent titles have received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal and two have been tagged as “Killer Books” by the Independent Mystery Bookseller’s Association. He lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut with his wife, Deborah Mandel. For more information, visit his website at: www.jamesrbenn.com

Yay! E-Reads has just released two more novels in John Bellairs’ beloved Johnny Dixon series, numbers 10 and 11 if you’re keeping score.

In The Hand of the Necromancer, Johnny Dixon gets a summer job at the Gudge Museum. Everything seems okay as Johnny mops the floors and dusts the artifacts. That is, until a sinister man named Mattheus Mergal shows up looking for the one item the professor held back – a wooden hand carved by the evil wizard Esdrias Blackleash.

If Mergal gets the hand, he’ll be able to bring back his long-dead relative and their sinister powers will be unstoppable. It’s up to Johnny and his friend professor Childermass to keep Mergal from taking over the world, but they’ll have to face nightmares, snakes, and imprisonment inside a tiny snow globe.

In The Bell, the Book and the Spellbinder, written with Brad Strickland, a bored “Fergie” Ferguson finds in the library a battered black-covered book with a title as red as blood by a author named Jarmyn Thanatos. Ferguson should have been suspicious when he read the weird Dewey decimal number. And if he were a better scholar he’d have trembled at the name Thanatos.

Even though Fergie is a good kid, he steals the book, setting off a chain of sinister events that threaten not only his life but the lives of his friends Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass as well. Soon, Fergie is under the control of a mad sorcerer who has been putting children under his spell for the past three hundred years. Can Johnny and the professor break Fergie’s deepening trance in time to stop Thanatos and his dangerous march toward maniacal immortality?

This eleventh book in the Johnny Dixon series will hold readers spellbound until the final page.

“A sure-to-please page-turner.” —School Library Journal

Through Sunday March 25, Rita award-winning romance author Linda Jones is offering a free Amazon download of Into the Woods, one of her deliciously wicked and sexy fairy tales with a decidedly adult twist. As we post this, it’s the Number One historical romance on Kindle.

E-Reads has seven more: Big Bad Wolf, Someone’s Been Sleeping In My Bed, Cinderfella, One Day My Prince, Jackie and the Giant, Let Me Come In, and Let Down Your Hair.

If Into the Woods hooked you, try Someone’s Been Sleeping In My Bed.

Of late, life had hardly been a fairy tale for the lovely, golden-haired Maddalyn Kelly. Nearly killed in a stagecoach robbery, the beautiful blonde escaped deep into the forest of Wyoming. This was a far cry from the simple life she had planned for herself as a modest schoolteacher. Hungry, lost and weary, Maddalyn finally came upon a cozy mountaintop cabin. There were three of everything: three delicious meals, three comfortable chairs, and three warm beds. She couldn’t help dozing for just a moment … Maddalyn quickly learned that the cabin belonged to three burly and intimidating brothers: Karl, Conrad and Eric Bartlett. She had eaten Eric’s food, slept in Eric’s bed. He seemed a wild animal, but did his gruff manner belie a softer side? Feisty Maddalyn was determined to find out…

For more fairy tales for grownups and other Linda Jones romances, click HERE.

From Warren Murphy, the prolific author of the Destroyer series, comes another award-winning series called Trace.

The first novel introduces the dissipated insurance investigator whose assignments always seem to involve people who die not long after an insurance policy has been taken out on them. When Devlin Tracy – “Trace” – is not recovering from drink, gambling or womanizing, there is no one better at his job. The problem is, he’s always recovering from one, another or all three.

E-Reads is reprinting all seven thrillers in the Trace series. In the title novel. Trace’s part-time hooker girlfriend is off on an out-of-town trick, but alimony bills are piling up and his assignment is to find out if an idealistic doctor is dedicated to killing his patients instead of curing them.

The other novels in the series are:

And 47 Miles of Rope
Once a Mutt
Pigs Get Fat
Too Old a Cat
Getting Up With Fleas
When Elephants Forget

Trace was nominated by Mystery Writers of America for best book, and Pigs Get Fat won an Edgar award for best paperback original of 1985. The series was nominated for a Shamus award from the Private Eye Writers.

If you want to take a day off from Destroyer, pick up a Trace or two, or six or seven.

RC