{Blog Tour} THE LAST WITNESS by Jerry Amernic

The Last Witness

by Jerry Amernic

on Tour May 2015

The year is 2039, and Jack Fisher is the last living survivor of the Holocaust. Set in a world that is abysmally complacent about events of the last century, Jack is a 100-year-old man whose worst memories took place before he was 5. His story hearkens back to the Jewish ghetto of his birth and to Auschwitz where, as a little boy, he had to fend for himself to survive after losing his family. Jack becomes the central figure in a missing-person investigation when his granddaughter suddenly disappears. While assisting police, he finds himself in danger and must reach into the darkest corners of his memory to come out alive.

Book Details:

Genre: Historical Thriller
Published by: Story Merchant Books
Publication Date: October 29th 2014
Number of Pages: 334
ISBN: 9780990421658
Purchase Links:

Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1
New York City, 2035

He was a tough sort. Ninety-five years old with elastic skin stretched across his bones like taut canvas, he was supposed to be an easy mark. Fragile and weak. A pushover. Albert Freedman lived by himself in a flat on the upper East Side, and when they came for him they didn’t expect any trouble. Albert knew something wasn’t right when the second one walked in, but the voice was soft and reassuring.
“We’re here to change your palm reader,” he said through the door. We’re doing all the apartments on your floor today and you’re the first. It won’t take five minutes.”
“You’re here to change my what?”
“Your palm reader.”
“I donno what yer talkin’ about. Go away!”
“You don’t understand. There’s a problem with the sensor. You know, the thing that opens your door when you put your hand in front of it? The palm reader?”
“What?”
“It scans your hand. Your print. Then it lets you in.”
Nothing.
“Look,” the man said, more softly now. “Mr. Freedman? You are Albert Freedman, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I realize you don’t want to be bothered but this is for your security. It’s like putting a new lock on the door.”
“A new lock?”
“That’s right. The sensor in your palm reader is ten years old.”
“It is?”
“The year’s inscribed on the side of the door. It says 2025. See for yourself.”
Albert looked, but he didn’t see anything. His eyes weren’t good. “Where does it say that?” he said.
“On the side of the door. It might be hard to read. The numbers are small.”
“Where are they?”
“Trust me. The thing is ten years old and it’s not working right. But we have new ones now that are much better. But it’s not only that. You see there was a break-in last week and they want everyone’s palm reader changed. That’s why we’re here. You’re the first one on our list, Mr. Freedman. We’ll be done in five minutes. Can we come in?”
“Five minutes you say?”
“That’s all it takes.”
He started jiggling the latch from the inside and then he stopped. “Wait a minute. Why am I the first one? This isn’t the first flat on the floor. You should be down at the end of the hall. Unless you’re doing it alphabetically and then you wouldn’t be starting with me. Why am I the first one?”
He was ninety-five years old. He wasn’t supposed to be asking questions like that. He was just supposed to open the door so they could kill him and make it look like a robbery.
There was an audible sigh from outside the door. “Look Mr. Freedman. It's like this. Doing all these sensors isn’t going to be much fun for us but the landlord said you’re a nice guy and we thought we’d start with you.”
At first nothing and then the jiggling from inside the door started again.
“All right. Come in. But make it fast.”
Albert released the latch that was linked to a sensor that had nothing wrong with it in a building where there had been no break-ins the past week, the past month or the past year. The first man through the door was short and slight, thirtyish with close-cropped hair and a soothing voice. He had a tattoo on his arm that looked like a snake, and if Albert had seen that he wouldn’t have opened the door. But then it was too late.
“Thank you,” the man said with a disarming smile.
The one behind him, younger and bigger with straggly hair and brown skin, burst through the door and pushed Albert out of the way. Old Albert fell against the wall and managed to brace himself with his hand, but the sudden impact jarred his wrist. The arthritis. Then the girl appeared, tall and skinny, dressed in black. Albert never got a good look at their faces, but it didn’t matter. He would be dead before they left.
“Where do you keep the money?” the girl screamed at him. “Tell us!
The small slim man with the snake on his arm turned, retreated into the hallway and closed the door behind him. In his hand was a little gadget with a screen on it. He touched the screen and a list of names came up. He ran his fingertip over the last name – Albert Freedman’s name – and it disappeared. Then he was gone.
The girl began riffling through Albert’s cupboards and drawers. Albert was confused. He didn’t get many visitors.
“Where do you keep the money?” the girl said again.
“What do you want?”
“Your money!”
The man who was now inside Albert’s flat didn’t waste any time. He came for him with his fists clenched. He hit him in the face and knocked him to the floor. Albert fell on his side, his hip, but was close enough to the door so he could reach behind it for his cane. The one with the heavy metal handle. He always kept it there.
Blood dripping from his nose, he scrambled to his knees, brought the cane back over his head, and with every ounce of strength he had walloped the intruder or thief or whatever he was across the ankles. There was a loud cry, but Albert wasn’t finished. He got to his feet, straightened up, and brought his cane back a second time. Now he turned on the girl and landed that metal handle square on the back of her shoulders.
“I’ll kill you both!” he said.
But Albert was old and the man was enraged now. He tore the cane from Albert’s hands and started hitting him with it. He hit him on the head. He hit him on the chest. He hit him on the arms. Albert tried to shield himself with his flailing hands, but the blows were relentless. They kept coming and coming and coming. The girl was going through his drawers, throwing everything she found on the floor. Albert always kept his place neat and he didn’t like that, but he could barely see through his eyes now.
“Here’s his wallet,” she said. “Get it over with.”
The beating took less than a minute. Albert, barely conscious, lay on the floor, bloodied and battered to a pulp, a near corpse of broken bones. He couldn’t move and the only thing to feel was pain. The man with the brown skin and straggly hair turned him over so he was face down and all there was to see was the cold dusty floor. It was the last thing Albert would see in his ninety-five years. He sniffed at the acrid air as a knee went deep into his back and the cane came up under his chin. Albert gurgled a few times, there was a crack, and his body went limp.

JUST RELEASED!

QUMRAN

Jerry Amernic's next novel QUMRAN is a biblical-historical thriller about an archeologist who makes a dramatic discovery in the Holy Land. It’s something that could set the world on its edge. He is both an atheist and an expert on the Romans, but this find more than upsets his logical theory of the universe, leading to a struggle between science and religion. Indeed, this intersection where science meets religion is the theme of the novel.
In historical flashbacks, we see him as a young archeology student who helps discover the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, just off the Dead Sea, and it happens when the State of Israel is being created. Later, he gets involved with investigating the legends of the Holy Grail and Holy Shroud of Turin, and each time out another Arab-Israeli war is tearing the Middle East apart. Throw in his close friend who is a brilliant Egyptian pathologist, along with his Israeli research assistant and his wife who is an authority on ancient languages and you have a foursome standing against the world. But the new discovery must be studied in secret. Or all Hell will break loose.

 

Author Bio:

Jerry Amernic is a Toronto writer who has been a newspaper reporter and correspondent, newspaper columnist, feature writer for magazines, teacher of journalism, and media consultant. His first book 'Victims: The Orphans of Justice' was a true story about a former police officer whose eldest daughter was murdered and who became a leading advocate for crime victims. This resulted in Jerry’s column about the justice system for The Toronto Sun. More recently Jerry co-authored 'Duty - The Life of a Cop' with Julian Fantino, the highest-profile police officer Canada has ever produced and now a member of the Canadian Cabinet. In fiction, Jerry’s first novel 'Gift of the Bambino' was praised by The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., The Globe and Mail in Canada, and others. His latest novel is the historical thriller 'The Last Witness'. Just released is the biblical-historical thriller 'Qumran'.

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This is a giveaway hosted by Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours for Jerry Amernic. There will be ONE U.S. or Canadian winner. The giveaway begins on May 1st, 2015 and runs through June 12th, 2015. a Rafflecopter giveaway
 

So what exactly was the Holocaust and D-Day?

 

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{Blog Tour: Excerpt, Review, & Giveaway} THE GIRL WITH A CLOCK FOR A HEART by Peter Swanson

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart

by Peter Swanson

on Tour January 6 - February 28, 2015

Book Details:

Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Literary
Published by: William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication Date: January 6, 2015
Number of Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780062267504
Purchase Links:

Synopsis:

Already optioned for film, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is Peter Swanson’s electrifying tale of romantic noir, with shades of Hitchcock and reminiscent of the classic movie Body Heat. It is the story of a man swept into a vortex of irresistible passion and murder when an old love mysteriously reappears.
On an ordinary Friday evening at his favorite Boston tavern, George Foss’s comfortable, predictable life is shattered when a beautiful woman sits down at the bar, a woman who vanished without a trace twenty years ago.
Liana Dector isn’t just an ex-girlfriend, the first love George couldn’t quite forget. She’s also a dangerous enigma and quite possibly a cold-blooded killer wanted by the police. Suddenly, she’s back—and she needs George’s help. Ruthless men believe she stole some money . . . and they will do whatever it takes to get it back.
George knows Liana is trouble. But he can’t say no—he never could—so he makes a choice that will plunge him into a terrifying whirlpool of lies, secrets, betrayal, and murder from which there is no sure escape.
Bold and masterful, full of malicious foreboding and subtle surprises, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is an addictive, nonstop thriller—an ever-tightening coil of suspense that grips you right up to its electrifying end.

Read an excerpt:

Prologue

It was dusk, but as he turned onto the rutted driveway he could make out the perimeter of yellow tape that still circled the property.

George parked his Saab, but left the engine running. He tried not to think about the last time he’d been to this almost-hidden house on a dead-end road in New Essex.

The police tape was strung in a wide circle, from pine tree to pine tree, and the front door was plastered with red and white tape in an X pattern. He turned off the engine. The air conditioner stopped blowing, and George almost immediately felt the smothering heat of the day. The sun was low in the sky, and the heavy canopy of pine trees made it seem even darker.

He stepped out of the car. The humid air smelled of the sea, and he could hear gulls in the distance. The dark brown deckhouse blended into the woods that surrounded it. Its tall windows were as dark as its stained siding.

He ducked under the yellow tape that declared police line do not cross and made his way toward the back of the house.

He was hoping to get in through the sliding-glass doors that opened into the house from the rotted back deck. If they were locked, he would throw a rock through the glass. His plan was to get inside the house and search it as quickly as possible, looking for evidence the police might have missed.

The sliding doors were plastered over with police stickers but were unlocked. He entered the cool house, expecting to be consumed with fear once he was inside. Instead, he felt a surreal sense of calm, as though he were in a waking dream.

I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it.

It was clear that the police had thoroughly searched the property. On several surfaces there were the streaky remains of fingerprint dust. The drug paraphernalia that had been on the coffee table was gone. He turned toward the master bedroom on the east side of the house. It was a room he had never been in, and he opened the door expecting a mess. Instead, he found a fairly neat space, a large, low-ceilinged bedroom with a king-size bed that had been made up with floral sheets. There were two low bureaus opposite the bed, each topped with a plate of glass.

Faded Polaroids were pinned under the grimy glass. Birthday parties. Graduations.

He opened the drawers, found nothing. There were some old items of clothing, hairbrushes, perfume bottles still in boxes, all with the dusty, floral smell of mothballs.

A carpeted stairwell led to the lower level. As he passed the landing by the front door he tried hard to keep the images out of his mind. But he looked extra long at the place where the body had fallen, where the skin had turned the color of not skin.

At the bottom of the stairs, he turned left into a large finished basement, musty-smelling and windowless. He tried the wall switches, but the electricity had been turned off. He pulled the small flashlight he’d brought out of his back pocket and cast its thin, dim light around the basement. In the center of the room was a beautiful vintage billiards table with red felt instead of green, balls scattered randomly across its surface. In the far corner was a high bar area with several stools and a large mirror engraved with the logo of George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey.

In front of the mirror was a stretch of empty shelf that he imagined had once held an array of liquor bottles, long since emptied and thrown away.

I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it.

He returned upstairs and looked through the smaller bedrooms, both of them, searching for any sign of their most recent occupants, but found nothing. The police would have done the same, would have bagged as evidence anything that struck them as significant, but he had had to come and look for himself. He knew he’d find something. He knew she would have left something.

He found it in the bookshelf of the living room at eye level in a wall of books. It was a white hardcover book, slipcovered in plastic as though it had once belonged to a library, standing out among the other books, most of which were technical. Boating manuals. Travel guides. An ancient set of a child’s encyclopedia.

There was some fiction on the shelf as well, but it was all mass-market paperbacks. High-tech
thrillers. Michael Crichton. Tom Clancy.

He touched the book’s spine. The title and the author’s name were in a thin, elegant red font. Rebecca. By Daphne du Maurier.

It was her favorite book, her one and only favorite book. She had given him a copy the year they had met. Their freshman year of college. She had read parts of it out loud to him in her dormitory on cold winter nights. He knew passages by heart.

He pulled the book out, ran his finger along the deckled edges of its pages. It fell open at page 6. Two sentences were boxed by carefully drawn lines. He remembered that it was the way she marked books. No highlighter. No underlined passages. Just exact outlines around words and sentences and paragraphs.
George didn’t immediately read the marked words; the book had fallen open not by chance but because a postcard had been tucked between its pages. The back of the postcard was slightly yellowed with age. There was nothing written on it. He turned it over and looked at the color image of a Mayan ruin, standing untoppled on a scrubby bluff, the ocean in the background. It was an old postcard, the color of the ocean too blue and the color of the grass too green. He turned it back over. “The Mayan Ruins of Tulum,” the description read. “Quintana Roo. Mexico.”

Chapter 1

At five minutes past five on a Friday night, George Foss walked directly from his office to Jack Crow’s Tavern through the gluey air of a Boston heat wave. He’d spent the final three hours of work meticulously proofreading a rewrite on an illustrator’s contract, then staring numbly through his window at the hazy blue of the city sky. He disliked late summer the way other Bostonians disliked the long New England winters. The weary trees, the yellowing parks, and the long humid nights all made him long for the crisp weather of autumn, for breathable air that didn’t make his skin stick to his clothes and his bones feel tired.

He walked the half-dozen blocks to Jack Crow’s as slowly as he could, hoping to keep his shirt relatively sweat-free.

Cars jockeyed along the narrow Back Bay streets attempting to escape the funk of the city. Most residents of this particular neighborhood would be planning their first drinks of the evening at bars in Wellfleet or Edgartown or Kennebunkport, or any of the seaside towns within reasonable driving distance. George was happy enough to be going to Jack Crow’s, where the drinks were average but where the air conditioning, monitored by an ex-pat French Canadian, was routinely kept at meat-locker temperatures.

And he was happy enough to be going to see Irene. It had been over two weeks since he’d seen her last, at a cocktail party thrown by a mutual friend. They had barely spoken, and when George left first she had thrown him a look of mock anger. It made him wonder if their on-again off-again relationship had reached one of its periodic crisis points. George had known Irene for fifteen years, having met her at the magazine where he still worked. She had been an assistant editor while he was in accounts receivable. Being an accountant at a well-known literary magazine had seemed the perfect job for a man with a literary bent but no literary talent. Now George was business manager of that particular sinking ship, while Irene had worked her way up the ranks of the Globe’s ever-expanding website division.

They had been a perfect couple for two years. But those two years had been followed by thirteen years of diminishing returns, of recriminations, occasional infidelities, and a constantly lowering set of expectations. And while they’d long since given up the notion that they were an ordinary couple with an ordinary destiny, they still came to their favorite bar, they still told each other everything, they still occasionally slept together, and, against all odds, they’d become best friends. Despite this, there was the periodic need to clarify their status, to have a conversation.

George didn’t feel he had it in him this particular night. It had nothing to do with Irene; in some ways his feelings toward her hadn’t changed in about a decade. It had more to do with how he felt about life in general. Approaching forty, George felt as though his world had been slowly drained of all its colors. He’d passed that age when he could reasonably expect to fall madly in love with someone and raise a family, or to take the world by storm, or to have anything surprising lift him out of his day-to-day existence. He would never have voiced these sentiments to anyone—after all, he was securely employed, living in the fair city of Boston, still possessed of all his hair—but he spent most days in a haze of disinterest. And while he was not yet pausing in front of funeral homes, he did feel as though he hadn’t looked forward to anything in years. He had no interest in new friends or new relationships. At work, the paychecks had grown but his enthusiasm for his job had wavered. In years past he had felt a sense of pride and accomplishment with the publication of each monthly issue. These days he rarely read an article.

Approaching the tavern, George wondered what kind of mood Irene would be in tonight. He was sure to hear about the divorced editor at her office who had asked her out several times that summer. What if she agreed, and what if they became serious and George was finally thrown all the way to the curb? He tried to summon an emotion but instead found himself wondering what he would do with all the spare time. How would he fill it? And whom would he fill it with?

George pushed through the frosted-glass doors of Jack Crow’s and walked directly to his usual booth. Later he realized he must have walked right by Liana Decter sitting at the corner of the bar.

On other evenings, cooler ones, or ones when George was less dispirited about his lot in life, he might have surveyed the few patrons at his local tavern on a Friday night. There might even have been a time when George, catching sight of a lone curvy woman with pale skin, would have been jolted with the possibility that it was Liana. He’d spent twenty years both dreaming of and dreading the idea of seeing her again. He’d spotted variations of her across the world: her hair on a flight stewardess, the crushing lushness of her body on a Cape beach, her voice on a late-night jazz program. He’d even spent six months convinced that Liana had become a porn actress named Jean Harlot. He’d gone so far as to track down the actress’s true identity. She was a minister’s daughter from North Dakota named Carli Swenson.

George settled in his booth, ordered an old-fashioned from Trudy, the waitress, and removed that day’s Globe from his well-worn messenger bag. He’d saved the crossword puzzle for this very occasion. Irene was meeting him, but not till six o’clock. He sipped at his drink and solved the puzzle, then reluctantly moved on to sudoku and even the jumble before he heard Irene’s familiar steps behind him.

“Please, let’s switch,” she said by way of greeting, meaning their seats. Jack Crow’s had only one television, a rarity in a Boston bar, and Irene, outranking George in her Red Sox loyalty and fandom, wanted the better view.

George slid out from the booth, kissed Irene on the side of her mouth (she smelled of Clinique and Altoids), and resettled on the other side, with its view of the oak bar and floor-to- ceiling windows. It was still light outside, a pink slice of sun just cresting over the brownstones across the street. The spread of light across the glass caused George to suddenly notice the lone woman at the corner of the bar. She was drinking a glass of red wine and reading a paperback, and a flutter in George’s stomach told him that she looked like Liana. Just like Liana. But this was a flutter he’d experienced many times before.

He turned to Irene, who had swiveled toward the blackboard behind the bar that listed the day’s specials and the rotating beers. As always, she was unfazed by the heat, her short blond hair pushed off her forehead and curling back behind her ears.

Her cat’s-eye glasses had pink frames. Had they always? After ordering an Allagash White, Irene updated George on the continuing saga of the divorced editor. George was relieved that Irene’s initial tone was chatty and non-confrontational. Stories of the editor tended toward the humorous anecdote, even though George was apt to detect a critical undertone. This editor might be chubby and ponytailed and a dedicated microbrewer, but at least with him there was a palpable future consisting of something more than cocktails and laughs and the very occasional sex that George offered these days.

He listened and sipped his drink but kept his eye on the woman at the bar. He was waiting for a gesture or a detail to disabuse him of the notion that he was actually looking at Liana Decter and not a ghost version or some doppelganger. If it was Liana, she’d changed. Not in any obvious way, like putting on a hundred pounds or cutting all her hair off, but she looked altered somehow, in a good way, as though she’d finally grown into the rare beauty that her features had always promised. She’d lost the baby fat she had in college, the bones of her face were more prominent, and her hair was a darker blond than George remembered.
The more George stared, the more he became convinced it was her.

“You know I’m not the jealous type,” Irene said, “but who do you keep looking at?” She craned her neck to look back toward the rapidly filling bar area.

“Someone I went to college with, I think. I can’t be sure.”

“Go ask her. I won’t mind.”

“No, that’s okay. I barely knew her,” George lied, and something about the lie caused a spidery ripple of agitation to race across the back of his neck.

They ordered more drinks. “He sounds like a little prick,” George said.

“Huh?”

“Your divorcé.”

“Ah, you still care.” She slid out of the booth to go to the restroom, and this gave George a moment to really stare across the room at Liana. She’d become partially blocked by a pair of young businessmen removing their jackets and loosening their ties, but in between their maneuverings he studied her. She was wearing a white collared shirt, and her hair, a little shorter than it had been in college, hung down on one side of her face and was tucked behind an ear on the other. She wore no jewelry, something George remembered about her. There was an indecent creaminess to her neck and a mottled flash of crimson at her breastbone. She’d put away her paperback and now seemed, as she occasionally surveyed the bar, to be looking for someone.
George was waiting for her to get up and move; he felt that until he saw her walk he could not be sure.

As though his thinking it had made it happen, she slid off the padded stool, her skirt briefly bunching at midthigh. As soon as her feet touched the floor and she began to walk in George’s direction, there was no doubt. It had to be Liana, the first time he’d seen her since his freshman year at Mather College, nearly twenty years ago. Her walk was unmistakable, a slow tilting roll of the hips, her head held high and back as though she were trying to see over someone’s head. George lifted a menu to cover his face and stared at its meaningless words. His heart thudded in his chest. Despite the air conditioning, George could feel his palms start to dampen.

Liana passed just as Irene slid back into the booth. “There’s your friend. You didn’t want to say hello?”

“I’m still not sure if it’s her,” George said, wondering if Irene could hear the dry panic in his voice.

“Got time for another drink?” Irene asked. She had reapplied her lipstick in the bathroom.

“Sure,” George said. “But let’s go somewhere else. We could walk a little bit while it’s still light.”
Irene signaled the waiter, and George reached for his wallet.

“My turn, remember,” Irene said and removed a credit card from her bottomless purse. While she paid the check, Liana walked past again. This time George could stare at her retreating figure, that familiar walk. She’d grown into her body too. George thought she’d been his ideal in college, but if anything she looked better now: long tapering legs and exaggerated curves, the kind of body that only genetics, not exercise, will ever get you. The backs of her arms were pale as milk.

George had imagined this moment many times but had somehow never imagined the outcome. Liana was not simply an ex-girlfriend who had once upon a time broken George’s heart; she was also, as far as George still knew, a wanted criminal, a woman whose transgressions were more in line with those of Greek tragedy than youthful indiscretion. She had, without doubt, murdered one person and most likely murdered another.

George felt the equal weights of moral responsibility and indecision weigh down upon him.

“Coming?” Irene stood, and George did as well, following her brisk heel-first pace along the painted wooden floors of the bar.

Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” rat-a-tatted on the speakers. They swung through the front doors, the still-humid evening greeting them with its wall of stale, steamy air.

“Where to next?” Irene asked.

George froze. “I don’t know. Maybe I just feel like going home.”

“Okay,” Irene said, then added, when George still hadn’t moved, “or we could just stand out here in the rain forest.”

“I’m sorry, but I suddenly don’t feel so great. Maybe I’ll just go home.”

“Is it that woman at the bar?” Irene arched her neck to peer back through the frosted glass of the front door. “That’s not what’s-her-name, is it? That crazy girl from Mather.”

“God, no,” George lied. “I think I’ll just call it a night.”

George walked home. A breeze had picked up and was whistling through the narrow streets of Beacon Hill. The breeze wasn’t cool, but George held out his arms anyway and could feel the sweat evaporating off his skin.

When George got to his apartment, he sat down on the first step of the exterior stairway. It was only a couple of blocks back to the bar. He could have one drink with her, find out what brought her to Boston. He had waited so long to see her, imagining the moment, that now, with her actually here, he felt like an actor in a horror flick with his hand on the barn door about to get an ax in his head. He was scared, and for the first time in about a decade he longed for a cigarette. Had she come to Jack Crow’s to look for him? And if so, why?

On almost any other night, George could have entered his apartment, fed Nora, and crawled into his bed. But something about the weight of that particular August night, combined with Liana’s presence at his favorite bar, made it seem as though something was about to happen, and that was all he needed.
Good or bad, something was happening.

George sat long enough to begin to believe that she must have left the bar. How long would she really sit there by herself with her glass of red wine? He decided to walk back. If she was gone, then he wasn’t meant to see her again. If she was still there, then he’d say hello.

As he walked back to the bar the breeze pressing against his back felt both warmer and stronger. At Jack Crow’s, he didn’t hesitate—he swung back through the door and, as he did, Liana, from her spot at the bar, turned her head and looked at him. He watched her eyes brighten a little in recognition. She had never been one for outsize gestures.

“It is you,” he said.

“It is. Hi, George.” She said it with the flat intonation he remembered, as casually as though she’d seen him earlier that day.

“I saw you from over there.” George tilted his head toward the back of the bar. “I wasn’t sure it was you at first. You’ve changed a little, but then, walking past you, I was pretty sure. I got halfway down the street and turned back.”

“I’m glad you did,” she said. Her words, carefully spaced, had a little click at the end. “I actually came here . . . to this bar . . . to look for you. I know that you live near here.”

“Oh.”

“I’m glad you spotted me first. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to go up to you. I know how you must feel about me.”

“Then you know more than I do. I don’t exactly know how I feel about you.”

“I mean about what happened.” She hadn’t changed position since he’d come back into the bar, but one of her fingers gently tapped on the wooden bar to the percussive music.

“Right, that,” George said, as though he were searching in his memory banks for what she could be talking about.

“Right, that,” she repeated back, and they both laughed.

Liana shifted her body around to face George more squarely.

“Should I be worried?”

“Worried?”

“Citizen’s arrest? Drink thrown in my face?” She had developed tiny laugh lines at the edge of her pale blue eyes. Something new.

“The police are on their way right now. I’m just stalling you.”

George kept smiling, but it felt unnatural. “I’m kidding,” he said when Liana didn’t immediately speak.

“No, I know. Would you like to sit? You have time for a drink?”

“Actually . . . I’m meeting someone, in just a little bit.” The lie slid out of George easily. His head was suddenly muddled by her close presence, by the smell of her skin, and he had an almost animal urge to escape.

“Oh. That’s fine,” Liana quickly said. “But I do have something I need to ask you. It’s a favor.”

“Okay.”

“Can we meet somewhere? Maybe tomorrow.”

“Do you live here?”

“No, I’m just in town for . . . I’m visiting a friend, really. . . .It’s complicated. I would like to talk with you. I’d understand if you didn’t, of course. This was a long shot, and I understand.”

“Okay,” George said, telling himself he could change his mind later.

“Okay, yes, you’d like to talk?”

“Sure, let’s meet while you’re in town. I promise I won’t call the feds. I just want to know how you’re doing.”

“Thank you so much. I appreciate it.” She took a large breath through her nostrils, her chest expanding. George somehow heard the rustle of her crisp white shirt across her skin above the sounds of the jukebox.

“How did you know I lived here?”

“I looked you up. Online. It wasn’t that hard.”

“I don’t suppose you’re still called Liana?”

“Some people. Not many. Most people know me as Jane now.”

“Do you have a cell phone? Should I call you later?”

“I don’t have a cell phone. I never have. Could we meet here again? Tomorrow. At noon.” George noticed how her eyes subtly moved, searching his face, trying to read him. Or else she was looking for what was familiar and what had changed. George’s hair had turned gray at the sides, his forehead had wrinkled, and the lines around his mouth had deepened. But he was still in relatively good shape, still handsome in a slightly hangdog way.

“Sure,” George said. “We could meet here. They’re open for lunch.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m not sure, but I’m not unsure.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“Okay,” George said, again thinking that he could change his mind, that by agreeing he was only postponing a decision. Later George thought that there would have been times in his life when he simply would have told Liana that he didn’t think they should see each other. He had no need for justice, not even any real need for closure, and for that reason George didn’t believe he would have alerted the authorities. The mess that she’d gotten involved in was many years in the past. But it was bad enough that she must have been running ever since, and she would have to continue running the rest of her life. Of course she didn’t have a cell phone. And of course she wanted to meet somewhere public, a bar at an intersection in a busy part of Boston, somewhere she could take off from right away.

“Okay. I can come,” George said.

She smiled. “I’ll be here. Noon.”

“I’ll be here as well.

Author Bio:

Peter Swanson is the author of The Kind Worth Killing, and has degrees from Trinity College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Emerson College. He lives with his wife in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he is at work on his next novel.

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Mandy's Review:

As I was thinking about my review, I began contemplating clocks. What are the characteristics of a clock that pertain to the girl or, better yet, the girl's heart mentioned in the novel's title? Are there similarities that are easily noticeable?

George is a middle-aged man unhappy with his life. He thought that he'd be married with children by the time he reached his late 30s, early 40s. That hasn't happened. As I was reading, part of me wondered if George's situation is due to the fact that he's utterly boring. He goes to work at the same job day in and day out. He has an on-again off-again relationship with one of his co-workers. He takes no risks, has no social life. He's stuck in the past and doesn't seem to give any one woman a chance to get close enough because he's constantly comparing them to his remembrance of Liana.

Liana will do anything to get out of Florida. Anything. This chic is all about numero uno. She uses whomever she wants to get her way. I don't care for her and I could see her false personality from a mile away. How in the world George allowed himself to be suckered in time after time is beyond me. 

To answer the above questions, I've yet to figure out how Liana's heart is like a clock ... unless it's implying that she has no heart, in which case that would be true. I hate to say this since this review is part of a blog tour, but I don't like this novel. It left me frustrated. I know there are guys out there who want to believe the best in a girl they have a thing for, but eventually most dudes are like "F*** this. I'm out." They don't keep doing nonsensical, stupid favors that any normal person would be like, "You know what? You asking me to do this is throwing up a bunch of red flags. You can do it yourself. You made your bed, now lie in it." while throwing up a duece on their way out the door.

By all means, give this book a chance if you'd like to. Don't let my sole opinion determine whether or not you read this novel. You never know. You may like it.

*A physical copy was provided by the tour host for the purposes of this tour and in exchange for an honest review.

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{Blog Tour Review & Giveaway} ALL THE BUTTERFLIES IN THE WORLD by Rodney Jones

ASIN #: B00O87R33S

File Size: 628 KB

Page Count: 300

Copyright: October 28, 2014

Publisher: Red Adept Publishing, LLC

Book Description:

With her senior year looming, Tess McKinnon has two goals: hanging out with her best friend, Liz, and avoiding her judgmental, alcoholic mother. Then yummy John Bartley arrives—to tell Mrs. McKinnon that her daughter is dead. Distinctly still alive, Tess is baffled by John’s tales of 1800s time travel, rewritten lives, and love. She knows she’s never seen him before, but her feelings refuse to be denied.

When Tess and John discover an aged newspaper clipping that indicates John’s uncle was hanged for Tess’s murder in 1875, John decides to return to his time to save his uncle’s life. Not really sure she even believes in this time travel stuff, Tess checks the article after John leaves. The words have changed, and she is horrified to find that John has been hanged instead.

Armed with determination and modern ingenuity, Tess must abandon her past and risk her future for a chance to catch her own killer and find her first love for the second time.

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About the Author:

While a past resident of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Florida, New York, and Vermont, Rodney now resides in Indiana, where he whiles away his days pecking at a laptop, riding his ten-speed up the Cardinal Greenway, taking long walks with his daughter, or backpacking and wilderness camping.

His list of past occupations reads like his list of past residences, though his life-long ambition was to be an artist until he discovered a latent affinity for writing.

“In art,” Rodney says, “I was constantly being asked to explain images constructed from a palette of emotions and ideas, which usually required complex narratives to convey their meaning, if there even was a meaning. In writing, the words are creating the images, images are telling a story, the story is evoking feelings. I like it. There’s nothing to explain.”

Rodney’s interests include: art, science, politics, whiskey and chocolate, music (collecting vinyl records), gardening, and travel.

Mandy's Review:

Have you ever watched the movie 'The Butterfly Effect' with Ashton Kutcher? If you haven't, it was about a guy who could travel back in time to change something negative from his past. That proverbial drop of water emitted rings of change that rippled throughout time affecting the present Ashton returned to after his trip. Sometimes the changes were good, sometimes they were bad. All the Butterflies in the World references 'The Butterfly Effect' and it's a fairly safe comparison.

At the beginning, John's back in 2009 to tell Tess' mom that Tess died in 1875. What he finds, however, is that he has somehow traveled back in time to the very first encounter he ever had with Tess. As he stands there flabbergasted, he realizes Tess has no memories of their previous meeting and he has to win her heart all over again. During the process, they discover an old newspaper article stating John's uncle was hanged for Tess' death. Shocked by lies, John is determined to head back to 1875 to clear his uncle's name ... getting himself arrested for Tess' death in the process.

After John leaves, Tess realizes how she really feels about John. Liz picks up on her feelings and Tess confesses to the time travel aspect of Tess and John's relationship. Understandably unbelieving, Liz needs convincing. Tess takes her to the museum that has the newspaper article of John's uncle's hanging. Because of John's trip back to 1875, the newspaper article has changed to show that John was hung over Tess' death instead. Now determined to rescue John and his uncle, Tess makes a plan to travel back to 1875 ... with the intentions of never coming back to 2009.

All the Butterflies in the World could probably be read as a standalone novel, but I would really recommend reading the first novel, The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains, beforehand. It introduces a lot of the characters you'll read in this one and give you a better understanding of who they are and the time they live in.

I really, really enjoyed this novel. It did take me a few chapters to get into the groove of it, but that was probably because I have so much going on right now. What I love about this storyline is that Rodney leaves a twist at the end so you are left eagerly anticipating the next novel. Fortunately, I had All the Butterflies in the World when I finished the first one, so I didn't have to wait long. Not so with this one. I am now left wondering what's going to happen in book three. It almost seems like Tess and John's story is finished, but I don't think it is. I believe we'll see them again as supporting characters in the next novel. Who's going to take center stage? Well, now what kind of reviewer would I be if I told you everything that happened? I recommend you picking up The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains as well as All the Butterflies in the World to see for yourself. I think you'll enjoy them as much as I did.

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{Book/Author Spotlight} SEX, MURDER & KILLER CUPCAKES by Allison Janda

ISBN #: 978-1499583595

Page Count: 262

Copyright: May 21, 2014

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1st Edition

Book Description:

(Take from Amazon)

She may be a crime-scene photographer, but that doesn’t mean Marian Moyer is ready to star in her own murder mystery. Most days, she can’t even control her hair. But when the star of Marian’s racy, underground magazine turns up dead and the police are convinced she’s the guilty party, it’s up to Marian to find out who really did it before it’s too late. While danger isn’t exactly her middle name, there’s plenty to go around, especially when Marian begins to suspect that her long-time man crush is behind it all.

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Author Spotlight:

I was a pretty boring kid. I was also a fairly run-of the-mill teenager. I never snuck out to parties. School sporting events were beyond my understanding. I was constantly lost between the worlds of books and theater. In college I majored in Journalism, which would eventually seal my fate. I wouldn’t realize it for another seven years or so.

Like most people in their early 20s, I jacked around quite a bit. Job here. Relationship there. Surely the emergency credit card can be used to purchase shoes, right? I really need nude heels that I can wear twice and then forget about completely.

Somewhere in my late 20s I started having honest heart-to-heart conversations with people that I looked up to. I decided to make some huge changes. I quit my well-paying job and started my own business, Curly Q Media. It was not a smart business move but then, I’m not often praised for using the left side of my brain.

Somewhere in the middle of that mess, I got the idea in my head to write books. The thought had lingered in the back of my brain for a long time but, you know, 60,000+ words is a serious time commitment.

I started the blog 365 with a Twist. Basically, I took the typical 365 Project where you take one photo every day for a year and added a short story to it. This led me to write a short story with a couple of characters I loved like they were family. I began to wonder what they did outside of that racy short. I began to lose interest in the remaining several months of my project.

So was born my first novel. I wrote it in 32 days. The fact that I wanted to enter it into a first time writer’s competition with a deadline only 33 days away helped significantly. When it was submitted, I was so giddy with pleasure at my accomplishment that I started writing a follow-up. I celebrated the one-year anniversary of my now successful business just two months later.

That’s pretty much the story, for now. I still consider myself pretty boring. The only flavoring I use in lattes is vanilla. The only movies I’m willing to watch are those with happy endings. I won’t purchase less, I’ll simply find a way to make more. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, especially those holiday-themed ones with all the extra peanut butter, are my downfall.

{Book Blast} The Jones Men: 40th Anniversary Edition by Vern E. Smith

The Jones Men: 40th Anniversary Edition

by Vern E. Smith

Book Details:

Genre: Crime

Published by: Rosarium Publishing

Publication Date: May 2014

Number of Pages: 264

ISBN: 978-0989141185

Purchase Links: 

Synopsis:

DETROIT, 1974

To become the King, you have to take the crown. It won't be given up lightly. Heroin kingpin, Willis McDaniel, has been wearing that particular piece of jewelry for far too long, and youngblood, Lennie Jack, thinks it would look really good on his head. When a junkie tells Jack about a big delivery, the young Vietnam vet makes his move. Feeling his empire crumble, McDaniel puts the word out to find whoever's responsible. The hunt is on, the battle is engaged, and the streets of Detroit run red with blood.
In 1974 Vern E. Smith took the crime fiction world by storm with his debut novel, The Jones Men. Heralded as "a large accomplishment in the art of fiction" by the New York Times, The Jones Men went on to be nominated for an Edgar Award and became a New York Times Notable Book. The art of crime fiction has never been the same since.

Read an excerpt:

For Bennie Lee Sims’ wake, Lennie Jack chose the sky-blue Fleetwood with the chromed-up bumpers and the bar-line running from the trunk to the dash, dispensing six different liquors with chaser.

Joe Red brought the car to a halt in front of Fraser’s Funeral Parlor on Madison Boulevard. He backed it in between a red El Dorado with a diamond-shaped rear window and a pink Lincoln with a leopard-skin roof.

Lennie Jack wore a medium-length Afro and had thick wide sideburns that grew neatly into the ends of a bushy moustache drooping over his top lip. He got out of the passenger seat in a manner that favored his left shoulder. He had on a cream-colored suede coat that stopped just below the knee, and a .38 in his waistband.

Joe Red was shorter and thinner and younger than Lennie Jack. He got his nickname for an extremely light complexion and a thick curly bush of reddish brown hair; it spilled from under the wide-brimmed black hat cocked low over his right ear. He had on the black leather midi with the red-stitched cape; he had a .45 automatic in his waistband.

They came briskly down the sidewalk and went up the six concrete steps to the entrance of Fraser’s.
An attendant in a somber gray suit and dark tie greeted them at the door.

“We’re here for Bennie Sims,” Joe Red said.

“Come this way,” the attendant said.

He guided them down a narrow hallway past a knot of elderly black women waiting to file into one of the viewing rooms flanking the hall on either side. The hallway reeked of death; the women wept.
They passed three more doors before the attendant led them left at the end of the hall and down a short flight of stairs. A single 60-watt bulb illuminated the lower level. The attendant went past the row of ebony- and silver-colored caskets stacked near the staircase and stopped at a door in the back of the room.

“They’re in there,” he said. He turned and headed back up the stairs. Lennie Jack rapped softly at the door. They stood a few feet back from the doorway to be recognizable in the dim light.

The door cracked.

“This Bennie Lee?” Lennie Jack said.

“Yeah, this it,” said a voice behind the crack.

A man with wavy black hair in a white mink jacket and red knicker boots let them in. He relocked the door.

The room smelled of cigarette smoke. A row of silver metal chairs had been stacked in a neat line on one side, but most of the people come to pay their respects were scattered in the back in tight little clusters, talking and laughing.

At the front of the long room, near a small table of champagne bottles, Bennie Lee Sims’ tuxedo-dad body lay in a silver-colored coffin with a bright satin lining.

His face was dusty with a fine white powder.

Lennie Jack walked over to the coffin. He dipped his fingers in the silver tray of cocaine on top and sprinkled it over Bennie Lee.

Joe Red stepped up behind him and tried to find a spot that wasn’t covered. He finally decided on the lips and scattered a handful of the fine white crystalline powder around Bennie Lee’s mouth and chin.
They moved through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting people. Almost everybody had come to see Bennie Lee off.

The Ware brothers were there: Willie, the oldest at twenty-four; Simmy, who was twenty; and June, who often swaggered as if he were the elder of the clan but still had the baby-smooth face and look of wide- eyed adolescence. He was seventeen.

Pretty Boy Sam was standing in one corner with his right foot resting on one of the metal chairs. He had smooth brown skin and almost girlish features, topped off by a pointed Van Dyke beard. His good looks masked a violent temper.

Pretty Boy Sam had worn his full-length brown mink and brought his woman to pay his respects to Bennie Lee Sims, who had two neat bullet holes right between the eyes and underneath all the cocaine on his face.

Slim Williams was there with his woman. He was a tall, thin dark-skinned man whose left eye had been destroyed by an errant shotgun blast. He now wore a variety of gaily colored eye patches the way he had heard Sammy Davis did when he lost his eye. He had on a patch of bright green and red plaid and stood conversing on one side of the room with Hooker, Woody Woods, and Mack Lee.
Willis McDaniel was not there, but then, he never came. He had probably never considered it, but it was a source of irritation to the others.

Joe Red said, “Hey Jack, he the man. He don’t hafta come see nobody off if he don’t wanta come. Ain’t none of these people thinkin’ bout makin’ him come. Who gon make him come?”

“Why he can’t come like the rest of the people?” Lennie Jack said. “Has anybody ever thought of that, you reckon? He too big now to bring his ass out here to see a dude off? He probably had him ripped anyway. I don’t understand how these chumps let an old man like that just get in there and rule.”

“Now we both know how he got it,” Joe Red said. “He took it. He say, ‘Look, I’m gon be the man on this side of town cause I got my thing together and I got plenty big shit behind me. Now what you motherfuckers say?’ Everybody say, ‘You the man, Mister McDaniel.’ That’s the way he did it.”

“That is the way to take it from him, too.” Lennie Jack said. “We gon get lucky pretty soon. I think he can be had and I know just the way to do it. I got some people working on it. The first thing they teach you in the war is to fight fire with fire, you know?”

He took the tiny gold spoon on the chain around his neck and scooped a pinch of cocaine off the tray Joe Red handed him. He brought the spoon up to his right nostril and sniffed deeply.

The crowd was beginning to drift to the corner of the room where Slim Williams was holding court. Slim was thirty-seven, and much older than most of his audience. Lennie Jack was twenty-six, and Joe Red had just turned twenty-one three days ago.

Slim Williams had diamond rings on three fingers of his left hand, and he was waving them around in a dazzling display and talking about Joe the Grind.

“Joe used to walk into a bar with his dudes with him–he always carried these two dudes with him everywhere he went. He’d walk into a place fulla people and say, ‘I’m Joe the Grind, set up the bar! All pimps and players step up to the bar and bring your whores with you.’”

Slim Williams chuckled. “Then Joe would talk about ‘em. He used to say, ‘You ain’t no pimp, nigger. What you doin’ up here? I ain’t buying no drinks for you. Sit down!’”

Slim Williams laughed; so did everybody else.

“Joe used to rayfield a chump bag dude too,” Slim Williams said. “He used to tell ‘em ‘Just cause you got eight or nine hundred dollars worth of business don’t mean you somebody.’ Then Joe would throw a roll down that’d choke a Goddamn mule and tell the chump: ‘Looka here boy, I just had my man sell forty-two thousand dollars worth of heh-rawn, and I got twenty more joints to hear from fore midnight. Gon sit down somewhere, you don’t belong up here with no big dope men.”

They laughed again and somebody passed the coke tray.

June Ware took his pinch and squared his toes in the eighty-dollar calfskin boots from Australia, via Perrin’s Men’s Shoppe on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

“What happened to Joe, Slim?” June Ware said.

“Oh, somebody shot ‘im in the head in an after-hours joint,” Slim Williams said. “And lemme tell you, youall shoulda been there to see Joe’s wake. It put this thing to shame. Compared to Joe’s, this thing ain’t nothing. This light-weight. They say there was coke in the block wrapped in foil and pure heh-rawn set out on silver trays with diamonds in the sides.

“So they partied all night till twelve the next day, then they all went to Joe’s funeral. After the funeral was over, everybody got on the plane with his woman and went to Jamaica for two days.”

“Say what?” June Ware said.

“Yeah, that’s the truth,” Slim Williams said. “And you shoulda seen that funeral too. They say a broad came over from Chicago in a white-on-white El Dorado, and she was dressed in all white with a bad-ass mink round her shoulders. Then when she came out of the hotel the next day for Joe’s funeral, they say she was in all black. She went to the graveyard and threw one hundred roses on Joe. Then she got in her ride and split. Don’t nobody know who she was. When they had Joe’s funeral march, there was one hundred fifty big pieces lined up for blocks down Madison Boulevard. They pulled a brand new Brough-ham behind the hearse, and when the march was over they took the car out to the trash yard and crushed it.”

“Goddamn Slim!” June Ware said.

Mack Lee, who was twenty-two years old and decked out from the top of his big apple hat to the tip of his leather platforms in bright lavender, came their way with his woman on his arm.

The woman looked about nineteen; she wore diamond-studded earrings and a matching bracelet. She carried a tray of glasses and an unopened bottle of champagne.

“We oughta drink a toast to Bennie Lee,” Mack Lee said, “and ask the Lord how come he made him so stupid.”

The laughter rippled through the room; Mack Lee popped the cork in the champagne bottle and poured the rounds.

Trailor:

Author Bio:

A native of Natchez, Miss., Smith is a graduate of San Francisco State University, and the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He began his journalism career as a reporter for the Long Beach, Calif. Independent Press-Telegram.

From 1979 until 2002, Smith served as the Atlanta Bureau Chief and as a national correspondent for Newsweek.

Vern Smith's work as a journalist, author and screenwriter spans four decades.

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{Book/Author Spotlight} THE FOREVER SAGA: FLASH by Sean C. Sousa

ASIN #: B0099B2UBS

File Size: 3594 KB

Page Count: 334

Copyright: July 8, 2014

Publisher: Epical Media; 2nd Edition

Book Description:

(As provided by the author)

Long ago, the first reign of Grigori Geist nearly destroyed the Earth.

Returned from exile, Geist is secretly rebuilding his kingdom beneath Antarctica, and assembling his robotic Vaucan race to conquer mankind. Only one obstacle remains: the war hero Brian Renney.

Yet Brian is now losing a battle against his fears. Scars of heart and mind linger in the Vietnam veteran and retired coach, fueling nightmares that leave him abrasive as a husband and father. His failures embitter his youngest son, Jason – a star athlete torn between pursuing the woman he loves, and meeting the demands of a father who is far from the storied Army captain he once was.

And all the while, Geist is coming for them.

Against an ancient tyrant and his servants, Brian and Jason must face a threat that plagues the world from deep shadows…and gain an ally who, once meant for evil, will forever be a force for good.


A 5-chapter sample and further info can be found at the official website: www.theforeversaga.com

About the Author:

Sean C. Sousa first envisioned The Forever Saga as a video game design concept, then a screenplay, and finally a written work of fiction. His debut novel, Flash, marks the end of an eight-year writing journey, and the start of another: to bring his relatable, poignant stories to a worldwide audience.

His dream is to use fiction to inspire positive social change in the world, calling attention to issues of social justice and mobilizing his readership to meet the needs of those afflicted.

Mr. Sousa resides in Southern California with his wife, Shelley. When he is not writing, he is up to socially-acceptable mischief with his friends and family.

Author Bio: Koethi Zan, Author of THE NEVER LIST

To hear the Spotify playlist that inspired Koethi, click here.

When Koethi Zan was born in the sleepy farming town of Opp, Alabama, the "City of Opportunity," her mother was Valedictorian of the local public high school and her father the star of its football team. Her parents named her after the homecoming queen of Lurleen B. Wallace Junior College, perhaps hopeful that some of that glory would rub off on her. But Koethi would never be a homecoming queen. In fact, she spent most of her youth in her room, reading, listening to Morrissey, and avoiding everything connected to high school football - not an easy task in those parts.

After graduation, Koethi put herself through Birmingham-Southern College with scholarships and a small "cow fund" courtesy of Molly, the Charolais heifer she received as her third birthday present. She used the money wisely, travelling to New Orleans on the weekends to hit the club scene, almost always in silver-sequined costume, surrounded by transvestites, Goth kids and her gay male entourage. Perhaps, in some roundabout way, she had fulfilled her homecoming queen destiny after all.

Then, in what may have been a misguided fit of pique, Koethi threw away her all-black daywear and her thrift-store evening gowns, and went to Yale Law School, with some vague idea of becoming a film producer. Afterwards, however, she unexpectedly found herself twenty-eight stories up in the Manhattan offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell, a prestigious white shoe law firm that represented mostly investment banks. She regularly pulled all-nighters working on secured financings and revolving credit facilities. She tended to wear demure black pantsuits, with her hair up.

It didn't take her long to realize corporate life wasn't for her, and Koethi spent the next fifteen years practicing entertainment law both in private practice (at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison and, later, Schreck Rose & Dapello) and in-house business and legal affairs positions (for the film producer, Ed Pressman, and, most recently, at MTV), with a slight detour along the way to study cinema at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

As an entertainment lawyer, Koethi attended glamorous premieres and openings, international film festivals and celebrity-filled parties. She dealt with gritty production issues as varied as suicide threats, drug overdoses and sex-tape allegations. She warred with Hollywood agents and befriended reality stars.

Then, while Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel at MTV, she decided to fulfill a lifelong dream on the side, and in the early mornings she wrote a crime novel, The Never List.

Now, coming full circle in a way, Koethi, her husband, Stephen Metcalf, and their two daughters, live in an old farmhouse in a rural community in upstate New York. Her husband occasionally watches a football game on television. But her daughters have never even heard of homecoming queens.