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Burned by Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett
By Nancy Bilyeau After a 2003 newspaper column on nuclear weapons in Iraq disclosed that she was a CIA operations officer, Valerie Plame was “burned”—finished with the CIA. The international controversy that ensued led to hearings, lawsuits, even arrests. Plame wrote a memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which was the basis for a film starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. And then Plame turned to fiction. Her first thriller, Blowback, introduced a female covert CIA ops officer named Vanessa Pierson, on the trail of the world’s most dangerous nuclear arms dealer. In Plame’s second thriller, the recently published BURNED, Pierson’s mission takes some even more frightening turns. It’s a story of high stakes—the novel opens with a more »
Stay Dead by Anne Frasier
New York Times bestselling author Anne Frasier takes readers back to her dark, enchanting Savannah—a place as terrifying as it is mesmerizing. Homicide detective Elise Sandburg is traumatized after her run-in with a madman the press has dubbed “The Organ Thief.” As Elise takes refuge in her deceased aunt Anastasia’s abandoned plantation to investigate and recover from her ordeal, she begins to question everything—from her dangerous line of work to her complex relationship with her handsome, tortured partner, David Gould. But with a madman on the loose, and her mother’s claims to still hear from Aunt Anastasia, she may have more immediate problems on her hands. In Elise’s world, where cold hard crime mixes with the local Gullah culture, nothing is ever what it seems, more »
Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd
In the latest mystery from New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd, Inspector Ian Rutledge is summoned to the quiet, isolated Fen country to solve a series of seemingly unconnected murders before the killer strikes again August 1920. A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a guest is shot just as the bride arrives. Two weeks later, after a fruitless search for clues, the local police are forced to call in Scotland Yard. But not before there is another shooting in a village close by. This second murder has a witness; the only problem is that her description of the killer is so horrific it’s unbelievable. Badgered by the police, she quickly recants her story.
Crimes of Memory by L.J. Sellers
L.J. Sellers writes the bestselling Detective Jackson mystery series—a two-time Readers Favorite Award winner—as well as provocative standalone thrillers. Her novels have been highly praised by reviewers, and her Jackson books are the highest-rated crime fiction on Amazon. L.J. resides in Eugene, Oregon where her novels are set and is an award-winning journalist who earned the Grand Neal. When not plotting murders, she enjoys standup comedy, cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. She’s also been known to jump out of airplanes. In CRIMES OF MEMORY, the eighth in her Detective Jackson series, Jackson returns to the Eugene, Oregon Police Department after a leave of absence resulting from a personal tragedy. He’s immediately assigned to investigate the homicide of a man who lived more »
Blurb for top spot – do not publish
The September edition of The Big Thrill is here! 38 new thrillers from ITW Members this month including debut novels from Barry Lancet, Carla Norton, Mary Miley, Geoffrey Girard, Misty Dietz and S.L. Menear, plus Special to the Big Thrill: Up Close and Personal with Allison Brennan and Laura Griffin, a Between the Lines interview with William Kent Krueger by Julie Kramer, and News From South Africa by Joanne Hichens! CLICK HERE to read more!
Lies in Wait by Donna Del Oro
Writing this prescient story last year (I wrote LIES IN WAIT before the recent and tragic Boston Marathon bombings) was a challenge. I read scores of books and articles about Islam, Muslims in America, the Qur’an, the history of Islam and the FBI’s undercover and intelligence strategies in counter-terrorism. What I discovered was both enlightening and deeply disturbing. I read declassified reports by the CIA on what law enforcements agencies can expect will happen when the Muslim population in an American city reaches 1%, 2 %, 3-5%. When the population reaches the 3-5% range, the Muslim community begins to petition for Sharia Law zones, like the ones that currently exist in the Netherlands. Denmark and France are approaching that percentage and their laws are facing more »
The Homecoming by Carsten Stroud
By Carsten Stroud Four years ago, southbound on Interstate 75, a hundred miles out of Chattanooga and on our way to Savannah,my wife Linda and I saw a Lexus SUV in the ditch on the far side of the northbound lanes, a couple of dazed people standing around beside it. One of them, a puffy older guy in one of those awful canvas boonie hats,was on a cell phone. There was no blue-and-grey Georgia State Patrol car at the scene: it was just another roadside enigma. Linda and I drove off, but a half-mile down the road, we saw another badly-damaged car in the ditch, and another guy on a cell. Once is incident, twice is coincidence: but again we drove away. And then, five more »
Special to the Big Thrill: Thriller Award Nominees by John Raab
By John Raab And the nominee’s are……. And the winner is….well, you are going to have to wait for ThrillerFest NYC 2013 to get this answer. The Big Thrill newsletter would like to introduce you to some of the nominees in each category. Some of the nominees were too busy writing their next novel, but we have a great lineup and a couple of questions for them to answer. When you put together an award ceremony with so many great authors, there are always some that just missed this list. The process is a long involved one and a lot of reading to determine the nominees. It all starts at the top and that would include two very important people, Carla Buckley, ITW Board of more »
Special to the Big Thrill: Law & Disorder by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker
By Mark Olshaker THE PERFECT CHARACTER Though I didn’t know it at the time, I’d been looking for John Douglas my entire professional life. I made my living as a documentary film writer-producer and happened into the thriller genre almost by accident. I saw a small article in the newspaper noting that when Albert Einstein died in 1955, his brain had been removed from his skull for scientific study, but after more than two decades, nothing substantial about the physical nature of genius had been revealed. Yeah, that’s a good cover story, I thought, but what did they really do with the brain? Out of that idle thought came my first novel, EINSTEIN’S BRAIN, for which I was fortunate enough to garner reviews and sales more »
ThrillerFest VI – by Ian Walkley
THRILLERFEST 2011 In July, I attended the International Thriller Writers’ annual ThrillerFest in New York. This was my second year attending and it was great to be reacquainted with some friends from last year as well as breathing the same air as the likes of Ken Follett, Robert Crais, Gayle Lynds, David Morrell, Karin Slaughter and many other famous thriller authors. Writers tend not to have the egos of actors, and their bodyguards are unarmed publicists, so even the most hallowed writer would generally be open for a chat, or at least willing to spare a moment for a kind word of encouragement to a fellow writer, even one as yet unpublished. And hearing other writers talk about how they approach writing, particularly how they more »
