New releases 4/8: Four backlist Regency romances plus a baseball classic

It's a good week for all you baseball fans! The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is now available in ebook edition. 

Widely considered to be one of the greatest minds in the history of the game, Bill James has changed the way we think about the sport of baseball.  In this chronicle of field generals, strategists, and occasional cannon fodder, James writes with piercing insight about the men who hold what may be the most important spot in the dugout. The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.

And for all your romance readers, we're releasing four Regency romances from author Mona Prevel, for the first time in ebook edition! Read these delightful romps that RT Book Reviews dubbed "clever tales[s] with plenty of sparkling wit." 

Freebie-Friday: THE MOMENT BEFORE by Suzy Vitello

Happy Freebie-Friday! Today's freebie is for all of you YA lovers! For today only, you can add Suzy Vitello's The Moment Before to your #readmore2014 list for free!

"Don't get me wrong. I loved my sister. I never, not once, wished her dead."

Brady and Sabine Wilson are sisters born eleven months apart, but they couldn't be more different. Popular Sabine, the head cheerleader dating the high school hunk, seems to have all the luck, while her younger, artsy sister "Brady Brooder" is a loner who prefers the sidelines to the limelight.

After Sabine dies in a horrific cheerleading accident, grief unravels Brady and her family. Once recognized for her artistic talent, 17-year-old Brady finds herself questioning the value of everything she once held dear. Her best friend betrays her. Her parents' marriage is crumbling. And the boy everyone blames for the accident seems to be her only ally in the search for answers in the wake of her sister's death. As an unlikely friendship emerges, Brady learns more about Sabine - and love - than she bargained for.

Available for free on Amazon, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

If you love The Moment Before, then you'll be thrilled to hear this exciting news from Suzy. Here's what she had to say about the future of The Moment Before:

As a mom, I’m used to shepherding loved ones through various milestones. First words, first crush, first job. Like so many things, parenthood is a dynamic continuum.

I have a similar relationship with my characters.

From the moment I heard Brady’s voice in my head, I realized she was a character I wanted around for a while. When I finished writing The Moment Before, I knew I’d follow Brady and Connor into adulthood. Perhaps like some of my readers, I wanted to know what happened with them. Would they become a couple? Would their relationship grow into something more than shared love for Sabine?

Well, curiosity got the better of me, and I’m thick into the next Brady and Connor book, but it doesn’t pick up right where Moment left off. In fact, it’s four years later. As in: Brady and Connor are no longer teens.

You may have heard of this category called New Adult? Maybe that’s where this new book will slot. There’s romance (a messy love triangle, in fact); there’s the concerns of newly independent adults – career versus college, where to live, who to love; and most importantly for my characters, that tension between the past and future.

I’m excited to age my characters into their twenties for this next book because, at least where I live, there are so many options for a person coming into adulthood. Creative options. Not just career-wise, but living situations, partnerships, ways to explore who you are. And yet, certain things remain the same: jealousy, insecurities, desire for love.

These past years I’ve watched my kids (four of them, in my blended family) navigate the twenties and our times, and it amazes me the blend of traditional and non-traditional routes they’ve taken. I am exploring those life decisions with Brady and Connor, while they continue to flirt with their romantic feelings for each other. Right from the get-go, there’s another woman in Connor’s life, and fueling the conflict is the latest predicament Brady finds herself in. Intrigued? Good!

As they did in Moment, Brady and Connor will take risks, make mistakes, and find themselves in a particular type of danger. Plus, there’s an orchard, lots of dogs, and a glimpse of today’s “wild west.”

But back to The Moment Before. Because it is spring, and that is the season in which Moment takes place, I’m running a little giveaway this month. This has been such a hard winter for so many; blossoms on the trees are more than ever a welcome sight. I invite you all to capture the moment of the spirit of April. Send me photos or sketches or some other interpretation of blossoms this month, and I’ll post them here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/momentbeforeblossoms. I’ll choose a winner on May 1^st, and that person will get a $25 gift certificate for art supplies. (You can also post your blossom art to my twitter-feed calling out @suzy_vitello and #blossommoment).

Follow Suzy on Wattpad!

New release 4/1: take me out to the ball game!

Sportswriter Mike Shropshire brings to life 1970's major league baseball in Seasons in Hell, out today in eBook edition!

You think your team is bad?  In this landmark work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity.

In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. 

Download your copy of Seasons in Hell on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore. 



Also available today exclusively on Uni Watch for a limited time: The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is now available as an eBook, specially priced at $2.99.

The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers is a thought-provoking, entertaining, and seminal guide to a vital part of the national pastime, written by one of its most groundbreaking iconoclasts.

Newsweek once called him "The guru of baseball," and Bill James, for nearly forty years, has led the vanguard of how we measure the game.  From Sabermetrics to his Baseball Abstracts, James has influenced even the casual fan all the way up to the top brass. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, however, is the manager, and Bill James has penned a guide on some of the most innovative and renowned men to ever hold that position. 

Some of the game's greatest managers have been Hall-of-Fame players who put down a bat and picked up a lineup card: Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Joe Cronin, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby.  Others have achieved greatness from their ability to assemble legendary teams: Billy Martin, Tommy Lasorda, Connie Mack, Joe McCarthy, Dick Williams, Leo Durocher.  Here, Bill James explores the history of the manager, and its evolution from 1870-1990, in a decade-by-decade chronicle, examining the successes, the failures, and what baseball fans can learn from both.  

YA authors Elisa Freilich & C.J. Abedi are on Wattpad!

Two more YA authors from Diversion have joined the Wattpad community! If you're a lover of YA, add C.J Abedi's Fae and Elisa Freilich's vignettes from her novel Silent Echo: A Siren's Tale to your #readmore2014 lists. You can find excerpts from both of these dazzling YA's on WattPad!

Caroline Ellis' sixteenth birthday sets into motion a series of events that have been fated for centuries. A descendant of Virginia Dare, the first child born in the lost colony of Roanoke, and unaware of her birthright as the heir to the throne of the Light Fae, it isn’t until Caroline begins a tumultuous relationship with Devilyn Reilly that the truth of her heritage is revealed.  

Devilyn is the only Fae who is both of the Light and of the Dark, and struggles to maintain that precarious balance to avoid succumbing to the power of the Dark within him.  He is the only one who can save Caroline from those who would destroy her and destroy all hope for unity among the Fae. He promises Caroline that he will protect her at all costs, even when it means protecting her from himself. 

Told from the alternating perspectives of Caroline and Devilyn, FAE draws on mysteries, myths and legends to create a world, and a romance, dangerously poised between Light and Dark. 

Available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and the iBookstore.

After you check out Fae on Wattpad, pre-order the sequel, The Dark King, coming May 6, 2014

Devilyn Reilly has crossed over to the sinister world of The Dark Fae, reigning over the realm as its King.  He is to fulfill a prophecy--to unite the Light and Dark Fae once and for all, but those who love him now fear that he will never be the same again, that he can no longer be trusted, that every trace of the Light he once had is gone forever.  

Caroline Ellis, the final heir of the Light Fae, must learn to survive without the protection of her one true love.  She must come to embrace her own strength to evade those in the Dark court who seek her destruction—for the power is within Caroline to use Light to change Fate itself...

Caroline and Devilyn’s chemistry is undeniable. Their destiny together inevitable if only they have the will to overcome The Darkness and The Fates.

Pre-order your copy from Amazon, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

Haunted by silence, a mute teenage girl is mysteriously given back her voice ... and it is divine.

Rendered mute at birth, Portia Griffin has been silent for 16 years. Music is her constant companion, along with Felix, her deaf best friend who couldn’t care less whether or not she can speak. If only he were as nonchalant about her newfound interest in the musically gifted Max Hunter.

But Portia’s silence is about to be broken with the abrupt discovery of her voice, unparalleled in its purity and the power it affords to control those around her. Able to persuade, seduce and destroy using only her voice, Portia embarks on a search for answers about who she really is, and what she is destined to become.

Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, Silent Echo: A Siren's Tale is an epic story filled with fantasy, romance and original music. 

Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

New release 3/25: A historical mystery, available in eBook and print edition!

Marshall Goldberg releases his debut novel The New Colossus, a historical mystery set in 1880 New York, amidst greed, corruption, and murder.

Nellie Bly arrives at age 24 in Manhattan, lacking connections and money, but blessed with an abundance of courage and a skill for reportage. Within ten months she lands two front-page stories on the country’s most widely-read newspaper, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. 

The pugnacious and voluble Pulitzer is so impressed that he assigns her to get to the bottom of a murder that has confounded the police—the untimely death of his friend Emma Lazarus, the controversial poet and activist. Her investigation leads to tense encounters with some of the most powerful and ruthless men of the time, in an era where elected officials are bought and sold, and where greed runs rampant on an unregulated Wall Street. Outgunned and ignoring her contemptuous all-male colleagues, Bly has only two real allies: a doctor who uses scientific techniques to establish criminal behavior, and a theater critic with unlimited access to underground New York. As the pieces fall into place Bly uncovers layer after layer of corruption, getting closer to a dangerous core—and to the truth.

Download your copy of The New Colossus today on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore.

Also available today: Seasons in Hell by Mike Shropshire. Get your specially priced copy EXCLUSIVELY from Uni Watch!


You think your team is bad?  In this landmark work on one of the most tortured franchises in baseball, one reporter discovers that nine innings can feel like an eternity.

In early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire agreed to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, not realizing that the Rangers were arguably the worst team in baseball history. Seasons in Hell is a riotous, candid, irreverent behind-the-scenes account in the tradition of The Bronx Zoo and Ball Four, following the Texas Rangers from Whitey Herzog’s reign in 1973 through Billy Martin’s tumultuous tenure. Offering wonderful perspectives on dozens of unique (and likely never-to-be-seen-again) baseball personalities, Seasons in Hell recounts some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game and brings to life the no-holds-barred culture of major league baseball in the mid-seventies. 



And this week, we also have something for your chick-lit lovers! Bulk up your #readmore2014 lists with Eileen Palma's hilarious debut novel, Worth the Weight, now available for pre-order.

How much weight is too much for one romance to bear?

When Kate Richards, the effervescent host of television's KidFit and the author of kid-friendly diet cookbooks, runs into Jack Moskowitz at a dog park, sparks fly. He's attractive, charming, and single. She has no idea that he's also the one man who could cost Kate her career--the CEO of Considerable Carriages, a company that profits from childhood obesity. 

Jack knows exactly who Kate is, though. She tore his company apart on television only the day before! Seeing an opportunity, Jack starts digging up dirt on his nemesis, to put her crusade on ice once and for all. But the more time the two spend together, the more his lie—and his feelings for Kate—spiral out of control. 

When Jack and Kate try to tip the scales of romance it brings chaos, heartbreak and hilarity and more than a few laps around love’s track. 

Pre-order your copy on Amazon, Kobo, or the iBookstore!

YA authors Katie Davis & Suzy Vitello are on WattPad!

Authors Katie Davis and Suzy Vitello are now on WattPad! If you're a lover of YA, add Katie's Dancing With the Devil and Suzy's The Moment Before to your #readmore2014 lists. You can find excerpts from both of these dazzling YA's on WattPad!

Dancing With the Devil

 To move on from her past, an extraordinary girl must tear down the walls she has built to protect herself.

Mackenzie Douglas seems to have it all: good looks, a great boyfriend, a passion for biking, and a little sister who worships her. But under the veneer of perfection lie the emotional scars of her childhood, inflicted by her father. Though her memories have faded with time, the wounds on Mac’s subconscious remain.

Having vowed to never be a victim again, Mac focuses on a journey she’s always wanted to take: a summer bike trip on her amazing new RoadCap bike. But as the excursion finally gets underway, memories Mac long ago buried start to claw their way back to the surface, forcing her to confront a past she has done everything she can to forget.

To prevent her sister from enduring the same trauma, Mac must let go of everything in which she’s found refuge. To break a cycle that needs to be broken, Mackenzie summons her strength and risks shattering the world she has so carefully built, exposing hidden secrets, long-told lies, and a horrific crime.

Pre-order your copy of Dancing With the Devil today on Amazon and Kobo.

The Moment Before

“Don’t get me wrong. I loved my sister. I never, not once, wished her dead.”

Brady and Sabine Wilson are sisters born eleven months apart, but they couldn’t be more different. Popular Sabine, the head cheerleader dating the high school hunk, seems to have all the luck, while her younger, artsy sister "Brady Brooder" is a loner who prefers the sidelines to the limelight.

After Sabine dies in a horrific cheerleading accident, grief unravels Brady and her family. Once recognized for her artistic talent, 17-year-old Brady finds herself questioning the value of everything she once held dear. Her best friend betrays her. Her parents’ marriage is crumbling. And the boy everyone blames for the accident seems to be her only ally in the search for answers in the wake of her sister’s death. As an unlikely friendship emerges, Brady learns more about Sabine—and love—than she bargained for.

Get your copy of The Moment Before on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

New releases 3/18: Four backlist mysteries and a hilarious coming-of-age

Anthony Bruno, author of the Bad series, is back with five more backlist titles, all available in eBook edition, to add to your #readmore2014 lists!

Devil's Food: A Loretta Kovacs Novel (Book 1)

“Bruno’s characters are more than just quirky dressing for the plot… it moves fast and furious, but along the way his characters’ struggles with their own doubts and failings anchor the reader to them.” – The Nashville Banner

In Devil’s Food, the first book in the Loretta Kovacs thriller series, it’s make-it-or-break-it time for zaftig Loretta when she’s assigned to the ragtag Parole Violators Search Unit, a.k.a. the Jump Squad. All her buttons are pushed when she goes undercover as a desperate dieter at a Florida fat farm in order to nab an embezzler who’s a perfect size 2.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, & the iBookstore.

Double Espresso: A Loretta Kovacs Novel (Book 2)

“A cast of kooky, dangerous characters worthy of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiassen… A funny, often harrowing crime novel.” —Booklist

In Double Espresso, the second book in the Loretta Kovacs thriller series, Loretta races to keep one hitman from killing another. The intended victim is a valuable government witness against the mob, and a dirty FBI agent is helping the bad guys. Loretta must fend off the advances of an amorous mob boss while babysitting the cantankerous witness in Seattle—Java City—as she desperately struggles to kick her caffeine habit.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, & the iBookstore.

Hot Fudge: A Loretta Kovacs Novel (Book 3)

“A divertingly comic entertainment with a bittersweet bite… Fine escapist fare from a pro.” —Kirkus Reviews

In Hot Fudge, the third book in the Loretta Kovacs thriller series, parole officer Loretta falls for her partner, Frank Marvelli. A sexy fellow parole officer “borrows” Marvelli for an assignment in San Francisco, and jealous Loretta tails them. Marvelli is kidnapped, and the women team up to find him and nab the fugitive in question, a successful ice-cream entrepreneur. Loretta encounters a cast of kinky characters and stumbles onto the sinful secret ingredient that has made Elmer Fudge Whirl impossible to resist.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, & the iBookstore.

Bleeders

FBI profiler Trisha McCleery has been on a twenty-year personal search for the person who brutally murdered her mother. At the same time serial killer Gene Lassiter has been on an obsessive twenty-year search for the daughter of his first kill. If she finds him, justice can at last be served. If he finds her, one man’s reign of terror can continue unabated. In a stunning life-or-death final act, the hunter and the hunted go head-to-head, with a shocking ending that bleeds justice dry.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, & the iBookstore.

The Temptations of St. Frank

In this hilarious and biting coming-of-age novel, seventeen-year-old Frank Grimaldi wants one thing more than anything else—to have sex before he graduates. Too bad his crazy teachers, insane parents, the Catholic Church, and the Mafia are all standing in the way.

Imagine Catch-22’s Captain Yossarian in high school. Imagine Prep written by a guy. Imagine the narrator of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus as a Catholic. Imagine J.P. Donleavy’s The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. set in New Jersey in 1970. Imagine The Temptations of St. Frank.  

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, & the iBookstore.

Freebie-Friday: featuring Martin J. Smith

Happy Freebie-Friday! This week's freebie is Martin J. Smith's newest thriller The Disappeared Girl from his captivating Jim Christensen series. Today only, you can download The Disappeared Girl for FREE from Amazon and the iBookstore.

Two men stand out in a crowd overlooking the Ohio River. A plane is being taken from the water where it crashed decades before. Both men helped put it there. 

Jim Christensen’s daughter, Melissa, has been troubled of late. She has dreams that feel like memories, unsettling images percolate to the surface. She remembers a terrifying past, possibly her own, from a time before she was adopted by her father. Christensen’s work as an expert in memory makes him the ideal person to help unlock his daughter’s fragile grasp on her own history. But will he want to learn the truth of where Melissa came from? Who she was before? Who might still be looking for her?

This dizzying novel of suspense takes the reader back into a dirty war and its human costs, into the fevered mind of one of its survivors, and through the crosshairs of a man desperate to keep his own history vanished.

Martin also stopped by the blog this week to talk about his own experiences with adoption and how they influenced The Disappeared Girl. 

From Martin J. Smith:

Every adoption story is a mysterious stew of longing, loss, and searching love. I learned that firsthand from my sister Lisa, my oldest sibling, who was 19 in October 1961 when she found herself pregnant and unable to keep her infant daughter. I was just five at the time, and three decades passed before Lisa ever told me her secret. On the day she finally did—sitting with me on my front porch in Southern California—something extraordinary happened. At her home in Phoenix, the phone rang. The caller spoke briefly with my sister’s husband, but left no message. We later learned that coincidental call was from her lost daughter, then 30 and living in Ohio, trying for the first time to contact her birth mother.

Like I said, mysterious.

So when people ask me what inspired my novel “The Disappeared Girl,” which Diversion launched on March 4, that’s the story I tell them. I saw firsthand how both mother and child carry the weight of adoption, and how that burden can last lifetimes. And I came to understand in a personal way an adopted child’s need to know, and a mother’s enduring bond with a missing child.

I carried that experience into “The Disappeared Girl,” which is a suspense thriller about an American father and his adopted daughter who plunge into a high-stakes search for the truth about her past. That search leads them into a deep, dark well of family secrets, and into the crosshairs of an international fugitive who’ll do anything to keep those secrets buried. Researching the novel took me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, into the grim, now-open secrets of Argentina’s Dirty War, during which an estimated 30,000 people vanished into a shadowy government system intent on rooting out subversives.

My sister’s story of disconnection and searching love took on a global dimension when I learned that some of the Dirty War’s political prisoners were pregnant women, and that about 500 babies born to those women were stolen and funneled into a now-notorious adoption pipeline designed to shore up loyalty to that morally bankrupt government. After giving birth, many of the mothers simply disappeared.

Then something extraordinary happened. The mothers of the women who endured that ordeal formed a collective conscience called The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Beginning in 1977, and at great risk, those brave women began gathering in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires to focus world attention on that tragedy, and to learn the fate of their lost children and grandchildren. Their drama may have played out on a world stage, but their driving motivation was precisely the same as the one that eventually reunited my sister and her first daughter. The courage and determination of those mothers—of all disconnected mothers and children—should humble us all.

By comparison, my role was relatively simple: To knit those twin strands of reality into a novel that not only entertains, but also acknowledges and celebrates that courage. If “The Disappeared Girl” does all that, it will have succeeded.

New releases 3/11: Two backlist true crime and a historical non-fiction

From Pulitzer Prize-winning journals Edward Humes comes three backlist titles, now re-released in eBook edition.

Murderer With A Badge

Bill Leasure was among the least ambitious officers ever to wear the badge for the Los Angeles Police Department. He was content to work the traffic beat and only rarely gave out tickets. 

He also ran scams that netted him countless riches, from stealing yachts to collecting guns and cars. And he further enriched himself setting up a murder-for-hire ring. Was he in it for the thrills? Was he a cop playing both sides of the law for the fun of it? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes explores the lies and psychopathy that enabled Bill Leasure to fool even the most savvy of city prosecutors, his own wife.

Available onAmazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore. 

Buried Secrets

In the 1980’s, Adolfo Constanzo, devotee of Santeria and powerful cult leader opened shop in Mexico City as a fortune teller. He soon realized that there were greater profits in drug money than the occult, and as his status grew in the drug trade, so too did his legendary brutality. Kidnappings, torture, and murder were three weapons in his arsenal that he used to keep a vice grip on the drug trade. 

Humes explores the intersections of the drug trade and politics in a way that still resonates today, also touching upon the religious elements that play into the iconic status of drug kingpins. After the ritual murder of Mark Kilroy, a student from America, Constanzo died in a shoot-out and many of his followers went to prison. This unflinching, unforgettable story is brought to vivid, terrifying life in “One of the best true-crime tales in recent time.”

Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore. 

Over Here

Inspiring war stories are familiar. But what about the after-the-war stories? From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Over Here is the Greatest Generation’s after-the-war story – vivid portraits of how the original GI Bill empowered an entire generation and reinvented the nation. The GI Bill opened college education to the masses, transformed America from a nation of renters into a nation of homeowners, and enabled an era of prosperity never before seen in the world. Doctors, teachers, engineers, researchers and Nobel Prize winners who had never considered college an option rewrote the American Dream thanks to this most visionary legislation. 

Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore.

Gary Grossman pays tribute to Michael Palmer

The publishing industry and readers around the world lost remarkable talent in the past few months. 

Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Elmore Leonard, and Michael Palmer.

Each had a unique voice and an amazing presence.  They captivated and entertained millions of fans, and inspired thousands of writers.  I am one of them.

While a great deal has been written about Clancy, Flynn and Leonard, I’d like to honor Michael Palmer.

Michael was the first author to notice me.  Actually, notice isn’t even the proper term.  Recognize is better.  Launch is even stronger.  

Thanks to an introduction through our mutual friend in Boston, Sandi Goldfarb, Michael wrote an incredible endorsement for my first political thriller, Executive Actions.   His quote remains on my Diversion Books cover.  Through his words we became friends.

Michael Palmer encouraged me to keep writing.  After Executive Actions he helped me focus my objectives and goals.   He gave me professional tips and other introductions.  He also told me I had to participate in one of his favorite events –ThrillerFest, the annual conference of The International Thriller Writers , Inc.   

Michael was right about that as he was everything else. 

I also realized that Michael Palmer was willing to nurture others in the same manner.  Nowhere was that better seen than at the 2013 ThrillerFest where he was celebrated morning, noon and night by his fellow writers and the legions of ITW members who couldn’t wait he see him.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to repay Michael’s kindness.  Two years ago, as I helped in the production of the Emmy-winning PBS book series “Between the Lines with Barry Kibrick,”

I brought Michael to Puerto Rico for a special taping.  Michael and Barry discussed A Heartbeat Away.  The show can be viewed through:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vHyxsyRRAI.   

As Michael talks about his novel, it’s easy to grasp his own commitment to story and character; his understanding of structure; and his desire to entertain readers through suspense close enough to touch.

Michael Palmer introduced us to evil doers and took us to perilous places.  He raised decidedly scary “What If” scenarios.  He asked us to think.   

He noted in the TV interview that he wrote fiction the way the world is.  And yet, he remained personally optimistic. 

Host Barry Kibrick underscored that point by reading a quote from Michael’s novel, drilling down into his underlying optimism; his belief in the human spirit.   “..we as a people,” he wrote, “can master any difficulty and achieve unparalleled peace... .“

Rest in peace, Michael Palmer.  Your creativity and thoughtfulness will continue to inspire us. 

Gary Grossman is the author of the thrilling Executive series.

Executive Actions

An assassin’s bullet changes the course of the Presidential election— not by killing Democratic candidate Teddy Lodge, but his wife. Riding a wave of popular sympathy, Lodge surges forward as the man to beat for incumbent President Morgan Taylor. Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke is ordered by President Taylor to investigate the assassination, and unravels a deadly Soviet plot that has incubated for more than 30 years. Now in the hands of a power hungry Middle Eastern heir to the throne, Agent Roarke must stop a sleeper agent poised to change the course of American policy in the Middle East. Executive Actions is a tense political thriller, where both the Presidency and the Constitution are at stake.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the iBookstore, & Audible.

Executive Treason

The secret terrorist organization that came within a heartbeat of installing its agent as President of the United States in Executive Actions is back with a new—and deadlier—plot to destabilize the U.S. government. It all begins with what appears to be a simple mugging and murder of a female White House staffer. Secret Service agent Scott Roarke discovers the truth: that the murder was committed by his secret nemesis, the mysterious assassin who had managed to always stay one step ahead of him during the presidential campaign. This time Roarke has found clues about the assassin's past that give him the tools he needs to hunt the hunter, but the clues can only go so far. Roarke needs all his skill, and a huge amount of luck as well, if he's going to catch his quarry.

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the iBookstore, & Audible.

Executive Command

The clock is ticking down to an attack on America’s most vulnerable natural resource: Water.  Our nation’s water resources are high on terrorist target lists, but low on America’s consciousness.  Water sources are largely unprotected, providing open access to any enemy with chemicals and biotoxins. 

So far we’ve been lucky.  But that luck won’t last.

This is the all-too-real-and-present danger facing President Morgan Taylor and Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke as they desperately try to prevent hell-bent terrorists from destroying America and its infrastructure city by city, and state by state.

Fact-based in frightening detail, Executive Command is a political thriller that will leave you pondering its strong possibility the next time you pour a glass of water.

Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, the iBookstore, & Audible.

Zubaan Books enters the International eBook market in a partnership with Diversion Books

Zubaan Books, India’s pioneering feminist publishing house, has entered into an agreement with Diversion Books for worldwide eBook distribution of its entire English-language trade catalogue.  The international partnership will kick off with forty-five titles, to be made available to online retailers this week, to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8^th.   

The initial offering from Zubaan includes both fiction and non-fiction titles, including acclaimed historical fiction exploring the partition of India and Pakistan and its very human ramifications (All Passion Spent by Zaheda Hina), attitudes towards women and sexuality (The Good Indian Girl by Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra), searing memoirs that resonate across all cultures (A Life Apart by Prabha Khaitan), and many others. The list also includes an exciting range of books for children and young adults (Riddle of the Seventh Stone by Monideepa Sahu) under its Young Zubaan imprint.

“We’re delighted that our search for the perfect partner to take our eBooks into the international market has led us to Diversion,” says Urvashi Butalia, Director of Zubaan. “Diversion has not only the marketing expertise we’re looking for but also a commitment and a passion for books that mirrors our own. We’re delighted that readers internationally will now be able to easily access and buy our books online with Diversion Books, and look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration.”

“We’re excited to be partnering with such an important house as Zubaan,” says Mary Cummings, Editorial Director of Diversion Books. “It’s time their list broke into the international market in a bigger way, and we are happy to be able to complement Zubaan’s fantastic list of authors with our digital distribution and marketing expertise.”

About Zubaan Books

Zubaan is an independent publishing company based in New Delhi. It grew out of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women. Founded in 2003 by Urvashi Butalia, who co-founded Kali, Zubaan has established its name as one of the preeminent publishers in India, and one of the top feminist presses in the world.

About Diversion Books

Diversion Books is a premier publishing company headquartered in New York City, marketing original and backlist works from well-known and emerging authors. Diversion has a full-service approach to production, marketing, and publicity, and engages the latest tool and technologies in order to produce and promote its titles in the best way possible. Founded by book lovers from the world of traditional publishing, Diversion is building the next generation publishing company, one great book at a time. 

New release 3/04: The fourth installment of a gripping thriller series.

Martin J. Smith is back with the fourth installment of his thrilling Memory series, The Disappeared Girl. Add this gripping tale of suspense and intrigue to your #readmore2014 list today.

Jim Christensen’s daughter, Melissa, has been troubled of late. She has dreams that feel like memories, unsettling images percolate to the surface. She remembers a terrifying past, possibly her own, from a time before she was adopted by her father. Christensen’s work as an expert in memory makes him the ideal person to help unlock his daughter’s fragile grasp on her own history. But will he want to learn the truth of where Melissa came from? Who she was before? Who might still be looking for her?

This dizzying novel of suspense takes the reader back into a dirty war and its human costs, into the fevered mind of one of its survivors, and through the crosshairs of a man desperate to keep his own history vanished.

Order your copy of The Disappeared Girl on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and the iBookstore. 

And if you haven't read the compelling first book of the Memory series, Time Release it's also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore, and Kobo.

Time Release takes place in a city gripped in a panic as a maniac slips poison onto pharmacy shelves. All of the evidence has pointed to Ron Corbett, but shoddy policework let Corbett off the hook, left the crime unsolved.

Ten years later, it’s happening again. This time, for the most personal of reasons, Detective Downing has made it his mission to see Corbett behind bars. He enlists the help of Jim Christensen, a psychologist who specializes in memory, to interview Corbett’s son, now a young man with a painful past and problems of his own. Does the boy remember his father poisoning pill containers? Has he blocked memories of a horrific crime spree enacted in his own house? As Christensen explores the boy’s memory and Downing grows more obsessive investigating the case, both men fear that the killings now may not be as random as they once thought, and that unlocking memories may draw them too close to a vicious predator.