Anne Trager's Blog, page 29

The journey through the pages is not to be rushed

In the winter print issue of ForeWord Reviews,one review begins: “Neither a murder mystery, nor a thriller,Treachery in Bordeaux is, as the name implies, about treachery.” And the reviewer, Tricia Morrow, does a fine job at capturing this whodunit‘s strong points:

“…the authors introduce two characters who will be central to the series. From sentences that are often beautifully understated, the reader gets an immediate sense of each man.”
“Unusually adept at description, the authors manage to p...

Buy two, get one free 2013 preview special

Beware, writers on the loose! In 2013, Le French Book will release aa zany, surprising and intellectually stimulating collection of storiescalled 52 Serial Shorts. It was written by seven of France’s top writers—Tatiana de Rosnay, Didier Van Cauwelaert, Yann Queffélec, Daniel Picouly, Christine Orban, Irène Frain and Harold Cobert. These hard-hitting literary giants, which include two Goncourt prizewinners and one of France’s most-read authors, have written among them upwards of 175 acclaimed...

Bestseller lists, holiday shopping, and e-book gifting

Exciting news: The Paris Lawyer made it to number 3 on the Nook mystery bestseller list over the weekend, then hovered at number 5 and this morning it is still in the top 10.

This happened during our Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday promotional weekend. I didn’t do any shopping myself this weekend, but apparently a lot of other people did. I just found out that Cyber Tuesday–that’s today–is another big shopping day, so don’t miss out on these great reads. Actually, there are other really big shopp...

Writing, Crime Fiction, Translation, Fiction, Reality…

These are some of the topics Anne Trager and our authors have covered in a number of guests posts hosted by a variety of blogs over the past couple of months. Here, we’ve brought all the links together.

Related toThe Paris Lawyer by Sylvie Granotier

Overcoming Writing Challengesin Mystery Writing is Murder: “I have many years of translating behind me, but when i took on our first crime fiction novel,The Paris Lawyer, by Sylvie Granotier, I encountered some unique challenges that required some c...

10 Reasons to Read Crime Fiction During Thanksgiving Weekend

What’s the best way to digest that turkey? We say it’s with a great read. We’ve come up with ten good reasons to read crime fiction over this holiday weekend and to help have scheduled five whole days of reduced prices on our ebooks for Thanksgiving, running through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. All our ebooks are now available for $2.99–that’s more than 60% off the original price.

Thanksgiving, a time for giving thanks and eating, seeing family and eating, watching football and eating, and t...

The Winemaker Detective’s Guide to Wining and Dining: Alsace

Here is another recommendation from the Winemaker Detective, Benjamin Cooker, thanks to Noël Balen and Jean-Pierre Alaux. Welcome to Alsace. Yes, a future book in the series does take place there.

Alsace: between the lines and the vines

Benjamin Cooker is currently preparing to wander in the vicinity of Strasbourg and Colmar, in Alsace, to taste the late-harvest wines in front of the cameras (to shoot a spring 2013 episode of the Winemaker Detective television series airing in France), so it is...

Sylvie Granotier on Writing Legal Mysteries

The latest issue of Mystery Readers Journal has a great line-up of authors talking about legal fiction thanks to Janet Rudolph. Our very own Sylvie Granotier contributed an article called “Suspense, Transgression and Murder.” It begins like this:

“I never doubted that I would write almost always about suspense, transgression, murder and all the bizarre acts our species delights in surprising us with, except once, when I was translating Grace Paley’s short stories into French. After that, I start...

Listen to Anne Trager interview on Colorado Public Radio

(c) Elise Thatcher

On Nov. 8th 2012, Anne answered Ryan Warner’s questions on Colorado Matters, one of Colorado Public Radio’s morning and afternoon shows. She gives her most personal view yet on Le French Book’s creation, how our books are chosen, and also how her shared time between France and Colorado influences her endeavors.

You can listen to the interview (approx. 10 minutes) by clicking directly on the Play button below or here to go the the specific page on the CPR website: Need a Good...

An extraordinary, hard-hitting novel: ForeWord Reviews on The 7th Woman

ForeWord Reviews just came out with a great review ofThe 7th Womanby Frédérique Molay. This is how it starts:

“Standing before a crowd of aspiring writers some twenty-five years ago, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Scott Card admonished, “Nobody ever woke up and decided ‘today I’m going to be evil’.” Outstanding advice, as crime fiction only resonates when there is a believable villain. No matter how twisted or diabolical, there must be plausible logic behind the bad guy’s exploits. And t...

Aix-en-Provence at your own pace

We don’t have any books set in Aix-en-Provence yet, but it is certainly a place visit. Today, we have a guest post about a mobile app for visiting that town: Edible Heritage. I just love the name. For those of you who participated in our sweepstakes, you’ve already seen this name, since they gave away apps for the promotion.

Back in September 2011, over a lovely bottle of Provençal red, we hatched the concept of creating a mobile application (“app”). My girlfriend Laurence and I have a common...