Hank Garner's Blog, page 35
January 15, 2019
Episode 542 | Matthew Quirk Interview
Thriller author Matthew Quirk stops by the show today to talk about his new book The Night Agent and shares the story behind his stories.
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“Plenty of breathless one-more-chapter, stay-up-late suspense wrapped around a meaty and timely story … irresistible.”
— Lee Child
To find a Russian mole in the White House, an FBI agent must question everything. . . and trust no one
To save America from a catastrophic betrayal, an idealistic young FBI agent must stop a Russian mole in the White House in this exhilarating political thriller reminiscent of the early novels of John Grisham and David Baldacci.
No one was more surprised than FBI Agent Peter Sutherland when he’s tapped to work in the White House Situation Room. From his earliest days as a surveillance specialist, Peter has scrupulously done everything by the book, hoping his record will help him escape the taint of his past. When Peter was a boy, his father, a section chief in FBI counterintelligence, was suspected of selling secrets to the Russians—a catastrophic breach that had cost him his career, his reputation, and eventually his life.
Peter knows intimately how one broken rule can cost lives. Nowhere is he more vigilant than in this room, the sanctum of America’s secrets. Staffing the night action desk, his job is monitoring an emergency line for a call that has not—and might never—come.
Until tonight.
At 1:05 a.m. the phone rings. A terrified young woman named Rose tells Peter that her aunt and uncle have just been murdered and that the killer is still in the house with her. Before their deaths, they gave her this phone number with urgent instructions: “Tell them OSPREY was right. It’s happening. . . “
The call thrusts Peter into the heart of a conspiracy years in the making, involving a Russian mole at the highest levels of the government. Anyone in the White House could be the traitor. Anyone could be corrupted. To save the nation, Peter must take the rules into his own hands and do the right thing, no matter the cost. He plunges into a desperate hunt for the traitor—a treacherous odyssey that pits him and Rose against some of Russia’s most skilled and ruthless operatives and the full force of the FBI itself.
Peter knows that the wider a secret is broadcast, the more dangerous it gets for the people at the center. With the fate of the country on the line, he and Rose must evade seasoned assassins and maneuver past jolting betrayals to find the shocking truth—and stop the threat from inside before it’s too late.
Matthew Quirk is the New York Times bestselling author of The 500, The Directive, Dead Man Switch, Cold Barrel Zero, and The Night Agent. He spent five years at The Atlantic magazine reporting on crime, private military contractors, terrorism prosecutions, and international gangs before turning to fiction. An Edgar Award finalist and winner of the ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel, Quirk lives in San Diego.
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January 10, 2019
Episode 541 | Jessica Barry Interview
Jessica Barry, author of the new thriller Freefall, joins me today to talk about the writing life.
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An Indie Next Pick and Amazon Best of the Month Thriller pick
“Exhilarating, emotional — a thriller charged with genuine depth and raw power.” —AJ Finn author of the #1 NYT Bestselling The Woman in the Window
A propulsive debut novel with the intensity of Luckiest Girl Alive and Before the Fall, about a young woman determined to survive and a mother determined to find her.
When your life is a lie, the truth can kill you
When her fiancé’s private plane crashes in the Colorado Rockies, Allison Carpenter miraculously survives. But the fight for her life is just beginning. Allison has been living with a terrible secret, a shocking truth that powerful men will kill to keep buried. If they know she’s alive, they will come for her. She must make it home.
In the small community of Owl Creek, Maine, Maggie Carpenter learns that her only child is presumed dead. But authorities have not recovered her body—giving Maggie a shred of hope. She, too, harbors a shameful secret: she hasn’t communicated with her daughter in two years, since a family tragedy drove Allison away. Maggie doesn’t know anything about her daughter’s life now—not even that she was engaged to wealthy pharmaceutical CEO Ben Gardner, or why she was on a private plane.
As Allison struggles across the treacherous mountain wilderness, Maggie embarks on a desperate search for answers. Immersing herself in Allison’s life, she discovers a sleek socialite hiding dark secrets. What was Allison running from—and can Maggie uncover the truth in time to save her?
Told from the perspectives of a mother and daughter separated by distance but united by an unbreakable bond, Freefall is a riveting debut novel about two tenacious women overcoming unimaginable obstacles to protect themselves and those they love.
Jessica Barry is a pseudonym for an American author who grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and was raised on a steady diet of library books and PBS. She attended Boston University, where she majored in English and Art History, before moving to London in 2004 to pursue an MA from University College London. She works in publishing. For more about Jessica Barry, please visit her on Twitter: @jessbarryauthor and on Instagram: @JessicaBarry9.
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January 9, 2019
Episode 540 | Lyndsay Faye Interview
Today my author interview guest on Author Stories is Lyndsay Faye. Lyndsay’s new book The Paragon Hotel is an amazing historical thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat and turning pages. After the interview we have an audiobook excerpt from The Paragon Hotel audiobook narrated by January LaVoy, courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio.
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The new and exciting historical thriller by Lyndsay Faye, author of Edgar-nominated Jane Steeleand Gods of Gotham, which follows Alice “Nobody” from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland’s the Paragon Hotel.
The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and those who want her dead, she has her sights set on Oregon: a distant frontier that seems the end of the line.
She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of Harlem, who leads Alice to the Paragon Hotel upon arrival in Portland. Her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be the only all-black hotel in the city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises. But as she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the unforgettable club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she begins to understand the reason for their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers–burning crosses, inciting violence, electing officials, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice, along with her new “family” of Paragon residents, are willing to search for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the Oregon woods.
Why was “Nobody” Alice James forced to escape Harlem? Why do the Paragon’s denizens live in fear–and what other sins are they hiding? Where did the orphaned child who went missing from the hotel, Davy Lee, come from in the first place? And, perhaps most important, why does Blossom Fontaine seem to be at the very center of this tangled web?
[image error] Visit Lyndsay’s Amazon Page
Lyndsay Faye moved to Manhattan in 2005 to audition as a professional actress; her schedule opened up when her day-job restaurant was knocked down with bulldozers. Her first novel Dust and Shadow: an Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson is a tribute to the aloof genius and his good-hearted friend whose exploits she has loved since childhood. After writing fifteen additional short stories over the next six years, she collected them in the critically acclaimed The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.
Faye’s fascination with the origins of the New York City Police Department led to her first Best Novel Edgar Award nomination; The Gods of Gotham, Seven for a Secret, and The Fatal Flame follow ex-bartender Timothy Wilde as he navigates the rapids of his turbulent city, learning police work in a riotous pre-Civil War political landscape. Following this trilogy, Faye turned to what she calls “satirical romance.” Her Edgar-nominated Jane Steele re-imagines Jane Eyre as a gutsy, heroic serial killer who battles for justice with methods inspired by Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Her latest novel, The Paragon Hotel, follows “Nobody” Alice James as she flees the Harlem Mafia only to wind up in Ku Klux Klan-plagued Portland, Oregon in 1921.
Aside from the Edgar, Faye was nominated for a Dilys Winn Award, was featured in Best American Mystery Stories 2010, and is honored to have been selected by the American Library Association’s RUSA Reader’s List for Best Historical. She is an international bestseller and has been translated into 14 languages. While she doesn’t teach writing professionally in any capacity (nor is she remotely qualified), she does a great deal of volunteer mentoring and workshops for libraries. In 2016, she was thrilled to implement the National Mentorship Program at Mystery Writers of America, and continues to serve as its coordinator.
Born in Northern California and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Lyndsay migrated back to “the Peninsula” and graduated from Notre Dame de Namur University with a dual degree in English and Performance. She worked as a professional actress throughout the Bay Area for several years, nearly always in a corset, and if not a corset then–at the least–heels and lined stockings. She has a very high pop belt and is a soprano, supposing that interests you.
Lyndsay and her husband Gabriel live in Ridgewood, Queens. During the few hours a day Lyndsay isn’t writing or editing, she is most often cooking, cooing at her houseplants, nuzzling her cat (Prufrock), or sifting through thrift store racks for designer clothing. She is a very proud member of Actor’s Equity Association, the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, the Baker Street Babes, the Baker Street Irregulars, and Mystery Writers of America. She is hard at work on her next novel…always.
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January 8, 2019
Episode 539 | Andrew Grant Interview
Thriller author Andrew Grant joins me today to talk about his writing career and his new book Invisible.
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An Army veteran and intelligence agent goes undercover as a janitor at a federal courthouse to pursue his own brand of justice in a thriller that’s part John Grisham, part Robert Crais.
“Propulsive and engaging from the very first page.”—C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Pickett series
As a young man, Paul McGrath rebelled against his pacifist father by becoming a standout Army recruit and the star of his military intelligence unit. But lingering regrets about their relationship make him return home, only to find his father dead, seemingly murdered. When the case ends in a mistrial—after a key piece of evidence disappears—something doesn’t smell right to McGrath. So he puts his arsenal of skills to work to find out just how corrupt the legal system is. And to keep digging, he gets a job at the courthouse. But not as a lawyer or a clerk. . . .
Now McGrath is a janitor. The perfect cover, it gives him security clearance and access to the entire building. No one notices him, but he notices everyone. He notices when witnesses suddenly change their stories. When jury members reverse their votes during deliberation. When armies of corporate attorneys grind down their small-time adversaries with endless tactical shenanigans. While McGrath knows that nothing he discovers can undo his past wrongs or save his father, he finds his new calling brings him something else: the chance to right current wrongs and save others. And by doing so—just maybe—to redeem himself . . . if the powerful and corrupt don’t kill him first.
Advance praise for Invisible
“The masterful Andrew Grant outdoes himself with this deliciously twisty, magnetic thriller. Fiercely redemptive, with its clever, profoundly moving, and altogether captivating David and Goliath hook, Invisible is a winner.”—Sara Blaedel, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Forgotten Girls
“Paul McGrath is not just a janitor—he’s a terrific new hero in what promises to be a fantastic and original series by Grant. Paul may be invisible . . . but his results are not in this intense mystery thriller that will leave you wanting more. In a word? Awesome.”—Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Too Far Gone
“Invisible is a riveting read from cover to cover. I love getting in on the ground floor of a new series, especially when it’s sure to be a hit!”—John Gilstrap, New York Times bestselling author of the Jonathan Grave series
Andrew Grant was born in Birmingham, England in May 1968. He went to school in St Albans, Hertfordshire and later attended the University of Sheffield where he studied English Literature and Drama. After graduation, Andrew set up and ran a small independent theatre company which showcased a range of original material to local, regional and national audiences. Following a critically successful but financially challenging appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Andrew moved into the telecommunications industry as a ‘temporary’ solution to a short-term cash crisis. Fifteen years later, after carrying out a variety of roles including several which were covered by the UK’s Official Secrets Act, Andrew became the victim / beneficiary of a widespread redundancy programme. Freed once again from the straightjacket of corporate life, he took the opportunity to answer the question, what if … ?
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January 7, 2019
Episode 538 | Drew Avera Interview
Today’s author interview guest is science fiction and cyberpunk author Drew Avera.
Pre-order Drew’s book Rise of the Syndicate now.
Can one death save humanity?
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Five-hundred years after colonizing Mars, a new challenge arises, the largest global terraforming project in history. As the World Council seeks financing to invest in technology that could replace the Archean colony’s giant dome habitat with an artificial atmosphere, some members stand in opposition. Unfortunately, those resisting the coming change do so at their own detriment.
Following the murder of his wife, Halem Scrimpshire is on a path for vengeance. Framed for her death, Halem believes Marada’s prominent opponent, Councilman Tetrim Rine conspired against her, leading to her untimely death. But the clock is ticking for him to prove his theory before justice falls on him.
If Halem’s wrong, he goes down for murder. If he’s right, he may discover a sinister plot that will alter his future, and that of the Martian colonies as well.
Rise of the Syndicate is set in the same universe as Drew Avera’s bestselling Dead Planet series.
Drew Avera has been a lot of things in life; a band geek, a comic book nerd, a pseudo rock star, an amateur artist, a Navy veteran, husband, and father. But beyond being a family man, his favorite is his role as the bestselling author of the space opera series, The Alorian Wars.
Getting his start with National Novel Writing Month 2012, the writing bug consumed him. Since publishing in 2013, Drew has written more than twenty books. His most notable works include The Dead Planet Series and The Alorian Wars. But there is plenty more on the way as he delves into new universes, always trying to find what ticks in his characters to bring them to life. Check out the worlds he’s created by visiting his website. www.drewavera.com.
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January 1, 2019
Episode 537 | 2018 Year End Wrap Up With Chris Pourteau
Today Chris Pourteau joins me for the fifth consecutive year to close out 2018. Each year we meet up to talk about our thoughts on the happenings in the world of books and story telling. We talk about everything from our book of the year picks, new authors continuing existing franchises when the creator passes on, Bohemian Rhapsody, the passing of a geek legend, and much more.
[image error] Hank’s Book of the Year Pick. Make Me No Grave by Hayley Stone
[image error] Chris’s Book of the Year Pick. Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips
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Find Chris’s series The SynCorp Saga here.
Top Ten Winner in Read Freely’s 2018 50 Best Indie Book of the Year
From Book 1: Four lives collide as Earth stands on the brink of mass extinction…
Mother Nature is mad as hell. Monster hurricanes … freak sandstorms … roasting wildfires. Species disappear every day. Is humanity next?
Though some believe our future lies among the stars, the American President funds the Lazarus Protocol—a last-ditch attempt to reverse Earth’s climate crisis through geoengineering. But the New Earth Order—a mysterious league of reactionary activists with sleeper agents around the world—pursues another outcome: the subjugation of mankind to nature itself.
A brilliant billionaire who wants to save the world. A lunar engineer called home to bury her father. A disgraced veteran haunted by yesterday’s mistakes. A US Army colonel, desperate to save as many people as possible.
Four lives. One planet. And one last chance to save it…
Brought to you by the best-selling writing team of Bruns & Pourteau, The Lazarus Protocol is the first installment in The SynCorp Saga, a new series of dark sci-fi thrillers about the corporate takeover of our solar system.
Pick up The Lazarus Protocol to discover this exciting new series today!
About Chris Pourteau:
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I’ve made a living at one time or another as a teacher, a lab technician helping to recover one of Christopher Columbus’s ships, and, for the past 25 years, a professional technical writer and editor
My first novel, Shadows Burned In, won the 2015 eLite Book Award Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. In November 2015, I edited and produced the collection Tails of the Apocalypse, which features short stories set in different apocalyptic scenarios with animals as main characters. In 2017, I co-helmed a sequel of sorts, Chronicle Worlds: Tails of Dystopia—a similar collection of animal-centric stories, this time set in various existing dystopian worlds of their authors—with Future Chronicles Series Editor Samuel Peralta.
Among novel-length works, I recently co-authored a Sci-Fi series called the First Swarm War with author David Bruns set in Nick Webb’s Legacy Fleet Kindle world (a kind of Battlestar Galactica meets Aliensuniverse). David’s first novel in the FSW series is called Invincible, and my sequel is Avenger. I also wrote a novella prequel to the series called Tarantula. You can find my other works (short stories, novels, and anthologies) on this site. David and I are currently developing a near-future Sci-Fi dystopian universe together set to debut in summer 2018.
I’ve been influenced by writers both modern and classical as influences, notable among them Bernard Cornwell, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Toni Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Mark Twain. Other major influences include fellow Texan and singer-songwriter James McMurtry, Groucho Marx, and a little-known comedy troupe from England you’ve probably never heard of named Monty Python. (Python is always happy to have someone shill their name as long as they don’t have to pay for it and might get a chance to sell you something, so there you go, guys. Regards from Texas.)
As far as current reading interests go, I prefer science fiction and fantasy and historical fiction, which you could probably guess from my list of influences. I’m also a die-hard Star Trek fan and prefer Sci-Fi dramas like Battlestar Galactica (the reboot), Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Stranger Things, and Orphan Black when I flip on the tube.
December 31, 2018
Episode 536 | Jennifer Robson Interview
Today’s author interview guest is historical fiction author Jennifer Robson, author of The Gown.
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One of December’s most anticipated reads from InStyle, HelloGiggles, Hypable, Bookbub, and Bookriot!
One of Real Simple’s Best Historical Fiction novels of the year!
“The Gown is marvelous and moving, a vivid portrait of female self-reliance in a world racked by the cost of war.”–Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network
From the internationally bestselling author of Somewhere in France comes an enthralling historical novel about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the twentieth century—Queen Elizabeth’s wedding gown—and the fascinating women who made it.
“Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of color on the long road we have to travel.”
—Sir Winston Churchill on the news of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcoming wedding
London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.
Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?
With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.
About Jennifer
An academic by background, a former editor by profession, and a lifelong history nerd, I am lucky enough to now call myself a full-time writer. I’m the author of five novels set during and after the two world wars: Somewhere in France, After the War is Over, Moonlight Over Paris, Goodnight from London, and most recently The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding. I was also a contributor to the acclaimed anthology Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War.
I studied French literature and Modern History as an undergraduate at King’s University College at Western University, then attended Saint Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, where I obtained my doctorate in British economic and social history. While at Oxford I was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.
For a number of years I worked as an editor but am now fortunate enough to consider myself a full-time writer. I am represented by Kevan Lyon of the Marsal Lyon Agency and my personal publicist is Kathleen Carter of Kathleen Carter Communications.
I live in Toronto, Canada, with my husband and children, and share my home office with Ellie the sheepdog and her feline companions Sam and Mika.
December 29, 2018
Author Stories on YouTube
All of our shows are on YouTube. This is a handy place to dig through all 500+ author interviews. Here’s a handy playlist.
Changes
Please bear with us as we make some changes. We’ll be back to normal soon.
December 21, 2018
Episode 535 | Robin Cook Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Robin Cook, pioneer of the medical thriller genre and author of the new book Pandemic. New York Times-bestselling author Robin Cook takes on the cutting-edge world of gene-modification in this pulse-pounding new medical thriller. When an unidentified, seemingly healthy young woman collapses suddenly on the New York City subway and dies upon reaching the hospital, her case is an eerie reminder for veteran medical examiner Jack Stapleton of the 1918 flu pandemic. Fearful of a repeat on the one hundredth anniversary of the nightmarish contagion, Jack autopsies the woman within hours of her demise and discovers some striking anomalies: first, that she has had a heart transplant, and second, that, against all odds, her DNA matches that of the transplanted heart. Although the facts don’t add up to influenza, Jack must race against the clock to identify the woman and determine what kind of virus could wreak such havoc–a task made more urgent when two other victims succumb to a similar rapid death. But nothing makes sense until his investigation leads him into the fascinating realm of CRISPR/CAS9, a gene-editing biotechnology that’s captured the imagination of the medical community. . . and the attention of its most unethical members. Drawn into the dark underbelly of the organ transplant market, Jack will come face-to-face with a megalomaniacal businessman willing to risk human lives in order to conquer a lucrative new frontier in medicine–and if Jack’s not careful, the next life lost might be his own. Robin Cook was born on May 4, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, and spent his early years in Woodside, Queens. At the age of eight he moved with his parents and older brother to Leonia, New Jersey. His sister arrived two years later, changing him from the baby of the family to the middle child. In the sixth grade Dr. Cook became fascinated with archeology and selected it as a career goal. By the time he reached the tenth grade, however, he realized, humorously, he’d been born a century too late as far as the fabled, major buried cities were concerned. When he graduated from high school as valedictorian of his class, his interests had switched to medicine. Putting himself through school, he graduated from Wesleyan University summa cum laude with a major in chemistry and a distinction in government. He then went on to attend the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons while he worked running a blood/gas chemistry laboratory in support of the cardiac surgery team at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital during nights and weekends. The bright side of those difficult years was that he’d been invited as a consequence of his necessary gainful employment to spend his medical school summer electives setting up a similar blood/gas lab for the Jacques Cousteau Oceanographic Institute in Monaco. After surgical residency training, Dr. Cook was drafted into the Navy, where he attended submarine school and navy diving school. Following a tour of duty in the South Pacific on the USS Kamehameha, a ballistic missile submarine and the flagship of the Pacific submarine fleet, he was transferred to the Deep Submergence Systems Project (Sea Lab), where he trained as a navy aquanaut medical officer. In that position he participated in research in diving, and published his first book: A Medical Watch Standers Guide to Saturation Diving. Following his completion of his military service and subsequent discharge from the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander, Dr. Cook undertook a second residency. This was in ophthalmology at Harvard. Upon its completion, he then matriculated as a full time student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government while …
