STEVE BREWER

Steve Brewer is the author of 15 books, as well as a humor writer whose weekly column, The Home Front, runs in newspapers nationwide.

Brewer's latest novels include the standalones WHIPSAW and BANK JOB, and the seventh in his comic Bubba Mabry private eye series, MONKEY MAN.

The first Bubba novel, LONELY STREET, currently is in post-production in Hollywood. The independent film stars Jay Mohr, Robert Patrick and Joe Mantegna.

He spent 22 years in the newspaper business, but  has written his column for Scripps-Howard News Service for the past nine years from home, in his pajamas.

Brewer just completed a two-year stint on the national board of directors of Mystery Writers of America. He served as a judge for the Edgar Awards in 2000 and was Fiction Guest of Honor at Cluefest that same year.

CUTTHROAT

As Balzac said, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." The wealthy Sheffield family has left many crimes in its wake, some perpetrated by troubleshooter Solomon Gage, but this time the Sheffields are going too far.

Solomon has worked his whole life for the Sheffields, solving their problems and covering up their sins, but his career is on the line in the new corporate thriller, "Cutthroat," by veteran author Steve Brewer. Solomon is the right-hand man of patriarch Dominick Sheffield, but his position of trust has always been resented by Dom's two middle-aged sons.

Now the sons are making their biggest move ever: Going behind Dom's back to plot a coup in Niger. They want to take over that African nation's vast uranium mining operations, and only Solomon can stop them.

Solomon first learns of the Africa deal while rescuing one of Dom's granddaughters from a crackhouse in Oakland, California. Soon, he's plowing through computer files and stumbling over bodies and confronting the Sheffield scions, trying to get to the bottom of their conspiracy. The Sheffields would happily see him dead before they let him ruin their plot. But they're in danger, too, as mercenaries are sent from Africa to eliminate them.

With settings ranging from the deserts of Niger to the skyscrapers of San Francisco to the oak-studded hills of California's Mendocino County, "Cutthroat" is a fast-paced novel in which the sins of the sons endanger a family, and only an outsider like Solomon Gage can protect them from a bloody maelstrom of their own creation.

Rights available: English except North America (Bleak House Books, USA, Fall 2007); World translation rights except Russia (Inostranka Publishers). Film option sold.

FIREPOWER (World rights)

FIREPOWER is the fast-paced story of inventor Alice Porter and a hitman named Bob. Alice has invented a pollution-free, regenerative hydrogen fuel cell that would make petroleum obsolete within a decade or two. Men in the oil business and the highest reaches of government conspire to eliminate Alice and her invention, and make repeated attempts on her life. Bob is the first one sent to kill her, but he ends up protecting her instead through a running gun battle across the American Southwest.

The story opens in Plano, Texas, where Bob and another hitman, Sonny, bump off two computer hackers who've leaked word of the invention. The wildcatter oilman who hired Bob and Sonny for that job then hires Bob to go solo to California to kill Alice. But while Bob is staking out Alice's home, he spots Sonny scoping out her place. Bob gets the jump on Sonny, and learns that the plan is to dispatch Bob as soon as he bumps off Alice. Bob kills Sonny instead. He takes Alice and a visiting congressman hostage after another shootout. He learns from them that Alice's invention could save the planet from global warming and pollution and war in the Mideast. It's desperately important that she go public with it.

Just as they reach her lab for proof, the building explodes into flames. Her boss thought he was placing a "data bomb" on the computer system for the Big Oil cabal, but the bomb was real.
Bob, Alice and the congressman are hiding out nearby when they're jumped by a trio of killers sent by the oilmen. Bob guns them down, but the congressman is killed in the crossfire.

Alice and Bob are on their own now, branded as terrorists and the targets of a nationwide manhunt. They race across the Southwestern desert, the oilmen's killers and a crooked FBI agent right on their heels. And every cop in the country is on the lookout for them…

BUBBA MABRY SERIES
(Lonely Street, Baby Face, Witchy Woman, Shaky Ground, Dirty Pool, Crazy Love and Monkey Man)

"A wonderful new entry in the Private Eye field" – Tony Hillerman

The Bubba Mabry mystery series blends suspense and humor as the "recovering redneck" private eye bumbles through one case after another. The seven-book series is recommended by Booklist for "a nice mix of low-rent comedy, solid action and general amiability." Set in the wilds of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the series features Bubba, a transplanted Southerner hampered by a genetic gullibility, and his girlfriend/wife, Felicia Quattlebaum, a dogged newspaper reporter who regularly sticks her nose into Bubba's business. Bubba's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he gets beat up a lot, but readers root for him because of his good heart and his self-deprecating humor. Library Journal calls the series "solid entertainment."

The first in the Bubba Mabry series, Lonely Street, is being made into a Hollywood film starring Jay Mohr, Robert Patrick and Joe Mantegna.

The seventh, Monkey Man, was a finalist for the Lefty Award for best humorous mystery of 2006.

LONELY STREET

Bubba Mabry may not be Albuquerque's most successful private investigator, operating as he does from the seedy Desert Breeze Motor Inn on Route 66, amid hookers and drug dealers. But when a man named Buddy, sporting pounds of gold jewelry, hires him to act as body guard for a visiting celebrity, Bubba sees it as relatively easy money. "The Man" turns out to be none other than The King, Elvis himself – determined to keep a low profile.

When the "fan" who is harassing Elvis turns out to be a tabloid sleaze and turns up dead in a hotel room, Bubba finds himself the main suspect. Unfortunately, two female tabloid reporters – a spunky brunette and a gorgeous blonde – have gotten wind of the King's existence and are hot on Bubba's heels as he tries to find his now-missing client and only alibi…

Rights available: English except North America; World translation rights.
Film release Spring 2007.

Praise for Steve Brewer's books

For Cutthroat:

"I would not only say you should buckle up before getting in this indie car of a book, I’d suggest wearing a five point harness, this book moves fast and is relentless. Great action and wonderful climax. Brewer delivers on every level." Crimespree Magazine

"Steve Brewer delivers a taut geopolitical thriller with sure-handed plotting and muscular prose.   Cutthroat grabs you from behind, like a man with a knife who won’t let go until he’s done with you."
Bill Fitzhugh, author of Highway 61 Resurfaced

"A sparkling plot, great characters, very cinematic - Steve Brewer proves he is just as good at the thriller as he is the comic crime novel."           Donna Moore, author of Go to Helena Handbasket

"Brewer, author of the "Bubba Mabry" series and "Drew Gavin" mysteries, has created an unusual new hero."              Library Journal

"What starts as a fairly standard thriller slowly develops into an intriguing story about personal loyalty, family betrayal, and conspiracy. Brewer, author of the Bubba Mabry and Drew Gavin mysteries, is an experienced genre hand, but the lightly Shakespearean overtones here are something new for him. He makes it work, though, as he does the dark tone, similar to the Parker novels (written by Westlake-as-Stark), but with a more sympathetic lead."     Booklist

For The Bubba Mabry Series:

 "I've always believed that everyone needs at least one Bubba in his or her life. Well, you can't go wrong with Bubba Mabry, recovering redneck."   Edgar-winning author Laura Lippman

"Recommended for its seamless narrative, frequent humor and spine-tingling action." Library Journal

"MONKEY MAN briskly moves through a seamless plot. Brewer continues to make Bubba a likable guy who is willing to reach beyond his limitations."      Oline Cogdill, The Sun-Sentinel (FL)

"Steve Brewer gives a fast-paced and witty look at how it might be if America's No1 celebrity really was alive."         Tony Hilerman about "Lonely Street"

 "A fast and enjoyable read"   CrimeSpree magazine
  

For Whipsaw:

"Ideal beach reading. The action never falters, the killings pile up and the hero is someone worth rooting for."    The Chico (CA) Enterprise-Record.

 "Like Elmore Leonard, the writer whose work his most resembles, Brewer writes with a light and deft touch, bringing style and wit to the crime genre, along with a pleasing gift for character and dialogue."
Chicago Sun-Times

For Back Job:

"Another top-notch book from Steve Brewer, the working man's Elmore Leonard… Combining big laughs with some serious tension and a terrifc plot, Bank Job is a real winner." - Online reviewer David Montgomery

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lonely Street (1994, Pocket Books)
Baby Face (1995, Pocket Books)
Witchy Woman (1996, St. Martin's Press)
Shaky Ground (1997, St. Martin's Press)
Dirty Pool (1999, St. Martin's Press)
End Run (2000, Intrigue Press)
Crazy Love (2001, Intrigue Press)
Cheap Shot (2002, Intrigue Press)
Trophy Husband (2003, University of New Mexico Press)
Bullets (2003, Intrigue Press; France: Encre de nuit, 2006; Russia: Inostranka, 2005)
Fool's Paradise (2003, UNM Press)
Boost (2004, Speck Press)              
Sanity Clause, a novella, in "The Last Noel" (2004, Worldwide Mysteries)
Bank Job (2005, Intrigue Press)
Whipsaw (2006, Intrigue Press)
Monkey Man (2006, Intrigue Press)
Cutthroat (2007, Bleak House)

[Back to Authors]

KEN BRUEN

”So many books are so much like so many other books that it's always a delight to encounter a writer with an utterly distinctive voice. The prize-winning Irish novelist Ken Bruen is such a writer. The words that best describe him, besides original, are outrageous and hilarious.” (Washington Post)

Ken Bruen was born in Galway in 1951 and is the author of over fifteen novels. After completing a MA in English he spent twenty-five years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, S.E. Asia and South America.

Ken Bruen has been a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony and Barry awards and he has won the Shamus Award (twice), the Macavity Award and the Barry Award for books in the Jack Taylor series.

Translation rights to several Ken Bruen’s books have been sold to France (Gallimard/Série Noire and Fayard), Italy (Frassinelli and Fanucci), Japan (Hayakawa), Spain (Tempora/Tropismos and Pamies), Russia (Ripol Classic and U-Factory), Denmark (Klim), Turkey (Bilge Kultur Sanat Yayinlari) and Albania (Dituria).

‘SERGEANT BRANT ’ SERIES (English language ex. North America & translation rights ex. France, Japan, Russia, Spain):

THE WHITE TRILOGY (A WHITE ARREST, TAMING THE ALIEN, THE McDEAD)

An original and thought provoking trilogy from the author of whom Books Ireland said: "If Martin Amis was writing crime novels, this is what he would hope to write."

Here are your poor, your tired, your hungry; your predatory crack dealers, your arsonists and rapists; your killers for money, for revenge, for enforcement, and for sheer ugly fun. The neighborhoods of Southeast London are the kind of place where the most hardened, brutal criminals are treated like Robin Hood, where a snitch is likely to get cooked alive, where even the pit bulls better travel in pairs. It’s the place R&B call home. Chief Inspector Roberts and Detective Sergeant Brant are obverse sides of the same tarnished coin.

Roberts is cool, calculating, cerebral and deadly. Brant is a thug, bad as any of the hard case crooks, but with his own unshakeable code.

In The White Trilogy, Ken Bruen’s jagged, brilliant tour of London noir, they come up against some of the worst. A sadistic gang who hang crack dealers from lampposts; Fenton "The Alien," who leads Brant on a deadly chase through London, New York, San Francisco and Acapulco; and Tommy Logan, a ruthless lowlife with social aspirations and no compunctions about dealing out brutal death.

The White Trilogy is a potent epic of death and redemption, love and betrayal, and the thin line between chaos and the rule of law.

BLITZ

The fast moving follow-up to the ‘White Trilogy’.

The Brixton-based police squad are suffering collective burn out:

Detective Sergeant Brant is hitting the blues and physically assaulting the police shrink.

Chief Inspector Roberts’ wife has died in a horrific accident and he’s drowning in gut-rot red wine. ‘Black and beautiful’ WPC Falls is lethally involved with a junior member of the National Front and simultaneously taking down Brixton drug dealers to feed her own habit.

The team never had it so bad and when a serial killer takes his show on the road, things get progressively worse. Nicknamed ‘The Blitz’, a vicious murderer is aiming for tabloid glory by killing cops. Harold Dunphy, Ace crime reporter believes he’s on to the story of the decade and the police have never had more incentive to catch a villain.

‘Getting hammered’ was never meant to be the deadly swing it is in this darkest chapter from London’s most addictive police squad.

VIXEN

For the south-east London police Squad, it’s rough, tough, dirty business, as usual. The Vixen – the most sensuous, crazy, female serial-killer ever – is masterminding a series of lethal explosions. She is dispatching her own gang and the cops, and has more than a passing interest in WPC Falls…

Meanwhile…

Porter-Nash is facing a serious health problem, nothing to do with his being gay, but everything to do with needles.

PC McDonald finds himself looking down the wrong end of a .38…

The career of a new addition to the Squad, WPC Andrews starts spectacularly but, as usual, she is about to discover that dynamite doesn’t just mean explosive substances…

Superintendent Brown is close to a coronary, and arresting the wrong man in a blaze of publicity is only the beginning of his problems
…
If the Squad survives this incendiary instalment, they’ll do so with barely a cop left standing.

CALIBRE

“If you only know Bruen's work from the Taylor series, you're in for a treat. For Bruen is also the author of a police procedural series set in southeast London, featuring the amoral Sergeant Brant.

CALIBRE is the sixth entry in the series that began in 1998. This is one of those books that once you read it, you immediately will have to search out and buy all the other books featuring Brant and his fellow constables. It's so enjoyable and fast-paced that if you're like me, you'll want to catch up with everything you missed.
If you read CALIBRE, you are going to do exactly what I did: go right online and order another Brant story.”
- Bookreporter

In Bruen's new pulp-inspired novel featuring Inspector Brant, the Southeast London Police Squad is plagued by a serial murderer who's determined to give his victims a lesson in manners.

Taking a cue from Jim Thompson's “The Killer Inside Me”, the ‘Manners Killer’ believes that anyone who behaves rudely in public (e.g., verbally abuses a store clerk, slaps a child) is fair game. He soon finds that he's no match for Brant, Bruen's amoral, sociopathic brute of a detective ("He was heavily built with a black Irish face that wasn't so much lived in as squatted upon").

While he might or might not agree with the killer’s cause and can even forgive his tactics to some degree, Brant is just ornery enough to employ his trademark brand of amoral, borderline-criminal policing to hunt for the Manner Killer. For if there’s one thing that drives the incomparable inspector, it’s the unshakeable conviction that if anyone is going to be getting away with murder on his patch, it’ll be Brant himself.

While his methods may be questionable, Brant gets results, and we find ourselves secretly cheering him on.

Meanwhile, Brant is writing his first crime novel, “Calibre”, and aspires to become the English Joseph Wambaugh. Of course, he doesn't let the fact that he can't write deter him; Brant just nicks the stories from his cop buddy Porter Nash…

 AMMUNITION

"The seventh Inspector Brant noir from Shamus-winner Bruen maintains the feverish pacing that has become Bruen's trademark. As incorrigible hardcase Brant sits in a London pub brooding about the recent demise of his hero, real-life author Ed McBain, a gunman opens fire and then disappears. Hit multiple times, Brant is rushed to the hospital. Local criminals and cops alike rejoice at this unexpected bit of good fortune, but within a few days he's up and crankier than ever, vowing revenge on his assailants. Meanwhile, his fellow cops grapple with their own personal crises: Sgt. Elizabeth Falls is harassed by a psycho named Angie (last seen in Vixen), fresh out of prison and anxious to settle the score; police constable McDonald, in a cocaine-fueled downward spiral, agrees to lead a group of senior citizen vigilantes. When one of the codgers is killed during their first mission, McDonald's fate is sealed. Bruen keeps this train wreck on proper course to a wholly satisfying, and very noir, conclusion." - Publishers Weekly

Stand-alone titles:

LONDON BOULEVARD

Mitchell is finally free after a stint in prison for assault. A crony offers him a job as a loan-shark enforcer, and though Mitchell isn't crazy about the idea, he doesn't have any better offers. He's perfect for the job - mean and merciless.

Buthe's also got another, softer side: he's an avid reader of crime novels, he's a loyal friend, and he'd even like to get married one day if he can find the right woman. He figures his luck might have changed when he lands a legitimate job as a handyman for a rich actress who's eager to reward him with cash, cars, and sex. Then he meets Aisling - smart, beautiful, and, best of all, as crazy about Mitchell as he is about her. But Mitchell can never truly escape his violent past or the dangerous world of loan sharks, druggies, and other bottomfeeders. When an arrogant error in judgment threatens everything that's dear to Mitchell, he plots his own ghastly form of revenge on those who've stolen his life.

World Rights Available Ex: English NA, France (Fayard), Japan (Shinchosha)

RILKE ON BLACK

This thriller tells the story of a businessman who has a stunning wife and a passion for poet, Rilke. He is kidnapped by three characters: a red-necked white Brixton-born man; a black woman with a cocaine habit; and a psychopath.

In South London, an unlikely gang of kidnappers hatch a plot. Nick, an ex-bouncer, Dex, a charismatic sociopath, and Lisa, a motor-mouth junkle femme fatale. Their prey is a powerful, local businessman with an obsession for the poet Rilke. Thing is, each kidnapper has a very different agenda. Which means it's only a matter of time before the joking stops, and the ever threatening violence begins.

Rilke on Black is an eerie, crooked tale of sex, obsession and betrayal. Ken Bruen's dark contemporary thriller matches a razor sharp vernacular with a country music soundtrack to create a truly intoxicating and original mix.

Translation Rights Available Ex: France, Germany

HER LAST CALL TO LOUIS MACNEICE

Her name was Cassie. She liked poetry. And guns. And money. She liked Cooper. That was his bad luck. Cooper had it easy back then. For a bank-robber. Took it easy. But took it. He had a legit business too. A repo man. Even had an accountant. Cassie blew it all to hell. 

Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice is the purest London noir, dark and dirty as the Thames by night. Just as with his acclaimed debut, Rilke on Black, Ken Bruen takes the reader on a one-way ride - straight to the bitter end.

Translation Rights Available Ex: France, Germany

THE HACKMAN BLUES

A job of pure simplicity. Find a white girl in Brixton. Piece of cake. What I should have done is doubled my medication and lit a candle to St Jude - maybe a lot of candles. Add to the mixture a lethal ex-con, an Irish builder obsessed with Gene Hackman, the biggest funeral Brixton has ever seen, and what you get is the Blues like they've never been sung before. Ken Bruen's powerful second novel is a gritty and grainy mix of crime noir and Urban Blues that greets you like a mugger stays with you like a razor-scar.

World Rights Available Ex: English NA, France

[Back to Authors]

URSULA DE BRÚN

Ursula de Brun was born in Dublin and spent her childhood in Brooklyn.

A writer for the past twenty years she has written for TV, stage, radio and print and was  a scriptwriter on Series 6 of the popular BBC series Ballykissangel.

Her work includes six plays written for the stage, four of which have been produced in theatres such as Andrews Lane (Dublin), Town Hall (Galway) and the Dunamaise (Portlaoise).
Three radio plays have been produced by RTE (Radio Telefis Eireann). In 1994, she won the P.J. O’Connor Playwright award.

Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies: The Brandon Book of Short Stories, Phoenix Irish Short Stories and Mercier Press Francis McManus collection. She is a winner of a Francis McManus radio short story award.

Ursula lives in Dublin where she facilitates workshops in creative writing and gives drama writing courses for UCD Adult Education Dept.

She is currently working on her next novel, Baby You Can Drive My Car, as well as on a drama for television entitled Love Me.

DANCING WITH THE DELI MAN (World rights)

Moving between Ireland and the US Dancing with the Deli Man is a fast, funny and poignant story of mid-lives thrown a curved ball.

Angela Merrill takes a hit with a bout of existential angst. Daughter Jill calls her mother a veggie. Angela’s afraid she might be…

Paul thinks she’s gone off the boil; and daughter ‘Jilly’ plays him like a fiddle. There’s only one place of refuge… his special chair…the one with the springs ready to burst through and shoot up his backside…

Best friend Margot refuses to marry Dermot as a talisman against banality. Playing the field – is Margot’s cure-all. Because when it’s over, it’s over…

Leo Bronski is lonely. His ex wife Louise blames ‘Nam neuroses. Leo blames bad luck with pain-in-the-ass women. All he wants right now is a good relationship with his son, Steve…

Jill ditches her summer job in Leo’s deli and disappears with Leo’s son.  Angela turns up in Boston looking for her. The kids are doing The Trail; Leo and Angela follow. For him she’s another pain-in-the-ass woman. For her he’s the reason she does something she thought she’d never do – her thing.

Meanwhile … back in Ireland Margot and Paul play out the last stages of their thirty year war...  Margot guarding a secret and Paul busy hatching a sub-standard Machiavellian plot to get Angela back.

About Ursula de Brún's work

Long Lonely Time (Andrews Lane Theatre)

"…A beautifully compact hour of very persuasive theatre…Ursula De Brun hears the much finer sounds of the inner voice… She has a terrific ear for theatre-talk." - Diana Theodore, The Irish Times - Weekend

"Ursula de Brun’s play …will open up many a raw wound…the emotional impact is strong,.. scenes are written in tight economical dialogue that encapsulates a lot of grief…There is a good element of suspense." - Treasa Brogan, The Evening Press

"This is a compelling show, and well worth the visit." - Victoria White, The Irish Times

Rhubarb, Rhubarb (Andrews Lane Studio)

"Rhubarb, Rhubarb… humorously displays the breakdown in communication between a long-married couple…skillfully crafted…" - Mary Carr, The Evening Herald

Heaven Sent (RTE Radio Drama)

"Ursula de Brun’s comic -Play of the Week" - R.T.E. Guide

Signs (The Brandon Book of Irish Short Stories)

‘The Brandon Book of Irish Short Stories features work from a host of the best contemporary Irish writers, including Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe, Ursula de Brun…’ - Ireland on Sunday

[Back to Authors]

XUJUN EBERLEIN

Xujun Eberlein grew up in Chongqing, China, moved to the United States in 1988, and holds a Ph.D. from MIT.

Xujun's fiction and literary non-fiction works have been published in the Unites States, Canada, England, Kenya, and Hong Kong, and won a bunch of literary awards.

Her debut story collection, "Apologies Forthcoming", won the 2007 Tartt Fiction Award and was published in the US in June 2008. 

APOLOGIES FORTHCOMING
Stories

Four decades ago China was embroiled in the Cultural Revolution, a period that turned the country on end and defined the generation of Chinese now coming to power.  This collection of stories, departing from the usual "victim literature," provides an apolitical and humanistic view onto life during and after that time.
Winner of 2007 Tartt Fiction Award

From the publisher:
"A totally  illuminating collection of stories centered around China's Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, which, as we learn, continues even today. Xujun Eberlein lived in China during that turmoil and now makes her home in America. This, her first story collection, is both disturbing and enthralling." - Livingston Press, 2008

Rights available: English ex. NA and Asia; translation rights.

Praise

Xujun Eberlein is a fresh voice in American fiction, a Chinese writer with a remarkably shrewd, interesting tongue.  …There is a richness in her vision that sets it apart.
Jay Parini, Poet, novelist, biographer, professor; author of The Apprentice Lover

Xujun Eberlein has an intimate feel for how the general conditions of a culture--her native Chinese culture--shape and distress the lives of her characters. She is a gifted story-teller, attuned to how people think and feel and deal with the things that really matter behind the show of appearances. The stories have a subtly addictive momentum.
Sven Birkerts, Editor of AGNI and author of My Sky Blue Trade

Xujun Eberlein is a writer of uncommon talent. With affection and perception, she has drawn engaging characters struggling with love, friendship and loss in Chinese society during and after the Cultural Revolution.  Apologies Forthcoming is a gem of a book. - Laila Lalami, Author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits 

[Back to Authors]

KENNETH J. HARVEY
(Russian translation rights only)

International bestselling author Kenneth J. Harvey's books are published in Canada, the US, the UK, Russia, Germany, Japan, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. He has won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Winterset Award, Italy's Libro Del Mare, and has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

His novels The Town That Forgot How to Breathe and Brud have been first published in Russia by Amphora Publishers. A new edition of The Town That Forgot How to Breathe will be coming out from Centrepolygraph Publishers in 2008. Centrepolygraph will also publish Harvey's first short stories collection, Directions for an Opened Body, and his novels Stalkers and Inside.

Praise For Kenneth J. Harvey

"A tough, unrelenting novel, thrilling and darkly eloquent and, in the end, a celebration of what life offers in even the harshest of circumstances." - John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

"A writer like no other." - Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief

"An extravagantly haunted imagination." - J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace

"Inside is classic Harvey. No one else can write like this." - Bill Gaston, author of Sointula

"Compassionate, endlessly inventive and daring...the work of a major writer, and one who single-handedly shifts our literary centre of gravity to the east." - Frank Moher, The National Post


"Inside is the kind of novel that brings temporary life back to such cliches as 'gripping' and 'page-turner'... Myrden will probably stand as one of the more vivid and full-blooded characters of all the Canadian novels being published this year." - Nathan Whitlock, The Toronto Star

[Back to Authors]

SAM HAWKEN

A graduate of the University of Maryland, Sam Hawken pursues twin callings as writer and historian. Areas of his study include comparative theology, Jewish and Middle Eastern histories and the formational experience of the United States.

As a student, he has worked with a number of eminent scholars of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All of Sam Hawken’s work involves extensive research, authentic flavor and a devotion to illuminating issues both historical and contemporary.

Sam Hawken’s short fiction can be found in a number of places and embraces a broad spectrum of genres, from southwestern noir to historical fiction and horror.

He’s appeared in the magazines Revelation, Dead Letters, War Journal, Back Roads and Hardluck Stories, and anthologies Way Out West and Revelation, Vols. I and III. Sam is a member of the Western Writers of America and co-edits Out West: The All-Fiction Western ‘Zine, the only periodical in the United States devoted to western fiction.

THE GUILTY (World rights)

The Guilty, set in post-World War II Germany, draws from scholarship surrounding Nazi Germany’s “euthanasia” program, Aktion T4, while exploring notions of collective guilt as examined in such works as Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s bestseller, Hitler’s Willing Executioners.

A novel of love, horror and redemption, The Guilty is set in a small German town of Engelmann. From 1941 to 1945, Engelmann Hospital, in the beautiful German countryside, was a death factory. The bodies of the murdered were burned or buried, just like the memories of those who let it happen.

Brilliantly conceived, surreal and disturbing, The Guilty explores the lasting effect such wrongs have on both the perpetrators and the victims… living and dead.

It is 1965. Ella Kaffenberger arrives in Engelmann to secure a student-nurse position in the old and relatively forgotten hospital.  Born on the day the war ended, Ella has known only the wounded Germany left when the bombs stopped falling. She is a part of the healing generation of Germans untouched by the poison of Nazism.

She has lived a sheltered life, and has only one real ambition: to work with children. Her relationships with adults are awkward and naive, from Dr. Fischer, director of Engelmann Hospital, to the handsome carpenter working on renovations with whom she becomes involved.

Dr. Fischer, rumored by the staff to be a tattooed former death camp inmate, assigns Ella to pursue one of his projects: uncovering the files of deceased patients from the Nazi years.

Ella’s work reveals a black vein of hidden history – crimes for which no one paid the penalty – and she comes to understand that the souls of the dead have never rested easy in Engelmann…

Ella has to stand against the evil at the heart of the hospital, and in the dark yesterdays of Nazi Germany, protecting the children of Engelmann and the one she carries.

As well as a chilling evocation of the atrocities committed during the reign of Nazism, The Guilty is a sensitive, humane and moving story of a young women who never had to fight for anything and who, at a crucial moment in her life, discovers her own inner strength, sense of justice and unswerving dedication to the idea 'never again'.

[Back to Authors]

HARVEY JACOBS

Harvey Jacobs is one of America's most remarkable storytellers, a modern surrealist and perhaps the greatest Jewish fantasist since Singer.

His short stories collection The Egg of the Glak was published in the USA by Harper & Row in 1969 and in the UK by Secker & Warburg in 1970 (reprinted in 1971), was optioned for film five times and still has a cult following in the USA, England and Australia.

His first novel, Summer On a Mountain of Spices about a Catskill Mountain hotel in the last days of WWII was also optioned for film and Broadway by Hal Prince and stands as one of the best novels of the "Jewish Alps" ever written. A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts allowed him time to complete his next novel The Juror.

His short stories continued to appear in a wide variety of US and overseas magazines as diverse as Esquire, Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Paris Review. He won the Playboy Fiction Award in a competition that included many of America's best writers.

Other work includes the novels Beautiful Soup and American Goliath, called "arguably the year's best novel" by the Kirkus Review.

SIDE EFFECTS

Side Effects is the incredibly painful (and slightly hilarious) story of the last day in the short (but turbulent) life of Simon Epple, a lad from Glenda, Minnesota, who discovers (the hard way) that in our time side effects have replaced fate.

The subject, i.e. the pharmaceutical industry and its barrage of commercials for cure-or-kill miracle drugs is exactly on target, front and center in millions of minds…literally, a matter of life or death. It is a fast and furious read.
The basic setting for the novel is a death row cell in a maximum security Federal prison. In his final hours, Simon relives his roller coaster life, is host to relatives, friends (and enemies) who come to say their fond farewells. Simon’s main interest is in discovering the clever plot that landed him in utter jeopardy, convicted of murdering a cult leader not to mention the holy man’s many followers.

Simon, who is half-Catholic and half-Jewish, remembers when he was baptized and circumcised in the same day, all that activity leaving the infant delirious with fever. Fortunately, a new drug being tested by Regis Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. saves his life (but, alas, there will be side effects.)

The side effects will lead to other side effects, ad infinitum, shaping the course of Simon’s life while throwing the entire pharmaceutical industry into absolute panic.

Simon is stricken by a series of peculiar illness traced to virulent side effects caused by every “wonder drug” that cures his previous illness (the drugs marketed by Regis Pharmaceuticals, Ltd.). Each time a side effect is detected, the company must add a “black box” warning to the drug’s label - these warnings translate into millions, even billions of dollars lost in potential sales. Regis Van Clay quickly realizes that Simon Epple is a threat not only to his company but to the gross national product of the U.S.A. and the threat must be dealt with firmly and finally.

Despite a sudden anti-death penalty turnabout by Regis Van Clay for very pragmatic reasons, Simon is legally executed…or is he? The lethal drugs (usually effective, not too many complaints) produce certain side effects when administered to Simon Epple that cause amazing complications…with dangerous implications for the drug cartels!

Rights available: World ex. North America (Celadon Press, 2008)

About Harvey Jacob’s writing

American Goliath (St. Martin’s Press, 1997)

“First things first: this is a masterpiece… stunningly inventive and charming fiction – arguably this year’s best novel.”  - Kirkus Review

“It is a wonderfully engrossing read. It is an enlightening and life-enhancing read… I recommend it to everyone who had given up hope of ever again being entertained at such a high level of aspiration. This is the kind of book that restores your faith in the vitality and focus of American fiction.”
Michael Moorcock

“If Mark Twain and Isaac Bashevis Singer went on a bender and collaborated on a novel, it would be American Goliath! Harvey Jacob’s masterpiece is a bawdy, joyous romp of a novel and a quintessentially American fable. It’s full of life, laughter, gentle cynicism and homegrown magical realism. It’s a wonderful book.“ - Jack Dann

Beautiful Soup (Celadon Press, 1990)

“Beautiful Soup is not only a very funny book, but also an accomplished, rare novel. Recommended.”
- Magic Realism

“It unfolds with a richness of invention, character and dialogue.”       
- Locus

“A fine comic novel… Jacobs’ screwball comic inferno America… It’s funny, it’s pointed… Jacobs manages to imbue it with a certain characterological depth, a warmth, a pathos even. Satire it is, but satire, as it were, with a human face.” - Azimov SF

Short stories

“Jacobs, a superb wordsmith, is at home in many areas… His characters are haunting. He has an original mind with a highly attractive way of looking at things.” - Chicago Tribune

“Hypnotizes, the reader is compelled to listen. Bizarre urban fairy tales delivered with kick and rhythm.”
- Time Magazine

“It is impossible to stop reading any of them. Here is an author who sees life clearly and with humor everything there is to know.”  - Publishers Weekly      

“The ease with which Jacobs pulls transformations from real to surreal, from plausible to perverse, admirably shows his art in creating milieus at times comic, at times sorrowful, but never sentimental.”
- The Independent

[Back to Authors]

CELINE KIERNAN

Born and raised in Dublin, Celine Kiernan has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. Trained at the SullivanBluth Studios, her career as a classical feature character animator has spanned over seventeen years and given her a tremendous amount of pleasure and pride. She’s spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA, but for the past ten years has been more or less settled in Ireland.

Celine wrote her first (and most appalling) novel at the age of eleven, and hasn’t stopped writing or drawing since. She has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most, drawing and story telling.

Married and the bemused mother of two entertaining teens, Celine is currently working on the third novel of "The Moorehawke Trilogy,"The Rebel Prince, and preparing the art-work for her graphic novel, Thomas Clarke Goes to War.

THE MOOREHAWKE TRILOGY

This trilogy is a young adult’s adventure/fantasy/romance set in a fantasy version of fourteenth century Europe. There are no dragons or fairies or magical powers, the fantasy elements include only talking cats and the accepted and universal presence of ghosts. The trilogy contains themes that would be considered quite mature.

Roddy Doyle wrote about Celine Kiernan's work: 'This is marvellous, vivid writing, and story telling at its absolute best. It reminded of the first time I read Philip Pullman - I was utterly engrossed.'

THE POISON THRONE
Returning to her home after a five year absence, fifteen-year-old Protector Lady finds herself embroiled in a shocking and dangerous mystery. The Royal Prince Alberon is missing, and the King seems determined to wipe all traces of him from history. Worse again, to Wynter's horror, the King has forced her great friend, the Lord Razi, to take Alberon's place as heir to the throne. Razi, the King's much loved bastard son, is determined to find his brother and restore the fragile Kingdom to its former stability and peace.

Between them, Wynter, Razi, and Razi's mysterious friend Christopher, must dodge assassins, battle the King's brutal guards, and try and keep themselves out of prison as they solve the mystery of Alberon's disappearance. But eventually it becomes clear, that to be of any use at all, they must escape the confines of the palace, something that is much easier said than done.

Torn between her duty to the future of the Kingdom, and her desire to protect the ones she loves, Wynter finds herself faced with the most heartbreaking of decisions. Can she find the strength to abandon her dying father to the not-so-tender mercies of his friend The King? And what of her growing love for Christopher Garron? The palace is no place for a man such as him. In this most political of worlds, Wynter knows that she must bring herself to let Christopher go, while she stays behind to fulfil her role as Protector Lady.

The Poison Throne takes the reader from the time Wynter and her father arrive back at the palace, to the time when Razi, Christopher and Wynter escape the palace and head out in search of Alberon.

Rights available:
French & Russian translation rights.

Rights sold:
English Australia / New Zealand: Allen & Unwin; Spanish (Paidos / Grupo
Planeta; German (Heyne & Bertelsmann).
All the other rights: The O'Brien Press (Ireland).

Praise for THE POISON THRONE

Hughes & Hughes Booksellers: "Book of the Month" (October 2008).

Eason's Booksellers: featured in the Diamond Catalogue (October 2008).

This is marvellous, vivid writing, and story telling at its absolute best. It reminded of the first time I read Philip Pullman - I was utterly engrossed. - Roddy Doyle

Although written for young adult readers Celine Kiernan's first novel will, I am sure, enjoy a much wider readership. The first of "The Moorehawke trilogy", it tells the tale of a young girl and her father and their attempts to lead a normal, and safe, life in a fourteenth century kingdom set somewhere in southern Europe. The characters are few, but they are drawn with such exactitude, with such sympathy for their predicaments, that they linger on in the reader's mind when the final chapter has been read.        The Irish Immigrant ("Book of the week")

The narrator’s voice is strong and the writing stylish. An excellent story from a debut Irish author.     Children’s Books Ireland’s BookFest – Recommended Reading Guide (also selected as ‘Editor’s Choice’)

Kiernan's characters are well drawn, and her complicated plot – surrounding a young woman caught up in a courtly intrigue – is made palatable by well-delivered messages of friendship, familial love and tolerance at the book's heart. - Sunday Business Post (Ireland)

While there are some Irish echoes in Celine Kiernan's striking debut novel, The Poison Throne the setting, both in place and time, is unnamed: the former hints at a kingdom somewhere in southern Europe, the latter would seem to be the 14th century. Here is a territory ruled over by King Jonathon, presiding over a court and country undergoing radical social and political change. When 15-year-old Wynter Moorehawke and her lord protector father return to their country after some time away, they soon find themselves entangled in the decidedly murky and violent world of royal intrigue. Add some talking cats and some appearing and disappearing ghosts and we have the material for a fascinating historical fantasy, characterised by vivid, colourful writing, some wonderfully reconstructed 14th-century speech and a fondness for the expressive simile: "…his voice as subtle as snow falling on snow". Warmly recommended, for readers of 14 and well beyond. - The Irish Times

"The first in a trilogy, this novel, set in a fictionalised fourteenth-century Europe, is a remarkable combination of court intrigue, adventure and romance. Densely written, the narrator’s voice is strong and the writing stylish. An excellent story from a debut Irish author." - Children's Books Ireland

"Teen novel that will baroque your world. Kiernan’s epic fantasy adventure set in an imagined version of 14th Century Europe has all the ingredients of an international bestseller: political skulduggery, passion, violence, loyalty and betrayal. …Although much of the novel takes place in two rooms, it’s a testament to Kiernan’s writing that the book still manages to be compelling, exciting and full of suspense. The torture chamber scenes require a strong stomach but add to the dark, Dumas-like atmosphere. The writing is extraordinary, almost baroque, layered with metaphors and similes; at times it threatens to overpower the plot but somehow in this meaty, satisfying novel, it works. This book is the first part in a trilogy, recommended for both teen and adult readers." - The Irish Independent

THE CROWDED SHADOWS

Alone for the first time in her life, fifteen-year-old Protector Lady Wynter Moorehawke continues her search for the missing Prince Alberon. But how long can a young woman survive in these bandit infested mountains? And just exactly how many of the King’s enemies are lurking in these crowded shadows? It seems that every tyrant or bully that has ever threatened the Kingdom is sending delegates to meet with the Rebel Prince, and Wynter is increasingly nervous of Alberon’s intentions.

Old friends soon make a welcome appearance, and Wynter finds herself reunited with her dear friend Razi and her beloved Christopher. They join forces and, with Wynter’s knowledge of the route, the two men are confident that they shall soon find Razi’s half brother and settle this terrible rift between the King and his legitimate heir.
But where old friends go, old enemies soon follow, and Wynter finds herself confronted with terrible shadows from Razi’s past. The infamous Loups-Garous make a sudden reappearance, and their casual brutality seems certain to end our friend’s journey.

All seems lost, until comfort comes from an unexpected source. Wynter once again finds herself caught up in formalities and politics, but this time of a completely foreign nature. It is to Christopher that Wynter and Razi must now turn for guidance and help, as it is his adopted people, The Merron, who offer them sanctuary in their time of need.

Why have these fiercely independent nomads come so far south? And why have they sided with that bloody-handed tyrant Marguerite Shirken, the very woman who has made it her life’s work to wipe their race from the face of the earth? Alberon is at the centre of all this, and now only the Merron can get Razi to his brother’s camp. But why is Christopher so unwilling to take his people’s help? And why, after all he has been through, would he rather face the Wolves then allow Razi accept the Merron’s protection?

The Crowded Shadows ends with Wynter, Razi and Christopher setting out on the last leg of their quest under the dubious protection of the Merron Lords.

Rights available:
French & Russian translation rights.

Rights sold:
English Australia / New Zealand: Allen & Unwin; Spanish (Paidos / Grupo
Planeta; German (Heyne & Bertelsmann).

All the other rights: The O'Brien Press (Ireland).

THE REBEL PRINCE (work in progress)

In this third and last volume of the trilogy, Wynter Moorehawke and her friends find the missing Prince Alberon. Having been convinced that Razi was dead, Alberon greets his brother with joy, welcoming him and Wynter with open arms. But five years of war have left their scars, and it is not long before the brothers’ differences come between them.

Troubled by the fragility of The King’s vision of the future, Alberon is determined to protect the Kingdom by strength rather then diplomacy. He proudly reveals to Razi and Wynter his great hope, Lorcan’s ‘Bloody Machine’ An invention hundreds of years ahead of it’s time, the ‘Bloody machine’ amounts to the Tudor version of a machinegun and offers huge advantages over the crude weaponry available to the Kingdom’s enemies.

Alberon cannot understand his father’s desire to repress this incredible invention. In this confusion over their father’s motives, Wynter and Alberon find common ground. Alberon sees Lorcan’s machine as the perfect tool to defend the geographically and militarily vulnerable Kingdom. Razi claims that Alberon may well insure the strength of the Kingdom, but he will, in the process, rot its soul and there-by undo all the good that their father has done in the short time of his reign.

Wynter cannot bring herself to agree with Razi. She knows that the Kingdom will not survive another insurrection. Despite her deep qualms about Alberon’s choice of allies, she finds herself siding with him against her friends.
But when the last envoys to Alberon’s camp turn out to be the Loups-Garous, Wynter’s loyalty to the Kingdom and its future are stretched to their limit. How can she possibly stand by as Alberon negotiates with the men who have so blighted Christopher’s life? And what about Christopher, can he once again swallow his desire for revenge? Or will he finally wreak his vengeance, regardless of the effect it may have on Alberon’s negotiations, and his friendship with Razi?

The Rebel Prince ends with an epilogue in which we see the surviving members of the travel party and the kind of lives they are leading, four years after the final battle.

Rights available:
French & Russian translation rights.

Rights sold:
English Australia / New Zealand: Allen & Unwin; Spanish (Paidos / Grupo
Planeta; German (Heyne & Bertelsmann).

All the other rights: The O'Brien Press (Ireland).

[Back to Authors]

ROBERT KILLIAN-DAWSON

Robert Killian-Dawson was born in London and grew up in Australia and South East Asia, the backdrop for his novel The Right Thing to Do. He was educated at Marlborough College and the University of Southampton, where he studied Politics.

At various times he has worked as a radio journalist, a business writer and a photographer. He has been married to Reneé since 1997; together they have renovated several period houses, managed a rock’n’roll band and bred some rather fine miniature dachshunds.

They live with their three children on the east coast of the United States, in the historic South Carolina town of Beaufort, where Robert is currently working on his next novel.

BURNING FURY (World rights)

A woman dressed like a bag lady shuffles onto the forecourt of a gas station in the North Carolina coastal town of Catherine, and fills a gallon canister with gasoline. She walks a quarter of a mile to the beach, where she douses the fuel over her body and sets herself alight.

When the charred woman is identified at the hospital, it turns out she is the schizophrenic mother of Alex Hutchinson, one of Catherine’s most famous sons. It was Alex and his rock’n’roll band, Burning Fury, who put this sleepy college town on the map and turned it into a regional cultural hub drawing in musicians, filmmakers, artists and wannabees from all over the country. Interrupting a world tour to see his mother before she dies, Alex then retreats to a vast mock Italianate villa overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

In his grief Alex turns to Rachel, the one woman who knew him intimately when he was a regular sized person, before he became a rock star. The problem is, Rachel is married to Stuart, and having been burned once by Alex, she is extremely wary of having anything to do with him again. After all, her life is an enviable one: the loving husband with a successful business, the immaculately restored historic home, the picture perfect two daughters, the weekend lodge in the mountains, the cars, the boat… and yet… and yet…

Stuart, meanwhile, has his own demons. His own successes, though considerable, will always pale in comparison with Alex’s. Stuart’s curse was that he left the band for the security of his family’s restaurant business a few months before they were signed to a major label and rocketed into stardom.

As Alex descends upon this fragile couple, he starts to suck out of them the one thing he can’t buy – their normality. In the process he dredges up memories that were better left unstirred, sowing the seeds of his own discontent in Stuart and Rachel’s perfectly manicured garden.

Burning Fury takes a hard look at contemporary America, where the well-off have more stuff than almost anyone else in the world, but consume anti-depressants in equally vast quantities. Its central themes are envy, our obsession with celebrity and how we come to terms with our thwarted ambitions.

[Back to Authors]

PAUL MASON

BAO: ABSENT HEADS

Eleventh century China.

A headless corpse is found in parkland. Bao Xing, a young clerk in the district magistrate’s office, becomes embroiled in the investigation.

He thinks it’s his way out of a dead-end job, but instead it leads him up some dark, unexpected alleyways.
He soon discovers that being sincere and well-meaning doesn’t get you very far in pursuit of a maniac, it just gets you beaten up by anyone nursing a grudge, including your boss. Nursing broken bones, Bao Xing learns of a second murder. This time he plunges into the world of the intelligentsia, a world of sexual politics, tangled familial relations and secrets. Once again, things don’t quite work out the way he hoped they would.

Fate intervenes in the shape of another man named Bao, an unsmiling judge dedicated to the eradication of corruption. With Bao Xing’s information, the judge starts to get results, but as the case unfolds, hidden complexities emerge. By the time it is resolved, nine heads have been lost and a festering evil close to the Emperor has been exposed.

Judge Bao is a historical figure, and China’s most celebrated detective. The Bao series puts him back where he belongs: in the Song Dynasty, a time and place remote even from contemporary China, yet tantalisingly modern.

Rights available: World

[Back to Authors]

CRAIG MCDONALD

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist and writer. He is a finalist of the Edgar, the Gumshoe and CrimeSpree Awards and is nominated for the Anthony Award for his first novel, Head Games.

He was a contributor to the 2004 New York Times nonfiction besteller Secrets of the Code and an author of two books of interviews with major American and European crime and mystery writers: Art In the Blood (PointBlank, 2006) and Rogue Males, (Bleak House, 2008).

His short stories and articles have also appeared in the Mississippi Review, Hard Luck Stories, Crime Factory, Crimespree and Thuglit.

Bleak House Books published in September 2007, as a lead title, Craig McDonald's novel Head Games, introducing Hector Lassiter, a larger-than-life crime writer.

Hector Lassiter also centers highly-praised short stories that appear in two crime fiction anthologies, The Deadly Bride & 19 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, (Carroll & Graf, 2006) and Danger City II (Contemporary Press, 2006) and three prequels, Toros & Torsos (Bleak House, Fall 2008), Print the Legend (St. Martin's/Minotaur, 2009) and Gnashville, Mon Amour (St. Martin's/Minotaur, 2010)

Head Games is soon to appear in graphic novel format from First Second Books, an Eisner Award winning imprint of Henry Holt & Company.

HEAD GAMES

Head Games is equal parts road novel, caper and historical fiction: a black comedy and wistful ballad of lost America rooted in borderland myth and history.

In March 1916, Mexican General Pancho Villa raided and destroyed the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several civilians. President Woodrow Wilson dispatched Black Jack Pershing and an army of 10,000 into Mexico to find and bring back Villa — dead or alive. The chase descended into a national debacle. Villa escaped, living in comfort and peace until his assassination in 1923. A short time later, someone dug up Pancho’s body and stole his head.

An American soldier-of-fortune was arrested for stealing Pancho Villa’s skull. Many believe he was hired by the grandfather of U.S. President George W. Bush. Prescott Bush was a member of the secretive Yale Skull and Bones Society.

Head Games’ narrator is Hector Lassiter, a larger-than-life crime writer who knew Hammett and Chandler … a boozing, brawling, much-married charmer who fished with Hemingway and bedded Hollywood starlets.
Now widowed and feeling his age, Lassiter recovers Villa’s head. Within hours of taking possession of the skull, Lassiter and a young poet sent to profile him for True Magazine are targets of competing fraternities, Mexican bandits and U.S. intelligence services.

The breakneck chase extends across 1957-1970 America — from the cantinas of old Mexico to the Venice, California set of Orson Welles’ noir classic Touch of Evil, to the sanctum sanctorum of Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones Society. The cast of characters includes Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Webb and a young and gone-missing National Guardsman named “George W.”

All rights available exept:
English N/A: Bleak House (published Fall 2007)
French translation rights: Belfond, Editis Group.
Russian translation rights: Arabesque Books, AST Group.
Japanese translation rights: Shueisha
Graphic novel adaptation: First Second Books, Henry Holt & Co.
Audio book rights: Recorded Books, USA.

TOROS & TORSOS

Hector Lassiter is a crime novelist who writes what he lives and lives what he writes. But Hector goes a step beyond: frequently forcing those around him into the tawdry and turbulent territory of his crime stories and novels.
In Toros & Torsos, Hector meets his match in the person of a mysterious killer committed to the craft of murder: a blood-thirsty provocateur who leaves a string of increasingly macabre, homicidal tableaus modeled after seminal works of surrealist art.

This startling novel takes it cue from all-too-real recent scholarship postulating the existence of a dark underground of misogynistic and possibly homicidal surrealist artists, photographers and art collectors that flourished in Europe and United States through most of the Twentieth Century. These extremist surrealists engaged in a parlor game they dubbed “Exquisite Corpse” — a twisted collaborative artistic pursuit that may have found its most infamous and sublime expression in the 1947 murder of would-be actress Elizabeth Short.
Toros & Torsos pits Lassiter, the hard-living pulp author, against the ultimate performance artist in a duel to the death extending across three decades and three continents.

The novel is set against the vivid backdrops of a killer hurricane that nearly destroyed the Florida Keys in 1935, the Spanish Civil War, post-war Los Angeles and the final days of the Batista regime in Cuba.
This wildly original noir saga also boasts a cast of characters including Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and John Huston.

In a blood-limned haze of deception, murderous metaphor and devastating betrayal, nothing is what it seems and obsession and creativity collide in a wicked and unexpected climax that shakes the art world to its foundations.

All rights available exept:
English N/A: Bleak House (Fall 2008)

PRINT THE LEGEND

It was the shot heard ’round the world: On July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway died from a shotgun blast to the head.

Hemingway spent the last days of his life in a state of severe paranoia, convinced he was under constant surveillance by the FBI. Hemingway was alone in his Idaho home with his fourth wife, Mary, the morning of his death. Mary first said Papa’s shooting was an accident. Later she admitted that in the wake of brutal electroshock treatments, Ernest Hemingway took his own life.

It’s 1965: two men have come to Ketchum, Idaho to confront the widow Hemingway — men who have doubts about the true circumstances of Hemingway’s death. One is crime novelist Hector Lassiter, the oldest and best of Hem’s friends…the last man standing of the Lost Generation. Hector has heard intimations of some surviving Hemingway manuscripts: a “lost” chapter of A Moveable Feast and a full-length manuscript written by a deluded Hemingway that Hector fears might compromise or harm his own reputation. What Hector finds are pieces of his own, long-ago stolen writings, now in danger of being foisted upon an unsuspecting public as Ernest Hemingway’s work.

The other man is Hemingway scholar Richard Paulson, a man with a dark agenda who sets out to prove that Mary murdered Papa Hemingway.

Paulson and his young, pregnant wife Hannah, herself an aspiring writer, travel to Idaho to interview Mrs. Hemingway who believes Richard Paulson has come to write her hagiography.

As Hector digs into the mystery of his and Hemingway’s lost writings, he uncovers an audacious, decades-long conspiracy tied to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

Print the Legend is a literary thriller about Hemingway's death and the patina that perceived suicide lends the author's legend…an exploration of the sinister shadow play and co-dependence that binds authors and their academics.

It is a love story that finds the aging Hector Lassiter striving to protect Hannah as sinister forces gather around her, threatening Hannah and her unborn child.

It is a propulsive page-turner that carries the critically acclaimed Hector Lassiter series to a new level — a startling novel that draws on scholarship confirming the FBI hounded Hemingway across the course of his long, storied career, and in fact followed Papa into the very corridors of the Mayo Clinic.

Craig McDonald’s novel could forever change how readers regard the death of Ernest Hemingway. When legend becomes fact, print the legend.

All rights available ex.:
English N/A: St. Martin's Press / Minotaur (Spring 2009)

GNASHVILLE, MON AMOUR

Craig McDonald once again blends history, humor and propulsive narrative drive in the latest installment of The Hector Lassiter series.

It’s 1958: the cold war is raging, racial tensions are reaching the boiling point and the U.S. government has just lost a hydrogen bomb somewhere off the South Carolina coast.

As the tumultuous year winds down, crime novelist Hector Lassiter and his young friend singer-songwriter Logan Burke arrive in Nashville for the funeral of a country music legend — a death that’s starting to look a lot like murder.

Prodded by his troubadour protégé, Hector — grown weary of his own outsized public persona — begins nosing around the circumstances of country music king Jake Gantry’s death. Soon enough, skeletons start tumbling from closets and it becomes clear the picking-and-grinning, wig-wearing country crooner was a sinister and dangerous man with a terrible secret agenda.

Hector and Logan’s once-simple inquiry swiftly skids crosswise, entangling them with a couple of dangerous women and unexpectedly mushrooming into a death race to recover a stolen weapon that could reduce Music City USA to a radioactive crater — a device sought not just by the U.S. government agency responsible for its loss, but also a host of spies, foreign insurgents and homegrown terrorists.

Caught in a crossfire of unimaginably high stakes, Hector’s accidental crusade will ally him with old friends and former adversaries and offer the world-weary pulp novelist a last chance to leave an unexpected heritage that will carry through to the 21st Century — nothing less than the prospect to shift the balance of power across a continent and forever change the course of history.

All rights available exept:
English N/A: St. Martin's Press / Minotaur

Praise for Head Games

A fun, deft debut, …reminiscent of James Crumley's Milo Milodragovich PI novels but Crumley lite, this slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire.  - Publishers Weekly

Every now and then you run into a book that has it all: humor, a delightfully dark tone, a world-weary and larger-than-life protagonist and a wildly inventive storyline. Craig McDonald's Head Games is such a novel. …A book with a premise as unorthodox as this could easily dissolve into farce, but McDonald skillfully avoids that trap, crafting a clever and only slightly over-the-top slaughter-fest worthy of James Ellroy or James Crumley." 
- BookPage (chosen as September 2007 "Mystery of the Month")

Craig McDonald, a genuine expert on the history of crime fiction (with a wonderful book of author interviews, "Art in the Blood," to prove it), gives free rein to all his obsessions in a debut novel that's a berserk 1957-based caper running roughshod through the politics and pop culture of the latter half of the 20th century. His hero, Hec Lassiter, a pulp fiction writer, gets caught up in plot involving Ivy League skulduggery (yes, the Bush family appears), Mexican federales and revolutionaries and an assortment of real-life icons (Hemingway, Dietrich, Welles) - all whipped into a violent, frothing frenzy. McDonald stomps hard enough on the gas that there's no time to reflect on the preciousness of it all. Strap in, hold on, enjoy the ride.  - San Francisco Chronicle, Eddie Muller's Top 10 list in crime fiction for 2007

Blurring the lines between historical fact and fiction, Craig McDonald’s triumphantly twisted first novel is one of the most unusual, and readable, crime-fiction releases to come along in years. … Crime-fiction fans looking for an original voice should check out this exceptional debut, which blends Jack Kerouac’s picaresque narrative style and James Ellroy’s noir sensibilities with a heaping helping of urban legend, subtle social commentary and a trunkful of decapitated heads.  - Chicago Tribune

In his debut novel McDonald mixes history, legend, and fantastic characters to play the best kind of Head Games with his readers. Where has this guy been? Sit back, curl up and get ready for a timeless adventure. …Head Games is a magic carpet ride in a Chevy Bel Air. The end result is a trip no mystery fan should miss. Hector Lassiter is a tarnished hero with a lustrous shine. Next book please Mr. McDonald.   - Crimespree Magazine

A turbulent tale of murder, conspiracy and political intrigue …not for the faint-hearted.  - Kirkus Review

Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50's.  A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot.  The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending.   - James Crumley

Few writers can blend a contemporary feel with what drew us to  old-style pulp and original paperbacks: that momentum, that craziness, the  thrill of the downhill slide and crash. "Head Games" is smart, it's funny, and it moves like a roach when the  lights go on -- what's not to love? - James Sallis

“You’ve got to find what you love and let it kill you.” Jesus… I’d kill for those lines. The book just took me breath away… This is like the old master in his 70s, producing one last masterpiece to stun them… Stunned me… Over and over. The beautiful understated humour running like a sad song all through the whole novel. I stake me whole reading career on calling this a full formed masterpiece. I’m beyond impressed.”   - Ken Bruen

Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by -- but never weighed down by -- Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next.   - Laura Lippman

Head Games is that one in a million read (which happens to be a debut) that most of us six and seven tries down the road wish we could come up with just once. Head Games is fast, funny, furious, heart wrenching, real smart and totally unapologetic … a five-star page turning sizzler in a four-star world.   - Charlie Stella

Head Games is contemporary noir at its finest. Prose that bites like a guillotine blade. A voice that sings in your skull. And in aging pulpster/adventurer Hector Lassiter, a hero who's the real deal — morally complex and damned funny.  - Allan Guthrie

Craig McDonald knows the tough guy, has created one of the very finest, a pulp writer called Lassiter who knew Hemingway, Welles and Dietrich, and who I wish wasn't fucking fictional so I could hunt for his books. He spits in the eye of the pansy-ass authority hero that has glutted the crime market, reminiscent of Crumley at his best and with Ellroy's sick historical verve. Bottom line, McDonald's a talented bastard. - Ray Banks

Praise for TOROS & TORSOS

Spanning the years from 1935 to 1959, Edgar-finalist McDonald's second novel to feature crime novelist Hector Lassiter (after 2007's Head Games) deftly mixes myth, history and a serial killer who arranges dead bodies to resemble surrealistic art. Lassiter, whose work embodies the “write what you live and live what you write” ethos, loves hard, drinks hard and keeps an eye on avenging the loss of the beautiful blonde he meets in a Key West bar on page one. As a popular author, Lassiter interacts with such notables as Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, whom the author skillfully animates. Other celebrities of the day make cameo appearances. Solidly grounded in such actual events as the Key West hurricane of 1935, the Spanish Civil War and Cuba's last days before Castro, McDonald's imaginative tale takes an enjoyably different approach to art and murder. - Publishers Weekly

Crime writer and ladies' man Hector Lassiter (Head Games) makes a return appearance in McDonald's outstanding second series effort. Spanning over a quarter-century and moving from Miami to Hollywood with stops in Spain and Cuba for a civil war and a revolution, respectively, this novel displays McDonald's storytelling and writing skills. …McDonald wows with his writing, which seems effortless despite using many voices, and his book will keep readers rapt. Highly recommended for all public libraries. - Library Journal

Head Games was an over-the-top road trip through the history and myth of mid-twentieth-century America. Toros & Torsos is similar, but every different. This time Hec is palling with Hemingway in Key West and preparing for what proves to be the devastating 1935 hurricane. A young woman there is disemboweled, and her torso is stuffed with machine parts. Hec immediately connects the murder to surrealist art and journeys to the battlefront of the Spanish civil war, Hollywood and Cuba in search of the artistic murderer. Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Salvador Dali and John Dos Passos all turn up in juicy cameos and the details on the hurricane, the Spanish war, and surrealism are the product of careful research. This is less of a romp than Head Games, darker and richer, with Hec less a cartoon action hero and more a fully fleshed lead character. - Booklist

McDonald's sophomore effort is a lot of fun, as the author effortlessly and credibly incorporates his characters and storyline into such real life happenings as the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, the Spanish Civil War, the filming of The Lady from Shanghai, and the Black Dahlia murders. …

Toros and Torsos manages to convey interesting historical tidbits even as it entertains. Although lethal tough guy Lassiter is indeed larger than life, his presence among the likes of Hemingway and Welles feels appropriate, as if he actually were a vital part of that notable crowd. Add McDonald's myriad, but uniformly clever, allusions to all things noir to the mix, and you get one captivating read. - Mystery Scene Review

“The twists and turns in Toros & Torsos boggle the mind when viewed from a distance. When one is in the middle of the book, it all flows seamlessly. Hector’s place, just off the center of several social circles, never seems unusual or unlikely. The well-known figures that he interacts with seem just as real as Hector does. Toros & Torsos is a novel of deceptions, large and small, and obsessions. Set against the background of the Spanish Civil War, the HUAC activities, and the artistic circle that included Hemingway, Dos Passos, Orson Welles, and the like, Toros & Torsos is a ripping good read.” - Crimespree Magazine

In TOROS & TORSOS Craig McDonald takes pop culture, real people and invented action to create a powerful novel of suspense. It gives one the slippery sensation of time-travelling with characters you'd always wished you could meet and suddenly you can. McDonald is knowing and artful, and the suspense pushes at a lovely pace until it starts to stomp like Hemingway on an empty bota." - Daniel Woodrell

A bold, ambitious, genre-bending novel from the talented Craig McDonald. - George Pelecanos

Craig McDonald's novel is astounding, covering everything from top class mystery to a real depiction of such notaries as The Surrealists and Hemingway and literally makes them live and breathe. Such is the sheer artistry of the writing. This is granite poetry in all it's stone glory. Cross Cormac McCarthy with Craig Holden and throw in the wizardry of Pete Dexter, then you come close to realising how amazing this novel is. - Ken Bruen

In his lush, sprawling second novel, Toros and Torsos, Craig McDonald draws together both the timeliest markers of mid-century America—modernism, surrealism, film noir, pulp fiction, communism—and the eternal touchstones of classic crime literature—desire, chaos, obsession and loss. It is a bold, bloody landscape, but McDonald never lets its scale become so big that we lose sight of the lively characters at its dark center. Wily and wistful Hector Lassiter, a complicated, rueful and haunted Ernest Hemingway and dozens more draw us close to their chests, anchor us, win our favor and, in the end, break our hearts." - Megan Abbot, Edgar-winning author of Queenpin (Simon & Schuster)

ROGUE MALES, Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life

Crime novelist Duane Swierczynski (The Wheelman, The Blonde) declares Craig McDonald's first book of interviews Art in the Blood “A must-read collection of interviews with crime writers at the top of their game by an interviewer who’s at the top of his.”

Rogue Males is a second book of interviews with major American and European crime fiction authors, including James Crumley, Daniel Woodrell, Alistair MacLeod, Andrew Vachss, James Ellroy, Max Allan Collins, Stephen J. Cannell, Craig Holden, Pete Dexter, Randy Wayne White, Lee Child, Elmore Leonard, Tom Russell, Kinky Friedman, James Sallis and Ken Bruen.

From the Introduction:

"The writers I’ve spoken with over the past five or six years have by turns been funny, warm, truculent, insightful and sometimes brusque. Some have been extremely thoughtful, and some have been flip or prickly.
The interviews have been cordial and charged.

They’ve rarely been less than provocative.

In the following interviews, you will encounter mavericks, trailblazers and the gadflies. Men of conscience, entrepreneurs and magnificent bastards.

They are variously crusaders and reformers … exhibitionists and isolates. These are writers who have lost parents and wives and children, sometimes through tragedy, sometimes for pursuing their art, and sometimes as a result of their own head-shaking bad behavior. When it comes to their excesses, most of these men are their own harshest and best/worst critics.

Through it all, to a man, they have remained stubbornly creative, working alone, writing novels and stories through all manners of turmoil and adversity."

Rights available: English ex. North America (Bleak House Books, 2008).
Translation rights ex. French (Editions Moisson Rouge).

[Back to Authors]

PAT MULLAN

Pat Mullan was born in Ireland and has lived in England, Canada and the USA. Formerly a banker, he now lives in Connemara, in the west of Ireland. 

He has published articles, poetry and short stories in magazines such as Buffalo Spree, Tales of the Talisman, Writers Post Journal.  His poetry appears frequently in the Acorn E-zine of the Dublin Writers Workshop.

Recent work has appeared in the anthology, Dublin Noir, published in the USA by Akashic Books and in Ireland and the UK by Brandon Books.

His first novel, The Circle of Sodom, received two nominations: one for Best First Novel and one for Best Suspense Thriller at the 2005 Love Is Murder conference in Chicago. His second novel, Blood Red Square, was published in the US (LBF Books, 2005).

He is a member of International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America.

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL (World rights)

Burned-out lawyer Ed Burke flees New York, a failed marriage, and a high pressure career as a criminal attorney and returns home to Dublin, Europe’s most happening city.

Hand-in-hand with the new prosperity, a culture of ruthless corruption has taken root and threatens to pervade the highest levels of government in Celtic Tiger Ireland and the EU.

Ed’s new job, defending a prominent developer in a tribunal investigating the rezoning of prime residential property, draws him into the world of Ireland’s elite movers and shakers who will stop at nothing to achieve their aims. He is also drawn into a passionate affair with an old flame, Pia, now the glamorous wife of a corrupt and powerful political leader.

As his infatuation turns into love, Pia is murdered in his own bed, and Ed has no doubt that her heartless, power-hungry husband is behind it.

Edmund Burke’s quest to avenge Pia and free himself from a troubled past becomes an adrenaline-pumping race to save Ireland from the grip of a cabal of corrupt power brokers.

He must find his way through a tangled web of lies, deceit and murder as he matches his wits against the Machiavellian schemes of the rich, the famous and the powerful who seek to mould the future of Europe and the West.

Advanced praise for The Root of All Evil

"A high-powered legal thriller chocked full of betrayal, deceit, corruption, and murder. Mullan is Ireland's answer to John Grisham, with a smattering of Ross MacDonald thrown in. THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL will make your head spin."
- JA Konrath, author of RUSTY NAIL.

“Pat Mullan’s latest, THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL, is a razor blade down the spine. So fast-paced, expect whiplash. This is Irish noir with a hero whom you’ll want at your back in any gunfight. Grab a copy and clear your schedule!”
- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of BLACK ORDER.

“THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL is a tight, intelligent thriller. Author Pat Mullan blends political intrigue and murder with a unique Irish flavor that goes down smooth. His hero, Ed Burke, is striking – almost an anti-hero in some respects. To unravel the deception and save himself, Burke must test old friendships, and determine who to trust in an Ireland changed by the Celtic Tiger. Mullan writes suspense with an edge reminiscent of Bob Ludlum. An author to watch.” - Cerri Ellis, Mostly Mystery Reviews

“Pat Mullan is a natural born storyteller with a gripping, engaging style. He may just be the next big thing in Irish crime fiction.” - Jason Starr, author of LIGHTS OUT.

[Back to Authors]

STEVEN OTFINOSKI

Steven Otfinoski has written extensively on popular culture, including two adult rock music books for Billboard and a YA history of television for Marshall Cavendish's "Great Inventions" series. His most ambitious books on pop culture are the one-volume encyclopedias, African Americans in the Performing Arts and Latino Americans in the Arts, both for Facts on File.

He has also written more than 130 books for young adults. His first YA novel was Village of Vampires, published by Fearon Pitman, which was then reprinted by Bantam. He has also written Whodunit? Science Solves the Crime for W. H. Freedman; Bram Stoker: The Man Who Wrote Dracula and Stan Lee: Comic Book Genius, both for Scholastic; and Television, a history of the medium, for Marshall Cavendish. 

His Scholastic book Putting It in Writing has sold more than 400,000 copies to date.

Steven Otfinoski has been a fan of the horror anthology since he first saw Frank Gallop’s ghastly head appear out of the darkness of a small black-and-white TV screen in the early 1950s and gasp, “Lights Out!” He grew up having the dickens scared out of him by The Twilight Zone, Way Out, One Step Beyond, and Thriller. This book, like his two volumes on vintage rock music, is a loving tribute to that era and all that followed it.

TERROR ON THE TUBE: A HISTORY OF TELEVISION HORROR, FANTASY AND SUSPENSE ANTHOLOGY

TERROR ON THE TUBE is the first-of-a-kind, comprehensive study of this fascinating genre, stretching from Lights Out! in the early 1950s to today’s Masters of Horror.

It is, in part, a loving look back at the shows that made baby boomers shiver in their pajamas, including The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and The Outer Limits. It is also a serious, critical study of this distinctive genre, born out of radio’s suggestive power and developed and refined on television by such masters of the form as Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling. It will not only have a strong appeal for the "baby boomer" generation weaned on television, but will also attract younger readers who feed on zombie and vampire movies, and who have made Supernatural a cult hit on television and the thriller Disturbia the number-one movie in America last spring.
The best of TV horror and fantasy anthologies have made, and continue to make, our brains think at the same time that they take our breath away, touch our hearts and make our skin crawl.

While the horror, fantasy and suspense anthology has been one of the most fondly remembered and still viable television genres, there has been no serious study of the genre. Paul H. Schulman’s Fantastic Television, published in 1977, is now woefully out of date. There have been a number of books devoted to such perennial programs as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and The X-Files. But most of these books are episode guides and fan books. While containing much fascinating information, they are not critical studies. An exception is Marc Scott Zicree’s excellent The Twilight Zone Companion.

Terror on the Tube will present the total picture of the horror, fantasy and suspense anthology from its earliest beginnings in the late 1940s to today. In its depth and breath, it will cover this genre as no other book has before. It will be lavishly illustrated and will include a detailed bibliography and a comprehensive listing of all the programs available on DVD.

Rights: World
Detailed proposal and sample chapters available.

[Back to Authors]

WILLIAM REES & JASON MOSER

William Rees was born in New Haven, CT in 1967. His debut graphic novel Scars and Bars (artwork by Jason Moser) was released in October, 2006. His second graphic novel Obsession (artwork by Sam Hart & Jeff Clemens) was released in April, 2008. He currently lives in New York City.

Jason Moser has been working in comics for several years. Previous projects have ranged from the Day Prize nominated Point Pleasant to work for Fangoria Comics and The Scream Factory to his critically acclaimed self-published series Ellium. He currently lives in Michigan.

SCARS AND BARS

Set in a post 9/11 New York, Scars and Bars, follows two characters who have found themselves on different sides of the law but whose lives are strangely connected and in many respects very similar.

The first character is Vincent “Kid” Madrid, a one-time boxer who is framed for murder and sentenced to serve 13 years at Sing-Sing prison. The second character is Anton Majak, a one-time corrections officer who is fired for abusing prisoners. The narrative alternates between Madrid and Majak, the chronology told from multiple perspectives as means of presenting different versions of a parallel, overlapping story.

Madrid is the tragic hero, the poor patsy who is betrayed by promoters, managers, friends and lovers. His ultimate tragedy is that he can never escape, but that he doesn’t completely know it. Blind, trusting, he has never been free and he doesn’t understand what it means. Society is a prison for him.

Majak is an authoritarian figure throughout, justifying his ruthless behavior, as he moves to joining the NYC Police Department after his termination as a prison guard. He is morally ambiguous: a steroid abuser, an enforcer, an agent of destruction.

The main theme of the book is the relationship between the individual and the state. The Majak character is a metaphor for lawlessness, degenerate power, authority gone insane. Conversely, the individual, the solitary man (the Madrid character), is personified as a caged captive. He is the victim of a warped society: exploited, compromised, falsely accused, wrongly imprisoned, try as he might, the individual will be crushed in the end. 

A parenthetical theme is the nature of truth: reality (as conveyed by tabloid headlines, bombastic talk radio, sensational sports reporting) is nothing more than an approximation of the truth. The "straight truth" is not black and white, absolutely certain: it is fragmented, shifting, remote. In other words, one man's version of the truth is another man's lie.   

The art: the hollow, washed-out, emotionally dead graphics are used to delineate the corruption and decay that is modern America.

In the tradition of Munoz/Sampayo's "Alack Sinner" series.
   
Rights available: World ex NA (Heavy Proton, 2006)

REVIEWS

"Rees' narrative is confident and intricate...Moser's wash style, evoking everyone from Gene Colan to early Richard Corben, is striking...and suggests big possibilities for both writer and artist. Worth a look." - Comic Book Resources

"Take the hyper-violent camp of Sin City, the easy sleaze of Huston or Hammett, the experimental structure of Memento, mash with a fist, and behold Scars and Bars...It’s a very, very interesting project. Rees is unquestionably a unique voice, utilizing bits and pieces of obvious genre influences and combining them into a style heretofore unseen. On the one hand, the story beneath Scars and Bars is exceedingly straightforward – simple nearly to the point of simplistic – yet the narrative structure is heavily multifaceted, creating a borderline experimental piece. Artist Moser brings his highly-produced, computer-generated, gritty black-and-white glamour to Scars... [and] that sits perfectly snug within the street-crime noir genre. His stiff characters and expressions can take some getting used to, but the story is told as it should be, showcasing the still, quiet, stagnant world of New York crime coming to representational life...Scars and Bars can be an intimidating work at times, as the story isn’t meant to come clear until its very end, and the numerous creative flourishes – both visually and script-wise – may lead readers to believe they’re just not getting it. But rest assured, the creators have done a bang-up job on this one. It’s dark, it’s expressionistic, it’s original, it’s a lot of things old and loved, and it’s an inarguably entertaining book. I’ll definitely remember this one for a long time to come. It’s got the goods." - Broken Frontier

"Scars and Bars sets a standard for a dark and brooding atmosphere, only amplified by its art...[and] proves to be a provocative and intense read. Moser's art resembles detailed charcoal sketches. Black remains the dominant color through this graphic novel." - Bookloons

"This dark, hefty OGN tome is a brutal modern noir that follows two paths in New York City... Several neat storytelling decisions throughout, like the small panels to convey an exciting boxing match, different speech balloon styles for different people, inserting boxing reportage and NYC maps and photo backgrounds, etc. A real creepy sense of violence is present. There is something here."  - Neilalien

"Yes it is a bleak read. Yes it does plunge into a sordid and amoral side of modern urban life and yes it is fairly unrelenting but the points made are valid and need to be considered by a society that is becoming increasingly violent.

"The writing is a mix of this powerful poetic reflective style and equally powerful direct speech. The narrative has non–fiction, historical elements woven into the storyline and this certainly gives the whole comic a realistic feel.

"It is a stylishly presented volume, carefully planned, very well structured and executed with a fine eye for layout design. The way we are guided through the New York setting via street map location frames at the beginning of each chapter is just one of the interesting visual features employed in Scars and Bars. In a word: Punchy."
- Comics Bulletin

[Back to Authors]

SEAMUS SMYTH

After leaving his native Belfast for London at the age of 15, in the late 60s, Seamus Smyth spent several years "knocking about, sleeping under flyovers, just dossing" and the embarked on a remarkably varied career.

Almost always self-employed, he worked, among other things, as a landscape gardener, an antiques restorer, a furniture maker, equestrian gear manufacturer, horse breeder and a tomato inspector…

Seamus Smyth finally came to writing – a long time ambition – while in hospital after an unfortunate accident involving an under-sized parachute, a crash landing and a broken leg. He's been at it intermittently ever since.

His first novel, QUINN, has been published in the UK by Hodder to a critical acclaim.

Seamus Smyth is currently working on a new novel featuring his diabolical but strangely likeable villain Gerd Quinn.

RED DOCK (World rights ex. Japanese and French translation)

Historical background: In the Republic of Ireland, for most of the 20th century, orphanages, known as "industrial schools", were run by the Catholic Church. Children were forced to work in child slave labour camps. Physical and sexual abuse were commonplace. Children grew up believing that their families had befallen them and were responsible for all that. Some were driven insane; many went on to a life of crime. For decades, the majority of prison inmates in Ireland were ex-industrial school. Only in mid-nineties, these institutions were exposed as "the gulags of Ireland".

In 1949, on the night of their birth, Robert "Red" Donovan and his twin Sean are placed in such an institution and given the name Dock. Aged nine, Red witnesses the kicking to death of Sean by a Christian Brother. At his twin's deathbed, he vows to one day return his body to their birthplace for reburial. Red's life is consumed by this vow. It is his driving force to the exclusion of all else.

His family, and a garda constable Winters who put the twins into "care", will be made to pay.

Aged 21, Red Dock kidnaps Winters' new born daughter and leaves her on the steps of an orphanage to be raised by nuns who name her Lucille Kells. But this is not his revenge. Not yet. Revenge will come 22 years later, after Lucille left the nuns…

Is there a more fiendish vengeance than to take an innocent child and destroy her entire life in order to get back to her parents? One needs a patience of Job and sufficient hatred to carry through so many years of waiting for his handiwork to come to fruition…

The story is told by Red Dock himself, by Lucille and by Hockler, a psycho and an ex-industrial school inmate whom Red blackmails into killing the Donovan family. Red Dock is a pitiless sociopathic killer but the poignancy of the story is, strangely, all the more pronounced when delivered in his aggressive style.

A powerful novel about monstrous by-products of a terrible system that will make the reader shiver, grieve ant think.

FOUR O'CLOCK EASTERN (World rights ex. Japanese  translation)

In 1985 a young man returns from his honeymoon, inherits a million dollars, is forced to hand it over when his bride is kidnapped, doesn't get her back, goes do