HER DARK LIES Media Roundup and End of the Year Sale

What a wondeful way to wrap up the release year! Only for this week, HER DARK LIES is $2.99.

Fast-paced and brilliantly unpredictable, HER DARK LIES invites you to a wedding none will forget—and some won’t survive.

Pick up the ebook before the deal ends. And read on for the media round up. It was a wonderful year for this little book, and I can’t thank you enough for all your support!

Get your copy!

Kindle | Nook | Apple Books | Google Play | Kobo

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Recognition

•   PW Picks: Books of the Week, March 8, 2021

•   New York Post: The best new books to read, week of March 6: Top releases, updated weekly

•   Apple Books March Must Listen

•   The Big Thrill feature

•   Mystery Scene feature

•   Goodreads: 36 of the Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021

•   CNN: 20 of the most anticipated new books to read this March

•   Crime Reads: The Best New Books Out in Paperback This March

•   The Real Book Spy’s March 2021 Reading Guide

•   Smart Bitches, Trashy Books: March 2021 New Releases, Part One

•   Frolic: Ten Hot Reads for March 2021

Featured Reviews

•   Publishers Weekly, starred review

•   Shelf Awareness

•   Bookreporter

•   Criminal Element

•   Booktrib

•   Providence Journal

•   Nashville Scene/Chapter 16

Featured Essays

•   Rogue Women Writers: J.T. Ellison Goes Rogue

•   Crime Reads: Eight Dark Novels of Love and Obsession, Against A Mediterranean Backdrop

Interviews to Watch

•   Parnassus Books: In Conversation with Allison Brennan

•   Writer’s Block Bookstore: In Conversation with Lisa Gardner

•   Murder By The Book: In Conversation with Helen Ellis

•   Mysterious Galaxy: In Conversation with Lisa Unger

•   Page 158 Books: In Conversation with store owner Sue Lucey

•   Woolfer Author Series: In Conversation with Carmen Tanner Slaughter

•   First Chapter Fun with Hannah & Hank

•   ScaredStraightReads Instagram Live

•   Write for Success with Leslie Zemeckis

•   Murder By The Book: Adele Parks and Lisa Jewell In Conversation with J.T. Ellison

Podcasts and Interviews

•   Crime By The Book

•   Author Stories with Hank Garner

•   Thoughts From A Page Podcast 

•   Howe's Things

•   Thriller Talk with K.J. Howe and Ryan Steck

•   Vox Vomitus

•   Book Brag with Lynne Constantine and Wendy Walker

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It’s gonna be a KILLER YEAR!

I am thrilled to share that Killer Year is back! This amazing collection of stories from the debut authors of 2007 and their International Thriller Writers (ITW) mentors is worth reading for itself, but here we are, lucky thirteen years later, and the careers of the authors inside this collection have blossomed. Some have even gone stratospheric.

There have been movies and television shows, multiple New York Times bestsellers, publishing houses established, ghostwriting and cowriting gigs secured, flourishing indie careers—the works. Some of us have published only a few books in the intervening years, some have published many. But what we all have in common is an abiding love for the crime fiction genre, which is on showcase in this collection. From supernatural suspense to mob stories, literary to private investigators, police procedural to true crime, plus stories, essays, and observations from the ITW mentors, KILLER YEAR truly has something for everyone. So sit back, relax, and let the finest voices in crime fiction take you away! I hope that you'll find some new to you authors in these gems, and seek out their work as well.

Meet the Killer Year debut authors of 2007

Brett Battles
J.T. Ellison
Jason Pinter
Bill Cameron
Dave White
Derek Nikitas
Gregg Olsen
Marcus Sakey
Robert Gregory Browne
Toni McGee Causey
Marc Lecard
Patry Francis
Sean Chercover

(with honorable mentions to original members who weren't in the anthology way back when, Sandra Ruttan, C.J. Lyons, and Phil Hawley.)

What’s this all about, you might ask? Here’s a little history on Killer Year, the organization and the anthology:

Debuts novelists didn't used to get a lot of attention, and in crime fiction particularly, many of us started in mass market paperback, which, at the time, had little to no chance of being reviewed in the trades. Concerned we might get lost in the shuffle of big name authors debuting, a few of us banded together to start a crime-fiction-specific marketing organization to raise the profile of ALL the debut authors in the genre. We of course missed a few, folks like Laura Benedict and Karna Bodman, among others, but a small knot of writers got involved, and we went into the very first Thrillerfest armed with T-shirts, postcards, riding a wave of media and our own enthusiasm so high that we drew the attention of the leadership of ITW. M.J. Rose, Steve Berry, and Lee Child in particular thought what we were doing was smart, and sat down with us to offer a deal—let ITW adopt the Killer Year program. Each of us got a mentor, an established ITW bestseller who helped us navigate our release year, read our books, offered personal advice and public support. It was a staggering cool situation, made all the better by actually working—our debut novels all got press. We got reviews. We got blurbs from bestsellers. We got media attention. We made a splash. (The Debutante Ball was the literary/women's fiction equivalent of our program, definitely check them out, too.)

There were other positive downstream effect of Killer Year that continue to this day. ITW was able to design a debut author program that brought up each new "class" of writers, year after year. Publishing in general paid attention as well, and lo these many years later, being a debut is a special, incredible, managed "event" rather than a spaghetti against the wall attempt to start a career.

Pretty heady stuff.

The anthology was a natural extension of this endeavor. My own mentor, the indomitable Lee Child, stepped in as editor. M.J. wrote us an introduction that perfectly explained the adage we all now know to be true: a rising tide lifts all boats. Laura Lippman gave us a coda. Mentors Allison Brennan, Ken Bruen, and Duane Swierczynski wrote original stories. And all the Killer Year members wrote a tale, which is introduced by their individual mentors. St. Martins did us proud with the release, and now, Two Tales is trying to do the same.

This is a special, special collection, in too many ways to count. I hope you love it—especially this stunning new cover! It's gonna be a Killer Year, again!

What are you reading this weekend?

LIE TO ME is today's Audible Daily Deal!

If you’re itching to try a new audiobook, may I humbly suggest you give LIE TO ME a try? Not only is it the Audible Daily Deal today (yay!), it’s the first book of mine I could ever listen to all the way through, because the actors did such an outstanding job of embodying the characters I forgot they were reading my words! I can’t give higher praise.

Sutton and Ethan Montclair are supposed to be living out their dream. Both writers, they’ve just bought a beautiful house to restore in quaint Franklin, Tennessee, have an adorable baby boy named Dashiell, and have settled in for a wonderful life together. But their happiness is at an end. Faced with challenges no parent should have to go through, they break under the pressure. When Sutton goes missing, leaving behind a note that says don’t look for me, and a body is found, Ethan is immediately the primary suspect.

But what has really happened behind the closed doors of the Montclair’s lovely new home?

With deepest thanks to Matthew Waterson, Saskia Maarleveld, Sarah Naughton, and Julia Whelan for bringing Sutton’s and Ethan’s world to life.

A DEEPER DARKNESS — on sale for $1.99

A DEEPER DARKNESS, the first book in my Sam Owens series, is on sale for $1.99!

About the book:

As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments. 

But the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam's life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate—until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C.

On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam's sharp eye the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Ranger was murdered, though not for his car.

Forced to confront the burning memories and feelings about yet another loved one killed brutally, Sam loses herself in the mystery contained within Donovan's old notes. It leads her to the untouchable Xander, a soldier off-grid since his return from Afghanistan, and then to a series of brutal crimes stretching from that harsh mountainous war zone to this nation's capital. The tale told between the lines makes it clear that nobody's hands are clean, and that making sense of murder sometimes means putting yourself in the crosshairs of death.

Download the eBook

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Audible Daily Deal: TEAR ME APART

Exciting news! TEAR ME APART is today’s Audible Daily Deal! Get the audiobook for just $4.95. This is incredible savings! The audiobook was narrated by Eva Kaminsky, Rebekkah Ross, Jacques Roy, Caitlin Davies, Amy McFadden, and Pete Simonelli, and it is simply amazing.

Don’t have an Audible account yet? This could be the perfect time to start. Select TEAR ME APART as your free audiobook to sign up and you’ll get 2 free Audible Originals for your trial. After the trial ends, you’ll get 1 audiobook and 2 Audible Originals per month. Audible is $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel online anytime and keep all your audiobooks. And let me tell you, I’ve added a full 20 books a year to my reading by listening to audiobooks. it’s a wonderful experience, especially for your favorite novels.

About the book:

The follow-up to her critically acclaimed Lie to Me, J.T. Ellison’s TEAR ME APART is the powerful story of a mother willing to do anything to protect her daughter even as their carefully constructed world unravels around them.

One moment will change their lives forever…

Competitive skier Mindy Wright is a superstar in the making until a spectacular downhill crash threatens not just her racing career but her life. During surgery, doctors discover she’s suffering from a severe form of leukemia, and a stem cell transplant is her only hope. But when her parents are tested, a frightening truth emerges. Mindy is not their daughter.

Who knows the answers?

The race to save Mindy’s life means unraveling years of lies. Was she accidentally switched at birth or is there something more sinister at play? The search for the truth will tear a family apart…and someone is going to deadly extremes to protect the family’s deepest secrets.

With vivid movement through time, TEAR ME APART examines the impact layer after layer of lies and betrayal has on two families, the secrets they guard, and the desperate fight to hide the darkness within.