Happy Pub Day
Two new books you'll love
Wanted to quickly let you know about two books out today — one I’ve read and loved & one I’ve picked up today, on pub day.
First, is Chris Harding Thornton’s LITTLE UNDERWORLD from Macmillan’s MCD imprint. I read an ARC of this book last year and couldn’t wait to blurb it and sing its praises.
Here’s what I said: “Little Underworld is so vivid it feels like reading a movie. Straightforward in its telling and subtle in its beauty, this ingenious novel is what might happen if the Coen Brothers set an episode of Peaky Blinders in 1930s Omaha. A lively, unforgettable masterpiece starting with a very personal murder and twisting through an American city's brutal political machine, while never losing sight of hope and grace almost within reach."
Here are the book details:
Omaha, 1930. When ex-cop-turned-PI Jim Beely murders the man who assaulted his fourteen-year-old daughter, the last person he wants to see is local crooked cop Frank Tvrdik. Luckily, Frank isn’t interested in the lifeless body in Jim’s car. Frank has a proposition: he’ll make the dead man disappear if Jim helps take down Elmer Kobb, who is vying for city commissioner and willing to backstab anyone who gets in his way.
Soon, Jim and Frank are sucked into a seedy world of crime and corruption, where no one is safe and nothing is what it seems. Then Jim is violently attacked and one of his operatives turns up dead within the span of twelve hours, and his search for the truth yields a web of lies and a mounting death toll. As he and Frank are pulled deeper into the city’s dark underbelly and its absurd political machinations, Jim begins to question everything he knows about Omaha and his place in it.
In her moody, ferocious, and darkly funny follow-up to Pickard County Atlas, a novel Tana French called a "slow-burning beauty of a book," the native Nebraskan Chris Harding Thornton mines Omaha's sordid past, melding fact and fiction into an unforgettable tale of danger and deceit. Little Underworld asks: What does it mean to be good, and what is left for those of us who aren’t?
Get your copy here: LITTLE UNDERWORLD
The second book I wanted to let you know about is Aggie Blum Thompson’s SUCH A LOVELY FAMILY from Macmillan’s Forge imprint.
She and I are doing an event together at the Virginia Festival of the Book on March 22, so if you’re in the area, stop by and see us at Southern Fried Crime.
Between now and then, I’ll be reading the book along with you.
Here are the book details:
The cherry blossoms are in full bloom in Washington, D.C., and the Calhouns are in the midst of hosting their annual party to celebrate the best of the spring season. With a house full of friends, neighbors, and their beloved three adult children, the Calhouns are expecting another picture-perfect event. But a brutal murder in the middle of the celebration transforms the yearly gathering into a homicide scene, and all the guests into suspects.
Behind their façade of perfection, the Calhoun family has been keeping some very dark secrets. Parents who use money and emotional manipulation to control their children. Two sons, one the black sheep who is desperate to outrun mistakes he’s made, and the other a new father, willing to risk everything to protect his child. And a daughter: an Instagram influencer who refuses to face the truth about the man she married.
As the investigation heats up, family tensions build, and alliances shift. Long-buried resentments surface, forcing the Calhouns to face their darkest secrets before it’s too late.
Get your copy here: SUCH A LOVELY FAMILY