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For starters, I hope you like our new layout. We're excited and hope that it will enable us to provide you with more accurate and user-friendly newsletters.
Secondly, where did my year go? I know I ask this question periodically. But, I feel like I sneezed and suddenly it is October. Now, if we could just chase away some of this pesky 100-degree heat. . . Regardless of the weather outside, I have plenty of enthralling stories from Poisoned Pen Press to take me to cooler climates. . .
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What's New...
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October 9-12 is the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. Bouchercon, a national mystery and detective fiction fan conference, is held annually-usually in September. It is named in honor of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher. The attendees are fans, authors, agents, booksellers, publishers and other people who read and enjoy mystery and crime fiction. The first one was held in Santa Monica, CA in 1970.
Among the guests of honor this year are our publisher, Robert Rosenwald, and our editor, Barbara Peters. They will be accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award amidst a crowd of mystery fans, and-of course-many of our authors. Sadly, the rest of the staff will miss out on the party. But someone has to be here to make books!
Poisoned Pen Press has something a little different to offer this month: a hardcover gift book starring the always delightful and outré Phryne Fisher.
 .A Question of Death by Kerry Greenwood. The Honourable Phryne Fisher-she of the Lulu bob, green eyes, cupid's bow lips and diamante garters-is the 1920s' most elegant and irrepressible sleuth. This collection of Phryne short stories and other Phryne miscellany-including Phryne's favourite shoes and hats, decadent cocktail recipes and her best tips for discouraging unwanted admirers-is a gorgeously collectable treat for all Phryne fans.
A celebration of the divine Phryne Fisher, A Question of Death is lavishly illustrated with divine color illustrations by Beth Norling. A Question of Death is a book that will bring joy to the hearts of Phryne Fisher fans everywhere.
Really, it's beautiful, and worth the $34.95, especially if you love Phryne as much as I do. This is the perfect book for those tea-worthy fall afternoons!
 King of Ragtime by Larry Karp. It's 1916, and time's running out for Scott Joplin. Before he dies, he wants to provide for his wife and secure his place in musical history. He's written a musical drama, and his young piano student, Martin Niederhoffer-who works as a bookkeeper at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder Music Publishers- convinces him to try to get Irving Berlin to publish and produce the work. The next day, Niederhoffer walks into his office and finds Joplin crouched over the blood-soaked body of a young man. He hustles his teacher away; unfortunately, the two are seen leaving the building.
Nell Stark, daughter of Joplin's first publisher, John Stark, hides Joplin and Niederhoffer from the police. In trying to sort out the mess, she calls her father in from St. Louis. After Berlin flatly denies ever having received Joplin's play, young Niederhoffer breaks cover and engages the services of hit man Footsie Vinny, who gives Berlin a five-day deadline to come up with the manuscript. And just when things couldn't get worse, Niederhoffer's girlfriend, Birdie, is kidnapped. Can Nell and John exonerate the ailing musician before it is too late?
The King of Ragtime is the second installment in the Ragtime series that Kirkus Reviews praises as "Impressively researched, with a substantial bibliography, Karp's second Joplin mystery paints a full-bodied portrait of Harlem back in the day.." ($24.95, Hardcover)
Shoot the Lawyer Twice, by Michael Bowen. Michael Bowen delights in keeping his readers on their toes. According to Booklist, " Readers may need a flow chart to keep all of the plot elements straight, but they will enjoy this romp through the halls of academe, where the battles are so bitter because the stakes are so small. Fast moving and funny." When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth suspects he's being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap publicity stunt. Meanwhile his wife Melissa, the professor-half of the couple, gets caught in the middle of a verbal firefight between two colleagues at a literary conference that soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury-tampering, forgery of an explosive papal document from World War II-and murder.
Melissa wants to protect a naïve undergraduate who might be implicated. But when one of the other suspects makes Melissa a cast-iron alibi, she finds that her search for the truth leads through a maze of gray lies-including her own.
Caught between an investigative reporter who's still having flashbacks to 1968, a fellow professor whose acute political correctness masks ruthless academic ambition, an engineer whose father's heart attack may have been either suicide or murder, and a brace of cunning lawyers out for blood, Rep and Melissa have to combine their talents to stay off the casualty list while they figure out what's really going on.
Shoot the Lawyer Twice is the fourth book in the Rep and Melissa Pennyworth series. ($24.95. Hardcover)
And don't miss our paperback titles. . .
 Putting Lipstick on a Pig, by Michael Bowen. When Rep Pennyworth is tapped to deliver the eulogy at the funeral of Vance Hayes, a cold-hearted, hard-headed lawyer with few if any friends, he's dismayed. But when Hayes' death seems mysteriously tied to the danger facing charming Vietnamese-American court reporter Sue Key, Rep starts to think that Hayes died, ironically, for the one human and decent deed he had ever performed. Or had he remained a swine?
Rep, new to practicing law in Milwaukee, has much to learn about Wisconsin, including what happens in deer season when 700,000 armed people swarm the northern woods. This is the third Rep and Melissa Pennyworth novel. ($14.95. paperback)
 The Ragtime Kid, by Larry Karp. Fifteen-year-old Brun Campbell idolizes Scott Joplin. In fact, he loves Joplin's compositions so much that when his family shuns his tastes in music, he runs away from comfortable El Reno, Oklahoma, for Sedalia, Missouri-Joplin's home. On his way, he trips over what he thinks is a log, but what is really a woman's body. Pocketing loose items (items that we later find belong to Scott Joplin), Brun is soon embroiled in a murder investigation in which his friend Edward Fitzgerald and his idol Scott Joplin are the prime suspects.
.($14.95)
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Where Are Our Authors...
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Aileen G. Baron
Oct 8, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, 10:00 am panel, Baltimore, Md.
Oct 29, La Habra Library, 1:00 pm, La Habra, CA
Michael Bowen
October 21, 7:00 p.m.. signing/reading, Schwartz Book Store (Downer Avenue location), Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Donis Casey
Oct 7, "How to Commit Murder" Mystery writing workshop, 6:00 p.m. Barnes and Noble, 21001 N. Tatum Blvd., Phoenix, AZ
Oct 11, "How to Commit Murder" Mystery writing workshop, 10:00 a.m. Tempe Public Library, Tempe, AZ
October 24-26, Women Wr iting the West 14th Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX
Kate Charles
October 13, Mystery Loves Company, 6-8 p.m., Baltimore, MD (with Marcia Talley & Deborah Crombie)
Judy Clemens
October 9-12, Bouchercon International Mystery Convention, Baltimore, MD
Kathleen Delaney
October 14th, Houston Main Library, 7:00 PM Houston, Texas (If they are not still underwater)
October 16th, Paso Robles Library, 7:00 PM, Paso Robles, CA
October 17th, Del Rio Cafe, Paso Robles Mystery Book Club, 12: PM, Paso Robles, CA
Mark de Castrique
Oct 4, Skyland Books, Noon - 2PM, West Jefferson, NC
Oct 10, Bouchercon, 10AM, Baltimore, MD
Kit Ehrman
Oct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Baltimore, MD
http://www.charmedtodeath.com
Oct 30, Ritz Charles, 10:00 a.m., Carmel, IN, http://www.carmel.lib.in.us/foundation/
Mary Anna Evans
October 3, Amelia Island Book Festival Authors in Schools, Fernandina Beach, Florida
October 4, Amelia Island Book Festival, Fernandina Beach, Florida
Oct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Baltimore, MD
October 30, Lake City Public Library, 7 pm.
Priscilla Royal
Oct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Baltimore, MD
Jane Tesh
Oct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Baltimore, MD
Jon TaltonOct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Panel, "Hard Not to Kill,"Baltimore, MD
Richard A. Thompson
Oct 9-12, Bouchercon, Sheraton Baltimore City Center, Baltimore, MD
Betty Webb
Oct. 3, Phoenix Zoo's "ZooFari," 6 p.m., Phoenix, AZ
Oct. 4, Ed Robson Library, 1 p.m., Sun Lakes, AZ
Oct. 9, North Valley Regional Library, 6:30 p.m., Anthem, AZ
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Sincerely,
Jessica Tribble
Poisoned Pen Press
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