You bought it...now what?

By Jenny Hilborne

Author of Mysteries and Thrillers

Who has at least one item of clothing in their closet or one pair of shoes they've bought and never worn? We see a bargain and buy it, but it's not a bargain at all if we never use it. These are often impulse buys. The same thing applies to books. With so many offered free or at low promotional prices of less than $1, we're downloading more than ever before. Are we reading these books? Does buying more mean we are reading more?

I buy loads of books. My Kindle currently holds 179 items, many of which I haven't yet read. I love e-Readers for their portability, the ease with which we can take hundreds of books with us when we travel, and the fact the digital books are so inexpensive to download. Reading is easier and cheaper than ever before, and we have far more choices available to us, including genres that might never have emerged without the changes in the publishing industry. 

With new genres should come new readers, you might think. But how many new readers has the digital explosion created, or are many of them existing physical book readers who have switched to digital?

Everyone loves to get something free or at a fraction of the cost. Marketers know it and use this strategy to give us what we want. They play on consumer emotions and affect our purchasing decisions by guiding us toward products we might not be seeking. Authors offer promotions to entice readers and grow their readership. Is it working?

Does the free or low price of an eBook entice you to make spur of the moment decisions and download a book you might never have considered, or one for which you would never pay the full price? If it does, what are the chances you will read it? Do these books sit stored and forgotten in your eReader, like that pair of bargain shoes gathering dust at the back of your closet? Or does the sweet deal of a free or cheap book stir up your passion for reading?

Books are not big ticket items, so we can afford to give in to our emotions and buy based on those emotions rather than on rational decisions. If we go into a bookstore, we might take hours choosing a book, one we will pay a lot more money for and will almost certainly read. Free and cheap provides instant gratification and encourages impulse buys; quick and irrational decisions. Downloading takes seconds, and we don't even need a bookshelf to store all those books. How likely are consumers to use (read) products they bought based on an irrational decision?

EBooks continue to be popular. But are we loading up our eReaders for no reason? Many readers complain in various online forums that they have TBR (to-be-read) lists that will take them years. So, what are the chances that many of these free and cheap books will ever be read? When the pleasure of a free download wears off, do most readers forget about the book, or discover they don't want the product after all?

Does free or cheap turn you off? Or does it encourage you to try a new author or a new genre? Has the eReader increased your enjoyment of reading? Does paying less for your hobby encourage you to buy more...and does this mean you read more?

      

Judging a Book by the Cover

Tom Schreck

I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was at the Baltimore Bouchercon sitting having beers with my buddy and mystery writer extraordinaire, Henry Perez.

"I read 'On The Ropes' and damn, Schreck, you can write," Henry said.

"Wow, thanks, Henry," I said.

"Yeah that was some dark shit."

"Dark? People usually tell me it's funny," I said. I hadn't heard "dark" before.

"A coerced mother-daughter internet sex ring isn't dark?" Henry said and took a sip off his Sam Adams.

I guess he had a point. Then he said something shocking.

"You gotta lose the dog on the cover, though. That's going to kill you."

"What? I love the hound." I thought everyone did.

"Yeah, he's great, Schreck, but you put a dog on the cover and everyone thinks you're a cozy writer. Let me tell you, you ain't a cozy writer." Henry took a self-congratulatory pull off his draft.

Fast forward six years and Thomas & Mercer releases the fourth in my series, "The Vegas Knockout." My editor told me when he signed me that we were losing the hound. I was bummed.

For a little while.

The book was released at the end of April.  On July 1 it was the number one rated hard-boiled mystery on Amazon.

The cover is a close up of a fighter getting punched in the face and spitting out his mouth guard.

Well, I got my rights back to my back list and in a joint effort with my literary agency, Irene Goodman, we're re-releasing the books with new gritty covers. In the first week "On the Ropes" with no advertising or buildup made it to the top 50 of the mystery sports genre six years after its original
release.

What do you think about covers? Which of my covers do you prefer and why? Even if you like the doggy one which one would you be more apt to buy?

Character Descriptions – Detailed or Sketchy?

by Jodie Renner, freelance fiction editor and craft writer

How do you feel about authors inserting detailed descriptions of each minor character as they come on the scene? To me, it seems artificial and contrived, and interrupts the story line. Or am I being too critical or picky, do you think?

I think it’s more natural and less intrusive to work the info in in smaller bits instead, as part of the ongoing action, not in a separate paragraph or cluster of descriptive sentences.

Even to suddenly stop the story to describe a main character in a paragraph or two seems unnatural and intrusive to me, but I don’t usually say so in my editing, as I don’t want to come across as some kind of strict, purist Nazi editor. But there again, I think it’s more sophisticated and organic to work in little details about the character as he/she is in action, interacting with others or whatever, rather than just stopping everything for a static description. To me, that’s the author stepping in to address the readers, and it shatters the illusion of being right there in the story world, just us and the characters.

Here’s an example, disguised, from a chapter in the middle of a thriller I edited (names, locale, and circumstances changed). All of the characters in this chapter appear in the book for the first and only time here. They’re important for this scene, but none reappear anywhere again in the book. Yet the author has chosen to describe each of these four characters in detail. I understand it more for the leader and POV character, but even then it seems like a bit of an interruption to me.

First, here’s the original scene, with character descriptions in bold.

The chapter opens:

Officer Lance Nakomoto of the CPD scanned his rearview mirror for the other unmarked car behind him. Both vehicles cruised the streets of Chicago in the dead of the night. 

Nakomoto was a tallish Asian man in his mid-forties with short spiky black hair. He had a kind, friendly face that didn’t immediately give away his real profession. His height and athletic build suggested a retired football player or a bodyguard.

[I left the above description (but changed here) because it was the POV character, even though I felt it was a bit of an interruption to the action and could have been pared down a bit, or the details spread out over several paragraphs.]

[…]

Nakomoto rang the doorbell of the suspect’s house and then stepped back. They waited. Nothing.

His partner and second-in-command, Peter Carson, looked through the window of the house. “The place has been trashed.” 

Carson was a hair shorter than Nakomoto, fair-skinned, with plump red lips and expressive green eyes. His head was shaved to mask his premature balding and he wore John Lennon glasses. Although he was five years younger than Nakomoto, he was softer around the edges and not quite as fit as his boss.

Nakomoto peered in and saw ripped couches, overturned furniture, broken lamps and smashed pictures. 

He turned to David Lewis, the third guy in the four-man team. “Climb that tree and see if you can get a look inside the second floor.” 

Lewis was in his early thirties, and at five feet seven inches, the shortest in the group. He had streaked brown hair, striking features, and a lean frame that was more agile than powerful. 

Lewis trotted over to the tall oak tree and started hoisting himself up.

Nakomoto had all the necessary warrants to search the premises and apprehend Dubrovnik if they found him, but for now they weren’t sure how many were inside or whether they were dead or alive, so they were proceeding with caution.

Nakomoto then turned to Juan Lopez, who at twenty-seven, was the rookie in the group. “Juan, go around the back and check it out.”

Juan Lopez had olive skin, puffed cheeks and a recently toned body. Nakomoto had seen Lopez’s college pictures and recognized the baby face, but was amazed at the transformation he'd gone through since then while getting in shape for the force.

A few minutes later, Lopez spoke quietly to Nakomoto on the radio. (And it continues.)


Here’s the same scene, after several revisions, with character descriptions bolded again:

Nakomoto rang the doorbell of the suspect’s house and then stepped back. They waited. Nothing.

His partner and second-in-command, Peter Carson, who had intense blue eyes and a shaved head, looked through the window of the house. “The place has been trashed.” 

Nakomoto peered in and saw ripped couches, overturned furniture, broken lamps and smashed pictures. 

He turned to David Lewis, the third guy in the four-man team. “Climb that tree and see if you can get a look inside the second floor.” 

Lewis, who was in his early thirties and short, with streaked brown hair and an agile, lean frame, trotted over to the tall oak tree and started hoisting himself up.

Nakomoto had all the necessary warrants to search the premises and apprehend Dovotnik if they found him, but for now they weren’t sure how many were inside or whether they were dead or alive, so they were proceeding with caution.

Nakomoto turned to Juan Lopez, the twenty-seven-year-old rookie in the group, who had olive skin, a baby face, and a recently toned body. “Juan, go around the back and check it out.” 

A few minutes later, Lopez spoke quietly to Nakomoto on the radio.


~ Readers, what do you think? Do you like detailed descriptions of characters, even minor characters? Or would you prefer a quick sketch and get on with the action?

~ Writers, which do you prefer? Do you have any tricks for working in details about characters without bringing the action to a halt while you describe them?

 

Jodie Renner, a freelance editor specializing in popular fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power (soon to be re-titled Fire up Your Fiction), which won a Silver Medal in the FAPA Book Awards, 2013, and Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published E-Book Awards, 2013. Upcoming title: Immerse the Readers in Your Story World. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, her blog, Resources for Writers, and find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Jodie also blogs alternate Mondays on The Kill Zone blog. Subscribe to Jodie’s newsletter here. 

Publicly Private

By Peg Brantley

I have always been one of those people who will tell anyone just about anything about me because I truly love to connect. I think the more we know and share about each other, the more we'll find common ground and will be able to build a lifelong relationship. The ideas of keeping secrets and holding your cards close to your vest have been very difficult for me to incorporate into my daily routine. In fact, I generally don't. Just ask my husband.

This is a scary world. I was shocked to hear that in the two years since Gabby Giffords and the others were shot in Arizona, there were eleven mass shootings in the United States! All of our radar is up and functioning more than it would ever have been earlier in a different age. At least it should be.

It's important to recognize that there are a lot less publicly violent ways to assault a life. There's identity theft, slander, malicious one-star reviews, and stalking, to name a few. There's nothing much we can do about people who slam our books. They're out in the public domain, after all, and our skin should be thick enough by now to absorb the punches. But we need to try and be smart about the rest of it.

I want to interact with my readers. From them I receive affirmation and support and encouragement and all of those amazing things I thought were just there for the "big guys" like Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Readers who enjoy my efforts are the ones that make me say it's okay not everyone likes my stuff. That they like it is sufficient. But I have found a few places where the boundary lines have been drawn. And they're not drawn just for me. They're drawn for my family.

It's important to note that even having drawn these lines, it's impossible to maintain absolute privacy any more. My goal is to have enough elements in place that I'm not an easy target if someone is targeting people, while at the same time being able to talk to readers in a meaningful and personal way.

Here are three things I've done:

• my online accounts will show my birth year as 1903. Even on my worst days, I don't look like I was born in 1903
• I recently obtained a post office box. Beginning with the postcards I mailed out for THE MISSINGS, my PO Box is the one I use for all things that are not personal.
• I post on Facebook about where I've been after the fact, if my home is likely to be open and vulnerable. 

Authors, what about you? Have you considered you might be vulnerable? What kinds of things have you done to give yourself a sense of privacy?

Readers, does it bother you to see a kind of roadblock between you and your favorite authors?

Stranded Island Books: What to Bring?

by L.J. Sellers, author or provocative mysteries & thrillers

In the wake of last month''s violence, I struggled with the right topic to blog about. I wanted to share something personal, then decided to post it on my website blog instead. So for this site, I have something light and hopefully fun.

Here are my top 10 books I'd want with me if I were stranded on an island:

• The Stand by Stephen King (long and captivating)
• The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders (long and captivating)
• The Witching Hour by Anne Rice (long and captivating)
• The Tomorrow File by Lawrence Sanders (incredible futuristic novel)
• Chiefs by Stuart Woods (one of his first and quite amazing)
• Under the Dome by Stephen King (because I haven’t read it and it’s long)
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson (because I haven’t read it and it’s long)
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein (for a fun change of pace)
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (gotta get around to it sooner or later)
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (might be useful) 

What books would you bring? Name as many or as few as you'd like.

What does the Print Media Have Against E-books?

By Andrew E. Kaufman

I read a recent Wall Street Journal article that quite honestly had me scratching my head. In reading it, one might think e-books are nothing more than a passing fad, destined to play a supporting role to paper books.

The article was titled: Don’t Burn your Book—Print Is Here to Stay. With the subtitle: The e-book had its moment, but sales are slowing. It cited a Pew survey, but when I looked it up, this was their headline: E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines.

It seemed the WSJ was stating the exact opposite of what the study was saying. The contradiction made me curious, so I kept reading, and the more I compared the two, the more puzzled I became.

The WSJ story says:

"How attached are Americans to old-fashioned books? Just look at the results of a Pew Research Center survey released last month. The report showed that the percentage of adults who have read an e-book rose modestly over the past year, from 16% to 23%."

And here’s what that Pew study actually says:

"The population of e-book readers is growing. In the past year, the number of those who read e-books increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older to 23%. At the same time, the number of those who read printed books in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population ages 16 and older to 67%"

The WSJ goes on to say:

"A 2012 survey by Bowker Market Research revealed that just 16% of Americans have actually purchased an e-book and that a whopping 59% say they have "no interest" in buying one."

That one startled me. I’d never heard such a thing. Then I looked closer and realized they were talking about all Americans. Since most people in this country don’t buy books in general, it would make sense that more than half would have no interest in buying an e-book. But it would seem that if they’d asked actual readers that question, those results might not be quite-so-whopping. So in reality, these numbers are pretty meaningless.

And there was this:

"Purchases of e-readers are actually shrinking, as consumers opt instead for multipurpose tablets. It may be that e-books, rather than replacing printed books, will ultimately serve a role more like that of audio books—a complement to traditional reading, not a substitute."

Does the WSJ not realize that those "multipurpose tablets" actually have e-readers built into them? It would be kind of like saying, “Nobody buys tomatoes anymore, but salads are on the rise.”

It’s not the first time I’ve seen a story like this with a distinct bias against the e-book industry. I remember reading one recently (also in the WSJ) that spoke of Amazon’s “Struggle to crack publishing”. It painted a dismal picture by citing their poor sales. The only problem was, their theory was based solely on Amazon’s print book revenue, completely ignoring their Kindle sales, which are outselling the former. Also overlooked was the fact that many brick-and-mortar bookstores refuse to carry Amazon titles.

I’ve read articles from other traditional print media publications that appear to have the same slant, and it made me wonder why so many of them seem anti-e-book.

One popular theory is that these ostensibly unbalanced representations are fueled by Amazon’s threat over the marketplace. Many retailers have reacted in a similar manner. Target and Walmart announced they would no longer sell the Kindle e-readers in their stores (although they continue to carry devices from other companies such as Barnes & Noble's Nook). A New York Times article states that Target Executives sent out a memo to their vendors stating:

"What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices.”

Is it possible an industry that's struggling to survive in the digital age might be reacting in much the same manner? Of course, I don’t claim to know the answer. I can only guess. 

What do you think?

Caveat Emptor: Don't Get Hosed!

By:  Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced over 2,000 ebooks for over 1200 authors and imprints.

Wow!  I was originally going to post tonight with more breathtaking episodes of book-making stuff, like "this is what a Table of Contents does in an ebook," but when I logged on tonight and saw LJ's post on "Done is Better than Perfect," preceded by Gayle's opening paragraph on "A New Year, A New Story," I knew that the Fates had told me to post a vehemently emphasized, "ME, TOO!" for both posts.  I have a second post, below, another topic altogether, about not getting ripped off by certain so-called "publishers" or "editors" or other scam artists.  Less cheery--but if you're not a natural-born skeptic, please read it.  I know my post this week is longer than usual, and I apologize, and ask for your forbearance. 

Synchronicity

Just today, I spoke to a client, at some length, both on LJ's topic (keep writing!  Stop editing!) and Gayle's opening comment, that achieving more books achieves more success, in terms of critical, public, and financial recognition.   This client has spent four heartrending years on his labor of love; even now, he has asked me about what he can do, after he's given me the book, "when" he wants to make changes.  In discussion, it turns out he feels compelled to stop and polish every single line, before he goes on to the next.  So I did something that I normally don't; I proffered, rather sternly, unasked-for advice.  I told him to stop writing and rewriting this book, and to work on the next; to not get stuck in the unending loop of instant gratification if typos appeared, detected by sharp-eyed readers; and that success would come, in large part, after his third book--not his first. 

Now, as it happens, this book has three full-length novels, combined in one anthology-like ("boxed set") "container," so after discussing it, he's decided to drip-release the books separately, one each month, and the "boxed set" as well in a fourth release.  He will, in one fell swoop, achieve the "magic number" of 3 books--the number that seems to be critical not only for authors to be taken seriously, but for so many other things, as well.  This client, then, is already fortunate.

I see numerous books come back to us for new endings; new introductions; new prologues, new chapters...it's excruciating to watch.  If this is you, I encourage you to buy Annie Lamott's Bird-by-Bird, and commit to memory her section on "Shitty First Drafts."  I think they are words to live by.  Get that "shitty first draft" out of you--but then, as we say here often on CFC--polish, polish, polish.  Once the book is published, do NOT look back; unless you've given away the ending in Chapter 2, or done something truly unlivable. Pretend you printed 10,000 copies, and keep hammering the keyboard on your next book, so that you can, as Gayle mentions, sell more books by writing more books. 

Being Hosed--The Caveat Emptor Segment

I have a story that makes me cringe in sympathy.  We have an older client, probably in his 80's, maybe 90's, who did 11 ebooks with us, back in 2010 and 2011.  At the time, of course, we had not added print production to our repertoire of available products.  Well, as it turns out, this client had another book in him; a memoir, with about 40-some odd images, about his life in music in the late 40's-50's-early 60's. 

He called me recently, desperate.  He told me he'd done this new book, with another company.  But he was extremely upset about the ebook versions he'd been given.  I was a little surprised he didn't come back to us for those--but he said, not unreasonably, that he'd needed "editing," plus layout for print, plus a cover, plus the ebooks, and he thought it would be best to get them "all in once place."

And so he did.  For a mere $5,850.00.  PLUS, for the company that did this, a percentage of all his royalties, forever.  

$5,850.00.  For an 89K word memoir, with 40 images.

I took a look,  and he was right:  the ebook work was atrocious.  The print work was ludicrously cavalier of the client's printing costs versus sales pricing. 

The story is thus:  He'd paid one woman $2,850 to have his book "edited."  Now, when he said that, I was pretty outraged, because she claimed she'd also "helped" with the print layout.  As it turned out, when he said "editor,"  he meant "transcription service that removed all his 'uhs' from the dictation," because he hadn't typed his book--he'd dictated it.  Now, I can't speak expertly to what transcription services run these days (it's about $70/hour, apparently), but for 89K words, by all transcription standards, (1 page = 350 words, no rush--she had the manuscript for more than 6 months), he should have paid about $1500.00, +/-.  Not an additional $1300 more.  I presume, then, that this extra money was for the alleged "help" in laying out the print book.  There certainly does not seem to be $1300 worth of editing, when I read it; tenses swap in sentences, and there are many choppy sentences where a simple comma would have smoothed out the flow of a sentence--that type of thing.  So:  where's the (editing) beef?

She then referred him to a colleague (they are Tony Robbins and Mark Victor Hanson grads/acolytes, etc.), who then charged him $2,500 for the print layout and ebooks and another $500 for the cover.  For the record, this book is laid out identically to a fiction title, with some images of music figures interspersed, on their own pages--nothing fancy.  Now, I don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with the final print layout itself, other than the "crime" of using 1.5-line spacing, to make it look like 407 pages, which of course will significantly increase--probably double--his printing costs per POD book.  If you don't care about how much money your client will lose by being cavalier with adding printing costs, hey, it's just laid out fine. 

Then the icing on the cake:  the ebooks.  This person--the layout person--who used InDesign, which could have been used to produce an ePUB that at least would have been somewhat usable, with some rework, chose not to do that.  Instead, he took that PDF that had been produced for print, and fed it to Calibre, a free program available on the Internet.  (The same program used by Smashwords, and called "the meatgrinder.")  Calibre did what it always does with PDF's used to make ebooks; it made every single line in the print book its own paragraph; it messed up the line spacing between those "paragraphs," and of course, there's broken lines in the middle of the lines on the page/screen, where the end of each "paragraph" is coded.  The first ePUB given to the client?  This guy didn't even know enough to remove the running headers and page numbers.  The "revised" one?  He still didn't even know to fix all the broken paragraphs--or even that he should--so left them. 

The worst crime?  He then fed this trashy, beyond-amateur ePUB to Amazon, as the final file to be published and distributed there, and hit "publish."  The book on MOBI was an utter abomination.  Replete with all the same broken paragraphs, this forced lines to run off the right-hand-margin of the page, rendering the text literally unreadable.  There was no TOC, as required by Amazon standards.  When the client called this person, and said, "well, wait, I've had ebooks before, and they never looked like this," he was dismissed with "We're EXPERTS," and his concerns blown off.

My heart breaks for this client.  We're fixing his eBooks, (for about $100.00, mind you...no extra zeroes at the end, there, mostly because I just FEEL for him), and I've provided him with screenshots and other evidence for him to use to try to get that money back--at least half of it.  If he'd gone to Createspace for editing, layout, distribution, cover design and even a Kindle book, once the manuscript was transcribed, he could have had the entire enchilada for about $2300.00.  (Including his extra images).  Actual editing, layout, cover art, distribution, printing, and a Kindle book (okay--not as great as ours, but, still), for $1750, plus my guesstimate of about $600 in additional images.  So even if the transcription had indeed cost $1500, his total "done and dusted price" would have been $1500 + $2300 for Createspace = $3800.  Not $5,850.00, and he wouldn't have received shoddily done and utterly unacceptable ebooks. 

Oh, and WAIT--I forgot the best part.  Not only that, these people are his "publishers" and receive almost all the monies from all sales, paying him a tiny "royalty" on each sale of his print and ebooks.  After all this--after taking ALL this money from him--now they're dipping their hands in his pockets for his SALES revenues, as well.

These two have a nice racket.  They travel around the west coast, lecturing on how to maximize your potential (Dare To Be Great!), and one of their pitches is this "self-publishing dream" deal.  He refers clients who need editing to her; she refers clients who need production and publishing to him.  If you review their websites carefully, you can see that most of the testimonials are canned letters from public figures, and the "books" that they've done are each OTHER'S.

PLEASE:  if you go seeking people to "one stop shop" your work; if you struggle with the idea of being your own publisher, and are looking for someone to "do it all for you"--well, they're out there.  That's what my former and back-again client got:  someone to "do it all" for him.  But this man was, flatly, ripped-off.  He received work for twice what he should have paid for it, even IF it had been done correctly, and it wasn't.  It took these two nearly a YEAR to produce what he did get, and now he's had to come to me to fix the digital books--and I haven't even told him what the print book is going to cost him to produce, printing-wise.  Their websites look nice and respectable...except that they have very, very few produced books on display.  If you look closely, you can see, as I said above, that most of the "work" on display is work that they've purportedly done for each other.

If you seek a company like this, ASK FOR REFERENCES.  Demand to see a list of their work.  Go to their "authors" page, and their "produced books" page.  Don't just take their word for it--go to Amazon and download the free samples, and SEE with your own eyes what you'd be getting.  Don't forget Preditors and Editors; Absolute Write, etc.  Ask around in the Writer's forums.  Don't fall prey like my former client did. 

--Here endeth the sermon--.  I'm sorry I've been long today.  If it saves ONE person from making the same mistake--then all this typing has been worth it. 

Until next time,

Hitch

Favorite Mysteries of 2012

Happy New Year!
Here are my favorite mystery/suspense novels of 2012.   (These are books that were originally published last year.)
They are listed alphabetically by author, as trying to rank them by how much I liked them is beyond my capabilities.  Clicking on the title will link you to my review. 

• A Killing Winter (Leo Desroches #2) by Wayne Arthurson (Forge hardcover, 10 April 2012).
• A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel #4) by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge hardcover, 17 July 2012).
• Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4) by Tana French (Viking hardcover, 24 July 2012).
• What the Heart Remembers by Debra Ginsberg (NAL trade paperback, 4 September 2012).
• The Skeleton Box (Starvation Lake #3) by Bryan Gruley (Touchstone hardcover, 5 June 2012).
• The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Gamache #8) by Louise Penny  (Minotaur hardcover, 28 August 2012).
• Poison Flower (Jane Whitefield #7) by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press hardcover, 6 March 2012).
• Valley of Ashes (Madeline Dare #4) by Cornelia Read (Grand Central Publishing hardcover, 14 August 2012).
• The Book of Lost Fragrances by M.J. Rose (Atria hardcover, 13 March 2012).
• Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (William Morrow hardcover, 21 February 2012).
• The Other Woman by Hank Phillipi Ryan (Forge hardcover, 4 September 2012).
• Dark Lie by Nancy Springer (NAL trade paperback, 6 November 2012).

I'm interested to hear whether or not you agree with my choices.  And what are yours?