I've been reading David Morrell for years. Amazed most I think by how masterful every book is. How intelligent but at the same time fast paces. How smart he is but how he never makes you stop to notice it. And how he keeps reinventing himself as an author - taking on every kind of suspense novel  - and doing it as well as anyone ever has. 

Now he's taken on historical suspense and you will swear that he must have used a time travel machine to write Murder As a Fine Art. You will be in gaslit London... you will smell the filth.. you will walk the dark streets... you will be scared and horrified and your heart will beat faster and you will know when you are finished with this astonishing novel that you have truly been in the hands of one of our era's most brilliant masters of the genre.

I don't review books - but I do hand yell (my version of a booksellers "hand sell"). If you love historical suspense - you will be enthralled! Truly! (All the buy links are here)

Publishers Weekly calls Murder as a Fine Art a “brilliant crime thriller. . . . Everything works–the horrifying depiction of the murders, the asides explaining the impact of train travel on English society, nail-biting action sequences–making this book an epitome of the intelligent page-turner.”

Chosen as one of PW’s 10 Best Summer Mystery/Thrillers of 2013!

Here's the flap copy:

The Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 were the most notorious mass killings in their day. Never fully explained, they brought London and all of England to the verge of panic.

Forty-three years later, the equally notorious Thomas De Quincey returns to London. Along with his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he is infamous for a scandalous essay about the killings: “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”

In Murder as a Fine Art, gaslit London becomes a battleground between a literary star and a demented murderer. Their lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.

When Seduction comes out on Tuesday, readers who buy the hardcover and open it will find, what I hope, will be a surprise.

The endpapers (see below) show my hand written manuscript of the book along with the pen and the ink I wrote it with.

Why did I write  122,833 words in ink?

I love challenges, but to tell the story of Victor Hugo’s experiments with séances in his own voice? What kind of crazy idea had I come up with? Surely it was lunacy to even attempt it.

I don’t have literary illusions. I had just fallen in love with Hugo’s story and wanted to tell it. What fascinated me was how much had been written about his life as a statesman, poet and author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables, but how little had been written about a certain part of his personal life: his dabbling with hashish, his preoccupation with reincarnation and the more than100 séances he’d conducted during a two year period while he lived on the Isle of Jersey.

During my research, I hadn’t once stopped to think that in order to tell the story of Hugo’s seduction by the spirit world, I would have to find his voice.

But there I was. Finally ready to write, sitting at a computer in a very 21^st century world trying to conjure a mid 19^th genius. For weeks I was stumped.

Then I had a revelation. I didn’t need to invoke the genius, just the man. I had read Hugo’s letters. I knew that the eloquence and brilliance of his poetry and prose didn’t always exhibit itself when he was writing to people close to him. Sometimes he was an extraordinary man saying ordinary things to his family.

That was the Hugo I needed to find try to find. The one who was relating a tale to an intimate. Not writing for the ages. Not trying to be brilliant – just attempting to reason out an unreasonable time in his life that had disturbed him.

But I still couldn’t do it. The cold keyboard, the sound of the mechanical clicking, the icons at the top of the page, the spell check. All of it was a gulf between me and the man I needed to channel. I decided it was hubris to even attempt to write this novel. Absurd to try. And yet, I couldn’t give up.

Carl Jung said that often coincidences aren’t coincidences at all.

One day in fit of frustration I got up from my desk in a huff and managed to  tip over a jar of pens. One was an old fountain pen. It rolled and fell on the computer. I stared at it for a moment.

What if…

I found a bottle of ink. Filled the pen. Then pulled out a simple notebook and started to write. Not the way I write, on a computer, but the way Victor Hugo would have written over one hundred and fifty years ago. Pen on paper. I began. And as the ink flowed… the words flowed.  

I don’t remember writing this book. Each day when I sat down and uncapped my pen I disappeared into the world of the novel. Three notebooks and 122,833 words later, I finished Seduction. 

Seduction is the first novel I’ve written by hand. Perhaps the last. Definitely one of the most fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken.

I do very much hope it proves fascinating for you as well. 

To order and find out more click here.

 A special award—from authors to booksellers—to say thank you this spring and summer.

 We're celebrating booksellers because you make discoveries, shine light on titles that you love, and welcome readers to your stores.

 Every Indie who sells a combined 25 copies (or more) from these bestselling & award-winning authors shown below receives a tin of treats from the Dancing Deer Baking Co.

 And the one bookseller who sells the most copies will win a $500 American Express Gift Certificate.

 To qualify to win: Simply keep track of copies sold of these six titles and email AuthorBuzzCo at gmail.com by Julyl 1 with your tallies, using the heading “Indie Love.”

 It’s just our way of taking a moment to show you some love back for all the love you show us authors.

We're celebrating booksellers because you make discoveries, shine light on titles that you love, and welcome readers to your stores.

 Every Indie who sells a combined 25 copies (or more) from these bestselling & award-winning authors shown below receives a tin of treats from the Dancing Deer Baking Co.

 And the one bookseller who sells the most copies will win a $500 American Express Gift Certificate.

 To qualify to win: Simply keep track of copies sold of these six titles and email AuthorBuzzCo at gmail.com by July 1 with your tallies, using the heading “Indie Love.”

 It’s just our way of taking a moment to show you some love back for all the love you show us authors.

When the world is spinning off it's axsis and nothing make sense, there's nothing like a mystery to curl up with and disappear into.

So I was especially grateful to have Aunt Dimity to relax with this weekend.

Nancy Atherton never disappoints. Her charming novels are entertainment you can count on. I loved the newest in the series. It was delightful. Peopled with charming characters. And full of surprises. 

Booksellers hand sell, I hand yell here on my blog. So if mystery is your cup of tea, you can't do better than to turn on the kettle and enjoy a few hours with the most engaging paranormal detective, Aunt Dimity.

Here's the description from the book cover. 

It’s a cold, dreary February in the sleepy village of Finch and Lori Shepherd has two stir-crazy seven-year-old boys on her hands. So when her good friend Bree Pym suggests an outing to Skeaping Manor, the bizarre Jacobean-house-turned-museum, Lori leaps at the chance. There she meets Daisy Pickering, a sweet (if a little odd) nine-year-old dressed in a shabby pink parka who regales Lori with a wild tale about the Russian aristocrats who once owned the priceless silver pieces on display.
 
A few days later, when a finely wrought silver sleigh figurine turns up in the pocket of a shabby pink parka at her thrift shop Lori recognizes it instantly as the object that mesmerized Daisy at Skeaping Manor. Hoping to avoid any real commotion, Lori tracks down Daisy’s mother, only to find that the Pickering family has disappeared without a trace. Stranger still, it seems that one of Daisy’s imagined Russian princes may be very real—and in desperate need of help.

With Aunt Dimity’s otherworldly guidance, Lori’s search for the sleigh’s true owner and the fate of the Pickering family begins to unravel a tangled web of secrets stretching from England’s finest country estates back to the blood-drenched soil of the Russian Revolution.

LEE CHILD, BARRY EISLER & STEVE BERRY

THE GIFT EVERY M.J. ROSE READER GETS!

Every reader who pre-orders a hardcover of SEDUCTION by M.J. Rose will get a free ebook of the short story collection IN SESSION. PLUS a limited edition  MANUSCRIPT PAGE SIGNED BY LEE CHILD, STEVE BERRY, BARRY EISLER, & M.J. Rose

1. Booksellers - Just collect the email & snail mail address of every reader who pre-orders or buys SEDUCTION from now to May 10^th.  

2. Email the list to MJRoseWriter@gmail.com

Each reader will get the free IN SESSION ebook plus a limited edition manuscript page signed by Lee Child, Barry Eisler, Steve Berry & M.J. Rose! 

A GREAT HAND SELL THAT WILL SEDUCE SUSPENSE READERS.  

"Intriguing, absorbing, and utterly captivating, Seduction will leave you begging for a sequel." —Books & Books

"Mysterious, haunting, and tragic, Seduction emerges as a suspenseful alchemy of potent ingredients, beautifully blended, that ignites your senses and leaves you aching for more." —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling  author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet    

"Mysterious, haunting, and tragic, Seduction emerges as a suspenseful alchemy of potent ingredients, beautifully blended, that ignites your senses and leaves you aching for more." —Jamie Ford, NYT bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

My newest novel is about many things: Victor Hugo and the secret séances he attended, Druid ruins, grief, ghosts, reincarnation and the lengths we go to for love.

 And scent.

 Below is a descriptions of the magical fragrance I imagined Jac L’Etoile smells in Seduction.

 I haven’t ever smelled it except in my mind – but if it reminds you of a perfume tell me which one in the comments. Just email me at  MJRoseWriter@gmail.com.

I’ll go smell them all and the one that comes closest will win the owner the necklace on the cover. And everyone who enters wins a  manuscript page from the book – signed by me.

Also if you want to join a  “by invitation only” Seduction book club on Facebook where I’ll be talking to readers about the book during the month of May – mention that in the email.

 And here is the msytery scent as described in the book:

 But there was something else Jac smelled. A rich and spicy perfume that combined roses, ylang ylang and oak moss. Trapped in the pages for how many years, a fine French perfume was escaping.

 It was the kind of scent she had grown up with. 

Nothing like most modern mass-produced fragrances, but 
beautifully articulated and rounded. She sniffed at it. There was one note that she couldn’t quite figure out, and that note was similar to the mysterious note in Ash’s cologne.

 No, not similar, it was the same note. It was that curious amber she’d found in Fantine’s  studio.

Was this another of Fantine’s scents? Was the amber note her signature? The way vanilla was Jean Guerlain’s? The way tuberose was her grandfather’s?

 Have you ever smelled a scent like this? Just tell me below.

 And to pre-order Seduction so you can join the book club buy Seduction - (only $13.48) Pre-order the hardcover of Seduction from Amazon, BN.com or support your local Indie Store by May 7th.

 "A luxurious, sensual experience for the reader. This atmospheric tale of suspense is fully engrossing." —Library Journal (starred review)