American war photographer Luke Johnson just wants a quiet drink in his neighborhood bar in Paris, but when his friend Giselle stumbles in with a priceless stolen painting, his peaceful sojourn in the City of Light is over. Suddenly a French Count, black market thugs, Interpol, and the Paris Sanitation Department all want a piece of him. It's lucky Luke has a sense of humor. The French Art of Stealing is a giddy joyride through the back alleys of Paris, an insider's guide to the charms and complexities of French society, and a comic thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Summer, 1871: the worst storm in living memory is battering the remote border town of Tres Cruces, flooding rivers, snapping telegraph lines, wrecking the ferry. Stranded miners and ranchers huddle in the town's leaky inns, fretting while their meager supplies dwindle. Only Diana Clayborn remains unafraid. Forced into prostitution at an early age, Diana has been stranded her entire life, with an iron heart and acid sarcasm her only defenses against the brutality of her profession. For her, dying in a flood would be no worse than living the nightmare of her life. When a mysterious drifter named Moreno asks Diana to help rob the town's only bank, she feels she has nothing to lose, but Moreno's daring scheme of misdirection and guile has a potentially fatal flaw. Diana must decide which is stronger, her common sense or her desperation, and she comes to understand that no matter what she chooses, the price of her freedom may ultimately be calculated in blood.
'Praise for The Whale: A Love Story ' The Whale is fiction, of course,
although the author is careful to depart as little as possible from the
historical record, but the accuracy of the premise is of less interest than
Beauregard's immense skill in rendering Melville's inner voice-an impressive
feat of authorly ventriloquism. Beauregard has captured the true hide and grit
of that God- and nature-haunted 19th-century mind in all its rough, baroque,
oddly tender poetry.' -The Washington Post 'Half history, half imagination,
this intimate look into the household and heart of Herman Melville is a quick,
compulsive read. Beauregard's Melville, still filled with hope and preoccupied
with longing, is just in the process of wrestling his white whale onto the
page. We meet him here with much pleasure, some amusement, and a great deal of
pity. And are so happy not to be married to him.'-Karen Joy Fowler, author of
The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'A
brilliantly conceived, sparklingly written, carefully researched, and moving
account of the surprising relationship between Hawthorne and Melville, as well
as a credible and poignant story of the sufferings, sorrows, flights of fancy,
and plain hard work that went into the writing of a great book: Moby Dick
.'-Sheila Kohler, author of Becoming Jane Eyre§§'Mark Beauregard has written
an engaging novel about one of the vivid episodes in the saga of American
literature. I've always been drawn to the idea of Melville in the Berkshires,
with his friend Hawthorne just down the road, and the way their combustive
interactions led to the writing of the greatest American novel, Moby Dick . I
read this novel with deep absorption. A first-class piece of fiction.'-Jay
Parini, author of The Passages of H. M.'A fascinating exercise in fictional
projection, The Whale imagines what has been lost to the impossible past-the
veiled emotional details of the relationship between Melville and Hawthorne.
The result is a lively, intriguing, and surprisingly amusing romp through the
intimate gaps of literary history.'§-Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan or, the
Whale and The Sea Inside§'A touching, stirring, tragic love story, wonderfully
researched and compellingly told. The Whale succeeds as all the best
historical fiction does, by giving readers fresh new insights about important
events and persuading them that if things didn't happen exactly this way, they
should have.'§- Ron Hansen, author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford§§'Herman Melville once wrote that 'it is better to fail in
originality, than to succeed in imitation.' But Mark Beauregard's quirky and
exciting novel manages to be both utterly original and a delightful imitation.
On the one hand, it's a funny and philosophical fan fiction that incorporates
real letters and journal entries from Melville and other leading literary
figures of the mid-nineteenth century. On the other, it's an exuberant new
work from an innovative voice.'§-Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost
Maps 'Full of nuance and passion and an incredible amount of research, The
Whale swirls around the relationship between Melville and Hawthorne, without
losing its factual footing or sacrificing any storied intrigue.' -
Refinery29'In Beauregard's fittingly emotive account, Melville is preoccupied
and fervent, and Hawthorne is changeable, by turns sensitive and cool. Set
against a literary community that helped define American letters of the time,
this high-spirited story evokes a singular relationship and the complexity of
Moby-Dick .' -Shelf Awareness 'Absorbing . . . Drawing from Melville's
letters, Beauregard offers up not only an inventive, fictional take on the
deeply felt relationship between the two writers but also a sharp examination
of the very real struggles Melville faced creatively and
"When Marnie Hawthorne inherits her family fortune, a candy empire built on the world-famous Hawthorne Toffee Bar, she also inherits the dark secret her reclusive grandmother concealed for half a century. The truth behind the Hawthornes' rise from small town candy makers to international chocolate magnates is as disturbing as it is incredible, and the only man who knows the whole story has a reason not to tell it. As Marnie becomes entangled in the mysterious drama of her grandmother's life, she finds that her future depends on the ghosts haunting someone else's past. Spanning four generations, Blood & Chocolate tells an epic story of longing, forbidden love, and the unpredictable consequences of desire."
Mouse Watkins is the leader of the Bad Apples, the funkiest old school soul band in St. Louis. For twenty years, he's been laying down smoking grooves, tasty rhythms, and gutbucket funk in dance clubs up and down the Mississippi, always one break away from the Big Time. But Mouse is starting to wonder if his break will ever come. His best friend has disappeared with the Bad Apples' last dollar, his tour van won't start, and a groupie stole his only winter coat at the band's last show. Now, with no stomach for starting over (again) and a bleak winter on the horizon, Mouse washes up in East St. Louis, exactly where he started two decades ago. His dreams have come to nothing. Or have they? Give the Drummer Some is an odyssey into the heart of pop music and the soul of St. Louis, a book about the choices all artists, even great artists, have to make when the brilliant spotlight of stardom fails to shine on them.
When legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent dies, his longtime lover and business partner Pierre Bergé announces that he will auction off their vast private art collection for charity. To celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime event, the Grand Palais in Paris hosts a public exhibition of the rare masterpieces, but the celebration ends abruptly when one of the paintings is stolen! An anonymous tip leads police to American war photographer Luke Johnson, whose murky connections to Saint Laurent's past make him all the more suspect. And when Luke's friend Benoît is kidnapped and the kidnappers demand the stolen painting as ransom, it seems the only person in Paris who doesn't think Luke is an art thief is Luke himself. Now, Luke must rescue Benoît while dodging the police and matching wits with the inscrutable mastermind who stole the painting in the first place. And everyone Luke meets wants some kind of revenge, including his ex-girlfriend! In Paris, the only thing as romantic as falling in love is getting even.
