Brash Books Newsletter: June 2021
Published: Mon, 06/07/21
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Having trouble viewing the email? Click the following link: https://archive.aweber.com/newsletter/brashbooks/NDYyMzA1NA==/brash-books-newsletter-june-2021.htm Hi , We're starting June with some big new releases, some big news... and some big discounts!
John B. Sanford's long-lost literary masterpiece is back in print for the first time in over 60 years... and includes a new afterword by Jack Mearns, author of John Sanford: An Annotated Bibliography [Note: This is not "John Sandford" who writes the Prey novels]. The critics then and now have gone wild for the book... "The prose is fresh and energetic, the story-telling superb, and the writing comes out as raw and terrifying as an exposed nerve." New York Times "A brief, fast book, and those pages are terse. Sanford has injected the drama of spilled blood that made America." Los Angeles Times "An unusual book with some brilliant pieces of writing, exceeding Celine and Faulkner in depravity and language." Kirkus Reviews "Sanford really shined as a complex, but readable, young author that had a unique voice. Considering the wealth of literature I have devoured over 30 years, I've never read a novel like this one. Despite its 1939 conception, the book is seemingly timeless... Sanford's characters are hardened by strife and the land they plow and that gritty combination affected me long after the final pages were read. Make My Bed in Hell is the main character's outlook on his tumultuous life and a fitting title for such a poignant literary novel." The Paperback Warrior Here's the story: Aaron Platt has spent every day of his life breaking his back to scrape a living from the rocky, played-out fields of the Adirondack farm he inherited from his sadistic father. One winter morning, he follows footprints in the snow to his barn and discovers a man freezing to death in a horse stall. What unfolds between the two men, past and present, is a brisk, gritty depiction of crime and punishment. But their harrowing story is more than that, exposing the shocking hypocrisy of the people who live in the nearby, bucolic town—a legacy of hatred that reaches back to the violent founding of the nation. CrimeReads.com ran a terrific essay this weekend on "The Unjustly Forgotten Crime Novels of John Sanford," who they call "mid-Century America's radical Jewish conscience," a lawyer, a novelist, a committed Communist, a progenitor of rural noir, and a blacklisted screenwriter who kept reinventing himself. You can read it here. You can get the book in ebook, paperback or hardcover here.
Ralph Dennis' ALL KINDS OF UGLY, the long-lost final novel in the incredible Hardman detective series, is a finalist for the 2020 Shamus Award for Best Paperback Novel, one of the most prestigious honors in mystery/crime fiction, from the Private Eye Writers of America. The book has scored some incredible reviews... "Ralph Dennis was a master of believable action and surprising heart, with characters who could dish out the tough guy banter with the best of them. All Kinds of Ugly is a beauty, though; a pure distillation of grade A, hardboiled pulp that dares to reach for more." Mystery Scene Magazine "Fans of Dennis will welcome the author’s previously unpublished, hard-hitting 13th and final book featuring unlicensed Atlanta PI Jim Hardman. His strong prose and well-paced storytelling place him alongside the likes of George V. Higgins and Ross MacDonald." Publishers Weekly "Expert writing, plus good plotting and an unusual degree of sensitivity. Ralph Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment." New York Times The winner of the award will be announced later this summer. You can order the book here.
All four ground-breaking Blanche White novels by Mystery Writers of America grandmaster Barbara Neely, Winner of the Agatha and Macavity Awards... in one volume... only 99 cents! "One is tempted to describe Blanche White as a combination of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins… but it would be a crime to suggest she is anything less than a truly original creation." Los Angeles Times You can get it here. THEIR MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE SCORES GREAT REVIEWS
And the good folks at Bookgasm loved the book, too, saying:
HAPPY HOUR... 99 CENT CRIME FICTION Like Happy Hour at a bar, we're offering you a deal on some incredible crime fiction. In Tony Knighton's Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties, a small-time grifter steals an overcoat on Christmas Eve and finds a pair of gloves, a pack of gum, and forty thousand dollars in the pocket. But his unexpected score soon becomes an icy nightmare. You can get it here. Until next time, read on, and stay Brash.
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MAKE MY BED IN HELL IS HERE
ALL KINDS OF UGLY IS A SHAMUS AWARD FINALIST
BLANCHE FOUR-PACK 99 CENTS UNTIL JUNE 10
Our new release of Tom Ardie's smash 1971 thriller scored a rave review from Mystery Scene Magazine: "Their Man in the White House is a compelling thriller, both prescient in its premise and a true product of its time. Ardies posits a
wealthy businessman with a shady past, an undeclared Presidential candidate who may be under the influnece of the Soviets. Sound like someone who made a splash on the US political scene recently? Well, yes, but Ardies is not writing about you-know-who. Inventive, witty, and eminently readable."
You can order the book 
