[sufue]

Three books by Michaela Thompson are on US Kindle Countdown for varying amounts of time. All were previously published many years ago in DTB under the name of Mickey Friedman.

The three are:

Hurricane Season - the first in Thompson's Florida Panhandle mystery series, which is at $0.99 for about 3 1/2 more days before going to $2.99
link: http://www.amazon.com/Hurricane-Seas.../dp/B00BMZ708M
blurb:

Spoiler:

“Miss Marple meets Eudora Welty (with a trace of Erskine Caldwell)” -Kirkus

The New York Times said: “With the kind of realism that stems from William Faulkner, the author skillfully portrays her inbred, suspicious, nasty people ... Hurricane Season ends up an orthodox murder mystery, but it is more than that. In a way, [Michaela Thompson] has attempted a microcosm of America, carefully dissecting out a single cell under a very strong lens."

A STORM, AN ILLICIT LOVE AFFAIR, AND MOONSHINE… (actually, two illicit love affairs)

The 1950s fairly leap off the page in this classic cozy mystery set in northern Florida in the Eisenhower era, complete with Johnny Ray on the jukebox and a Womanless Wedding—this one interrupted by an explosion at a moonshine still. Lily Trulock, owner of Trulock’s Grocery & Marine Supply, leads a pretty quiet life until a stranger comes to town. The new guy’s not what he appears, but then, some of St. Elmo’s residents aren’t either.

Before she can say, “down the hatch,” Lily’s at the center of a vicious murder and a no-holds-barred bootlegging war—and a nasty storm’s on the way. This is a vibrant, atmospheric, powerful novel—as filled with energy, mystery, and motion as a hurricane.

Hurricane Season is as much a richly-detailed, spot-on historical as a mystery, widely praised by masters of the genre and reviewers alike for its pitch-perfect period feel and fine, spare writing.

"A remarkable, compelling first novel ... a storm of a story." -The Washington Post

"This is a remarkable book which deserves readers from far beyond the ranks of mystery fans." -The San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner

P.D. JAMES said: “(Michaela Thompson) knows how to create that sense of place, which is so important to any novel but particularly to crime fiction; her characters are believable men and women in a real world, her mystery is credible, and in Lily Trulock she has created a middle-aged heroine who is both original and sympathetic.”

JOHN D. MACDONALD said: “I enjoyed the book. It has real people in a real place, factors which seem to be ever more rare these days—even though it is the only way to create a real suspension of disbelief.”

Riptide - the second in Thompson's Florida Panhandle mystery series, which is at $0.99 for less than an hour more (sorrry!) before going to $1.99
link: http://www.amazon.com/Riptide-Florid.../dp/B00IU087O8
blurb:

Spoiler:

A RIP-ROARING, PULSE-POUNDING FLORIDA PUZZLER…

As intricate as a fisherman’s net, Riptide fairly writhes with sinister delights—family secrets, family feuds, lost family fortunes, betrayals, puzzles, sunken treasure… and murder, of course. With a bit of illicit romance and treachery thrown in for seasoning. This rife atmosphere swirls around New york artist Isabel Anders, who’s summoned home to tiny St. Elmo, Florida to deal with an emergency: the aunt who raised her has been brutally—and mysteriously—injured.

Isabel arrives to find the family mansion in ruins, her aunt living in a trailer, and, dangerous as a cottonmouth, the lover she left at sixteen just where he used to be. Waiting for her. Except now he’s got a grudge against her, a secret of his own, and some unsavory companions. Just when Isabel’s aunt seems to be getting better (but before she’s able to talk again) she dies just as mysteriously as she was injured. Suspecting murder, Isabel quickly ties her aunt’s death to another.

But to find the killer, she has to hack her way through a small-town jungle of intrigue and several generations of interrelated secrets, producing hours of pulse-pounding delight for the confirmed puzzle fan.

WHO WILL LIKE IT: Fans of Laura Lippman, Kate Atkinson, intelligent cozies like those by G.M. Malliett, Elizabeth Zelvin, and Gillian Roberts, British puzzlemeisters like the great Dorothy L. Sayers herself, all BBC mysteries, and of course, Michaela Thompson’s own Hurricane Season.

Venetian Mask is a non-series thriller, at $0.99 for about 3 1/2 more days before going to $2.99.
link: http://www.amazon.com/Venetian-Mask-.../dp/B00I1RPWTI
blurb:

Spoiler:

PEOPLE MAGAZINE called Venetian Mask “…kaleidoscopic, satisfyingly intricate … a brainy, psychologically astute cut above most mysteries.”

THE NEW YORKER called author Michaela Thompson “An enthralling entertainer, and one familiar with every nuance of Venice and Carnival.”

MURDER AT CARNIVAL IN THE FLOATING CITY

The surreal splendor of Venice glitters and mesmerizes as six so-called friends who, it turns out, barely know each other meet at Carnival to play a malignant game that quickly turns murderous. Sally, the “Tallahassee lassie” spurned by the rest as a virtual hayseed, is swept up by a mysterious count, attending masked balls, operas, and Carnival revels even as she mourns her marriage and dodges a deadly pursuer. “Things should happen at Carnival,” says her unlikely protector, who resembles Harlequin in more than his costume. “If they go on just the same, there’s no reason for Carnival at all.” There’s absolutely no chance of that in this psychological tour de force of surging identities wrestling to emerge in people forced by violence to confront their inner Harlequins and Medusas.

The characters change costumes, alter egos, sex partners (and preferences), and most of all, their stories while Carnival swirls around them, each more desperate by the hour to solve the murder, commit another, save a career, escape a past…whatever it is that Carnival, as much a character as the humans, seems to command them to do. The guignol grows ever grander, the danger more heightened as the clock ticks toward midnight on Fat Tuesday and Sally finds she has more enemies than she thought.

Who will like it: Fans of THE SECRET HISTORY, Commedia dell’arte, French Comedy (there’s more than a little Molière here), and all things Venice, particularly Daphne du Maurier’s DON'T LOOK NOW, John Berendt’s CITY OF FALLING ANGELS, and Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti mysteries.

"The decaying splendor of Venice forms the backdrop for a complex and unusual murder mystery … an elaborate, surrealistic book ripe with atmosphere, plot and characterization.” —Publishers Weekly