Free (Kindle DRM-free) New Orleans Mourning by Julie Smith [Socialite Murder Mystery]

[ATDrake]

Something reasonably interesting in the KDP Select exclusive or else slushpile today, enough to take the time to put together a minor late-evening post.

I've never actually read anything by the feature author.

However I have bought one of her books, which was the crime anthology New Orleans Noir which she edited in the Akashic Books series, because it contained a story by one of my favourite authors, which IMHO shows taste on the part of the editor, and this freebie-offered title of hers happens to be an award-winner.

Also, all proceeds from the NON anthology went to charity to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina, so bonus points.

New Orleans Mourning by Julie Smith is the 1st in her series featuring rookie female cop and ex-deb Skip Langdon, originally out from St. Martin's Press in 1990 and apparently much-reprinted in paperback for a number of years thereafter.

This won the 1991 Edgar Award for Best Novel, according to the blurb.

Free without DRM for who knows how long (hopefully for more than the next 3-4 hours if you're seeing this late, but caveat 1-clicker) @ Amazon main UK DE ES FR IT

Description
It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and civic leader and socialite Chauncy St. Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a parade-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Is the killer his aimless, promiscuous daughter Marcelle? Homosexual, mistreated son Henry? Helpless, alcoholic wife Bitty? Or some unknown player? Turns out the king had enemies.

Enter resourceful heroine Skip Langdon, a rookie police officer and former debutante turned cynic of the Uptown crowd. Scouring the streets for clues, interviewing revelers and street people with names like Jo Jo, Hinky, and Cookie, and using her white glove contacts, the post-deb rebel cop encounters a tangled web of brooding clues and ancient secrets that could mean danger for her--and doom for the St. Amants.

Langdon, with her weight worries, insecurities, and yet overall toughness has long been a favorite of those who like their female sleuths bold, smart, and refreshingly human.

Ballantine-published Christine Kling returns with a newly-written adventure mystery/conspiracy thriller apparently based on an actual real-life WWII-era unsolved submarine disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle: Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

Zebra-published Rainy Kirkland returns with an historical urban fantasy romance which appears to be some kind of sequel to her previously-offered Zebra-published volume: Falcon's Curse (Bewitching Kisses Series)

Joy V. Smith (ISFDB entry) offers a collection of her short sf/fantasy stories, some of which have been published in small press outlets: The Doorway and Other Stories

Fellow Canadian Kim Kinrade has had a couple of books out from Picasso Publications, which appears to be a small imprint which has published previously-included CBC-praised Nicola Furlong, among others, and here is his 1999 historical-to-present-day thriller based on a Mountie's decades-long hunt to catch a fugitive from justice, which apparently involves some WWII aviation stuff: The Millenium Man

Peter Scott has had some fiction and non-fiction stuff out from Down East Books, which appears to be a small multi-author imprint which specializes in genre fiction and historical and crafts non-fiction. He offers his 2007 historical litfic drama set on an island that was occupied by the Nazis during WWII and now being invaded by American tourists or somesuch: Barter Island

Celina Grace says that her UK-set post-terrorist-bombing aftermath psychological thriller was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Debut Dagger Award, which according to their website is open to aspiring authors without any published works and for which they list several previous recipients/nominees who have gone on to have respectable writing careers, so if you want to try a possibly-vetted indie: The House on Fever Street

Nancy Lynn Jarvis' real-estate agent amateur sleuth mystery is self-pub, but she quotes praise from local newspapers and the sample shows reasonably decent prose and surprisingly nice formatting with nifty little house images as chapter headers and scene separators, so possibly you may or may not be willing to give a try to: Backyard Bones (Regan McHenry Mystery Series)

Transsexual porn star Meghan Chavalier returns with another insider guide, this one perhaps a bit more helpful if potentially less entertaining: Your True Self: An Informative Guide For Transitioning Transgender Women

Reasonably significant repeats from Barbara Bartholomew, who is repeating her Signet-published YA fantasy series, Robert W. Walker, who is repeating several books including some in his Jove-published Jessica Coran Forensic Pathologist series if you are missing any, and Minotaur/Penguin/Severn House-published I.J. Parker who is repeating part of her Japanese historical self-pub series.

Happy reading, if you manage to spot something you think you might like and it's still free by the time you see it.

ETA: Bantam/HarperCollins-published UK author Stephen Booth offers an installment in his Cooper & Fry mystery/crime series, for which he quotes series praise from UK newspapers. This one appears geo-restricted and is not available to Canadian and does not seem to exist in the UK, but US-address accounts can get it: Dying to Sin

ETA: Also a repeat in A.A. Attanasio's HarperCollins-published Arthurian fantasy series, if you missed it and can still catch it.

[melmac]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

ETA: Bantam/HarperCollins-published UK author Stephen Booth offers an installment in his Cooper & Fry mystery/crime series, for which he quotes series praise from UK newspapers. This one appears geo-restricted and is not available to Canadian and does not seem to exist in the UK, but US-address accounts can get it: Dying to Sin

Darn missed that Booth one it shows as $9.99 in the US store or $0.00 to prime members

Got the Julie Smith one though I love anything set in New Orleans