A Wonderful Saturday

Saturday was my first FALCONS book signing, at Garden District Book Store here in New Orleans. Thanks to everyone who turned out; it was a lot of fun.

Steve, Danielle and I then went and walked around the Big Lake at City Park. The weather was glorious and the tulips were still in bloom. Tulips do not grow naturally here in New Orleans and need to be dug up and refrigerated.  But since I grew up in colder climes where spring meant tulips and daffodils, it was wonderful seeing them. We then went out to dinner and I had a decadent desert.

All in all a wonderful day!

March 1st is here!

Today is release day!

And for those of you who like to listen to the books, I have some good news: the Audible version, narrated by Davina Porter, should be up in a day or two, as well. And wonder of all wonders, they've given it essentially the same cover:

In fact, this one's kinda cool because you can see parts of the artist's original painting that the art director cropped out. 

Blogger is really not cooperating with me here, but hopefully it will straighten out its issues soon.

Books Signings for WHEN FALCONS FALL

Release date is one week from today! (And I'm wondering, Did no one look at the calendar and realize 1 March also just happens to be Super Tuesday?)

No grand book signing tour this year, but I do have a few signings lined up.

First up is a signing here in New Orleans at the Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania Street, at 1:00 pm on Saturday, 5 March.

And then on 19 March I'll be doing a signing in Houston at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet. That'll be at 4:30 pm.

On May 7th, I'll be in Phoenix, Arizona, for a small conference at The Poisoned Pen. More about that later.

And then in September I'll be at the Bouchercon Conference here in New Orleans. There will be a signing associated with that, but nothing has been finalized yet.

I think I mentioned before that WHEN FALCONS FALL takes place entirely outside London--far from London, in fact. It makes for an interesting and different dynamic.

And Another Great Review, This One from Library Journal

Release date is just two weeks away! I'm currently nursing an awful cold and trying to summon the energy to clean up the mess left by some "minor" renovations that were supposed to take 1 1/2 days last week and instead $$$$$stretched to yesterday. But anyway, here is a great review from Library Journal:

WHEN FALCONS FALL: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery by C. S. Harris
"When Emily Chance's body is discovered near the Shropshire village of Ayleswick-on-Teme in 1813, the local squire calls on Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, to investigate the suspicious death. Sebastian soon discovers that the widow was not what she pretended to be and several people had motives for her murder. [I'm going to snip a few lines here about aristocrats and smugglers and Lucien Bonaparte because I don't want to give away a key plot point.] It's up to Sebastian and Hero, his intrepid wife, to figure out which secret killed Emily before it destroys them, too. VERDICT Harris's 11th series installment (after Who Buries the Dead) is both an engrossing tangled mystery and astonishing tale about a tragic search for identity. An excellent choice for St. Cyr fans and readers of historical mysteries. ---Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA"

Historical Novel Society Reviews FALCONS

Another wonderful review, this one from the Historical Novel Society:

When Falcons Fall: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

St. Cyr, better known to his readers as Devlin, arrives with his family in a small Shropshire village in 1813, ostensibly on a quest to discover the truth about his own identity and to pay homage to a slain friend. What he finds on his journey is more than he bargained for.

Of course, Devlin quickly becomes involved in a murder investigation. Despite the town’s efforts to classify the death of a young widow, found dead on the banks of the river, as a suicide, the pieces don’t fit. Why is Emma Chance in Ayleswick? Who is she sketching and why? As Devlin digs deeper, he learns she is not the first young woman to have died under mysterious circumstances.

The inhabitants of Ayleswick are not what they seem, either. The town takes on a personality of its own – a history of deadly fire, black market doings, and just plain bad folks with nasty secrets. To add to this messy stew is newly ensconced Lucien Bonaparte, estranged brother of Napoleon, who appears to have more up his sleeve than first appears.

What a delight!  Not just a fun romp, this is well-written and plotted, and, again, as Devlin attempts to sort out truth from artifice, a showpiece for Harris to create wonderfully fleshed out and complex characters.  One of the best Devlin entries, and highly recommended!