Lori Roy
-
LET ME DIE IN HIS FOOTSTEPS
Publishers Weekly
'nin Bu yaz okunacak en iyi kitaplardan biri seçimi!
Eserle ilgilenen yayıncılarımızın bana yazmalarını rica ederim.
Lori Roy’s LET ME DIE IN HIS FOOTSTEPS is one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Summer Reads for 2015!
Click here to check it out.
Let Me Die in His Footsteps
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, June 2015. World English.
Manuscript available.
From Edgar-Award winner Lori Roy, an extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of suspense and Southern literary fiction in a novel inspired by events surrounding the last lawful public hanging in the United States.
In Browerton, Kentucky, 1936, Joseph Carl Baine hung by his neck until dead, the last man lawfully hung in plain sight. For the multitude who carried with them the weight of this stark punishment and its imperfect justice, theirs is a destiny of unrest.
Some twenty years later, something is in the air, a spark, a crackle, something that feels a terrible lot like trouble coming. Only Annie Holleran can sense it, because she has the know-how—the gift of knowing how a thing will end before its end has come. On her day of ascension--the half birthday between fifteen and sixteen, when local girls by tradition peer into a well to learn the identity of their future husbands--Annie is faced with the lifelong fear that Aunt Juna, the woman who saw to the hanging of Joseph Carl Baine, will finally return home.
At the Holleran lavender farm, the rows are perfectly spaced, but the rich purple blooms are no cover for the stain of secrets that took root on Aunt Juna’s day of ascension those many years ago. Annie has lived all her life with the fear of turning evil like Aunt Juna, and as Annie prepares for her own ascension, she and the whole of Browerton brace for Juna’s return.
The past is stealing Annie’s future, and she will not survive if bygones get the better of her. With the power of her know-how, the care of her family, and the hope of finding her own true love, she must avenge the wrong of a generation.
“In the lavender-scented landscape of Lori Roy’s fine novel, secrets from the past emerge like long buried locusts, and the world of young Annie Holleran is changed forever. This is a beautifully observed story whose details of time, place, and character are stunning little jewels sure to dazzle the eye on every page. Annie’s journey from the comforting lies of childhood to the hard truths destined to shape her as a woman is one that readers will long remember. Quite simply put, I loved this book.”—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of Ordinary Grace and The Cork O’Connor Series
“This powerful story inspired by the last legal public hanging in the U.S. should transfix readers right up to its stunning final twist.” —Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
“Roy easily reaches back in time to conjure small-town Kentucky of 1936 and 1952, as Annie and her adoptive mother reveal the aftermath of a young boy’s mysterious death. Edgar winner Roy’s third novel (following Until She Comes Home, 2013) is an atmospheric, vividly drawn tale that twists her trademark theme of family secrets with the crackling spark of the “know-how” for a suspenseful, ghost-story feel.” —Booklist, starred review
“Young love, Southern folklore, family feuds, and crimes of passion . . . Roy describes life on a lavender farm in rural Kentucky in vivid detail, and the mystery of what happened years ago will keep readers engaged until the end.” —Library Journal
“A Faulkner-ian tale of sex and violence from the Kentucky hills.”—Kirkus Reviews
"Reading Lori Roy is a sinuous, near-physical experience, her stories so rich and well-told they twine into the reader in a manner both gentle and profoundly deep. I consider her writing a love-sonnet to American letters. Simply lovely." —John Hart, Edgar-Award winning and New York Times bestselling author of The King of Lies and Iron House
Also by Lori Roy:
Bent Road
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, April 2011. World English.
France: Le Masque/ Hachette. Japan: Shueisha. Korea: Viche Books. Taiwan: Ten Points.
Books available.
Winner of the 2012 Edgar Award
A Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A Florida Sun Sentinel Best Book of the Year
Celia Scott flees the race riots of Detroit with her three children and husband and heads for his small hometown in Kansas. Yet Kansas is not a reprieve. A new tension starts to build: a small child has disappeared and increasingly the fingers are pointing toward Celia’s own family. Celia’s sister-in-law died mysteriously years ago and now the unsolved case of the lost girl has everyone remembering the similarities. As the mysteries unravel, so does Celia’s family. It is only when the truth explodes around them that they can find a way back towards a rough kind of redemption. Bent Road captures the flat brutality of the Kansas plains in pure and spare prose.
"A remarkably assured debut novel. Rich and evocative, Lori Roy's voice is a welcome addition to American fiction."—Dennis Lehane
“Favorite Suspense Novel”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“A former tax accountant, author Roy is calculated in the way she builds and eases tension; when a local girl goes missing, even the simplest scenes crackle with suspense. Inhabiting a world where lights are dim and laughter is hushed, Roy’s characters still manage to shine.”—People Magazine
“But Roy is in full narrative command, taking her time to point the reader to the next direction, but always certain – even if we are not – that what comes next is what must happen, not what we hope or wish would transpire.”—Sarah Weinman, NPR
“Roy's outstanding debut melds strong characters and an engrossing plot with an evocative sense of place…couples a vivid view of the isolation and harshness of farm life with a perceptive look at the emotions that can rage beneath the surface. This Midwestern noir with gothic undertones is sure to make several 2011 must-read lists.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Roy 's exceptional debut novel is full of tension, complex characters, and deftly gothic overtones. Readers of Tana French's In the Woods will find this dark and satisfying story a great read. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal, starred review
“This odd, dark and often creepy tale of a dysfunctional community and a family that fits right in will keep readers wondering right until the last page.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"A cruel calculus drives Lori Roy’s impressive debut novel...Like Michael Chabon’s work, which sometimes crosses genres, Roy’s novel could be called literary fiction or mystery. Whatever the label, “Bent Road” is written with the care and craft of stand-out storytelling.”—The Kansas City Star
Set in the beautifully rendered Kansas plains, "Bent Road" is a family
story with a suspenseful Gothic core, one which shows that the past always has a price,
whether you're running from it or back toward it. Crisp, evocative prose, full-blooded characters, and a haunting setting make this debut stand out."—Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River
story with a suspenseful Gothic core, one which shows that the past always has a price,
whether you're running from it or back toward it. Crisp, evocative prose, full-blooded characters, and a haunting setting make this debut stand out."—Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River
“In her debut mystery, Roy excels at creating the kind of ominous mood that is unique to the novel’s small-town setting, in which the church holds sway, and family secrets are locked up tight. Terrifying and touching, the novel is captivating from beginning to end.”—Booklist
“Dropping us in a world of seeming simplicity, in a time of seeming calm, Lori Roy transforms
1960s small-town Kansas into a haunting memoryscape. Bringing to mind the family horrors
of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and the dark emotional terrain of Tana French’s In the
Woods, Bent Road manages to be both psychologically acute and breathtakingly
suspenseful, burrowing into your brain with a feverish power all its own.”—Megan Abbott, Edgar award winning novelist, Queenpin
1960s small-town Kansas into a haunting memoryscape. Bringing to mind the family horrors
of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and the dark emotional terrain of Tana French’s In the
Woods, Bent Road manages to be both psychologically acute and breathtakingly
suspenseful, burrowing into your brain with a feverish power all its own.”—Megan Abbott, Edgar award winning novelist, Queenpin
Until She Comes Home
Agent: Jenny Bent
Dutton, June 2013. World English.
France: Le Masque/Hachette. Japan: Shueisha.
Books available.
Nominated for the 2014 Edgar Award
A New York Times Editor’s Choice
One of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Favorite Mysteries of 2013
Following one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years—including an Edgar Award for Best First Novel—Lori Roy returns with a novel of spellbinding suspense in which a pair of seemingly unrelated murders crumbles the façade of a changing Detroit neighborhood.
In 1958 Detroit, on Alder Avenue, neighbors struggle to care for neighbors amidst a city ripe with conflicts that threaten their peaceful street.
Grace, Alder’s only expectant mother, eagerly awaits her first born. Best friend, Julia, prepares to welcome twin nieces. And Malina sets the tone with her stylish dresses, tasteful home, and ironfisted stewardship of St. Alban’s bake sale.
Life erupts when child-like Elizabeth disappears while in the care of Grace and Julia. All the ladies fear the recent murder of a black woman at the factory on Willingham Avenue where their husbands work may warn of what has become of Elizabeth, and they worry what is yet to become of Julia—the last to see Elizabeth alive.
The men mount an around-the-clock search, leaving their families vulnerable to sinister elements hidden in plain sight. Only Grace knows what happened, but her mother warns her not to tell. “No man wants to know this about his wife.” Ashamed that her silence puts loved-ones in harm’s way, Grace gravitates toward the women of Willingham Avenue, who recognize her suffering as their own. Through their acceptance, Grace conquers her fear and dares to act.
On Alder Avenue comes a sound like a gunshot, ripping through the vicious secrets that bind friends, neighbors, spouses. For the wicked among them, the walk home will be long.
“If you really want to know what shape your hometown is in, just take a good look at the street you live on, trying to see it as a stranger might. That’s the simple, heartbreaking truth Lori Roy delivers, sotto voce, in Until She Comes Home quietly shocking account of the tiny tremors in the life of a city that warn of cataclysms to come... One by one, these good people start breaking down, revealing the sad and in some cases shameful secrets they’ve kept locked away. Roy executes these transformations with such a delicate touch that the subtle alterations in a marriage, a friendship, a neighborhood hardly register — until the day someone looks around and realizes that all the trees have died.”—The New York Times
“Roy’s troubling novel leaves readers guessing until the end. It will appeal strongly to those fascinated by the psychological aspects of violent crimes and the motivations of those who commit them.”—Library Journal
“Roy makes every detail count as she builds her characters and gently but inexorably leads them to reexamine their own lives.”—Booklist, starred review
"Roy follows her Edgar-winning debut, Bent Road, with a moody, tension-filled tale of intertwined crimes set in late 1950s Detroit.”—Publishers Weekly
“A beautifully written, at times lyrical, study of a disintegrating community. Roy, author of the Edgar Award-winning mystery Bent Road (2011), tackles similar themes here with equally successful results.”—Kirkus Review, starred review
“Lori Roy has entered the arena of great American authors shared by Williams, Faulkner and Lee.”—Bookreporter
“Roy has created a tour-de-force of mood and suspense…If language can be delicate and brutal at the same time, this is what Roy achieves in a beautifully written, dark exploration of fears both real and imagined, of old ways facing upheaval…Roy has contributed a challenging, thoughtful and riveting story. Seeing the marvels she can create with words, we can only hope she’ll continue to share her talent with readers.”—Bookpage
Lori Roy’s bio:
Lori Roy has been a student of Dennis Lehane, Andre Dubus III, and Sterling Watson. She was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas.
