Thriller Night @ The Booksmith with MICHELLE GAGNON and MARK COGGINS

Special Agent Kelly Jones returns in Michelle Gagnon’s new novel. Drugged then kidnapped, a young girl wakes up to a nightmare. From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion, pitting Special Agent Jones against her most powerful adversary yet. The kidnapper’s ransom demands aren’t monetary…they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay. As Kelly’s fiancé Jake Riley races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a prominent congressman. At first the two cases don’t appear to be related. But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America – from the Aryan Brotherhood to biker gangs to skinheads – she discovers a horrible truth: a shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history…

Michelle Gagnon is also the author of The Tunnels and Boneyard, both of which have been published in numerous countries and languages. Of her new book, Lee Child writes, “High stakes, tension, excitement – I loved The Gatekeeper.”

Mark Coggins, the award-winning author of The Immortal Game and Runoff and two other books featuring August Riordan, delivers The Big Wakeup, plunging PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.

The odyssey of Eva Perón was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack. Or was she? When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Argentina, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into a mad hunt for Evita’s remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is an expert in ancient techniques of mummification.

Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, noted, “Coggins's outstanding fifth mystery … successfully blends an over-the-top premise with an unrelentingly grim plot … Coggins pulls no punches as the suspenseful action builds to a violent act of vigilantism.”