the 23rd Kate Shugak novel
published April 11, 2023
order your signed hardcover here
Kindle US
Kindle UK
At long last, the 23rd Kate Shugak novel is in print! An amuse bouche to whet your appetite…
Jim took the other side of the couch and picked up a thick book in an orange and red cover.
“You buying books by the pound now, or what?” His last one had been a 700-page biography of Churchill.
He peered at her over the top. “Be warned, I’m going to force-march you through it after I’m done. It’s like these two guys, one an anthropologist and the other an archeologist, are having a conversation about human history after they’ve done all the homework and now they’re just talking over a beer. Or a pint, I guess, since they’re both Brits. You will find chapter two especially interesting.”
“You’ve been reading it since July.”
“Late July.” He turned a page. “I’m taking it slow because I want to remember as much of it as I can.” He nudged her with his foot. “You?”
“An Aeluon, a Quelin, and an Akarak walk into a bar…”
He groaned. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not, but there may be a bedtime story later.”
He brightened. “How much later?”
She hid a smile. “If you’re very, very good…”
“I’m always good.” This said with emphasis.
I’ll say, she thought, but didn’t utter the thought out loud. His ego needed no reinforcement.
There are still signed first edition hardcovers available at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore (and they know how to ship), and don’t forget that each of the first 400 copies include a recipe card for the salmon bouillabaisse Kate makes in the book. I promise you it’s an easy recipe–hey, I make it successfully so it has to be.
6 Comments Leave a comment ›
Love their interaction
Me, too, but they kinda write themselves at this point.
Read it twice now! Once more soon
I’ve got my autographed copy in my reading stack, working its way up to the top. I got the recipe card, too — cool!
I love Kate and the books, including Not the Ones Dead – I just read it – and I appreciated the shout out to The Dawn Of Everything, but David Graeber was not a Brit. Except that he found an academic home in the UK after Yale denied him tenure (ie fired him, after encouraging him to go up for tenure early). He was American — born and raised in New York, in a working class Jewish family, and was involved with Occupy in Zucotti Park, and before that in the 1999 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle. He was more or less my classmate in grad school in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago – he started a couple years after I did, and we shared the working class Jewish background, although his family was more socialist than mine. (The working class part was an oddity in our academic circle. David felt that class as well as politics was a factor in Yale denying him tenure). His career owed a lot not only to his originality and independence as a thinker, but to the fluidity and clarity of his writing and his refusal to adopt the obscure pedantic style that more often gets rewarded in academic social science, but limits its reach (so it makes sense that you and Jim would be reading his last book). He died suddenly, and untimely, at the age of 59 in September 2020 after falling ill in Venice. He was not diagnosed with Covid but his wife thinks that was likely the underlying cause of his illness. He was a mensch – despite the fame and success he achieved he’d always stop and talk to old friends at conferences. He is sorely missed.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/06/david-graeber-obituary
# 23! Congratulations, Dana. I thoroughly enjoyed Not the Ones Dead, wedging in bits of reading time, despite racing against my own editorial clock. Kate is a wonderfully dictinctive character and I love your portrayal of Alaska. This was just the “Alaska fix” I needed! Thank you.