Get SCREWED This Week! Eoin Colfer's New Crime Thriller on Sale May 2

Eoin Colfer, the internationally renown author of the Artemis Fowl series, is back in the land of CRIME with a follow-up to his acclaimed debut, Plugged. 
 

On May 2, Overlook will publish Screwed, continuing the exploits of Daniel McEvoy, the hero of Plugged. In this uproarious follow-up, Colfer adds an entirely new chapter to the life and troubled times of Dan, the Irish expat owner of Slotz, a low-rent casino in Cloisters, New Jersey.. Still struggling with the memories of his stint as a U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon, Dan finds himself indebted to the local gang lord, Irish Mike Madden, who decides to call in the favor.

As the action moves from Cloisters to Manhattan, Dan is caught up in swirling circle of violent thugs, crooked cops, and ruthless relations. Back on the scene are some familiar faces from Plugged:  Irish Mike, Dr. Zeb Kronski, the plastic surgeon friend, Sofia Delano, a bipolar angel in the apartment upstairs, and Ronnie Deacon, the overzealous cop who has a funny way of showing up at the right place at the right time.  As Dan finds himself in deep water (including a short detour into the Hudson River), his past rises up to meet him in the form of his alcoholic aunt Evelyn and Edit Costello, the widow of his billionaire Irish grandfather Paddy Costello.

Full of head-spinning plot twists, crackling banter, razor-sharp dialogue, and a zany cast of characters that could only come from the imaginative mind of Eoin Colfer, Screwed is a screwball mystery that brings both laughs and thrills.

 

                                        Early Reviews for Eoin Colfer's Screwed:

 

"This comic thriller sends a hard-luck New Jersey club owner tumbling through a mad, mad world of assorted nuts. When Dan McEvoy, who debuted in Colfer’s Plugged (2011), awakens at the start of this second, often wacky installment, he’s cozied up to Sofia Delano, who’s on the lamb from her abusive husband, Carmine. Bipolar, schizophrenic and heavily medicated, Sofia sometimes thinks Dan is Carmine. But she’s beautiful and they’ve swooned over Amelie, so Dan stays by her side. He leaves her momentarily, though, when he’s called to task by Mike Madden, the Irish boss of Cloisters, the New Jersey village where McEvoy runs a dumpy club called Slotz. Madden had assigned Dan and a friend to guard his mother, so when the mother dies after lightning strikes her ski pole on the slopes, they’re in big trouble. But Madden says McEvoy can absolve himself by delivering a package of bearer bonds to a guy named Shea in SoHo. En route to Manhattan, McEvoy is detained by two cops, who cuff and then taser him. A resourceful McEvoy shakes them by deftly wielding a large dildo (don’t ask). Gathering his wits over French toast at Norma’s in Manhattan, McEvoy encounters his grandfather’s fourth wife, Edit Vikander Costello, who brings the alarming news that Evelyn Costello, his mother’s baby sister, is missing. McEvoy heads to Shea’s SoHo lair, convinced he’s stepping into a setup. A tricky chase ensues with McEvoy rivaling Bob Hope’s speed at rapid-fire wisecracks. McEvoy, however, is not entirely flippant. Among his frequent digressions are biting, unsettling memories of home life, including one trenchant passage in which he is handed a copy of The Fountainhead. At McEvoy’s core is a melancholy soul who believes “[t]he Universe cannot suffer happiness for long….”Colfer’s work is entertaining and expertly judged. His terse, muscular prose makes even a car chase seem like a new idea, and his McEvoy is a durable raconteur." - Kirkus Reviews

 "Dan McEvoy, the bouncer hero of Plugged (2011), finally has a shot at ending his simmering feud with local gangster Mike Madden when he’a asked at (at gunpoint) to deliver a mysterious package on Madden’s new boss. McEvoy, a street-savvy Irish expat, knows there is a catch, so he’s not at all surprised to find that Madden has offered his head to the rival crew, hedging his bets that McEvoy will be killed or will find a way to off Madden’s enemy. Slippery as ever, McEvoy wriggles out of that trap but is quickly wrapped up in complications, with two crooked cops hunting him to obtain a mysterious “package” and with the need to rescue his tragically alcohol-addled aunt. McEvoy’s nicely evoked mix of Irish fatalism, resigned violence, and hilarity would make any story a winner; the cast of witty, quirky supporting characters and the pleasingly twisted story line are a bonus. Recommended for readers who enjoy the gritty crime and humor of Elmore Leonard and Michael Van Rooy." -Booklist

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: Editorial & Marketing Assistant Molly O'Laughlin

Welcome back to the Overlook Press Employee Spotlight Series! Looking for some insight into how the publishing process works? You've come to the right place. Over the last year and a half we've introduced designers, contract managers, editors, sales staff, and publicists, all in the hopes of better acquainting blog readers with our team, as well as educating fans about the methods behind our bookish madness.

It's been a few months since we last introduced Overlook editor Mark Krotov, but today we're delighted to revive the regular feature that takes you behind the scenes at 141 Wooster Street, as we shine the spotlight on one of Overlook's most recent acquisitions, editorial and marketing assistant Molly O'Laughlin.

Kansas City native Molly O'Laughlin joined Overlook last month, having worked previously at Maria B. Campbell Associates, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Books of Wonder, and Archipelago Books. She loves KC barbecue and tiramisu, and will watch the same move five times in a row if she likes it enough (*ahem* Pitch Perfect *ahem*).

OP: Describe your job in 140 characters or less.

MO: I get to indulge my obsessive tendencies with detail work in both departments, read good books and work with wonderful people. #dreamjob!

OP: What are you currently reading?

MO: Besides submissions, I'm reading HOW THE FRENCH INVENTED LOVE by Marilyn Yalom, and TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis (because really it's shameful that I haven't yet read it).

OP: What is your favorite book that Overlook has published?

MO: I'm obsessed with THE CIRCLE by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg (forthcoming in May, is that cheating?) and ST. TRINIAN'S by Ronald Searle—sinister schoolgirls all the way. 

OP: If you didn't work in publishing, what would you be doing? 

MO: I'd probably be working at an arts non-profit or back in academia. Like George, I sing in a choir (Grace Church Choral Society), so maybe I'd even be singing...!

OP: What is your favorite word (can be in any language—bonus points if there is a funny/interesting story behind it)?

MO: I love the word "supper." I feel like I only ever hear my Oklahoman grandparents use it anymore, so it has all these nice, warm, homey connotations for me. Plus, supper/dinner is the best meal of the day!

April Showers Paperback Roundup

They say that April showers bring May flowers, but that doesn’t do much to distract from the rainy woes of spring. With every week bringing at least a couple days of rain, it seems we are doomed to spend a fair portion of these April days indoors. But your time nesting inside doesn’t have to be wasted perched on your windowsill, sighing over the cloudy skies. At Overlook, we have a little trick that cures the rainy-day blues every time: reading. And just in case you are at a loss for what to curl up with, we can suggest four engrossing paperbacks (on sale this month) with the power to distract you from even the most hellacious storm. So step away from that window, close the blinds, and bury your nose in these books until those May flowers have bloomed.

The Prince

By R.M. Koster

 This National Book Award nominee takes us to a not-so-fictional place, Tinieblas, where intrigue, violence, and military coups occur as often as fruit falls from the trees. Kiki, the son of a twice-ex-president, has inherited his father’s thirst for power and the presidency. But to become president of Tinieblas takes a Machiavellian intelligence, for one must outwit not only political foes but also the strong American interests. An insightful, furious, and funny depiction of twentieth-century Latin America, The Prince is an essential novel for readers of history and magical realism alike.

“There is art here. Mr. Koster has created a world which no one has ever seen before.” –The Washington Post

                                                                                                           Titus Awakes

                                                                                                   By Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels are widely acknowledged to be classic works of high fantasy, on par with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this series, Peake created the vividly detailed world—at once gothic and surreal—of Castle Gormenghast. When Peake died in 1968, he left behind the tantalizing pages and clues for the fourth and concluding book in the series.

Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn Peake’s widow, wrote Titus Awakes, based on those pages left behind by Peake. Fans of the Gormenghast novels will relish this continuation of the world Peake created and of the lives of unforgettable characters from the original novels, including the scheming Steerpike, Titus’s sister Fuchsia, and the long-serving Dr. Prunesquallor. Published a century after Peake’s birth, this strikingly imaginative novel provides a moving coda to Peake’s masterwork.

The Seersucker Whipsaw

By Ross Thomas

Clinton Shartelle doesn’t seem like a good choice to run a political campaign in Albertia. For one thing, he’s American, and Albertia is a small coastal republic in Africa, about to be cut loose from the English Crown. For another, Shartelle is Southern and fiercely proud of it, and his ideas about racial politics veer unpredictably from progressive to rigidly old-fashioned. Rich natural resources make Albertia attractive to businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, opening it up to political corruption. For his part, Shartelle is hired to make sure that a British industrialist’s favored candidate wins the presidency. But the opposition is backed by the CIA, for whom murder is just another political tool.

                                                                                                                   A Quiet Vendetta

                                                                                                                   By R.J. Ellory

By award-winning and bestselling novelist R. J. Ellory, this thriller takes his skill for suspense to a higher level. When Catherine Ducane disappears in New Orleans, the cops react fast—she is the Governor’s daughter, after all. But the case quickly grows very strange. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated, and when the kidnapper calls, he doesn’t want money: he wants time alone with a minor government functionary. By the time the pieces fall into place, it’s already too late...

A Quiet Vendetta is both the epic story of one mobster’s life—following him from Cuba to Chicago—and equally a powerful thriller of rage, love, and loss. With tension to top Cussler, Patterson, and Ellory’s own bestselling work, it confirms R. J. Ellory’s place at the forefront of the genre.

A New Anthology of Russia's Greatest Gothic Writers

Muireann Maguire's Red Spectres: Russian Gothic Tales from the Twentieth Century, a new collection of supernatural fiction featuring eleven short stories from both classic and lesser known Russian writers, is out later this week. Featuring nine pieces never before translated into English, the anthology combines many of the best-loved aspects of the traditional ghost story with the full Gothic repertoire of insanity, obsession, retribution, and terror.

In a starred review, Kirkus calls Red Spectres, "An excellent anthology of psych-and-spook mischief from behind the Iron Curtain, where a literature rich in such things held sway during the Soviet era." Over at Languagehat, Stephen Dodson recommends the book, "warmly to anyone with the slightest interest in stories of the uncanny, in early-twentieth-century Russia, or simply in good writing."

At her personal blog, Russian Dinosaur editor and translator Muireann Maguire has been walking readers through the back story behind her new book. In this excerpt from her ongoing "Translator's Tale" series, Maguire looks at some of the problems that confront any first time translator, as well as how she tackled these issues when it came to translating twentieth century Russian Gothic fiction. Click here to read the whole post!

"In the current (Spring #13) issue of the New Ohio Review, Rosamund Bartlett has a delightful short piece about the tribulations of translating Tolstoy. (She is currently completing a new version of Anna Karenina for Oxford World's Classics.) It describes her experience of 'spending a long time staring' at Tolstoy's 'inimitable, participle-laden, congested sentences'; two passages on bees prove particularly convoluted. Previous translators of AK produced their own unique versions of each sentence; they couldn't all be right. In the end, it was Bartlett's prior research into Tolstoy's hobbies (including, for some time, beekeeping) for her biography that helped her to unlock his prose: two peculiar verbs were exposed as highly specific beekeeping terminology, rather than ambiguous grammar. Another problem was Tolstoy's use of the singular noun pchela (bee) in a context that suggested multiple bees. Finally her 'apiarial research' led to the revelation that Tolstoy was, unusually but correctly, using pchela to signify an entire hive rather than a solitary insect. This insight allowed her to translate the 'bee passage' from Chapter Twelve of Part Two correctly, perhaps for the first time in the history of Tolstoy translation. One wonders what she would make of the Moscow/beehive passage in War and Peace.

I can't claim similarly research-intensive breakthroughs in my translation of Aleksandr Chayanov or the other authors featured in Red Spectres. However, I did repeatedly confront three perennial problems of translation: what do you do when your author's prose just isn't that good? How can you be sure you're getting it right? And, last but not least, how can you check whether to pay copyright fees? As every translator can be sure to stumble up against at least two of these, I'll describe my (fairly Jurassic) approach to all three."

It's That Time of Year Again...

 Bright mornings and late sunsets, those small, budding leaves on trees, the refreshingly warm days ahead of us: for all intents and purposes, spring has arrived. With the recent heat wave, it seems that everyone is ready to shed their winter coats for good (or at least until the Fall chill creeps in) and welcome fresh air, bright flowers, picnics in the park, and massive amounts of greenery.

With the onset of spring comes the slightly less exhilarating task of spring-cleaning. It’s a necessary evil that we all must face at some point. Even at Overlook we must sweep those dusty corners and take inventory of our behemoth bookshelves. In the process, we discovered a deluge of buried treasures: signed copies of books from a variety of genres. We found both The Wentworths and Chemical Pink by Katie Arnoldi if you are at a loss for great park reading and loads of Penny Vincenzi epic romance sagas to make your heart flutter in this season of love. But perhaps spring puts you in more of a creative mood—Milton Glaser’s Art is Work and Drawing is Thinking are stunning books that easily inspire. We also unearthed a few suspense thrillers by the great R.J. Ellory and Dave Zeltserman if you would rather add some dark adventure to your sunny days. Regardless of your plans in the next few months, Overlook is your one-stop shop for spring reading.  In the spirit of spring cleaning—we are willing to give away a stack of these precious signed copies. We’re offering up two books of your choice to three different entrants. For a chance to win, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter (we’re also on Tumblr and Pinterest!), and leave a comment below with your selections. The complete list up for grabs is below:

Glad we cleaned?

·      The Wentworths by Katie Arnoldi

·      Chemical Pink by Katie Arnoldi

·      Art is Work by Milton Glaser

·      Drawing is Thinking by Milton Glaser

·      A Quiet Vendetta by R.J. Ellory

·      A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory

·      Free Radicals by Michael Brooks

·      The Escape of Sigmund Frued by David Cohen

·      Dead Men by Richard Pierce

·      Walking English by David Crystal

·      Wicked Pleasures by Penny Vincenzi

·      Another Woman by Penny Vincenzi

·      Into Temptation by Penny Vincenzi

·      No Angel by Penny Vincenzi

·      Any Day Now by Terry Bisson

·      Free Radicals by Michael Brooks

·      Between the Sheets by Lesley McDowell

·      Daughter of Providence by Julie Drew

Winners will be chosen at random tomorrow by 12pm.

Available Now: THE SECRET LIVES OF SPORTS FANS by Eric Simons

What happens in your brain when you watch sports? Why do so many people return to something that so often leaves them heartbroken, angry, and even violent? The Secret Lives of Sports Fans by Eric Simons, out this month from Overlook, turns to neuroscience, psychology, endocrinology, evolutionary biology — and one sensitive man in an Oakland Raiders gorilla suit — in a search for the roots of a universal passion.

In The Secret Lives of Sports Fans, journalist Eric Simons poses a very simple question that millions of people have asked themselves at some point in their lives: “Why am I a sports fan – and why do I have this apparently irrational passion for something that the rational part of me says is ridiculous. And why does watching my favorite team make me hyperemotional?”

From surging testosterone to firing neurons, the science suggests that sports fans cede emotional control to our reflexes. And yet, critically, we retain a remarkable ability to influence and even control, the way those reflexes work. To explain that strange dance in the brain, Simons explores research on relationships, love, addiction and groups, concluding with a close look at what evolutionary theories can teach us about how and why people act tribally, and why culture matters.

Eric Simons recently lent his expertise to The Wall Street Journal to write about why March Madness in particular captures the hearts and minds of sports fans. Quoted in The Washington Post, he unpackaged one of the tournament’s more memorable moments, in which sports fans across the country temporarily forgot about their individual loyalties after a traumatic incident involving Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware’s ankle:

“Sometimes, you have an event that makes people realize that there’s something more important than the tribe, than the colors we wear. The story of sports fans that is really underappreciated is that we do shut off our red colors and our blue colors.”

Simons has also recently investigated his own sports addictions through interviews with SF Weekly and Smithsonian Magazine, and lent some helpful advice to baseball fans via The Boston Globe in preparation for the 2013 season.

 “An intriguing ride through ‘all the wondrous quirks and oddities in human nature.’” – Kirkus Reviews

“Adroitly mixing research with feature reporting, Simons unveils some intriguing discoveries … Simon’s affable writing style—and his great eagerness to profile actual people, including himself—infuses the data with heart and soul.” – Publishers Weekly

“A fascinating glimpse into why sports culture is what it is. Sports fans will find this a powerful tool for self-examination.” – Booklist