Buzz is building for Eoin Colfer's PLUGGED!

If you're attending this year's BEA, stop by the Overlook booth Wednesday at 2 p.m. to get a signed galley copy of PLUGGED, Eoin Colfer's new adult thriller.

People are already getting excited for this new direction for Colfer, including Kirkus Reviews. Check out our first review for PLUGGED below!

KIRKUS REVIEWS April 15, 2011
PLUGGED Author: Colfer, Eoin
Colfer’s adult crime-fiction debut—after his bestselling Artemis Fowl YA series—introduces a big, brash, bawdy, balding anti-hero.

Transplanted from Ireland to the picaresque vale of Essex County, N.J., sharp-witted, hair-challenged, ex-professional soldier Dan McEvoy finds he must cope with a nonstop barrage of problematic issues, all with pain and suffering potential. Dan’s used to that, however. A gypsy once told him he had “an aura that looked like shark-infested water.” Consciousness raised, Dan does what he can to keep the sharks at bay. Now, down on his luck though ever hopeful, he is minding his own business as lead bouncer at Slotz—an acknowledged dive, but a man’s got to eat while he waits for a turn-around—when a drunken patron plants a kiss where he shouldn’t. Connie, the hostess whose anatomy has been transgressed, complains. Dan moves in and unwittingly begins a chain reaction that ends with the lead bouncer as the lead suspect in Connie’s murder. The word “ends” overstates the case, of course, since Dan is to trouble what bad boys like him are to a certain kind of woman. Consider tempestuous Detective Ronelle Deacon, for instance, who beds and cuffs Dan with equal vigor. Or the deluded widow Delano, in whose erotic fantasy Dan is a stand-in for her long-lost husband. Add to this a volatile mix of ill-intentioned baddies—a shady shyster, a mobster in search of misplaced booty and an intemperate ghost—who batter and bruise him from his toes to the follicles of his in-progress hair transplant, and it’s a near thing whether or not Dan will make it to the sequel undoubtedly scheduled.

It’s a considerable step from the world of YA to this novel’s extreme raunchiness, and some in the fan base—new readers as well—may view it with alarm. Others will find the goings-on funny enough to forgive anything.

RIFLING PARADISE by Jem Poster Receives Rave Kirkus Review

Rifling Paradise, the new historical fiction novel by master storyteller and author of Courting Shadows Jem Poster, just received a lovely review from Kirkus:

A dubious character experiences a shattering change of heart during his specimen-collecting expedition to Australia, in a vivid historical novel by a renowned British poet.

Blamed for the suicide of a young boy and hounded out of his home by a mob, Charles Redbourne, the well-born but spendthrift hero of Poster's second work of fiction (Courting Shadows, 2008), is something of a lost soul in search of redemption. And he will find it at the end of the nightmarish trip he makes to the Antipodes, escaping his past while pursuing his inclination to become a naturalist. Although his host in Sydney, Edward Vane, offers hospitality, he too is a questionable figure, whose relationship with his headstrong, artistic daughter Eleanor seems violent, possibly abusive. Despite his earlier interest in boys, Redbourne is drawn to Eleanor, whose attunement to the land, its spirit and wildlife argues for a sustainable, noninterventionist relationship, unlike Redbourne's, whose specimen-hunting is done with a gun. Matters become more polarized when Redbourne leaves on his expedition into the hinterland, in the company of brutal Bullen and a half-aboriginal boy, Billy. Trapped between Bullen's cruelty and Billy's ancestral sensitivity, Redbourne barely survives and returns a different man. Poster's storytelling is notably fresh and pacey, and his characters have definition, even if they are often emblematic. Redbourne and Eleanor will leave Australia together, but their future is far from certain. Edgy, intense and engrossing work that delivers lessons astutely."

FINDING MERLIN Reviewed in Kirkus

Adam Ardrey's new book, Finding Merlin, which exposes the true history of the legendary Arthurian wizard, is reviewed today in Kirkus:

This important addition to Arthurian scholarship traces the origins of Merlin, unearthing consequential new material.

The Merlin of myth was a legendary magician and prophet in the court of King Arthur. Ardrey uses etymology, newly discovered historical documents and a fair dose of logical thinking to trace the roots of this forgotten man to sixth- and seventh-century Scotland, a radical discovery given that scholars have long proposed the real Merlin lived a century earlier in England and/or Wales. "If I am right," writes the author, "British history for the period from the late fifth to the early seventh century stands to be rewritten..." The discoveries of the real birthplace, battlefields and final resting place of Merlin, the man, as well as the many intriguing riffs into the lives and bitter rivalries of other important figures of that time, provide enough fodder to maintain reader interest...

A significant book for die-hard Merlin fans and skeptical scholars.

THE BOOK ABOUT BLANCHE AND MARIE named a KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF 2006

Check it out! Per Olov Enquist's The Book About Blanche and Marie was named a Best Fiction Book of 2006 by Kirkus Reviews. Woo!