Lay This Body Down

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Nancy and I were playing Scrabble a few evenings ago when we heard a sharp rapping at the door. We both jumped. Our normally watchful Icelandic sheepdog, Edda, must have been sleeping on the job; she erupted in loud barking. Turns out it was UPS dropping off a box with my 10 author’s copies of the latest Gideon Stoltz mystery, Lay This Body Down.

 

edda guarding a stack of books

 

Even with 20-some books published, I found it most pleasing to see this latest one, hold it in my hands, and study its cover: ominous, evocative, and, well, mysterious.

In 2019, to promote my first mystery, A Stranger Here Below (plus a nonfiction book on making habitat for wildlife that came out around the same time), I drove our aging Honda Fit from place to place in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. During three weeks in April, I gave 15 programs at bookstores and nature centers, followed by four more here in Vermont. I sold a lot of books. And I enjoyed meeting folks and finding out that they were interested in the story I had to tell.

Because of the pandemic, I only did a few zoom events for the second book in the series, Nighthawk’s Wing, when it came out in 2021.

But now that a new Gideon Stoltz mystery has arrived, and the pandemic seems to be waning (or we’re less afraid and more able to deal with it), I’ll be joining readers face-to-face again. The official book launch for Lay This Body Down is Thursday, March 2, at 6:30 p.m., at the small and very welcoming Cobleigh Library in Lyndonville here in northern Vermont. I’ll give a short program, read a passage from the novel, and take questions. Kim Crady-Smith of Green Mountain Books and Prints will have books for sale.

In May I’ll be in Centre County, Pennsylvania, where I was born and raised and on which I modeled my fictional Colerain County, where Gideon and True Stoltz solve mysteries.

On Tuesday, May 2, at 7 p.m., I’ll be at Centre Furnace Mansion, home of the Centre County Historical Society in State College, Pa. On Wednesday, May 3, at 6:30 p.m., I’ll do a program just down the road at the Bellefonte Art Museum, an old stone house that was a station on the underground railroad in the early 1800s. (Fugitives from slavery play an important role in Lay This Body Down.)

I hope to see you at one of those events.

Just In: First post-publication review:

“Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys appealing characters, a tight plot, good historical detail, and a lot of action in a historical mystery.” — February 2023 Historical Novels Review