Summer Reading Giveaway
Big summer reading news!
My publisher, Quercus USA, is teaming up with Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown and Company to give away eight amazing thrillers from their biggest authors. So you have a chance to win new books by Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, Michael Koryta, Marcia Muller, Sandra Brown, Jeff Abbott, Noah Hawley — and me!
Just like each author’s Facebook page and enter your information in this form (between now and July 16) for your chance to win:
https://goo.gl/forms/oLDEjGr9LSXgQiV13
Here’s where you can find all of these great authors on Facebook, too!
Michael Connelly: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelConnellyBooks
Megan Abbott: https://www.facebook.com/MeganAbbottAuthor
Michael Koryta: http://www.facebook.com/michaelkoryta
Marcia Muller: https://www.facebook.com/MarciaMullerAuthor/
Sandra Brown: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSandraBrown
Jeff Abbott: https://www.facebook.com/jeffabbottbooks/
Noah Hawley: https://www.facebook.com/noahhawley1/
Brian Freeman: https://www.facebook.com/bfreemanfans
Now in the UK and Australia
The e-book edition of the new Jonathan Stride thriller MARATHON arrives in the UK and Australia today….get it on your Kindle at a great price!
“Gripping… Besides being a chilling reminder of what can happen in our divided society, the book is a fast, compelling read.”–Publishers Weekly
Find out more at: http://www.canelo.co/books/marathon/
MARATHON Season
Some more great reviews for MARATHON this week. Make sure it’s on your summer reading list!
“With strong characters and a propulsive plot, this thriller races to a breathless finish before truth becomes collateral damage.” – Star Tribune
“One of the top writers in the genre today….Freeman’s MARATHON is a firecracker that doesn’t exploit the headlines as much as blows them apart and delves into the topics that really matter – all within a story that never lets up.” — Cemetery Dance
Invite Me to Your Book Club
I’ve been telling readers at all my tour events that MARATHON was written for book club discussions.
It’s a book designed to get people talking to each other. It’s filled with characters making good and bad choices — and with characters you may love or hate at different points throughout the book. Agree or disagree, you will want to share your thoughts with your friends about how this book reflects today’s society.
I’ve added book club discussion questions to the MARATHON page on my web site to help guide your meeting.
And why not ask me to be a part of it? I feel so strongly about this book that I’m asking book clubs around the country to put this book on their list — and then invite me to join the discussion by FaceTime, Skype, or phone. You can reach me via the Contact page on the website. Let’s talk!
Available Now
The wait is over! My new Jonathan Stride thriller MARATHON is available now in e-book, hardcover, and audio.
This is a very important book for me. It was clearly inspired by the events in Boston four years ago, but I made a decision early on not to write a book simply about terrorism. We have many fine thriller writers who have covered that ground. I wanted to write a very different kind of book — one that deals with hatred in its rawest forms and shows how hatred becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of violence and revenge.
I also wanted to shine a spotlight on how social media has changed the way we relate to tragedies. In MARATHON, the “incident” deliberately happens off-stage, and the reader discovers that something has occurred through “tweets” — much the way we find out about shocking news in real life. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become our source of news, but along with the hard information, there is also rumor, misinformation, and wild speculation. That’s a dangerous combination.
MARATHON is made for book clubs. You’ll find book club discussion questions on my website. This novel is intended to get people talking about the things that divide us and the things that bring us together. I hope you’ll add it to your list this year (and if you do, feel free to invite me to join your discussion by FaceTime or Skype).
Don’t forget to post your own reviews, too, at Goodreads, Amazon, BN, and other readers sites. Your feedback really does make a difference.
Happy reading!
Three-Dimensional Characters
You typically see the plot of my books through the eyes of several different characters. Stride, Serena, and Maggie are always there – but so are victims, perpetrators, and innocent bystanders. Their stories intensify the emotion of the thriller, because every crime has ripple effects that change lives in unexpected ways.
I want these characters to feel “three-dimensional” on the page, but I’m often writing about people with very different experiences from my own. To bring them to life, I need help.
For example, the characters in MARATHON include an ordinary Muslim family – husband, wife, and child – whose world is turned upside down by a violent attack and its aftermath. This family should feel as genuine and sympathetic to the reader as next-door neighbors. However, my own experience has given me little interaction with Islamic life or culture from which to build realistic Muslim characters.
Online resources are always valuable when doing character research, but I wanted something more personal – so I reached out to members of the Muslim community in the Twin Cities. There was initially some wariness in their response. Too many popular thrillers deal with Muslims only through the lens of Islamic extremism, and I had to persuade them that I wanted to write a story with greater depth and nuance. When they understood what I was trying to do, they were very gracious in sharing personal stories with me.
In the end, I had the opportunity to talk about day-to-day life, culture, and religion with several members of the Muslim community and to observe one of their Friday prayer services. Their generosity in sharing their values, beliefs, and fears was essential to my research. I hope I’ve lived up to their trust by creating Muslim characters in MARATHON who are sincere, flawed, heroic, and misguided in equal parts – in other words, people who are exactly like all of the other three-dimensional characters I try to bring to my novels.