Publish and Perish Pride and Predator Pursuit and Persuasion Out of the Ruins Watches of the Night Code of Silence An Update from Sally November 2007 For Those Who Know Ben Reese . . . Many thanks to the many readers…. I'm happy to say that Severn House Publishers will be bringing out Watches Of The Night in hardback in the UK in February 2008, and in the US in May 2008. They will publish trade paperbacks in both markets 6-12 months later after the hardbacks come out. Watches Of The Night is set in 1962 in interesting places here in the States, as well as in Scotland and Tuscany. Ben's also seen in flashbacks for the first time scouting for Army Intelligence during WWII. The seeds of the story were sown then in Germany. Yet, it's the unexpected content's of Kate's long-lost package (first revealed at the end of Out Of The Ruins, Multnomah 2003, Ballantine 2004) that force Ben and Kate down a slippery track toward a cluster of well disguised murders, past as well as present. The end comes in Italy, in a crumbling Tuscan farmhouse, where Ben tries to rescue Kate from a degrading and painful death at the hands of an Army Tech Team Leader Ben's despised since The Battle of The Bulge. What about the 6th Ben Reese? It's tentatively titled Code of Silence and it'll be published in hardback by Severn House Publishers in 2009, first in the UK, and then in the US. A trade paperback will come out 6-12 months after the hardback appears in each market. Code of Silence is a prequel to the series set in 1957 that's based on a real-life, recently revealed, WWII/Cold War intelligence battle that provides significant insight into the last sixty years. The novel opens in 1947 at a U.S. code and book-breaking facility near Washington D.C. where a linguist is murdered. Ten years later, a language professor acquaintance of Ben's (who's kept his book-breaking past secret) suddenly disappears. Ben's wife died three months before this, which means Ben's barely surfaced, and has no desire to get involved. Duty (and his best friend's prodding) gets him moving -- leading to a near-fatal attack that results in a serious concussion. A foggy mis-firing watery brain makes tracking his acquaintance's murderer a tightrope of tentativeness and indecision for Ben. But when he finally uncovers what's been deliberately hidden for him, and is helped to decrypt the contents, Ben finds himself in a labyrinth of fact-based intrigue that adds another dimension to his understanding of the world. |
