Sapere Books Sign New Cosy Crime Series by Amy Licence

Following the success of The Marwood Family Tudor Saga, we are delighted to announce that we have signed a new Sherlock Holmes-inspired cosy crime series by Amy Licence.

In Amy’s words:

“Tucked away in a sleepy Sussex village, Sherlock Holmes’ great-great niece Charlotte Holmes wants nothing more than to run her antiquarian bookshop in peace and quiet. Divorced, and with her grown-up children having flown the nest, she’s looking forward to reading her way through the shelves, attending quiz nights with best friend Nell, and going out for dinner with handsome lecturer Toby. But then a young woman unexpectedly turns up in answer to an advert she placed for a housemate, whose name just happens to be Scarlet Watson. It seems too much of a coincidence, but when the landlady of the local pub is murdered, the pair team up to solve the crime, and Scarlet’s infectious enthusiasm wins Charlotte over. But is the new arrival all she seems? What secrets is Scarlet hiding?

“A Study in Scarlet is the first book in my new cosy crime series, inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve always loved reading detective fiction and, as an English teacher, I have been reading the Holmes stories with my classes for twenty years. I felt it was a perfect addition to the genre, imagining a modern setting for some familiar devices, swapping the gender of the detective, and keeping a literary twist — my heroine loves reading! Each book is based on one of the original stories and Holmes fans will love spotting the overlap and solving the crime.

“I’m delighted to be branching out with Sapere Books into another genre that I’ve always loved. Books two and three in the series are already planned and ready to be written, with more sleepy village intrigue, plus some local festival glamour, but always remaining true to the Holmes genre.”

Discover more about Amy here.

We’re thrilled to announce that we have signed three new instalments of the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series by Linda Stratmann.

The series follows a young Sherlock Holmes and his acquaintance, medical student Mr Stamford, as they unravel mysteries and unmask devious killers.

In Linda’s words:

“I am delighted to continue the adventures of a youthful Holmes, before he met Dr Watson. A little about what to expect next: in the Halloween-themed Widow’s Key, an unexpected legacy creates a furore, with deadly mysteries to uncover.  In The Aeronauts, murder is sky-high, and escaped balloons cause peril both aloft and below. The Ghost of Lodge Thirteen finds Holmes and Stamford in Brighton. Richard Scarletti has been accused of murder, and his sister Mina (from the Mina Scarletti Mysteries) and Holmes form a powerful detective alliance.”

To keep up to date with Linda’s newest releases, visit her website and sign up to her newsletter.

Set in 1960s London, Simon Michael’s Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers follow a barrister with a tough past as he becomes embroiled in dangerous cases.

The first nine books in the series are already published, and we are delighted to announce that we have now signed up the tenth instalment.

In Simon’s words:

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be publishing my tenth Charles Holborne legal thriller with Sapere Books! When my previous publisher went bust four books into the series I feared my writing career had hit another brick wall, but Sapere were absolutely brilliant, offering to republish the first four books and continue with the series. Five years later, book 10 is taking shape. Regular readers will be aware that having worked throughout the 1960s, in Nothing But The Truth Charles’s nemeses, the Kray twins, were finally outwitted. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of evil men and topical social issues for Charles to confront. Thank you, Sapere!”

We are delighted to announce that we have signed a new series of Tudor mysteries by Paul Walker.

In Paul’s words:

“I’m thrilled to have a contract with Sapere Books for my new series. With a well-deserved reputation for publishing outstanding and innovative historical fiction, it’s a privilege to join such a talented group of authors under the Sapere banner.

“The series is a spin-off from the first of my William Constable books, State of Treason. Hector Askham, a captain of Spymaster Walsingham’s guards, was rewarded with retirement to a small estate in North Norfolk for his role in foiling a plot against Queen Elizabeth. Eight years later, now a country squire settled into his new life, an unwelcome command from Walsingham arrives only a few weeks after the dispersal of the Spanish Armada. Another threat, more subtle and insidious, is understood to be nearing the Norfolk coast. Askham is expected to lead an ill-prepared and under-resourced defence. But is the intelligence flawed? Can he trust the word of spies and paid informers? To disobey Walsingham’s command is not an option, but the odds are stacked against success and if he fails, the consequences could be severe.”

Congratulations to Laura Martin, whose gripping historical murder mystery, Death of a Lady, is published today!

Death of a Lady is first book in the Jane Austen Investigation series: thrilling Regency-era murder mysteries with a tenacious literary heroine working as a female sleuth.

1795, Hampshire, England

Jane Austen and her family are delighted to be attending Lord Wentworth’s ball. The event has been at the centre of village gossip after it was announced Wentworth was holding a ball to celebrate the return of his brother, who went missing in India many years earlier and had been declared dead.

At the ball an old friend, Emma Roscoe, bumps into Jane and tells her she saw something she shouldn’t have. She asks Jane to meet her at ten o’clock in the library to discuss it.

Delayed by dancing with the charming Mr Tom Lefroy, Jane is late to meet to her friend.

But when she arrives, she finds the body of Emma Roscoe lying on the floor with a dagger sticking out of her chest.

Distraught and feeling horribly guilty, Jane is determined to help with the investigation into Emma’s murder.

Was it a coincidence that the murder happened on the night of Lord Wentworth’s brother being reintroduced to society? What did Emma see that was worth killing her over?

And could more people be in danger?

With the help of her sister Cassandra, Jane must use her wit and intelligence to get to the heart of the mystery.

We are delighted to announce that we have signed a new dual timeline series set in the modern day and Tudor times by Phillipa Vincent-Connolly.

Told in authentic detail, the four-book series explores the intrigue and plots within King Henry VIII’s court. The books include ingenious twists on Boleyn family history, retold through a twenty-first-century history student’s eyes. The first instalment will be published later this year.

In Phillipa’s words:

“It’s very exciting to be working with Sapere Books on my first historical fiction series. The series is very special to me, as it includes appearances from some friends and colleagues of mine, who are featured as cameo characters from the modern day, with the history of the Tudor period also wound through, creating an exciting retelling of Anne Boleyn’s story. The narrative moves between the present day and the middle of Henry VIII’s reign.

“Set in South London and Queen Mary University of London, the first book follows an enthusiastic history undergraduate called Beth Wickers, who gets the shock of her life when her professor’s gold cypher ring opens up a mysterious portal that takes her to Tudor England and Hever Castle, where she becomes an integral part of Anne Boleyn’s life. She’s been warned not to meddle or risk changing history, but can she allow her dear friend to go on to become the second wife of King Henry VIII and to meet a horrific death? Can Beth save herself from the machinations of the Tudor Court, or will she meet the same fate as the queen to be? Only the ring has the answer.”

Amy Durant, publishing director of Sapere Books, commented: “I am thrilled to be working with Phillipa on these books, which breathe new life into the Tudor period. We are sure our readers are going to love the series!”

 

Click here to visit Phillipa’s website

We have received the very sad news that one of our authors, Bob Cornett, has passed away age 69. With Kevin D. Randle, Bob co-authored the Vietnam Ground Zero Military Thrillers and the Scorpion Squad Military Thrillers under the pseudonym Eric Helm. Kevin remembers Bob below.

On April 1, Robert Charles Cornett, “Bob,” sometimes known as R C Squared, passed away. Bob and I had been friends for nearly a half century. We met while we were both taking Air Force ROTC at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s. We shared an interest in science fiction and writing and a few other things.

Bob had originally majored in both physics and Russian, which seemed to be a very difficult path to follow. Eventually, he changed majors, and we both graduated in 1975. Bob remained in Iowa City.

It was in 1975 that I learned the Project Blue Book files had been declassified and were open for public scrutiny at Maxwell Air Force Base. Bob and I drove to Maxwell and began a search of those records. We might have been the first two outsiders to see those records. At the time, the names had not been redacted and we spent two days going through the index, writing down the names of all the witnesses for the unidentified sightings. At the time, this was a unique record, but today the information is available on the Internet. That search translated into a few magazine articles about Project Blue Book and sparked Bob’s interest in UFOs.

Writing had always been one of his goals, though I suspect he was more interested in writing science fiction than he was in writing about UFOs. We had written a book of science fiction short stories that was never published, but some of them have been posted to www.thesciencefictionsite.blogspot.com.

Bob had suggested that we talk to James Van Allen (a space scientist) about UFOs, because they knew each other. I thought it was just that Bob had taken a class from Van Allen and it was a sort of nodding friendship. But, one day, in the Physics Building, Van Allen got in the elevator with us. He looked at us and said, “Hi, Bob.”

And Bob said, “Hi, Van.”

Van Allen sat down with me for two hours to talk about UFOs. Bob missed the meeting for some reason, but it would not have happened had he not known Van Allen. That Van Allen would talk to me about UFOs said something about Bob.

We did investigate cattle mutilations for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). Jim Lorenzen (APRO’s co-director) had called me, asking me to look into them. With Bob, we went to Minnesota and spent a week to ten days there, learning what we could. We had been told that these mutilations were part of Satanic rituals, but we found no evidence to support that claim. Nor did we find anything to suggest that UFOs had anything to do with it.

All this resulted in Jim Lorenzen introducing Bob at a UFO convention as one of his top investigators. The irony was that Bob belonged to the rival National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). But the recognition did help Bob place some stories about UFOs in the magazines that were popular at the time.

We began to attend science fiction conventions with a view to meeting the editors working for publishers. We thought that if we met them, if they knew who we were, then we might have a leg up when a manuscript was submitted. I’m not sure if that ever worked in our favour, but we did meet Sharon Jarvis, an agent looking for writers. She recognized our military connection and one day called, wondering if we could write books about the Green Berets in Vietnam. We said yes and set about creating those books, now all recently republished under the banner of Vietnam Ground Zero. This did not erase our quest to write science fiction. I don’t know if those books helped or not, but we did eventually publish science fiction.

I was at home one night when Bob called and told me he had started a novel that dealt with a war in space. We planned to meet the next day, and he suggested that I bring along something. His “chunk” of the book, as we came to call them, was in the third person, but mine was in the first person. Before we were done, the book, Seeds of War, had five first-person narrators, not all of whom survived the conflict, and the third-person beginning in which Earth declared war on another planet. I mention this only because we used Lyndon Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin speech as the basis for the one in the book. We didn’t have to change much. It was a commentary on war. It was a strange attitude for us because of our connections to the military.

Bob and I attended many science fiction conventions, even after we had books published. At a party hosted by Berkley Books, we ended up as volunteer bartenders at about two in the morning. A very drunk science fiction fan wanted a Scotch, but we had run out. He was so drunk that we didn’t think he would know the difference, so we made some Scotch for him, using gin, Pepsi, and some wine, and we worked hard to make it look like Scotch. The man took it away happy.

We were at another science fiction convention in Minneapolis and were in the hotel room, working on a book. One of the characters was named Tom Waters, and I wrote the line, “Waters rushed up hill.”

Bob said, “You can’t say that.”

And I said, “Why not? No one will ever notice.”

From that point on, we often attempted to hide a bit of humour in the books for those astute enough to catch it. No one ever mentioned the waters rushing up hill to either of us.

Bob was popular on the science fiction circuit. I think it was a combination of things, including some of the stories that he wrote. He would do readings periodically, and I noticed that the fans sat quietly listening to his stories. He was sometimes slow in getting the story written, but it was always a good one. He was an imaginative writer, with a keen ear for human speech.

He was habitually late for nearly everything. We were to meet in Iowa City one day, but I got interested in a movie and figured that Bob would be late. So, I watched the end of the movie and was more than an hour late. Bob showed up about twenty minutes after I got there.

Bob eventually left Iowa City, moving to Moulton, Iowa, and our writing sessions waned at that point. We did a number of limited series, including one about time travel that started with Remember the Alamo, in which the time travellers return to 1836 to win the battle for the Texicans by using modern weapons.

But with the move to Moulton, our contacts lessened. I became involved in UFO research and Bob stuck closer to the science fiction. I think the last science fiction convention we attended together was in 1991, about the time of the Gulf War. We hadn’t been writing much together by that time. The Vietnam Ground Zero series had wound down and we didn’t have any contracts for science fiction novels.

Bob had trained as an EMT while living in Moulton and at some point had become a letter carrier. With his wife, MaryAnn, he eventually moved to Albuquerque where they hosted a few conventions.

Bob was interested in firearms and had a massive knowledge about them. Some of the writing about Vietnam showed just how much he knew about weapons. He was very good at describing the combat of the time. He was honourably discharged from the Air Force and later the Marines.

He was a very good friend, and I wish that I had been a better friend to him. I knew that his health had been poor these last few years. I had him on the radio version of A Different Perspective, and I was saddened by what I heard as we talked about UFOs. He just wasn’t as sharp as he had been when he was younger. You can listen to that show here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/19655144

In the last several years, maybe the last couple of decades, he had lost his fire for writing. Bob Tucker (a mystery, action-adventure, and science fiction author), who turned out to be a good friend, had said in his later years that he had retired from writing. Neither Bob nor I could understand that attitude … but sometimes writing is a very difficult task. I think Bob retired from it without really saying that he was retired.

I had thought of writing a tribute to my friend, but this turned into more of a remembrance. I’m surprised by how much I miss him.