Coffeetown
Announces the August Release of The Devil Takes Half
The
Devil Takes Half is now available!! ($14.95, 256 pp, 6x9
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-965-7), a work of mystery/suspense by new author
Leta Serafim. A police officer with domestic problems and no experience with
homicide sets out to find the killer of a beautiful archeologist.
“[An] impressive
debut… Serafim has a good eye for people and places, and sheds light on the
centuries of violent passion that have created an oppressive atmosphere hanging
over the sunny Greek landscape.”
—Publishers Weekly,
June 23, 2014
“The Greeks have a word for it, and in this fast-paced,
delightful mystery, that word is murder… The real buried treasure is pure
pleasure in Serafim’s debut novel.”
—Mary Daheim, New York
Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Alpine and Bed & Breakfast
mystery series.
The
Devil Takes Half is Book 1 in the Greek Island Mystery
series.
Sudden
Violence Rouses a Sleepy Greek Island
At an archeological dig on the idyllic Greek Island
of Chios, a severed hand is found lying in a blood-filled trench. Could it
belong to Eleni Argentis, a beautiful archeologist who is also the wealthy
daughter of a local ship owner? She and her young assistant, Petros, are both
missing.
The chief officer of the local police force, Yiannis
Patronas, suspects that Eleni and Petros happened upon something of real value.
However, his search turns up nothing but handfuls of broken clay, and then,
another body—that of Petros, whose throat has been brutally cut. Body parts
belonging to Eleni are left behind on a remote beach, confirming her demise.
Then an old priest with a fondness for TV detective shows is attacked and left
for dead. The dig site is located near the monastery where he was the only resident.
Patronas interviews Petros’ longsuffering
grandmother, his flighty mother and her money-grubbing boyfriend, as well as
Eleni’s greedy stepmother and her charming son. He also confronts two
archeologists, one British and one American… If Eleni’s find is, as they
insist, worthless, what are these men doing on Chios? Although Patronas has
little experience with homicide, he is determined to conquer the evil that
threatens this formerly peaceful island.
Says Leta, “I have visited over twenty-two of these
islands and spent the equivalent of a decade among the people who inhabit them.
Of all the qualities I have come to know, I most cherish the Greek sense of
humor, that bittersweet viewpoint, both pungent and cynical, that is so
uniquely theirs. In my view, the Greeks are always laughing at the unexpected,
whatever adversity is thrown their way, passing along a bit of truth about
human behavior as they go. Sages, every last one of them.”
The
Devil Takes Half is available in eBook and 6x9 trade
paperback editions at Amazon, B&N, European Amazons, and Amazon Japan.
Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com, Ingram, or Baker
& Taylor. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library
Resources or Midwest Library Service.
Camel Press has acquired
two more novels by Leta Serafim: When the Devil’s Idle and From
the Devil’s Farm, books two and three in the Greek mystery series!
When the Devil’s Idle
When an elderly German is found with his skull
bashed in on Patmos, the same isle St. John wrote the Apocalypse, Yiannis
Patronas, Chief Officer of the Chios police, is called in to investigate. He
asks his top detective, Giorgos Tembelos, and his friend and amateur sleuth,
Papa Michalis to join him.
With only a handful of suspects on such an isolated
island— the gardener, the housekeeper, the deceased’s son, daughter-in-law and
two grandchildren— Patronas is limited, and yet even more challenged. Who is
capable? Who has motive? Who wanted the old German dead? Why? Could the answers
be immediate or far reaching?
From the Devil's Farm
A child's body is found in the ruins
of an ancient temple, a famed landmark marking the entrance to the harbor of
Naxos, one of the largest Cycladic Islands in Greece. The boy has been bled
dry, his carotid artery nicked and the blood apparently collected as there is
little in evidence. “The work of two people,” Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer
of the Chios police who is called in to investigate, decides when he arrives at the scene, “one to hold the boy
down, the other to do the cutting.”
Was it cult related? Is it a
sadistic murderer? Did the boy perhaps know his deliverer from this world?
ABOUT Coffeetown
Press—Based in Seattle, Washington, Coffeetown Press has been publishing
the finest fiction and nonfiction since 2005. www.coffeetownpress.com
Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency www.loiaconoliteraryagency.com
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