Part of Series
The blonde secretary was scared when she visited Miranda Corbie’s office. A shove into a streetcar track, a box of poisoned chocolates…hateful, violent letters. Someone was trying to kill her. Miranda isn’t sure of anything at first except that Louise Crowley, the blonde who works as an assistant to Niles Alexander, San Francisco publisher, is in trouble. Despite her own preparations for an imminent voyage to a blitzkrieged Britain and a painful farewell to the city she loves, Miranda decides to help Louise and takes on her last case as a private detective in San Francisco…investigating her client, surveying the publishing world of 1940, and stumbling into murder with a trail that leads straight to Alcatraz…an island city of sharks. Along the way, Miranda explores her beloved San Francisco once more, from Playland-at-the-Beach to Chinatown to Nob Hill and Treasure Island. She encounters John Steinbeck and C.S. Forester, and is aided and abetted by the charming and dapper San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. And she also discovers personal truths she’s long denied… With her characteristic luxurious, lyrical prose and insightful eye for character, Kelli Stanley paints a rich, authentic portrait of 1940 San Francisco in this latest installment of her award-winning series.
Author
An award-winning author of crime fiction, Kelli Stanley's first novel in the Miranda Corbie series, CITY OF DRAGONS, was met with overwhelming critical acclaim. It won the Macavity Award (Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award) and was a finalist for the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Shamus Award. CITY OF SECRETS, her second novel in the series, won the Golden Nugget Award for best mystery set in California. CITY OF GHOSTS—the long-awaited third Miranda Corbie book—will be published August 5th, 2014. Stanley also writes a highly-praised series set in Roman Britain, the latest of which is THE CURSE-MAKER. Her debut novel, NOX DORMIENDA, won the Bruce Alexander Award for best historical mystery of 2008. She makes her home in Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco, earned a Master's Degree in Classics, and loves jazz, old movies, fedoras, Art Deco and speakeasies. For more information about Kelli's books, please visit her website at http://www.kellistanley.com About CITY OF GHOSTS: June, 1940. Art. Spies. Murder. For Miranda Corbie, private investigator and erstwhile escort, there are debts to be paid and memories-long-suppressed and willfully forgotten-to be resurrected. Enter the U.S. State Department and the man who helped her get her license. A man she owes. And playing along may get her a ticket to Blitz-bombed England, if she survives ... Through sordid back alleys and art gallery halls, from drag dress nightclubs to a Nazi costume ball, Miranda's journey into fear takes her on the famed City of San Francisco streamliner and a ticket to Reno, Nevada, the Biggest Little City in the World ... where she finds herself framed for a murder she never anticipated. Miranda must learn the difference between reality and illusion, from despair to deceit and factual to fake, as she tries to get her life back ... and navigates a CITY OF GHOSTS. Miranda's back. And noir will never be the same.
