Fiction in the Pacific

Earlier this week we mentioned the success of Neptune’s Inferno, The Literary Group International’s best-seller about the naval battles surrounding the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II.  Coincidently, another book coming out this month, Soho’s Devil-Devil by Graeme Kent, is set in the same area, just after the war.  

Murder and mystery find their way to the Solomon Islands, and the duty calls Ben Kella to dig up answers and set affairs right.  But it isn’t only Ben’s job because he’s a sergeant in the Solomon Islands Police Force.  He’s also an aofia, a spiritual peacekeeper who inherits the responsibility when he is born.  Because of his dual role, neither the police nor his people fully trust Ben.  

While searching for a missing anthropologist, Ben uncovers evidence of an uprising, gets cursed by one of the island’s magic men, and teams up with young American nun, Sister Conchita, to solve a series of murders that seems to be involved in all their other misfortunes.  We think the story is packed with enough flavor and suspense to support a whole series of books, and apparently Soho agrees.  This month they’ve announced that this book will only be the first.

Hot Upcoming Soho Title

There’s a lot of buzz about Soho’s upcoming title, Stolen Lives by Jassy Mackenzie.  Both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews have taken notice, reviewing advanced copies of the mystery novel, which will be available in hardcover April 2011.  

Stolen Lives is Mackenzie’s follow up to Random Violence in her series about Jade de Jong, a private investigator working the eclectic streets of Johannesburg.  The affair she started in Random Violence falls apart.  She calls it quits with Police Superintendent David Patel, only to discover that his wife is being blackmailed and his child has been kidnapped.  Meanwhile, Jade takes an easy job working as a bodyguard for Pamela Jordaan, a woman whose husband has recently disappeared.  

The plot thickens when she finds Pamela’s husband tortured and barely alive, leading her to a realization that both the kidnapping and the attempts on Pamela’s life are tied to a human trafficking organization much larger than all of them.  Stolen Lives isn’t out yet, but we’re eagerly awaiting our copies.  Look for it in early April for a fast-paced, page turner splashed with gunpowder and blood—just the way we like our Soho mysteries!

A News Break for Small Business

Welcome back readers. Today we're taking a moment to celebrate a victory for small businesses like ours, with the repeal of the expanded 1099 reporting requirements.

Included in the healthcare reform law, extended 1099 requirements were one suggested method of collecting on taxes supporters of the law claimed were under-reported, requiring each business purchase of goods or services over $600/year to be reported. The burden was heaviest for small businesses that operate without entire accounting departments already devoted to taxes. Thankfully, Congress came together from both sides of the aisle and repealed these requirements a few days ago.

With the repeal, we won't have to devote more of our (and the nation's) productivity away from growing our businesses. That's one for the little guys!

Neptune's Inferno is #10 in the Times

Congratulations to The Literary Group International and their author, James Hornfischer, for securing a spot on The New York Times best-seller list with Neptune’s Inferno.  The novel is Hornfischer’s most recent work of non-fiction about events in the Pacific war.  This time, he follows the fighting between the Japanese and American-Australian naval ships during the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942.

While much has been said about the ground forces, Marines, and Army troops who fought and secured the island’s only airfield against several attacks, there is perhaps less said about (and much to be learned from) the war fought on the surface of the surrounding ocean.  The American navy had made an early mistake, withdrawing their carriers after depositing the ground troops on the island, which led to the subsequent loss of several ships during a surprise Japanese raid.  From that point on, the Americans had to deal with Japanese ships with longer-ranged, more powerful torpedoes, and often failed to take advantage of their own superior radar capabilities.

Hornfischer details all of the encounters, giving his readers an inside look at the tactics and the men who designed them, using letters and documents recovered from the war.  Neptune’s Inferno is the definitive account of the Guadalcanal naval war.  Those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them, so check out Hornfischer’s latest and avoid the fate of less savvy commanders.

More Titles for Campfire

Publisher Steerforth is planning on publish thirty-seven new titles in its Campfire series (graphic novels targeted at the English-speaking market in Southeast Asia and based on classic novels and mythology) after the success of its first fourteen entries.

“The Random House library marketers take them to conferences and librarians snap them up and school jobbers love them,” Steerforth publisher Chip Fleischer told Publishers Weekly.  “When we can get them into the stores people buy them.”

The graphic novels appear to have found their niche.  Several high schools are attempting to use them to reach reluctant readers, children who cannot be drawn into the act of reading by the typical means.  By pairing exciting pictures with text in smaller, more manageable sections, the Campfire series is far more accessible to adolescents with no interest in typical books, younger children who are ready to take on more challenging material ahead of their peers, or anyone who enjoys either graphic novels or timeless classics.

We wish Steerforth the best in 2011 and encourage all of our readers to look for their new Campfire titles in the year ahead.

Internships, the Economy, and Egypt

We have for you today, a heartfelt message from Benay's President, Dawn Reshen-Doty:

Like most Americans, I’ve been glued to my TV in the evenings, watching the developments in Egypt.  There are many reasons for the unrest and the cry for political, social, and civil rights in Egypt but for the youth of that country, unemployment and the inability to find a job is high on the list of grievances.  Both in Egypt and here in the US, there’s great discussion of the affect that unemployment has on young people and society.  I am greatly concerned that so many recent college graduates here in the US are unable to find their first job or internship.

I remember with fondness my first job while at college, at a Japanese bookstore in Georgetown off Wisconsin Avenue, and then an internship at The White House.  When I graduated, I moved to Japan where my first job was teaching English for the Japanese government.  It pains me greatly to read about the difficulty our young people have today in finding a first job, or any job, as those experiences are the foundation of one’s entrée into adulthood and the business arena.

As an employer and entrepreneur I receive numerous resumes from young people, searching for their first job or internship.  Outside of my staff, many people may not know that I’m a big supporter of internships.  For many years now we’ve had summer interns, both at Benay and, for the past three years, at For Beginners.  Our For Beginners Managing Editor, Merrilee Warholak, started out with us twelve years ago as a Benay intern while completing her college degree.  This year we have two interns that are college graduates trying to fill out their resumes with employment experience while looking for their first real post-college jobs.  This winter we’ve started a paid internship program with Benay which provides three credits at Western Connecticut State University.  Our current intern works with me and our two bookkeepers, learning about bookkeeping, the pre-accounting work we do for our clients, and how businesses are run.

Yes, we’ve given many young people their first taste of the working world but we’ve received so much more back.  The energy, excitement, and enthusiasm that interns can bring to your organization are unbelievable.  I know that when the interns are in our office working side by side with us, we are more energized, more interested in examining and explaining exactly what we do and why, and we welcome the interns’ unexpected and sometimes very insightful questions.

I’m working very hard to be able to offer at least one of our interns full employment. We may not have enough work for a full time position today and it will mean more payroll, payroll taxes, benefits, etc.  It may even mean that we can’t afford to give raises to the rest of our staff this year because of the increase.  But I want to do it.  I have to do it.  

Why?  Because I truly feel that if every company in the US created one more job, offered employment to one more person, young or mature, we could and would be doing our part to pull the country and its people out of this economic slide.  So I ask you, I challenge you, to try and eke out one more job at your company for one more person. I know it’s hard but we need to do, person by person, job by job, and company by company.

Great news for Soho this week.

You may have heard of the Dilys award, the honor bestowed upon the mystery title which members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association have most enjoyed selling in each year.  The award was created in honor of Dilys Winn, founder of the first specialty bookseller in the US, and comprises a mark of particular distinction for authors and novels in the genre.  Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Soho’s Colin Cotterill is among this year’s nominees.  

We’re convinced the competition doesn’t have a chance.  This is Cotterill’s seventh book about Dr. Siri Paiboun, the national coroner for the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos whose intense curiosity and unwillingness to back down from questions has landed him a job as a detective as well.  Dr. Paiboun has gotten himself into plenty of trouble with his sharp wit and cynical viewpoint on authority, but Love Songs opens up with a situation which seems impossibly hopeless.

"I celebrate the dawn of my 74th birthday handcuffed to a lead pipe,” Dr. Paiboun says at the opening of the novel.  Far from his inadequate, familiar office in Laos, the doctor has been dragged from a serial murder investigation to Cambodia.  While he’s being held as a spy, the official investigations back in Laos continue, but Dr. Paibon is convinced the meager evidence collected so far points to the wrong man.

The book weaves the disparate dangers together subtly, culminating in the doctor’s discovery of the haunting, unfamiliar melody he has been humming and the true identity of the serial killer.  We’re proud of Colin and Soho, and wish them luck as IMBA makes their selection!