Book No. 2

I'm very happy to pass along the news that the husband's second book will hit bookstore shelves soon.

"The Secret Fire" is the follow up to "The Malice Box." It's both a sequel and prequel to the first, this time set in England, France - and a bit of Red Hook. However, he was also careful to write it in a way that you need not start with "Malice Box" to know what's going on.

Part of the "Secret Fire" is set in World War II. The book is fiction, but like the first book, it uses a lot of real-life events as a stepping-off place. He did original research and interviews to help craft the characters and stories.

In addition -- and I think this is very cool -- he's built a website for the non-fiction parts of the book. "The Secret Fire" website has original audio from his interviews as well as historic photos.

There's also a fancy new "Malice Box" website in Wordpress, which links to the intentionally clunky "Robert's blog" in Blogspot. (For those who haven't read the first book, Robert was told to create a blog on the fly and post pictures/text as a way of proving he was doing what he's told.)

Also of note, he has a Martin Langfield website (featuring a super cool lightning-bolt picture from the ceiling of the old theater on Governors Island, which was only open during Open House NY last year.)

The UK/Commonwealth publication date for "The Secret Fire" is April 16. It's coming out in recession-friendly paperback.

There's no U.S. publisher as of this time, however it's already being translated into German and Dutch.

And lastly, Penguin asked him to write up something for their website about the process of re-imagining history.

Labels: books

- posted by Amy @ 3/07/2009 07:54:00 AM