It's not summer without Katharine Schellman coming to Fountain! She'll be talking with another friend, John Copenhaver, about her newest installment in the Nightingale series.
About the Book:
Last Dance before Dawn is the final book in the luscious, suspenseful, and queer Nightingale mystery series by Katharine Schellman, set in 1920s New York.
Vivian Kelly has finally created a home and a family at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where no one cares who you are in the daytime. After all, in the underground world of 1920s New York City, everyone has a secret to keep, and they’re on the Nightingale's dance floor to leave those secrets behind. But sometimes it takes more than a dance to escape your past.
When a stranger from Chicago shows up at The Nightingale looking to settle old scores, Vivian and the Nightingale's owner, the mysterious and alluring Honor Huxley, send him packing. They soon discover, though, that the stranger was just a warning. Slowly, the people who have made The Nightingale their home realize that someone is following them. Hunting them. And that someone won’t stop until they unravel a mystery that’s been cold for years: a missing girl, a boy out for revenge, and a truck full of cash that disappeared in a job gone horribly wrong.
Vivian just wants to protect the people she loves, and she's willing to dig into the dirt of the past to make it happen. But some questions are safer left unanswered, and now that Vivian has built a family for herself, she has more to lose than ever before.
About the Author:
Katharine Schellman is an award-winning author of historical crime fiction, including the Nightingale Mysteries and the Lily Adler Mysteries. Her novels, which reviewers have called “worthy of Rex Stout or Agatha Christie,” have been named one of Suspense Magazine’s Best Books of the Year, a Library Journal Best Crime Fiction of the Year, and a New York Times editor’s pick. Her work has been nominated for the Silver Falchion award and won the Zibby Media National Book Award for Best Book for the History Lover. A former actor, onetime political consultant, and graduate of William & Mary, Katharine lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia with her family, an ever-growing TBR pile, and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering.
John Copenhaver is an award-winning author whose latest novel, Hall of Mirrors, was selected as a New York Times Crime Novel of the Year and recently won the Left Coast Crime Award for Best Historical Mystery. His debut, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, and The Savage Kind earned the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. A passionate advocate for queer voices, Copenhaver is a founding member of Queer Crime Writers and serves as a board member of International Thriller Writers. A lifelong educator, he mentors aspiring writers in the Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska and teaches creative writing and literature at VCU. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul Herrity. www.johncopenhaver.com