Margaret Millar Cover Reveal #3: A STRANGER IN MY GRAVE and THE FIEND

THE FIEND is, in a word, outrageous. It is easily one of Margaret Millar's most daring novels and one which involves one of the most brilliant games of cat-and-mouse between author and reader that has ever been written. It's not so much a "whodunnit" as it is a "please-for-the-love-of-god-don't-let-him-do-it". You've been warned. 

A STRANGER IN MY GRAVE is often held forth as Margaret Millar's greatest achievement. That point is contested by some but if you need further convincing let me recommend Declan Hughes' beautiful essay on the book in John Connolly and Declan Burke's indispensable collection of writers on writers, BOOKS TO DIE FOR. 

But that's enough of this preamble. Let's get to the latest round of Jeff Wong covers. 

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A young girl is at risk in this tense and disturbing page-turner that reveals a web of abusers and victims among a disparate cast of middle class Americans

Ben Gowen is trying to do the right thing. His brother Charlie is a disturbed man—one who has done his time for the crimes he committed, crimes involving children. But Ben is determined to help Charlie reform, something that isn’t easy considering Charlie’s limited mental capacity and the nature of his disease.

Charlie wants to be good. To be good and to be liked by his brother Ben. He doesn’t want to have the bad thoughts. But he’s disturbed that the parents of a little girl named Jessie have allowed their daughter to engage in risky behavior. Climbing trees. Rough-housing on the playground. She could get hurt. She should be fed nourishing meals and given warm clothing to wear. Upset, Charlie writes an anonymous letter to Jessie’s mother, shaming her. He will keep an eye on her and make sure she’s safe.  

The Fiend, first published in 1964, is a shocking novel in any era. Millar piles on the suspense and tension to nearly unbearable heights as a self-absorbed group of adults fail to notice a predator in their midst.

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Young housewife Daisy Harker’s world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy

Jim and Daisy Harker are a young, well-to-do couple in San Felice, California, and though childless they maintain the sort of domestic happiness that others can only aspire to. But a darkness exists at the outer edges of Daisy’s mind and she has no idea why it’s there. In a series of reoccurring nightmares she wanders a cemetery, eventually finding her own gravestone. According to the dream, December 2nd, 1955 is the day she died.  

Street smart but honorable, Stevens Pinata is a man with his own mysteries. An orphan left on a church doorstep as a child, he isn’t even certain of his ethnicity, let alone his goals in life. As a private investigator he works with bail bonds and quick shakedowns. But when a pretty young woman like Daisy Harker comes into his office with a crazy request to “find her lost day” he is intrigued. He is too decent to take advantage of a crazy woman, but Mr. Harker is a wealthy man and who is Pinata to turn down money?

What unfolds is a masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller. Millar’s razor sharp prose cuts a masterful plot and slashes at the racism, sexism, and entitlement endemic to an era otherwise celebrated for its prosperity.

Maggie's Back: The First Five eBooks Pub Today

It's a great day for fans of literature. 

For the first time in, well, ever, Margaret Millar is available to eBook readers. Released today are the first five books in our ongoing project to restore to print and digital availability the complete works of Margaret Millar. We're starting with eBooks and print is soon to follow. 

Check out our previous posts on BEAST IN VIEW & AN AIR THAT KILLS as well as THE LISTENING WALLS, VANISH IN AN INSTANT & WIVES AND LOVERS for more information on the first five eBooks released as well as information on where you can purchase them.  

Margaret Millar Cover Reveal #2: VANISH IN AN INSTANT, THE LISTENING WALLS and WIVES AND LOVERS

Today we have three wonderful new eBook covers to reveal as we press on in our quest to restore the novels and writings of Margaret Millar. In this round of covers we have two of Millar's most nihilistic novels of suspense, Vanish in an Instant and The Listening Walls, the latter of which will instantly remind readers of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl -- right down to the missing wife's name.

The third novel in this group -- Wives and Lovers -- is not a novel of suspense but rather a purely literary effort that further cements Millar's legacy as keen observer of  humanity, for better or worse. 

As with the previous two covers, all artwork here is by Jeff Wong. Jeff is designing all of the Syndicate Books editions of Margaret Millar, both in print and digital formats. More to come later on the schedule of the former. 

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In this classic noir tale of blurred guilt and flawed innocence, a cynical lawyer uncovers the desperate lives of a group connected only by a gruesome murder.

Eric Meecham is not an optimistic sort. An old-before-his-time lawyer, scratching out a living in courts and jail houses, he is no stranger to desperate cases and has little faith in anything or anyone. But his brand of existential nihilism isn’t without curiosity, and when he gets a chance to represent a local society woman who’s been arrested for murder under very scandalous circumstances, well, even he can’t help but be engaged.

Cold, austere, and used to having her way, Mrs. Hamilton is more than a little upset at having to travel 40 miles west of Detroit, in the dead of winter, to the small city of Arbana. But her careless daughter Virginia has landed herself in trouble again and Mrs. Hamilton will do anything to keep the family name out of a scandal. But she little understands the gravity of her daughter’s arrest. Virginia was found drunk and underclad in the midst of a white-out snow storm. She was also covered in blood. In a cottage not too far away a married man, father of two, lay brutally stabbed to death.

Earl Loftus is the definition of a hard luck case. Broke and terminally ill, Earl’s life has been one tragedy after another. But the spark of a thoughtful intellect still gleams in his eyes and when Loftus comes forward to confess to the crime that Virginia is accused of, Eric Meecham is instantly skeptical. Could a man like Loftus actually commit such an act? The more Meecham interviews Loftus, the less he thinks it’s possible.

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In this suspenseful masterpiece about corrupted love, Rupert Kellogg's wife, Amy, goes missing after an ill-fated trip to Mexico—and Rupert becomes the focus of a paranoid investigation.

Amy Kellogg is not having a pleasant vacation in Mexico. She’s been arguing nonstop with her friend and traveling companion, Wilma, and she wants nothing more than to go home to the Bay Area. But an uncomfortable stay in a Mexican hotel takes a nightmarish turn when Wilma is found dead on the street below their room—an apparent suicide. 

Rupert Kellogg has just returned from seeing his wife Amy through the difficulties surrounding the apparent suicide of her friend in Mexico. But Rupert is returning alone—which worries Amy’s brother. Amy was traumatized by the suicide, Rupert explains, and has taken a holiday in New York City to settle her nerves. But as gone girl Amy’s absence drags on for weeks and then months, the sense of unease among her family changes to suspicion and eventual allegations.

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A sincere and compassionate novel about the complications of married life, and the love, loathing, pain, loyalty, disappointments and friendship that grow out of a marriage.

Channel City, California, is a an average coastal town where everyone is doing their best to get by and be respectable, from the sun-grizzled fishermen on the wharf to the perfectly coifed society wives to the over-fed gophers who plague every middle-class garden. But in the hot summer of 1954, one unhappy man's extramarital affair turns the community on its head.  

Hazel Anderson, a dental assistant, is a contentedly divorced forty-something whose ex-husband, George, runs the town's wharf bar. Hazel worries about George, who is smitten with a much younger woman, Ruby, who won't have anything to do with him, and Hazel thinks Ruby is hiding secrets of her own. The dentist Hazel assists, Gordon Foster, works hard to support his wife and three children in their middle-class lifestyle, but he can never satisfy his wife, Elaine, who has always resented being married to a dentist instead of a "real" doctor. All of these relationships become tangled when henpecked Gordon's romantic indiscretion comes to light.  

Here, in this sweet, sad, and incisive literary novel, Margaret Millar accomplishes the same feat as she has with her award-winning crime fiction by offering readers a fascinating snapshot of life as it was, not life as we like to remember it having been.