13 1/2

Publisher Marketing: With "13 1/2," Nevada Barr, "New York Times" bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from the horrifying 1970s murder spree of a child dubbed Butcher Boy by a shocked public in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi trailer trash, to post-Katrina New Orleans. In Jackson Square in the French Quarter a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirty years later, Polly is a respected professor of literature with good friends and her own home a safe life for her and her two daughters. Butcher Boy, released on his seventeenth birthday, shook the snow from his boots and headed south. New Orleans, a Mecca for runaways then and now, offers sanctuary but never forgiveness. When Polly falls in love with Marshall Marchand, a restoration architect who is helping to rebuild her adopted city, shadows of the past rise out of the poisoned ground of New Orleans as thick and deadly as the toxic waters of the flood. Like history, some crimes are doomed to repeat themselves. Evil stays the same, only the victims names change. As two broken pasts collide in an uncertain present, Polly is determined that her children s names will never be on that list." Review Citations: Booklist 08/01/2009 pg. 6 (EAN 9781593155537, Hardcover) Library Journal 08/15/2009 pg. 64 (EAN 9781593155537, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Publishers Weekly 08/24/2009 pg. 39 (EAN 9781593155537, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Romantic Times 10/01/2009 pg. 89 (EAN 9781593155537, Hardcover) People Weekly 10/12/2009 pg. 51 (EAN 9781593155537, Hardcover) Audio File Best Mystery & Susp 12/01/2009 pg. 30 (EAN 9781441800510, Compact Disc) Audio File 12/01/2009 pg. 45 (EAN 9781441800510, Compact Disc) - *Starred Review Contributor Bio:  Barr, Nevada Nevada Barr is the author of the series of "New York Times" bestselling novels featuring Anna Pigeon, a law enforcement park ranger. Her novels include "Winter Study", "Borderline" and "Burn". She won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel for "Track of the Cat". Like her character, Barr worked for the National Park Service as a park ranger before resigning to write full time. She had postings to such parks as Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas (where Anna Pigeon was created) and Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. She lives in New Orleans. Contributor Bio:  Miller, Dan John Dan John Miller is an American actor and musician. In the Oscar-winning "Walk the Line", he starred as Johnny Cash s guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins, and has also appeared in George Clooney s "Leatherheads "and "My One and Only", with Renee Zellweger. An award-winning audiobook narrator, Dan has garnered multiple Audie Award nominations, has twice been named a Best Voice by "AudioFile "magazine, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a Listen-Up Award from "Publishers Weekly".