Bev Editions Catalogue Spring 2014

Bev Editions

eBooks Original and Reissued

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Lyn Hamilton

The Xibalba Murders

The Xibalba Murders takes us to the Mayan ruins of Mexico where tomb robbers and political unrest create a potent mix of danger and romance. The theft of Mayan treasure and Lara McClintoch’s discovery of a corpse on the museum roof make her a suspect of robbery and murder. Desperate to prove her innocence, Lara must unmask the killer and stop a tomb robber.

“The excitement, magic, and adventure that is felt while watching an Indiana Jones flick will be felt while reading Lyn Hamilton’s wondrous debut novel.”

Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 1997 Internet Review Lyn Hamilton

The Maltese Goddess

The Maltese Goddess, is set on the idyllic Mediterranean island of Malta, where Lara’s client embroils her in murder and an assassination plot that goes to the top of Malta’s political elite.

Malta’s heritage, including the Knights of St. John, play an important part in the mystery that Lara must solve if she is to save her life and clear the names of her new friends.

Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 1998

Lyn Hamilton

The Moche Warrior

Antiques dealer Lara McClintoch is putting her failed marriage behind her and has opened a new shop when a box of junk she acquired becomes the target of burglary, arson and murder.

She follows the trail to the mountains of Peru.

“Armchair travelers and mystery buffs will enjoy the smooth blend of history and murder.”

Publishers Weekly Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 1999

Lyn Hamilton

The Celtic Riddle

The will of a wealthy Irishman sparks a murder-spree and treasure hunt that Lara must solve by delving into Ireland’s Celtic past. The novel was adapted for a Murder, She Wrote TV Movie in 2003 starring Angela Lansbury.

“Steeped in Irish lore, this multilayered tale will please puzzle enthusiasts and those who demand a logical but totally surprising solution to a crime.”

Publishers Weekly Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 2000

Lyn Hamilton

The African Quest

A tour of the ancient ruins of Carthage and Tunisia turns deadly when tourists begin dying under mysterious circumstances. Lara suspects that two ships competing to find a lost treasure are implicated. Lara’s quest for justice climaxes in a harrowing race across the desert. “....a really good story, Hamilton’s best, with solid research and setting.”

Margaret Cannon, Globe & Mail Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 2001

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Bev Editions- Fiction

Lyn Hamilton

The Etruscan Chimera

Lara has almost concluded up her annual antiques buying trip in Europe when she’s invited to meet reclusive billionaire, Crawford Lake. Lake wants her to obtain a certain Etruscan sculpture, and to tell no one he’s the buyer. All Lara has to do is persuade the owner to sell, which is hard to do when he turns up dead in his own Etruscan tomb.

“Erudite and entertaining... a journey that is every bit as magical as the elusive chimera.”

Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 2002

Lyn Hamilton

The Thai Amulet When Will Beauchamp closed his antique shop in Bangkok and disappeared, he left behind a family

in Toronto and a lot of questions. When fellow antiques dealer Lara McClintoch tries to find him in Thailand, she faces suspicion and deceit. Did Will run away? Was he involved in corruption? Why was he fascinated by an old murder case? Now people he knew are under attack, but Lara keeps searching. “the author does a fine job of blending history with the sounds, smells and tastes of the Orient.”

Bev Editions 2013 Publishers Weekly Penguin/Berkley 2003

Lyn Hamilton

The Magyar Venus

Roommates from college draw Lara McClintoch into an encounter with an old lover and the mystery surrounding a 25,000 year-old statue. To find if the antiquity is real or fake, Lara traces the path of a 19th C adventurer who is said to have found the statue in Hungary. Lara learns that digging up the past can be dangerous, whether it is someone else’s or your own. “gives us a puzzle, a recurring heroine, an interesting setting, a fabulous antique object, some history and some travel—and a whiff of forbidden romance.”

Bev Editions 2013 Penguin/Berkley 2004 The Globe and Mail Lyn Hamilton

The Moai Murders

How many people put a visit to remote and mysterious Easter Island on their life to-do list? Lara McClintoch and her best friend Moira share a yearning to hug one of those famous giant carved heads. But when they get to the island, someone is bumping off members of a strange congress gathered to study local culture. Who has murder on their bucket list? Lara races against time to stop the killing. “This book is a lot of fun, and should make a great companion for the beach or the pool.”

Bev Editions 2013 Globe and Mail Penguin/Berkley 2005

Lyn Hamilton

The Orkney Scroll

Lara McClintoch’s professional pride is hurt when an antique cabinet she thought was genuine is deemed a fake. When the antique dealer who sold it for a million dollars is murdered and the money goes missing, Lara follows the forgery trail to Scotland’s Orkney Islands, once ruled by the Vikings.

The place is pretty and the people kind, but Lara feels danger closing in on her.

“This is the most accomplished and clever book yet from a writer who is quickly becoming CanaBev Editions 2014 da’s queen of crime fiction.” Calgary Herald Penguin/Berkley 2006

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Bev Editions- Fiction

Lyn Hamilton

The Chinese Alchemist

A client asks Lara McClintoch to buy an antique Chinese silver box containing a formula for immortality. After the box is stolen from a Beijing auction house, Lara follows a dangerous trail through the back alleys of modern China to find it. Despite its promise of life forever, the box keeps getting people killed. Lara fears she will be next unless she can uncover the secret behind the heist. “…longtime series fans will enjoy seeing McClintoch in action in China.” Publishers Weekly Bev Editions 2014 Penguin/Berkley 2007

Martyn Burke

The Commissar’s Report In this Cold War satire, Dimitri, a young Kremlin spy is secretly smitten by the sirens of capitalism.

He is thrilled when he is assigned to work in the Soviet Consulate in New York City. But his talent for making money on Wall Street creates problems with the Kremlin, and his boyhood friend is now a CIA agent stalking him. Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, The Commissar’s Report is lauded as “a wonder of intense, cinematic storytelling” by the Wall Street Journal.

Bev Editions 2011

Martyn Burke

Ivory Joe

A rollicking love story of Leo and Tina Klein set in 1950s New York, Havana, and the deep south.

Leo is a charming rogue with ties to the mob. Tina is a leftist activist and manager of “Ivory Joe” Coulter, a talented musician and former boxer. Ivory Joe weaves a deft plot involving the attempted theft of one of Joe’s songs, to give us a joyous tale of energy and soul. “Martyn Burke knows his territory and he keeps a jazzed up pace appropriate to the story and the era. …A real pleasure” says Meg Bantam Books Wolitzer in The New York Times.

Bev Editions 2011

Morley Torgov

The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick

Max Glick, a small-town teenager with doting grandparents and helicopter parents, dreams of a career as a concert pianist. But his elders favor sensible professions like medicine, law or science. Help comes from his music teacher and a rabbi with ambitions to be a stand-up comic. a warm, funny and unforgettable portrait of a boy who is poised on the brink of adulthood and about to take the biggest risk of his life. Winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour and a Torgi Award, it was adapted for an Lester Orpen & Denys 1982 award winning feature film and a TV series.

Bev Editions 2012

Morley Torgov

Stickler and Me Ben Marshall, 13, faces a summer of unpalatable choices: He can shuffle between his newly divorced parents, too distracted to notice him; or he can visit his grandfather Ira, a cranky, small-town lawyer, who is a stickler for rules. When Ira’s wealthy client, Mrs. O’Hearn dies, instructing him in her will to “put down” her beloved dog, Ira rebels. With Ben as his accomplice, they go on the run with the dog and embark on an adventure that brings Ben closser to his grandfather and adulthood.

Bev Editions 2011

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Bev Editions-Fiction

Jaron Summers

The Failed Life of a Mormon Missionary

A young man’s hilarious quest for sex and God. In 1962, Jerry Wonder, a 19-year-old Mormon missionary, leaves South Dakota to save souls in New Zealand. But Elder Wonder is flawed. He is a compulsive masturbator, or in Mormon parlance, a “self-pollinator.” Elder Wonder’s path is fraught with challenge. He misses his girlfriend Susan who tried valiantly to seduce him before he left, but to his regret he remained strong for both of them. A comic novel about the many ways older men stifle and control young men.

Bev Editions 2012 David Onley

Shuttle

Edwards Air Force Base: the giant Hypersonic Jet Yorktown with the Shuttle Columbia clasped to her back, climbs to the sky. Their pioneering mission: to launch the Shuttle into space from the edge of the atmosphere. Neither craft will reach its destination. One will never return. Fact and fiction combine in this dramatic, bestselling novel of a space shuttle mission that goes perilously wrong.

With the shattered craft locked in fatal orbit, their crew running a desperate race against time, Mission Control mounts a last ditch effort that must not fail. The result is a stunning story of rescue Futura/Orbit 1981 is space that grips to the very last page.

Bev Editions 2012

Don Gutteridge

Lily’s Story Lily’s Story tells the tale of a remarkable pioneer woman, born in the backwoods of Ontario in 1840.

Lily’s struggle to survive and grow and discover her place in the scheme of things is complicated by the travail of frontier living, and the impact of historical events themselves, the railway rivalries, the grand tour of the Prince of Wales in 1860, the Underground Railroad, the Riel Rebellions, the Great War and the influenza pandemic that followed it. By the author of the acclaimed Rebellion Mysteries series.

Bev Editions 2013 Blanche Howard

Penelope’s Way Penelope, age 70, searches for the meaning of life in the accreted layers of love, lust, guilt, family, pot luck suppers, and time and chaos theory. Her efforts may be destined to fail, but the journey is joyous. “This book is a great read: a compact narrative and a wide-ranging story… it ended far too soon,” wrote the Globe and Mail.

Coteau Books 2001 Bev Editions 2013

Blanche Howard

Dreaming in a Digital World

Gen Varley, a PhD in computer science has big ambitions for work and love. Virginal in the ways of office politics and the human heart, Gen must contend with her boss’s deceit, her seemingly boring boyfriend’s secret life, and an affair with a married co-worker that reduces her to subtle stalker. Allies include a mentor who turns fairy godmother with surprising consequences. A delightful romp from the writer of Penelope’s Way and The Celibate Season (with Carol Shields).

Bev Editions 2011

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Bev Editions-Non Fiction

Rangeley Wallace

No Defense

Library Journal describes this romantic mystery as a “powerful first novel.” At her father’s behest, and over her husband’s objections, LuAnn moves her husband and children home to Alabama. There she inadvertently spurs the investigation that leads to her father’s indictment. Family secrets, a taut story line, and a surprising ending combine to create a riveting drama.

Bev Editions 2013 St. Martin’s Press 1995

Rangeley Wallace

Things Are Going to Slide In this compelling page-turner, heroine Marilee’s life quickly begins to spin out of control when her husband leaves her, her first love steals a promotion from under her nose, and her legal clinic must defend a teenager accused of killing her newborn. “Rangeley Wallace has beautifully rendered the texture of Southern life in this gripping tale of love, betrayal, and the strength of family,” says Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump.

Bev Editions 2013 Howard Engel

The Whole Megillah

In this short ebook. Benny Cooperman, the most endearing private eye in literature, is sprung from small-town Grantham and working in Toronto. A dealer in rare books asks him to investigate the theft of an ancient Jewish manuscript. While Benny is immersed in the strange world of antique book collectors, his client turns up dead and the robbery isn’t all it seems. It’s all in a day’s work for Benny Cooperman, “the great Canadian detective,” star of 13 critically acclaimed and bestselling novels. 27,000 words.

Bev Editions 2012 William Weintraub

Why Rock the Boat

Harry Barnes, a young reporter joins the Daily Witness where the managing editor, Philip Butcher fires journalists with aplomb while ignoring or trying to hide the real news. To amuse himself Harry writes hilarious stories about his boss, which inexplicably appear in the Witness. When he falls for Julia, a reporter who is hot for rebellion, Harry is tempted to rock the boat all the way. “Weintraub is a really first-rate farceur,” exclaimed the New York Times. An award winning feature film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Little, Brown 1961 Bev Editions 2011

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Todd Hoffman

The Spy Within

Written with a novelist’s panache, this is the true story of the Chinese spy who penetrated the CIA, and for 30 years revealed America’s intelligence secrets to his masters in Beijing. Larry Chin, the CIA’s top Chinese linguist, was China’s top spy.

“A successful cloak-and-dagger reenactment of the FBI sting that exposed a Chinese-American double agent in 1985, “ said Kirkus.

Bev Editions 2012 Steerforth Press 2008

Marian Fowler

Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj

When the British ruled India, four Victorian women find themselves in a disturbing land, experiencing extremes of decadence amid crushing poverty. Emily Eden, Charlotte Canning, Edith Lytton and Mary Curzon followed husbands or a brother who were appointed Viceroys. In this compelling slice of colonial history we see how India marked them with its heat, mutinies and lascivious secrets.

“Witty, pungent and boldly irreverant and totally absorbing, Below the Peacock Fan is a book to Bev Editions 2013 be savoured. It is a gem.” –The London Free Press Penguin/Viking 1987

Lita-Rose Betcherman

The Swastika and the Maple Leaf

Fascism was not a mass movement in Canada in the 1930s, but it threatened the country’s health.

In his review, Mordecai Richler wrote, “Dr. Betcherman has written a lively, readable history, the stronger for being detached and allowing the embarrassing facts to speak for themselves….It is strong , evocative stuff, a necessary reminder of how things were. I recommend it highly.”

Bev Editions 2013 Fitzhenry and Whiteside 1975

Lita-Rose Betcherman

Reds under the Bed

An engaging account of a formative period in Canada’s political history, just as important as Senator McCarthy’s Red Scare was in the US. This is an unbiased account of midnight arrests, imprisonment without trial, and forced deportation faced by those whose only crimes were unpopular political opinions. This story is an important lesson in human rights, regardless of ideology.

“A pungent and often rollicking account of panic, zealotry and high confusion in both the Left and Bev Editions 2011 Right.” The Montreal Gazette Deneau 1983

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Bev Editions-Non Fiction

Dennis Smith

General Miranda’s Wars: Turmoil and Revolt in Spanish America Before Simon Bolivar, there was Francisco de Miranda who plotted to free Spain’s colonies in South America. Roaming the world, he cajoled funds from the powerful, including Britain’s William Pitt and Russia’s Catherine the Great. But Miranda’s invasion of New Spain in 1806 was a painful fiasco.

He died a prisoner in a Spanish dungeon, leaving the way clear for Bolivar’s eventual triumph.

“I read General Miranda’s Wars with fascination and admiration... What a rare combination of dreamer, fabulist, narcissist, courtier, and man of action.”

-Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress Bev Editions 2012

David Pratt

JFK, Oswald, Cuba and the Mafia:

A Chronological History

Who shot President Kennedy? Did Oswald act alone or as one of a group? Was he, as he claimed, a “patsy”? What was the role of organized crime? How did Jack Ruby manage the split-second timing that allowed him to kill Oswald? How to explain the many witnesses who died sudden and violent deaths in the aftermath of the tragedy? David Pratt read every relevant document and questions the Warren Commission’s conclusions. He has crafted this timeline for readers to decide for themselves. 25,000 words.

Bev editions 2013 Lita-Rose Betcherman

Buckingham’s Man: Balthazar Gerbier

Balthazar Gerbier, an artist and architect, connoisseur and curator, secret agent and diplomat, a friend of Rubens and counsellor to kings, his life offers a window into dazzling 17th century England and Europe. Gerbier is perhaps most well-known for assembling the famous art collection for the Duke of Buckingham at London’s York House. Lita-Rose Betcherman has written the definitive and long-awaited biography of Gerbier.

Bev Editions 2011

Lita-Rose Betcherman

The Riviera Set: From Queen Victoria to Princesss Grace From Picasso to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winston Churchill to sex kitten Brigitte Bardot. The glorious strip of Mediterranean beach stretching from Marseilles to Monaco still attracts writers, artists, film stars, and scoundrels. Betcherman’s rich account of the leisure life of history’s most glamorous figures in this iconic place will delight tourists and armchair travelers alike.

Bev Editions 2011

Harold Troper

The Rescuer

The true story of how one ordinary woman, Judy Feld Carr, entered a world of international intrigue and breached the walls of Syria’s totalitarian regime to help Jews escape tyranny. Historian Harold Troper gives gripping accounts of Syrian Jews who made a daring escape from a life of extortion, imprisonment, and torture under dictator Hafez al-Assad in the 1970s. A history that reads like a thriller offers insight into a region plagued with conflict and human rights abuses.

Malcolm Lester Books 1999 Bev Editions 2012

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David Pratt

For the Thinking Executive

David Pratt scoured books, articles and speeches by 826 Nobel prize winners for distilled wisdom from the world’s acknowledged geniuses. Here, he has chosen the perfect words for business executives and managers to use in their own presentations. His sources range from scientists to literary giants: Einstein, Curie, Hemingway, Kissinger, Martin Luther King and more. The quotations are accompanied by brief biographies and provide inspiration and insight into the singular minds that crafted them.

Bev Editions 2012

Morley Torgov

A Good Place to Come From

A warm and clever memoir of growing up motherless and raised by an irascible immigrant father in a small northern Canadian town. It is here that a young man, yearning for a larger life, develops the wit and comic sensibilities that he will use to become one of his country’s greatest humorists. It has been adapted into a TV mini-series and three stage plays by Israel Horvitz that toured American cities. It was awarded the prestigious Leacock Prize for humor.

Lester & Orpen Dennys 1974 St. Martin’s 1986 Bev Editions 2012

Leonard Mitchell & Peter Rehak

Undercover Agent

Undercover Agent tells the story of North America’s biggest drug bust at the time, netting $238 million worth of contraband. The man behind it was a small-town businessman who fooled the Miami drug barons looking for a way into Canada. Leonard Mitchell worked undercover for the RCMP for 19 months because “it was the right thing to do.” He was successful but it earned him a lifetime on the run from the mob. An exciting and true account of what one man endured to do the right thing.

McClelland & Stewart 1989 Bev editions 2011

Edward Shorter

Sadomasochism and Ardent Love

From the Marquis de Sade to E.L James, the idea of sadomasochism has shocked and titilated readers for 200 years. Shorter, a professor at the University of Toronto, is the author of Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction. In this short e-book, he focuses solely on fetish and sadomasochism, a fetish once thought of as deranged, but is now achieving mainstream acceptance. 17,000 words.

Bev Editions 2012 Dot.com Germ. Lang. 2012

Edward Shorter

Sex, Rock and History

Rock’n’roll mirrors society’s changing attitudes about sex. The women who fainted at the concerts of Little Richard, Elvis Presley’s provocative (for their time) pelvic thrusts, Sid and Nancy Vicious embodying the self-destructive nihilism of punk-rock with their troubled relationship, and the influential Riot Grrrl movement that transformed sexual mores. Historian Edward Shorter explores the connection between sex and the musical genre that defined 20th century culture in this funny, illuminating short ebook. 9,000 words.

Bev Editions 2012

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