Just a quick note to let you know about this!
Summer 2022 is the time to pick up the first 5 Dana Hargrove novels in ebook.
Less than a buck each, marked down from $4.99.
Tell your friends!
Here are the links for my author pages at these booksellers:
Here’s the sale schedule!!»»»»»»
“Informed, thrilling action in and out of the courtroom, and few can portray it better than V.S. Kemanis. Highly recommended.” — The San Francisco Review of Books
Dear KU Subscribers,
I’m posting this quick note to let you know that the first four Dana Hargrove novels are available on Kindle Unlimited.
Thursday’s List and Homicide Chart:
If you’re not on KU, you can purchase these “Dana Hargrove Doubles” in e-book for much less than buying them separately. Here’s Forsaken Oath and Deep Zero:
It’s been such a pleasure to distribute the Dana Hargrove novels in the most affordable format, introducing them to a new wave of fiction lovers. Since their release in mid-January, readers have been devouring the pages and leaving such wonderful reviews and feedback. And the Dana Hargrove Doubles are a good way to get the full experience of Dana’s world, from the time of her rookie days in Thursday’s List through her days as an elected D.A. in Deep Zero, before you pick up and read her latest story, Seven Shadows.
Thank you, Readers!
Today, Seven Shadows goes live.
Little did I suspect that Dana Hargrove would be hanging around this long. I wrote the first draft of Thursday’s List in the mid-nineties, during a period of stay-at-home momming after years of working a big investigation at the NY State Organized Crime Task Force. Dana was born but didn’t see a bookshelf until 2013. In the years since, her world keeps growing—a web of fascinating cases, intriguing colleagues, complex adversaries, and family dramas.
Here are Dana’s stories and the years in which they take place: Thursday’s List (1988), Homicide Chart (1994), Forsaken Oath (2001), Deep Zero (2009), and Seven Shadows (2015). The sixth novel, planned for 2022, will bring Dana into the present. As for the time gaps between the stories, one reviewer calls this “a bold strategy to show how much a lawyer can change over the course of her career” (Kirkus Reviews). I call it, simply, interesting and fun.
In a lifetime, the delicate balance between career and family is in perpetual flux, just as societal views and hot button issues in criminal justice are ever evolving. In Seven Shadows, Dana returns as a trial judge, in midlife, dealing with the empty nest at home as she weighs her views on incarceration, now that she wields the power of the gavel. She’s conflicted over a tough sentencing decision in a high-stakes murder case when an unpleasant past comes calling. Who is lurking in the shadows?
Ask your favorite independent bookstore and lending library to order the Dana Hargrove books and Your Pick: Selected Stories (2019 Eric Hoffer Award, Best Story Collection) from Ingram ipage. If you happen to be a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, the first four Dana Hargrove novels are now free on Amazon (Dana Double 1; Dana Double 2). Please help spread the word!
A special note to fellow authors, reviewers, and bloggers:
If you’d like a free review copy in e-book or paper, please email a request through my contact page. I’d love to get your feedback. You may find the ending of Seven Shadows, as one reviewer put it, “Surprisingly different” (“Recommended” by The U.S. Review of Books).
You will also find this on a page near the end:
“All works published by Opus Nine Books are dedicated to the nine members of the family headed by John and Kate Swackhamer at 3 South Trail, Orinda, California — a large world under one small roof.”
Thanks for reading!
Dana walks the tightrope like never before in her tricky balance between professional ethics and family loyalties.
Just a quick note to let you know that online magazine Kings River Life is running a giveaway for my Dana Hargrove novel, Deep Zero! Click on the following link to find out how to enter: Review/Giveaway of Deep Zero.
While you’re over at Kings River Life, check out the book reviews, short fiction, and other interesting articles. This magazine originates in my home state, California, but its reach and subject matter are global. Here is the KRL vision statement: “We are a California magazine with local focus and global appeal, along with a desire to entertain, inspire and inform with a unique variety of articles that provide something of interest for everyone.”
Once again, thanks to readers and reviewers for a great launch of Deep Zero. If you haven’t read the first three novels, it’s easy to catch up with Dana’s world in the Dana Hargrove Legal Mysteries Collection, available at a discount in ebook and on Kindle Unlimited for free!
I’d like to share with you some photos I took today of ice floes on the Hudson River. These are fitting illustrations for my new legal suspense novel featuring prosecutor Dana Hargrove.
What lurks here? Deep Zero.
I’ve had a great week visiting many fabulous authors and bloggers.
Thank you Art Taylor for hosting me on SleuthSayers, the site for Professional Crime-Writers and Crime-Fighters, where I talk about the Dana Hargrove novels and writing legal suspense.
I shared hot cocoa and good conversation about Deep Zero with Linda Hill on “Staying in with…” on Linda’s Book Bag.
Deep Zero was featured on Indie Crime Scene and included on the new releases page of Dru’s Book Musings.
Author Connie Johnson Hambley invited me for a return visit to her outstanding blog, Out of the Fog, where I offer my reflections on how far the Dana Hargrove series has come.
Got some nice words about Deep Zero from reviewers on NetGalley, Mystery Sequels, and The U.S. Review of Books.
Thanks to all of these wonderful authors, bloggers, and reviewers, and extra thanks to fabulous cover artists, Roy Migabon and Eeva Lancaster.
Now…time to write a few short stories before brainstorming about the next Dana Hargrove novel…
Thanks to talented filmmaker Blake Horn for producing a short video, filmed in my home, about my inspiration for the novels featuring prosecutor Dana Hargrove.
Blake Horn at work.
Click the link below to watch the video on YouTube:
The fourth standalone Dana Hargrove novel, Deep Zero, will be here soon!
Farewell 2017! From the personal journal, it’s a fond farewell. On December 30, 2017, my beloved husband Kevin and I celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary. This year has been as rich and loving as always, and I’m thankful for the many warm and wonderful times together and with our daughters, other family members, and close friends.
In my legal mystery novels, protagonist Dana Hargrove juggles the demands of a high-powered professional career with her personal and family life. She has a loving husband, Evan, to support her. Evan and Dana are nothing like Kevin and I except for one thing: We are a team, giving each other space to pursue our personal interests. For this I am very grateful. I would not be able to accomplish my artistic goals without Kevin.
These are my professional and artistic highlights for 2017:
Publishing my fourth story collection, Love and Crime: Stories, to starred reviews by Foreword and BlueInk.
Interviews with exceptional authors Eowyn Ivey and William Burton McCormick on VBlog.
Getting on stage again after a break of many years, performing the stellar choreography of Katiti King and making many new dance friends along the way.
Many hours of joyful dance with my favorite teachers at Gibney Dance and Steps NYC, including Diane McCarthy, Laurie DeVito, Katiti King, Max Stone, Teresa Perez Ceccon, and Bethany Perry.
An amazing master class with Lynn Simonson, the creator of the Simonson Technique.
A wonderful sendoff by my coworkers and friends at the Appellate Division upon my retirement from my fulltime legal career.
Thank you to editor Janet Hutchings of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for posting my humorous account of my (now former!) commuter life, Rock ‘n Rail, on Something Is Going to Happen.
A lot of fun working on a video of my work with talented filmmaker Blake Horn. Stay tuned! The video will be posted soon to Amazon and Goodreads.
Putting the finishing touches on my fourth Dana Hargrove novel, Deep Zero, to be released on January 25, 2018!
I wish you a happy, healthy, artistic 2018!
Love from V.
Once again, Dana Hargrove is caught at the intersection of family and career—a career that happens to involve criminal suspects, judges, attorneys, and officers of the law! The thematic core to these novels picks up the internal conflict familiar to any career woman with a family: the incessant tug between the professional and the personal. In my career, both in and out of the courtroom, I have felt that tug keenly. Over the past few years, in writing these novels, I’ve become very attached to Dana, her family, her colleagues, and her adversaries, and that is my wish for you, the reader. Pick them up in any order. Each novel is a standalone, as I take Dana through various stages of her career and life, with several years in between each story
: Thursday’s List (1988), Homicide Chart (1994), and Forsaken Oath (2001).
Already, in a curl of my mind, I’m starting to envision Dana’s life in 2008…
For the e-book, pre-order here on Amazon.
Release date for both paperback and e-book is April 30!
If you are a reviewer or blogger and would like to receive an ARC, please send me a message through my contact page!