Award-winning, bestselling, thought-provoking mysteries
Tonight’s event at Murder by the Book was a whole lot of fun, as we discovered The Kinky Side of LRK. Yes, The Bones of Paris tour ripples across the country, and tomorrow moves from Houston to Austin’s Book People. Come join us, and see if I can find something to startle you with.
Then: BoucherCon, here I come!
It’s 1 day until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
The Latin Quarter
From page 87: The night felt soft after the harsh day, and… [Stuyvesant’s] feet took him along the boulevard Raspail; up the rue de Rennes; through narrow streets unchanged since students wore doublets. Down the quay to Notre Dame, admiring the massive dance of stone and the reflection of lights and the dark mass of moored barges.
The vast recreation of Paris under Napoleon III was largely concerned with the Right Bank, where government and commerce lived. Why spend money ensuring that students, artists, and the working class can travel more smoothly through well-lit streets, switch on electric lights in their sitting rooms, and flush their toilets with a modicum of efficiency? More pity, the Right Bank.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 2 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
Arènes de Lutèce
From page 68: [Stuyvesant] set off across the heart of the Latin Quarter in the direction of the Arènes de Lutèce. Lutetia was Rome’s name for the city, and the one-time arena was a restful spot in the Quarter—if one ignored the ghostly sounds of lions and dying gladiators.
After two millennia of intense change, Rome still protrudes from the foundations of Paris. On the Right Bank the remains are primarily found in the shapes of the roads, but in the Latin Quarter, Roman baths (fed by a ten-mile long aqueduct) and the Arena can still be seen.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 3 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
Vert-Galant
From page 238-9: Past the magnificence of Notre Dame, around the Palais de Justice, and across the road to the small park at its prow, the Vert-Galant. Voices came from a moored barge; lights from the shore danced along the placidly flowing water.
If one were to lay the Tour Eiffel down against the tip of the Île de la Cité Square (the two shapes are virtually the same) the Vert-Galante would be the Tower’s spire. The small park at the prow of the Île is popular with fishermen. Perhaps that is why Harris Stuyvesant enjoys pausing there to reflect.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
Just a reminder to anyone interested in this year’s contest: the deadline to send me the URL of your Pinterest page is midnight tonight Pacific time (although to be honest, I may not actually get to all the boards until midday tomorrow…). First prize is the iPad mini loaded with my books,and the five runners-up win a signed hardback (and oh, is it ever gorgeous!). 
We’ll be in touch with the winners probably Monday and trumpet them out on PUB DAY (which is Tuesday, in case you’ve been living in a cave or just come out of a coma.)
So: the contest rules are here.
Email your page address by midnight Pacific Time to bones@laurierking.com
It’s 4 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
From page 85: [Stuyvesant] walked along to the pub-like comfort of the Falstaff and let Jimmie pour him a glass of his best Scotch. Jimmy Charters had been a British flyweight boxer, and anyone who put on the gloves was a friend of his.
Jimmie Charters was a fixture in Paris bar society. He worked his way around most of the bars patronized by English-speakers, ran a few of them, knew everyone, and let most of them cry on his shoulders at one time or another. His memoir, This Must Be the Place, is a deft tell-all that yet conceals the sins, and often the identities, of the customers who were also his friends. A man didn’t have to wield paint to be an artist.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 5 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
From page 89: The welcome, the voices—just the company of Mme Lemestre’s ladies teased at him like a cool breeze. He even had the money for a full night of pampering.
The Sphinx, an elegant (and quite legal) brothel run by Mme Lemestre, is said to be the first business in Paris to install air conditioning. There is some disagreement as to when it opened, but clearly it was up and running by 1929.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 6 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
Montparnasse Cemetery
From page 61: “His studio is down near Denfert-Rochereau….”
“Isn’t that across from the Montparnasse cemetery?”
“Yes. Not one of the more cheery cemeteries, I’m afraid.”
Established outside the city center in the 1820s, Montparnasse cemetery is the final resting place of figures as diverse as artist Man Ray and Camille Saint-Saens, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (together), French President Paul Deschanel and Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 7 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
Cole Porter’s Music Room, Paris
From page 312: [Stuyvesant] began with Cole Porter, the man Sarah had taken care to be standing beside at the strike of the full-moon bell. Porter lived with his wealthy wife in a garden mansion near Des Invalides—a marriage of convenience, since Porter’s interests lay elsewhere.
During the time The Bones of Paris takes place, in September 1929, Cole Porter was hard at work on his new New York show, Fifty Million Frenchmen. As far as the world knows, Porter was in the US, but it is now revealed that in fact, Porter got on a boat to Paris, for inspiration.
To order The Bones of Paris please click on the following links:
It’s 8 days until The Bones of Paris, Laurie R. King’s suspense novel of 1929 Paris.
For excerpts and information click here.
Gertrude Stein (r) & Alice B. Toklas (l) by Man Ray: 27 rue de Fleurus
From page 145: “Why do so few Americans bother to learn the language? People like that Stein woman—you know her? She has been here for years, yet can scarcely order a cup of coffee.”
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo moved from California to Paris in 1903, where they both began to collect the more outrageous modern artists. The Stein home and studio soon became a pilgrimage site for visiting Americans, filled with modern art, artists, and writers.
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