City of Dragons
Kelli Stanley
Works of: Fiction
Publisher(s): Thomas Dunne/Minotaur (Macmillan)
February, 1940.
Gone With The Wind packs movie palaces two months after its December premiere. “Moonlight Serenade” echoes from jukeboxes all over the country. And the Sino-Japanese war still rages, while France waits anxiously for the Nazi blitzkrieg to hammer the Maginot line.
In San Francisco’s Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief.
Miranda Corbie—thirty-three-year-old private investigator, Spanish Civil War nurse and ex-escort—waits impatiently in the crowd. Until small-time numbers runner Eddie Takahashi stumbles into Sacramento Street and into her life … fatally shot.
The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. Japanese boy in a Chinese carnival … wrong place at the wrong time.
All Miranda wants is justice—whatever it costs. From Chinatown tenements to a tattered tailor’s shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic—she shakes down the city—her city—seeking the truth.
CITY OF DRAGONS is a sprawling, visceral novel of San Francisco in 1940, a world of race wars and class wars, a world in which sexual threat is as casual as a five cent cigar.
It is also a beautiful world … of hats and neon night clubs, Harry James and Chesterfields,of a World’s Fair ready to reopen in just three short months.
It’s Miranda’s world. And she’ll die to protect the good in it.
Because part of her died a long time ago…
Other Awards
Macavity Award Winner for Best Historical Mystery
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
Shamus Award Finalist
Bruce Alexander Award Finalist
RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Finalist
Top Ten Mystery/Thriller of 2010, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
2010 Top Ten Best Fiction by Bay Area Authors, San Francisco Chronicle
Indie Next Book for February, 2010
An Alternate Selection of the Mystery Guild
Publishers Weekly, Booklist & Library Journal Starred Reviews
RT Book Reviews Top Pick for February
A Killer Book Selection of the IMBA
Poisoned Pen Hardboiled Club Pick
Sub-genres
Other books by Kelli Stanley
City of Sharks
City of Ghosts
City of Secrets
Memory Book
The Curse-Maker (Maledictus)
First Thrills: High Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Writers
Nox Dormienda (A Long Night for Sleeping)
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