Lance Charnes's Blog

“Doha 12 is an exciting and hard-to-put-down read of fiction, not to be overlooked.” — Midwest Book Review Small Press Bookwatch

Jake Eldar’s and Miriam Schaffer’s names may kill them.

Jake manages a bookstore in Brooklyn. Miriam is a secretary at a Philadelphia law firm. Both grew up in Israel and emigrated to build new lives in America. Neither knows the other exists…until the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad uses their identities in an operation to assassinate a high-ranking Hezbollah commander in Doha, Qatar.

Now Hezbollah plans to kill them both.

Jake, Miriam and ten other innocents in five countries — the Doha 12 — awake to find their identities stolen and their lives caught between Mossad and Hezbollah in an international game of murder and reprisal. Jake stumbles upon Hezbollah’s plot but can’t convince the police it exists. When his wife is murdered in a botched hit meant for him, Jake and Miriam try desperately to outrun and outfight their pursuers while shielding Jake’s young daughter from the killers on their trail.

Hezbollah, however, has a fallback plan: hundreds of people will die if Jake and Miriam survive.

Read the first five chapters free!

To celebrate the release of Engaño on 30 September, both Zrada and Engaño will be on sale for $2.99 until 8 October.

Both are available in Kindle and ePub editions on Amazon, Apple Books, and Kobo and its affiliates.

If you enjoy Carson's adventures, don't miss this chance to get her newest. If you haven't met her yet, now's your best chance.

Carson, the hard-nosed Toronto ex-cop from the action thriller Zrada , is back in Engaño , the second book in the DeWitt Agency Adventures series.

In Engaño, Carson plunges into high season on the Costa del Sol in search of Viktoriya Baranova, the wayward Instagram-princess daughter of the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs. When Carson finally finds her, she discovers the real story is a lot more complicated...and potentially deadly.

In Zrada, Carson was perfectly at home in the hellscape of Ukraine's war-torn Donbass. But the louche megaclubs and drug-fueled parties of Marbella and Ibiza pose a whole different kind of challenge for her, as does another threat: the wall she's built around her feelings is starting to crumble. Can she care about someone else and still do her job? Carson may find out the hard way.

Engaño releases worldwide on 30 September. It's now available for pre-order on Kindle, Kobo, and Apple Books, and will appear in trade paperback on the 30th. Order your copy today!

Zrada, my new action/adventure novel featuring ex-cop Carson from the DeWitt Agency Files series, finally has a beginning, middle, and end all in one file.

Next come several rounds of editing, alpha and beta reads, and all the admin work to launch a new title (and, perhaps, a new series). Release is tentatively scheduled for late Q3 2020.

For more information, check the new Zrada page on my website. Stay tuned!

Chasing Clay, the third entry in the DeWitt Agency Files series, is at long last entering beta.

Life intervened in a grand way and delayed this one far past when I thought I'd have it done. I'm now aiming for late Q3 for its launch.

For more information about Chasing Clay or the DeWitt Agency series, check the series landing page on my website.

I'll be appearing at Book Carnival in Orange, California on Saturday, 10 February, at 2:00 p.m.

Sharing the program is David Putnam, author of the Bruno Johnson crime-thriller series.

I'll be reading from Stealing Ghosts, my latest art-crime novel. Dave will probably read from The Vanquished, his latest. Between us, we'll answer questions, sign books, and figure out what would happen if our respective main characters ever ran into each other (probably nothing good).

Book Carnival is at 348 South Tustin Street, just south of the Chapman Avenue exit on CA-55. Drop by if you're in the neighborhood.

Stealing Ghosts , the sequel to The Collection , will release on Friday, 17 November.

The Nazis seized Dorotea DeVillardi’s portrait from her Viennese family in 1938, then the Soviets stole it from the Nazis. Now it’s in the hands of a Russian oligarch. Dorotea’s corporate-CEO grandson played by the legal rules to get her portrait back, but he struck out. He’s hired the DeWitt Agency to get it for him – and he doesn’t care how they do it.

Now ex-con Matt Friedrich and his ex-cop partner Carson have to steal Dorotea’s portrait from a museum in a way that nobody knows it’s gone, and somehow launder its history so the client doesn’t have to hide it forever. It gets complicated from there...

Stealing Ghosts is now available for pre-order for Kindle, Nook, Kobo (and from Kobo partner sites), and from iTunes. The trade paperback will be available on 17 November.

The BookLife Prize called The Collection "...a multi-faceted, well-detailed story that's hard to put down and highly recommended for detective story and intrigue readers looking for something refreshingly original." Get in on the ground floor with Stealing Ghosts -- get your copy today.

I'll be appearing at Book Carnival in Orange, CA (348 S. Tustin Street) to talk about The Collection , read an excerpt, and sign books.

Book Carnival is an independent bookstore dedicated to mysteries and thrillers. Anne, the owner, makes a point of supporting both local and national authors, big names and not-so-big.

With me will be Shari Lapena, author of domestic thrillers A Stranger in the House and The Couple Next Door .

Come see us emerge from our burrows and face the world!

The Collection -- the first book in the DeWitt Agency Files art-crime series -- is finally available in stores.

It's available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Tolino and trade paperback through a number of outlets all over the world. Check www.wombatgroup.com/collection for the latest list of retailers.

Criminal Element said:

"The Collection is a breezy read in the way the very early Leslie Charteris's Saint novels were breezy: entertaining with an underlining of grit below the surface... I’m certainly looking forward to more adventures in this budding series."

The Collection , the first book in the DeWitt Agency Files art-crime novels, is primed to release on 14 November.

You can pre-order your e-book edition now:

- Kindle
- Nook
- Kobo

The trade paperback edition will be available on 14 November.

Go to my website for more information about The Collection .