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In Her Exquisite Clutches
Not yet published
Expected 2 Mar 27An art-collecting dragon and a reformed delinquent team up to solve a seemingly unsolvable museum heist. Will they crack the case, recover the paintings, and make a tidy profit? In this delightful new mystery, the most infamous art theft in Boston history is recast with both human and supernatural players.
Every dragon needs a man on the inside.
Angharad Stoneweaver is a dragon with exquisite taste and the finest reputation in the art world for recovering lost masterpieces. What she lacks is the ability to fit through a doorway.
Ex-lowlife Sam Braun has landed the job as Stoneweaver’s right-claw man, working as her eyes and ears on the ground. Sam’s pay is good, the perks are better, and he has no regrets about trading the gutter for the good life.
But when the mobster (and friend of Sam’s late father) Carmine Delucci turns up dead, Stoneweaver’s latest investigation hits a little too close to home. Everyone knows Delucci was behind the largest heist in American history, but nobody knows what happened to the stolen paintings.
For Stoneweaver, it’s a mystery she cannot resist. For Sam, it’s an unraveling of his father’s seedy past, and a possible answer to an impossible question: What, exactly, is the power of art?
Every dragon needs a man on the inside.
Angharad Stoneweaver is a dragon with exquisite taste and the finest reputation in the art world for recovering lost masterpieces. What she lacks is the ability to fit through a doorway.
Ex-lowlife Sam Braun has landed the job as Stoneweaver’s right-claw man, working as her eyes and ears on the ground. Sam’s pay is good, the perks are better, and he has no regrets about trading the gutter for the good life.
But when the mobster (and friend of Sam’s late father) Carmine Delucci turns up dead, Stoneweaver’s latest investigation hits a little too close to home. Everyone knows Delucci was behind the largest heist in American history, but nobody knows what happened to the stolen paintings.
For Stoneweaver, it’s a mystery she cannot resist. For Sam, it’s an unraveling of his father’s seedy past, and a possible answer to an impossible question: What, exactly, is the power of art?
ebook
Expected publication March 2, 2027
About the author
Auston Habershaw
47 books91 followersAuston Habershaw is the author of the Saga of the Redeemed (Harper Voyager Impulse), If Wishes Were Retail (Tachyon), and Faceless Galaxy (JAB Books). Habershaw has published over 30 science fiction and fantasy short stories in Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, among other places. His next book, In Her Exquisite Clutches (Tachyon) releases in March 2027.
Habershaw has worked as a lifeguard, barista, waiter, QA tester, dog walker, hotel bellhop, pedicab driver, SAT tutor, office drone, and a bunch of other random things. He currently teaches composition and literature at MCPHS University in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find him online at aahabershaw.com
Habershaw has worked as a lifeguard, barista, waiter, QA tester, dog walker, hotel bellhop, pedicab driver, SAT tutor, office drone, and a bunch of other random things. He currently teaches composition and literature at MCPHS University in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find him online at aahabershaw.com
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I'll start this review with the disclaimer that I got a pre-publication copy via Netgalley for review, and there's a long time to go until it's published. That means that hopefully most of the errors I spotted will be corrected, most notably spelling a dragon's treasure as "horde" rather than "hoard" and saying that she "horded" it (the latter of which spell check should have caught). That's not the only vocabulary error either, by a long way, and the author also apparently doesn't know, or at least consistently doesn't follow, the conventions for how dialog should be punctuated (with the tag as part of the same sentence as the dialog, not a separate sentence). Even if they do get fixed by publication, these are disappointingly basic errors to still be in place at the time the book is sent out for review. This is presumably why so may authors make the same few simple mistakes: their teachers (like this author, who teaches composition) don't know the rules either.
Setting all that aside, the actual story is well told, and is a clever unravelling of a heist, loosely based on an actual (still unsolved) art heist in real-world Boston. This one, however, takes place in a world where thought-to-be-mythical beings have reemerged into the world a few years before the main action, which takes place in the 2020s, and several years after the heist in the early 2000s. Among them is a dragon, who hoards (she does not horde) art.
It's explicitly inspired by Nero Wolfe, whose detective was split into two distinct people: the one who stayed inside and admired his collection and did the brain work, and the one who went out and did the leg work (and got beaten up while doing it). The latter, in this version, is a human, and our narrator, employed by the dragon as an investigator and her eyes on the street. The dragon is infuriatingly high-handed, which completely works, and the investigator is reasonably smart - but not dragon-level smart - and streetwise enough to get the upper hand over the criminals, at least sometimes.
There's a decent amount of character backstory for the investigator, too; he has history with several of the people who are suspected of having been somehow involved in the heist, and I did suspect that this was one reason the dragon employed him specifically, perhaps even the main reason. Yes, he's been working for her for a while at this point, but she's a long-term thinker, being more than a thousand years old.
The journey to the conclusion and the conclusion itself were both satisfying and both full of surprises, and despite the basic mechanical issues, I enjoyed the book and would look for another (but would hope that it had had more editorial attention before I read it).
Setting all that aside, the actual story is well told, and is a clever unravelling of a heist, loosely based on an actual (still unsolved) art heist in real-world Boston. This one, however, takes place in a world where thought-to-be-mythical beings have reemerged into the world a few years before the main action, which takes place in the 2020s, and several years after the heist in the early 2000s. Among them is a dragon, who hoards (she does not horde) art.
It's explicitly inspired by Nero Wolfe, whose detective was split into two distinct people: the one who stayed inside and admired his collection and did the brain work, and the one who went out and did the leg work (and got beaten up while doing it). The latter, in this version, is a human, and our narrator, employed by the dragon as an investigator and her eyes on the street. The dragon is infuriatingly high-handed, which completely works, and the investigator is reasonably smart - but not dragon-level smart - and streetwise enough to get the upper hand over the criminals, at least sometimes.
There's a decent amount of character backstory for the investigator, too; he has history with several of the people who are suspected of having been somehow involved in the heist, and I did suspect that this was one reason the dragon employed him specifically, perhaps even the main reason. Yes, he's been working for her for a while at this point, but she's a long-term thinker, being more than a thousand years old.
The journey to the conclusion and the conclusion itself were both satisfying and both full of surprises, and despite the basic mechanical issues, I enjoyed the book and would look for another (but would hope that it had had more editorial attention before I read it).
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This is a genre-savvy story that combines urban fantasy populated by eclectic and charming characters with the currently out of style genre of detective fiction and crime noir. Sam Braun is a human employee/butler of reclusive art collector dragon, Angharad Stoneweaver, who is from somewhere in the British Isles and awoke from a long hibernation and decided to settle in a gigantic manor in Boston, Massachusetts with her extensive private art collection. Sam himself is connected to a fabled art theft of several famous paintings that occurred when he was a teenager, and the plot of this book revolves around his and Angharad trying to solve the case and Sam himself facing his father and associates’ checkered past. The resulting story is a stimulating and imaginative frolic through the Boston art scene and various Bostonian archetypes with familiar storybeats leading to an entertaining and satisfying conclusion.
I found the various characters to be standout with each imbued with their own quirky personalities and motivations. Angharad is, of course, the most enigmatic with Sam as her slightly deluded Jeeves/Alfred, but I also enjoyed the vampires and various other human gangsters in the cast and found them to be both fun and functional. Habershaw makes good use of the limited third person POV, allowing us to follow Sam along on his increasingly high-stakes investigation and giving the reader the opportunity to cheer and cringe in relation to his life choices. I really appreciated the spiritual throwbacks to staples of the detective fiction genre, even the tongue-in-cheek brief romance between Sam and a major player in the overall drama.
The pace of this novel is, unfortunately, extremely slow for the first half with most of the fantasy elements aside from Angharad not appearing until then. I also found myself curious about Sam’s regular day to day in Angharad’s employ, since it’s lampshaded that he has grown and changed a lot since his bygone delinquent days, but we only got hints and bits of it aside from deep-diving into his childhood connection to crime through his father and associates. Once this novel hits its stride in the second half, I had a rollicking good time, but it took some time to get there, which may deter some readers. Part of what kept me interested in my own knowledge of the real life art theft that inspired this and how much I love a “dragon among humanity” story. If you like detective fiction with substantially less racism and misogyny and enjoy the vibes of Knives Out or Conclave but just wish those had dragons, this is the book for you.
Thank you to Netgalley and Tachyon Publications for this ARC.
I found the various characters to be standout with each imbued with their own quirky personalities and motivations. Angharad is, of course, the most enigmatic with Sam as her slightly deluded Jeeves/Alfred, but I also enjoyed the vampires and various other human gangsters in the cast and found them to be both fun and functional. Habershaw makes good use of the limited third person POV, allowing us to follow Sam along on his increasingly high-stakes investigation and giving the reader the opportunity to cheer and cringe in relation to his life choices. I really appreciated the spiritual throwbacks to staples of the detective fiction genre, even the tongue-in-cheek brief romance between Sam and a major player in the overall drama.
The pace of this novel is, unfortunately, extremely slow for the first half with most of the fantasy elements aside from Angharad not appearing until then. I also found myself curious about Sam’s regular day to day in Angharad’s employ, since it’s lampshaded that he has grown and changed a lot since his bygone delinquent days, but we only got hints and bits of it aside from deep-diving into his childhood connection to crime through his father and associates. Once this novel hits its stride in the second half, I had a rollicking good time, but it took some time to get there, which may deter some readers. Part of what kept me interested in my own knowledge of the real life art theft that inspired this and how much I love a “dragon among humanity” story. If you like detective fiction with substantially less racism and misogyny and enjoy the vibes of Knives Out or Conclave but just wish those had dragons, this is the book for you.
Thank you to Netgalley and Tachyon Publications for this ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was such a fun read for me that drew me in immediately based on the premise of an art collecting dragon solving a mystery with a former criminal employee doing all the legwork and reporting back to her.
I didn’t quite know what to expect, which made the book so much better when reading about Angharad and Sam and the ways in which their personalities make for an enjoyable back and forth banter between the two.
This book was very different to the usual mysteries I read, with the fantasy elements creating a more interesting world. The investigative elements and fantasy creatures being meshed together was really enjoyable to read.
The mystery side of this book definitely grabbed me and it was very satisfying to watch all of the pieces finally come together about what happened to the different art pieces and the ways in which everything was connected.
Overall, this book was an enjoyable read that differed from anything I have read before. This would be perfect for any reader looking for a fantasy mystery set in the art world, with dragons, vampires and other supernatural creatures playing different roles in the world this book is set in.
Thank you so much NetGalley and the publisher for my arc of this book!
I didn’t quite know what to expect, which made the book so much better when reading about Angharad and Sam and the ways in which their personalities make for an enjoyable back and forth banter between the two.
This book was very different to the usual mysteries I read, with the fantasy elements creating a more interesting world. The investigative elements and fantasy creatures being meshed together was really enjoyable to read.
The mystery side of this book definitely grabbed me and it was very satisfying to watch all of the pieces finally come together about what happened to the different art pieces and the ways in which everything was connected.
Overall, this book was an enjoyable read that differed from anything I have read before. This would be perfect for any reader looking for a fantasy mystery set in the art world, with dragons, vampires and other supernatural creatures playing different roles in the world this book is set in.
Thank you so much NetGalley and the publisher for my arc of this book!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received this ebook ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.
I started this book not quite knowing what to expect - I'd never heard of Auston Habershaw or his books, but I couldn't resist the idea of a art-hoarding dragon solving a mystery with her human employee doing the legwork and reporting back to her. This was such a fun story, told entirely from Sam's wry and self-deprecating perspective. It's also in many ways a love letter to art and what it means to humanity. I also really liked that the book didn't feel the need to explain why the supernatural folks (trolls, vampires, dwarfs, a dragon) just showed up one day - they just did and now this is the world.
And while I definitely caught hints of how the mystery was going to play out with the characters, the culmination of it all in the usual grand reveal was fantastic. One of those where you can look back and see all the hints that point toward what actually happened to the artwork and what was going on with the conmen involved in everything. That's the key to a really successful mystery story - that and interesting detectives, which Angharad and Sam definitely were.
I started this book not quite knowing what to expect - I'd never heard of Auston Habershaw or his books, but I couldn't resist the idea of a art-hoarding dragon solving a mystery with her human employee doing the legwork and reporting back to her. This was such a fun story, told entirely from Sam's wry and self-deprecating perspective. It's also in many ways a love letter to art and what it means to humanity. I also really liked that the book didn't feel the need to explain why the supernatural folks (trolls, vampires, dwarfs, a dragon) just showed up one day - they just did and now this is the world.
And while I definitely caught hints of how the mystery was going to play out with the characters, the culmination of it all in the usual grand reveal was fantastic. One of those where you can look back and see all the hints that point toward what actually happened to the artwork and what was going on with the conmen involved in everything. That's the key to a really successful mystery story - that and interesting detectives, which Angharad and Sam definitely were.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
In Her Exquisite Clutches was such an interesting take on urban fantasy and definitely not what I expected going in. It felt fresh, unique, and different from a lot of other books in the genre, and I loved trying to piece everything together as the story unfolded.
The characters were a lot of fun and brought so much personality to the story. Their interactions kept me invested, and I enjoyed spending time with them even when the plot took some unexpected turns.
That said, I did find the first part of the book a little slow. It took me a while to fully settle into the story, and there were moments where I felt the pacing dragged more than I would have liked. Once things started moving, though, I was much more engaged and found myself eager to discover where the mystery was heading.
Overall, this was a creative and enjoyable read with a unique premise, an intriguing mystery, and a cast of characters that were easy to root for. If you're looking for an urban fantasy that offers something a little different from the usual formula, this one is worth checking out.
Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to review x
The characters were a lot of fun and brought so much personality to the story. Their interactions kept me invested, and I enjoyed spending time with them even when the plot took some unexpected turns.
That said, I did find the first part of the book a little slow. It took me a while to fully settle into the story, and there were moments where I felt the pacing dragged more than I would have liked. Once things started moving, though, I was much more engaged and found myself eager to discover where the mystery was heading.
Overall, this was a creative and enjoyable read with a unique premise, an intriguing mystery, and a cast of characters that were easy to root for. If you're looking for an urban fantasy that offers something a little different from the usual formula, this one is worth checking out.
Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to review x
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Got the ARC from NetGalley
In Her Exquisite Clutches had me at an art-collecting dragon hiring a former delinquent to do the actual legwork. Angharad Stoneweaver and Sam Braun make a fun pairing, especially once the mystery around Carmine Delucci’s death starts pulling Sam into the history of the stolen paintings. I liked how the book plays with a very classic detective setup while letting the supernatural side feel completely normal to the characters.
It does take a while to really get moving, and I wanted a little more from some of the supporting cast. Once the investigation picks up in the second half, though, I had a much better time with it. I’d happily read another mystery with these two.
In Her Exquisite Clutches had me at an art-collecting dragon hiring a former delinquent to do the actual legwork. Angharad Stoneweaver and Sam Braun make a fun pairing, especially once the mystery around Carmine Delucci’s death starts pulling Sam into the history of the stolen paintings. I liked how the book plays with a very classic detective setup while letting the supernatural side feel completely normal to the characters.
It does take a while to really get moving, and I wanted a little more from some of the supporting cast. Once the investigation picks up in the second half, though, I had a much better time with it. I’d happily read another mystery with these two.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for this ARC!
Extremely fun read! The tricksy conman mixed with hyper intellegent dragon mixed shockingly well and i cannot wait (and dearly hope) to read more about these two. Some of the side characters, like the other staff, could have been explored more, but maybe thats the plan for possible sequels? One case per staff member would be a very cool idea, with Sam obviously still doing the leg work XD.
This was an absolute blast to read!
Extremely fun read! The tricksy conman mixed with hyper intellegent dragon mixed shockingly well and i cannot wait (and dearly hope) to read more about these two. Some of the side characters, like the other staff, could have been explored more, but maybe thats the plan for possible sequels? One case per staff member would be a very cool idea, with Sam obviously still doing the leg work XD.
This was an absolute blast to read!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I just read an ARC of In Her Exquisite Clutches: A Mystery, by Auston Habershaw, March 2027 Tachyon. Think obsessive art collecting dragon and her henchman trying to solve the biggest art heist of all time. While it did not quite get to great, I loved it and really wanted to find out what happened. I would read more if it becomes a series. Also, I love the extensive Afterword by Habershaw, and its eloquent, passionate explanation of where the story came from.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews