The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

Luis Ojeda owes his life to the Pacifico Norte cartel. Literally. Now it’s time to pay.

Luis led escaping American Muslims out of the U.S. during the ten years following a 2019 terrorist attack on Chicago. He retired after nearly being killed by a border guard. But now in 2032, the Nortes give Luis a choice: pay back the fortune they spent saving his life, or take on a special job.

The job: Nora Khaled – FBI agent, wife, mother of two, and Muslim. She claims her husband will be exiled to one of the nation’s remote prison camps to rot with over 400,000 other Muslim Americans. Faced with her family’s destruction, she’s forced to turn to Luis – the kind of man she’s spent her career bringing to justice.

But when the FBI publicly accuses Nora of terrorism, Luis learns Nora’s real motive for heading south: she has proof that the nation’s recent history is based on a lie – a lie that reaches to the government’s highest levels.

Torn between self-preservation and the last shreds of his idealism, Luis guides Nora and her family toward refuge in civil war-wracked Mexico. The FBI, a dogged ICE agent, killer drones, bandits, and the fearsome Zeta cartel all plan to stop him. Success might just free Luis from the Nortes…but failure means disappearing into a black-site prison, or a gruesome death for them all.

In a day-after-tomorrow America where government has been downsized and outsourced into irrelevance, and none but the very wealthy few can afford hopes or dreams, Luis and Nora must learn to trust each other to ensure the survival of the truth – and of the people they love.

Read an excerpt on Goodreads.

South is available for Kindle through Amazon US/BR/CA/DE/FR/IN/IT/JP/MX/UK
Also available for Nook, Kobo, and iTunes
ePub also available through Chapters Indigo (CA), Angus & Robertson (AU) and Eason (IR)
Trade paperback available through Amazon US/CA/DE/FR/IN/IT/JP/UK | Angus & Robertson (AU) | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository (UK) | Books-a-Million | Hudson Booksellers | Indiebound | Powell's | Vroman's | Whitcoulls (NZ)
Trade paperback also available (in English) through Adlibris (NO/SE) | Agapea (ES) | Flipkart (IN) | Suomalainen (FI) | Thalia (DE)

South is featured on Criminal Element! And it's a great review, too.

South is a compelling futuristic thriller, as convincing a cautionary novel as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was in its day (and arguably still is)...I really got the feeling, reading this, that these were real people forced to live in terrible times, and I was only too happy to cheer them on—or cry over their tragedies—as the novel raced to its conclusion.

Check it out here.

South just got a great review from William Davis, author of Black Karma :

"Charnes creates characters you can understand and care for. The action scenes in South make you feel as though you are a participant...South is a brilliantly conceived and executed thriller."

See the review here.

Michael Brookes, author of The Cult of Me , Faust 2.0 and three other horror/SF novels, has featured the first two chapters of South on his blog. Pay him a visit and see what else he's up to over there.

Many thanks to Michael!

South just got an insanely great review from Seeley James, author of The Geneva Decision and the Trench Coats serial.

"You will find no better dystopian thriller than SOUTH...You will love this story."

Catch the review on his website, which also features interviews with name authors like Hugh Howey and James Rollins.

I’m a guest blogger again on NovelTravelist.com, a site that concerns itself with the intersection between fiction and travel. In my post, I describe how I used models from the present day to build South’s world of 2032. In the process, I use examples of how I put together a Third World version of Santa Ana, California, one of the major settings in South .

Check out the post at http://noveltravelist.blogspot.com/20....

The April 2014 Midwest Book Review Small Press Bookwatch includes this insanely great review of South :

“South is a riveting work of action/adventure suspense that is a real page-turner of a novel. Author Lance Charnes demonstrates a truly impressive knack for deftly creating a complex and thoroughly engaging story that grabs and holds the reader’s rapt attention from beginning to end. A novel that could be ripped from today’s headlines about cross-border narco-terrorism, “South” is highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library Contemporary Fiction collections."

This is a big win because Midwest Book Review is one of those reviewers that librarians pay attention to. I had some success placing Doha 12 in libraries partly on the strength of its MBR review; I hope to repeat that for South .

South just got a very nice review from The Review Hutch in New Zealand:

"The story is very fast. There are many things happening at once with many characters. I got the impression that I walked into an already very established landscape and I had to jog along to keep up...I really liked this book."

See the review here.

South is now available on Scribd! If you're already a subscriber, you can read South as part of your monthly fee. If you're not, Scribd allows you to read as many books as you like for $8.99 a month, with a free month up front.

Get South on Scribd here.

Kobo is putting on an unlimited 35%-off sale from now until Monday. This means South is now available for $1.95 on Kobo, the leading e-reader platform outside Amazon markets.

If you've been on the fence about buying South, now's the time to jump!

The Kindle, Nook and ePub editions of South are on sale for $1.99 today through 9 August.

If you've been holding off on buying South , now's the time!

Muslim registries. Border walls. Refugees fleeing the U.S. for Canada and Mexico.

In 2013, it was a cautionary tale.

In 2017, it's the news.

What happens next? Read tomorrow's headlines today -- get South , a near-future thriller.

Available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, and in trade paperback (see Message 1 above).



Or join my mailing list and get a free e-book edition of SOUTH. www.wombatgroup.com

This is a great, realistic thriller. Here's my 5 Star review:

Outstanding! Exciting, Well-Crafted Thriller
By William G. Davis on November 30, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Author Lance Charnes has considered current trends, read the tea leaves, and created one possible future that will chill you to the bone It is twenty years in the future. The American economy has collapsed. The gap between rich and poor is a chasm as vast as the Grand Canyon. Local governments have gone bankrupt. The federal government and its agencies are corrupt from the top down. Two vast drug cartels are economic and political powers on both sides of the Mexican border. The greatest accomplishment for an average American is to simply survive.

A false flag incident--whose facts have been distorted by elements of the federal government--has made targets of Arabs and Muslims. All considered suspected terrorists, they are persecuted like German Jews in World War II. The fortunate flee the country. The rest are rounded up and sent to `camps', never to be heard from again.

Nora Khaled is an FBI agent, her husband a diplomat. They are patriotic, America-born Muslims. But Nora carries a secret that could bring down the current administration and its entire `counter-terrorism' infrastructure. Consequently, she's been declared a terrorist and must get her family South, across the border. A counter-terrorism specialist herself, Nora is forced to go against all her instincts and negotiate with one of the drug cartels to smuggle herself and her family to safety in Mexico. The cartel taps retired border smuggler Luis Ojedo to get Nora and her family across the lethal,heavily guarded border. Luis nearly died in his last crossing effort and swore to his wife to never do it again. But the cartel threatens Luis and his family, forcing him to take the mission.

Luis and Nora, two characters from opposite sides of the law, must learn to trust each other with their lives. Their adventure, dodging fugitive death squads and intrusive electronic surveillance, facing treachery at every turn, form the plot of South.

As in his first thriller, Doha 12, Charnes creates characters you can understand and care for. The action scenes in South make you feel as though you are a participant. These well-crafted elements combine to wrap you up in the story until the very end. This is a book you will remember for a long, long time, and a cautionary tale about where America might be heading.

South is a brilliantly conceived and executed thriller. As good--or maybe better-- than anything coming out of main stream publishing, South is truly worthy of a 5 Star rating. I can't wait to see where Mr. Charnes takes us with his next novel

William wrote: "This is a great, realistic thriller..."

Thanks again for this great review!

If you haven't discovered The Collection yet, please take a look. It's very different from South in tone and subject, but I hope you'll enjoy it, too.

South is part of a special Kobo 40% off sale now through 30 October! Just go here (https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/south-7), add South to your basket, then use the promo code 40SAVE.

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Border walls. Muslim registries. Refugees fleeing the U.S.

In 2013, it was a warning. In 2017, it's the evening news.

What's next? Read South before it happens.

If you're in Australia or New Zealand, you use Kobo, and you've been putting off getting South , now there's one less reason. Between now and 28 February, when you buy a Kobo book at full price, you can get a participating book at half-price.

It just so happens South is participating.

For Australia, go here: https://www.kobo.com/au/en/p/summerbo...
For New Zealand, go here: https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/p/summerbo...

It's under "Mystery & Thrillers." Enjoy!

South is now available through Kindle Unlimited!

Unfortunately, this also means that the e-book isn't available outside of Amazon anymore. They simply weren't selling, so I'm trying something different.

If you're looking for a paper book, though, South is still available online worldwide, very probably from your favorite seller of paper books.