Sold! To The Mild-Mannered Librarian With Too Many Books!

I work for a large enough library system that we do receive ARCs. When one of the warehouse guys brings in a new box, it's sort of like Christmas. Frankly, there's nothing more exciting than getting books in the mail - but I'm a dork like that.

I recently met with a library rep from Holtzbrinck Publishing, which are the folks who own St. Martin's, Tor, Henry Holt and Farrar, Straus and Giroux to name a few. Well this lovely rep (bless her heart), put me on the mailing list for their ARCs and earlier this week I got something really cool. An ARC for Heartsick by Chelsea Cain.

This is exactly how it showed up. The book is enclosed in a plastic evidence bag, like it was taken from the crime scene. The cover of the book just features a bloody hand print. Once you open the book, you also find a CD - which features a sample of the audio book recording and some really impressive author quotes. Normally author quotes on a book jacket don't do much for me (or most readers I suspect), but Cain has quotes from Tess Gerritsen ("an addictive read"), Chuck Palahniuk ("most compelling, most original serial killer since Hannibal Lecter") and Dominick Dunne ("utterly unforgettable").

Plot Description: It's much worse for Detective Archie Sheridan. He can't forget the woman who kidnapped him. For ten days, she tortured him to the brink of death, then mysteriously set him free and turned herself in. Now two years later, he's addicted to pain pills, estranged from his family, and obsessed with her. Gretchen Lowell is behind bars. But she still has all the power. Smart. Sexy. Vicious. She's a beauty. She's a killer. As Archie trails a new case, he needs Gretchen now in more ways than one - to catch a killer and to release his soul. Love hurts, sometimes in torture.

This is just the beginning folks. Two more books featuring Gretchen Lowell are to follow, and St. Martin's is rolling this one out with a $250,000 marketing campaign and a 200,000 copy first print run. 4000 of these ARCs were sent out, and the book is set to land in stores on September 4. Sometimes these big, splashy marketing campaigns tank, but between the clever ARCs, the whole female-serial killer thing, and the press this author is probably going to get in the media, it could be the start of something huge.