Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Crime & mystery fiction
Weblink
http://loriraderday.com/blog/

THE BLACK HOUR

Lori Rader-Day

For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic--until a student she'd never met shot her.

He also shot himself. Now he's dead and she's back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can't let go: Why?

All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She's thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex--whom she may or may not still love--has moved on.

Enter Nathaniel Barber, a graduate student obsessed with Chicago's violent history. Nath is a serious scholar, but also a serious mess about his first heartbreak, his mother's death, and his father's disapproval. Assigned as Amelia's teaching assistant, Nath also takes on the investigative legwork that Amelia can't do. And meanwhile, he's hoping she'll approve his dissertation topic, the reason he came to grad school in the first place: the student attack on Amelia Emmet.
Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives.

This novel won the Lovey Award for Best First Novel as well as the Illinois (US) Woman’s Press Association “Mate E. Palmer Award in Communications for Fiction.” It has also been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, the Left Coast Crime Rosebud Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best Paperback Original, and now the Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Lori has an MFA in creative writing and she belongs to the Sisters in Crime Chicagoland chapter and the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter.

Available products
Book Published 2014-07-01 by Seventh Street Books
Book Published 2014-07-01 by Seventh Street Books

Comments

With disconcerting timeliness (in the wake of recent shootings), Rader-Day captures the more sinister aspects of campus life. While the author captivates from page one with her psychologically attuned debut, it is the sociological frames that work so well: class, power, and violence. This reviewer was bowled over by the novel's alternating points of view, superb storytelling, and pitch-perfect take on academia.

This accomplished debut bears favorable comparison to the work of Gillian Flynn (more Sharp Objects than Gone Girl), Cornelia Read, and S. J. Watson. Chicago writing instructor Rader-Day ably manipulates the elements that constitute academia’s dark side (competition, campus politics, quests for identity, and, of course, sex) without the overlong academic digressions these settings sometimes court. Amelia Emmet is a sympathetic, yet jaded and darkly witty main character. An unputdownable read.

An “exceptional debut” that provides “an irresistible combination of menace, betrayal, and self-discovery.

Rader-Day's compelling novel pits the worst of human nature against those merely trying to survive. Those who believe themselves to be entitled feel no remorse when taking what they want, even if it means someone's life. Everyone is not who they seem and it's a challenge to figure out where each belongs." 4 Stars - Compelling

Lori Rader-Day's thriller THE BLACK HOUR has won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, a prestigious literary prize awarded at Bouchercon, which was very exciting coming on the heels of her nomination for the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Best First Novel at the MWA Edgar Awards earlier this year. Her newly published book LITTLE PRETTY THINGS is garnering rave reviews and she's hard at work on her third, due to pub July 2016, called AN ELEGANT HAND. She's also up for the Chicago Writers Association’s 2015 Book of the Year Awards.