A Dangerous Road: Reading Group Guide Edition

Smokey Dalton
Historical
Mystery

Available in:
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Trade paperback, $14.99

A Dangerous Road: Reading Group Guide Edition

Kris Nelscott

New! Reader’s Guide Edition

With Discussion Questions

“Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.” —Salon

Who is Smokey Dalton?

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why.

So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will challenge everything he’s ever known, including his own identity.

Set against the backdrop of the strike and protests that will end with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, A Dangerous Road combines the politics of race, betrayal, unexpected love, and the terrible cost of trust.

It’s a story so memorable the Mystery Writers of America chose it as one of the top five novels of the year and the Historical Mystery Appreciation Society honored it as the winner of the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery.

What the critics say:

“Powerful stuff, with a role for every major black actor in Hollywood.”—Kirkus Reviews

“More than just offering a puzzle, this novel encourages self-examination about identity, responsibility and the consequences of choices. Smokey proves himself a man of conscience able to make tough choices.” —Publishers Weekly

“Nelscott’s series setting, in the turbulent late ’60s, gives her books layers of issues of racism, class, and war, all of which still seem to remain sadly timely today.” —Oregonian

“It’s not hard to draw parallels between Nelscott’s PI Smokey Dalton and Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins, another secretive, canny black man trying to solve mysteries while circumspectly navigating the white world. But Dalton’s no knock-off. (Would you label the hundreds of hard-boiled detectives who’ve appeared in Raymond Chandler’s wake mere Marlow Xeroxes because they’re white?)” —Entertainment Weekly

The Smokey Dalton books are “a high-class crime series.” —Booklist

Read the whole series of gripping novels:

A Dangerous Road
Smoke-Filled Rooms
Thin Walls
Stone Cribs
War at Home
Days of Rage
Street Justice

Awards for the series:

The first Smokey Dalton novel, A Dangerous Road, won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second, Smoke-Filled Rooms, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third, Thin Walls, was one of the Chicago Tribune’s best mysteries of the year. Kirkus chose Days of Rage as one of the top ten mysteries of the year and it was also nominated for a Shamus award for the Best Private Eye Hardcover Novel of the Year. Street Justice was nominated for a Shamus award for the Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel.

Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

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Still Life 1931

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Mystery

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Still Life 1931

Kris Nelscott

‘Still Life 1931’ by Kris Nelscott (Kristine Kathryn Rusch), based on Hotel Room (1931) [a painting by Edward Hopper], was perhaps the best story in the collection [In Sunlight or in Shadow, edited by Lawrence Block], telling the story of Lurleen, a white volunteer/informant for the NAACP at the beginning of the Great Depression.

<i>—New York Journal of Books</i>

Years ago, Lurleen helped the NAACP investigate lynchings. She stopped when she met her husband, but never forgot the work…or the caution it required. After his death, Lurleen finds herself struggling to find purpose. 

She travels to New York without a plan. But what she finds there might help her face her past—and finally chart her future.

A powerful story about justice, courage, and facing one’s true self.   

Blaming the Arsonist

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Blaming the Arsonist

Kris Nelscott

UC Berkeley, January, 1969—In the midst of turbulent student protests on campus, a cherished building suddenly bursts into flames. Pammy Griffin, an alum who owns a women’s gym nearby, heads over to check out the fire and walks straight into a troubling mystery. Who wants Berkeley to burn? Hippies? Protesters? Or someone with an even darker motive?

But as Pammy investigates, she finds herself, and her gym, embroiled in a troubling turn of events. To catch the arsonist, she and members of her gym must confront some of society’s most brutal, and most hidden, violence using whatever weapons they can.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s Readers Choice Award 2017, Fifth Place.

“Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.”

<i>—St. Petersburg Times</i>

Combat Medic

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Combat Medic

Kris Nelscott

Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.

<i>—St. Petersburg Times</i>

Berkeley, May, 1969—When former Army nurse Captain June “Eagle” Eagleton returned from Vietnam, she thought she left the war zone behind. But when the familiar sound of a helicopter wakes Eagle from sleep, she realizes she has awoken in a very different kind of war zone: one filled with tear gas, and kids, and the National Guard.

As Eagle fights her way to help her friend Pammy at A Gym of Her Own, she finds herself in the middle of a very difficult situation—one where saving lives might prove harder than she thought possible.

Stone Cribs

Smokey Dalton
Historical
Mystery

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ISBN 978-0615902548
audiobook

Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

After attending a charity fundraiser, private investigator Smokey Dalton and his powerful girlfriend discover a critically injured woman in his neighbor’s apartment, and his neighbor missing. Smokey gets the woman to a nearby hospital which proves to be a mistake: the doctor won’t treat the dying woman until she tells him what happened to her. Smokey works to save the woman and find his neighbor, but everything he does makes the situation worse.

Smokey has entered a secret part of America—the arcane rules of a hospital trying to follow the law as well as save lives. None of it makes sense, and all of it threatens everything Smokey believes in.

“Without the slightest hint of preaching, Nelscott brilliantly illuminates the ugliness of that era—which defines Smokey’s world but does not destroy him. Because of Nelscott’s strong hand, it also does not overwhelm the drama of this remarkable story.”
–Publisher’s Weekly starred review

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