We're over half-way through issuing the complete works of Margaret Millar as eBooks. Below is a handy visual guide to what's available now. Click through each cover for more title information in the Syndicate Bookstore.
All eBook covers by Jeff Wong.
Today we have three wonderful new eBook covers to reveal as we press on in our quest to restore the novels and writings of Margaret Millar. In this round of covers we have two of Millar's most nihilistic novels of suspense, Vanish in an Instant and The Listening Walls, the latter of which will instantly remind readers of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl -- right down to the missing wife's name.
The third novel in this group -- Wives and Lovers -- is not a novel of suspense but rather a purely literary effort that further cements Millar's legacy as keen observer of humanity, for better or worse.
As with the previous two covers, all artwork here is by Jeff Wong. Jeff is designing all of the Syndicate Books editions of Margaret Millar, both in print and digital formats. More to come later on the schedule of the former.
Eric Meecham is not an optimistic sort. An old-before-his-time lawyer, scratching out a living in courts and jail houses, he is no stranger to desperate cases and has little faith in anything or anyone. But his brand of existential nihilism isn’t without curiosity, and when he gets a chance to represent a local society woman who’s been arrested for murder under very scandalous circumstances, well, even he can’t help but be engaged.
Cold, austere, and used to having her way, Mrs. Hamilton is more than a little upset at having to travel 40 miles west of Detroit, in the dead of winter, to the small city of Arbana. But her careless daughter Virginia has landed herself in trouble again and Mrs. Hamilton will do anything to keep the family name out of a scandal. But she little understands the gravity of her daughter’s arrest. Virginia was found drunk and underclad in the midst of a white-out snow storm. She was also covered in blood. In a cottage not too far away a married man, father of two, lay brutally stabbed to death.
Earl Loftus is the definition of a hard luck case. Broke and terminally ill, Earl’s life has been one tragedy after another. But the spark of a thoughtful intellect still gleams in his eyes and when Loftus comes forward to confess to the crime that Virginia is accused of, Eric Meecham is instantly skeptical. Could a man like Loftus actually commit such an act? The more Meecham interviews Loftus, the less he thinks it’s possible.
Amy Kellogg is not having a pleasant vacation in Mexico. She’s been arguing nonstop with her friend and traveling companion, Wilma, and she wants nothing more than to go home to the Bay Area. But an uncomfortable stay in a Mexican hotel takes a nightmarish turn when Wilma is found dead on the street below their room—an apparent suicide.
Rupert Kellogg has just returned from seeing his wife Amy through the difficulties surrounding the apparent suicide of her friend in Mexico. But Rupert is returning alone—which worries Amy’s brother. Amy was traumatized by the suicide, Rupert explains, and has taken a holiday in New York City to settle her nerves. But as gone girl Amy’s absence drags on for weeks and then months, the sense of unease among her family changes to suspicion and eventual allegations.
Channel City, California, is a an average coastal town where everyone is doing their best to get by and be respectable, from the sun-grizzled fishermen on the wharf to the perfectly coifed society wives to the over-fed gophers who plague every middle-class garden. But in the hot summer of 1954, one unhappy man's extramarital affair turns the community on its head.
Hazel Anderson, a dental assistant, is a contentedly divorced forty-something whose ex-husband, George, runs the town's wharf bar. Hazel worries about George, who is smitten with a much younger woman, Ruby, who won't have anything to do with him, and Hazel thinks Ruby is hiding secrets of her own. The dentist Hazel assists, Gordon Foster, works hard to support his wife and three children in their middle-class lifestyle, but he can never satisfy his wife, Elaine, who has always resented being married to a dentist instead of a "real" doctor. All of these relationships become tangled when henpecked Gordon's romantic indiscretion comes to light.
Here, in this sweet, sad, and incisive literary novel, Margaret Millar accomplishes the same feat as she has with her award-winning crime fiction by offering readers a fascinating snapshot of life as it was, not life as we like to remember it having been.
