Next month, Frugal Muse Books Music & Video in Darien, Illinois will host mystery novelists Ronald Balson and William Kent Kreuger. Ronald H. Balson, author of Once We Were Brothers, Saving Sophie, and Karolina’s Twins, will speak at Frugal Muse Books on Monday, October 2, 2017 about his latest book in the series, The Trust. Two weeks later, Frugal Muse Books will host “An Evening New York Times Bestselling Crime Fiction Author William Kent Kreuger” on the night of Wednesday, October 18, 2017.
In The Trust, private investigator Liam Taggart – the hero of Balson’s three previous novels – returns to his hometown in Northern Ireland for his uncle’s funeral only to discover his relative may not have died of natural causes. Balson is an attorney and adjunct professor who has an interesting story to tell because he self-published his first novel and it sold 100,000 copies. He will answer questions and signs copies of his new book. The event will be from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Free refreshments will be served.
Published by Atria Books in 2017, Sulfur Springs: A Novel is the fifteenth book in Kreuger’s Cork O’Connor series. The hero, Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor, is part Irish (obviously) and part Ojibwe. The character went from being a cop on the South Side of Chicago to being sheriff of Tamarack County in northern Minnesota (where most of the books are set) to being a private investigator. Sulfur Springs sees Cork and his bride, Rainy, travel from the woodlands of rural Minnesota to the desert of rural Arizona to find out why her son, Peter, called her to confess to a murder and then disappeared.
Mr. Kreuger will be at the superstore to talk about his new mystery novel Sulfur Springs and sign copies of the book. The event will be from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This is a free event. One should order the book in advance to guarantee seating.
Frugal Muse Books is located in Chestnut Court Shopping Center at the intersection of 75th Street and Lemont Road. The address is 7511 Lemont Road, Darien, Illinois. The phone number is (630) 427-1140.
Figure 1 Ronald H. Balson is an attorney, adjunct professor, and novelist.
Figure 2 Born in Oregon in 1950, William Kent Kreuger briefly attended Stanford University before he left due to radical leftist activities. [Amongst other things, he was one of the students who occupied the president’s office to protest Stanford’s “complicity in weapons production during the Vietnam War.”] By the time he lost his academic scholarship, he had fallen in love with a girl from Nebraska named Diane, so he moved there for her. He supported himself and his growing family as a logger, construction worker, and free-lance journalist before he began to research childhood development at the University of Minnesota and turned his hand toward writing fiction. His last seven novels have been New York Times Bestsellers.
Figure 3 Sulfur Springs is the latest novel in William Kent Kreuger’s Cork O’Connor series of mystery novels. He will make two appears in Illinois to promote the book in the course of a Midwestern tour: Frugal Muse Books in Darien, Illinois on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. and The Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois on Sunday, October 22, 2017 at 2:00 p.m.
Figure 4 Published in 2016, Manitou Canyon sees private detective Cork O’Connor go looking for a missing man days before his own daughter is due to get married. When he disappears himself, his family flies on a floatplane to the lake where the missing man was last seen to look for Cork only to find blood at his campsite. Hundreds of lives are at stake.
Figure 5 Published in 2013, Ordinary Grace won the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. Forty years late, Frank Drum looks back on the summer of 1961, when he was thirteen years old and tragedy struck his parents, elder sister, and brother.
Figure 6 For years, William Kent Kreuger wrote short stories and novels at St. Clair Broiler restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota. He had to stop his daily routine when the family moved to a different neighborhood and sadly the restaurant is closing at the end of September.
Figure 7 William Kent Kreuger grew up in the Pacific Northwest, but moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1980, so his wife, Diane, could attend law school. She made the Dean’s List her final year of law school despite having given birth to their second child the first semester of that school year. Many of Kreuger’s novels are set in the North Woods of Minnesota.
In the Garden City 