Nevada Barr - BURN: An Anna Pigeon novel

Author Event

Start: Thu, 08/05/2010 - 6:00pm

Outstanding…. Anna’s complex personality continues to elevate the series, and the ranger’s sojourn to New Orleans further energizes this always reliable series. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Barr develops the narrative carefully, never letting the eerie black-magic elements overshadow her solid and suspenseful plotting. A definite winner. --Booklist

New York Times best-selling New Orleans-based author Nevada Barr returns to Octavia Books for a reading performance and booksigning featuring her explosive new Anna Pigeon novel. BURN finds the resilient National Park Service ranger leaving the country’s wide open spaces to face danger in the back streets of New Orleans.

Recovering from her last adventure, Anna arrives in the Big Easy to stay with a friend and soon runs into trouble; the friend has a suspicious tenant who leaves a gruesome hint that Anna is the target of a hex. Searching for some answers in the markets of self-proclaimed witches, Anna uncovers hints of a criminal ring far more sinister than any voodoo curse.

In far away Seattle, a woman named Clare faces a nightmarish situation of her own. Narrowly escaping a house fire, she watches in horror as firemen pull what appear to be the bodies of her children from the wreckage. But moments before the fire, her house had been empty. Finding herself under suspicion for starting the blaze, she flees the Northwest in disguise, desperate to discover what has happened to her family.

Clare’s search intertwines with Anna’s own confrontation, and both find themselves heading into a terrifying underworld of cruelty and exploitation. BURN is a powerful novel of caring, determined people refusing to bend in the face of utter viciousness.

Nevada Barr at Octavia Books (photo by Tom Lowenburg