Congrats to Taylor Stevens!
THE DOLL has won the 2014 Barry Award for Best Thriller
The Barry Awards, voted on by readers of Deadly Pleasures magazine, included repeat winner William Kent Krueger, who took home the award for Best Novel for Ordinary Grace. Barry Lancet’s Japantown won Best First Mystery Novel, while Adrian McKinty’s I Hear the Siren in the Street won Best Paperback Original, and the Best Thriller went to The Doll by Taylor Stevens.
Sold to: Goldmann (Germany), Intrinseca (Brazil), Kodansha (Japan), Rebis (Poland), Century & Arrow (BCOM), Beijing Mediatime Books (China), Euromedia (Czech Republic)
"Munroe is a sensational character and Stevens is a sensational writer, and together they put The Doll high on my books-of-the-year list." —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series
“If you are a fan of Jack Reacher, Lisbeth Salander, or Nina Zero, you need to check out Vanessa Michael Munroe!” —BookPage
“Prolific linguist and exquisitely honed killer Munroe is no less effective here for still suffering from past trauma…Stevens’s third series outing is another brisk, adrenaline-fueled adventure with a trail of bodies and a damaged protagonist who may live to kill another day.” —Library Journal
“Stevens’ third Munroe book is another international action-adventure with a Bourne-like avenging angel at the reins.” —Booklist
“Lean and mean thriller featuring Vanessa Michael Munroe, an "informationist" with a scary dark streak… This book is strongly influenced by the existential bare-bones approach of Lee Child's Reacher books, and its brilliant but damaged heroine, the estranged daughter of missionaries, owes much to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But Stevens stamps the novel with her own bleak, punishing, bullet-flying outlook… Out of that gloomy intensity comes edgy suspense. In Stevens' powerfully contained follow-up to The Innocent, there is no release for the tormented heroine, only license to live another day.”
—Kirkus
“Good and bad deeds alike have a high price, as dramatically shown in Stevens’s harrowing third Vanessa Michael Munroe novel…Munroe remains as compelling as ever: violent yet protective of innocence, imprisoned by not only her past but also the choices she has made in response to it, and painfully conscious of her closeness to sanity’s edge.” —Publishers Weekly