Bruce Mason – Publicist

Five Decembers

“Hard-as-nails mystery/suspense/noir set against a backdrop of war in the Pacific. One hell of a good story.” – Stephen King

“War, imprisonment, torture, romance…The novel has an almost operatic symmetry, and Kestrel turns a beautiful phrase.” –The New York Times, Best Mystery Novels of 2021

“Lyrical, violent, intelligent, breathtaking: this is an unforgettable book.” – Wall Street Journal

"A gripping, resonant neo-noir odyssey" -New York Magazine

"A great blend of crime, war, and history" -The New York Post

"2021 was a memorable reading year, and I can’t think of a better way to close it out than with this unique mystery, which will engage you from start to finish." - Bookreporter

Five Decembers is a gripping thriller, a staggering portrait of war, and a heartbreaking love story, as unforgettable as All the Light We Cannot See.

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves; and though the U.S. doesn’t know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.

This extraordinary novel is so much more than just a gripping crime story—it’s a story of survival against all odds, of love and loss and the human cost of war. Spanning the entirety of World War II, FIVE DECEMBERS is a beautiful, masterful, powerful novel that will live in your memory forever.

Serial (This American Life)

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life. Season one investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. Season two focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season three, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area. Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story. As of September 2018, episodes of seasons one and two have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.

Uneasy by Chris Buck

Uneasy is a book of Chris Buck’s portraits of the famous from 1986 to 2016. For three decades Buck has been carving out a unique space in the world of celebrity portraiture, capturing its ineffability - its danger, its oddness, its warped sense of reality.

White Fur by Jardine LiBaire

A stunning star-crossed love story set against the glitz and grit of 1980s New York City.
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PRAISE FOR WHITE FUR

“A fairy tale of love and class and money and death and New York City in the 1980's, as seen through eyes so new and so young that everything seems like magic all the time…What holds it together is ferocity — Libaire's elegant, incongruous, glitz-and-trash command of the language of youth and young love, and the uncompromising fire of her main characters as they drift and dash from page to page.”—NPR
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“Two barely-20-somethings from opposite sides of the tracks fall in frantic love amid the lush grit of New York City in the 1980s…The real strength of the novel is its Technicolor atmosphere: Libaire’s New York is a glittering whirlwind, raw and sweaty and intoxicating. A page-turning whirlwind steeped in pain and hope.” —Kirkus Reviews
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Writing with all the senses, Libaire demonstrates an ability to evoke vivid moods and places, drawing a stark and realistic depiction of ’80s Manhattan. She also succeeds at giving equal weight and attention to both her protagonists, elegantly toggling between their perspectives. The most lively, memorable, and convincing character in the novel is the setting itself. —Publishers Weekly
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“[The] setting is viscerally exposed and uniquely gritty, and Libaire’s meaty, brazen, Ferrari-fast sentences prop it up well.” —Booklist
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A sexy, literary love story...White Fur would merely be an excellent exploration of the power dynamic between two lovers if the prose weren't so evocative and the sex scenes so torrid. —Maris Kreizman, Vulture (New York Magazine)

The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson

Join bestselling author Jon Ronson as he traces an intriguing butterfly effect. Many years ago, a teenager in Brussels had an idea – make porn free and easy to stream online. The consequences of that idea are surprising, delightful, and sad. They reach into areas of life no one could have expected. In this series’ first episode, meet Fabian Thylmann – that teen from Brussels.

Street Noise Books

Hired to oversee the publicity and marketing for the launch of a new publishing company, Street Noise Books. An independent publishing company of nonfiction for young adults, with a focus on heavily illustrated, and graphic novel nonfiction will launch in the Spring of 2020. Street Noise Books will publish 6 titles in the first year, and then will publish 6-8 titles per year for the first few years. Its books will have a radical, intersectional feminist, queer, and inclusive vision, and seek to provide a platform for the voices of marginalized people. Employing the traditional publishing model and open to unagented submissions, Street Noise Books sees its role as discovering and publishing books that are best described by the company’s tag line, “unapologetic, authentic, and politically relevant”.