FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ashland, Or.  May 10, 2008

 flyer | author's website | amrg series

John Straley, Alaska Writer Laureate and Author, The Big Both Ways

Mystery author John Straley will be at Bookwagon Books in Ashland on Friday June 20, on tour with his latest work, The Big Both Ways, published in 2008 by Alaska Northwest Books.

Set in 1935, times are tough and jobs are scarce. A man leaves a logging camp, helps a woman get her car out of ditch only to find out there's a dead body in the trunk and finds his life taking a course he never would have planned. Eventually the various characters will take a journey through the Inside Passage to Alaska as everyone searches for a new and better life. Ray Troll designed Straley's cover, in the style of his earlier books.

John Straley is a remarkable writer, presenting the living and breathing landscape and people of Alaska. Marilyn Stasio, crime fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review says, "While doing little to lift the human spirit, the unforgiving climate suits the somber tone of this series, which features a pensive private investigator named Cecil Younger, who isn't so much blind to the harsh beauty of the setting as he is fixated on the peculiar psychology of the natives."

Straley's characters and plots are as quirky and compelling as the titles of his books, which include Shamus Award winner, The Woman Who Married a Bear, The Music of What Happens, Death and the Language of Happiness, The Curious Eat Themselves, and in 2001 Cold Water Burning.

The improbability of real life enter Straley's works, who is by profession an investigator with the Alaska Public Defenders Office. Straley was honored in 2007/08 as Alaska's Writer Laureate.

The Ashland Mystery Readers Group also produces the cable access television show Ashland Mystery, rvtv noir, airing Wednesdays at 7:30 pm in Southern Oregon on Cable Channel 15 and webcast at the same time from www.roguetv.org. Now showing Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond mysteries and editor of Los Angeles Noir.

Ashland Mystery is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library, and in 2008 also sponsored by Bookwagon New and Used Books, Standing Stone Brewing Company, and Beverly&David Lively--The Party Place. For more information contact Maureen Flanagan at 541-552-0743 or visit the group’s website www.booksandoldlace.com/

###