Susanne Alleyn

"This is a story about passion, bloodshed, desire, and death: everything, in fact, that makes life worth living." --Irma la Douce

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The Executioner's Heir was Book of the Week at BookWorks for the first half of January 2014!

SPECIAL OFFER

Buy the paperback editions of The Executioner's Heir and/​or Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders at Amazon.com and get the Kindle versions for just 99 cents each with the paperback via Amazon's Kindle MatchBook program. This offer is retroactive—if you already bought the paperback new at Amazon, you can still get the 99-cent eBook for your Kindle. Or buy the paperback as a gift for someone and keep the eBook for yourself.

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After nearly 20 years, my (non-mystery) historical novel about the real-life Charles Sanson, executioner of Paris, is in print!

I began writing pieces of this novel in 1994. I stopped and started many times on it, still fumbling for the right way to do it. Other books were written in the meantime, including all four of the Aristide Ravel mysteries. (Yes: Charles Sanson is the executioner who appears, much older, in Palace of Justice; his grown son is the executioner featured in Game of Patience. Can you tell I've been fascinated by this family for a long, long time?)

The Executioner's Heir is about Charles's youth in the 1750s/​60s—from the time when he must take over his ailing father's official title of master executioner of Paris, to his late twenties and his gradual, unwilling acceptance of the odious job he has to do. A sequel will take Charles into the French Revolution and his greatest crises of conscience.

Read a featured essay about Sanson, "An Unsuitable Job For a Gentleman," here on the Blog page or at the Historical Fiction eBooks group blog.


NOW IN PRINT
Read the first chapter here at the book page
(link at the top of the right-hand column)
OR
Download the first 13 chapters FREE at Smashwords.com
Available in all e-reader & computer formats including mobi (Kindle), Epub (Nook, Kobo, etc), and PDF

The Executioner's Heir is also available in paperback ($15.99, currently with an Amazon or Barnes & Noble discount of about $2.00) at all Amazon sites, at CreateSpace.com, and various other online retailers worldwide (see the book page for more links).

"Charles’s personal crisis and clashing loyalties evoke Greek tragedy, and speak to the issues that will resonate with readers." (Starred Review) (Publishers Weekly)

"Alleyn’s exhaustive research pays off handsomely in well-drawn characters and colorful historical context. ... A well-researched, robust tale featuring an endearing executioner." (Kirkus Reviews).

"A remarkable book." (Five Stars) Review by L.J. Roberts, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer

"It's hard to imagine having a more difficult job than Charles Sanson, chief executioner of Paris in the years leading up to the French Revolution. By all accounts, he was a compassionate man who gained a surprising amount of respect in a time when there was little to respect about the French legal system. Susanne Alleyn's latest novel, The Executioner's Heir, is about his early life, from the time he had to take up his father's profession as a young teenager into his late twenties. This is a skillfully written self-published novel by an author whose past work has been published by New York houses like Minotaur and Soho, and it compares favorably with other traditionally published novels, both in the quality of the writing and in the high standard of the publication values. For more about it, see the review." Margaret Donsbach, Historicalnovels.info

*FYI: Despite the subject matter, this novel has a limited violence/​gore content, with no more graphic depictions of torture or capital punishment than is found in an average episode of The Tudors.

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Welcome to my author website, home of murder and mayhem in eighteenth-century France & the French Revolution.

For lots more on all the novels, click "Works."

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Inquiries about translation, reprint, audio, or film/​TV rights to any of my novels should be directed to my agent:

Cristina Concepcion
Don Congdon Associates
110 William St., Suite 2202
New York, NY 10038

212 645 1229 phone
212 727 2688 fax

Be sure to visit the "Events" page for information about future parties, book signings, readings, etc.

Are you a member of a book club?

(By "book club" I mean, of course, a group of friends who meet regularly to discuss a particular book they've all read--not one of those annoying "get four books free now and put yourself in hock to us for the rest of your life" deals.)

Are you part of a neighborhood book club or writers' group in the USA, Canada, or UK? If so, would you and your group like to hold a live phone chat with an author?

Writers love talking about their work! (It probably comes from spending way too many hours alone at a keyboard.) I'd be delighted to visit on the phone with your group for an hour to answer your questions and/​or discuss my books, mystery fiction, historical fiction, writing, getting published, and so on. College-level writing or history classes are also welcome.

Contact me to set up a date and time for a chat--don't forget to remind me what time zone you're in--and tell me a little about your group. All you need at your end is a speakerphone; I'll pay for the call. I look forward to visiting with you!

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Web site ©2009 Susanne Alleyn.
Contents of this site may not be reproduced in any form without written consent of the author. Publications may quote excerpts for purposes of review only.