THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin (Putnam) THE GOOD SON by You-Jeong Jeong (Penguin Books) PROVIDENCE by Caroline Kepnes (Lenny) Vote for your favorite book here by noon on Thursday, June 28. Then, tune into The Tonight Show on Friday night, June 29, when Jimmy Fallon will announce the official “Tonight Show Summer Read!” To share your enthusiasm on social media, follow Jimmy Fallon on Instagram and The Tonight Show on Facebook and interact using #TonightShowSummerReads #prhpartner. Watch Jimmy Fallon announce his book club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRkZNEcLHuw

In THE DISAPPEARED, Joe Pickett has two cases to contend with: a prominent female British executive never came home from the high-end guest ranch she was visiting, and the British Embassy as well as the new governor of Wyoming are pressing hard.  At the same time, Nate Romanowski has asked Joe to intervene with the feds on behalf of falconers who can no longer hunt with eagles even though their permits are in order. Both cases are fraught with frustration, danger, and potentially lethal consequences. In this “Meet Our Author” interview, C.J. Box talks about his writing process, how he creates such authentic “bad guys,” and the inspiration behind THE DISAPPEARED.  How would you describe your writing regimen – in terms of place, time and routine? After doing the research and developing a fairly comprehensive outline, I write at least five days a week in my office and establish a goal of a minimum of a thousand words a day.  Sometimes I double or triple that.  I start each day editing the raw work from the previous day and then proceed from there.  I’m a morning worker and after working out and breakfast I walk from our house to a big barn on our ranch.  My office is located above the barn so I have views of the mountains, eagles, and often pronghorn antelope and mule deer.  Plus our horses.  If I notice the scenery, though, that means I’m not working.  So I try to keep my head down. [caption id="attachment_109713" align="alignright" width="384"] C.J. Box
©Michael Smith[/caption] What accounts for your ability to create so many truly scary but believable villains in your books? I think there’s sometimes a tendency in crime fiction to make the bad guys bad in every conceivable way.  I try to avoid that by providing a backstory and (most importantly) motivation for why the bad guys do what they do.  I think that helps make them both believable and even more scary because the reader can empathize (a bit, at least) with them.  There are instances where Joe Pickett even understands why his antagonist is dangerous and feels sorry for them a little.  I guess I’m the same way. With THE DISAPPEARED, you introduce several new plot twists and characters that may surprise your readers.  Where did the inspiration for these creations come from? Prior to my books taking off, I worked for over twenty years in the international tourism industry on behalf of five Rocky Mountain states. Part of our job was to promote western experiences to Europeans and others.  Dude ranch holidays were particularly popular in the United Kingdom and especially among professional women.  I found that fascinating - that very urban women wanted to spend a week or two in the modern west.  Part of the appeal, we found, was that a significant number of these women wanted to hook up with a young cowboy.  And it happened quite often.  That phenomenon was the basis for the new book, where a well-known female executive disappears after visiting a very high-end dude ranch. A luxury “dude ranch,” Silver Creek, figures in the plot of this novel. As a native of Wyoming, do you witness any real-life contention between the intrusion of rich outsiders that such properties bring and the longtime locals? The interaction between wealthy dude ranch guests and locals is a source of fascination to me.  Some guests try to pretend they’re cowboys and cowgirls, and some locals play up being natives to the point of caricature.   I’ve seen romances develop between overseas visitors and young local wranglers, and I know of a few women who chose to stay with their young cowboy rather than go home.  It’s an intersection between western myth and modern reality.

The book opens with a meth-addicted grave robber unearthing the death mask of Montezuma, setting off a violent struggle for its possession. There is the drug lord who employs him, and who would kill for that mask. There is the expat American collector, sinister and possibly mad. There is the greatly respected curator, who for a fee will provide provenances for his country’s looted artifacts, and his long-suffering housekeeper, a deeply religious lesbian in a culture of machismo, who despises her patron. And there is the looter himself, who has stolen the mask and is now running for his life. Above all, there is Anna Ramsey, an American with a history of bad choices, who has hidden behind a mask all her adult life. A deeply wounded woman, Anna knows that masks protect and conceal. Anna is a heroine for our times, as she searches for the courage to remove her mask and show her true face. “A whirling tale of art and its sometimes sordid acquisition…[In] short, punchy chapters…[Dancing with the Tiger] races through the antics of…[a] rapacious cadre of thieves, collectors, murderers, bounty hunters and art lovers…[Wright] explores the ethical implications of collecting and its scent of exploitation [and] takes us into the underground world of art laundering, where stolen objects are washed clean by corrupt dealers with fake provenance papers…[Lots of] valuable insights to unearth in this wild novel.”—The Washington Post