Black Swan
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Sailing back from Maine, Sam Acquillo, his girlfriend, Amanda Anselma, and screwball mutt Eddie Van Halen get blown off course by a dangerous gale. With damaged boat and frayed nerves, they limp into the closest harbor, which happens to be on Fishers Island, New York, a distant and altogether disassociated scrap of Long Island.
A summer preserve for the oldest old money in America, it is defended by year-round denizens who safeguard their islandβs insularity with xenophobic fervor. Sam and Amanda are hardly welcomed with open arms, unless theyβre the arms of the young and beautiful Anika Fey, daughter of the owner of the Black Swan, the islandβs only hotel, whoβs only too eager to fold Sam into her embrace.
But feminine wiles arenβt the only hazard faced by Sam and Amanda. Theyβre soon swept up in big-money intrigue, dark conspiracy, brutality, murder, and the machinations of high-tech millionaires, to say nothing of the autumn storms that lash the island with wind and wave.
In the years since losing everything, Sam has fought his way back to an existence that even he believes is worth preserving. And now, bad timing and a broken rudder could result in the greatest loss of allβhis life.
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Chris Knopf βs mystery novels have received exceptional awards and accolades, with critics likening his character Sam Aquillo to Dashiell Hammettβs Sam Spade, Raymond Chandlerβs Philip Marlowe, and Robert B. Parkerβs Spenser, while repeatedly comparing Knopfβs work to that of Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, and Ross Macdonald. Two Time was one of thirteen mysteries listed as recommended summer reading in the New York Times Book Review, and Publishers Weekly chose it as one of the βBest 100 Books for 2006.β Head Wounds won the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Mystery. Dead Anyway was listed on the 2012 Best Fiction lists of both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. Knopf is a sailor, cabinetmaker, and advertising executive in Connecticut. He and his wife Mary also spend considerable time at their Long Island home in Southampton.
Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbinsβs Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.
