New Releases by Ian Weir

"In 1876, the fabled lawman Strother Purcell disappears into a winter storm in the mountains of British Columbia, while hunting down his outlawed half-brother. Sixteen years later, the wreck of Purcell resurfaces - derelict, homeless and one-eyed - in a San Francisco jail cell. And a failed journalist named Barrington Weaver conceives a grand redemptive plan. He will write Purcell''s true-life story. All it requires is a final act..."--Amazon.com.

The Reckoning of WM. STARLING, Esq., a Foundling, concerning Monstrous Crimes and Infernal Aspirations, with Perpetrators Named and Shrouded Infamies disclosed to Light of Day, as set down by his Own Hand in this year 1816 London, 1816. The Napoleonic War is over, Romanticism is at its high tide, and the great city is charged with the thrill of scientific discovery and Regency abandon. The nineteen-year-old foundling Will Starling returns from the Continent, having spent five years assisting military surgeon Alec Comrie, and now is helping Comrie build a civilian practice in London''s rough Cripplegate area. This means entering into an uneasy alliance with the Doomsday Men: grave robbers who supply surgeons with cadavers for dissection. There are wild rumors about Dionysus Atherton, an old university friend of Comrie''s and the brightest of London''s emerging surgical stars, whispers of experiments on corpses not quite dead, in a bid to unlock the mystery of death itself. Will works obsessively to ferret out the truth; the investigation twists and turns through brothels and charnel houses and the mansions of Mayfair.

Library Journal Best Books 2011: Historical Fiction selection Finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award Finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award Finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize 1851. London, England. Once a well-known prize-fighter with a terrifying right fist (known as “The Hammer of Heaven”), Daniel O’Thunder has seen the light, and now the protection of the poor and the weak is his life’s work. He runs an establishment for those in need of food, shelter and counsel—a place where virtue and vice rub shoulders uneasily. But an ancient evil is stalking the streets, preying on the vulnerable souls it finds there. It is an evil that takes different forms and hides behind many faces, threatening everything Daniel loves most. Driven to desperation, Daniel responds by issuing a breathtaking challenge…to the Devil himself. Rich in humor and memorable characters, Daniel O’Thunder is a rollicking literary thriller set in the teeming slums of Dickensian London. Fast-paced and gripping, comic and tragic by turns, it is a spectacular fiction debut.

"A mysterious stranger walks into a Kansas Saloon in 1907, and tells an epic Old West saga of gunslinging, lost love and revenge. But as the story unfolds, there are hints that the storyteller has a dark and hidden agenda."--Publisher.