Coffeetown Announces the August Release of The Devil Takes Half

IRVING, Texas - Aug. 2, 2014 - PRLog -- Coffeetown Announces the August Release of The Devil Takes Half

The Devil Takes Half is now available!! ($14.95, 256 pp, 6x9 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-965-7), a work of mystery/suspense by new author Leta Serafim. A police officer with domestic problems and no experience with homicide sets out to find the killer of a beautiful archeologist.

“[An] impressive debut… Serafim has a good eye for people and places, and sheds light on the centuries of violent passion that have created an oppressive atmosphere hanging over the sunny Greek landscape.”

—Publishers Weekly, June 23, 2014

“The Greeks have a word for it, and in this fast-paced, delightful mystery, that word is murder… The real buried treasure is pure pleasure in Serafim’s debut novel.”

—Mary Daheim, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Alpine and Bed & Breakfast mystery series.

The Devil Takes Half is Book 1 in the Greek Island Mystery series.

Sudden Violence Rouses a Sleepy Greek Island

At an archeological dig on the idyllic Greek Island of Chios, a severed hand is found lying in a blood-filled trench. Could it belong to Eleni Argentis, a beautiful archeologist who is also the wealthy daughter of a local ship owner? She and her young assistant, Petros, are both missing.

The chief officer of the local police force, Yiannis Patronas, suspects that Eleni and Petros happened upon something of real value. However, his search turns up nothing but handfuls of broken clay, and then, another body—that of Petros, whose throat has been brutally cut. Body parts belonging to Eleni are left behind on a remote beach, confirming her demise. Then an old priest with a fondness for TV detective shows is attacked and left for dead. The dig site is located near the monastery where he was the only resident.

Patronas interviews Petros’ longsuffering grandmother, his flighty mother and her money-grubbing boyfriend, as well as Eleni’s greedy stepmother and her charming son. He also confronts two archeologists, one British and one American… If Eleni’s find is, as they insist, worthless, what are these men doing on Chios? Although Patronas has little experience with homicide, he is determined to conquer the evil that threatens this formerly peaceful island.

Says Leta, “I have visited over twenty-two of these islands and spent the equivalent of a decade among the people who inhabit them. Of all the qualities I have come to know, I most cherish the Greek sense of humor, that bittersweet viewpoint, both pungent and cynical, that is so uniquely theirs. In my view, the Greeks are always laughing at the unexpected, whatever adversity is thrown their way, passing along a bit of truth about human behavior as they go. Sages, every last one of them.”

The Devil Takes Half is available in eBook and 6x9 trade paperback editions at Amazon, B&N, European Amazons, and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com, Ingram, or Baker & Taylor. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Service.

Camel Press has acquired two more novels by Leta Serafim: When the Devil’s Idle and From the Devil’s Farm, books two and three in the Greek mystery series!

When the Devil’s Idle

When an elderly German is found with his skull bashed in on Patmos, the same isle St. John wrote the Apocalypse, Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer of the Chios police, is called in to investigate. He asks his top detective, Giorgos Tembelos, and his friend and amateur sleuth, Papa Michalis to join him.

With only a handful of suspects on such an isolated island— the gardener, the housekeeper, the deceased’s son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren— Patronas is limited, and yet even more challenged. Who is capable? Who has motive? Who wanted the old German dead? Why? Could the answers be immediate or far reaching?

From the Devil's Farm

A child's body is found in the ruins of an ancient temple, a famed landmark marking the entrance to the harbor of Naxos, one of the largest Cycladic Islands in Greece. The boy has been bled dry, his carotid artery nicked and the blood apparently collected as there is little in evidence. “The work of two people,” Yiannis Patronas, Chief Officer of the Chios police who is called in to investigate, decides when he arrives at the scene, “one to hold the boy down, the other to do the cutting.”

Was it cult related? Is it a sadistic murderer? Did the boy perhaps know his deliverer from this world?

Leta Serafim was a journalist at the Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau before moving to Greece, where she taught art and illustrated books. Upon her return to the United States, she wrote feature stories for the Boston Globe before trying her hand a fiction. She continues to spend her summers in Greece. www.letaserafim.com

ABOUT Coffeetown Press—Based in Seattle, Washington, Coffeetown Press has been publishing the finest fiction and nonfiction since 2005. www.coffeetownpress.com

Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency www.loiaconoliteraryagency.com