The book we called “THE Title You Need to Know” for the last week of April, Natchez Burning by Greg Iles, (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio), debuts at #2 on this week’s New York Times Fiction best seller list and at #5 on the USA Today list, where is is just below Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

It’s been five years since Iles’s most recent book, The Devil’s Punchbowl. He published 13 thrillers in rapid succession and was on track to release Natchez Burning in 2011, when twin tragedies changed that plan. He nearly died in a car accident, losing part of his right leg, and then his father died, making him realize, as he tells the Greenville S.C. newspaper, “life was too short to pull any punches. I decided there was no room in this book for formula and fluff. The story had to be handled with appropriate gravitas. I had to deal with it not only the way it deserved but in a way that would make my father proud.”

He ultimately decided to make Natchez Burning the first in a trilogy. On his Web site, Iles says, “I’m working like a madman to finish The Bone Tree, volume 2 of the trilogy.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2014 at 5:32 pm and is filed under 2014 -- Summer, Fiction, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.