Kelli Stanley

Kelli’s second novel CITY OF DRAGONS [Indie Next Pick, February, 2010] was released by Minotaur on February 2, 2010, and is available in hard cover, e-book and audio editions. A large print version is coming in June.

Next Valentine's Day, you'll leave more than your heart behind in 1940 San Francisco ...

February, 1940. In San Francisco's Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Stuck in the crowd, Miranda Corbie, 33-year old private investigator, stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice--whatever it costs.

From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor's shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city--her city--seeking the truth.

"Children's Day", a short story prequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, will be published by Tor/Forge in the upcoming International Thriller Writers Anthology FIRST THRILLS: High Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors (June 22, 2010). CITY OF SPIDERS (working title), the sequel to CITY OF DRAGONS, will be published by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur in 2011.

Kelli's debut novel, NOX DORMIENDA (A Long Night for Sleeping) (Five Star; July, 2008), won the Bruce Alexander Memorial Historical Mystery Award and was nominated for a Macavity Award. The book broke new genre ground as the first "Roman noir", a pun on its unique combination of Chandler-esqe hardboiled style and rich historical texture.

NOX DORMIENDA is currently in its third printing. Italian rights (mass market paperback) have also been sold to Mondadori; Greek rights have been purchased by Periplous. CURSED, the sequel to NOX DORMIENDA, will be published by Thomas Dunne/Minotaur in 2011.

Praise for CITY OF DRAGONS

“Beautifully imagined and beautifully written—this book does everything great fiction is supposed to.”

Lee Child

“A powerful crime novel ... Stanley’s dialogue bristles with attitude, the atmosphere is as thick as the bay fog, and her protagonist is a great new dame in crime fiction. A smart, stunning thriller.”

Linda Fairstein

“CITY OF DRAGONS is big and ambitious, both reverent and original.  Author Kelli Stanley has her eye on greatness.”

George Pelecanos

"CITY OF DRAGONS is a stunning recreation of
time and place that I greatly enjoyed . . . as will everyone who reads it."

Robert B. Parker

“Come … rush headlong into 1940’s San Francisco, wreathed in fog and Chinatown secrets.

A city just like Stanley’s noir heroine, Miranda Corbie, an ex-escort and current private eye, forever ‘a girl you didn’t take home to mother.’ But I’ll bet Raymond Chandler would have liked to get her number.

You’ll be asking yourself why reading CITY OF DRAGONS – a story as dark as black coffee – makes you feel so good. And it does.

Take a sip. I dare you.”

Louise Ure

“Kelli Stanley’s CITY OF DRAGONS blew me to ribbons.

From the opening chapter, we’re rooting for Miranda, a marvelous, feisty, compassionate heroine who is my favourite P.I. to come down the mean streets in oh, so long.

Superb characterisations … and a story to make you weep. Fathers will never seem quite the same again. From the opening quote by Cornell Woolrich, we’re off and gasping, and not just from the lovely evocations of another era of Chesterfields.

Polish up the Shamus, I know where it’s headed this year.”

Ken Bruen

“Evocative and taut, Kelli Stanley’s CITY OF DRAGONS bursts with dark atmosphere. Fans of Raymond Chandler and Megan Abbott should add Stanley to their list of must-read authors.”

Tasha Alexander

"All I could think of as I watched Miranda Corbie, the red-headed babe and licensed private eye, fast-talk her way through this cool book was how much fun the author must have had immersing herself in the B-movie world she's so lovingly recreated. Readers will have fun, too."

Otto Penzler, ed., Best American Noir Stories of the Century

"Kelli Stanley manages to achieve some very difficult things in CITY OF DRAGONS: recreating time and place powerfully but without excessive romanticizing, honoring the noir classics without losing any sense of originality, and capturing the events and tensions of the world without losing the story along the way. It takes a very skilled writer to achieve something like this.

Written in a prose style that's simultaneously staccato and smooth, CITY OF DRAGONS is a compelling and powerful novel."

Michael Koryta

"In Kelli Stanley’s deft, sure hands, the classic noir form is transformed: CITY OF DRAGONS is imbued with the colors, sounds, emotions and excitement of true history.

She blends the urgent fears of a world on the brink of a world-shattering war with the gritty realities of the San Francisco streets: exploitation, racial prejudice, and the tawdry sins of everyday criminals.

Stanley’s Miranda Corbie is tougher than tough, more of a hero than any man within the tantalizing scent of her ubiquitous Chesterfields.

CITY OF DRAGONS is an explosive, important book—and the best part is an ending that will blow you away."

Laura Benedict

“Kelli Stanley’s CITY OF DRAGONS is stunning, pitch-perfect noir. She conjures forth a lost, poignant, and darkly luminous San Francisco in which Hammett - and LA’s Chandler - would feel immediately at home.”

Cornelia Read

“Kelli Stanley’s haunting narrative voice seduces us into the gritty, racist, and somehow gorgeous CITY OF DRAGONS that is 1940 San Francisco.

I wondered how the scope of the crime could possibly be big enough to match the voice, the complex characters, and the powerful setting. And yet Stanley’s ending paid off perfectly.

This is one of my favorite novels of all time.

Watch out, Sam Spade, Miranda Corbie is a woman hardboiled and feminine enough to keep you in line!”

Rebecca Cantrell