University of New England

Presenting Jenny Siler
The Prince of Bagram Prison

Thursday, April 17, 2008, 7-9 p.m., free and open to the public.

An edge-of-the-seat political thriller set in the murky world of post-911 espionage.

It's September 11th, 2004, three years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In Washington, DC, Dick Morrow, retired spy chief and head of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, is grappling with his wife's imminent death. In Madrid, a CIA snitch - an eighteen year-old Moroccan boy named Jamal - is on the run after claiming to have seen the fugitive terrorist Hamid Bagheri.

In London, former British special forces soldier Colin Mitchell is found dead in a train station bathroom, the victim of an apparent overdose. In Virginia, Colin's exlover, Katherine Caldwell, an Arabic specialist and Army Intelligence reservist, is unexpectedly called back to duty. Kat, who worked as an interrogator in Afghanistan, knows Jamal from the prison at Bagram Airbase, where he was held after being captured with a group of foreign fighters, one of whom was Bagheri. Kat's mission, which will take her from Madrid's red-light district to the slums of Casablanca, is clear: find the boy before Bagheri does.

But when another member of Colin's special forces team is found dead, Kat begins to suspect that Jamal's safety may not be the primary concern for those who want him found. And when Jamal tracks down his reluctant former CIA handler, Harry Comfort, he not only puts himself in further danger, but rekindles a decades-old struggle between the man who can save him and the one who wants him dead.

PRAISE FOR EASY MONEY
"Once in a blue moon, a new writer speaks up in a voice that gets your attention like a rifle shot. Jenny Siler had that kind of voice...clean, direct and a little dangerous...an intensely vivid piece of writing...." - The New York Times Book Review

"In her first novel, 27-year-old author Jenny Siler has shown tough-guy thriller writers how a woman does it. And she packs some punch...a terrific thriller." - The Wall Street Journal

PRAISE FOR ICED
"One of the new talents in tough gal crime fiction.... She handles the hard-boiled writing style with a natural grace, never sounding forced or stagy.... It effectively reveals Gardner as a complex soul, faithless and dour, as rugged as the Montana wilderness." - Publishers Weekly

Jenny Siler is the critically acclaimed author of six novels, the most recent of which, AN ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN and THE PRINCE OF BAGRAM PRISON were published under the pseudonym, Alex Carr. Her first novel, EASY MONEY was a New York Times Notable Book. The New York Times Book Review called her second novel, ICED, "poetry with attitude." Jenny grew up in Missoula, Montana and has lived pretty much everywhere, from Key West, Florida to Cordova, Alaska . She currently resides in Portland, Maine with her husband and young daughter. More information about Jenny and her writing is available at her websites, www.jennysiler.com and www.anaccidentalamerican.com.

For more information, call Cally Gurley, Curator, MWWC, at 207/221-4324.