Frog Music - Tapa dura

"FROG MUSIC...[brings] to steamy life the unresolved so-called San Miguel Mystery.... Donoghue front-loads the -drama.... She captures San Francisco in all its -melting-pot, fishy-smelling glory, and weaves in authentic -details about smallpox outbreaks, race riots, and orphan-ages. -Jenny Bonnet is an incendiary character pulled directly from the history books.... Her extraordinary life gives Donoghue's novel contemporary resonance."--Elyse Moody, Elle

"More fine work from one of popular fiction's most talented practitioners.... Donoghue's vivid rendering of Gilded Age San Francisco is notable for her atmospheric use of popular songs and slang in Blanche's native French, but the book's emotional punch comes from its portrait of a woman growing into self-respect as she takes responsibility for the infant life she's created."--Kirkus Reviews

"Donoghue's first literary crime novel is a departure from her bestselling Room, but it's just as dark and just as gripping as the latter.... Aside from the obvious whodunit factor, the book is filled with period song lyrics and other historic details, expertly researched and flushed out.... Donoghue's signature talent for setting tone and mood elevates the book from common cliffhanger to a true chef d'oeuvre."--Gabe Habash, Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"[An] offbeat, high-minded whodunit from the award-winning author of Room."--Adam Rathe, DuJour

"Donoghue...devises an ingeniously plotted revision to the official story of why Jenny died-true to her sustained, career-long effort to read history slant and thereby set the record straight."--Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"It's in the tentative moments of love between Blanche and P'tit that FROG MUSIC is at its best-heartfelt, affecting, and real. Donoghue is so gifted at depicting the fraught blessings of motherhood."--Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune

"A vivid narrative equipped with love, lust, and violence, questionable morals, period folk tunes, an eclectic band of characters, and a quest for justice."--Morgan Ribera, Bustle

"Donoghue's book captures the details of San Francisco through meticulous research. The city is a character itself."--Tony DuShane, San Francisco Chronicle

"A riveting literary thriller."--Karen Holt, Huffington Post

"Donoghue delivers her best to date.... [She] had us with her novel Room.... But in her latest, she outdoes herself. She leaves behind her familiar, her trusted ways and dishes up something bold, raw-ish and fabulously fun-whilst maintaining a very serious and noted literary merit."--Daniel Scheffler, Edge

Burlesque dancer Blanche Beunon tries to discover who murdered her friend Jenny, who was shot through a window in a railroad saloon in 1876 San Francisco, amidst a record-breaking heat wave and smallpox epidemic. 200,000 first printing.