COMING SOON

From All Things That Matter Press

Extenuating Circumstances

a novel by James King


With a new diagnosis that threatens his most cherished memories, Bill Warrington is determined to patch up his differences with his three children before it’s too late. But when all three grown siblings greet Bill’s overtures with wary indifference, he improvises a scheme to skip town with his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, April, whose twin ambitions to learn how to drive and to find rock stardom on the West Coast make her his perfect–and willing–abductee. But Bill’s plan soon veers dangerously off course, leaving April behind the wheel of his beloved Chevy Impala, dealing with situations no fifteen-year-old should face.

“A moving tale.”
People Magazine. Selected as a “Great Read.”

“Bill Warrington’s Last Chance is full of fascinating things to talk about — like the coming of age of a young girl juxtaposed with an old man’s search for redemption, not to mention the touching but unsentimental way they grow to care for each other… Perhaps one of the best things you can say about a novel is that the story lingers after you finish it. I have gone on thinking about this one without trying.”
Sue Monk Kidd, Author, NY Times Bestseller, “The Secret Life of Bees

“This is what reading is about and what a good book is supposed to do.”
Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone mystery series

“The spirited interplay between the gruff but wounded Bill and the perhaps too precocious April provides the most sensitive scenes in this enjoyable first novel.”
Publishers Weekly





For most of their lives, Doug and Gary McCarty have protected each other—and the dark secret they share. They thought they’d succeeded. They were wrong. When an ex-con resurfaces with a threat to expose the truth, Doug stands to lose everything: his marriage, his career as a defense attorney, and the family he has struggled to hold together.

“King’s writing is literary lightning!”
Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder and Pictures of You

“The tension builds throughout the book as James King skillfully intersperses flashbacks with present events. The dialogue is witty, the characters are profoundly credible, and the pace is high with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. I simply couldn’t put this book down.”
Carin Gerhardsen, International bestselling author of Black Ice and the Hammarby series.

“Extenuating Circumstances is more than just a great suspense story–and that it absolutely is. But, more so, it’s an exploration of family dynamics, both humbling and heroic, and how they can break us and, if we are lucky enough, also patch us back together, though not without some permanent scars to show for the effort.”
Gae Polisner, author of The Memory of Things and Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me