Contemporary Authors

• Through The Bookstore Window - 2018 Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book, Los Angeles, CA
• The Circle of Thirteen - 2015 Turner, Nashville, TN

• Bill Petrocelli Website - https://billpetrocelli.com/

  About Bill Petrocelli
  Bill Petrocelli — Bio
  Bill is the co-owner with his wife, Elaine, of the nationally known-bookstore Book Passage. Book Passage has three bookstores in California in Corte Madera, Sausalito, and at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
  Bill attended Oakland Public Schools and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the U.C. Law School. In addition to several years in private practice, he served as a California Deputy Attorney General and as the head of a poverty law office in Oakland, California.
  Bill served on the Board of the American Booksellers Association and as attorney for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, in which he successfully pursued a major price-discrimination suit against publishers. Recently, he was the plaintiff in a First Amendment case challenging a California law that threatened to interfere with the distribution of autographed books. The law was subsequently modified by the California Legislature.
  He is a frequent advocate on women’s issues and on the problems of local businesses.
  He is the author of four books.
  Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders was published by McGraw Hill in 1980 and was one of the first books that talked about abuses of data collection by government and businesses and about the future implications of computerized record-keeping
  Sexual Harassment on the Job: What it is and How to Stop it was co-authored by Barbara Kate Repa and published by Nolo Press in 1992. It was the first book published on the subject of stopping workplace harassment and sexual violence.
  The Circle of Thirteen is a novel that was published in 2013 by Turner Publishing. The theme of the novel is the coming empowerment of women. Novelist Lisa See called it “a true celebration of women in the face of great odds.”
  Through the Bookstore Window is a novel published in March 2018 by Rare Bird Books. Foreword Magazine calls it “an unusual, rewarding take on the nature of memory: how it haunts and heals, how single moments set the future in motion, and how it binds survivors together in ways they seldom expect.”
  (A Cheekier Bio)
  This is the page on an author’s website where the writer is usually portrayed in uplifting, slightly impersonal tones – a paean of success and respectability. I thought about doing that; instead I wrote this.
  I was born in Oakland, California, and attended Oakland Public Schools. After graduation I drove about ten miles or so to the University of California in Berkeley and enrolled as a student. After receiving my undergraduate degree, I went back a year later and eventually received a law degree from the same university. All of this cost me about $45 per semester. So for a total of about $630, I received two degrees from the finest public university in the country.
  I’m fortunate it didn’t cost more, because my working-class family wouldn’t have been able to afford it. But today that same tuition is over $100,000. But that’s assuming that a kid from Oakland would even be accepted. The University these days seems to be more partial to applicants from out of state who can be charged an even higher tuition.
  So when asked how much social progress I’ve seen in my lifetime, I look around at students who are saddled to their eyeballs with student debt. I have to answer, “Maybe not so much.”
  After law school I spent some time in the California Attorney General’s learning the ways and mores of the state bureaucracy, but my real-world education began when I began working in a poverty law office in East Oakland for the Alameda County Legal Aid Society. There, I learned the amazing ways in which some people cope with problems that would sink the rest of us. But I also learned too that grinding poverty can eventually defeat anyone. It was important to me at that point in my life to be working with an energetic group of lawyers in that environment. But we all soon realized that it was going to take more than our legal enthusiasm to solve the problem of persistent poverty.
  Fighting the good fight, but not winning the big war – there’s a pattern there. And it’s one that I’ve repeated over the years. When I was in private law practice a few years later I was hired by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association to pursue a pair of antitrust cases against major publishers who were engaged in price discrimination against independent bookstores. We won the cases, but we were never able to stop the practice from springing up again in different, more virulent forms. Sadly, today the book business is still riven with unfair business practices that the Justice Department seems determined to make worse.
  In 1981 I wrote Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders, which was published by McGraw-Hill. This was in the wake of the Nixon investigations, and I wrote it as a warning against government and commercial intrusion into personal and private matters. That fight wasn’t just lost – it was lost in spectacular fashion.
  And when the next wave hits, it will be far worse. Technology continues to be the ally of the snooper. Future privacy-invaders will not only be more efficient in getting what they want, they will be much better able to cover their tracks. Informational systems used to have built-in limitations: the very bulk of the material maintained in the system imposed practical limitations on what an individual snooper could glean from the files. But the computer is rapidly depriving us of all that protection. At the same time we are increasing the personal information in public and private data banks, we are expanding geometrically the accessibility of that information to those who are bent on misusing it.
  I wrote those words in 1981, but I could just as easily have written them last week.
  I would like to think that my next book had a greater impact. Barbara Kate Repa and I wrote Sexual Harassment on the Job: What it is and How to Stop it for Nolo Press in 1992. There are dozens of books on that topic now, but this one was the first. While we were editing it, I remember screaming at the TV screen during the Clarence Thomas- Anita Hill hearings, saying, “That’s it — that’s what we’re talking about!” Things may have gotten better since then, but when I look at the stories told by the “Me Too” movement I’m not so sure.
  For the last several years I’ve been involved mostly with my wife in helping to operate Book Passage, which has two bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although the deck will probably always be stacked against independent bookselling, it’s still a wonderful business. Every day we meet enthusiastic readers, a few famous authors, and a lot of new writers on their way up. And all of this happens in a place that is uniquely suited to put people in an upbeat mood: an independent bookstore.
  I have a wonderful wife– Elaine,
  four terrific children – Grant, Nicole, Kathryn, and Michael,
  six brilliant grand-children – Petra, Ian, Sammy, Bryn, Laura, and Dylan.
  So what, exactly am I complaining about?

• Amazon -

  Bill Petrocelli is the author of the novel The Circle of Thirteen. He is co-owner with his wife, Elaine, of Book Passage with bookstores in Corte Madera, San Francisco, and Sausalito. Bill is a former attorney with the California Attorney General and previously headed a poverty law office in Oakland. His previous books were Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders and Sexual Harassment on the Job: What it is and How to Stop it.

• Mercury News - https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/11/11/book-passage-co-owner-bill-petrocelli-has-a-passage-of-his-own-hes-a-novelist-now/

  Book Passage co-owner Bill Petrocelli has a passage of his own — he’s a novelist now

  By Vicki Larson and Marin Independent Journal | Marin Independent Journal
  November 11, 2013 at 7:08 am
  William Petrocelli may have just published his first novel, but he was pretty confident he wasn’t going to have the hassles other first-time authors face.
  That’s just one of the perks of co-owning a bookstore.
  Still, “The Circle of Thirteen” (Turner Publishing, $26.95, 336 pages) didn’t even make it on Elaine’s Picks, the list of books his wife, Elaine, recommends for her Book Passage customers in Corte Madera.
  “Well, she made it a pick, but not official,” Petrocelli says with a laugh.
  It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume Petrocelli’s literary connections would make everything easy — from finding an agent, to getting a top-notch editor, to landing a book deal, to having authors praise it, to being prominently place on bookstore shelves.
  It gave him entrée, he admits.
  “Let’s face it, I have a lot of advantages,” he says.
  However, as a longtime bookseller, he’s well aware that it takes a lot more. “Sure, I know a lot of people in the book business, but the book is going to have to stand on its own merits.”
  Petrocelli has been enjoying the change in his status, especially since his just-released book, a futuristic thriller about an international terrorist group that targets women, has been earning kudos.

  “A wonderful, uplifting thriller,” writes Abraham Verghese, author of “Cutting for Stone.” Mill Valley’s Martin Cruz Smith, author of “Gorky Park,” calls it “unique and thoughtful.” A review in the book trade journal Shelf Awareness says it’s “equal parts mystery, thriller, dystopian fiction and feminist polemic — all of it compelling from first page to last. … what stays with the reader is the bond between and among women of character, integrity and action.”
  And, in introducing him before she interviewed him at his book launch in October, San Rafael author Isabel Allende observed that his writing reveals that he’s “as much of a radical feminist as Gloria Steinem.”
  That particularly pleases Petrocelli. The main reason for writing the book, he says, was to explore the state of gender relations. “You can’t live with Elaine very long without picking up that kind of a nuance, because she’s very articulate and very clear on issues involving women’s equality, and a lot of that has rubbed off,” he says of his wife of 40 years.
  “At one point in ‘The Circle of Thirteen,’ I have a character that says something I really believe in, which is ‘if you can solve the problem of gender equality worldwide, it makes the solution to all the problems easier, and if you don’t solve that issue, you just keep making the same mistakes,'” says Petrocelli, 75, a former Legal Aid poverty lawyer. “You can’t write a story like this without getting into the social issues that will evolve over the next decades. You have to address things like climate change, the problems of concentrations of wealth and criminal enterprises manipulating that wealth, and the evolving world of women, which is a crucial, crucial part of the story.”
  Petrocelli is no stranger to writing books, although he acknowledges it was a lot more exhilarating writing a novel than his two nonfiction books, one on privacy and one on sexual harassment. But he always wanted to write a novel. He started formulating the plot for “The Circle of Thirteen” about six years ago and absorbed what numerous authors who passed through the bookstore’s doors had to say at readings and conferences.
  Then, of course, there’s his other ace in the hole — his wife.
  “She was essential,” he says. “Any time I’d write something, I’d let her read it. She was my first critic and my first fan.”
  Vicki Larson can be reached at vlarson@marinij.com.

• Book Passage - https://www.bookpassage.com/william-petrocelli

  William Petrocelli is co-owner, with his wife Elaine, of the Book Passage bookstores in Northern California. His books include Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders and Sexual Harassment on the Job: What it is and How to Stop it. He’s a former Deputy Attorney General, a former poverty lawyer in Oakland, and a long-time advocate for women's rights. This is his first novel.

• Omnimystery News - http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/10/a-conversation-with-novelist-william-petrocelli-1310250800.html#.VFKePMmwXVq

  A Conversation with Novelist William Petrocelli
  Lance Wright 10/25/2013 08:00:00 AM No Comments

  with William Petrocelli
  We are delighted to welcome novelist William Petrocelli to Omnimystery News today.

  Set in the turbulent future of New York City, Bill's new thriller is The Circle of Thirteen (Turner Publishing; September 2013 hardcover and ebook formats).

  We recently had the chance to catch up with Bill and talk about his book.
  — ♦ —
  Omnimystery News: How do you decide whether or not the book you're writing will be a stand-alone or one of a series?

  Photo provided courtesy of
  William Petrocelli
  William Petrocelli: I like books with series characters, but as I was writing The Circle of Thirteen I realized I could not create it with a sequel in mind. The main reason is that the book covers a wide time-span with a big canvas of characters and topics. As I thought about a possible sequel, I realized that it would have to be radically different in tone and scope from the original. I didn't think that was a good idea.

  That said, it has occurred to me that a prequel to this story might be possible. I've thought about the early days of Maya, one of the major characters in the book, realizing that I could probably craft a story out of her early life before she enters into the pages of The Circle of Thirteen. I'm still thinking about that as a future project.

  OMN: We introduced The Circle of Thirteen as a thriller, but we're always curious into which genre or category the author places their own work.

  WP: That's an excellent question. As I was writing the book, I knew that it would not fit neatly into any of the convenient categories that publishers normally use. A friend of mine, who used to run a literary journal, calls it a "novel of ideas." I kind of like that characterization. Probably a good way to describe it is like this: A character-driven thriller set in the near future.

  OMN: Tell us something about the book that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.

  WP: As a I was well into the writing of the book, I began to realize that the back-story about the thirteen women — the fallen leaders of Women for Peace — seemed to fall into an archetypical pattern. There's a recurring theme in literature about a "band of brothers" — the Knights of the Roundtable, the Seven Samurai, the Three Musketeers — who devote themselves to a higher cause. Although I didn't set out to write that kind of book, I'm beginning to think that it may have evolved into that genre. If so, it's an archetype with a twist. This band of brothers is a band of sisters.

  OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experiences did you include in the storyline?

  WP: There's a lot of me in the book, although that may not be obvious since the story is set mainly in the future. I've been involved in protest demonstrations against big companies, and I've walked in my share of peace marches. However, the story is mainly written from a woman's point of view, so that made it harder for me to base it just on my own experiences. The biggest test, I suppose, was to see how much I had absorbed from the gender revolution that was going on around me.

  OMN: Describe your writing process for us.

  WP: I started the book with a definite story in mind, but that story changed radically as I went through the many revisions. I began with an outline, but as I wrote I had to go back and revise that outline considerably. It was definitely a back and forth process. I'd try to outline a tightly constructed plot, but then I would revise my ideas completely as the story unfolded on the page. That led to another outline with a different version of the plot, but then the reality of writing would force me to change that outline again. The final book is completely different from what the story was at the beginning.

  The best example of that dynamic at work is with the character of Maya. At the beginning she was just a walk-on character. But then she began to "speak to me" as I was writing the scenes in which she appeared. After a while, I realized that she was a compelling character who was essential to the plot. She ended up being one of the most important people in the book.

  OMN: And how does that translate into your writing environment?

  WP: Er, ah … messy. I've gotten much neater now, since the book is at the printer and I can't just fiddle with the manuscript at any time of day. I know that some people write only in the morning, only in the evening, or at some fixed time. Others write 500, 700, 1,000, or some other magic number of words per day. In my case, I would just dive in whenever the spark of an idea hit me. I could keep going for several hours like that, as long as I was able to absorb myself in the scene. And in those moments when that kind of inspiration didn't happen, I would just basically waste a lot of time.

  OMN: Given that the book takes place in the near future, how did you go about creating the setting for it?

  WP: I tried to not to take liberties with any of the basic facts. Any peace march down Market Street in San Francisco is likely to follow the route I mentioned. When Julia takes off on a run up Mt. Tamalpais, she'd be following the route I mentioned. The Italian lake that Julia retreats to when she is in a state of crisis is just as I described it. The pivotal event at the U.N Headquarters takes place on Monday, May 4, 2082, and I checked a perpetual calendar to make sure that May 4 actually falls on a Monday that year.

  But a more interesting question is how does a writer fact-check the future? I went round and round on that question. Basically, I wanted to create an environment that was recognizable to the readers but that was different enough that it felt like the future. There are hundreds of decisions that a writer has to make about the world of the future just to tell a story. The challenge is to convey all that as part of the story without slowing down the plot or turning the characters into mere mouthpieces. I thought about what things are likely to change in future decades and what things are likely to remain pretty much the same.

  One way to approach the problem of the future is to think about how much life has changed — or not changed — in the last several decades. Would I have recognized 2013, if I could have gotten a glimpse of it in 1963, 1973. 1983? As I thought about it, I realized that social and technological changes occur very unevenly. If I could have seen 2013 back then, I would have been rather startled by things like the internet and cell phones, but I would not have noticed any big difference in the way we fly around in jet airplanes. The social changes — or non-changes — are even more uneven. For example, we've gone through some major civil rights developments over the last several decades, but we're still fighting the same poverty, choking on our own pollution, and knocking heads with the Russians.

  Given all that, I pondered how to portray the future? I decided that certain technological changes were likely to occur: e.g. household robots, magno-trains, hologramic-interaction during meetings. But it also seemed to me that some of our current bad tendencies would probably just continue and get worse, such as global warming, a potential collapse in world-wide food production, and criminal-control over the world's finances. It seemed quite conceivable that technological progress could march hand in hand with social regression. Optimist that I am, however, I surmised that we will reach a point in the sixth or seventh decade of this century when we will have turned things around and found a way to live in a more positive environment. I don't know the exact means by which humanity will gain control over its economic, social and environmental future, but in The Circle of Thirteen I write as if it will happen.

  OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?

  WP: I read just about anything I could get my hands on. I suppose history and geography had a big influence on me, because they opened up new horizons that I might not have seen as a kid growing up in Oakland.

  OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?

  WP: Mysteries, histories, and science. That sounds a bit glib, but I usually head first to those sections in our bookstore to view what's new.

  OMN: What are some of your interests outside of writing?

  WP: My favorite hobby is music. I used to play the guitar a lot, but lately I've gravitated towards the piano. My taste is music lies somewhere near that point where jazz, rock, and pop all intersect. There is one character in The Circle of Thirteen who is a piano player, and I'm planning a somewhat bigger role for music in the next novel I'm working on.

  I think there is a direct connection between writing and music — at least for me, anyway. In playing the piano, I'm always improvising — I never want to play a piece the same way twice. And that's how I feel about writing. I would hate to get to the point where I thought I was repeating myself.

  OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.

  WP: Wow — I could go just about anywhere with that type of question! Do you want the five best pasta dishes in Northern Italy, the five best players in Cal basketball history, the five best bars for ordering a Rye Manhattan? I could come up with any of those, but I suspect you're asking for something a little more weighty.

  How about this as a topic? The one hundred-year anniversary of World War I is just a few months away, and that is something worth thinking about — if for no other reason than to make sure that we don't stumble into a disaster like that again. Almost everyone agrees that it was the worst catastrophe in human history, but almost no one can say why the hell it happened. Barbara Tuchman called it "a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours." Like everything else Tuchman wrote, she was right on point with that observation.

  There are only four books on my list, but they are so engaging and so well-written that the reader won't feel cheated:

  • The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman

  Though is not as famous as her The Guns of August, this is in many ways a richer book with unforgettable portraits of Europeans just before the war. The people she portrays all had one thing in common: none of them knew that their world was about to collapse around them.

  • The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark

  Clark circles around the fateful month of July, 1914, like a mongoose circling a cobra. Why did the assassination of the Archduke at the end of June lead to the massive outbreak of hostilities at the beginning of August? His conclusion was that no one really wanted war, but the leaders were all too weak and narrow-minded to stop it.

  • To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

  Hochschild is a passionate and surprising writer with books like Bury the Chains and Leopold's Ghost to his credit. This is an unforgettable portrait of a proud and arrogant England that becomes ripped apart by the war.

  • Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan

  The war eventually had to end, but the world was left was in ruins. The allied leaders who met in Paris the following year tried to pick up the pieces. MacMillan, the great-granddaughter of one them, David Lloyd George, tells the compelling story about how these well-meaning men got just about everything wrong.

  OMN: What's next for you?

  WP: Another novel. The book I am working on now will be quite different from The Circle of Thirteen, but I'm hoping to create the same intense relationships between the characters.
  — ♦ —
  William Petrocelli is co-owner, with his wife Elaine, of the Book Passage bookstores in Northern California. He's a former Deputy Attorney General, a former poverty lawyer in Oakland, and a long-time advocate for women's rights.

  For more information about the author and his work, visit his website at WilliamPetrocelli.com or find him on Twitter.

• SF Signal - http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/10/guest-post-william-petrocelli-on-the-challenges-of-writing-a-thriller-set-in-the-future/

  [GUEST POST] William Petrocelli on The Challenges of Writing a Thriller Set in the Future (+ Giveaway)
  Posted on October 17, 2013 by William Petrocelli in Books, Contest // 0 Comments

  William Petrocelli is the co-owner, with his wife Elaine, of the famed independent San Francisco Bay Area Book Passage bookstores. As a former Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and a poverty lawyer in Oakland, Petrocelli has long been an advocate for women’s rights. The Circle of Thirteen is his first novel. Visit WilliamPetrocelli.com for more information about the novel and Bill’s book tour, as well as essays, excerpts, reviews and a list of select independent bookstores to buy the book.
  Fact-Checking the Future: The Challenges of Writing a Thriller Set in the Future
  by William Petrocelli, author of The Circle of Thirteen (Turner Publishing, on-sale October 22, 2013)
  Writing teachers say write with a strong sense of place. Little details can bring a story to life, and the historical setting can often place those details in the reader’s mind so that they don’t have to be spelled out. If the hero is “confronted by a man with a gun,” the context can fill in the picture. If the story is set in Tombstone 1881, Chicago 1927, or Berlin 1944, in your mind’s eye you’ll see a Western Sheriff, a Chicago mobster, or an agent of the Gestapo.
  But what do San Francisco in 2056 or New York in 2082 look like? Writers of future-fiction don’t have to do much historical research, but they do something just as difficult: they have to create a historical context on the blank slate of a reader’s mind. The challenge is to merge your vision of the future with the visions of thousands of readers without jarring them to the point of distraction.

  The closer a future scene is to the present, the more difficult it is to write. A story set well into the future operates under its own internal rules. No one really tries to fill in all the gaps between the present moment and some far distant time. But if you set a story in, say, 2017, readers might expect you to describe the next version of the iPhone, predict the World Series, or tell them who got elected President in 2016.
  I wanted The Circle of Thirteen to be about the changing role of women, and I thought it best to tell it from a future vantage point. I chose the period 2032-2082, because that would place the story close enough to the present world to be relevant but not so close that I would have to update every bit of current trivia. But it’s never that neat. I may have started with a focus on the role of women, but history – even future history – doesn’t move in distinct packets. I quickly realized that I had to weave many other themes into the story, like global warming, economic injustice, and political violence.
  How much does a society really change over a period of 30, 40 or even 50 years? Thinking back a few decades, I wonder how much of our present world I would have foreseen. I never would have guessed the Internet, but on the other hand commercial jet travel doesn’t seem to have changed much at all. Historical change is uneven, and things sometimes move in different directions. At one point in the book technical progress and social regression are both happening at the same time. That doesn’t seem to me to be at all unlikely.
  The biggest challenge is to avoid what novelists call the “big data-dump” – adding in background facts that don’t fit into the flow of the story. Everything has to be seen through the eyes of the characters. It’s likely, for example, that our current obsession with social-networking will evolve in a technology that allows users to project their discussions onto walls in public places. I decided to introduce that future-fact in a scene where Julia, the protagonist, is racing to get away from the words surrounding her so she can concentrate on her own thoughts.
  Another example involves Julia’s house-robot, Toki. He is seen through her eyes, and the reader shares her bemusement at how emotionally clueless he can be. In that case I decided it was better to have Julia be annoyed than the reader be bored.

• Shelf Awareness - http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1859#m17930

  Bookseller Bill Petrocelli Now a Novelist, Too
  Congratulations to Bill Petrocelli, longtime co-owner, with his wife, Elaine, of Book Passage, Corte Madera and San Francisco, Calif., who has written a first novel, The Circle of Thirteen, that is scheduled to be published next fall by Turner Publishing.

  Todd Bottorff, Turner's president and publisher, said, "As an independent publisher, I'm particularly happy to publish a leading independent bookseller's debut work of fiction. It's an exciting collaboration from both sides of the indy desk."

  And Turner executive editor Diane Gedymin commented: "I've known and admired Bill and Elaine for decades as innovative and dedicated booksellers, educators and advocates of good books. They have helped launch many an author onto the bestseller lists--now it's Bill's turn!"

  Speaking of The Circle of Thirteen, Petrocelli said, "It's been five years in the making, and it's changed a lot in the course of the five years. I don't know if there's a single sentence from the original."

  The book is described by Turner as "a suspenseful, character-driven work set in a plausible and compelling future. The narrative weaves back and forth in time, from an act of domestic violence that created a disturbed personality, to the two weeks leading up to a bombing at the UN, to events half a century before that directly influence it. The many strong, relatable women and the connections between them provide an emotionally grounded and fascinating window on the future's unforgettable history."

  Petrocelli said, "I wanted to write about some of the social issues facing society and the country--including gender violence, food shortages and environmental problems--and make it a compelling story so you don't feel you're reading a lecture." The Circle of Thirteen works on "lots of levels," he continued. "On one level, it's a multi-generational tale of several women. And it can be read as a thriller, but it's a literary thriller." He noted that Carol Seajay, longtime head of Feminist Bookstore News, called the book "a novel of ideas."

  "Writing fiction has been a lot of fun and a major challenge at the same time," Petrocelli said. The process has required him to turn off the part of his brain where he thinks like a lawyer--before becoming a bookseller, he was a poverty lawyer in Oakland and a deputy attorney general for the state of California--and turn on "a completely different part of my brain," he said.

  Asked about a book tour, Petrocelli laughed and said, "We have one book signing for sure scheduled at Book Passage." In no surprise for someone who has been a longtime advocate of independent bookselling, Petrocelli hopes to work closely with other indies. "I can't wait until the ARC is available so I can hand it around and talk to people," he said. He will also likely hire a publicist and aims to have "an active website."

  Petrocelli said his wife, Elaine, has been "the biggest fan of my work and so supportive," helping free up time for him to write. He also praised his agent, Lisa Gallagher of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, whom he got to know at one of Book Passage's mystery writers conference. "She's is a burst of energy. She's wonderful." In addition, he said that Carl Lennertz, while he was still at HarperCollins, read the manuscript and "did serious editing on it." Although Lennertz then went on to become executive director of World Book Night U.S., "most of Carl's editing remains in the book."

  Petrocelli is now working on another novel that takes "a little different tack," one that, unlike The Circle of Thirteen, touches on the book business. We can't wait for that one either!

  Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Petrocelli, Bill: THROUGH THE BOOKSTORE WINDOW

Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Petrocelli, Bill THROUGH THE BOOKSTORE WINDOW Rare Bird Books (Adult Fiction) $24.95 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-945572-90-6
A war refugee tries to reunite with her missing daughter, who may be in danger.
Years after escaping from the war in Bosnia, a bookstore manager named Gina Perini lives above her shop in San Francisco, trying to stay out of sight and out of trouble. But one day a lawyer friend says she may have found Gina's long-lost daughter. The daughter, once Jelena and now Alexi, is living in Indiana with her adoptive parents. Her father is a fundamentalist minister who shepherds a large flock at a megachurch and manages a foundation that works with orphaned children around the world. Why would a man with so many responsibilities want to adopt a helpless, pretty refugee? Anyone who's familiar with the genre will already have a good guess. From there, one melodramatic twist follows another right up to the bloody denouement in a motel parking lot. Melodrama works best with a sense of humor (just ask Charles Dickens!). Petrocelli's (The Circle of Thirteen, 2015) second novel, on the other hand, is grimly serious. That's understandable given his weighty themes--war and memory, incest and gender identity--but if Gina is going to draw a parallel between her own story and the rich history of noir stories set in San Francisco ("I couldn't help thinking that I was about to play a part in one of them"), it should be as much fun as a noir, too.
Melodramatic but unengaging.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Petrocelli, Bill: THROUGH THE BOOKSTORE WINDOW." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522643111/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2b32fe30. Accessed 17 May 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A522643111

• Washington Times
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/22/book-review-through-the-bookstore-window-by-bill-p/
  Word count: 774

  By Muriel Dobbin - - Thursday, March 22, 2018
  ANALYSIS/OPINION:
  THROUGH THE BOOKSTORE WINDOW
  By Bill Petrocelli
  Rare Bird Books, $24.95, 280 pages

  Through the window of a bookstore lies the panorama of the dark world of Gina Perini, who has suffered rape, assault and torture and survived.
  Bill Petrocelli has written an often bleak but poignant account of a woman’s tragedy focusing on her desperate attempts to escape from the unspeakable. It is remarkable that she displays determination to elude terrorist killers after fleeing a vicious, war-torn situation in Dubrovnik. What is even more remarkable is that she clings to the memory of a baby girl who would now be in her teens — if she is still alive at all — given the circumstances of her birth.
  Gina has re-created herself as the eye behind the little bookstore window in San Francisco, but the past is and shall be always with her. The killers, from the Commandant to the Hyena, still haunt her and there are several memorable moments when she fears the terror is still too close to her.
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  Like the time on a boat when she has a casual encounter with a couple from Massachusetts who tell her they own a bookstore and have feared attacks before because of selling books that are banned. She remembers standing between the couple and the woman who put her hand on her shoulder, casually yet protectively, as Gina tries to portray herself as a part of the group. She remembers thinking “I wished I was her” before leaving. She never sees the couple again, yet it is one of the few moments of comfort in the entire plot.
  And more tragedy lies ahead for Gina when she discovers that the baby did not die and is now a teenager called Alexi who has been adopted by the Reverend Wilder and his wife who run a religious foundation. What should be good news turns out to be the next chapter of the nightmare that seems to tread in Gina’s path. Alexi has been abused for years by her adoptive father and ultimately must be rescued by the resourceful Gina.
  At perhaps the riskiest dramatic moment of the book, the girl asks Gina if she is her mother. Gina replies “No. I am your father.” Mr. Petrocelli is on high-risk ground with that revelation about the terrible past and Gina’s tangled sexual encounters with women that have led her to the conclusion that she is transgender. The strange encounter between the tortured mother and the abused girl is well handled and remarkably turns into a civilized situation that perhaps nobody, especially the reader, expects.
  Gina is the voice and the soul of the plot. What remains astonishing is the strength she displays in a life in which her only consolation is indeed the view from the bookstore. It sounds almost ridiculous to suggest there is a happy ending. It isn’t that kind of book. Yet it offers a realistic conclusion in which there is a glimmer of hope for Gina and a possible future for Alexi. In their topsy-turvy world, a civilized home becomes a possibility. The inevitable killings that accompany events are in line with the fact that this is a strange and unusual but inevitable thriller of a book.
  It is Gina who tells her own sad little philosophy as she contemplates writing what amounts to a personal horror story. She writes, “We’ve all been wounded by war. Some wounds come from big, brutal wars, but others are from smaller bloodlettings that don’t make the front pages I think reality exists only in our life stories.”
  She notes that “Trying to isolate our own story is a mistake, because everything that makes life worth living occurs at the place where our stories intersect.” This is a fragile business in a fragile world, and “at times when you can’t sleep you might as well start telling stories.”
  What is remarkable is that Gina has remained alive to tell any of her story, and that makes it worthwhile.
  • Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.

• Foreword Reviews
  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/through-the-bookstore-window/
  Word count: 364

  Through the Bookstore Window
  Bill Petrocelli
  Rare Bird Books (Mar 13, 2018)
  Hardcover $24.95 (280pp)
  978-1-945572-90-6
  Through the Bookstore Window is a bold exploration of lives joined by history. The story features Gina Perini, an exile in San Francisco, whose life as a bookstore manager covers a troubling past in Bosnia, and Alexi Wilder, an abused teenager trapped in Indiana. When Gina responds to Alexi’s need, a serpentine thriller unfolds as both women run from their demons.
  Through alternating points of view and across state lines, Petrocelli weaves powerful themes on remaking a life and courage. Between the story of Gina and Alexi’s pursuers and the women’s journey toward safety, another story—of a Vietnam veteran and lonely investigator—gathers force. It’s here, in the account of Davey Fallon, that multiple strands converge, sparking a dangerous finale.
  Gina’s first-person chapters stand out for her voice. At turns pensive, resilient, forceful, and uneasy, she’s a fascinating portrait of second chances. A victim of war’s brutality and an unwilling aggressor, a community figure and a private person who’d rather lose herself to the world of books, she’s one of the more sharply defined characters in the novel. The depth of her role in Alexi’s life adds crucial notes of love and atonement in an otherwise brooding landscape. Davey also deserves mention as a man who immerses himself in the search for Alexi only to find that he must confront his own self-destructive nature.
  On occasion, the work broadcasts emotional controversies, as with a character’s impassioned remarks on gun violence, and a Midwestern sermon that speaks against same-sex unions and abortion. At other times, dark issues—such as collusion between a church and its neighboring foundation—are woven deeply into the plot, but threaten to eclipse Gina’s journey.
  Through the Bookstore Window is an unusual, rewarding take on the nature of memory: how it haunts and heals, how single moments set the future in motion, and how it binds survivors together in ways they seldom expect.
  Reviewed by Karen Rigby
  March/April 2018

• Publishers Weekly
  https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-945572-90-6
  Word count: 206

  Through the Bookstore Window
  Bill Petrocelli. Defenestration, $24.95 (216p) ISBN 978-1-945572-90-6

  San Francisco bookstore manager Gina Perini, the heroine of this tangled tale set in 2011 from Petrocelli (The Circle of Thirteen), escaped from war-torn Bosnia in 1996, but her past still haunts her. In particular, she wants to know the fate of Jelena, a missing Bosnian baby. Thanks to the research of a lawyer friend, Gina discovers that Jelena, now 15-year-old Alexi Wilder, is living in Indianapolis, Ind., with her foster parents, Allen and Susan Wilder. Gina makes an impulsive trip to Indianapolis, where she meets Susan and sees Alexi but doesn’t introduce herself. Back in San Francisco, she emails Alexi, who responds with a plea that prompts her to return to Indianapolis to rescue the girl from her abusive father. Gina takes Alexi home to San Francisco, where she explains their surprising relationship. Unbeknownst to the other, Susan and Allen each hire someone to track down Gina and Alexi, setting the stage for a violent showdown. Petrocelli overplays coincidences in a convulsive conclusion that wraps things up too neatly. Nonetheless, he provides some important lessons about love and survival.(Mar.)
  DETAILS
  Reviewed on: 01/08/2018
  Release date: 03/01/2018