I enjoyed this book a lot despite not being familiar with the author, his life or his previous fiction. I have seen and enjoyed L.A. Confidential. In learning about his unique environment growing up and navigating his life I see the correlation to the elements he adds his fiction .
The book didn’t spark my interest in reading any of his novels, perhaps because it was a satisfying experience to know ( from reading this book ) where the author perhaps gleaned elements he adds to his fiction. So in that way, I found the book enjoyable and fulfilling.

It captured my interest and the rare, impactful stories of Ellroy’s life influences made me want to continue to the end.

Big Ellroy fan. I read his “first” autobiography and still remember parts of it. I liked finding out more details especially from an observer.

Thank you to Netgalley for this advance PDF. I was looking forward to this one as a long-time fan of James Ellroy, the Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction. Crime writer extraordinaire and iconoclast, Ellroy is the sort of brazen personality who seems antithetical to the sensibilities of the electronic age. Some of the things he has said and written will likely drop some jaws out there. He forged his reputation with his breakout hit The Black Dahlia, which began his landmark LA Quartet in the mid 1980s, and his popularity spiked with the lauded film adaptation of LA Confidential in 1997 (though Ellroy maintains De Palma’s far less successful The Black Dahlia earned him more sales than LAC ever did). If you’ve seen any of the entertaining documentaries with Ellroy or seen clips of his live appearances, you know he is a showman. Love Me Fierce in Danger fills in the backstory to this larger-than-life personality. From his childhood where the unsolved murder of his mother granted his dark wish to live with his father and his wayward years with his Hollywood-connected dad (who mockingly called his son “Der Fuhrer” when the boy was obsessed with the American Nazi party), to breaking and entering the bourgeois homes of girls who obsessed him, to alcohol and drug abuse, and ultimately to redeeming several wasted years with his writing career.

The first third of the book or so is admittedly rather familiar to anyone who read Ellroy’s candid memoir, My Dark Places, which details his childhood, his mother’s murder, and his attempts to solve it with help from the police in the 1990s. Ellroy also wrote another candid nonfiction book, The Hilliker Curse, which detailed his “pursuit of women” and gradual breakdown during his tour for The Cold Six Thousand. There is a familiarity to these sections, although it does at least seem like there is supplemental information to the years covered by The Hilliker Curse that wasn’t offered in the book, sometimes via quotes from friends, wives, and lovers. If you’re amenable to Ellroy’s trademark “dog humor,” the book will provide you with some good laughs, and it is especially fascinating where the book speaks of the years Ellroy hasn’t covered himself. In the last chapters, it does feel like it is glossing over information to get to the end. Author Stephen Powell doesn’t have especially high regard for Ellroy’s 2nd LA Quartet in progress, but there isn’t much insight offered as to why, and there is no mention of Ellroy’s last book, Widespread Panic, since it ends with the point where Powell notifies Ellroy that he is going to do the biography. Still, there is plenty to recommend for those who love Ellroy’s work, especially if they might have missed his own nonfiction.

I found it hard to access, psychologically. Interested in the author's subject but ...just not engaging. But well written for those who like to examine the inner workings of one of America's better writers.

A rip-roaring look at the life and career of James Ellroy. It covers a lot of familiar ground but still manages to pull new insights about his childhood and early writing, and also adds some interesting context to his work and how it fits into the larger scope of American literature and Los Angeles.

The only real criticism-if you could call it that-would be that it ends rather abruptly. However, the story isn't finished yet.

Whatever adjectives one would use to describe an epic grand scale literary accomplishment should be given to this book about James Elroy. From his humble beginnings to his gritty stories to those he loved and left into a few things he may not be so proud of it’s all in this book and what a book it is. This isn’t a short biography but all encompassing the author seem to have ate up everything about Mr. Elroy and spit it out on the page and left nothing out I am not big on biographies But I do love some autobiographies and this is definitely one of them. This is a true accomplishment and if it hasn’t won awards yet it definitely should. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

4.5 rounded up
Well researched and well written, a must read gorgeous James Ellroy fans.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

I'm not someone who's pored over all of Ellroy's work, but I was more than intrigued to find out more about his life from the little I knew and Steven Powell delivers a comprehensive account of a life well lived.

The early part of the book is completely wild as we are introduced to Ellroy's parents, who led similarly barnstorming lives before the murder of Ellroy's mother when he was 10 years old. The effect of this on the young Ellroy cannot be understated as even while he believes himself to be the next great crime writer he spends his years scraping by enough to fuel his addiction to alcohol.

Following this the biography becomes more conventional to that of a writer as Ellroy becomes a crime fiction star. Between the book tours, dalliances and Demon Dog antics, Powell analyses some of Ellroy's biggest works digging down into the whys and wherefores of the particular tale he is discussing with the text held against Ellroy's life at the time of writing in order to understand the pieces of him amplified by the text.

Ellroy feels like a specific example of not requiring the same political leanings in order to produce wonderful art as he has done with his L.A. Quartet and Underworld U.S.A. series'. Nor has it stopped multiple women falling for "Dog" whereby their leanings at opposed sides of the spectrum.

Powell's account is never less than captivating as there is usually some tumult around the corner in Ellroy's life or he has produced something wonderful that Powell is unafraid to discuss at length to provide insight into the work and the man. A top notch scholarly biography of an amazing character and writer.

I have actually never read a James Ellroy novel, although I have seen several of the movie versions. I knew he had a reputation that was somewhat volatile, but had no idea of the depth and breadth of that volatility throughout the course of his lifetime.

This was a very interesting, although also somewhat off-putting, biography. It is incredibly detailed, not only about Ellroy's life, but also about each of his major books, with quite lengthy descriptions of the plots of each. It was a difficult read in the sense that Ellroy is a difficult personality (both to capture in words and to like or warm to), as opposed to difficult because of the writing style, which is quite engaging, particularly given some of the subject matter.

His career spanned a lot of significant time periods, in cinematography and publishing, and that made for a very interesting backdrop for the biography. Pair that with the shifts in attitudes toward crime, perpetrators, and victims in that same time frame, and the result does intrigue me. I'm still not sure if I will wind up reading Ellroy after this book, but I definitely feel like I have a solid grounding as to what drove the man to develop the type of persona he did. And while that grounding doesn't exactly endear him to me, it does intrigue me enough that it may lead me to one or more of his major works.

A fascinating biography of talented author, James Ellroy. His early life reads like a gritty crime novel. He lived it and it inspired his imagination to write popular novels later in life. In spite of the rough life he had growing up, he was a voracious reader of classic crime novels. He honed his writing skills by all the reading he did. College wasn't needed. A no holds barred biography.
Thanks Net Galley for the chance to read this book for free in exchange for an honest review with my opinion.

Very complete and well researched overview of James Ellroy's life and career. It's a great companion piece to Ellroy's own nonfiction and has a slightly different point of view, that his fans will appreciate.

I know you are going to think I am strange, but I have never read anything Ellroy has written. I have been meaning to, but there are just so many books out there.

I have to say that this was quite the ride. At times I just had to set it aside because of some of the stuff that was described. I can say there are definitely a couple of his books I would like to read now.

I knew Ellroy's mother was murdered when he was a young boy. I never knew though how troubled and, let's face it, terrible his life has been. He has been labeled a womanizer, drug addict, alcoholic, and tempered person. After reading this, I can say that's all true. Plus he is one of the best crime writers out there. I never knew he wrote historical fiction crime books, which I love to read. I learned a ton from reading this book.

Publishes February 9, 2023

Thanks to Netgalley, and Bloomsbury Academic for the Kindle Version of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#netgalley
#bloomsburyacademic

😊 Happy Reading 📚😊

To paraphrase from Steven Powell's introduction to this well-researched, comprehensive and at times overwhelming biography of legendary crime.novelist James Ellroy, it's surprising no one had already written such a book. Perhaps would-be biographers felt Ellroy had already told his own story well enough in his two memoirs, MY DARK PLACES (one of the "Demon Dog's" best works) and THE HILLIKER CURSE (one of his few utterly terrible books).

In any event, Powell had no such reticence, and his dedication has produced LOVE ME FIERCE IN DANGER. The book is drawn from years of research, which ranged from multiple interviews with Ellroy and his life's major figures to discoveries about the writer's family history Ellroy never could have made. This meticulous approach gives us a sweeping narrative that starts with Ellroy's parents' backgrounds in the 1920s and ends in 2021 with the 70-something writer in comfort and relative stability.

In between is a life of nearly nonstop chaos. Ellroy nearly died multiple times of alcohol and drug abuse before publishing a single book, let alone become the massively influential and successful giant of the genre he is now. Most of his fans already know this, as well as the story of his mother's murder, as it's all in MY DARK PLACES. Powell's work digs deeper into that material, but it doesn't feel like rehashing.

The truly revelatory stuff is found in the examination of Ellroy's years of fame. Though often staying sober after his hellish youth, his addictive personality manifests throughout his life in virtually every other aspect of it: spending, womanizing, chasing the trappings of fame in the media and at public appearances, and constantly aiming to portray himself as more.vulgar, caustic, right-wing and hypermasculine than he actually is (and he is in fact all of those things, but more nuanced underneath the bluster). Powell vows in the intro not to psychoanalyze Ellroy, but he doesn't have to: the behavior, whether it be acts of immense generosity and human kindness or cutthroat cruelty and verbal abuse, tells you all you need to know. Ellroy is an absolute mess in many ways, and it is inextricable from the power of his writing. (Ellroy is fairly honest to his biographer about most of his worst qualities; Powell presents the rest by amassing evidence from other parties.)

As I said in my review of Ellroy's latest novel (the disappointing, overcooked but compulsively readable WIDESPREAD PANIC), I'm a huge fan of his work. His fiction reveals more of who he is than almost any of his public statements. Powell understands this, and the time he spends critically examining Ellroy's major books is some of the biography's best material. (The look into the UNDERWORLD USA books is particularly insightful.)

All told, LOVE ME FIERCE IN DANGER is an engaging, well-paced read, one that Ellroy's fans, skeptics and neutral parties could all benefit from. (Though if you're the type of fan who needs to think their favorite writers are particularly great human beings, the examinations of Ellroy's behavior in romantic relationships will be excruciating.) If there is any area where the book is lacking, it's the abrupt ending. Just as we're delving into an interesting look at how and why Ellroy's work is (mostly) not losing quality but allowing structure and formal experimentation to subsume emotional engagement, everything just kind of stops, Barring a few anecdotes and the explanation of how Powell pitched his biography to Ellroy, that's it. Then again, it's perhaps truest to Ellroy's oft-cited statement that "closure is bullshit" for the book to end that way.

Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy – Steven Powell – 2023
This is the first significant biography of James Ellroy’s legendary literary career, that accelerated after his historical crime fiction novels rocked the NYT bestseller lists. During his long career, Ellroy has won numerous awards and found additional success with articles and essays, noir screen and script writing, crime documentaries, memoir and public speaking engagements. These are incredible achievements for a man that credits his educational background to the Los Angeles County Public Library after his expulsion from high school. Since 2020, author Steven Powell, based in the U.K. has invested hundreds of hours in research and directly conversing with James Ellroy and Helen Knode. This is the fourth book Powell has written about Ellroy’s life and career.

Without question, the tragedy of Jean Ellroy’s unsolved murder in El Monte, California, (1948) has greatly influenced her son’s life and literary career beyond comprehension. There was bias and stigma in that era against divorced single mothers who didn’t meet the powerful idealized societal version of wife, mother, homemaker. There was no evidence that Jean, a nurse, was an alcoholic, promiscuous, or a bad unfit parent. She closely supervised her son’s education, took him to church services and on vacations. We learned that following their acrimonious divorce, his father deliberately poisoned his son's mind against his mother-- parental alienation was unheard of at the time.
In the 1970’s, homelessness, arrests/petty crimes and inhalant and alcohol abuse had taken a toll on Ellroy’s mental and physical health. As he turned his life around, he began writing. Ellroy sharpened his public speaking skills and dazzled AA members with his gifted storytelling abilities.
Powell introduced his favorite Ellroy novels and book series offering detailed accounts related to his writing styles of combining fictional characterization with real life events, and his technique of limiting dialogue to reduce the manuscript content. If a name was dropped, a credible story followed—also included were easy to follow timelines, cultural events, trips abroad, literary agents, famous editors, celebrities and other insiders in the publishing and film industries. Ellroy generously donated his papers to the University of South Carolina (1999) he visits on occasion to lecture and update the archive.
Eventually Ellroy identified as the “Demon Dog” of American crime fiction, and even barked sometimes in public spaces! Since barking dogs can be totally annoying, some fans (and former lovers) understandably failed to find this persona very amusing. Speaking of dogs, by his own admission, Ellroy’s dog Margaret did not like him and often growled in his presence. The dog was a gift from his second wife, editor/novelist Helen Knode (m.1991-2006).

The term of a “Ladies Man” implies a gentlemanly (true) love of women. Although Ellroy admired the fine women he romanced he was unable to honor his marriage vows or commitments in serious relationships. Throughout the book, he cycled through a repetitive pattern of obsessive ritualized seductions and abandonments that involved too many women. These women believed his lies layered in literary and poetic nonsense, accepted flowers, expensive costly gifts and (sometimes) insincere marriage proposals. He was introduced to families, friends and associates. Some of these women nursed him though health and emotional episodes, drug dependency, rehab programs, and mental breakdowns. Predictably, after he decided to move on, a vicious verbal fight was instigated, then he failed to answer or return phone calls. A former partner was conveniently dismissed: “We will never speak again.” he said. This is not love. The book is an exceptional exploration of scholarship and (unpleasant) truth. Nice photos were included. Bravo! ** With thanks to Bloomsbury via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

This is a biography of the life of James Ellroy. He wrote LA Confidential and Black Dahlia. His most recognizable works.
Steven Powell obviously has a great understanding of this author and insight into his public and private life. Ellroy is quite an egmatic character and quite the womanizer. He wants to be heard and thinks that everyone is drawn to him. Powell touches on the subject of Ellroy's mothers murder and the turbulent life that seemed to follow Ellroy's childhood..
I thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Bloomsbury Academic for an advanced copy of this biography on one of the outstanding and outlandish crime writers of the 20th Century.

To understand the art that is created, one must look at the past to find what created the person. What motivates, what irritates, what scares and what makes the creator laugh. A biographer might have to go deep, past where the creator wants others, including themselves to look, to even find facts about people close to the creator, that they didn't even know about. Actions, reactions, events all make a mark, all leave a scar. To understand the Demon Dog, one must know the hell that forged him. To read James Ellroy is to see past effecting the present, screaming into the future and burning all in its path. To read a biography on the man is seeing the portrait of man, whose childhood left a mark, took his time to find himself, good to friends, bad to the women in his life, and a writer of skill and great ability. Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy by Steven Powell is a biography of a man, a study of a canon, and a life that has few parallels.

James Ellroy had a different name at birth, one that sounded like a political assassin, or a hayseed. Ellroy's parents divorced early, with a lot of enmity, and Ellroy spent time between both parents, a mom that tried to raise him, and a father who spent more time railing on the shrew that he married. Ellroy's mother was murdered, suspect unknown, and Ellroy went to live with his father, a minor Hollywood flunkie, who had seen better days, and spent more time on his couch then providing or caring for his son. Young James loved to read, stealing books when he had to to keep up with his voracious habit. Crime and crime stories were his favorite, books that later helped him when he started breaking into houses for thrills. After the death of his father, drinking nearly killed Ellroy, but golf, AA, books and a need to write gave him something to live for. Starting slow he wrote what he knew, crime, men failing and Los Angeles. Slowly he found his groove, removing words, mining history and people, real and not-so-real, to tell his tales, and success, and madness soon followed.

One great biography, about a man who really had it rough, but also gave it back to people, friends, and especially women. Ellroy's life is something that if one read it in a book, some would say, that seems like much. Powell writes about the man, not pulling punches, going right to the problems that being around Ellroy can cause, his numerous health issues, and marital problems and paints of portrait of a complicated man, who really was saved by the power of his own words. Powell also is very good in talking about the writing. The book is full of numerous examples, of Ellroy's power and poise in writing, and some clunkers that make one go ehh. Powell also talks about Ellroy's style, his way of removing words, getting the writing down to the bone, and shaving that bone a little more. The book is well sourced with plenty of interviews and discussions, all footnoted. Ellroy seems to have a lot of friends to talk about him, and sadly just as many people that he doesn't talk to anymore.

Not just a good biography about a great writer, but a great biography period. Recommended for fans of course. Also for fans of the mystery novel in general, or for those interested in the cultural history of California. And for people who enjoy biographies about fascinating, troubling people.

Perilously close to that kid in the Whit Stillman film, reading a biography of a writer when you've only read two of the writer's books. But I'd heard this was quite a ride, and it doesn't disappoint. Obviously anyone with any awareness of Ellroy knows about his murdered mother, the similarities with the Black Dahlia case which set his trajectory from an early age, but his dad was just as much a character from the son's books, a foul-mouthed chancer so given to bullshitting that of course Ellroy came to disbelieve his stories of having been a war hero, and Rita Hayworth's business manager, even though both of those turn out to have been true. Given that background, little wonder if Ellroy's own life would take him to some dark places, though there's a heartbreaking early moment where his dad, in one of the few moments of vaguely responsible parenting here, has to tear out certain pages from the animal stories the young James* loves, lest they prove too distressing for the boy's tender sensibilities. Still, in Ellroy's world innocence never lasts long, and soon enough he's the school Nazi, a development to which his dad does respond pretty well, by beginning to wear a yarmulke around the house. Before long, the dad is dead too, his last words to his son the advice "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you." One day, that grounding in knowing there are sleazy stories behind Hollywood's veneer will serve Ellroy well, but in the meantime there's a hand-to-mouth youth of substance abuse and mostly petty but often quite disturbing crime to be getting on with – the sort of thing which could very easily have seen Ellroy too end up like one of his characters, except that we wouldn't have known what an Ellroy character was, because he'd have been dead in a ditch before he wrote a damn thing.

As it happens, he does eventually get clean – at least as far as booze is concerned. Which largely seems to leave him with more time and energy for chasing women instead, not least because at this point AA meetings were apparently hotbeds of hooking up. Though also of the usual cultish behaviour – even as someone who's always been deeply suspicious of the organisation, I was taken aback by the sponsor who insisted that Ellroy ditch writing because it was distracting him from the all-important steps. Yeah, because making sure to remove other sources of meaning from an addict's life will definitely help them stay sober, and doesn't at all feel just like a determination to monopolise their life. Not that Ellroy is exactly innocent on that front himself; initially a charmer with women, over and over again he rapidly becomes controlling, hypocritical, a general nasty piece of work, even before you consider the way he keeps talking about marriage far too soon – in one case, setting the date for less than a month after the preceding divorce. Not that it takes an expert to work out what might be at the root of this behaviour, even before he falls for an actress he also wants to cast as his mother in an adaptation of his memoir. Another recurring pattern is for Ellroy, who if he'd at least pulled back from outright fascism remained performatively right-wing (he named a dog after Margaret Thatcher), to fall for left-wingers. I think the ex who surprised me most was Ellen Kushner, known for her queer fantasy novels, but Powell has spoken to plenty, most of whom speak surprisingly fondly of Ellroy, considering**.

Not that the only famous names here are temporary targets of the Demon Dog's libido, mind. Some of the other characters are much as you'd expect, as in the dick-waving dinner with Harlan Ellison, or the angry encounter with Derek Raymond. Even Nick Cave has enough of an overlap in subject matter not to be surprising, ditto Charles Bronson – though the context there was not what I'd have guessed, and his methods of vengeance were considerably more subtle than his acting roles might lead you to expect. But we also get everyone from Samuel Delany to Carrie Fisher, and even an indirect role for Janet Malcolm. And while he's far from the most famous name, I was particularly entertained by the appearance of Matthew J. Bruccoli, a man whose F. Scott Fitzgerald obsession was the source of some fascination to a friend and me for a few years. Here he's described as "the most misogynistic man I ever met" by Ellroy, which is quite something from a man where one of his many break-ups came when his then partner failed to see the funny side after he "joked about using the names of his ex-girlfriends as dead hookers in his novels" (and can you guess what happened in the book he published after their split?). Still, you can't deny Ellroy called it right when he described Kevin Spacey as "a venomous individual" after their paths crossed on account of the LA Confidential film. The rest of the book has a thread running through it of his mixed feelings about this most successful screen version of his work, which kicked his career up a level even as it botched his book – despite which, he remained for a long time interested in the prospect of a sequel, and the version which would have seen the returning Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe joined by Chadwick Boseman definitely sounds like it would be worth a look at the DVD rental shop between the worlds. And if nothing else, even the film we got stands out as a better idea than most of Ellroy's other screen incarnations – the true crime film made by Troma sounds especially misjudged.

In amongst the grime and the glitz, of course, there's also the work – and Ellroy has always very much seen the novels as the real work, with screenwriting a lucrative adjunct. They're all here, although for certain selected examples the story stops in order that Powell can give a more detailed examination. His position is uncontroversial; the early books are apprentice work, leading up to the imposing LA Quartet, which is then followed by the Underworld USA trilogy, at which point Ellroy is clearly still trying to stretch himself as a writer, but in which that ambition can sometimes get away from him. And thereafter, a certain weariness creeps in, with the suspicion that the new prequel quartet might represent a surrender of sorts. Especially when you consider that the young Ellroy had planned to work until he could do the Black Dahlia case justice, then leave crime behind for historical fiction. Which...well, I suppose you could argue that he moved into historical fiction, it was just that he couldn't deliver on the other half because he'd realised American history was crime. And from the small portion of the work I know, I'd say this biography makes sense as something to sit beside it. Yeah, there were things where I would have liked to know more – hearing that Ellroy bonded with his long-time cover designer Chip Kidd over DC obscurity Snapper Carr, I would have loved a deeper dive on his comics tastes. And I did spot at least one error, in the references to "A.E. Houseman". But the overall impression is of a story told with sufficient craft and energy to overcome any sense that you wouldn't want to spend much time with the lead character, and from which you definitely feel like you've learned something about the USA. Hell, maybe Ellroy did end up a lot like one of his own characters after all.

*Actually Lee at this point, but let's not confuse matters.
**Weirdly, there is one whom Powell very carefully avoids naming, even while providing more than enough information to identify her, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

(Netgalley ARC)

Steven Powell’s in-depth biography of the crime fiction writer James Ellroy which is very well constructed and extremely meaty. He is able to dive down deep into Ellroy’s life from birth to where he is today, which includes the death of his mother, life with his father afterwards and the questionable living life in the streets and his trouble with crime before settling down to become the writer he is today.

The beginning is very harrowing and very frank and honest which I truly applaud it for. This is warts and all and does not shy away from some very difficult subject matter that is his life but as we move forward to his writing career we are probably getting the most in-depth character study about the man and his gift to the world.

This is an excellent book and really hard to put into words a life that seems to outweigh the intense crime fiction that Ellroy produces. His life in itself is his best seller. Fascinating.

This is a brisk biography, written in short, snappy sentences of lean prose, reminiscent of James Ellroy’s own writing. At times, Ellroy’s life reads like one of his own books: the glamour of the golden age of Hollywood is vividly evoked, with parents who move in the orbits of the movie stars of the day. A divorce leads to hardship and an unhappy existence which culminates in his mother’s murder, an event that would define his entire life.
Steven Powell has undertaken incredible research into Ellroy’s life, with unprecedented access to information, especially regarding the early lives of his parents. It even seems strangely voyeuristic at times. This is a dense book and not the easiest of reads, but it is interesting, visceral and highly recommended to fans of Ellroy’s work.

This is an academic biography of Ellroy's life and work to date.
The author clearly had great access to the subject of his work (always a benefit for a biographer) and, of course, a pretty seminal work the subject had already written about his early life and, in particular the murder of his mother and the effect it had on him. To be sure, there are a lot of ibids in the reference, drawing a lot from 'My Dark Places.'
The book goes beyond that book in terms of time and events covered, and a more literary consideration of the man but as detailed and painstakingly researched as it is I didn't get the essence of the subject the way I did through Ellroy's own autobiographical piece - it is, as one might expect, a little dry. Sure, there's a lot of 'scandal' and dark matter, but it's told in such a matter of fact way (with an abundance of footnotes along the way) that I felt this is probably one more for the devoted Ellroy fan than a casual reader of his work or, indeed, anyone not already familiar with him.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the chance to see the book.