Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series, which is set in Seattle and has sold more than seven million books worldwide. He is also the author of the Charles Jenkins espionage series and the David Sloane series of legal thrillers. He has also written several stand-alone books, including the novels “The 7th Canon” and “Damage Control;” The literary novel “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” was Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni won an AudioFile Earphones Award for narration. His nonfiction exposé “The Cyanide Canary,” was Washington Post’s best book of the year. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a three-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. Robert Dugoni’s books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages. His new book “The World Played Chess: A Novel” is an emotionally arresting follow-up to “The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell.” (amazon, 2021)

“The World Played Chess: A Novel” – In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. When he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer―Vincent’s last taste of innocence and first taste of real life―dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life, and seeking one’s own destiny.