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A Just Clause: A Booktown Mystery
by Lorna Barrett
Cozy Mystery. Just when things are getting back to normal in Booktown, bookstore owner Tricia and her sister Angelica have their lives turned upside down by a shocking visitor from their past in this latest entry in Lorna Barrett’s New York Times bestselling series. Surprised by a visit from their father, a con man who has served jail time Tricia and Angelica investigate when he is implicated in a shocking murder that occurs against a backdrop of a high-profile book signing. Includes recipes. By the best-selling author of A Fatal Chapter.
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Here and Gone: A Novel
by Haylen Beck
Mystery. It begins with a woman fleeing through Arizona with her kids in tow, trying to escape an abusive marriage. When she’s pulled over by an unsettling local sheriff, things soon go awry and she is taken into custody. Only when she gets to the station, her kids are gone. And then the cops start saying they never saw any kids with her, that if they’re gone than she must have done something with them… Meanwhile, halfway across the country a man hears the frenzied news reports about the missing kids, which are eerily similar to events in his own past. As the clock ticks down on the search for the lost children, he too is drawn into the desperate fight for their return.
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| Date With Death by Julia ChapmanCozy Mystery. Placed on indefinite leave, Met cop Samson O'Brien returns to his Yorkshire Dales hometown to open a detective agency. But no one's happy to see him, least of all Delilah Metcalfe, whose brother was Samson's best friend; Samson didn't come to the funeral after he died in Afghanistan. In spite of that, dating service owner Delilah needs money, so she rents part of her building to him. When several suspicious deaths connected to Delilah's business occur, the duo team up in this fun first book in an atmospheric, well-plotted series. |
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The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes: A Novel
by Leonard S Goldberg
Historical Mystery. 1914. Joanna Blalock’s keen mind and incredible insight lead her to become a highly-skilled nurse, one of the few professions that allow her to use her finely-tuned brain. But when she and her ten-year-old son witness a man fall to his death, apparently by suicide, they are visited by the elderly Dr. John Watson and his charming, handsome son, Dr. John Watson Jr. Impressed by her forensic skills, they invite her to become the third member of their investigative team. She is swept up in a Holmesian mystery with ties to the Second Afghan War, a hidden treasure, and a murder at the highest levels of British society.
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| The Chalk Pit by Elly GriffithsMystery. Beneath Norwich, England lies a number of medieval and chalk-mining tunnels, and in one of them, a surveyor unearths recent human bones. Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway teams up with DCI Harry Nelson to investigate the bones amid reports of cults, cannibals, a man who vanished into thin air, and a missing homeless woman. Featuring complex characters and relationships (Ruth and the married Harry have a child together) combined with suspenseful plotting, this ninth in the Ruth Galloway mysteries will please fans of both Louise Penny and Julia Spencer-Fleming. |
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| Song of the Lion by Anne HillermanMystery. Attending a high school basketball game, Navajo police officer Bernadette Manuelito hears a car bomb explode in the parking lot. It's thought that the owner of the car, a lawyer mediator working with land developers, the Hopi, and the Dani, was the target, so Bernie's husband, Sgt. Jim Chee, guards him. Meanwhile, Bernie works with retired Lt. Joe Leaphorn to uncover a link from the bomb to one of his earlier cases. While the late Tony Hillerman focused on Leaphorn and Chee, his daughter Anne places Bernie at center stage in her previous two books in the series and in this 21st entry. For another fascinating female lead, try Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak mysteries. |
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| A Rising Man by Abir MukherjeeHistorical Mystery. Newly arrived in 1919 Calcutta, former Scotland Yard detective Sam Wyndham joins the Imperial Police Force and lands a big case: a murdered British official is found with a sinister note in his mouth. Working with likable Sgt. Banerjee and jealous sub-Inspector Digby, Wyndham travels through all levels of Colonial Indian society to find a killer. With atmosphere to spare, this delightful debut should please fans of other India-set historical mysteries, such as Barbara Cleverly’s Detective Joe Sandilands series, Miranda Carter's The Strangler Vine, and Laurie R. King's The Game. |
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| Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love: The Grantchester Mysteries by James RuncieCozy Mystery/Short Stories. Like previous entries in this charming series, this sixth collection features clergyman-detective Sidney Chambers investigating cases big and small. First, while on a walk in the 1970s Cambridgeshire woods with his seven-year-old daughter, the archdeacon discovers a corpse. With his friend DI Geordie Keating sometimes helping, Sidney also aids a friend who's been raped, looks for a runaway teen, and tries to locate a missing medieval book. Slightly cozier than Grantchester, the TV series based on them, these leisurely paced novels are reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries. |
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| What the Dead Leave Behind by Rosemary SimpsonHistorical Mystery. A spring blizzard hits 1888 New York City, taking the lives of many. Was lawyer Charles Linwood one of them? That's the way things appear, but his fiancée, strong-willed heiress Prudence MacKenzie, suspects foul play. With help from Charles' friend, former Pinkerton agent Geoffrey Hunter, Prudence gathers her courage and hunts for the truth. Want more richly detailed books set around this time period? Try Lawrence H. Levy's Mary Handley novels or Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily Ashton mysteries. |
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The Templars' Last Secret: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel
by Martin Walker
Cozy Mystery. Bruno, the beloved chief of police in the idyllic French town of St. Denis, is back! This time a mysterious death brings ancient secrets to light, and it’s up to our hero–and favorite gourmand–to connect the tangled threads of past and present. Investigating the death of a woman found at the foot of a cliff where the long-ago Knights Templar stronghold stands, Bruno, assisted by Haitian newcomer Amélie, learns that the victim was searching for a religious artifact of incredible importance. By the best-selling author of Fatal Pursuit.
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Focus on: Mysterious Russia
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| The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin; translated by Andrew BromfieldHistorical Mystery. It's a lovely spring day in a Moscow park when a university student -- the heir to millions -- unexpectedly kills himself while playing "American roulette." Though he's young and inexperienced, Erast Fandorin of Moscow Police's Criminal Investigation Division believes there's more to the story. Questioning the dead student's friends and an English Baroness opening a Moscow orphanage, Fandorin discovers the death may be related to a terrorist group. This fast-paced first in Russian author Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin mysteries beautifully captures the feel of 1876 Russia and offers up a thoroughly entertaining mystery to boot. |
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A Whisper to the Living
by Stuart M. Kaminsky
Police Procedural. Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union, is a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing Russia. Rostnikov and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring and in doing so, Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs. Or their lives
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Defectors
by Joseph Kanon
Historical Mystery. In 1949, Frank Weeks, fair-haired boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the country to vanish behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs and has asked his brother Simon, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It’s a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. Defectors is the gripping story of one family torn apart by the divided loyalties of the Cold War, but it's also a revealing look at the wider community of defectors, American and British, living a twilit Moscow existence, granted privileges but never trusted, spies who have escaped one prison only to find themselves trapped in another that is even more sinister. Filled with authentic period detail and moral ambiguity, Defectors takes us to the heart of a world of secrets, where no one can be trusted and murder is just collateral damage.
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| A Man Without Breath by Philip KerrHistorical Mystery. The Nazis want evidence of a rumored Soviet massacre of Polish officers (Josef Goebbels hopes to use it as propaganda against the Soviets). To that end, Bernie Gunther of the War Crimes Bureau heads to Smolensk, where the former Berlin cop works with the Wehrmacht's Prussian aristocrats, interviewing people and sifting through the evidence. Though the truth is elusive, Bernie, an ethical man who doesn't like the Nazis, keeps at it, uncovering more crimes in the process. Enjoyed this excellent ninth in a popular series and want more World War II-era crime stories? Pick up Alan Furst's historical spy novels. |
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| The Twelfth Department by William RyanHistorical Mystery. In 1937 Moscow, Stalin is in control, corruption is rampant, and everyone is afraid; even loyalists like Captain Alexei Korolev of the city's Criminal Investigation Division don't feel safe. When party members want him to close a murder case before he's ready, Korolev's worries become reality: his 12-year-old son will be hurt if he doesn't comply. If you like Martin Cruz Smith's detail-rich Renko novels or Tom Rob Smith's gruesome Soviet books, you should check out this excellent third in a trilogy. Want to start at the beginning? Pick up The Holy Thief. |
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The Ice Curtain
by Robin A. White
Mystery. In Russia, after the discovery of the world's richest diamond mine in Siberia, Gregori Nowek struggles to uncover the truth behind the murder of his closest friend, shot down on a Moscow street, and searches for a fortune in missing diamonds as he takes on organized crime, smugglers, and a powerful diamond cartel. His search will take him back to the place he knows best…Siberia. There, in a gem-filled chasm deep in the earth, are secrets guarded by the murderous greed of the diamond cartel and kept by a beautiful woman trapped behind her own curtain of ice. Caught in a staggering conspiracy, Nowek will risk his life to find the truth…and to bring an astounding act of deception into the light of day. By the author of Siberian Light.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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