eMOM #26 March 2015 - Sleuth of Baker Street
Transcription
eMOM #26 March 2015 - Sleuth of Baker Street
The Merchant of Menace The official newsletter of SLEUTH of Baker Street 907 Millwood Rd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4G 1X2 416-483-3111 e-mail [email protected] SleuthOfBakerStreet.ca Greetings. March 2015 it once was, construction is going on all around her, dust and dirt are choking, her doctor son, Martin, has neglected her beautiful house It’s been a rather harsh winter once again and I am getting a little too and it’s fine antique furnishings. And where once there were trees and old for this. We’ve had record low temperatures this February and grass, there is a home occupied by a young family. Curious, and as there seems no letup in sight. Good thing I’m in Florida as I put the you begin to suspect, a few marbles light, she starts spying on the litfinishing touches on this issue! Had the chance to come down here tle boy and girl who play in the yard. But what’s that in the shadows, and play some golf and who am I to not take advantage of such warm under the tree? Is it really a scrawny little boy who seems neglected offers? A very good friend who lives a charmed life has a place in and malnourished, playing with stones and branches in the dirt? And Sarasota and he invited me down for a week of golf. The weather why does he look so much like her grandson that she’s not allowed to ranged from the mid-60s to the mid-80s and it was all wonderful. To visit? Convinced that the boy is being abused, she vows to save him. be correct I suppose I should have said around 15 to 30. Played a lot With every page, Madame Préau seems more unhinged, more dangerof golf and enjoyed every minute of it, but now having to wait anoth- ous. She’s hearing mice yet the dozens of traps she sets catch nothing; er six weeks or so before the season opens here will be tough. Well, the cats in the yard need to be taken care of; Martin is conspiring to be completely honest, much over 75/25 gets to be on the uncomagainst her and keeping her imprisoned…Madame Préau is an intellifortable side, but I’ll take it. gent, articulate woman but she’s also nuts. This is a chilling and unsettling psychological thriller that will make for uncomfortable readSarasota is a pretty lovely spot. A condo on the beach overlooking the ing in spots but start it and you will have a hard time putting it down Gulf with a little balcony might not be a bad way to spend the rest of and you’ll understand why it was such a big hit in Europe and why it one’s days. Lots of restaurants, shopping malls, golf courses, lots of won a number of awards for crime writing. cultural activities, the odd bookstores…actually almost too good to be believed. Alas, a tad out of the reach of a poor clerk in a bookstore. A Cut-Like Wound ($19.95) by ANITA NAIR was also very interBut I’ve been promised another invite! esting. It's the first day of Ramadan in heat-soaked Bangalore. A young man begins to dress: makeup, a sari, and expensive pearl earrings. Before the mirror he is transformed into Bhuvana. She is a hijra, a transgender seeking love in the bazaars of the city. This novel is a police-procedural, but, chances are, nothing like what you’re familiar with. Without the tools—forensic, legal, societal—that first-world forces have at their disposal, this police investigation is conducted in I played a lot of golf and read a lot. The Stone Boy ($17) by SOPHIE whole different way. And as you’ve likely never been to Bangalore, LOUBIERE was a marvelous read. This novel is the North American whether in fact or (mystery) fiction, I think you’ll find the landscape debut of this French writer and this is a fine psychological thriller. exotic, incomprehensible but fascinating. Like any other novel set in Madame Préau, a retired headmistress, has been away for some ten an unfamiliar time or place there is lots to be confused about, and a years, in a convalescent home, and returns to her home near Paris to small glossary would have come in very handy, but confused as I was find that all has changed. Her house is no longer the leafy refuge that for parts of the story, I liked it a great deal. Our hero, Inspector Borei J.D.’s Picks The Merchant of Menace, Very simple, just like our shipping charges. We’re in this together. We want to sell you book, you want books. So buy books, and we’ll keep producing the newsletter. Buy a heck of a lot of books and we’ll send you the you the hard copy. Postage & Handling Hours of Business In a word: Actual Thursday to Saturday 10 am to 6 pm What Canada Post charges us, is what we’ll charge you. No handling, no packaging, no nothing else. No charge for the tape, no charge for the box, no charge for wages to get it all prepared. Simple. Fair. Sunday Noon - 4pm Monday to Wednesday & Statutory Holidays Closed SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. Gowda, difficult to deal with, not as subservient as his superiors would like him to be but quite well respected by some of his colleagues, is an interesting character. He’s passionate about doing his job despite the interference from the higher ups. He’s feeling a little shut out from his wife and family, so when an old girlfriend reappears, well, he has a dilemma. The distraction of Urmila combined with his investigation into a serial killer on the loose in Bangalore make for a very entertaining story and I’d be happy to read more stories with this character. JIM HARRISON’s The Great Leader (#1) ($22.95 trade paperback) was a delight. The author has won international acclaim for his body of work, but this one is wholly different from what he has written before. Great was published some years ago but only came to my attention when I saw the sequel listed. Simon Sunderson—though only his mother gets away with calling him Simon—has only very recently retired but he is adamant about getting the Great Leader off the streets and into jail and so doing is going to be his retirement project. GL is the leader of a cult located initially in Northern Michigan, Sunderson’s bailiwick, but he and his followers are on the run to warmer climes, Arizona, partially to flee Sudnerson’s scrutiny. There have been reports of GL’s taste for young girls and fleecing his followers of tens of thousands of dollars to support his cult and his expensive tastes. The parents of some of the young girls are followers of GL themselves and won’t press charges. So Sunderson has a difficult job ahead of him to gather enough evidence against GL. But he is adamant that he will. Sunderson is a history buff—his ex-wife used to complain that he spent more on his history books than they spend on the mortgage—and being with his beloved history books and fishing the beautiful streams of his native Upper Peninsula of Michigan for brook trout is what he would rather do more than just about anything else, but not unto GL is sorted out. There is a lovely, quiet wit about Sunderson, and you know how well that works for me, and I enjoyed my journey with eccentric, weak, alcoholic, aging Sunderson. Lots of American history, particularly the appalling treatment of the Native peoples as European settlers moved in—killing them all was the easiest approach—his bouts of gout and excessive drinking, which only muddles his thinking, and inappropriate sexual impulses, which make for some very funny moments, combine in this witty, meandering read, perfect for a long weekend. The sequel, Big Seven (#2) ($34.95), is now out and I’ll look looking forward to it. e-MOM March 2015 Page 2 rything else. Can you spell “compatible?” So here I go again and this better work or you won’t be reading my Picks. Actually if you can’t read my picks you won’t be reading my rant, but, I get to vent. But I keep my fingers crossed, forever hopeful. (Given some of the issues I’ve been having recently with Windows 8 and this new Dell—not sure which one is the problem, but they’re pretty much both crap— I’m ready to throw in the towel myself. Going back to pencil and paper might not such an undesirable proposition!-JD) JD read, and loved, Or the Bull Kills You (#1) by JASON WEBSTER featuring Chief Inspector Max Cámara. Since I have always wanted to go to Spain, and given his strong recommendation, I decided to give it a go as well. But, silly me, wouldn’t you know it…the book is out of print. It seems we bought the last eight copies in existence and all are sold. Not to be deterred, I started with the second in the series A Death in Valencia (#2) ($15 remaindered hard cover), and just loved it. Lots of copies of it around! The colourful sights and sounds, the Spanish wine and food, the politics and a great plot all combine to make this an entertaining read and I’m hooked. A renowned paella chef has been found dead; the mayor and other local politicians want to demolish El Cabanyal, the colourful fisherman's quarter on Valencia's seafront; an abortionist has been kidnapped and with the Pope due to visit the city, the police are on high alert. One of Chief Inspector Max Cámara's long term adversaries is put in charge of the missing abortionist case and tensions quickly run high. Add to that ominous cracks spreading across the walls of his flat and Cámara feels under a lot of pressure. (And those cracks lead us into another plot)! Lots of action, twists and turns, great atmosphere, I think I have to find a marathon to walk in Spain somewhere, it sounds like a beautiful place. The third and fourth in the series are Anarchist Detective (#3) ($16.99) and Blood Med (#4) ($16.99 due at the end of July). A good series to start on! I know JD mentioned PETER MAY in the February 2015 newsletter but I just had to add my voice to let you know how great this writer is. Many years ago PETER MAY wrote a terrific series set in China featuring Beijing detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell. But, alas, the six books in the series are out of print at the moment. Hopefully some publisher will get wise, buy the rights and reprint these terrific mysteries. After his “China” series he introduced us to Enzo Macleod in 2006, and has produced five titles in the “Enzo” series, the first three of which are now back in print in the UK and the remaining two will be in the next few months. Our friends at Poisoned Pen Press did print some of this series a few years back, with title changes if I remember correctly, but those are no longer available so we are bringing in the new UK editions. Forensic expert Enzo Macleod is a professor at a university in Toulouse and has taken I don’t know what it is about computers but I always seem to be a wager to solve the seven most notorious French murders using modscrewing up with them. I can never find where I save my work; the ern technology and a total disregard for the justice system. The first, computer can’t read my file if I type it on one computer and then try Extraordinary People ($24 trade paperback) is terrific, in fact all of to open it on another; or sometimes, as happened a few newsletters them are, so save your dollars, forego lunch or dinner and buy them ago, my file of Picks gets completely lost and mangled. When I all. Lots of stock on hand and more as we need it, so start the series opened the file all I got was thousands of tiny little square boxes on and enjoy some great reads: Extraordinary People (#1), The Critic the screen. And it has happened again with my March 2015 newslet- (#2) and Blacklight Blue (#3) are available and Freeze Frame (#4) ter Picks. And of course himself was away golfing his tiny little brains will be available by the end of April and Blowback (#5), mid-June. out in sunny Florida, chasing that stupid little white ball. Percy wasn’t They are $24 each in trade paperback. Order your copies soon! any help either; he has his own, little larger, balls that he wants to chase, (tennis balls at the dog park)! Microsoft keeps assuring me that And while I`m on the PETER MAY topic, his “Lewis Trilogy” is I can seamlessly transfer my work to any machine any time, but, I now available from a Canadian distributor, at very nice prices. The think that that’s a big con game. JD, of course, is convinced that I’m stories are set on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides of Scotland and too stupid to let live. He keeps telling me that it’s because we have are edgy, gripping, gritty, dark, and feature detective Fin Macleod. old computers, with three different operating systems—XP, 7 and 8— The titles are Blackhouse (#1) ($14.99), The Lewis Man (#2) ($26.99 and three or four different version of Word. He’s much better at buy- hardcover and the $14.99 trade paperback is expected April 15) and ing the latest and greatest than at making sure everything talks to eve- The Chessman (#3) ($26.99 hardcover). Here is a short description of Marian’s Picks SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. e-MOM March 2015 Page 3 the plot of Blackhouse: “When a grisly murder occurs on the Isle of Lewis that bears similarities to a brutal killing on the mainland, Edinburgh detective and native islander Fin Macleod is dispatched to the Outer Hebrides to investigate, embarking at the same time on a voyage into his own troubled past. As Fin reconnects with the people and places of his tortured childhood, the desolate but beautiful island and its ancient customs once again begin to assert their grip on his psyche. Every step toward solving the case brings Fin closer to a dangerous confrontation with the dark events of the past that shaped, and nearly destroyed, his life.” So good!!! You must read this author. gle. Charlo Torp has become estranged from his daughter after his wife died from cancer, and is overwhelmed with unpayable debts. In a desperate attempt to fix his life, he robs a wealthy old woman. Things go terribly wrong and she is murdered. It was the old woman’s fault, Charlo tells himself repeatedly, as he tries to win back his daughter’s affection, and hide his crime from the police. Inspector Sejer is the investigating officer and the protagonist of the series. He’s never had an unsolved case. This time, however, Sejer is only minimally present, while the focus is on Charlo and his actions that are spurred on by necessity and fear. Fossum has written an insightful study of human morality through a poet’s eyes, and raises the quesI love a good spy story so when I discovered MICK HERRON I was tion: How far would you go for a fresh start? thrilled. Slow Horses (#1) ($9.95) and Dead Lions (#2) ($14.95) are the two titles featuring those sloppy MI5 agents who have screwed up their careers somehow and have been relegated to an offshoot office to do menial work, while the other agents are busy saving England from the bad guys. Slow Horses was shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Dagger, while Dead Lions was shortlisted for, and won, the Gold ADLER-OLSEN, JUSSI ALPHABET HOUSE ($32.95) British Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the year. I was disappointed that his pilots James Teasdale and Bryan Young have been chosen to conduct new book, Nobody Walks ($26.99), was not the third adventure of a special photo-reconnaissance mission near Dresden, Germany. Inthose loveable losers, but I wasn’t disappointed in the read. No sir. telligence believes the Nazis are building new factories that could This is every bit as good and every bit as thrilling. Tom Bettany is turn the tide of the war. When their plane is shot down, James and working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets word tellBryan know they will be executed if captured. With an enemy patrol ing him that his estranged 26-year-old son Liam is dead. Liam, it in pursuit, they manage to jump aboard a train reserved for senior SS seems, fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking pot. soldiers wounded on the eastern front. In a moment of desperation, Tom returns home to London determined to find out the truth about they throw two patients off the train and take their places, hoping they his son’s death, no matter whose feathers he ruffles. But quite a few can escape later. But their act is too convincing and they end up in the people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerAlphabet House, a mental hospital located far behind enemy lines, ated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might where German doctors subject their patients to daily rounds of shock have thought he’d left it all behind when he first skipped town, but treatments and experimental drugs. The pilots’ only hope of survival nobody ever really walks away. And the ending of the story will have is to fake insanity until the war ends, but their friendship and courage you biting your nails!! are put to the ultimate test when James and Bryan realize they aren’t the only ones in the Alphabet House feigning madness. A standalone novel from the writer of the Department Q series. ANOLIK, LILI DARK ROOMS ($31.99) Death sets the plot in motion: the murder of Nica Baker, beautiful, wild, enigmatic, and only sixteen. The crime is solved, and quickly, a lonely classmate, unreI confessed in the November newsletter that I had never read LAUquited love, a suicide note confession, but memory and instinct won’t RIE R. KING’s Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes mysteries before. allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. DropAfter reading The Bones of Paris (Harris Stuyvesant #2) ($19), I de- ping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and cided I had to meet Ms. King’s version of Holmes and picked up her progressive private high school in Hartford, Connecticut, from which latest addition to the series, Dreaming Spies (Mary Russell / Sherlock she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with Holmes #13) ($31). As someone who is wary of authors who take be- identifying and punishing the real killer. A debut novel. loved characters and use them in their own fiction, I loved the tongue- ARCHER, JEFFREY clifton MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD in-cheek reference to the fact that Sherlock is ARTHUR CONAN (#5) ($32.50) When Harry Clifton visits his publisher in New York, DOYLE’s creation. In King’s novels (narrated by Holmes’s wife, he learns that he has been elected as the new president of English Mary), Sherlock Holmes simply allows the world to believe that he is PEN, and immediately launches a campaign for the release of a fela fictional character, so that he can investigate with more freedom. low author, Anatoly Babakov, who's imprisoned in Siberia. Babakov's He’s a married man of flesh and blood. In this case, Holmes and crime? Writing a book called Uncle Joe, a devastating insight into Mary are on a steamer ship bound for Japan. Imagine being stuck on a what it was like to work for Stalin. So determined is Harry to see Baship with Holmes for weeks on end, without the welcome distraction bakov released and the book published, that he puts his own life in of rampaging tusked boars, and flimsy aeroplanes to keep him occu- danger. His wife Emma, chairman of Barrington Shipping, is facing pied. There are drawbacks to having a husband with a restless mind. the repercussions of the IRA attack on the Buckingham. Some board Luckily, a blackmailer on board the ship and a lithe young Japanese members feel she should resign, and Lady Virginia Fenwick will stop woman lead them to a mystery that has the power to topple an empire. at nothing to cause Emma's downfall. Sir Giles Barrington is now a You can tell right away when an author has had fun writing a book. minister of the Crown, and looks set for even higher office, until an King’s enthusiasm for Holmes and Russell’s partnership leaps off the official trip to Berlin does not end as a diplomatic success. Once page, making this a compelling blend of history and adventure. again, Giles's political career is thrown off balance by none other than his old adversary, Major Alex Fisher, who once again stands against On a bleaker, yet no less gripping note, The Murder of Harriet Krohn him at the election. But who wins this time? In London, Harry and (#7) (#22) by KARIN FOSSUM begins with a man walking through Emma's son, Sebastian, is quickly making a name for himself at Fardarkness. In this Norwegian novel, the reader is kept firmly inside the thing's Bank in London, and has proposed to the beautiful young murderer’s mind, a witness to every justification and internal strugAmerican, Samantha. But the despicable Adrian Sloane, a man inter- Hardbacks Vanessa’s Picks SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. ested only in his own advancement and the ruin of Sebastian, will stop at nothing to remove his rival. ATKINS, LUCY MISSING ONE ($24.99) Kal McKenzie was never close to her mother Elena, whose coldness towards her spoiled any chance of a good relationship. When Elena dies of cancer, Kal feels forlorn: how do you mourn a mother who, inexplicably, just didn’t seem to love you? While clearing out Elena’s art studio, Kal finds a drawer packed with postcards, each bearing an identical one-line message from a Canadian gallery owner named Susannah Gillespie: “Thinking of you.” Who is this woman and what does she hold the key to her ruined relationship with her mother? Conflicted by her grief and shaken up from recently seeing a covetous text from an old girlfriend on her husband’s cell phone, Kal impulsively sets off with her toddler Finn to Susannah’s isolated home on a remote British Columbian island. A place of killer whales and storms. Soon Kal quickly realizes she has made a big mistake. BEATON, M C macbeth DEATH OF A LIAR (#30) ($28) Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime. BERENSON, ALEX john wells TWELVE DAYS (#9) ($32.95) John Wells, with his former CIA bosses Ellis Shafer and Vinnie Duto, has uncovered a staggering plot, a false-flag operation to convince the President to attack Iran. But they have no hard evidence, and no one at Langley or the White House will listen. Now the President has set a deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear program, and the mullahs in Tehran, furious and frightened, have responded with a deadly terrorist attack. Wells, Shafer, and Duto know they have only twelve days to find the proof they need. BLACK, CARA MURDER ON THE CHAMPS DE MARS (#15) ($27.95) Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her, running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor gypsy boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no? The dying woman’s secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy’s mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own, she must have been abducted. What does she know that’s so important it’s worth killing for? And will Aimée be able to find her before it’s too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out? BLAEDEL, SARA FORGOTTEN GIRLS ($29) The body of an unidentified woman was discovered in a local forest. A large, unique scar on one side of her face should have made the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. As the new commander of the Missing Persons Department, Louise risks involving the media by releasing a photo of the victim, hoping to find someone who knew her. Louise's gamble pays off: an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and branded a "forgotten girl." But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates more than thirty years ago. Aided by her friend journalist Camilla Lind, Louise finds that the investigation takes a surprising and unsettling turn when it brings her closer to her childhood home. And as she uncovers more crimes that were committed, and hidden, in the e-MOM March 2015 Page 4 forest, she is forced to confront a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed. BOWEN, GAIL 12 ROSE STREET (#15) ($27.95) Joanne's husband Zack is the leading progressive candidate in a neck-and-neck race, with the existing mayor, for Regina's top job. The tough campaigning is well underway when a disturbing threat disrupts the celebration for the opening of the Racette-Hunter Centre, a project Zack has been spearheading, intended to benefit the impoverished community of North Central Regina. Joanne soon realizes that sinister interests are working behind the scenes of the election, and another savage act makes clear that someone will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. The Shreve campaign perseveres, but when Zack's opponents share some shocking information about the past, the revelation sends Joanne reeling. As tensions around the election build, Joanne tries to hold herself together, keep her family intact, and get to the bottom of why a series of violent incidents, seemingly related to the mayoral race, all lead back to a mysterious property in North Central, 12 Rose Street. BRANDT, HARRY WHITES ($32.50) Back in the run-and-gun days of the mid-1990s, when a young Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an aggressive anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a ten-yearold boy while struggling with an angel-dusted berserker on a crowded street. Branded as a loose cannon by his higher-ups, Billy spent years enduring one dead-end posting after another. Now in his early forties, he has somehow survived and become a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch, a small team of detectives charged with responding to all post -midnight felonies from Wall Street to Harlem. Mostly, his unit acts as little more than a set-up crew for the incoming shift, but after years in police purgatory, Billy is content simply to do his job. Then comes a call that changes everything: Night Watch is summoned to the four a.m. fatal slashing of a man in Penn Station, and this time Billy's investigation moves beyond the usual handoff to the day tour. And when he discovers that the victim was once a suspect in the unsolved murder of a twelve-year-old boy, a savage case with connections to the former members of the Wild Geese, the bad old days are back in Billy's life with a vengeance, tearing apart enduring friendships forged in the urban trenches and even threatening the safety of his family. BREKKE, JORGEN DREAMLESS (#2) ($29.99) A promising young singer is found dead in a clearing in a forest, gruesomely murdered, her larynx cut out, and an antique music box placed carefully atop her body, playing a mysterious lullaby that sounds familiar, but that no one can quite place. Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker, of the Trondheim Police Department, still recovering from brain surgery, is called in to investigate. Singsaker, now married to Felicia Stone, the American detective he met while tracking down a serial killer, fears the worst when another young girl, also known for her melodic singing voice, suddenly goes missing while on a walk with her dog one night. As the Trondheim police follow the trail of this deadly killer, it becomes clear that both cases are somehow connected to a centuriesold ballad called “The Golden Peace," written by a mysterious composer called Jon Blund, in the seventeenth century. The first in the series is Where Monsters Dwell ($18.50). Also titled Where Evil Lies in the UK. BRETT, SIMON feathering TOMB IN TURKEY (#16) ($37.50) Carole Seddon has never enjoyed holidays much. Nevertheless, she has allowed herself to be persuaded by her friend Jude to accept a fortnight’s free accommodation at a luxurious Turkish villa owned by Jude’s property developer friend Barney Willingdon. But from the outset the holiday is marred by a series of menacing incidents: threatening messages daubed on the villa walls; and their host being accosted by a knife-wielding man at a local restaurant. As Carole and Jude launch into what they do best, investigating, it becomes clear that SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. Barney Willingdon has made plenty of enemies, with his ruthless business deals and complicated love life. Matters come to a head when Carole’s sightseeing trip to nearby Pinara is curtailed by the discovery of a body in one of the ancient Lycian tombs. And what really did happen to Barney’s first wife, Zoe? CALDWELL, IAN FIFTH GOSPEL ($32) In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. That same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator’s secret: what the four Christian gospels, and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel known as the Diatessaron, reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend’s death and its consequences for the future of the world’s two largest Christian Churches, Father Alex finds himself hunted down by someone with a vested stake in the exhibit, someone he must outwit to survive. From the author of The Rule of Four, ($19), originally published in 2004. CLARKSON, JOHN AMONG THIEVES ($29.99) They thought they could cover up what an out-of-control trader at a Manhattan brokerage firm did to Olivia Sanchez. She worked hard, played by the rules, but so what? Blackball her from the industry and be done with her. Who's going to stop them? Nobody, until Olivia turns to her cousin Manny, an ex-con and ex-gang leader whose first reaction is to take care of the arrogant bastard who hurt his cousin permanently. His partner, James Beck, part of a tight clique of ex-cons based in Brooklyn's Red Hook, convinces Manny to hold off. Things can be complicated in the real world. But even the savvy Beck has no idea what's really going on. There's much more at stake than Beck imagines, starting with enough money to ignite a level of ruthless greed that can wipe Beck and his partners off the face of the earth. It's tens of millions of dollars, connected to arms dealing for a clandestine U.S. agency. Beck and his loyal band are forced into an escalating nonstop war against an arms dealer, war criminals, Russian mobsters, and even the NYPD. The only way to stay out of prison and survive is to outsmart, outfight, never concede, and ultimately rob their enemies of the source of their power: 116 million dollars. COOPER, TOM MARAUDERS ($31) When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the centre of it all is Gus Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one armed treasure hunter obsessed with finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte. His quest brings him into contact with a wide array of memorable characters, ranging from a couple of small time criminal potheads prone to hysterical banter, to the smooth-talking oil company middleman out to bamboozle his own mother, to some drug smuggling psychopath twins, to a young man estranged from his father since his mother died in Hurricane Katrina. As the story progresses, these characters find themselves on a collision course with each other, and as the tension and action ramp up, it becomes clear that not all of them will survive these events. DE BEAUVOIR, JEANNETTE ASYLUM ($29.99) Martine LeDuc is the director of PR for the mayor's office in Montreal. When four women are found brutally murdered and shockingly posed on park benches throughout the city over several months, Martine's boss fears a PR disaster for the still busy tourist season, and Martine is e-MOM March 2015 Page 5 now also tasked with acting as liaison between the mayor and the police department. The women were of varying ages, backgrounds and body types and seemed to have nothing in common. Yet the macabre presentation of their bodies hints at a connection. Martine is paired with a young detective, Julian Fletcher, and together they dig deep into the city's and the country's past, only to uncover a dark secret dating back to the 1950s, when orphanages in Montreal and elsewhere were converted to asylums in order to gain more funding. The children were subjected to horrific experiments such as lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and psychotropic medication, and many of them died in the process. The survivors were supposedly compensated for their trauma by the government and the cases seem to have been settled. So who is bearing a grudge now, and why did these four women have to die? DEVERELL, WILLIAM beauchamp SING A WORRIED SONG (#6) ($24.95) Everything is going well for Arthur Beauchamp in his early middle age. Life is so good for the top-notch defence lawyer that, in a moment of career restlessness, he decides to switch sides, just the once, and prosecute a young man charged with murdering a clown. Beauchamp is confident he can prove Randolph Skyler is guilty. Confident, but still worried and surprisingly blind to how precarious the evidence is — and, worse, to the fissures opening in his personal life. It’s a case Beauchamp will never forget, not even years later, when he’s happily remarried and retired to a bucolic life on Garibaldi Island in the glorious Salish Sea. As Beauchamp is about to learn, the older you get, the greater the chance is that the past will come back to bite you. Just arrived, can’t wait to get to it; he is one of the best in the business. If you have somehow, somehow, missed this wonderful, entertaining writer, you owe it to yourself. So start with Trial of Passion (#1) ($19.95). FLUKE, JOANNE swensen DOUBLE FUDGE BROWNIE MURDER (#19) ($28.95) Life in tiny Lake Eden, Minnesota, is usually pleasantly uneventful. Lately, though, it seems everyone has more than their fair share of drama, especially the Swensen family. With so much on her plate, Hannah Swensen can hardly find the time to think about her bakery--let alone the town's most recent murder. . . Hannah is nervous about the upcoming trial for her involvement in a tragic accident. She's eager to clear her name once and for all, but her troubles only double when she finds the judge bludgeoned to death with his own gavel--and Hannah is the number one suspect. Now on trial in the court of public opinion, she sets out in search of the culprit and discovers that the judge made more than a few enemies during his career. With time running out, Hannah will have to whip up her most clever recipe yet to find a killer more elusive than the perfect brownie. GAPPER, JOHN GHOST SHIFT ($31) As an up-and-coming agent of the Commission for Discipline Inspection, Song Mei probes political corruption, not mysterious deaths. But that changes when she arrives on the scene of a grim police investigation and is confronted with a crime and a victim impossible to ignore. Despite strict orders and threats from superiors, Mei knows she cannot turn away. Breaking protocol, Mei undertakes a covert search for the truth about the mystery woman’s death, and life, by following in her footsteps from a factory plagued by worker suicides to a luxury hotel dealing in highend escorts to an American home haunted by tragedy. But when Mei crosses paths with an ex–CIA operative on a shadowy mission of his own, her personal quest takes a jarring turn into political and industrial espionage that pits both agents against the highest ranks of communism and capitalism. GRADY, JAMES LAST DAYS OF THE CONDOR (#2) ($29.99) From the publisher’s blurb: Look in the mirror: You're nobody anybody knows. You know pursuing the truth will get you killed. But you refuse to just fade away. So you're designated an enemy of the largest secret national security apparatus in America's history. Good SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. guys or bad guys, it doesn't matter: All assassins' guns are aimed at you. And you run for your life branded with the code name you made iconic: Condor. Everyone you care about is pulled into the gunsights. The CIA star young enough to be your daughter-she might shoot you or save you. The savvy political aide who lets love trump the law. The lonely woman your romantic dreams make a fugitive. The Middle Eastern child warrior you mentored into a master spy. Last Days of the Condor is the bullet-paced, ticking clock saga of America on the edge of our most startling spy world revolution since 9/11. Set in the savage streets and Kafkaesque corridors of Washington, DC, shot through with sex and suspense, with secret agent tradecraft and fullspeed action, with hunters and the hunted, Last Days of the Condor is a breakneck saga of America's secrets from muckraking investigative reporter and author James Grady. Sequel to Six Days of the Condor, originally published in 1974, seems to be out of print at the moment. GRAVES, SARAH snow WINTER AT THE DOOR (#1) ($31) Moving from Boston to remote Bearkill, Maine, isn’t homicide cop Lizzie Snow’s idea of a step up. But breaking away from tragedy and personal betrayal is at least a step in the right direction. Her dead sister’s fate still torments her, as does her long-missing niece’s disappearance. Lizzie hopes to find the mysteriously vanished child here, amid the coming ice and snow. But in the Great North Woods, something darker and more dangerous than punishing winter is also bound for Bearkill. The town is a world apart in more than distance, full of people who see everything, say little, and know more than they’ll share with an outsider. The only exceptions are the handsome state cop who once badly broke Lizzie’s heart and desperately wants another chance and Lizzie’s new boss, sheriff Cody Chevrier, who’s counting on her years of homicide experience to help him solve his most troubling case, before it’s too late. A rash of freak accidents and suicides has left a string of dead men, all former local cops. Now the same cruel eyes that watched them die are on Lizzie and so is the pressure to find out what sort of monster has his hooks in this town, what his ruthless game is, and just how brutally he’ll play to win. HADDAM, JANE demarkian FIGHTING CHANCE (#29) ($31.50) Gregor Demarkian grew up in the Armenian-American enclave in Philadelphia known as Cavanaugh Street. Even though he left to go to college, and then went on to a storied career in the famous Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI, he eventually returned to Cavanaugh Street after an early retirement. There he finds himself in a rapidly gentrifying urban neighborhood that still retains some of the friends, institutions, and flavour of the immigrant neighborhood he grew up in. Among them is his best friend, Father Tibor Kasparian, the parish priest of the local Armenian-Orthodox church, probably the most genuinely gentle soul that Demarkian has ever met. When Father Tibor is then arrested on murder charges, it tears at the very foundation of Demarkian's world. While Gregor has very strict rules about for whom and under what conditions he will consult, all those rules go by the wayside. Demarkian is now a man possessed, and his one goal is to find out what really happened and who is really responsible for the murder Father Tibor is charged with. HARRIS, C. S. st. cyr WHO BURIES THE DEAD (#10) ($27.95) London, 1813. The vicious decapitation of Stanley Preston, a wealthy, socially ambitious plantation owner, at Bloody Bridge draws Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, into a macabre and increasingly perilous investigation. The discovery near the body of an aged lead coffin strap bearing the inscription King Charles, 1648 suggests a link between this killing and the beheading of the deposed seventeenthcentury Stuart monarch. Equally troubling, the victim’s kinship to the current Home Secretary draws the notice of Sebastian’s powerful father-in-law, Lord Jarvis, who will exploit any means to pursue his own clandestine ends. Working in concert with his fiercely independent wife, Hero, Sebastian finds his inquiries taking him from the wretched back alleys of Fish Street Hill to the glittering ballrooms of e-MOM March 2015 Page 6 Mayfair as he amasses a list of suspects who range from an eccentric Chelsea curiosity collector to the brother of an unassuming but brilliantly observant spinster named Jane Austen. But as one brutal murder follows another, it is the connection between the victims and ruthless former army officer Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, that dramatically raises the stakes. Once, Oliphant nearly destroyed Sebastian in a horrific wartime act of carnage and betrayal. Now the vindictive former colonel might well pose a threat not only to Sebastian but to everything, and everyone, Sebastian holds most dear. HARRISON, METTE IVIE BISHOP’S WIFE ($26.95) Linda Wallheim is a devout Mormon, the mother of five boys and the wife of a bishop. But Linda is increasingly troubled by her church’s structure and secrecy, especially as a disturbing situation takes shape in her ward. One cold winter night, a young wife and mother named Carrie Helm disappears, leaving behind everything she owns. Carrie’s husband, Jared, claims his wife has always been unstable and that she has abandoned the family, but Linda doesn’t trust him. As Linda snoops in the Helm family’s circumstances, she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as a wronged husband. Linda’s husband asks her not to get involved in the unfolding family saga. But Linda has become obsessed with Carrie’s fate, and with the well-being of her vulnerable young daughter. She cannot let the matter rest until she finds out the truth. Is she wrong to go against her husband, the bishop, when her inner convictions are so strong? Based on a true story. HERRON, MICK NOBODY WALKS ($26.95) Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn’t know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead. Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking pot. Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son’s death. Maybe it’s the guilt he feels about losing touch with Liam that’s gnawing at him, or maybe he’s actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he’ll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might have thought he’d left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody ever really walks away. From the author of the fabulous Slow Horses ($9.95) and Dead Lions ($14.95), this is a stand alone novel. A favourite of Marian’s. See Marian’s Picks. JAMES, MARLON BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS ($33) On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer’s house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but much has been whispered, gossiped and sung about in the streets of West Kingston. Rumours abound regarding the assassins’ fates, and there are suspicions that the attack was politically motivated. JERKINS, GRANT DONE IN ONE ($33.95) For SWAT sniper Jake Denton, the bullet casings he saves as grim reminders of his "kills" are beginning to add up. His wife, his department-ordered psychiatrist, and even Jake himself are all beginning to question just how these sanctioned kills are affecting his mental health. Nobody wants him to end up like Lee Staley, his mentor and ex-partner, now out on permanent psych leave, drinking himself to death, and the prime suspect in a series of shootings that have paralyzed Northern California. Jake doesn't believe that Staley's guilty, but since their job has taught them to kill, how easy would it be for his friend to cross over to the other side? How easy would it be for him? On every police force in the country, there's a SWAT sniper going about his daily life, acting like an average cop, until the moment when the call comes in. Then SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. they become a hostage's last hope and a criminal's worst nightmare. To some, they are silent heroes, to others, silent killers. KANON, JOSEPH LEAVING BERLIN ($32.50) Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witchhunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment is to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? Betrayal? Survival? Murder? KELLERMAN, JONATHAN delaw MOTIVE (#30) ($32) Even having hundreds of closed cases to his credit can’t keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonizing over the crimes that don’t get solved and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end, one even Alex Delaware’s expert insight can’t explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case because there’s always a next one. This time the victim is Ursula Corey: a successful, attractive divorcée who’s been gunned down, not a robbery but an execution, a crime that smacks of simple, savage revenge. And along with that theoretical motive come two strong contenders for the role of perp: the dead woman’s business partner/ex-husband and her divorce lawyer/secret lover. But just as Alex and Milo think they’re zeroing in on the most likely suspect, a bizarre new clue stirs up eerie echoes of the unsolved Hennepin murder. And the discovery of yet another crime scene bearing the same taunting signature raises the spectre of a serial killer on a mission, whose twisted method is exceeded only by his manipulative and cunning madness. KERNICK, SIMON FINAL MINUTE ($26.99) After a traumatic car accident wipes out his memory, Matt Barron retreats to his sister's house in rural Wales to begin his slow recovery. But something's wrong. He keeps having a recurring dream of being in a house with a group of dead bodies and a bloody knife in his hand, and he's beginning to have real doubts that he is who his sister says he is. Then one night, the past comes calling in the most terrifying way imaginable and Matt is forced to flee for his life. He needs to find out who he is, whatever the cost, and there's only one person who can help. Ex-Met cop, turned private detective, Tina Boyd. But Matt's a hunted man and, as Tina digs into his background, she suddenly finds herself in the firing line too. Stock expected by the end of March. KING, LAURIE R russell DREAMING SPIES (#14) ($31) After a lengthy case that had the couple traipsing all over India, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are on their way to California to deal with some family business that Russell has been neglecting for far too long. Along the way, they plan to break up the long voyage with a sojourn in southern Japan. The cruising steamer Thomas Carlyle is leaving Bombay, bound for Kobe. Though they’re not the vacationing types, Russell is looking forward to a change of focus, not to mention a chance to travel to a location Holmes has not visited before. The idea of the pair being on equal footing is enticing to a woman who often must race to catch up with her older, highly skilled husband. e-MOM March 2015 Page 7 Aboard the ship, intrigue stirs almost immediately. Holmes recognizes the famous clubman the Earl of Darley, whom he suspects of being an occasional blackmailer: not an unlikely career choice for a man richer in social connections than in pounds sterling. And then there’s the lithe, surprisingly fluent young Japanese woman who befriends Russell and quotes haiku. She agrees to tutor the couple in Japanese language and customs, but Russell can’t shake the feeling that Haruki Sato is not who she claims to be. Once in Japan, Russell’s suspicions are confirmed in a most surprising way. From the glorious city of Tokyo to the cavernous library at Oxford, Russell and Holmes race to solve a mystery involving international extortion, espionage, and the shocking secrets that, if revealed, could spark revolution and topple an empire. LAMBDIN, DEWEY adam lewri KINGS AND EMPERORS (#21) ($29.99) As kings are overthrown and popular uprisings break out all across Spain, Lewrie's right back in the action, ferrying weapons to arm Spanish patriots, scouting within close gun range of the impregnable fort of Ceuta, escorting the advance units of British expeditionary armies to aid the Spanish, and even going ashore to witness the first battles between Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, and Napoleon's best Marshals, as the long Peninsular War that broke Imperial France begins to unfold. LAUKKANEN, OWEN stevens THE STOLEN ONES (#4) ($31) Cass County, Minnesota: A sheriff’s deputy steps out of a diner on a rainy summer evening, and a few minutes later, he’s lying dead in the mud. When BCA agent Kirk Stevens arrives on the scene, he discovers local authorities have taken into custody a single suspect: A hysterical young woman found sitting by the body, holding the deputy’s own gun. She has no ID, speaks no English. A mystery woman. The mystery only deepens from there, as Stevens and Carla Windermere, his partner in the new joint BCA–FBI violent crime task force, find themselves on the trail of a massive international kidnapping and prostitution operation. From the author of the fabulous Professionals (#1) ($10.99). LEHANE, DENNIS coughlin WORLD GONE BY (#3) ($34.99) Ten years have passed since Joe Coughlin’s enemies killed his wife and destroyed his empire, and much has changed. Prohibition is dead, the world is at war again, and Joe’s son, Tomás, is growing up. Now, the former crime kingpin works as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, his wife’s homeland. A master who moves in and out of the black, white, and Cuban underworlds, Joe effortlessly mixes with Tampa’s social elite, U.S. Naval intelligence, the Lansky-Luciano mob, and the mob-financed government of Fulgencio Batista. He has everything—money, power, a beautiful mistress, and anonymity. But success cannot protect him from the dark truth of his past—and ultimately, the wages of a lifetime of sin will finally be paid in full. Sequel to Given Day (#1) and Live by Night (#2) ($21 each). LIPPMAN, LAURA monaghan HUSH (#12) ($33.50) On a searing August day, Melisandre Harris Dawes committed the unthinkable: she left her two-month-old daughter locked in a car while she sat nearby on the shores of the Patapsco River. Melisandre was found not guilty by reason of criminal insanity, although there was much skepticism about her mental state. Freed, she left the country, her husband, and her two surviving children, determined to start over. But now Melisandre has returned to Baltimore to meet with her estranged teenage daughters and film the reunion for a documentary. The problem is, she relinquished custody and her ex isn't sure he approves. Now that she's a mother herself, short on time and patience, Tess Monaghan wants nothing to do with a woman crazy enough to have killed her own child. But her mentor and close friend Tyner Gray, Melisandre's lawyer, has asked Tess and her new partner, retired Baltimore PD homicide detective Sandy Sanchez, to assess Melisandre's security needs. Tess has always felt that her curiosity about others is her SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. greatest strength. Yet the imperious Melisandre is someone she cannot begin to understand, much less empathize with. A decade ago, a judge ruled that Melisandre was beyond rational thought. But was she? Tess tries to keep her distance from her mercurial yet confident client. This strategy gets tricky after Melisandre becomes a prime suspect in a murder. And as her doubts about Melisandre grow, Tess realizes that she's under scrutiny as well, followed by a judgmental stalker with an ax to grind MASON, JAMIE MONDAY’S LIE ($29.99) Dee Aldrich rebelled against her off-centre upbringing when she married the most conventional man she could imagine: Patrick, her college sweetheart. But now, years later, her marriage is falling apart and she’s starting to believe that her husband has his eye on a new life, a life without her, one way or another. Haunted by memories of her late mother Annette, a former covert operations asset, Dee reaches back into her childhood to resurrect her mother’s lessons and the “spy games” they played together, in which Dee learned memory tricks and, most importantly, how and when to lie. But just as she begins determining the course of the future, she makes a discovery that will change her life: her mother left her a lot of money and her own husband seems to know more about it than Dee does. Now, before it’s too late, she must investigate her suspicions and untangle conspiracy from coincidence, using her mother’s advice to steer her through the blind spots. The trick, in the end, will be in deciding if a “normal life” is really what she wants at all. MAY, PETER RUNAWAY ($50) An expensive British import. In 1965, five teenage friends fled Glasgow for London to pursue their dream of musical stardom. Yet before year's end three returned, and returned damaged. In 2015, a brutal murder forces those three men, now in their sixties, to journey back to London and finally confront the dark truth they have run from for five decades. MAY, PETER lewis CHESSMEN (#3) ($26.99) Living again of the Isle of Lewis, ex-Detective Inspector Fin McLeod is working as a security officer for a local landowner. While investigating illegal activity on the estate Fin encounters the elusive poacher and former childhood friend Whistler Macaskill. But while Fin catches up with Whistler, the two witness a freak natural phenomenon, 'Bog Burst', which spontaneously drains a loch of its water, revealing a mudencased light aircraft with a sickeningly familiar moniker on its side. Both men immediately know that they will find inside: the body of Roddy Mackenzie, a friend whose flight disappeared more than seventeen years before. But when Whistler's face appears to register something other than shock, an icy chill of apprehension overtakes Fin. What secret has Whistler been hiding from him, and everyone else on the island? Fin is unprepared for how the truth about the past will alter the course of the future. See Marian’s Picks. MEISTER, ELLEN DOROTHY PARKER DRANK HERE ($31) Heavenly peace? No, thank you. Dorothy Parker would rather wander the famous halls of the Algonquin Hotel, drink in hand, searching for someone, anyone, who will keep her company on this side of eternity. After forty years she thinks she’s found the perfect candidate in Ted Shriver, a brilliant literary voice of the 1970s, silenced early in a promising career by a devastating plagiarism scandal. Now a prickly recluse, he hides away in the old hotel slowly dying of cancer, which he refuses to treat. If she can just convince him to sign the infamous guestbook of Percy Coates, Dorothy Parker might be able to persuade the jaded writer to spurn the white light with her. Ted, however, might be the only person living or dead who’s more stubborn than Parker, and he rejects her proposal outright. When a young, ambitious TV producer, Norah Wolfe, enters the hotel in search of Ted Shriver, Parker sees another opportunity to get what she wants. Instead, she and Norah manage to uncover such startling secrets about Ted’s past that the future changes for all of them. The first in the series is Farewell, Dorothy Parker ($16). e-MOM March 2015 Page 8 PEARCE, MICHAEL mamur MOUTH OF THE CROCODILE (#18) ($37.50) Atbara, Sudan, 1913. A dead man is fished out of the River Nile. An accident or something more sinister? A visiting Pasha from the Royal Household believes it was murder and that he himself was the intended target. He insists that the Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, escorts him on his return train journey to Cairo, for protection. It’s to be an eventful voyage. Matters take an unexpected turn when the train is stranded in the desert following a sandstorm. With the help of English schoolboy Jamie Nicholson, the Mamur Zapt pursues his investigations, convinced that at least one of his fellow passengers has a secret to hide. And what was the Pasha really doing in that remote corner of the Sudan? Could the Mamur Zapt’s deepest fears be true? Could he really be about to uncover a conspiracy against the British? PYPER, ANDREW DAMNED ($29.99) Danny Orchard wrote a bestselling memoir about his near-death experience in a fire that claimed the life of his twin sister, Ashleigh, but despite the resulting fame and fortune he’s never been able to enjoy his second chance at life. Ash won’t let him. In life, Danny’s charming and magnetic twin had been a budding psychopath who privately terrorized her family and death hasn’t changed her wicked ways. Ash has haunted Danny for twenty years and now, just when he’s met the love of his life and has a chance at real happiness, she wants more than ever to punish him for being alive so she sets her sights on Danny’s new wife and stepson. Danny knows what Ash really wants is him, and he’s prepared to sacrifice himself in order to save the ones he loves. The question is: will he make it back this time? ROWE, ROSEMARY FATEFUL DAY (#15) ($37.50) Libertus is passing the villa of his patron, Marcus Septimus Aurelius, when he sees an elaborate travelling carriage which has pulled up outside and is now blocking the road. Recognising that this may be an important visitor, Libertus approaches the carriage, intending to explain that Marcus is away, gone to Rome to visit his old friend Pertinax, who has recently been installed as Emperor. However, for his efforts, Libertus instead receives a torrent of abuse and the carriage-driver almost runs him down as he departs. Libertus is badly shaken, but goes back to the villa the next day to find out why there was no gatekeeper in evidence to deal with the stranger. There he finds a gruesome discovery: the man is dead and hanging in his hut, and none of the other house-slaves are to be found. Worse things are to follow as news arrives from Rome which will turn the lives, not only of Libertus and his family, but the whole Empire upside down SANSOM, C J shardlake LAMENTATION (#6) ($34.95) Summer, 1546. King Henry VIII is slowly, painfully dying. His Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle; whoever wins will control the government of Henry's successor, 8-year-old Prince Edward. As heretics are hunted across London, and the radical Protestant Anne Askew is burned at the stake, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry's 6th wife, Matthew Shardlake's old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr. Shardlake, still haunted by events aboard the warship Mary Rose the year before, is working on the Cotterstoke Will case, a savage dispute between rival siblings. Then, unexpectedly, he is summoned to Whitehall Palace and asked for help by his old patron, the now beleaguered and desperate Queen. For Catherine Parr has a secret. She has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King's attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. But, although the book was kept secret and hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen's private chamber, it has inexplicably vanished. Only one page has been found, clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer. Shardlake's investigations take him on a trail that begins among the backstreet printshops of London but leads him and Jack Barak into the dark and labyrinthine world of the politics of the royal court; a world he had sworn never to enter again. SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. Loyalty to the Queen will drive him into a swirl of intrigue inside Whitehall Palace, where Catholic enemies and Protestant friends can be equally dangerous, and the political opportunists, who will follow the wind wherever it blows, more dangerous than either. The theft of Queen Catherine's book proves to be connected to the terrible death of Anne Askew, while his involvement with the Cotterstoke litigants threatens to bring Shardlake himself to the stake. SHAW, WILLIAM KINGS OF LONDON (#2) ($29) London, November 1968. Detective Sergeant Breen has a death threat in his inbox and a mutilated body on his hands. The dead man was the wayward son of a rising politician and everywhere Breen turns to investigate, he finds himself obstructed and increasingly alienated. Breen begins to see that the abuse of power is at every level of society. And when his actions endanger those at the top, he becomes their target. Out in the cold, banished from a corrupt and fracturing system, Breen is finally forced to fight fire with fire. STEINHAUER, OLEN ALL THE OLD KNIVES ($27.99) Six years ago in Vienna, terrorists took over a hundred hostages, and the rescue attempt went terribly wrong. The CIA's Vienna station was witness to this tragedy, gathering intel from its sources during those tense hours, assimilating facts from the ground and from an agent on the inside. So when it all went wrong, the question had to be asked: Had their agent been compromised, and how? TYLER, L C elsie CROOKED HERRING (#5) ($39.99) Ethelred Tressider, mid-list crime writer, is surprised when fellow author Henry Holiday unexpectedly turns up on his doorstep. He's even more surprised when Henry confesses that he may have committed murder while drunk on New Year's Eve. Though he has little recollection of the night, Henry fears he may have killed drinking companion and fellow crime writer Crispin Vynall, and asks Ethelred to discreetly make enquiries in order to discover the truth. As Ethelred and his trusty agent Elsie begin to investigate, they discover that Henry has been set up, and now all that remains is for them to find out why and, more importantly...whodunit? WILLIAMS, TIMOTHY guadelo HONEST FOLK OF GUADELOUPE (#2) ($26.95) April 1990: French-Algerian judge Anne Marie Laveaud has been living and working in the French Caribbean département of Guadeloupe for more than a decade, but her days are still full of surprises. She is only just starting to investigate the suspicious suicide of a high-profile environmental activist and media personality when she is pulled off the case. Is it because she was getting too close to the truth? But the new case she’s been assigned takes precedence. The naked body of a white woman has been discovered on a beach. The victim’s remains offer no clues about her final hours. She was found without any of her belongings, and it seems she had been dead at least three days before anyone spotted her corpse. What turned this woman’s vacation in paradise into a final nightmare? As always, the story of a murdered white woman attracts international media attention. The pressure is on Anne Marie to solve the murder quickly, before bad publicity destroys the island’s all-important tourist industry. e-MOM March 2015 Page 9 Marco silent. Detective Carl Mørck wants to save the boy, but Marco’s trail leads him to a case that extends from Denmark to Africa, from embezzlers to child soldiers, from seemingly petty crime rings to the very darkest of cover-ups. A terrific series! AIRD, CATHERINE LAST WRITES ss ($11.99) Twenty-two brand new short stories. The indefatigable detective Inspector Sloan reappears in many of these stories with his sidekick Crosby. But there are also new characters to be met, such as the mysterious Malcolm Venables of the Secret Service. Full of delicious twists and turns, Last Writes is a collection to curl up with and savour. ALEXANDER, ELLIE bakeshop MEET YOUR BAKER (#1) ($9.99) Welcome to Torte-a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it's criminal. After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte's customers turns up dead, there's much ado about murder. The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival's newest board member. A modern-day Lady Macbeth, Nancy has given more than a few actors and artists enough reasons to kill her. Jules's high school sweetheart, Thomas, is the investigator on the case. His flirtations are as delicious as ever, and Jules can't help but want to have her cake and eat it too. ARCHER, CONNIE LADLE TO THE GRAVE (#4) ($9.99) By the Spoonful is Snowflake, Vermont’s most popular soup shop, but owner Lucky Jamieson doesn’t have any time to enjoy her success, she’s too busy trying to keep a lid on false accusations against her loved one. It’s almost May, and some of the local ladies have organized a pagan celebration in the woods to welcome spring. But the evening goes terribly wrong when one of the attendees winds up dead, apparently poisoned by an herbal concoction prepared by Lucky’s grandfather, Jack. Lucky’s sure her grandfather could not have made such a tragic mistake. But before she can clear him of suspicion, her best friend, Sophie, is diverted from planning her wedding to By the Spoonful chef Sage DuBois when she finds a dead man floating in the creek on her property. Now it’s up to Lucky to get both Sophie and Jack out of hot water. Recipes included. BALDACCI, DAVID robie TARGET (#3) ($11) The President knows it's a perilous, high-risk assignment. If he gives the order, he has the opportunity to take down a global menace, once and for all. If the mission fails, he would face certain impeachment, and the threats against the nation would multiply. So the president turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel. Together, Robie and Reel's talents as assassins are unmatched. But there are some in power who don't trust the pair. They doubt their willingness to follow orders. And they will do anything to see that the two assassins succeed, but that they do not survive. As they prepare for their mission, Reel faces a personal crisis that could well lead old enemies right to her doorstep, resurrecting the ghosts of her earlier life and bringing stark danger to all those close to her. And all the while, Robie and Reel are stalked by a new adversary: an unknown and unlikely assassin, a woman who has trained her entire life to kill, and who has her own list of targets, a list that includes Will Robie and Jessica Reel. BARR, NEVADA anna pigeon DESTROYER ANGEL (#18) ($11.99) Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the U.S. Park Services, sets off on ADLER-OLSEN, JUSSI dept q MARCO EFFECT (#5) ($18) a much-needed vacation: an autumn camping trip in the Iron Range in Fifteen-year-old Marco Jameson longs to become a Danish citizen upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Elizand go to school like a normal teenager. Unfortunately, his Uncle Zo- abeth, Heath's fifteen-year-old daughter; Leah, a wealthy designer of la forces the children of their former gypsy clan to beg and steal for outdoor equipment; and Katie, Leah's thirteen-year-old daughter. For his personal gain. When Marco discovers a dead body that proves the Heath, this getaway is the ultimate test to see whether Leah's camping true extent of Zola’s criminal activities, he goes on the run. But it gear can help make wilderness adventures more accessible to the disturns out his family members aren’t the only ones who want to keep abled. The trip starts off okay but on their second night disaster Paperbacks SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. strikes. Anna decides to go for a solo evening float on the Fox River but when she returns to the campsite, she is shocked to see, with her own two eyes, that a group of heavily armed thugs have abducted Heath and the others. Now, with limited resources and no access to the outside world, Anna must find a way to rescue the women from their captors, and brave the elements of the unforgiving North Woods, before it's too late. And time is running out. BATES, QUENTIN gunnhildur CHILLED TO THE BONE (#3) ($15.95) When Sergeant Gunnhildur Gísladóttir of the local police force is called in to investigate the death of a man found tied to a bed in one of Reykjavík's nicest hotels, she finds no sign of criminal activity but suspects there may be more to the case than meets the eye. Could the death of the shipowner be related to a local gangster’s recent return to Iceland after many years abroad? What begins as a straightforward case for Gunnhildur soon explodes into a dangerous investigation, involving a discreet bondage society that ruthless men will go to violent extremes to keep secret. BERNEY, LOU LONG AND FARAWAY GONE ($18.50) In the summer of 1986, two tragedies rocked Oklahoma City. Six movietheatre employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved. Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead. Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past, with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she’ll stop at nothing to find answers. As fate brings these damaged souls together, their obsessive quests spark sexual currents neither can resist. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? BLACK, BENJAMIN marlowe BLACK EYED BLONDE (#1) ($18.50) "It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving." So begins a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client arrives: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events, and soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest-and most ruthless-families. BLACK, CARA MURDER IN PIGALLE (#14) ($15.95) June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle, she’s five months pregnant and has the baby’s wellbeing to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighbourhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favorite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to. BOWEN, GAIL 12 ROSE STREET (#15) ($27.95) Joanne's husband Zack is the leading progressive candidate in a neck-and-neck race, with the existing mayor, for Regina's top job. The tough campaigning is well underway when a disturbing threat disrupts the celebration for the opening of the Racette-Hunter Centre, a project Zack has been spearheading, intended to benefit the impoverished community of North Central Regina. Joanne soon realizes that sinister inter- e-MOM March 2015 Page 10 ests are working behind the scenes of the election, and another savage act makes clear that someone will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo. The Shreve campaign perseveres, but when Zack's opponents share some shocking information about the BOX, C. J. STONE COLD (#14) ($11.99) Everything about the rich stranger is a mystery: the massive, isolated ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumours that the man’s wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out the truth. But he finds out a lot more than he bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe. He doesn’t frighten Joe at all. The other man is another story. BRADFORD, LAURA SUSPENDERED SENTENCE (#4) ($9.99) After the Stoltzfus barn catches fire, Claire is awed by the response of the community. Hundreds of Amish men gather together to raise a new barn for the family in a matter of days. But in the midst of the work, a human skeleton is unearthed. Found with the remains is half of a friendship bracelet last seen on Sadie Lehman, an Amish teen long believed to have left her strict upbringing for the allure of English ways. Now Detective Jakob Fisher, once a member of the Amish community himself, is determined to solve the young woman’s murder. With Claire’s help, he must dig into the past and bring to light long-buried secrets. BRIGHTWEKK, EMILY MRS. JEFFRIES SERVES AT SIX (#16, #17 and #18) ($19) Includes Mrs. Jeffries Pinches the Post, Mrs. Jeffries Pleads Her Case and Mrs. Jeffries Sweeps the Company. BRODY, FRANCES shackleton MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON (#3) ($18.50) Young Harriet and her brother Austin have always been scared of the quarry where their stone mason father works. So when they find him dead on the cold ground, they rush off quickly to look for some help. When help arrives, however, the quarry is deserted and there is no sign of the body. Were the children mistaken? Is their father not dead? Did he simply get up and run away? A sinister disappearing act. It seems like another unusual case requiring the expertise of Kate Shackleton, and Mary Jane, the children's mother, is adamant that only she can help. But Mary Jane is hiding something, a secret from Kate's past that raises the stakes and puts both Kate and her family at risk. BUCKLEY, CARLA DEEPEST SECRET ($18) Twelve years ago, Eve Lattimore’s life changed forever. Her two-year-old son Tyler on her lap, her husband’s hand in hers, she waited for the child’s devastating diagnosis: XP, a rare genetic disease, a fatal sensitivity to sunlight. Eve remembers that day every morning as she hustles Tyler up the stairs from breakfast before the sun rises, locking her son in his room, curtains drawn, computer glowing, as he faces another day of virtual schooling, of virtual friendships. But every moment of vigilance is worth it. This is Eve’s job, to safeguard her boy against the light, to protect his fragile life each day, to keep him alive, maybe even long enough for a cure to be found. Tonight, Eve’s life is about to change again, forever. It’s only an instant on a rainy road, just a quick text as she sits behind the wheel, and another mother’s child lies dead in Eve’s headlights. The choice she faces is impossible: confess and be taken from Tyler, or drive away and start to lie like she’s never lied before. BUDEWITZ, LESLIE ASSAULT AND PEPPER (#1) ($9.99) After leaving a dicey marriage and losing a beloved job in a corporate crash, Pepper Reece has found a new zest for life running a busy spice and tea shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Her aromatic creations are the talk of the town, and everyone stops by for a cup of her refreshing spice tea, even other shopkeepers and Market regulars. But when a panhandler named Doc shows up dead on the store’s doorstep, SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. a Seattle Spice Shop cup in his hand, the local gossip gets too hot for Pepper to handle, especially after the police arrest one of Pepper’s staffers, Tory Finch, for murder. Tory seems to know why she’s a suspect, but she refuses to do anything to curry help herself. Convinced her reticent employee is innocent, Pepper takes it on herself to investigate. Only, if she’s not careful, Pepper’s nosy ways might make her next on the killer’s list. BURLEY, JOHN FORGETTING PLACE ($18.50) Menaker State Hospital is a curse, a refuge, a prison, a necessity, a nightmare, a salvation. When Dr. Lise Shields arrived at the correctional psychiatric facility five years ago, she was warned that many of its patients, committed by Maryland's judicial system for perpetrating heinous crimes, would never leave. But what happens when a place like Menaker is corrupted, when it becomes a tool to silence the innocent, conceal injustice, contain secrets? Why is it that the newest patient does not seem to belong there, that the hospital administrator has fallen silent, and that Lise is being watched by two men with seemingly lethal intent? The answers are closer than she realizes and could cost her everything she holds dear. CARMACK, AMANDA elizabeth MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S GARDEN (#3) ($9.99) 1559. Elizabeth has been on the throne for six months, and life in England seems newly golden. Kate Haywood, the young queen’s personal musician, has been keeping busy playing for a merry round of summer parties where famed astrologer Dr. John Dee and his fantastic horoscopes are all the rage. However, Elizabeth’s favourite stargazer fails to predict the discovery of a skeleton in the queen’s garden, and that the victim’s identity will call his own innocence into question. When the doctor’s pupil is the victim of a second murder, the concerned queen enlists her trusted Kate to clear the accused killer of wrongdoing. CASEY, JANE kerrigan KILL (#5) ($21) An expensive British import. Detective Maeve Kerrigan is away for a colleague's wedding, and she's enjoying an excuse to spend a beautiful fall weekend relaxing in the English countryside. It's a much-needed break from the grit and grime of her daily life on the London police force. But even at a wedding, the job is never far away. Midway through the reception, Maeve and her abrasive but loyal partner on the police force, DI Josh Derwent, are called back to London. A fellow policeman has been murdered, in a compromising position in a public park at night. And when Maeve and Derwent arrive to speak with the victim's family, his wife and daughter are surprisingly cold and reticent, which adds further layers of complexity to an already delicate investigation. And Maeve knows the victim and his family aren't the only ones with things to hide: the dark secret that her boss, Superintendent Godley, has been keeping for years is threatening to blow up in his face, and if that happens, they'll all be caught in the aftermath. CASH, WILEY THIS DARK ROAD TO MERCY ($18.50) After their mother unexpectedly dies, twelve-year-old Easter Quillby and her six-year-old sister, Ruby, aren't expecting to see their errant father, Wade, ever again. But the ex–minor league baseball player who's been gone for years has suddenly appeared at their foster home to steal them away in the middle of the night. Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, begins looking for them, and quickly turns up unsettling information linking their father to a multimillion-dollar robbery. But Brady isn't the only hunter on the trail. Robert Pruitt, a mercurial man nursing a years-old vendetta, is determined to find Wade and claim his due. CASS, LAURIE BORROWED CRIME (#3) When Minnie loses a grant that was supposed to keep the bookmobile running, she’s worried her pet project could come to its final page. But she’s determined to keep her patrons, and Eddie’s fans, happy and well read. She just needs her boss, Stephen to see things her way, and make sure he doesn’t see Eddie. The library director doesn’t exactly know about the bookmobile’s furry co-pilot. But when a volunteer dies on the e-MOM March 2015 Page 11 bookmobile’s route, Minnie finds her traveling library in an even more precarious position. Although the death was originally ruled a hunting accident, a growing stack of clues is pointing towards murder. It’s up to Minnie and Eddie to find the killer. CHILDS, LAURA tea STEEPED IN EVIL (#15) ($9.99) Theodosia has never considered herself a wine connoisseur, tea has always been…well, her cup of tea. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to pass up an invitation to a fancy wine-tasting party at the upscale Knighthall Winery, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Unfortunately, a sweet evening takes on a bitter aftertaste when a dead body is discovered in one of the wine barrels. The son of proprietor Jordan Knight has been murdered. Dissatisfied with the police investigation, Knight turns to Theo for help. She’s heard through the grapevine that there are both family and business problems at Knighthall. They say in vino veritas, but everyone at the winery seems to be lying through their teeth. Sorting through the guest list as well as family and staff, Theo has her pick of suspects. Includes recipes and tea tips. CHRISTOPHER, ADAM ELEMENTARY: THE GHOST LINE ($9.99) Summons to a bullet-riddled body in a Hell’s Kitchen apartment marks the start of a new case for consulting detectives Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson. The victim is a subway train driver with a hidden stash of money and a strange Colombian connection, but why would someone kill him and leave a fortune behind? The search for the truth will lead the sleuths deep into the hidden underground tunnels beneath New York City, where answers, and more bodies, may well await them. CLEELAND, ANNE MURDER IN RETRIBUTION (#2) ($8.99) Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, Lord Acton, and rookie detective Kathleen Doyle ruffle more than a few feathers at CID Headquarters when their relationship comes to light. But office politics quickly become trivial amid a rash of underworld murders. As the body count climbs, Doyle uncovers a vicious war over lucrative turf between the Russian mafia and an Irish terrorist group. But their acts of revenge are almost too much for Scotland Yard to keep up with and when Acton seems unusually troubled by the crimes, Doyle wonders what sparked the conflict in the first place. COLLINS, MAX A quarry QUARRY’S CHOICE (#11) ($11.95) Quarry is a pro in the murder business. When the man he works for becomes a target himself, Quarry is sent South to remove a traitor in the ranks. But in this wide-open city, with sin everywhere, and betrayal around every corner, Quarry must make the most dangerous choice of his deadly career: who to kill? COOK, JOSH EXAGGERATED MURDER ($16.95) Private investigator Trike Augustine may be a brainiac with deductive skills to rival Sherlock Holmes, but they’re not doing him any good at solving the case of a missing gazzilionaire because the clues are so stupefyingly—well, stupid. Meanwhile, his sidekicks, Max the former FBI agent and Lola the artist, don’t quite rise to the level of Dr. Watson, either. For example, when a large, dead pig turns up on Trike’s floor in the middle of the night, none of them can figure out what it means. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking as the astronomical reward being offered diminishes drastically every day. COOK, THOMAS H BLOOD INNOCENTS ($30) This is the first mystery that Mr. Cook wrote and was originally published in 1980. Due to its higher cost we won’t stock the book but will order it for you if you would like a copy. Blood seeps into the gutters at the children’s zoo in Central Park. Two deer have been slaughtered, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other slashed across the neck. Normally it would be a case for the Parks Department, but these are no ordinary deer. The pride of the small menagerie, they were given to the zoo by a prominent socialite who cannot afford bloody headlines. The NYPD hands the case to Detective Reardon, star of the homicide squad. A recent widower at fifty-six, Reardon has seen too many hu- SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. man victims to care much about the two butchered animals. He resents being taken off other pressing cases for the sake of politics, but soon another killing snaps him to attention. Two women are found dead in their apartment, one stabbed fifty-seven times and the other with her throat cut. Surely this vicious parallel isn’t a coincidence. CRAIG, JAMES carlyle SHOOT TO KILL (#7) ($15.99) When French gangster Tuco Martinez threatens Carlyle and his family, the inspector has to call on the resources and skills of Dominic Silver to try and see him off. But Dom won’t do all the dirty work and so Carlyle has to go into hiding. Cut off from his home turf, both literally and metaphorically, Carlyle struggles to cope with the situation while meanwhile, back in London, the charismatic major, Christian Holroyd, is finally spiralling completely out of control? CUTTER, NICK DEEP ($19.99) Special orders only on this title. It takes about a week to get it into the store. A strange plague called the ’Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget, small things at first, like where they left their keys, then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as “ambrosia” has been discovered, a universal healer, from initial reports. It may just be the key to a universal cure. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab, the Trieste, has been built eight miles under the sea’s surface. But now the station is incommunicado, and it’s up to a brave few to descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine. DAHEIM, MARY emma lord ALPINE YEOMAN (#25) ($9.99) An ill wind blows through Alpine, but Advocate publisher Emma Lord and Sheriff Milo Dodge seem immune to the prevailing angst. The newlyweds’ domestic idyll is most definitely over when a dead man is discovered near the fish hatchery and nobody has a clue as to his identity. Vida Runkel may have insight, but Emma’s redoubtable House & Home editor is mad at the world and saying little. Moreover, whispers of scandal travel through the quaint streets when some high school girls mysteriously take a walk on the wild side. And then Milo’s dedicated deputy, Sam Heppner, a true yeoman, suddenly goes AWOL. What’s happening in Alpine? If Milo knows, he’s not telling Emma. And Emma’s again headed for trouble when she starts snooping. The situation grows even more fraught when a shocking link is revealed between the mystery corpse and one of Alpine’s own, unearthing a long-buried dark secret. Tongues are wagging on Front Street—and the gossip contains an air of menace. I wonder what she is going to do after we get Alpine Z….? DE GIOVANNI, MAURIZIO VIPER (#6) ($19) Springtime proffers fragrant temptations to the men and women of Naples. But evil also lurks in the sweet-smelling spring air. It is one week before Easter, Naples, 1932. At the high-class brothel in the centre of town known as Paradiso, Viper, the most famous prostitute of all, is found dead. Suffocated with a pillow. Her last client swears that when he left her she was alive and well. But when her next client arrived, he found her dead. Who killed her and why? Ricciardi has to untangle a complex knot of greed, frustration, jealousy and rancor in order to solve the riddle of Viper’s death. As he does so, he will discover no end of conflicting emotions just beneath the surface of a city that lives on passion. DEAVER, JEFFERY OCTOBER LIST ($9) Two days ago, Gabriela's life was normal. Then, out of the blue, she gets word that her six-year-old daughter has been taken. She's given an ultimatum: pay half a million dollars and find a mysterious document known as the "October List" within 30 hours, or she'll never see her child again. DISHER, GARRY challis DRAGON MAN (#1) ($9.99) Meet e-MOM March 2015 Page 12 Hal Challis, Detective for the Mornington Peninsula police force in Southeast Australia, in the first investigation in this prize-winning crime series. It was originally published in 1999. A serial killer is on the loose in a small coastal town near Melbourne, Australia. Detective Inspector Hal Challis and his team must apprehend him before he strikes again. But first, Challis has to contend with the editor of a local newspaper who undermines his investigation at every turn, and with his wife, who attempts to resurrect their marriage through longdistance phone calls from a sanitarium, where she has been committed for the past eight years for attempted murder—his. DUGONI, ROBERT MY SISTER'S GRAVE (#1) ($20.95) Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House, a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder, is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers. When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past and open the door to deadly danger. EGHOLM, ELSEBETH boutrup DEAD SOULS (#2) ($22.99) For fans of Jussi Adler-Olsen and Camilla Lackberg comes Danish crime writer Elsebeth Egholm. On All Hallows' Eve, ex-convict Peter Boutrup is visiting his best friend's grave when her estranged mother appears. Her son, Magnus, has disappeared, and she begs Peter to look for him. The next day a young nun is pulled out of the moat at the convent in Djursland. She has been garrotted and Peter, who works there as a carpenter, was the last person to see her alive. Meanwhile, diver Kir Røjel finds an old box resting on the seabed. Inside are human bones. They are sixty years old, but the victim had also been garrotted. While Peter is looking for Magnus, Detective Mark Bille Hansen is assigned to the case. He is determined to link the bones in the box with the girl in the moat, but the hunt for the truth leads both he and Peter down a path so dark, they fear they may never return. The first in the series is Three Dog Night ($22.99). FIFIELD, CHRISTY MURDER TIES THE KNOT (#4) ($9.99) It’s winter in Keyhole Bay, Florida, and while the tourist trade is slow, souvenir shop owner Glory Martine is busy with her best friend’s wedding. As her friends Karen and Riley approach their wedding day, Glory could use a break from the nuptial madness. She takes a peaceful drive to Alabama’s piney woods to pick up the wedding quilt she ordered from a supplier. But the supplier, Beth, has disappeared along with the quilt and her husband, Everett. Glory learns that two men were found murdered near Beth and Everett’s home and that the couple is wanted for questioning. Believing they are innocent, Glory convinces them to cooperate with authorities. But when they’re thrown in jail, Glory vows to catch the real killer before one happy couple walks down the aisle and another gets sent up the river. The first three in the series are Murder Buys a T Shirt, Murder hooks a Mermaid ($8.99 each) and Murder Sends a Postcard ($9.99). FLETCHER & BAIN ALOHA BETRAYED ($9.99) Jessica is on the Hawaiian island of Maui, giving a lecture on community involvement in police investigations. Her co-lecturer is legendary retired detective Mike Kane, who shares his love of Hawaiian lore, legends, and culture with Jessica. But the talking stops when the body of a colleague is found at the rocky foot of a cliff. Mala Kapule, a botanist and popular professor at Maui College, was known for her activism and efforts on behalf of the volcanic crater Haleakala. Plans to place the world’s largest solar telescope there split the locals, with Mala arguing fiercely to preserve the delicate ecology of the area. Now it’s up to Jessica and Mike to uncover who was driven to silence the sci- SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. entist and betray the spirit of aloha. FREVELETTI, JAMIE GENEVA STRATEGY ($18) On one evening in Washington, DC, several high-ranking members of government disappear in a mass kidnapping. Among the kidnapped is Nick Rendel, a computer software coding expert in charge of drone programming and strategy. He is the victim with the most dangerous knowledge, including confidential passwords and codes that are used to program the drones. If revealed, his kidnappers could reprogram the drones to strike targets within the United States. Jon Smith and the Covert One team begin a worldwide search to recover the officials, but as the first kidnapping victims are rescued, they show disturbing signs of brainwashing or mind-altering drugs. Smith's investigation leads him to Fort Detrick, where a researcher, Dr. Laura Taylor, had been attempting to create a drug to wipe memory from soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. But Dr. Taylor's research was suspended almost a year ago, when she was placed in a mental institution. Now, if Smith doesn't figure out the brainwashing drug, and track down the kidnapped Nick Rendel, the kidnappers will soon have the power to carry out drone strikes anywhere in the world. FULLER, SAMUEL BRAINQUAKE ($14.95) The bagmen who transport money for organized crime live by a set of rules: no personal relationships, no ties, no women and never, ever look inside the bag you’re carrying. Paul Page was the perfect bagman, despite suffering from a rare brain disorder. But that ended the day he saw a beautiful Mob wife become a Mob widow. Now Paul is going to break every rule he’s lived by, even if it means he might be left holding the bag. GAGE, LEIGHTON silva WAYS OF EVIL MEN (#7) ($14.95) The Awana tribe, who live in the remote Amazon jungle in the Brazilian state of Pará, have dwindled to only 41 members and now 39 of them have dropped dead of what looks like poison. The neighbouring white townsfolk don’t seem to be mourning the genocide much, in fact, the only person who seems to care at all is Jade Calmon, the official tribal relations agent assigned to the area. She wants justice for the two survivors, a father and his 8-year-old son. But racism is deeply entrenched and no one is going to help her get to the truth. Unfortunately, this is far from the first time the Brazilian federal police have had a tribal genocide to investigate. Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team are sent in from Brasilia to try to solve the increasingly complex case just as a local white man is discovered murdered. Someone has done their best to frame the surviving Awana man, and the town is about to erupt. GAILEY, SAMUEL W DEEP WINTER ($18) As a powerful winter blizzard converges on a small Pennsylvania town, a local woman is found brutally murdered. All evidence points to Danny Bedford, the town outcast, when he is discovered cradling the bloody body. Danny manages to escape into the darkened woods, but he is pursued by the vindictive deputy sheriff, the victim's brothers, and distraught townspeople demanding justice. During the freezing night that follows, an intricate web of lies is uncovered, revealing that not everything in the town is quite what it seems, which sets off an unstoppable chain of events that changes the townspeople forever. GORE, STEVEN donnally NIGHT IS THE HUNTER ($18.50) Twenty years ago, Judge Ray McMullin proved to the people of San Francisco that he could pull that trigger by sentencing Israel Dominguez to death for a gangland murder. But it meant suppressing his own doubts about whether the punishment really did fit the crime. Now, as the execution date nears, the conscience-wracked judge confesses his unease to former homicide detective Harlan Donnally on a riverbank in far Northern California. And after immersing himself in the Norteño and Sureño gang wars, which left trails of bullets and blood crisscrossing the state, and in the betrayals of both cops and crooks alike, Donnally is forced to question not only whether the penalty was undeserved but the conviction itself. Soon those doubts e-MOM March 2015 Page 13 and questions double back, for in the aging judge's panic, in his lapses of memory and his confusions, Donnally begins to wonder whether he's chasing the facts of the case or just phantoms of a failing mind. But there's no turning back, for the edge of night is fast closing in on Dominguez, on McMullin, and on Donnally himself. GROSS, ANDREW EVERYTHING TO LOSE ($12.50) While driving along a suburban back road, Hilary Cantor, who's just lost her job and whose deadbeat husband has left her to care for her son who has Asperger's, witnesses a freakish accident when a deer suddenly darts in front of the car ahead of her. The driver careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Rushing to help, she discovers the car smoking, the driver dead, and a satchel on the floor stuffed with a half million dollars. That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep her son in school. In an instant, this honest, achieving woman who has always done the responsible thing makes a decision that puts her in the centre of a maelstrom of unforeseeable consequences and life-threatening recriminations. It isn't long before someone comes looking for the money, and as they get closer and closer to Hilary, she is pulled into a terrifying scheme involving a twenty-year-old murder, an old woman whose entire life has been washed out to sea by the storm, and a powerful figure determined to maintain the secret that can destroy him. With everything to lose and putting everything she loves at risk, Hilary joins up with a dogged police official from Staten Island who has his own connections to the money and is dealing with his family's tragic struggles in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Together they must fight to bring down an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep buried what that money was meant to silence. HAGBERG, DAVID macgarvey BLOOD PACT (#17) ($10.99) A large portion of the fabulous treasure originally stolen by conquistadors of the eighteenth century was buried in the desert of southern New Mexico by Spanish monks. Jacob Ambli, a Catholic priest, was sent as a spy on a Spanish military mission to find seven caches left for the Church. He kept a diary showing the locations, but was murdered trying to get back to Rome, and the journal was lost. Now, a century and a half later, the diary has come to light, and the Spanish government, Cuban intelligence agency, and the Catholic Church are racing to be the first to claim it. Kirk McGarvey is approached by a shadowy organization that wants to beat all of them to the book, the Voltaire Society, a mysterious group whose purpose is shrouded in the history of the United States. The chase takes Mac from Washington to Malta and finally to Seville, where he comes up against a fifth foe, one of the most ruthless assassins he has ever confronted, who has made a blood pact with the agents of the devil to find the lost treasure no matter what the cost. HAINES, CAROLYN bones BOOTY BONES (#14) ($9.99) Sarah Booth Delaney's fiancé, Graf, is recovering from a severe leg injury, and Sarah Booth knows just how to help him heal. She's arranged a romantic getaway for the two of them at a lovely beach cottage on Dauphin Island off the Gulf Coast. On the first day of their island adventure, they take a historical tour led by a woman named Angela, who is well-versed in local lore, including but not limited to rumours of pirate treasure hidden somewhere on the island. HALE, REBECCA H cats HOW TO CATCH A CAT (#6) ($9.99) A serial killer with a peculiar penchant for City Hall interns is on the loose in San Francisco, and it’s up to me and my two cats, Rupert and Isabella, to put a stop to the spree. Unfortunately, worrying about my uncle Oscar’s failing health and assisting with the interim mayor’s America’s Cup regatta doesn’t leave me with much opportunity to chase down clues.Could the key to apprehending the killer be found in San Francisco’s sailing history? The first European vessel to pass through the Golden Gate contained a familiar cast of human, and feline, passengers as well as an elusive killer who used a similar murder weapon. Will the past catch up to the present in time to crack the case? SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. HERBERT, A L MURDER WITH FRIED CHICKEN AND WAFFLES ($16.95) Welcome to Mahalia's Sweet Tea, the finest soul food restaurant in Prince George's County, Maryland. In between preparing her famous cornbread and mashed potatoes so creamy "they'll make you want to slap your Momma," owner Halia Watkins is about to dip her spoon into a grisly mystery. (I wonder if there is a recipe for those mashed potatoes in the book!). Halia Watkins has her hands full cooking, hosting, and keeping her boisterous young cousin, Wavonne, from getting too sassy with customers. Having fast-talking entrepreneur Marcus Rand turn up in her kitchen is annoying enough when he's alive, but finding his dead body face-down on her ceramic tile after hours is much worse. Marcus had his enemies, and the cast iron frying pan beside his corpse suggests that at last, his shady business deals went too far. Halia is desperate to keep Sweet Tea's name out of the sordid spotlight but her efforts only make Wavonne a prime suspect. Features delicious recipes from Mahalia's Sweet Tea, including Sour Cream Corn Bread and Sweet Corn Casserole! (But mashed potatoes??? I’ll have to get Marian to look). HURLEY, GRAHAM suttle TOUCHING DISTANCE (#2) ($15.99) Remember to ask us if you bought this title last year in a larger trade paperback edition. DS Jimmy Suttle is trying to get his life back on track. His marriage has fallen apart and he rarely sees his young daughter, Grace. But then a murder shuts the door on the chaos of his personal life. The victim was shot through the head at the wheel of his car on a lonely moorland road. The only witness? His two-year-old son, strapped into the rear child seat. Within days, two more killings, equally professional, equally without motive. Meanwhile, Suttle's estranged wife is embarking on an investigation of her own in the world of journalism. But the story brings her to the question at the very heart of Jimmy's case: what does it take to make a man kill? The first in the series is Western Approaches ($15.99). JACKSON, LISA CLOSE TO HOME ($9.99) Along the shores of Oregon's wild Columbia River, the Victorian mansion where Sarah McAdams grew up is as foreboding as she remembers. The moment she and her two daughters, Jade and Gracie, pull up the isolated drive, Sarah is beset by uneasy memories of her cold, distant mother, of the half-sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found on the widow's walk, feverish and delirious. But Sarah has vowed to make a fresh start and renovate the old place. Between tending to her girls and the rundown property, she has little time to dwell on the past. Until a new, more urgent menace enters the picture. One by one, teenage girls are disappearing. Frantic for her daughters' safety, Sarah feels the house's walls closing in on her again. Somewhere deep in her memory is the key to a very real and terrifying danger. And only by confronting her most terrifying fears can she stop the nightmare roaring back to life once more. JAMES, PETER ATOM BOMB ANGEL ($16.99) Originally published in 1982. Terrorists are threatening to sabotage Britain's nuclear power plants. One nuclear explosive smuggled inside a reactor would turn the entire core into a massive atom bomb and bring death and disease to millions of people for centuries to come. When Sir Isaac Quoit, chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, disappears without trace, MI5 are alerted to the mysterious Operation Angel. Slick superspy Max Flynn is briefed to crack the code, but can he beat the deadline before Angel strikes? Who are the terrorists? Why are the KGB involved? What are their aims and which power stations will they sabotage? If he does not act fast, Britain will be engulfed in a nuclear nightmare. KUZNETSOV, SERGEY BUTTERFLY SKIN ($16.95) When a brutal and sadistic serial killer begins stalking the streets of Moscow, Xenia, an ambitious young newspaper editor, takes it upon herself to attempt to solve the mystery of the killer's identity. As her obsession with the killer grows, Xenia devises an elaborate website with the intention of ensnaring the murderer, only to discover something disturb- e-MOM March 2015 Page 14 ing about herself: her own unhealthy fascination with the sexual savagery of the murders. LAMBDIN, DEWEY adam lewri KINGS MARAUDER (#20) ($20.50) The year 1807 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy. He's living at his father's estate at Anglesgreen, recovering from a wound suffered in the South Atlantic. At last there's a bright spot. Admiralty awards him a new commission, not a frigate but a clumsy, slow two-decker, Fourth Rate 50. Are his frigate days over for good? Lewrie's ordered to Gibraltar, but Foreign Office Secret Branch's spies and manipulators have use for him, again! HMS Sapphire is the wrong ship for the task, raising chaos and mayhem along the Spanish coasts, and servicing agents and informers. What he's ordered to do needs soldiers, landing craft, and a transport ship, all of which he doesn't have, and must find a way to finagle it. He could beg off and say that it's asking too much, but Lewrie is not a man to admit failure and defeat, and his quest might prove the most daunting of his long naval career. LEON, DONNA BY ITS COVER (#23) ($21.95) One afternoon, Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, a visiting American professor. But the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, it becomes clear that he is not who he said he was. As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless character turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or guilty. LEVINE, LAURA jaine austen KILLING CUPID (#12) ($8.99) When Jaine lands a job writing web copy and brochures for matchmaker Joy Amoroso, she's excited for a chance to help the lovelorn, until she realizes Joy is a ruthless taskmaster who screams at her employees for the smallest infractions, pads her website with pictures of professional models posing as clients, and offers up convincing but empty promises of love. So it's no surprise when the chiseling cupid turns up dead at a Valentine's Day mixer. Now, finding the culprit may prove harder than spotting that elusive caramel praline in a box of chocolates MACDONALD, JOHN D travis SCARLET RUSE (#14), TURQUOISE LAMENT (#15), DREADFUL LEMON SKY (#16), EMPTY COPPER SEA (#17), CINNAMON SKIN (#20), LONELY SILVER RAIN (#21), ($18 each) and BRIGHT ORANGE FOR THE SHROUD (#6) ($19) We recently ordered some Travis McGee stories for a customer. If there is a “colour” you don’t think you have read, ask us and we will see if it is back in print. MACHUGH/MCHUGH, MARY hoofers FLAMENCO FLAN AND FATALITIES (#2) ($8.99) The high-kicking Happy Hoofers, Tina, Janice, Pat, Mary Louise, and Gini, have been booked to flaunt their fabulous flamenco footwork on a luxury train ride through northern Spain. But when a blowhard talk show host is found deader than four-day-old flan--with Gini as suspect numero uno, the feisty friends waste no time stepping into their sleuthing shoes to protect one of their own. The dynamite dancers will have to step up their game before a clever killer brings the curtain down on one of them for good! The first in the series is Chorus Line, Caviar and Corpses ($8.99). MACKEVETT/MCKEVETT, G A savannah KILLER PHYSIQUE (#19) ($8.99) Plus-sized P.I. Savannah Reid gets a taste of the high life when she attends a Hollywood premiere on the arm of husband Dirk Coulter. Savannah may be a newlywed, but even she gets weak in the knees when she meets celebrity athlete-turned-movie -star Jason Tyrone. So imagine how she feels when the star’s turns up dead. Though the autopsy reveals Jason may have gotten his killer body through doping, no one wants to believe the beloved athlete is a fraud, least of all Savannah. Soon she’s deeply immersed in the dark SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. world of body enhancing drugs, and wondering if the world-class gym where Jason worked out is really just a front for a lucrative drug ring. Was Jason’s death the price he paid for threatening to expose other celebrities caught in the clutch of keeping a flawless image? Or was everyone’s favourite hero a victim of his own desire to always be at the top of his game? MALLOCK FACES OF GOD ($18) Murder and depravity are Police Commissioner Amédée Mallock’s daily bread. As far as he is concerned, mankind has been thoroughly abandoned by God, and the visions that haunt him do nothing to disabuse him of this notion. But nothing he has encountered has prepared him for the sudden appearance of a serial killer dubbed “the Make-up Artist.” The bodies of the killer’s first victims, found in four separate neighbourhoods of Paris, are monstrous works of art, baroque masterpieces of depravity, and demented expressions of corrupted piety. These crimes are unprecedented in their ferocity and their intricacy, and the deeper Mallock investigates the greater the mysteries and the enigmas. Foremost among them: is a solution to a series of crimes behind which the devil himself seems to lurk even conceivable? MARSTON, EDWARD home fron FIVE DEAD CANARIES (#3) ($17.99) Marmion and Keedy return for a third time in the acclaimed Home Front Detective series. The first two are Bespoke Murders and Instrument of Slaughter ($17.99 each). As thousands of Brits are fighting on the Front Line, a new breed of women emerges to hold the Home Front together. Fiercely independent and fiery-spirited, these women are a raucous group of munition workers. One group of 'canaries', so-called because of their chemically-stained yellow faces, decide to celebrate leader Florrie Duncan?s birthday but their frolics are soon cut short when all but one are killed in a startling explosion. With five times the victims there are five times the possible motivations for the murder, and Marmion and Keedy certainly uncover some surprising clues. Grappling with this perplexing murder mystery involves marital dysfunction, failed bomb plots and an extremely competitive women?s football team. MOFINA, RICK FULL TILT ($10.50) Deep in the woods of upstate New York a woman flees a blazing barn. She is burned beyond recognition, and her dying words point police to a labyrinth of "confinement rooms", rooms designed to hold human beings captive, where they make other chilling discoveries. In Manhattan, Kate Page, a single mom and reporter with a newswire service, receives a heartstopping call from a detective on the case. A guardian angel charm found at the scene fits the description of the one belonging to Kate's sister, Vanessa, who washed away after a car crash in a mountain river twenty years ago. Kate has spent much of her life searching for the truth behind her little sister's disappearance. Now, a manhunt for a killer who's kept a collection of victims prisoner for years without detection becomes her final chance to either mourn Vanessa's death or save her life. MORRIGAN, LAURA HORSE OF A DIFFERENT KILLER (#3) (#9.99) Animal behaviorist Grace Wilde’s psychic ability gives her insight into the minds of all kinds of creatures. If only humans were as easy to read. Dead men may tell no tales, but they can screw up your life with a few phone calls. Grace’s abusive ex-brother-in-law, Anthony Ortega, needs her help, at least that’s what he said on the messages he left before his sudden death. Grace is inclined to let the matter rest in peace, but when her sister is named a suspect, Grace decides to get to the bottom of the cryptic calls. Her only lead is Ortega’s fiancée, who believes that he had arranged to surprise her with the purchase of a Frisian gelding named Heart. The horse was being stabled at the R-n-R Ranch, but was taken in the middle of the night. Now, with her sister in trouble and a missing horse on her hands, Grace hopes the information harnessed from her psychic skills will be enough to catch the killer. The first two in the series are Woof at the Door ($8.99) and Tiger’s Tale ($9.99). e-MOM March 2015 Page 15 MOSLEY, WALTER DEBBIE DOESN’T DO IT ANYMORE ($17.95) Millions of men and (no doubt many) women have watched famed black porn queen Debbie Dare, she of the blond wig and blue contacts, “do it” on television and computer screens in every combination of partners and positions imaginable. But after an unexpected and thunderous on-set orgasm catches her unawares, Debbie returns home to find her porn-producer husband dead, electrocuted in their hot tub in the midst of “auditioning” an aspiring young starlet. Burdened with massive debt incurred by her husband, and which various L.A. heavies want to collect on, Debbie must find a way to extricate herself from the peculiar subculture of the porn industry and reconcile herself to sacrifices she’s made along the way. MUIR, FRANK gilchrist MEATING ROOM (#5) ($24) An expensive British import. When the body of Thomas Magner's business partner is found dead in his car on the outskirts of Anstruther, all evidence points to suicide. And Magner himself, a wealthy property developer, is currently under investigation for a series of alleged rapes from 30 years ago. In total 15 women are prepared to go to court to testify against Magner but one by one they inexplicably withdraw their complaints until only five remain. With the CPS now reconsidering its case, one of Magner's accusers is killed in a hit-and-run and the abandoned car is found to be registered to one T Magner. DCI Andy Gilchrist is assigned to the hit-and-run case and soon discovers that Magner's murky past is very much seeping into the present. How did he acquire his wealth? How did his first wife die? Why did his business partner commit suicide? And was Magner a serial rapist in his youth? Or was he something far worse? A terrific series. MURPHY, JENNIFER I LOVE YOU MORE ($18.95) Picasso Lane is twelve years old when her father, Oliver, is murdered at their summer beach house in North Carolina. Her mother, Diana, is the primary suspect, at least until the police discover his second wife, Jewels, and his third, Bert. The new widows say they have never met, but Picasso knows otherwise. She remembers the late-night visits, the hushed phone calls, and the whispered planning. Soon, however, it becomes clear that the “perfect murder” was not so perfect after all. Each woman pleads innocence, claiming that she backed out of the plan at the last second. And it’s up to Picasso to sorts through the lies and half-truths. NADEL, BARBARA ikmen LAND OF THE BLIND (#17) ($22.99) A body is found in the ruined Constantinople hippodrome: a woman, clutching a piece of red stone. She's recently given birth, but there's no sign of the baby. Inspector Cetin Ikmen discovers she was a Byzantine specialist on a crusade to protect the historic but now squalid areas of Istanbul that her enemy, property developer Ahmet Oden, seeks to destroy and rebuild. As Ikmen searches for the lost child and the truth behind her death, the people of Istanbul rise up in protest against their government in Gezi Park, and the city lurches into chaos and anger. Against this background, Ikmen will unravel a tale of ancient hostility and modern desires, where the truth is concealed within the secret history of this antique city. NIVEN, JOHN AMATEURS ($18.50) Gary Irvine's wife refuses to sleep with him, so he pursues an even stingier mistress: golf. But despite his spending unconscionable amounts of time and money, his game is wretched. Until the day he takes a perfect swing and then everything goes black. After waking up from a coma a few weeks later, with a golf-ball-sized dent in his temple, Gary discovers that his last perfect swing has been imprinted on his brain. However, his newfound prowess is accompanied by some troubling side effects, most noticeably Tourette's. As Gary miraculously advances to the final round of the British Open, his delinquent brother, Lee, stumbles from one botched drug deal to another, his orbit drawing ever nearer to the terrifying local crime lord Ranta Campbell. With their lives on the line, Gary and Lee must rediscover the ties that bind to survive a blood-soaked final round. SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. NIVEN, JOHN KILL YOUR FRIENDS ($18.50) As the twentieth century breathes its very last, with Britpop at its zenith, twenty-sevenyear-old A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through London’s music industry. Blithely crisscrossing the globe in search of the next megahit, fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of selfgratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of “cutthroat” to murderous new levels. ORGAIN, DIANA FIRST DATE WITH DEATH (#1) ($9.99) What was Georgia thinking? Sure, some cad ditched her at the altar, but can she really find love on TV? Her best friend, and producer of the reality show Love or Money, thinks so. Ten men. Ten adventure-filled dates. What can go wrong? For starters, a faulty bungee cord that hurls Georgia’s first date into a tragic spiral off the Golden Gate Bridge. He’s replaced by Paul Sanders, Georgia’s former fiancé. But the cop isn’t looking for a TV gig. Suspecting that the lover’s leap was no accident, Paul’s going undercover. When another bachelor gets a fatal kiss-off, the reality is that someone has killer new plans for the show and for Georgia herself. Now, under the threat of permanent cancellation, Georgia fears that the only man on the set she can trust is the one man she just can’t count on. OSWALD, JAMES maclean DEAD MEN’S BONES (#4) ($24) An expensive British import. Morag Weatherly and her two young daughters have been shot by husband Andrew, an influential politician, before he turned the gun on himself. But what would cause a rich, successful man to snap so suddenly? For Inspector Tony McLean, this apparently simple but high-profile case leads him into a world of power and privilege. And the deeper he digs, the more he realises he's being manipulated by shadowy factions. Under pressure to wrap up the case, McLean instead seeks to uncover layers of truth, putting the lives of everyone he cares about at risk. PATTERSON, JAMES (with DAVID ELIS) INVISIBLE ($18) Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected. That is, until Emmy finds a piece of evidence he can't afford to ignore. More murders are reported by the day and they're all inexplicable. No motives, no murder weapons, no suspects. Could one person really be responsible for these unthinkable crimes? PERSSON, LEIF G W backstr LINDA, AS IN THE LINDA MURDER (#1) ($27) A very expensive British import. Winner of the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel 2014. In the middle of an unusually hot Swedish summer, a young woman studying at the Vaxjo Police Academy is brutally murdered. Police Inspector Evert Bäckström is unwillingly drafted in from Stockholm to head up the investigation. Egotistical, vain and utterly prejudiced against everything, Bäckström is a man who has no sense of duty or responsibility, thinks everyone, with the exception of himself, is an imbecile and is only really capable of warm feelings towards his pet goldfish and the nearest bottle of liquor. If they are to solve the case, his long suffering team must work around him, following the scant few leads which remain after Bäckström's intransigence has let the trail go cold. QUARTEY, KWEI darko MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS (#3) ($14.95) A canoe washes up at a Ghanaian off-shore oil rig site. Inside it are the bodies of a prominent, wealthy couple, Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo, who have been ritualistically murdered. Pillars in their community, they are mourned by everyone, but especially by their niece Sapphire. She is not happy that months have passed e-MOM March 2015 Page 16 since the murder and the local police have made no headway in figuring out who committed the gruesome crime. Detective Inspector Darko Dawson of the Accra police force is sent out to Cape Three Points to investigate. The more he learns about the case, the more convoluted it becomes. Three Points has long been occupied by traditional fishing populations, but real estate entrepreneurs and wealthy oil companies have been trying to bribe the indigenous inhabitants to move out. Dawson unearths a host of motives for murder, ranging from personal vendettas to corporate conspiracies. REDFERN, JON endersby CHILDREN OF THE TIDE (#2) ($19.99) London: the early 1840s. The birth of young Queen Victoria's first child is taken as an auspicious sign for all. But on a cold March night, a spree of dark crimes in shadowy workhouses shocks the city. When Inspector Owen Endersby, of the recently formed London Detective Police, learns that the string of identical murders and abductions have all taken place under similar circumstances, he fears a monster is prowling the city. How long until the murderer strikes again? Is this the work of a diabolical killer, or a madman? Facts are scarce. Endersby and his sergeant, Thomas Caldwell, must start an investigation based on the fitful testimonies of terrified girls and one peculiar clue: a piece of curtain lace found in the throats of the victims. The first in the series is Trumpets Sound No More ($20.95). ROBB, J.D. FESTIVE IN DEATH (#39) ($9.99) Personal trainer Trey Ziegler was in peak physical condition. If you didn’t count the kitchen knife in his well-toned chest. Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers a lineup of women who were loved and left by the narcissistic gym rat. While Dallas sorts through the list of Ziegler’s enemies, she’s also dealing with her Christmas shopping list plus the guest list for her and her billionaire husband’s upcoming holiday bash. Feeling less than festive, Dallas tries to put aside her distaste for the victim and solve the mystery of his death. There are just a few investigating days left before Christmas, and as New Year’s 2061 approaches, this homicide cop is resolved to stop a cold-blooded killer. ROBERTS, NORA garden BLACK ROSE (#2) ($19) Special order only. A Harper has always lived at Harper House, the centuriesold mansion just outside Memphis. And for as long as anyone alive remembers, the ghostly Harper Bride has walked the halls, singing lullabies at night. At forty-seven, Rosalind Harper is a woman whose experiences have made her strong enough to bend without breaking and to weather any storm. A widow with three grown sons, she survived a disastrous second marriage and built her ‘In the Garden’ nursery from the ground up. Through the years, In the Garden has become more than just a thriving business, it is a symbol of hope and independence to Roz, and to the two women she shares it with. Newlywed Stella and new mother Hayley are the sisters of her heart, and together, the three of them are the future of In the Garden. Hired to investigate Roz’s Harper ancestors, Dr. Mitchell Carnegie finds himself just as intrigued by Roz herself. And as they begin to resurrect old secrets, Roz is shocked to find herself falling for the fascinating genealogist, even when he learns more about her than anyone has before. The first in the series is Blue Dahlia ($19), with one more title to come in the trilogy. RUSSELL, LEIGH steel FATAL ACT (#6) ($14.99) After a glamorous young TV soap star dies in a car crash, all eyes are on Detective Geraldine Steel to discover what caused the tragic accident. Another driver was involved in the collision but seems to have miraculously walked away unscathed and has now vanished. The deceased had no obvious enemies and nothing to hide, so the investigation seems to be stalling. But when another young actress is found dead, it becomes painfully clear that there is a murderer on the loose targeting beautiful, famous women. The only problem is that whoever is committing these crimes isn't leaving any clues. With public pressure mounting, Geraldine Steel unwittingly risks her sergeant's life in their search to track down a serial killer. SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. RYAN, ANNELISE mattie STIFF PENALTY (#6) ($8.99) Deputy coroner Mattie Winston knows a thing or two about dead bodies. That's why she's on the case of Derrick Ames, a high school math teacher stabbed to death with a barbecue fork straight to the heart. Sure, she's turned up some motives and a few suspects, but nothing adds up. Especially when the evidence points to Ames's teenage son. Newly pregnant Mattie can't believe it, even as her own longestranged father may be following her. But one thing's certain, she'd better start figuring things out fast, or a deadly perpetrator could be subtracting two more victims from the population of Sorenson, Wisconsin. SCARROW, SIMON cato BLOOD CROWS (#12) ($15.99) For nearly ten years, the Roman Empire has fought ceaselessly to strengthen its hold over Britannia. But opposition from native tribes led by the ruthless warrior Caratacus threatens to destroy everything. Prefect Cato and Centurion Macro are summoned by Governor Ostorius to Londinium. Tasked with leading a newly formed cavalry cohort into the heartland of Wales, they must destroy the growing resistance. But with Caratacus hatching increasingly ambitious plans and disorder threatening from within Macro and Cato's own ranks, this final test will push the soldiers to their limits. And if they do not emerge as victors, the Emperor Claudius's rule may be at stake, and the very foundations of the Roman Empire could be shattered irrevocably. SCOTTOLINE, LISA SAVE ME ($9.99) Nobody could have foreseen what would happen the day that Rose McKenna volunteers in the cafeteria of her daughter's elementary school. Rose does it to keep a discreet eye on her third-grader, Melly, a sweet, if shy, child who was born with a facial birthmark that has become her own personal bull's-eye. Melly has been targeted by the mean girl at their new school and gets bullied every day, placing Rose in a no-win position familiar to parents everywhere. Do we step in to protect our children when they need us, or does that make things worse? When the bully starts to tease Melly yet again, Rose is about to leap into action, but right then, the unthinkable happens. Rose finds herself in a nightmare, faced with an emergency decision that no mother should ever have to make. Would she sacrifice another mother's child to save her own? What she decides in that split second derails Rose's life and jeopardizes everything she holds dear, her family, her marriage and even her own life. SEYMOUR, GERALD IN HONOUR BOUND ($15.99) Originally published in 1984. Barney Crispin, a Captain in the SAS, is as tough as they come. He is sent on an urgent mission to the Afghanistan border: to destroy one of the Soviet Mi-24 helicopters, a highly sophisticated and virtually invulnerable piece of military equipment, and retrieve the hardware. In order to do so, he needs the help of the Mujahidin resistance and must first train them in the ways of stealth and sabotage. But the guerillas he trains are ill-equipped and disorganised. Their attempt fails and several of them are killed in the process. Against orders and with only eight missiles and a local boy as his guide, Barney decides to undertake the mission alone, his own solitary battle for vengeance SHEMILT, JANE DAUGHTER ($18.50) Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers, married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, fifteen-year-old Naomi, doesn’t come home after her school play, Jenny’s seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken. As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios, kidnapping, murder, seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, she’s still digging for answers and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she’s trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the trac- e-MOM March 2015 Page 17 es her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she thought she’d raised. SIMENON, GEORGES A MAN’S HEAD ($12) As per the publisher: A new translation of Georges Simenon's atmospheric novel set in the bustling streets of Paris, book nine in the new Penguin Maigret series. Slowly the Czech was becoming animated, but in a muted way, so typical of the man. Maigret now noticed his hands, which were long, surprisingly white and dotted with freckles. They seemed to reach out and take part in the conversation. 'Let's be clear that it's not your professionalism which I question. If you understand nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, it's because from the very start you've been working with facts which had been falsified.' Maigret sets out to prove the innocence of a man condemned to death for a brutal murder. As his audacious plan to uncover the truth unfolds, he encounters rich American expatriates, some truly dangerous characters and their hidden motives. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret's War of Nerves and A Battle of Nerves. Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. SMITH, ALEXANDER scotland BERTIE’S GUIDE TO LIFE AND MOTHERS (#9) ($21) Having anticipated his seventh birthday for so long, Bertie Pollock now longs to be eighteen, an age at which he can avoid a "gender neutral" birthday and his overbearing, eternally pushy mother, Irene. Down the street, Angus Lordie, painter and sometime somnambulist, might just be sleepwalking into trouble with the animal welfare inspectorate over his faithful hound Cyril's drinking habit, while Matthew and Elspeth struggle to care for their triplets, contending with Danish au pairs and dubious dukes to boot. Seeming to have recovered from being dumped and his doppelganger encounter, the hopelessly narcissistic Bruce might be facing his greatest challenge in the form of a "waxologist." As ever, when fate visits 44 Scotland Street, the real fun begins. Not even Bertie, with all his life experience, could foretell that it would take the form of Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna and a literary festival in Dubai. SMITH, KAREN ROSE de luca DEADLY DECOR (#2) ($8.99) Quiet Kismet, Pennsylvania, may look like any other small town, but as a home stager, Caprice De Luca can see behind closed doors and it seems someone has designs on murder. Life is a full house for Caprice these days. She's dating, she's rescuing adorable cocker spaniels, and she's decorating the roomy interiors of Kismet's most well-heeled residents with fun fantasy themes. But she's worried about her pregnant sister. Bella's marriage is coming apart like a bad wallpaper job, and to make matters worse, she's decided to meet up with a former flame Bob Preston, a house painter Caprice frequently employs. When he's found dead in a pool of green paint swirling with blood, it's time for Caprice to stage an investigation. With all eyes trained on Bella's husband, Caprice shifts her attention from finding the perfect curtains to finding the perfect culprit. The first in the series is Staged to Death ($8.99). SOREN, JACK MONARCH ($14.99) When Jonathan Hall walked away from his career as an international art thief to be a father, he thought he’d made a clean break from crime, from life as The Monarch and from an early grave. But when The Monarch’s signature symbol resurfaces, carved into the mutilated bodies of New York’s elite, Jonathan realizes his retirement may have been short-lived. Someone is framing The Monarch for horrific slayings. But Jonathan and his former partner, Lew, know this isn’t just murder, it’s a message. Now caught in a deadly game against a fanatical madman whose reach penetrates the darkest corners of the globe, Jonathan and Lew have no choice but to play along. But when Jonathan’s daughter SLEUTH of Baker Street and The Merchant of Menace, an unbeatable combination. becomes a pawn, all bets are off. To win this game, Jonathan and Lew will have to accept one final task as The Monarch, a job that could change the course of history forever. A debut novel. STAUB, WENDY CORSI BLACK WIDOW ($9.99) In the moonlight, shovelfuls of earth fall on a wooden crate at the bottom of a deep pit. Soon the hole will be filled and covered over with leaves, erasing all trace of the victim below, waking to the horror of being buried alive. Newly divorced Gaby Duran isn't really expecting to find her soul mate on a dating site like InTune. She just needs a distraction from pining over her ex-husband, Ben, and the happy marriage they once had. And she's wise enough to know that online, the truth doesn't always match the profile. Almost everyone lies a little or a lot. But Gaby quickly discovers there is much more at stake than her lonely heart. Local singles are going missing after making online connections. And a predator is searching again for the perfect match. One who will fulfill every twisted desire or die trying. STEINHAUER, OLEN CAIRO AFFAIR ($18.50) Sophie Kohl is living a nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a midlevel American diplomat in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when, this time, he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved ask why her husband has been assassinated. Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fallout wherever it leads. As these players converge on Cairo, the story unveils a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed. A stand alone novel. STEWART, FRAN WEE MURDER IN MY SHOP (#1) ($9.99) Hamelin, Vermont, isn’t the most likely place for bagpipes and tartan, but at Peggy Winn’s ScotShop, business is booming. While on a transatlantic hunt for some authentic wares to sell at her shop, Peggy is looking to forget her troubles by digging through the hidden treasures of the Scottish Highlands. With so many enchanting items on sale, Peggy can’t resist buying a beautiful old tartan shawl. But once she wraps it around her shoulders, she discovers that her purchase comes with a hidden fee: the spectre of a fourteenth-century Scotsman. Unsure if her Highland fling was real or a product of an overactive imagination, Peggy returns home to Vermont, only to find the dead body of her ex-boyfriend on the floor of her shop. When the police chief arrests Peggy’s cousin based on some incriminating evidence, Peggy decides to ask her haunting Scottish companion to help figure out who really committed the crime. STRALEY, JOHN COLD STORAGE ALASKA ($15.95) Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering. Clive “The Milkman” McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home. His vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane as lately he’s been hearing animals talking to him. Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town? Or will Clive’s arrival turn the whole place upside down? TURNER, LISA GONE DEAD TRAIN (#2) ($18.50) Burned by his last case, Memphis detective Billy Able is at a crossroads. He e-MOM March 2015 Page 18 doubts himself. He doubts his career. But he can't turn off instincts honed by a decade on the force. The suspicious deaths of two legendary bluesmen are ruled due to natural causes. Convinced that a crime has been committed, Billy Able and straitlaced female cop Frankie Malone refuse to let it go. A voodoo curse, a Santerían priest, and a decades-old photograph may connect the seemingly unrelated homicides. But the clues don't add up until a third victim is cruelly murdered. Guilt-ridden, Billy swears to dig into the city's dark history for answers, then finds himself caught up in a web of incriminating evidence. Hunter becomes prey. Frankie has his back as they race to solve the deadly puzzle from which Billy may not come out alive. The first in the series is A Little Death in Dixie ($23). WAIT, LEA needlepoint TWISTED THREADS (#1) ($8.99) After leaving a decade ago, Angie has been called back to Harbor Haven by her grandmother, Charlotte, who raised her following her mother’s disappearance when she was a child. Her mother has been found, and now the question of her whereabouts has sadly become the mystery of her murder. The bright spot in Angie’s homecoming is reuniting with Charlotte, who has started her own needlepointing business with a group called Mainely Needlepointers. But when a shady business associate of the stitchers dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances, Charlotte and Angie become suspects. As Angie starts to weave together clues, she discovers that this new murder may have ties to her own mother’s cold case. WILKINSON, KERRY jessica SCARRED FOR LIFE (#9) ($16.99) DI Jessica Daniel is not having a good week. Her wallet's been nicked, the refurbished incident room is already falling apart, and a new football-mad constable is driving her crazy. She also has bigger things on her mind. A student's body has been dumped in a wheelie bin at the back of a university building, with a vague link to an Olympic medallist and a theory that it could have been an induction which went wrong. There's the tattooed shop raider who has her team stumped; someone attacking lone women; a chief inspector who seems to have a problem with her; and someone putting letters through her front door insisting that she’s caught the wrong man. WILLIAMS, TIMOTHY trotti BIG ITALY (#5) ($14.95) Northern Italy, 1993: After what seems like several lifetimes as a policeman in the Questura, Commissario Trotti is ready for retirement. Soon, he’ll be able to fulfill his dream of moving to the countryside villa he co-owns with his cousin, where his daily business will be tending to goats and chickens. But despite Trotti’s stubbornly oldfashioned investigative methods and his disregard for social niceties, there are several people trying to talk him out of retirement. Trotti’s boss offers him a golden opportunity as head of the Questura’s new child abuse division. Meanwhile, Fabrizio Bassi, a reckless, womanizing private detective who worked under Trotti years ago before being kicked off the force, approaches him for help. Bassi has been investigating the death of a murdered doctor, and he has a conspiracy theory that extends to the highest reaches of government. Trotti declines, annoyed by the request. But when Bassi is found in a ditch with a bullet in his head, Trotti decides to take on one last murder case after all. ZANDER, JOAKIM SWIMMER ($22.99) Klara Walldeen was raised by her grandparents on a remote archipelago in the Baltic Sea, learning to fish and hunt and sail a boat through a storm. Now, as an EU Parliament aide in Brussels, she is learning how to navigate the treacherous currents of international politics: the lines between friend and enemy, truth and lies. But Klara has accidentally seen something she shouldn't have: a laptop containing information so sensitive that someone will kill to keep hidden. Suddenly, she is thrown into a terrifying chase across Europe, with no idea who is hunting her or why. Meanwhile, in Virginia, an old spy hides from his past. Once, he was a man of action, an operative so dedicated that he abandoned his infant daughter to keep his cover. Now, only he can save her.