Mystery
Antiques flee market : a trash 'n' treasures mystery
Barbara Allan
MYSTERY Allan, Barbara
Mystery
At the start of Allan's lively third antiques mystery (after 2007's Antiques Maul), divorcée Brandy Borne and her eternally glamorous if somewhat annoying mother, Vivian, are busy preparing for the Christmas rush in the small Midwestern town of Serenity. Then Walter Yeager, a fellow antiques dealer, dies of cyanide poisoning soon after it becomes public knowledge that the WWII veteran owned a valuable first edition of Tarzan of the Apes, which disappears from the crime scene. Walter's 20-year-old British goth granddaughter, Chaz, becomes the top suspect due to her prison record, but Brandy and Vivian believe she's innocent. Told primarily from Brandy's viewpoint with Vivian sneaking in quips for extra pizzazz, this bubbly tongue-in-cheek cozy also includes flea market shopping tips and a recipe. Allan is the pseudonym of the husband-wife writing team of Barbara and Max Allan Collins. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Sweet little lies : a novel
Caz Frear
MYSTERY Frear Caz
Mystery
"Twenty-six-year-old Cat Kinsella overcame a troubled childhood to become a detective constable with the Metropolitan Police Force, but she's never been able to banish the ghosts of her past or reconcile with her estranged father. Work provides a refuge from her family dysfunction, but she relies on a caustic wit to hide her vulnerability from her colleagues. When a mysterious phone call links a recent strangling victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who went missing in Ireland eighteen years earlier, the news is discomfiting for Cat. Though she was only a child when her family met Maryanne on a family vacation, right before she vanished, Cat knew that her charming but dissolute father wasn't telling the truth when he denied knowing anything about the girl's disappearance. Did he do something to Maryanne all those years ago? Could he have something to do with her current case? Determined to close the two cases, Cat rushes headlong into the investigation, crossing ethical lines and trampling professional codes. But the deeper she digs, the darker the secrets she may uncover... Narrated by the unforgettable Cat, Sweet Little Lies is both a compelling police procedural and a look at how we grapple with the shadows of our pasts"--Dust jacket.
Detective Constable Cat Kinsella is investigating the murder of a woman who turns out to have given herself a new identity years before. Cat realizes that she not only knew the victim--as a young but mature teenager who abruptly left the town they grew up in--but that she's always suspected her own father of having something to do with her disappearance. A slow boil of a mystery with well-developed characters. -Candice
Case histories
Kate Atkinson
FICTION Atkinson, Kate
Mystery
This year Kate Atkinson came out with her 5th book in her Jackson Brodie series, "Big Sky." I was once again reminded that I had never read a single book by Ms. Atkinson, despite constantly adding her books to my Goodreads "to read" list and hearing good things about her writing. I decided to read the first Jackson Brodie book, "Case Histories." I loved it! What I was most struck by was the sense of humor in her storytelling, even while dealing with tough subjects. The Jackson Brodie books (so far) are a blend of literary fiction and mystery - we shelve them in the regular fiction section. If you, like me, have been "meaning to" read Atkinson for years and keep putting it off, do yourself a favor and start one of her books. She also has many stand-alone novels which I look forward to reading. -Heidi K
Truly Devious
Maureen Johnson
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Johnson Maureen
Fiction, Mystery
When Stevie Bell, an amateur detective, begins her first year at a famous private school in Vermont, she sets a plan to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder's wife and daughter shortly after the school opened.
Can't wait to see where Maureen Johnson takes the main character Stevie. -Beth
Lock in
John Scalzi
SCIENCE FICTION Scalzi John
Science Fiction, Mystery
"Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. 95% of those afflicted experience nothing worse than fever and headaches. Four percent suffer acute meningitis, creating the largest medical crisis in history. And one percent find themselves "locked in"--fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. One per cent doesn't seem like a lot. But in the United States, that's 1.7 million people "locked in"...including the President's wife and daughter. Spurred by grief and the sheer magnitude of the suffering, America undertakes a massive scientific initiative. Nothing can restore the ability to control their own bodies to the locked in. But then two new technologies emerge. One is a virtual-reality environment, "The Agora," in which the locked-in can interact with other humans, both locked-in and not. The other is the discovery that a few rare individuals have brains that are receptive to being controlled by others, meaning that from time to time, those who are locked in can "ride" these people and use their bodies as if they were their own. This skill is quickly regulated, licensed, bonded, and controlled. Nothing can go wrong. Certainly nobody would be tempted to misuse it, for murder, for political power, or worse..."--
Part Sci-Fi, part Mystery--Lock In has something for lovers of both! -Brian
IQ
Joe Ide
FICTION Ide Joe
Fiction, Mystery
"A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tires or a homemade casserole. To get by, he's forced to take on clients that can pay. This time, it's a rap mogul whose life is in danger. As Isaiah investigates, he encounters a vengeful ex-wife, a crew of notorious cutthroats, a monstrous attack dog, and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. The deeper Isaiah digs, the more far reaching and dangerous the case becomes"--
This first book in what I hope is a very long series of crime/detective fiction by author Joe Ide. I started with the print copy and was grabbed quickly by the story. However there is a lot of East LA dialect in this book that slowed me down, so I checked out a copy of the e-aduio and I'm so glad I did. Actor Sullivan Jones brought the characters to life in ways my imagination couldn't. After listening to a few chapters the characters are firmly in my brain and I hear their voices when I read the text. Isaiah Quintabe (IQ) is my new favorite private investigator. He sees things other people miss. Things that aren't where they're supposed to be, or shouldn't be where they are, or things that just don't make sense. Author Joe Ide masterfully weaves together two stories - Isaiah's own rough teenage years and the current case he's been hired to solve - to introduce us to a great new character in detective fiction. The second book in the series is "Righteous" and the third "Wrecked" is due out in October 2018. -Beth
Dead woman walking
S. J. Bolton
MYSTERY Bolton S. J.
Suspense, Mystery
The twelve sightseers in a hot-air balloon are drifting over Northumberland. They're passing over an isolated farmhouse when Jessica and her sister, Bella see a man killing a young woman. Everyone in the balloon is watching the man when he looks up and spots them. He only has one option-- to kill them all. After a furious crash the balloon crashes, and Jessica's the only survivor. She's seen his face-- and he won't rest until he's eliminated the only witness to his crime.
I love all of Sharon (S.J.) Bolton's works, some of which are in the Lacey Flint series, others are standalones. Her books have a modernity, seriousness, and depth that I enjoy, and often some unique element that sets the story apart. This book is no different, from the unusual beginning where a crime is witnessed from a hot air balloon, to the way the intended victim turns the chase around. -Candice
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
Robin Sloan
FICTION Sloan Robin
Mystery
After a few days at his new job at Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything; instead, they "check out" large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele's behavior, seeking help from his variously talented friends, but when they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore's secrets extend far beyond its walls.
I listened to this on a 15 hour drive to Texas. I was hooked after the first few minutes! -Beth
The twenty days of Turin
Giorgio De Maria
FICTION Demaria Giorgio
Horror, Mystery, Thriller
In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one anothers personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the ether." But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Librarys users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day "phenomenon of collective psychosis" culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the citys occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: whats shared can never be unshared.
In this short work, our unnamed hero investigates a decades-old mystery, when the people of Turin experienced twenty nights of collective sleepwalking and inexplicable murders. Do the murders have something to do with the creation of the Library, where people can write down and share their most important thoughts and secrets? This book is a little bit “The Social Network” and a little bit “Stranger Things.” -Anne M
The devils of Cardona
Matthew Carr
FICTION Carr Matthew
Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery
"In this gripping historical thriller set in sixteenth-century Spain, a Catholic priest is murdered by a mysterious Muslim avenger as the Inquisition continues to force Moriscos to live and worship as Christians. In March 1584, the priest of Belamar de la Sierra, a small town in Aragon near the French border, is murdered in his own church. Most of the town's inhabitants are Moriscos, former Muslims who converted to Catholicism. Anxious to avert a violent backlash on the eve of a royal visit, an adviser to King Philip II appoints local magistrate Bernardo de Mendoza to investigate. A soldier and humanist, Mendoza doesn't always live up to the moral standards expected of court officials, but he has a reputation for incorruptibility. From the beginning, Mendoza finds almost universal hatred for the priest. And it isn't long before he's drawn into a complex and dangerous world in which greed, fanaticism, and state policy overlap. And as the killings continue, Mendoza's investigation is overshadowed by the real prospect of an ethnic and religious civil war. By turns an involving historical thriller and a novel with parallels to our own time, The Devils of Cardona is an unexpected and compelling read"--
If you want history with a dose of mystery than Matthew Carr’s The Devils of Cardona is your book. Judge Licenciado Bernardo Mendoza is sent to the Aragon region of Spain to investigate the murder of a Catholic priest. However, this is 1584, the Inquisition is in full swing, and the suspect, known only as the Redeemer, is a supposed Moor calling for the end of Catholic rule. This is a delicate situation for the King of Spain as he doesn’t want a revolt. When Mendoza arrives at the scene, he soon learns that this murder is much more personal than the historical and religious conflicts being exploited. So who is this Redeemer, is he the murderer, and what does he really want? -Anne M
Added by Beth