Crime Fiction Stars 2012

January - June

 

January...

  • The Rope: Anna Pigeon
    Author: Barr, Nevada
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780312614577 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star LJ
    In The Rope, Barr gathers together the many strings of Anna Pigeon's past and finally reveals the story of her first case. In 1995, 35-year-old Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. On her day off, Anna goes hiking into the park never to return. Her co-workers think she's simply moved on--her cabin is cleaned out and her things gone. But Anna herself wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a dry natural well, naked, without supplies, and no clear memory of how she got herself in this situation.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Blotto Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess
    Author: Brett, Simon
    $ 14.95 ISBN: 9781934609927 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    Hurrah for the return of that intrepid duo: Blotto (handsome, honorable, not the sharpest knife in the drawer), and his sister Twinks (just a bit brainier than a girl should be)! As this is the 1920s, they are of course attending a weekend house party, where how astonishing! a murder is announced. One of the guests has the gall to accuse Corky, the siblings family chauffeur, so Blotto and Twinks have no choice but to find the real murderer and clear Corky s good name. And also, you know, keep Corky from hanging and so on. Their sleuthing will take them to an opium den, a crumbling Scottish castle, and most thrillingly the headquarters of the evil League of the Crimson Hand.
    Updated 1.16.12
  • Queen Without a Crown
    Author: Buckley, Fiona
    $ 29 ISBN: 9781780290140 Date: 2012
    starLJ
    The ninth gripping murder mystery to feature Ursula Blanchard, special aide to Elizabeth I -November, 1569.Happily married to her third husband, Hugh Stannard, lady-in-waiting Ursula Blanchard is hoping to give up her undercover work for Queen Elizabeth l in order to enjoy domestic bliss. But when Hugh unwittingly endangers possession of his ancestral home, Ursula is forced to take on a seemingly hopeless - but handsomely paid - private assignment, which the Queen spots is the perfect cover for a covert investigation into a group of rebel barons plotting to put Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne . . .
    Updated 11.4.11
  • The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen
    Author: Caplan,Thomas
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023219 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    A former soldier turned movie star turned spy must stop a catastrophic nuclear weapons deal. This gripping thriller from Caplan propels readers around the globe-from Hollywood to Rome, the Black Sea to the Mediterranean--and to the very brink of nuclear abyss.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • A Quiet Vendetta
    Author: Ellroy, R.J.
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9781590205082 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    When Catherine Ducane disappears in New Orleans, the cops react fast--she is the governor's daughter, after all. But the case quickly grows strange. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated, and when the kidnapper calls, he doesn't want money: he wants time alone with a minor government functionary.
    Updated 1.16.12
  • Black Site
    Author: Fury, Dalton
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312668372 Date: 2012
    starPW
    From the author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Bin Laden comes the first title in a new series. Meet Kolt Raynor. A Delta Force operator and one-time American hero, he is still trying to make sense of his life--and duty--after a secret mission gone bad. Now he's been given a second chance to do right by his country, his men, and himself.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Believing the Lie
    Author: George, Elizabeth
    $30 ISBN: 9780525952589 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • Bloodland
    Author: Glynn, Alan
    $ 16 ISBN: 9780312621285 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    A helicopter crash off the coast of Ireland sends unexpected ripples through the international community in this intricate new thriller from the author of Winterland and Limitless.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Mystery in Minster: Matthew Bartholomew
    Author: Gregory, Susanna
    $ 27 ISBN: 9781847442970 Date: 2012
    starPW
    In 1358 the fledging college of Michaelhouse in Cambridge is in need of extra funds. A legacy from the Archbishop of York of a parish close to that city promises a welcome source of income. However, there has been another claim to its ownership and it seems the only way to settle the dispute is for a deputation from Michaelhouse to travel north. Matthew Bartholomew is among the small party that arrives in the bustling city, where the increasing wealth of the merchants is unsettling the established order, and where a French invasion is an ever-present threat to its port. He is both impressed and appalled by what he finds in the teeming streets, the magnificent buildings and the behaviour of its citizens, but he and his colleagues are soon distracted by learning that several of the Archbishop's executors have died in unexplained circumstances and that the codicil naming Michaelhouse as a beneficiary cannot be found.--Dust jacket
    Updated 11.8.11
  • The House at Sea's End
    Author: Griffiths, Elly
    $ 25 ISBN: 9780547506142 Date: 2012
    starKirkus star LJ
    Forensic archeologist, Dr. Ruth Galloway is back--this time investigating a gruesome World War II war crime.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Need You Now
    Author: Grippando, James
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780061840302 Date: 2012
    starPW
    In a new stand-alone novel from New York Times-bestselling author Grippando, a young Wall Street advisor and his girlfriend uncover a financial scheme that reaches into the halls of government.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • $10,000 in Small Unmarked Puzzles
    Author: Hall, Parnell
    $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312602475 Date: 2012
    starKirkus
    When young attorney Becky Baldwin hires Cora Felton to make a blackmail payment drop, it couldn't go worse: Cora stumbles over a corpse and a puzzle, and someone steals the money. This title in the entertaining series features new puzzles by Will Shortz that help readers solve the mystery.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Ran Away: Benjamin January
    Author: Hambly, Barbara
    $ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727880826 Date: 2012
    starPW
    The new Benjamin January novel from the best-selling author - RAN AWAY. So began a score of advertisements every week in the New Orleans newspapers, advertising for slaves who'd fled their masters. But the Turk, Huseyin Pasha, posted no such advertisement when his two lovely concubines disappeared. And when a witness proclaimed he'd seen the "devilish infidel" hurl their dead bodies out of a window, everyone was willing to believe him the murderer. Only Benjamin January, who knows the Turk of old, is willing to seek for the true culprit, endangering his own life in the process . . .
    Updated 11.21.11
  • The Fear Index
    Author: Harris, Robert
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307957931 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star LJ
    Bestselling author Harris (The Ghost Writer, Pompeii) returns with this intensely suspenseful thriller set at the nexus of high finance and sophisticated computer programming--a searing glimpse into an all-too-recognizable world of greed and fear, a novel that forces readers to confront the deepest questions about what it means to be human.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Orphan Master's Son
    Author: Johnson, Adam
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780812992793 Date: 2012
    starLJ star PW starBooklist
    An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master's Son follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • The Silent Oligarch
    Author: Jones, Christopher Morgan
    $ 26 ISBN: 9781594203190 Date: 2012
    starLJ star PW star Booklist
    Drawing on his decade of experience at the world's largest corporate intelligence firm, Jones leads readers down into the unvarnished realities of our time in the grand tradition of John le Carr. In this debut novel, a London intelligence agent pursues a money launderer to expose the dealings of a shadowy Russian oligarch.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Third Grave Dead Ahead
    Author: Jones, Darynda
    $ 23.99 ISBN: 9781250001542 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Paranormal private eye. Grim reaper extraordinaire. Whatever. Charley Davidson is back! And she's drinking copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake because, every time she closes her eyes, she sees him: Reyes Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Defending Jacob
    Author: Landay, William
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780385344227 Date: 2012
    starLJ starPW
    Andy Barber has been an ADA in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than 20 years. He is respected in his community and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But after a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His 14-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Hunter
    Author: Lescroart, John
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780525952565 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family--until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number: "How did ur mother die?" The answer is murder, and urged on by curiosity and the mysterious texter, Hunt takes on a case he never knew existed, one that has lain unsolved for decades.
    Updated 11.21.11
  • The Retribution
    Author: McDermid, Val
    $ 25 ISBN: 9780802120175 Date: 2012
    starPW
    In The Retribution, criminal psychologist Hill and DCI Jordan are back on the trail of Jacko Vance, the charismatic sports and TV star and serial killer of The Wire in the Blood. He has escaped from prison with a head full of vengeance and heart full of malice. As in all her novels, McDermid creates a brooding tension that allows readers to get close to characters whose lives are about to be ripped apart.--Danuta Kean, The Independent (UK)
    Updated 11.21.11
  • All I Did Was Shoot a Man: Leonid McGill
    Author: Mosley, Walter
    $ 27 ISBN: 9781594488245 Date: 2012
    starPW star Booklist
    In the latest and most surprising novel in Mosley's bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present, in this gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Start Shooting
    Author: Newton, Charlie
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780385534697 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star Kirkus
    " The best way I can describe the Four Corners neighbor-hood of Chicago is find a length of rebar, scratch a big cross into the concrete, set your feet solid in the quadrant you like best, lean back, and start shooting." Officer Bobby Vargas is hard-edged but idealistic, a Chicago cop who stands at the epicenter of a subterranean plot that will have horrific ramifications for both himself and the entire city. Twenty-five years earlier, a gruesome murder rocked the unforgiving streets of Four Corners. Now, sud-denly, a dying Chicago paper is running a serial expose on new evidence in that old case, threatening to implicate Bobby and his older brother, Ruben--a decorated, high-ranking detective and cop- prince of the streets. The smear campaign stirs up decades-old bad blood, leading the Vargas brothers down an increasingly twisted and terrifying path, where the sins of the past threaten to destroy what remains of the truth. As readers and critics discovered in his first novel, Calumet City, Charlie Newton's Chicago is a landscape as brutal and poignant as any in modern crime fiction--a multi-faceted, shockingly violent labyrinth of gangland politics, political backstabbing, corporate malfeasance, and, possibly, hope. Start Shooting is a riveting read. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Chalk Girl: Mallory
    Author: O'Connell, Carol
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780399157745 Date: 2012
    starPW starLJ
    Kathy Mallory returns in the latest novel by a New York Times-bestselling author. This time, the discovery of a body in a tree in Central Park leads Mallory to a story of extraordinary crimes: murders stretching back 15 years, blackmail and complicity, and a particular cruelty that only someone with Mallory's history could fully recognize.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • The Rook
    Author: O'Malley, Daniel
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780316098793 Date: 2012
    starLJ starPW
    "The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • Breakdown: V.I. Warshawski
    Author: Paretsky, Sara
    $26.95 ISBN: 9780399157837 Date: 2012
    starBooklist starKirkus starPW
    Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. For V.I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Jaguar: Charlie Hood
    Author: Parker, T.Jefferson
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780525952572 Date: 2012
    starPW
    A New York Times-bestselling author and crime fiction's most critically acclaimed and award-winning writer continues "the most groundbreaking crime series in decades." (St. Louis Post- Dispatch) with another gripping tale of the Mexican border.
    Updated 11.21.11
  • The Invisible Ones
    Author: Penney, Stef
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399157714 Date: 2012
    starLJ star LJ
    Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than his investigative skills.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Scarecrow Returns
    Author: Reilly, Matthew
    $ 25 ISBN: 9781416577591 Date: 2012
    starPW
    From the international bestselling author of Seven Deadly Wonders comes the fourth installment in the thrilling Scarecrow series. Marine captain Shane Schofield, call-sign Scarecrow, is back, this time thrown into battle against a large and secretive terrorist group known only as the Army of Thieves.
    Updated 11.21.11
  • Cell 8
    Author: Roslund, Anders
    $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781402787157 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star PW
    John Meyer Frey rots on Death Row in Utah for murdering a girl when he was 17. Following his suspicions, Detective Inspector Ewert Grens finds himself drawn into an investigation that shocks him to the core and blows open the death penalty debate--and the wider conflict between public justice and private revenge.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Darkening Field
    Author: Ryan, William
    $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312586515 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    It is 1937, and Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself on an airplane bound for Odessa after the suspicious suicide of a loyal young party member who supposedly had an illicit intimate relationship with the party director. His instructions are to determine if her suicide was actually a cover-up for murder, in this follow-up to The Holy Thief.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Dead Witness: A Connoiseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories
    Author: Sims, Michael (edt)
    $ 20 ISBN: 9780802779182 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Gathering the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the 19th and early 20th centuries--including a wide range of overlooked gems--Sims showcases the writers who ever since have inspired the field of detective fiction, including Mark Twain, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Fortune.
    Updated 11.8.11
  • Fifth Victim
    Author: Sharp, Zoe
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9781605982762 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    Where Charlie goes, thrills follow, and Zoe Sharp keeps them coming hard and fast. Tess Gerritsen, author of The Keepsake
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Boston Cream
    Author: Shrier, Howard
    $ 17.95 ISBN: 9780307359568 Date: 2012
    starLJ star PW
    Canada's top private eye is back as Jonah Geller resumes his vagabond ways in Boston Cream, the Vintage World of Crime trade paperback original and sequel to the Arthur Ellis-winning novels Buffalo Jump and High Chicago. David Fine is not the kind of guy to go missing. Or so his father tells PI Jonah Geller. A brilliant young surgeon-in-training, devout, devoted to his parents--last seen 2 weeks ago leaving the Boston hospital where he worked. Still recovering from a concussion, Jonah and partner Jenn Raudsepp soon find out that David fled for his life after a vicious Irish crime boss tried to abduct him. And that he's more likely dead than alive. Then Jenn joins the ranks of the missing, and Jonah needs help from former hit man Dante Ryan and two local wise guys as he races the clock to save her life, one step ahead of the Boston law. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Red Means Run
    Author: Smith, Brad
    $ 12 ISBN: 9781451645514 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    Smith, a "funny, poignant, evocative" (Dennis Lehane) crime novelist, debuts a new series set in upstate New York featuring jack-of-all trades Virgil Cain, who must clear his name of two murders while on the run from the law.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Agent 6
    Author: Smith, Tom Rob
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780446550765 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star PW
    Former secret police agent Leo Demidov is thrown into a foreign conflict and is forced to question and confront everything he ever thought he knew about his country, his family, and himself.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • All Necessary Force
    Author: Taylor, Brad
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780525952626 Date: 2012
    starKirkus
    Retired Delta Force officer Taylor--whose debut thriller, One Rough Man, was a national bestseller--continues his electrifying Pike Logan series.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Confession
    Author: Todd, Charles
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780062015662 Date: 2012
    starPW
    In the latest entry of Todd's New York Times-bestselling series, troubled Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge wrestles with a startling and dangerous case that reaches far into the past when a false confession from a man who is not who he claims to be leads to a brutal murder.
    Updated 1.14.12

February...

  • Wild Thing
    Author: Bazell, Josh
    $25.99 ISBN: 9780316032193 Date: 2012
    starPW
    When a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, a.k.a. Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world's worst field assignment, Brown has no real choice but to say yes. Even if it means that an army of murderers, mobsters, and international drug dealers--not to mention a lake monster--are about to have a serious Pietro Brnwa problem.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Guns in the Gallery
    Author: Brett, Simon
    $ 28.95 ISBN: 9781780290157 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans - Invited to a Private View of the work of controversial artist Denzil Willoughby, the good citizens of Fethering are not quite sure what to expect. And it turns out to be a lively affair, culminating in several embarrassing confrontations. But what no one could have anticipated was that the evening would end in sudden, violent death. The police seem happy to accept that it was suicide, but Fethering residents Carole and Jude remain unconvinced . . .
    Updated 1.16.12
  • A Parliament of Spies
    Author: Clark, Cassandra
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780312595746 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Abbess Hildegard may consider herself "just a nun with no useful skills or connections," yet her loyalty and intelligence have brought her to the attention of King Richard II himself--not the safest place to be, when the king has enemies on all sides.
    Updated 11.8.11
  • No Mark Upon Her
    Author: Crombie, Deborah
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780061990618 Date: 2012
    starPW
    A New York Times-bestselling author makes her mark with this absorbing, finely hued tale of suspense--a deeply atmospheric and twisting mystery full of deadly secrets, salacious lies, and unexpected betrayals involving the mysterious drowning of a rower, a Met detective, on the Thames.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Hunting Sweetie Rose
    Author: Frederickson, Jack
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312605261 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Sweetie Fairbairn is known for big-hearted philanthropy and magnificent soirees in her penthouse high atop one of Chicago's premier boutique hotels. Dek Elstrom is hired by a mysterious man to investigate the death of a clown. What is the connection between the dead clown and Sweetie?
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Man Who Killed
    Author: Nixon, Fraser
    $ 18.95 ISBN: 9781553655695 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Montreal, 1926. Mick is down on his luck until an old pal offers him a loaded revolver and a job: riding shotgun in a truck running booze across the border. Stateside Prohibition has opened up a market for certain amusements, vicious or otherwise. Mick takes the job--and his problems begin. Through his old friend Jack, Mick falls deeper into the life of the small-time tough. From whorehouse to gentlemen's club, through back alleys and deluxe hotels, jazz joints, opium dens, baseball diamonds, cheap diners and anywhere trouble is to be found, Mick burns his way through the City of Two Solitudes. Other people are in town for their own reasons. Babe Ruth's here; Harry Houdini, too. The Man Who Killed is a tale of political corruption and crime, of sexual jealousy and heartbreak, a portrait of a city after last call, of smoke-filled saloons and gunfire in the night. Shot through with dark humour and strange pathos, this is a novel of two friends who do bad things mostly for money, sometimes for fun, and the women they love.
    Updated 1.16.12
  • The Bedlam Detective
    Author: Gallagher, Stephen
    $ 25 ISBN: 9780307406644 Date: 2012
    starPW
    The author of The Kingdom of Bones returns with a beautifully written literary thriller featuring madmen who see monsters and monsters who hide in plain sight--a powerful story of class, family, and insanity.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Catch Me
    Author: Gardner, Lisa
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780525952763 Date: 2012
    starBooklist

    Updated 1.16.12
  • Children of Wrath
    Author: Grossman, Paul
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312601911 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Willi Kraus, the celebrated World War I and detective, returns in this prequel story about how he became the most famous Jewish Detective in Germany in the days of the Weimar Republic. In Children of Wrath Kraus tackles the case of the Kinderfresser, the vicious Child-Eater of Berlin.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Available Dark
    Author: Hand, Elizabeth
    $ 23.99 ISBN: 9780312585945 Date: 2012
    starPW starBooklist
    Photographer Cass Neary is already wanted by the police for questioning when she receives a mysterious job offer that sends her to Helsinki, where an iconic fashion photographer shows her a trove of photos depicting ritual killings. After narrowly escaping death herself, Cass flees to Iceland, where she finds a former lover and a legendary, exiled musician.
    Updated 1.15.12
  • Kill My Darling
    Author: Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia
    $ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727881373 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    A new Bill Slider mystery - When Melanie Hunter goes missing, the men in her life come under suspicion. And there's plenty to suspect; lies, half-truths, deceptions. When you pull one thread, the whole fabric of family life can come apart. There are secrets in Melanie's past, and pain she tried to hide from the world. slider and his team need to answer two questions: who loved Melanie, and who loved her too much . . .
    Updated 1.16.12
  • A Darker Shade of Blue
    Author: Harvey, John
    $ 25 ISBN: 9781605982847 Date: 2012
    starPW
    From the master of British crime fiction, a collection of noir and detective stories from the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger winner.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Hanging Hill
    Author: Hayder, Mo
    $ 25 ISBN: 9780802120069 Date: 2012
    starBooklist star PW
    Mo Hayder, internationally best-selling author of Skin and Gone, has firmly established her reputation as a master of gritty, gripping page-turners. Fast-paced and addictive, her latest, Hanging Hill, centers around a pair of estranged sisters, one a policeman, and the gruesome homicide of a teenage beauty which leads them deeper than they ever anticipated into an underground world of sex and violence. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Gem of a Ghost
    Author: Jaffarian, Sue Ann
    $14.95 ISBN:  9780738713816 Date: 2012
    starLJ
    When overbearing, ultra-rich Joanna Reid demands that Emma Whitecastle get rid of the ghost of her late husband Max, a former action film star who was killed in a car accident, Emma intends to refuse. But when Joanna reveals that she thinks Max killed himself, Emma decides to help find out why the film star's spirit has returned. Joanna may know more than she lets on, including why Lainey, her daughter with Max, has attempted suicide multiple times. Emma and Granny Apples have their "nosing about" work cut out for them in this multi-faceted, ghost-filled mystery.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Dark Rose
    Author: Kelly, Erin
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023288 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Paul was led into a life of crime by his boyhood protector, a bully named Daniel; but one night, what started as a petty theft turned into a grisly murder. Now, at nineteen, Paul must bear witness against his friend to avoid prison. Louisa's own dark secrets led her to flee a desperate infatuation gone wrong many years before. Now she spends her days steeped in history, renovating the grounds of a crumbling Elizabethan garden. But her fragile peace is shattered when she meets Paul; he's the spitting image of the one person she never thought she'd see again. The Dark Rose explores the extremes of obsessive love and loyalty, devotion and desperation. Like Kelly's critically acclaimed debut novel, The Poison Tree, this fantastically creepy, atmospheric novel thrills until the final shocking moments...
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Defending Jacob
    Author: Landay, William
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780385344227 Date: 2012
    starPW star Booklist star LJ
    Andy Barber has been an ADA in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than 20 years. He is respected in his community and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But after a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His 14-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • The Royal Wulf Murders
    Author: McCafferty, Keith
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023264 Date: 2012
    starPW
    A clever and fast-paced murder mystery full of wit, suspense, and fly fishing. When a fishing guide reels in the body of a young man on the Madison, the Holy Grail of Montana trout rivers, Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects foul play. It's not just the stick jammed into the man's eye that draws her attention; it's the Royal Wulff trout fly stuck in his bloated lower lip. Following her instincts, Ettinger soon finds herself crossing paths with Montana newcomer Sean Stranahan. Fly fisher, painter, and has-been private detective, Stranahan left a failed marriage and lackluster career to drive to Montana, where he lives in an art studio decorated with fly-tying feathers and mouse droppings. With more luck catching fish than clients, Stranahan is completely captivated when Southern siren Velvet Lafayette walks into his life, intent on hiring his services to find her missing brother. The clues lead Stranahan and Ettinger back to Montana's Big Business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Unwanted
    Author: Ohlsson, Kristina
    $ 25 ISBN: 9781439198896 Date: 2012
    starPW
    International crime's newest publishing star Ohlsson makes her American debut with Unwanted, the first installment of the Frederika Bergman crime series and winner of Sweden's prestigious Gold Pocket Book Award.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Helpless
    Author: Palmer, Daniel
    $25 ISBN: 9780758246653 Date: 2012
    starLJ star PW
    Palmer, son of bestselling author Michael Palmer, delivers the follow-up to his acclaimed debut Delirious--the story of an award-winning coach who's ordered world is suspended by shocking accusations of murder.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Man from Primrose Lane
    Author: Renner, James
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780374200954 Date: 2012
    starPW
    With a deft and singular blend of suspense, literature, and horror, The Man from Primrose Lane boasts as many twists and turns as a roller coaster. It's a spellbinding journey of redemption and a reflection on the roles of fate, destiny, and obsession when it comes to matters of the heart.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Bleed for Me
    Author: Robotham, Michael
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780316126380 Date: 2012
    starBooklist
    A teenage girl--Sienna, a troubled friend of his daughter--comes to Joe O'Laughlin's door one night, covered in blood. The police find Sienna's father, a celebrated former cop, murdered. Tests confirm that it's his blood on Sienna. She says she remembers nothing. Investigators take aim at Sienna. O'Laughlin senses something different is happening.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Anatomy of Murder
    Author: Robertson, Imogen
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023172 Date: 2012
    starPW
    London, 1781. Harriet Westerman anxiously awaits news of her husband, a ship's captain who has been gravely injured in the king's naval battles with France. As London's streets seethe with rumor, a body is dragged from the murky waters of the Thames. Having gained a measure of fame as amateur detectives for unraveling the mysteries of Thornleigh Hall, the indomitable Mrs. Westerman and her reclusive sidekick, anatomist Gabriel Crowther, are once again called on to investigate. In this intricate novel, Harriet and Gabriel will discover that this is no ordinary drowning-the victim is part of a plot to betray England's most precious secrets. The critics raved about their first adventure, comparing them with the characters of Tess Gerritsen in period clothes. Fans of Instruments of Darkness will find the smart and spirited pair's second outing just as riveting. - Publisher Marekting
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Mirage
    Author: Ruff, Matt
    $25.95 ISBN: 9780061976223 Date: 2012
    starPW
    From the beloved cult author of Bad Monkeys comes an unprecedented, mind-bending psychological thriller, in which an alternate history of 9/11 uncovers startling and harrowing truths about America and the Middle East.
    Updated 11.21.11
  • NIght Rounds
    Author: Tursten, Helene
    $25 ISBN: 9781616950064 Date: 2012
    starPW
    One nurse lies dead and another vanishes after their hospital is hit by a blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her rounds, but Nurse Tekla died 60 years ago. Detective Inspector Irene Huss has the challenge of disentangling wandering ghosts and complex human relationships to get to the bottom of this intriguing case.
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Desert Wind: Lena Jones
    Author: Webb, Betty
    $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590589793 Date: 2012
    starPW
    When P.I. Lena Jones's Pima Indian partner Jimmy Sisiwan is arrested in the remote northern Arizona town of Walapai Flats, Lena closes the Desert Investigations office and rushes to his aid. What she finds is a town up in arms over a new uranium mine located only ten miles from the magnificent Grand Canyon. Jimmy's sister-in-law, founder of Victims of Uranium Mining, has been murdered, but the opposing side is taken hits, too. Ike Donohue, the mine's public relations flak, is found shot to death, casting suspicion on Jimmy and his entire family. During Lena's investigation, she finds not only a community decimated by dangerous mining practices, but a connection to actor John Wayne and the mysterious deaths resulting from the 1953 filming of "he Conqueror. Gabe Boone, a wrangler on that doomed film, is still alive, but the only person the aged man will confide in is John Wayne's ghost. It's up to Lena to penetrate Gabe's defenses and find out the decades-old tragedy no one in Walapai Flats wants to talk about. By delving into the area's history, Lena learns that old sins never die; they're still taking lives. As with Desert Wives: Polygamy Can Be Murder, this seventh book in the Lena Jones series exposes real life crimes, and the reason why high-ranking government officials want those crimes to remain under wraps.
    Updated 1.14.12

March...

  • The Cop With the Pink Pistol
    Author: Basnight, Gray
    $ 14.95 ISBN: 9780977378784 Date: 2012
    starLJ
    NYC Detective Donna Prima, busted down to desk clerk for reasons known only to her and her captain, goes out on what looks to be a routine apartment robbery in Greenwich Village's Sixth Precinct. There she meets actor Conner Anderson, who's enjoying overnight success in TV's most-watched daytime soap, Vampire Love Nest. Conner, a wannabe detective since boyhood, alerts Donna to some strange goings-on in the bar across the street, and Donna sees her chance to make a big-time bust and have her detective status restored. There's only one catch: Conner wants to be part of the investigation. Against her better judgment, and only because she finds Conner so attractive, Donna agrees, and the two set out to find out the connection between a blue-collar watering hole and an upstate New York trash-hauling company, which may be involved in the theft of uranium from a nuclear power plant on the Delaware River. - Publisher Marekting
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Gods of Gotham
    Author: Faye, Lyndsay
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399158377 Date: 2012
    starLJ
    1845. New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever. Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this new "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward-at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum. One night while making his rounds, Wilde literally runs into a little slip of a girl-a girl not more than ten years old-dashing through the dark in her nightshift . . . covered head to toe in blood. Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • Blue Monday
    Author: French, Nicci
    $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780670023363 Date: 2012
    starPW
    The stunning first book in a new series of psychological thrillers introducing an unforgettable London psychotherapist Frieda Klein is a solitary, incisive psychotherapist who spends her sleepless nights walking along the ancient rivers that have been forced underground in modern London. She believes that the world is a messy, uncontrollable place, but what we can control is what is inside our heads. This attitude is reflected in her own life, which is an austere one of refuge, personal integrity, and order. The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when his face is splashed over the newspapers, Frieda cannot ignore the coincidence: one of her patients has been having dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A red-haired child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew. She finds herself in the center of the investigation, serving as the reluctant sidekick of the chief inspector. Drawing readers into a haunting world in which the terrors of the mind have spilled over into real life, Blue Monday introduces a compelling protagonist and a chilling mystery that will appeal to readers of dark crime fiction and fans of In Treatment and The Killing. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Good Father
    Author: Hawley, Noah
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780385535533 Date: 2012
    starPW
    First-time author Hawley delivers an intense, psychological novel about one doctor's suspense-filled quest to unlock the mind of a suspected political assassin: his 20-year old son. Told alternately from the point of view of the guilt-ridden, determined father and his meandering, ruminative son, "The Good Father" is a powerfully emotional page-turner that keeps one guessing until the very end.
    Updated 11.21.11
  • The Games
    Author: Kosmatka, Ted
    $ 25 ISBN:  9780345526618 Date: 2012
    starPW
    This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, "The Games" envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than readers think.
    Updated 1.16.12
  • Edge of Dark Water
    Author: Lansdale, Joe R.
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780316188432 Date: 2012
    starPW
    May Lynn once dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Now she's dead, her body dredged up from the Sabine River. Sue Ellen, May Lynn's strong-willed teenage friend, sets out to dig up May Lynn's body, burn it to ash, and take those ashes to Hollywood to spread around. Only problem is, Sue Ellen has some stolen money that her enemies will do anything to get back.
    Updated 1.16.12
  • The Professionals
    Author: Laukkanen,Owen
    $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399157899 Date: 2012
    starKirkus
    Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it's no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise-quick, efficient, low risk-works like a charm. Until they kidnap the wrong man. Now two groups they've very much wanted to avoid are after them-the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized-crime outfit looking for payback. As they all crisscross the country in deadly pursuit and a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: The true professionals, cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice . . . everything. A finger-burning page-turner, filled with twists, surprises, and memorably complex characters, The Professionals marks the arrival of a remarkable new writer. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Expats
    Author: Pavone, Chris
    $ 26 ISBN: 9780307956354 Date: 2012
    starKirkus star LJ star PW
    Can We Ever Escape Our Secrets? Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage . . . and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew. She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn't speak, doing the housewifely things she's never before done--playdates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she's not allowed to know. He's becoming distant and evasive; she's getting lonely and bored. Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and she's terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life. Stylish and sophisticated, fiercely intelligent and expertly crafted, The Expats proves Chris Pavone to be a writer of tremendous talent. - Publisher Marketing
    Updated 1.14.12
  • The Inquisitor
    Author: Smith, Mark Allen
    $ 27 ISBN: 9780805094268 Date: 2012
    starLJ star PW star Kirkus
    Geiger has a gift: he knows a lie the instant he hears it. Unlike most of his competitors, Geiger rarely sheds blood--and he never works with children. So when his partner, former journalist Harry Boddicker, unwittingly brings in a client who insists that Geiger interrogate a 12-year-old boy, Geiger responds instinctively.
    Updated 11.4.11
  • An American Spy
    Author: Steinhauer, Olen
    $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312622893 Date: 2012
    starPW
    Milo Weaver, New York Times bestseller Steinhauer's reluctant spy, is unwillingly drawn into his bosses' plans for revenge against the Chinese agent who orchestrated the deaths of 33 tourists. Steinhauer, the best espionage writer in a generation, delivers a searing, unputdownable international thriller that will settle once and for all who is pulling the strings and who is being played.
    Updated 1.14.12

April

  • Easy Money
    Author: Lapidus, Jens
    $ 27 ISBN: 9780307377487 Date: 2012
    starPW
    From one of Sweden's most successful criminal defense lawyers--and one of the country's youngest bestselling authors--comes an unflinchingly raw and suspenseful novel about three men caught up in the twisted justice that rules in Stockholm's underworld.
    Updated 11.8.11

May

June