Crime Fiction Stars 2011
January - June
Annotated lists of books receiving at least one starred review from one of four major review sources: Booklist, Kirkus, LJ and PW. The review source assigns the star.
January...
- Death Line
Author: Carter, Maureen
$ 13.90 ISBN: 9780956056634 Date: 2011
Booklist
When ten-year-old Josh Banks's body is discovered dumped on waste ground, Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss wants justice. She's not alone. Everyone hates child killers - even hardened criminals. Tip-offs trickle in, and the new press liaison officer has his work cut out when the squad springs a leak. But trial by tabloid is the least of the cops' worries. If Bev's under pressure, her boss faces more - as if nightmare memories of an earlier case weren't enough, he's facing an internal enquiry. Even if he's cleared he's no longer convinced he wants the job. And if the boss goes - where does that leave Bev?
Updated 12.1.10 - The Sentry: Joe Pike
Author: Crais, Robert
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780399157073 Date: 2011
PW
Dru Rayne and her uncle fled to L.A. after Hurricane Katrina; now they face a different danger. When Joe Pike witnesses Dru's uncle beaten by a protection gang, he offers his help, but neither of them wants it. Pike and Elvis Cole soon learn that Dru and her uncle are not who they seem.
Updated 11.21.10 - Caveat Emptor: A Novel of the Roman Empire
Author: Downie, Ruth
$ 25 ISBN: 9781596916081 Date: 2011
PW
In her fourth novel, Downie brings to life the corruption and treachery of Roman-occupied Britain, as it closes in on her winsome leading man, Gaius Petreius Ruso.
Updated 11.15.10 - Pecos Valley Revivial
Author: Duncan, Alice
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9781594149269 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 12.14.10 - October Killings
Author: Ebersohn, Wessel
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312655952 Date: 2011
PW LJ
Only 15 when her parents were killed in a massacre of anti-apartheid activists by white security forces, Abigail Bukula was spared by soldier Leon Lourens. Twenty years later, Lourens comes to Abigail, now a lawyer, for help. Someone is killing off members of the team who killed her parents.
Updated 11.21.10 - Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Letter
Author: Grant, Barry
$ 27.95 ISBN: 9780727869463 Date: 2011
Booklist
Having emerged from a Swiss glacier and solved his first murder case in more than ninety years (described in The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes), the world's most famous detective now sleuths through modern London in search of a stolen letter purportedly written by Shakespeare. Holmes displays his usual mental brilliance as he investigates the missing letter and discovers an international plot to arm terrorists. He and his roommate, James Wilson, track the Shakespeare letter and the terrorist arms dealers to a Scottish castle where surprises await . . . and where the two companions quickly find they must be bloody, bold, and resolute if they are to survive.
Updated 11.21.10 - The Janus Stone
Author: Griffiths, Elly
$ 26 ISBN: 9780547237442 Date: 2011
Kirkus LJ PW
When construction workers demolishing a large old house in Norwich uncover the bones of a child beneath a doorway--minus its skull--archaeologist Ruth Galloway is called upon to investigate. Is it a Roman-era ritual sacrifice, or is the killer closer at hand?
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 11.15.10 - Dead Zero: Bob Lee Swagger
Author: Hunter, Stephen
$ 26 ISBN: 9781439138656 Date: 2010
PW
Bob Lee Swagger tracks down an AWOL Marine sniper who resurfaces to complete his last mission, in the latest installment of Hunter's bestselling series.
Updated 11.29.10 - What the Night Knows
Author: Koontz, Dean
$ 28 ISBN:9780553807721 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ
In the late summer of a long ago year, a killer arrived in a small city. His name was Alton Turner Blackwood, and in the space of a few months he brutally murdered four families. His savage spree ended only when he himself was killed by the last survivor of the last family, a fourteen-year-old boy. Half a continent away and two decades later, someone is murdering familiesagain, recreating in detail Blackwood's crimes. Homicide detective John Calvino is certain that his own family—his wife and three children—will be targets in the fourth crime, just as his parents and sisters were victims on that distant night when he was fourteen and killed their slayer. As a detective, John is a man of reason who deals in cold facts. But an extraordinary experience convinces him that sometimes death is not a one-way journey, that sometimes the dead return. Here is ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolent than any he has yet created,with their own home the battleground. Of all his acclaimed novels, none exceeds What the Night Knows in power, in chilling suspense, and in sheer mesmerizing storytelling.
Updated 11.21.10 - The Cypress House
Author: Koryta, Michael
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316059723 Date: 2011
Kirkus LJ PW
A journey to Florida's coast becomes an inescapable nightmare in the newest supernatural thriller from international bestseller Koryta (So Cold the River).
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 11.29.10 - A Decadent Way to Die
Author: McKevett, G.A.
$ 24 ISBN: 9780758238108 Date: 2011
PW LJ
In her latest culinary mystery, plus-sized sleuth Savannah Reid must unearth the identity of a would-be killer whose prey is a famous and very wealthy octogenarian.
Updated 12.14.10 - The Diviner's Tale
Author: Morrow, Bradford
$ 26 ISBN: 9780547382630 Date: 2011
Kirkus
The Diviner's Tale is at once a journey of self-discovery and an unorthodox murder mystery, a tale of the fantastic and a family chronicle told by an otherwise ordinary woman.
Updated 10.18.10 - The Border Lords
Author: Parker, T. Jefferson
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780525952008 Date: 2011
Booklist
A three-time Edgar Award-winner delivers his dark masterpiece. A crime novel of unprecedented scope, The Border Lords brings back Charlie Hood and revisits the fevered landscape of America's southern border--and confronts the unexplored depths of humanity's dark soul. Show Less
Updated 11.15.10 - The Officer's Club
Author: Peters, Ralph
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780765326805 Date: 2011
PW Booklist LJ
Set in 1981, The Officers' Club captures the passions and confusion of the times, the reckoning due after a decade of indulgence--and the commitment of those who stayed in uniform through the bad years.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 12.10.10 - The Death Instinct
Author: Rubenfeld, Jed
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9781594487828 Date: 2011
PW LJ
A spellbinding literary thriller about terror, war, greed, and the darkest secrets of the human soul, The Death Instinct, by the author of The Interpretation of Murder, takes readers back to 1920 to the first terrorist attack on Wall Street.
Suggested Reading: Literary Thrillers
Updated 11.21.10 - Heartstone: Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery
Author: Sansome, C.J.
$ 27.95 ISBN: 9780670022397 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
During the summer of 1545, England is at war, and Matthew Shardlake is about to encounter the most politically dangerous case of his career.
Updated 1.5.11 - Cold Shot to the Heart
Author: Stroby, Wallace
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312560256 Date: 2011
Kirkus
Crissa Stone's mentor and lover is up for parole and needs some money. There's an illegal card game set. Desperate, Crissa slaps a plan together. It's robbery, not murder. Then one of her crew shoots a player, a man with connections to hitman Eddie the Saint.
Updated 12.14.10 - Vienna Twilight
Author: Tallis, Frank
$ 25 ISBN: 9780812981001 Date: 2011
Booklist
Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt finds that young women are being slain in an unnerving--and ingenious--manner, with a small hat pin. For Dr. Max Liebermann, the killer is unique in the annals of psychopathology, one who murders in the midst of consensual love.
Updated 2.14.11 - Anatomy of Ghosts
Author: Taylor, Andrew
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9781401302870 Date: 2011
PW
This historical thriller has wonderful period detail about Cambridge in the 1700s--the secret societies, the Cambridge dons, the brothels, and the bookshops.
Updated 11.21.10 - Attenbury Emeralds: A New Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery
Author: Walsh, Jill Paton
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312674540 Date: 2011
LJ Booklist
Lord Peter Wimsey and detective novelist Harriet Vane return in this mystery that takes Wimsey back to his very first case. It was 1921 when Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury Emeralds. Now, 30 years later, the grandson of Wimsey's first client seeks his help.
Suggested Reading: Traditional British
Updated 12.14.10 - Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun: Anastacia Pollack Crafting Mystery
Author: Winston, Lois
$ 14.95 ISBN: 9780783823471 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
When Anastasia Pollack's husband permanently cashes in his chips at a roulette table in Vegas, her comfortable middle-class life is suddenly kaput. She's left with two teenage sons, a mountain of debt, and her hateful, cane-wielding Communist motherin-law. Not to mention stunned disbelief over her late husband's secret gambling addiction, and the loan shark who's demanding fifty thousand dollars. Anastasia's job as crafts editor for a magazine proves no respite when she discovers a dead body glued to her office chair. The victim, fashion editor Marlys Vandenburg, collected enemies and ex-lovers like Jimmy Choos on her ruthless climb to editor-in-chief.But when evidence surfaces of an illicit affair between Marlys and Anastasia's husband, Anastasia becomes the number one suspect.
Updated 12.14.10
February...
- Shot Through Velvet: A Crime of Fashion Mystery
Author: Byerrum, Ellen
$ 6.99 ISBN: 9780451232502 Date: 2011
PW
Crimes of Fashion columnist Lacey Smithsonian is touring a failing velvet factory in Virginia on its final day of operation--and finds one of the factory owners dead. When a velvet ribbon appears at Lacey's paper, it could be more than her job at stake--it could be her life.
Updated 1.4.11 - Lucky Stiff
Author: Coonts, Deborah
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780765325440 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ
Updated 4.15.11 - These Things Hidden
Author: Gudenkauf, Heather
$ 16 ISBN: 9780778328797 Date: 2011
PW
From a critically acclaimed author comes a provocative, powerful, and deeply moving story. A legacy of secrets connects the birth of one little boy, where, if the truth is revealed, the consequences will be unimaginable for the adoptive mother who loves him, the girl who had tried to protect him, and the two sisters who hold the key to all that is hidden.
Updated 1.4.11 - Dark Town Redemption
Author: Hardwick, Gary
$ 13 ISBN: 9780972480413 Date: 2011
Booklist
After combat in Vietnam, African-American Robert Jackson returns home to Detroit in 1967 to discover racial unrest. His family reunion sours when he realizes his younger brother, Marcus, has joined a radical group fighting for civil rights. Meanwhile, rookie cop Thomas Riley is pounding his beat, maintaining family traditions, and trying to come to terms with the police department's rampant racism and brutality. Riley's and Jackson's paths inevitably collide when Marcus is murdered under circumstances that suggest the fatal shot was fired by the police and without justification. Jackson instantly turns radical himself and sets out to find the truth about his brother's death.
Updated 1.4.11 - Gone
Author: Hayder, Mo
$ 23 ISBN: 9780802119643 Date: 2011
Booklist
In her latest page-turner, the author of Skin and Ritual delivers a thrilling and horrifying story that follows the investigation of a brilliant yet twisted carjacker with a disturbing game to play.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 11.21.10 - The Devotion of Suspect X
Author: Higashino, Keigo
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312375065 Date: 2011
LJ PW Kirkus
Yasuko Hanaoka thought she had escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day, the situation quickly escalates and Togashi ends up dead. Yasuko's next-door-neighbor Ishigami offers his help, not only disposing of the body, but plotting the cover-up as well.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 12.14.10 - First Grave on the Right
Author: Jones, Darynda
$ 21.99 ISBN: 9780312662752 Date: 2011
LJ Booklist
Charley sees dead people. And it's her job to convince them to "go into the light." But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e. murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice.
Updated 4.15.11 - Red Wolf
Author: Marklund, Liza
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9781451602067 Date: 2011
LJ PW
Considered the female Steig Larsson, Scandinavia's most successful female crime writer offers readers the first novel in her #1 internationally bestselling series--a clever crime novel with gutsy, unforgettable characters.
Updated 1.5.11 - Eyes of the Innocent
Author: Parks, Brad
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312574789 Date: 2011
LJ
Updated 4.15.11 - Gideon's Sword
Author: Preston, Douglas
$ 26.99 ISBN: 9780446564328 Date: 2011
LJ
Updated 4.15.11 - Treachery in Death
Author: Robb, J.D.
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780399157035 Date: 2011
PW
Detective Eve Dallas' partner, Peabody, overhears two fellow officers arguing. It doesn't take long to realize they're both crooked--guilty not just of corruption but of murder. Now Peabody, Eve, and Eve's husband, Roarke, are trying to get the hard evidence they need to bring the dirty cops down--knowing all the while that the two are willing to kill to keep their secret.
Updated 12.14.10 - On Borrowed Time
Author: Rosenfelt, David
$ 25 ISBN:9780312598365 Date: 2011
PW Kirkus LJ
After an accident on the way to Kendrick Falls, Richard Kilmer's fiance Jennifer Ryan vanishes. However, no one in Richard's life will even confirm Jen's existence. But where could she have gone? Has Richard lost his mind or is someone else behind it all?
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.15.11 - Redback
Author: Russell, Kirk
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727869654 Date: 2011
Booklist PW
Fourth novel in the highly-acclaimed John Marquez crime series - Eighteen years ago, Special Agent John Marquez was forced to watch as his informant, Billy Takado, was gunned down, the victim of a set-up by criminal mastermind Emrahain Stoval. In the fallout from the affair, Marquez lost his job. Now, working for California's Department of Fish and Games, John is contacted by a former colleague. Ted Desault is determined to take Stoval down, but to do that, he needs Marquez's help . . .
Updated 12.14.10 - Fourth Day: Charlie Fox
Author: Sharp, Zoe
$ 25 ISBN: 9781605981215 Date: 2011
Booklist
The cult calling itself Fourth Day is highly protective of its privacy. Five years ago Thomas Witney went in to get evidence that the cult's leader was responsible for the death of Witney's son. Witney never came out. Now, Charlie Fox and Sean Meyer, are tasked to get Witney out.
Updated 12.14.10 - Though Not Dead: Kate Shugak
Author: Stabenow, Dana
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312559113 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
Kate Shugak and the rest of the Park rats are stunned by the death of Old Sam, Kate's 87-year-old uncle and foster father. In his will, he leaves almost everything to Kate, including a homestead deep in gold mining country that no one knew he had and a letter that reads simply, "Find my father."
Updated 12.14.10 - The Curse-Maker
Author: Stanley, Kelli
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312654191 Date: 2011
Booklist
Roman physician Arcturus and his wife Gwyna arrive at Bath for a holiday to find a dead body floating in the sacred spring. It turns out that the murdered man is a curse maker whose curses actually come true, and, as murder follows murder, it looks like there's now a curse on Arcturus.
Updated 1.4.11 - Shortcut Man
Author: Sturges, P.G.
$ 24 ISBN: 9781439194171 Date: 2011
Kirkus
Sturges delivers a hard-boiled crime novel featuring Dick Henry, a "shortcut man," who is hired to spy on an LA producer's wife, only to find himself in hot water.
Updated 12.14.10 - The Nomnation
Author: Tapply, William G.
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781602399907 Date: 2011
Booklist
The Nomination is a fast-paced action and suspense thriller that brings eventsfrom the final days of the Vietnam War into direct conflict with contemporaryAmerican politics. Vietnam War hero and Massachusetts Judge Thomas Larriganis hand-picked by his friend the president to fill the upcoming vacancy onthe Supreme Court. Larrigan seems like the perfect candidate: a family man withan uncontroversial judicial record. The president's credibility needs a sure bet.Larrigan will do anything to win the nomination, but he has some old skeletonsrattling around in his closet. He calls his old Marine buddy, now a hit man, tosweep the closet clean. But there are a few skeletons Larrigan doesn't know arestill alive. The Nomination is the story of how lives can intersect in deception, desperation, revelation, death, and, ultimately, redemption. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 11.15.10 - The Terror of Living
Author: Waite, Urban
$ 25 ISBN: 9780316097895 Date: 2011
Booklist
Phil Hunt supports his family by guiding an occasional illicit delivery through mountain passes he's known since birth. Bobby Drake is a sheriff who is living down the legacy of his father. The two men's paths cross in the mountains north of Seattle, when Drake ends up disrupting a shipment
Updated 1.4.11 - Night Vision
Author: White, Randy Wayne
$ 26 ISBN: 9780399157059 Date: 2011
PW
A lot is going on in the trailer park known as Little Guadalajara, inhabited principally by illegal laborers. When a teenage girl witnesses the park manager killing a man, her only hope for survival is Doc Ford.
Updated 1.4.11 - The Dangerous Edge of Things
Author: Whittle, Tina
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590588178 Date: 2010
PW LJ
Tai Randolph thinks inheriting a Confederate-themed gun shop is her biggest headache -- until she finds a murdered corpse in her brother's driveway. Even worse, her supposedly respectable brother begins behaving in decidedly non-innocent ways, like fleeing to the Bahamas and leaving her with both a homicide in her lap and the pointed suspicions of the Atlanta PD directed her way. Suddenly, she has to worry about clearing her own name, not just that of her wayward sibling. Complicating her search for answers is Trey Seaver, field agent for Phoenix, an exclusive corporate security firm hired to investigate the crime. Trey is fearless, focused, and -- much to Tai's dismay -- utterly impervious to bribes, threats and clever deceptions. Still in recovery from the car accident that left him cognitively and emotionally damaged, Trey has constructed a world of certainty and routine. He has powerful people to answer to, and the last thing he wants is an unpredictable stranger "detecting" on Phoenix turf. Tai's inquiry leads her from the cold-eyed glamour of Atlanta's adult entertainment scene to the gilded treachery of Tuxedo Road. Potential suspects abound, including violent stalkers, vengeful sisters, and a paparazzo with a taste for meth. But it takes another murder -- and threats to her own life -- to make Tai realize that to solve this crime, she has to trust the most dangerous man she's ever met.
Updated 12.14.10
March...
- Past Tense: Sloan and Crosby
Author: Aird, Catherine
$ 26 ISBN: 9780312672911 Date: 2011
PW Kirkus
DCI Sloan and Constable Crosby are on the case again. A young girl has been murdered, found dead in the river. But what connection does she have to the recently deceased Josephine Short?
Updated 4.15.11 - Started Early, Took My Dog
Author: Atkinson, Kate
$ 25 ISBN: 9780316066730 Date: 2011
Booklist PW
Retired police detective Tracy Waterhouse leads a quiet, ordered life--until she cares for a young child. Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, the beloved detective from Case Histories, rescues an abused dog. Jackson is about to learn, along with Tracy, that no good deed goes unpunished.
Updated 2.14.11 - School of Night
Author: Bayard, Louis
$ 25 ISBN: 9780805090697Date: 2011
LJ PW
An ancient mystery, a lost letter, and a timeless love unleash a long-buried web of intrigue that spans four centuries, from 16th-century England to modern-day Washington, D.C.
Updated 2.7.11 - Murder in Passy: Aimee Leduc
Author: Black, Cara
$ 25 ISBN: 9781569478820 Date: 2011
Kirkus
The wealthy Parisian neighborhood of Passy is the last place one would expect a murder. But when Aimee Leduc's godfather asks her to check on his girlfriend at her home there, that's exactly what Aimee finds.
Updated 1.20.11 - Cold Wind: Joe Pickett
Author: Box, C.J.
$ 26 ISBN: 9780399157356 Date: 2011
PW
The extraordinary new Joe Pickett novel from the Edgar Award-winning author. Nowhere to Run was "wonderful" (The Denver Post"), "terrific" (Chicago Tribune), and "outstanding" (Publishers Weekly). The new novel from C. J. Box is all that, and more. When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in- law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do-especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck. Whichever way this goes . . . it's not going to be good. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 2.14.11 - A Red Herring Without Mustard: Flavia De Luce
Author: Bradley, Alan
$ 24 ISBN: 9780385342322 Date: 2011
PW
In the third installment of Bradley's bestselling series, Flavia de Luce must clear a woman's name to prevent a grave injustice, while trying herself to avoid an early (and unjust) grave.
Updated 12.14.10 - The Night Season
Author: Cain, Chelsea
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312619763 Date: 2011
Booklist
Cain launches the next stage of her bestselling series as Portland detective Archie Sheridan works to regain his life and Susan Ward steps in to share the spotlight in this electric thriller from one of today's most talented suspense writers.
Updated 10.18.10 - The Altar of Bones
Author: Carter, Philip
$ 25 ISBN: 9781439199084 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 3.27.11 - The Trinity Six
Author: Cumming, Charles
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312675295 Date: 2011
Kirkus PW Booklist
From the author of the New York Times Notable Book Typhoon comes his most accomplished and compelling thriller yet--the story of the search for the mysterious, long-rumored sixth man of the Cambridge Spy Ring.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Espionage
Updated 3.27.11 - Death in a Scarlet Coat: Lord Francis Powerscourt
Author: Dickinson, David
$ 25 ISBN: 9781569479124 Date: 2011
PW
Instead of leading his riders to the hunt, the fifteenth Earl of Candlesby is found dead, his body wrapped in blankets atop his horse, a corner of his scarlet coat visible in the morning mist. Three people see the body. One dies. Another vanishes. Now only one man knows how he was killed. Lord Powerscourt is summoned to investigate the murder. Powerscourt uncovers a tangled web of jealousy, revenge, and hatred on a rundown estate where the father and his sons are equally dangerous. The fifteenth Earl has left a trail of dueling, theft, and adultery across the flatlands of Lincolnshire. It will take another murder and a perilous chase beneath the crumbling estate before Powerscourt unlocks the mystery. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.20.11 - Pacific Glory
Author: Deutermann, P.T.
$ 26 ISBN: 9780312599447 Date: 2011
LJ Booklist
Pacific Glory is a thrilling, multilayered World War II adventure following two men and an unforgettable woman, from Pearl Harbor through the most dramatic air and sea battles of the war.
Updated 1.4.11 - Love You More
Author: Gardner, Lisa
$ 26 ISBN: 9780553807257 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ
WHO DO YOU LOVE? One question, a split-second decision, and Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter? AND HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO . . . As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper's mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child? . . . TO SAVE HER? For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn, no one to trust, as the clock ticks down to a terrifying deadline. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training, every trick at her disposal, to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.27.11 - Afraid of the Dark
Author: Grippando, James
$ 26 ISBN: 9780061840289 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ
The New York Times-bestselling author is back with a sinister thriller that leads his ever-popular hero, Jack Swyteck, to secret detention sites and an underground video ring spanning the globe.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 3.27.11 - Body Line
Author: Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia
$ 29 ISBN: 9780727869579 Date: 2011
Booklist
The brand-new Bill Slider Mystery - David Rogers was a doctor, handsome, charming and rich. He lived the lifestyle of a consultant - expensive clothes, top restaurants, exclusive clubs - until someone killed him in the hallway of his lovely million-plus-pound house. But when Bill Slider and his firm are thrown into the mystery, they soon discover that nothing is as it seems, for though David's girlfriends are plenty, none of them can tell Slider anything about where he worked or what exactly he did . . .
Updated 2.14.11 - False Money: Abbot Agency
Author: Heley, Veronica
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727869852 Date: 2011
LJ
The latest Abbot Agency mystery - Bea Abbot runs a domestic agency that does not 'do' murder. But the disappearance of Tomi, the star of an award-winning short film, is a different matter, especially when charming but feckless Chris bribes Bea to investigate with a bouquet of flowers. When Bea - working through personal problems - discovers that Tomi is not the only one amongst his friends to vanish, however, she wonders if her own life might be in danger too . . .
Updated 3.7.11 - Remote Control
Author: Isaka, Kotaro
$ 25 ISBN: 97884770031082 Date: 2011
PW
Masaharu Aoyagi, a former delivery-truck driver in the city of Sendai, is unemployed. Two years ago he achieved brief notoriety for rescuing a local actress from a robbery attempt while making a delivery to her apartment. Now he is back in the spotlight - this time as the main suspect in the assassination of a newly elected prime minster who had come to Sendai for a hometown victory parade. Set in a near-future Japan modeled on the United States, Remote Control follows Aoyagi on a forty-eight-hour chase, in a dramatic retelling of the Kennedy killing with Aoyagi in the role of a framed Lee Harvey Oswald. A massive manhunt is underway. As Aoyagi runs, he must negotiate trigger-happy law enforcement and Security Pods set up throughout the city to monitor cell-phone and email transmissions and keep a photo record of street traffic. Can he discover why he has been set up and who is responsible? Can he find the real assassin and prove to the world his innocence - amidst media pronouncements of his guilt - before the conspirators take him out? Isaka's style and worldview are such that he is often compared to Haruki Murakami; but he defies an easy label as a writer, with a voice, a sense of humor, and an imagination that are truly unique. Now, with this excellent translation by Stephen Snyder, readers everywhere can enjoy one of Japan's finest literary talents. - Winner of the Shugoro Yamamoto Prize and the Japan Booksellers' Prize - Publisher Marketing
Updated 2.14.11 - Devil Red
Author: Lansdale, Joe R.
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307270986 Date: 2011
LJ
Updated 4.15.11 - Bank of the Black Sheep
Author: Lewis, Robert
$ 15 ISBN: 9781846687457 Date: 2011
PW
Ex-PI Robin Llywelyn wakes up handcuffed to a hospice bed, full of morphine and with a fading memory as the cancer closes in. Unfortunately, he leaves a lot of loose ends. Prosecuted for crimes he can't remember committing and pursued by cops and criminals alike, he discovers that a hidden fortune is waiting. Llywelyn's last case sees him in a race against the reaper to score the final haul. Robert Lewis' previous books include The Last Llanelli Train and The Swansea Terminal. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 2.14.11 - The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Author: McCall Smith, Alexander
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307378392 Date: 2011
PW
One of Phuti Radiphuti's apprentices has gotten a girl pregnant and, under pressure to marry her, has run away. Naturally, it is up to Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi to help the couple work things out. In other developments, Mma Ramotswe investigates a case of rural jealousy in which cattle are being poisoned, in this 12th installment of the beloved, bestselling series.
Updated 3.7.11 - Cast Into Doubt
Author: MacDonald, Patricia
$ 29 ISBN: 9780727869586 Date: 2011
PW
A gripping novel of domestic suspense - Shelby Sloan, a successful Philadelphia businesswoman in her early forties, has one child, a daughter whom she raised on her own. She gives her daughter, Chloe, and son-in-law, Rob, a Caribbean cruise as a gift, while she takes the opportunity to mind her four-year-old grandson. But life becomes a nightmare when Rob calls to tell her that Chloe has disappeared overboard. The police decide it was an accident, but Shelby refuses to accept the official verdict . . .
Updated 2.14.11 - Rizzo's Fire
Author: Manfredo, Lou
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312538064 Date: 2011
Kirkus
The follow-up to Rizzo's War. As 20-year veteran Joe Rizzo edges closer to retirement, things only seem to get harder: having promised his wife he'd quit smoking, he's working the most baffling case of his career, with a new partner to boot.
Updated 1.20.11 - The Troubled Man
Author: Mankell, Henning
$ 26 ISBN: 9780307593498 Date: 2011
Booklist PW LJ Kirkus
From a master of Swedish noir (New York Times) comes the first Kurt Wallender mystery in more than a decade: the much-anticipated return of the brilliant, brooding detective.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.7.11 - Blowback
Author: May, Peter
$ 25 ISBN: 9781590588413 Date: 2011
LJ Kirkus
Beginning an investigation into a fourth cold case described in a book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin, Scottish scholar and amateur detective Enzo MacLeod travels to a small island off the coast of Brittany where his attempts to solve a 20-year-old murder are assisted by clues the dead man left in his study.
Updated 2.14.11 - The Lost Sister
Author: McLean, Russell D.
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312576820 Date: 2011
LJ
A teenage girl is missing. Her godfather is a known criminal and her mother is hiding a dark secret. For private investigator J. McNee, what starts as a favor for a friend soon becomes a nightmare as he races to find the girl before it's too late.
Updated 12.14.10 - When the Thrill Is Gone: Leonid McGill
Author: Mosley, Walter
$ 27 ISBN: 9781594487811 Date: 2011
PW
Leonid McGill is back, in the third--and most enthralling and ambitious--installment in Mosley's latest "New York Times"-bestselling series. The economy has hit the private-investigator business hard. So how can McGill say no to the beautiful young woman who walks into his office with a stack of cash?
Updated 1.4.11 - The Complaints
Author: Rankin, Ian
$ 25 ISBN: 9780316039741 Date: 2011
Booklist Kirkus LJ
Nobody likes The Complaints--they're the cops who investigate other cops. It's where Malcolm Fox works. He's a serious man with frustrating problems about which he cannot seem to do anything. Then the reluctant Fox is given a new case.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.15.11 - The Brothers of Baker Street
Author: Robertson, Michael
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312538132 Date: 2011
PW LJ Booklist
Reggie Heath's latest client is the driver of one of London's famous Black Cabs, accused of murdering two American tourists. But the letters to Sherlock Holmes are piling up--including one from someone who claims to be the descendant of Professor James Moriarty.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.15.11 - A Shortcut to Paradise
Author: Solana, Teresa
$ 15 ISBN: 9781904738558 Date: 2011
PW
A satirical romp and suspenseful mystery set in the literary world of Barcelona.
Updated 2.14.11 - Echoes of the Dead: DCI Monica Paniatowski
Author: Spencer, Sally
$ 29 ISBN: 9780727869807 Date: 2011
Kirkus Booklist LJ
The third book in the new series featuring DCI Monika Paniatowski - When a recently released prisoner claims in a deathbed confession that he is innocent of the rape and murder of a young girl for which he was convicted twenty-two years earlier, DCI Monika Paniatowski is tasked to lead an unofficial investigation into his claims. At first she is reluctant, but when she learns that her old mentor Charlie Woodend was the lead detective in the case, she knows she must do everything she can to protect his reputation . . .
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.14.11 - The Informationist
Author: Stevens, Taylor
$ 23 ISBN: 9780307717092 Date: 2011
PW LJ
Stevens's blazingly brilliant debut introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn't have to kick over a hornet's nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander....Thriller fans will eagerly await the sequel to this high-octane page-turner.--Publishers Weekly, starred, boxed review
Suggested Reading: Debuts | Thrillers
Updated 2.7.11 - Lucifer's Tears
Author: Thompson, James
$ 25 ISBN: 9780399157004 Date: 2011
Kirkus PW Booklist
Inspector Kari Vaara returns, more haunted than ever, in the follow-up to Snow Angels. Kari is pushed into investigating a 90-year-old national hero for war crimes committed during World War II. Soon, the past and present collide in ways no one could have anticipated.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.27.11 - Twice a Spy
Author: Thomson, Keith
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780385530798 Date: 2011
PW
In this follow-up to Once a Spy Charlie and Drummond Clark are hiding out in Switzerland and trying to retrieve Drummond's memory. When NSA operative Alice Rutherford, with whom Charlie has fallen in love, is kidnapped, the Clarks must dodge a formidable CIA case officer and his team to get her back.
Suggested Reading: Espionage
Updated 2.14.11 - The King of Diamonds
Author: Tolkien, Simon
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312539085 Date: 2011
Kirkus
From the acclaimed author of The Inheritance and grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien comes a sophisticated mystery layered with dark secrets from the past and slowburning suspense.
Updated 2.14.11 - An Empty Death
Author: Wilson, Laura
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312538118 Date: 2011
LJ
Called in to investigate after a doctor is found dead, warweary Detective Inspector Ted Stratton soon realizes that someone at the hospital is not what he or she appears to be. Someone has discarded his own identity, and that someone is on a killing spree. Annotation: Called in to investigate after a doctor is found dead, warweary Detective Inspector Ted Stratton soon realizes that someone at the hospital is not what he or she appears to be. Someone has discarded his own identity, and that someone is on a killing spree.
Updated 3.27.11 - Satori
Author: Winslow, Don
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780446561921 Date: 2011
Booklist
Nicholai Hel returns in this prequel to Trevanian's landmark bestseller Shibumi, one of the classic thrillers of the 20th century. Hel has the skills to be the world's most formidable assassin and now the CIA needs him.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 12.14.10
April
- The Law of Angels
Author: Clark, Cassandra
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312674557 Date: 2011
LJ
York, 1385. Just as the Mystery Plays are about to unfold, a young woman witnesses a terrible crime and turns to Abbess Hildegard for protection.
Updated 4.15.11 - Guilt by Association
Author: Clark, Marcia
$ 26 ISBN: 9780316129510 Date: 2011
PW Booklist Kirkus
With her tremendous expertise in the nuances of L.A. courts and crime, and with a vibrant ensemble cast of characters, Clark, the lead prosecutor in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, combines intimate detail, riotous humor, and visceral action in a debut thriller that marks the launch of a major new figure on the crime-writing scene.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts | Legal Stars
Updated 4.15.11 - Live Wire
Author: Coben, Harlan
$ 28 ISBN: 9780525952060 Date: 2011
PW
Myron Bolitar's family takes center stage in this new Coben thriller. Former tennis star Suzze T and her rock star husband, Lex, are both clients, and now Lex has disappeared and a very pregnant Suzze is in tears. Myron is forced to confront deep secrets in Suzze's past, his family's mortality, and before Live Wire is over, his own.
Updated 2.14.11 - Red on Red
Author: Conlon, Edward
$ 26 ISBN: 9780385519175 Date: 2011
PW Kirkus LJ Booklist
The author of the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling memoir Blue Bloods delivers his first novel--the story of two NYPD detectives with radically different approaches to life and work.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts
Updated 3.27.11 - The Fifth Witness
Author: Connelly, Michael
$ 28 ISBN: 9780316069359 Date: 2011
PW LJ PW
Falling on tough times, Mickey Haller expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home. Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 2.14.11 - Nickel Plated
Author: Davis, Aric
$ 13.95 ISBN: 9781935597322 Date: 2011
Booklist
Just 12 years old, Nickel, a survivor of the foster care system, makes a steady living by selling marijuana to high schoolers, blackmailing pedophiles he ferrets out online, and working as a private investigator. When a girl named Arrow hires him to find her little sister Shelby, Nickel discovers children for sale, and adults with souls black as the devil.
Updated 3.27.11 - A Gentleman of Fortune: Or, the Suspicions of Miss Dido Kent
Author: Dean, Anna
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312596965 Date: 2011
Kirkus
In this sequel to Bellfield Hall, Miss Dido Kent learns more about the dirty dealings among the upper classes of Surrey than even she could have imagined.
Updated 5.15.11 - Nightshade: Hugh Corbett
Author: Doherty, P.C.
$ 26 ISBN: 9780312678180 Date: 2011
PW
An unscrupulous manor lord has reneged on his promise to hand over a priceless ornate cross stolen from the Templars during the Crusades. Furthermore, he has massacred as heretics 14 members of a religious order. Hugh Corbett, devoted emissary of King Edward I, is sent to Mistleham.
Updated 2.14.11 - The Hanging Wood
Author: Edwards, Martin
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590588529 Date: 2011
LJ
Twenty years ago, a teenage boy, Callum Hinds, went missing in England's Lake District. His uncle was suspected of having done the boy harm and interviewed by the police. When he committed suicide close to his cottage in the Hanging Wood, everyone assumed it was a sign of guilt. But the body of the boy was never found. Now his sister, Orla Payne, who never believed in their uncle's guilt, has returned to the Lakes, and takes up a job in an atmospheric residential library, close to her father's farm, the upmarket caravan park where her step-father works, and the Hanging Wood. She wants to find the truth about Callum's disappearance, and--at the prompting of Daniel Kind--and, in a drunken call, tries to interest DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of Cumbria's Cold Case Review Team, in the case. Hannah is reluctant, leading Orla to demand whether she cares about justice. Hannah does care, and when Orla dies in strange and shocking circumstances, she determines to find the truth about what happened to Callum--and to Orla. Hannah's investigation brings her back into contact with Daniel, while she tries to resolve her troubled relationship with bookseller Marc Amos. But their personal lives have to be put on hold when another death occurs, and Hannah finds herself racing against time to prevent a shocking murder as the past casts long shadows on the sunlit landscape of the Lakes. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.7.11 - An Evil Eye
Author: Goodwin, Jason
$ 26 ISBN: 9780374110406 Date: 2011
PW
From the Edgar Award-winning author of The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, and The Bellini Card comes the fourth adventure of the famous investigator Yashim.
Updated 2.17.11 - Phantom Evil
Author: Graham, Heather
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780778329534 Date: 2011
PW
Heading a group of paranormal investigators for the government, Jackson Crow--part English, part Cheyenne--uses his link to the realm of spirits to help solve the mysterious death of a senator's wife with the help of Angela Hawkins, a police officer with paranormal intuition.
Updated 3.7.11 - Dead by Midnight: Death on Demand
Author: Hart, Carolyn
$ 25 ISBN: 9780061914973 Date: 2011
Kirkus
A recent death appears to be suicide, but Annie Darling suspects murder. To solve the case, she unravels the mystery of a towel hidden at midnight in a gazebo, the lack of fingerprints on a crystal mug, blood on a teenager's blue shirt, and the secret of a lovers' tryst.
Updated 1.20.11 - The Beloved Dead
Author: Hays, Tony
$ 26 ISBN: 9780765326287 Date: 2011
LJ PW
In this third title in Hays's Arthurian mystery series, Malgwyn is sent north to fetch the young woman who is to be Arthur's bride. But he discovers a string of ritualistic killings of young virginal women, and Malgwyn is left with a question he must answer quickly.
Updated 2.14.11 - The Fallen Angel: Nic Costa
Author: Hewson, David
$ 25 ISBN: 9780385341523 Date: 2011
PW
Nic Costa and the detectives of Rome's Questura must solve a case with roots buried deep in one of the ancient city's most infamous episodes--a story of incest, murder, and martyrdom. In a novel that captures modern Rome in all its complexity, as well as its history of beauty and barbarity, genius and blindness, The Fallen Angel is a twisting and twisted contest between innocence and evil.
Updated 3.27.11 - Get Maitland
Author: Hunt, James Patrick
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9781594149658 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 3.27.11 - Escape Artist: Edna Ferber
Author: Ifkovic, Ed
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590588475 Date: 2011
PW
In 1904 Edna Ferber is a nineteen-year-old girl reporter for the Appleton, Wisconsin "Crescent," an occupation that many townspeople, including her own family, consider scandalous for a proper young girl. By chance, she interviews Harry Houdini, in town visiting old friends. Houdini, as Ehrich Weiss, spent his boyhood years in the small town. When Frana Lempke, a beautiful young German high-school girl, disappears and is soon discovered murdered, Edna asks Houdini for help in solving the murder. The unusual crime baffles the local police because Frana mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the high school. Houdini, the celebrated escape artist, takes a liking to Edna and agrees to help. But as Edna pursues the story, alienating any number of people, she senses that she is being followed. It's a troubling summer for her. Her homelike is in disorder, though she is dedicated to a blind father. Her mother and sister dislike her walking the streets as a reporter. Worse, the newsroom has become a hostile environment, with a new city editor determined to undermine her. Piecing together the clues, she comes to see that her own life in the small town is unraveling. As the future best-selling writer starts to solve the crime, she understands that her involvement will impact her life forever. In 1904 future best-selling writer Edna Ferber, then a nineteen-year-old fledgling reporter in Appleton, Wisconsin, teams up with famed escape artist Harry Houdini to solve the baffling murder of a beautiful young girl who has mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the local high school. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - Eve
Author: Johansen, Iris
$ 27.99 ISBN: 9780312651206 Date: 2011
LJ
In her newest novel of breathtaking suspense, #1 bestselling author Johansen begins a trilogy that will answer questions that have haunted her legion of fans for more than a decade. With a brilliant narrative that goes back to Eve Duncan's early life, exploring her history and motivations like no other novel before, Eve reveals long-guarded secrets and is guaranteed to leave Johansen fans panting for more.
Updated 4.15.11 - Field Gray: Bernie Gunther
Author: Kerr, Philip
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780399157417 Date: 2011
PW LJ Booklist
Kerr delivers a novel with the noir sensibility of Raymond Chandler, the realpolitik of vintage John le Carr, and the dark moral vision of Graham Greene. "A thriller that will challenge preconceptions and stimulate the little grey cells."--The Times (London), selecting Field Gray as a Thriller of the Year.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 3.30.11 - Aftertime
Author: Littlefield, Sophie
$ 15 ISBN: 9780373803361 Date: 2011
PW
Set in a dystopian world and featuring zombies, Aftertime is the first novel in a new series. Cass Dollar had been taken by zombies and turned into one of them. But she got better somehow. Now all she wants to do is find her daughter.
Updated 2.14.11 - Sister
Author: Lupton, Rosamund
$ 24 ISBN: 9780307716514 Date: 2011
LJ PW Booklist
As one woman risks everything to uncover the truth about her sister's last moments, this debut novel with a knockout twist shows that nothing is as durable--and as exceptional--as the bond between sisters.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts
Updated 5.15.11 - The Illusion of Murder
Author: McCleary, Carol
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780765322043 Date: 2011
LJ
The intrepid Nellie Bly, the world's most famous reporter, sets sail around the world on a dazzling adventure and becomes embroiled in international intrigue with the fate of nations at stake.
Updated 3.7.11 - Spiral
Author: McEuen, Paul
$ 25 ISBN: 9780385342117 Date: 2011
Booklist
The race is on to stop the devastating proliferation of the ultimate bioweapon.
Updated 3.27.11 - Stolen Lives: Jade de Jong
Author: MacKenzie, Jassy
$ 25 ISBN: 9781569479094 Date: 2011
LJ
Wealthy Pamela Jordaan hires PI Jade de Jong as a bodyguard after her husband Terrance disappears. But when a determined shooter nearly kills them both and Jade finds Terrance horrifically tortured and barely alive, Pamela realizes that she has been drawn into a wicked game.
Updated 2.14.11 - Sticky Fingers
Author: Martin, Nancy
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312573737 Date: 2011
PW
Roxy Abruzzo barely escaped big trouble in her first adventure, Foxy Roxy. Now Roxy is determined to stay on the straight and narrow--except that she gets in over her head doing a few jobs for her uncle Carmine, one of the last oldtime mob bosses in Pittsburgh.
Updated 2.14.11 - The Medusa Amulet
Author: Masello, Robert
$ 26 ISBN: 9780553807790 Date: 2011
Kirkus
In this new spine-tingling thriller, the quest to recover a legendary artifact--and plumb its secrets--depends upon one man: David Franco, a brilliant but skeptical young scholar at Chicago's world-renowned Newberry Library. What begins as a simple investigation quickly spirals into a twisting, turning tale of suspense and intrigue.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 1.20.11 - The Magic Bullet: A Locked Room Mystery Featuring Shadwell Rafferty and Sherlock Holmes
Author: Millett, Larry
$ 25 ISBN: 9780816674800 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
The thrilling sixth novel in local historian Larry Millett's renowned mystery series.
Updated 3.30.11 - Fires of the Gods: Sugawara Akitada
Author: Parker, I.J.
$ 29 ISBN: 9780727869890 Date: 2011
PW
A Sugawara Akitada Novel -Eleventh-century Japan. Sugawara Akitada's ailing wife is expecting a child, and when he loses his job and tries to confront the nobleman who is responsible for his dismissal, he ends up suspected of his murder. With no income and a growing family to support, Akitada desperately plunges into the investigation of this crime, aided by his faithful servant Tora, inadvertently placing not only his own life, but also the lives of his wife and child, in grave danger . . .
Updated 2.14.11 - Prophecy
Author: Parris, S.J.
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780385531306 Date: 2011
PW
In the year of the Great Conjunction, the streets of London are abuzz with predictions of horrific events to come, possibly even the death of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth calls upon her personal astrologer, John Dee, and Giordano Bruno to solve the mystery behind the deaths of several of her maids as rumors of black magic abound.
Updated 3.27.11 - Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America
Author: Pattison, Eliot
$ 26 ISBN: 9781582436449 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
Thirty years after global holocaust, the colony of Carthage still struggles to build its new world. Embittered survivor Hadrian Boone--once a revered colony founder--has been hounded by despair. After the colony's leading scientist is murdered, Hadrian unearths chilling secrets behind the killing.
Suggested Reading: Dystopian Fiction
Updated 3.27.11 - Every Shallow Cut
Author: Piccirlli, Tom
$ 10.95 ISBN: 9781926851105 Date: 2011
PW
He's nameless, faceless, and has nothing left to lose - and now he has a gun! Alone except for his beloved bulldog, Churchill, a man who's failed at his career, his marriage, and his own simple hopes makes his way across the American landscape and the spectacle of his own bitter past, heading home to his brother when he knows there's no home left for him. Tom Piccirilli brings us a story for our current struggling times, taken directly from a broken heart. It is full of realism, grit, and a depth that gives voice to the fears most of us can barely imagine. The terror of loss, the overwhelming dread of failure, the horror of missed-out, mediocre dreams. And the all-too average explosive rage. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.7.11 - Threshold: Jack Sigler
Author: Robinson, Jeremy
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312540302 Date: 2011
Booklist
An ancient tower holds the key to unlocking a horrifying secret hidden within mankind's most antiquated languages. If unlocked, the world as we know it will cease to exist. Jeremy Robinson's third book in the Jack Sigler series is a rocket-powered thriller, combining high adrenaline action, smart science, ancient legends, and stunning locations.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers | Adrenaline
Updated 3.7.11 - Bent Road
Author: Roy, Lori
$ 26 ISBN: 9780525951834 Date: 2011
Kirkus LJ PW
In her promising debut novel ... Roy proves that dark secrets hide even in the most wide-open places. Set in the beautifully rendered Kansas plains, Bent Road is a family story with a suspenseful gothic core.''--Michael Koryta, author of Tonight I Said Goodbye.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Debuts
Updated 2.14.11 - Little Too Much
Author: Shannon, John
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727869913 Date: 2011
Booklist
The new novel in the critically acclaimed Jack Liffey series - Private Investigator Jack Liffey is hired to find a popular African-American actor, Ty Bird, who has disappeared from the set of his new movie. Meanwhile, Jack's home life is falling apart - his daughter, Maeve, has moved out, and his partner, Gloria, is spending less time at home. However, as Jack's search for Bird takes him to some of LA's stranger suburbs, he finds out that someone is coming to seek revenge . . .
Updated 4.15.11 - Dogs Don't Lie
Author: Simon, Clea
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590588604 Date: 2011
Booklist
Pru Marlowe isn't your ordinary animal psychic. A tough girl on the run from her own gift, Pru left the big city to return to her picturesque Berkshires hometown looking for a little peace. Too bad that her training as an animal behaviorist got her mixed up with Lily, a rescue dog, and Charles, her person. Now Charles is dead, and Lily looks good for it. After all, Lily is a pitbull, a fighting-ring dropout, and way too traumatized to give Pru a clear picture of what she has witnessed. But Pru knows something about bad girls trying to clean up, and, with a sense of justice strong enough to overcome her dislike of human society, she takes the case. Listening to the animals, Pru picks up clues--and learns there are secrets in the pretty little town that make murder look simple. Unable to tell anybody about her psychic abilities, uncertain at times about her own sanity, Pru comes to realize that if she clears Lily, she'll likely become the prime suspect--or the next victim. While the only creature she can totally trust is her crotchety tabby Wallis, Pru's got to uncover the real killer--and find a way to live with her gift--before the real beasts in the town savage her and those she has come to love. The first in the Pru Marlowe "pet noir"series. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.7.11 - Once Was a Soldier
Author: Spencer-Fleming, Julia
$ 25 ISBN: 9780312334895 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ
Spencer-Fleming's debut novel, In the Bleak Midwinter, introduces readers to Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne. One Was a Soldier takes their relationship--and the series--to the next level.
Updated 4.15.11 - The Blue Light Project
Author: Taylor, Timothy
$ 15.95 ISBN: 9781593764029 Date: 2011
Booklist
Spanning a four-day hostage situation in the not-too-distant future, The Blue Light Project looks on as a city unravels and three lives intersect in unlikely ways. When an armed man seizes a television studio in the center of town, Thom Pegg, a former investigative journalist turned tabloid reporter, is as surprised as anyone to learn that he is the only person to whom the hostage taker will speak, bringing him inside the studio and in contact with the frightening truth. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.27.11 - The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, The Ones You Do
Author: Woodrell, Daniel
$ 16.99 ISBN: 9780316133654 Date: 2011
PW
Now available in one volume--The Bayou Trilogy, from the author of Winter's Bone, featuring Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do.
Updated 3.7.11
May
- Leeches
Author: Albabari, David
$ 24 ISBN: 9780151015023 Date: 2011
Booklist
The place is Serbia, the time is the late 1990s. Our protagonist, a single man, writes a regular op-ed column for a Belgrade newspaper and spends the rest of his time with his best friend, smoking pot and talking about sex, politics, and life in general. One day on the shore of the Danube he spots a man slapping a beautiful woman. Intrigued, he follows the woman into the tangled streets of the city until he loses sight of her. A few days later he receives a mysterious manuscript whose contents seem to mutate each time he opens it. To decipher the manuscript--a collection of fragments on the Kabbalah and the history of the Jews of Zemun and Belgrade--he contacts an old schoolmate, now an eccentric mathematician, and a group of men from the Jewish community. As the narrator delves deeper into arcane topics, he begins to see signs of anti-Semitism, past and present, throughout the city and he feels impelled to denounce it. But his increasingly passionate columns erupt in a scandal culminating in murder. Following in the footsteps of Foucault's Pendulum, Leeches is a cerebral adventure into the underground worlds of secret societies and conspiracy theories. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - Darkside
Author: Bauer, Belinda
$ 15 ISBN: 9781451612752 Date: 2011
PW LJ
In bleak midwinter, the people of Shipcott are shocked by the murder of an elderly woman in her bed. As snow cuts off the village, local policeman Jonas Holly is torn between catching a brutal killer and protecting his vulnerable wife, Lucy. Soon Jonas is taunted by a series of increasingly sinister anonymous notes from someone who seems to know every move he makes.
Updated 3.27.11 - The Jefferson Key
Author: Berry, Steve
$ 26 ISBN: 9780345505514 Date: 2011
PW
Four United States presidents have been assassinated--in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963--each murder seemingly unrelated and separated by time. But what if those presidents were all killed for the same reason: a clause in the United States Constitution--contained within Article 1, Section 8--that would shock Americans? This question is what faces former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone in his latest adventure. When a bold assassination attempt is made against President Danny Daniels in the heart of Manhattan, Malone risks his life to foil the killing--only to find himself at dangerous odds with the Commonwealth, a secret society of pirates first assembled during the American Revolution. In their most perilous exploit yet, Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt race across the nation and take to the high seas. Along the way they break a secret cipher originally possessed by Thomas Jefferson, unravel a mystery concocted by Andrew Jackson, and unearth a centuries-old document forged by the Founding Fathers themselves, one powerful enough--thanks to that clause in the Constitution--to make the Commonwealth unstoppable. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 5.15.11 - A Drop of the Hard Stuff
Author: Block, Lawrence
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780316127332 Date: 2011
Booklist PW
Block brings his greatest character, Matthew Scudder, back into action in his most personal case. After a childhood friend is shot down while attempting to atone for past sins, Scudder is drawn into a murder investigation that threatens to upset his path toward recovery--and get him killed in the process.
Updated 3.27.11 - You Believers
Author: Bradley, Jane
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9781609530464 Date: 2011
Booklist
You Believers is a powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how the worst things can be faced so that we might not only survive, but grow. A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. But it is not just the heartbreak or the deep mystery of the hunt for lost loved ones that Bradley so convincingly explores. Rather, with the help of an amazingly dedicated searcher, family and friends somehow learn to move past unspeakable horror and celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit. Offering a vision that is at once ruthless and utterly compassionate, Bradley renders the search for logic, meaning, redemption and even hope in the domino force that is human nature.
Updated 5.5.11 - Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders
Author: Brandreth, Gyles
$ 14 ISBN: 9781439153697 Date: 2011
Booklist
Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders opens in 1890, at a glamorous party hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle. All of London's high society--including the Prince of Wales--are in attendance at what promises to be the event of the season. Yet Oscar Wilde is more interested in another party guest, Rex LaSalle, a young actor who claims to be a vampire. But the entertaining evening ends in tragedy when the duchess is found murdered--with two tiny puncture marks on her throat. Desperate to avoid scandal and panic, the Prince asks Oscar and his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to investigate the crime. What they discover threatens to destroy the very heart of the royal family. Told through diary entries, newspaper clippings, telegrams, and letters, "Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders "is a richly atmospheric mystery that is sure to captivate and entertain. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - Murder Under Cover: Bibliophile
Author: Carllisle, Kate
$ 7.99 ISBN: 9780451233516 Date: 2011
LJ
When she receives an exquisite copy of the Kama Sutra from her best friend, Robin, to appraise and restore, Brooklyn Wainwright anticipates both recreating a beautiful book and spicing up her love life. But then Robin's apartment is ransacked, and the great guy she recently met is murdered in her bed.
Updated 5.15.11 - Breaking Silence
Author: Castillo, Linda
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312374990 Date: 2011
LJ
The New York Times-bestselling series hailed as gripping (People) returns with Police Chief Kate Burkholder called to the scene of a horrific tragedy on a peaceful Amish farm.
Updated 3.27.11 - Among the Departed: Constable Molly Smith
Author: Delany, Vicki
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590589243 Date: 2011
LJ
Fifteen years ago a young girl by the name of Moonlight Smith went to her best friend Nicky Nowak's house for a sleepover. Moonlight joined the family for breakfast the following morning and was then picked up by her mother. Shortly after, Mr. Nowak went for a walk. He was never seen again. Autumn has arrived on the mountains above Trafalgar, B.C., and the promise of winter is in the air. Constable Molly Smith is cuddled by the fireplace with Adam Tocek of the RCMP when Tocek and his dog Norman are called to a wilderness camping ground to join the search for a little boy who snuck away from his family looking for bears. The child is found, dirty, terrified, weeping, but unharmed. Then the inquisitive Norman digs up something else: human bones. The ID isn't positive, but it is enough to have Sergeant John Winters of the Trafalgar City Police pulling old boxes from the basement to re-open the Brian Nowak investigation. He finds a family shattered beyond recognition by the disappearance of their husband and father. Mrs. Nowak is an empty shell of a woman, dressed in pajamas, never leaving the house. Her son Kyle haunts the streets of Trafalgar at night and spends his days creating beautiful, but highly troubling, art. Nicky Nowak lives in Vancouver and has grown up to be gorgeous, charming, elegant. Yet behind that facade lies a woman whose heart has closed so tightly against human relationships she comes to Trafalgar trailing in her wake a terrifying threat to another innocent family. As the investigation into the life and disappearance of Brian Nowak grows, old secrets are brought to light and new ones struggle to remain hidden. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.7.11 - Trespasser
Author: Doiron, Paul
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312558475 Date: 2011
LJ
On a fog-shrouded road in Maine, a young woman disappears after hitting a deer with her car. The game warden called to investigate uncovers a web of lies and deceit that leads to a killer who may have already gotten away with murder.
Updated 3.27.11 - Fatale
Author: Echenoz, Jean
$ 12.95 ISBN: 9781590173817 Date: 2011
PW
Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there's no question that Aimee is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she's set her eyes on a backwater burg--where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion. Aimee has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - The Worst Thing
Author: Elkins, Aaron J.
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780425240991 Date: 2011
Booklist
From the Edgar Award-winning creator of Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective, comes an exciting, new stand-alone mystery about a man who must face his worst fears head on.
Updated 5.5.11 - The White Devil
Author: Evans, Justin
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780061728273 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
An American teenage boy with a dark past is sent abroad to Harrow, the famous British boarding school, and finds himself fighting to save his own life by solving a 200-year-old literary mystery and freeing a ghost of its bonds. Annotation: An American teenage boy with a dark past is sent abroad to Harrow, the famous British boarding school, and finds himself fighting to save his own life by solving a 200-year-old literary mystery and freeing a ghost of its bonds.
Suggested Reading: Ghosts
Updated 3.30.11 - Buried Secrets
Author: Finder, Joseph
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312379148 Date: 2011
LJ Booklist
Nick Heller--a private spy who discovers things powerful people want to keep hidden--returns in the follow-up to Vanished, finding himself in the middle of a life-or-death situation that's both high-profile and intensely personal.
Suggested Reading: Espionage
Updated 5.5.11 - Deceptions
Author: Frayn, Rebecca
$ 15 ISBN: 9781439196397 Date: 2011
PW
Frayn's gripping novel about the mysterious disappearance of a 12-year-old boy will have readers guessing the outcome until the very last page.
Updated 3.27.11 - The Durham Deception
Author: Gooden, Philip
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727869951 Date: 2011
PW
Second in the gripping new 19th century Cathedral murder mystery series from the acclaimed author of the 'Nick Revill' mysteries - For the newly-weds Tom and Helen Ansell life is no honeymoon, as they are drawn into a murky underworld of Victorian spiritualism and stage magic when they're sent on a mission to the stunning cathedral city of Durham. Not only must they investigate Helen's Aunt Julia, who has mysteriously fallen for a medium, but also solve the riddle of the sinister Lucknow dagger. Until suddenly things go from bad to worse when a body turns up and Helen herself is accused of murder. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.18.11 - Misery Bay: Alex McKnight
Author: Hamilton, Steve
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312380434 Date: 2011
PW
Acclaimed Edgar Award-winning author Hamilton returns to the series that made him a legend--with Alex McKnight hunting a bloodthirsty killer through frostbitten Michigan.
Updated 4.15.11 - Pocket-47
Author: Hardin, Jude
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781608090112 Date: 2011
PW
Fifteen-year-old Brittney Ryan has taken to the streets. Leitha, her older sister and legal guardian, hires private investigator Nicholas Colt to find her and bring her home. Piece of cake, Colt thinks. With Brittney's forbidden boyfriend's address in hand, he plans to make a surprise visit and put this one in the scrapbook.But something more sinister is behind Brittney's disappearance, and Colt soon finds himself in an ever-widening maze of deceit, betrayal, and murder. When Colt learns what the mysterious phrase Pocket-47 means, he is haunted even more by the plane crash that killed his family and rock band twenty years ago-a crash he now realizes might not have been an accident.Determined to save Brittney, Colt struggles to untangle the threads of his own tortured past. Unfortunately, one of the most heinous and violent criminals in modern history has other ideas. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - Scales of Retribution
Author: Harrison, Cora
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727869968 Date: 2011
PW
June, 1510: the Burren, west coast of Ireland - Upon going unexpectedly into an early labour, Mara is alerted to the disappearance of Malachy, the local physician. Mystery follows birth, as shortly after the entrance of her son into the world the body of Malachy is discovered. But who stands to profit from this death and who therefore are Mara's lead suspects? For starters there is Malachy's new wife and her two sons, not to mention the very daughter who helped to deliver Mara's child. But soon we discover that the list of people bearing Malachy a grudge is even longer that Mara could have anticipated.
Updated 5.15.11 - The Devil She Knows
Author: Loehfelm, Bill
$ 26 ISBN: 9780374163529 Date: 2011
PW Booklist
Maureen Coughlin is in a rut. At twenty-nine, the Staten Island native fears she may become a lifer at the Narrows, the faux-swank bar where she works. Nursing a strained relationship with her mother, she seeks ambition in the little thingsa gym membership, a plan to return to school, a dash of cocaine before workbut theres no denying that shes stuck. Then, leaving work one night, Maureen walks in on a tryst between her coworker Dennis and Frank Sebastian, an aspiring politician. Sebastian forces her into silence, and Maureen is more than happy to forget what shes seenuntil Dennis turns up dead. In her search for answers, Maureen finds new meaning in her life. But before she can track down Sebastian, he tracks down her mother. Soon, Maureen is bouncing all over Staten Island trying to protect her mother while staying one step ahead of Sebastian.
Updated 5.5.11 - October Fest
Author: Lourey, Jess
$ 14.95 ISBN: 9780738726236 Date: 2011
LJ
Beer and polka music reign supreme at Octoberfest, Battle Lake's premier fall festival. To kick off the celebrations, the town hosts a public debate between the two congressional candidates: straight-laced Arnold Swydecker, and slippery incumbent, Sarah Glokkmann. As a reporter for the Battle Lake Recall, Mira James is roped into writing up the word war. But the festive mood sours when a well-known Glokkmann-bashing blogger is found dead . . . and the congresswoman herself meets a gruesome fate. To keep the heat off her best friend's fiance--an ex-con reporter--Mira wades through the candidates' dirty laundry, their unsavory secrets, and some murderous mudslinging to expose the killer. -Publisher Marketing
Updated 4.15.11 - Fatale
Author: Manchette, Jean-Patrick
$ 12.95 ISBN: 9781590173817 Date: 2011
PW
Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there's no question that Aimee is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she's set her eyes on a backwater burg--where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion. Aimee has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.27.11 - A Conflict of Interest
Author: Mitzner, Adam
$ 25 ISBN: 9781439157510 Date: 2011
PW
Mitzner delivers a stunning debut thriller in the bestselling tradition of Scott Turow and John Grisham--the story of a lawyer who discovers the secrets of an old family friend. Annotation: Mitzner delivers a stunning debut thriller in the bestselling tradition of Scott Turow and John Grisham--the story of a lawyer who discovers the secrets of an old family friend.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers | Debuts | Legal Stars
Updated 4.15.11 - The Vault
Author: Morrison, Boyd
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9781439181829 Date: 2011
PW
A combat engineer and linguistics expert must find the connection between Archimedes and the legend of King Midas before it is too late.
Updated 6.19.11 - The Snowman
Author: Nesbo, Jo
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780307595867 Date: 2011
Booklist LJ Kirkus
Internationally acclaimed, bestselling Norwegian writer Nesbo appears on the Knopf list for the first time with a bone-chilling new thriller about a serial killer who takes Harry Hole--Nesbo's irascible police investigator--to the brink of insanity.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 7.1.11 - Sixkill
Author: Parker, Robert P.
$ 26.95 ISBN: 9780399157264 Date: 2011
LJ
On location in Boston, bad-boy actor Jumbo Nelson is accused of the rape and murder of a young woman. As the case grows darker and secrets about both Jumbo and the dead girl come to light, it's Spenser--with Nelson's bodyguard Zebulon Sixkill at his side--who must put things right.
Updated 5.15.11 - The Devil's Light
Author: Patterson, Richard North
$ 26 ISBN: 9781451616804 Date: 2011
LJ
Al Qaeda operative Amer Al Zaroor directs the theft of a nuclear weapon from the Pakistani military, and then transports it toward its intended target, Israel. Deep inside Washington, CIA operative Brooke Chandler thinks he knows how the bomb is being moved toward its target and how to find it. First he must overcome the skepticism of the CIA and the White House, and then he must find the bomb before it causes the Middle East to go up in flames.
Updated 2.14.11 - The Informant
Author: Perry, Thomas
$ 27 ISBN: 9780547569338 Date: 2011
PW Kirkus LJ
A professional killer betrayed by the Mafia finds his peaceful life threatened when a hit team finally catches up with him. He knows they won't stop coming and decides to take the fight to their door. Soon Justice Department official Elizabeth Waring, the only one who believed in the assassin's existence years ago, receives a surprise late-night visit from him, and a new assault on organized crime, and an uneasy alliance between opposite sides of the law begins.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Hit Men
Updated 5.15.11 - Secrets of the White Rose
Author: Pintoff, Stefanie
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312583972 Date: 2011
PW LJ
The murder of a judge sets off a witch hunt that only Detective Simon Ziele and criminologist Alistair Sinclair can stop, in the third novel of Pintoff's Edgar Award-winning series. Annotation: The murder of a judge sets off a witch hunt that only Detective Simon Ziele and criminologist Alistair Sinclair can stop, in the third novel of Pintoff's Edgar Award-winning series.
Updated 4.15.11 - Footsteps on the Shore
Author: Rowson, Pauline
$ 28.95 ISBN: 9780727880079 Date: 2011
Booklist
The new Detective Inspector Horton mystery - Friday the thirteenth starts badly for DI Andy Horton. Convicted Murderer, Luke Felton, has gone missing, at the same time a decomposed corpse is washed up in Portsmouth harbour. But before Horton can get to grips with either case, he is called to the house of a woman he had met only the day before, to find her brutally murderer. Is Luke Felton the prime suspect, or is his body in the mud of the harbour? Horton is under pressure, and little does he suspect that things are about to get a whole lot worse.
Updated 5.15.11 - Buried Prey
Author: Sandford, John
$ 27.95 ISBN: 9780399157387 Date: 2011
PW
A house demolition provides an unpleasant surprise for Minneapolis--the bodies of two girls, wrapped in plastic. It looks like they've been there a long time. Lucas Davenport knows exactly how long. Some secrets just can't stay buried. Annotation: A house demolition provides an unpleasant surprise for Minneapolis--the bodies of two girls, wrapped in plastic. It looks like they've been there a long time. Lucas Davenport knows exactly how long. Some secrets just can't stay buried.
Updated 4.15.11 - Kiss Her Goodbye
Author: Spillane, Mickey & Max Allan Collins
$ 25 ISBN: 9780151014606 Date: 2011
LJ
After a woman is murdered practically on a funeral home's doorstep, Mike Hammer is drawn into the hunt for a cache of Nazi diamonds that makes the Maltese Falcon seem like a knickknack. Soon he is hobnobbing with coke-snorting celebrities at the notorious disco Club 52 and playing footsie with a sleek lady D.A., a modern female on the make for old-fashioned Hammer.
Updated 5.15.11 - Purgatory Chasm
Author: Ulfelder, Steve
$ 23.95 ISBN: 9780312672928 Date: 2011
PW Lj
This riveting debut mystery features a gritty, razor-sharp new voice in fiction--Conway Sax, a recovering alcoholic and car mechanic who owes everything to the Alcoholics Anonymous group that saved him. When a member turns up dead, Conway must catch the killer.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.15.11
June
- Now You See Me
Author: Bolton, S.J.
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312600525 Date: 2011
Kirkus PW LJ
From the author of Blood Harvest. An enigmatic London police officer finds herself at the heart of a serial-killer investigation with uncanny ties to Jack the Ripper.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 4.18.11 - Long Gone
Author: Burke, Alafair
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780061999185 Date: 2011
LJ
The acclaimed author's first stand-alone book is a gripping thriller in which an art gallery manager is thrust into a mystery after finding her boss dead and the gallery stripped bare.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 5.15.11 - County Line
Author: Cameron, Bill
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781935562351 Date: 2011
PW
Bill Cameron returns with a new novel starring ex-cop Skin Kadash.
Updated 4.15.11 - Breaking Silence
Author: Castillo, Linda
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312374990 Date: 2011
LJ Booklist
The New York Times-bestselling series hailed as gripping (People) returns with Police Chief Kate Burkholder called to the scene of a horrific tragedy on a peaceful Amish farm.
Updated 5.31.11 - Revenger: An Elizabethan Thriller
Author: Clements, Rory
$ 25 ISBN: 9780385342841 Date: 2011
PW
his critically acclaimed debut thriller, Martyr, Clements introduced readers to the unforgettable John Shakespeare, chief intelligencer to Queen Elizabeth I and older brother to Will. Now, five years later, the Queen needs Shakespeare's services once more.
Updated 5.15.11 - Perfect Crime
Author: Cline, Edward
$ 14.95 ISBN: 97819357971412 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 5.15.11 - The Quest for Anna Klein
Author: Cook, Thomas H.
$ 27 ISBN: 9780547364643 Date: 2011
LJ
It is 1939, and Thomas Danforth is to provide a place where a brilliant woman can receive training in firearms and explosives. This is to be the beginning of an international plot carried out by the mysterious Anna Klein--a plot that will ensnare Danforth in more ways than one.
Updated 5.15.11 - Murder One
Author: Dugoni, Robert
$ 25 ISBN: 9781451606690 Date: 2011
LJ
The New York Times-bestselling author of The Jury Master returns with another gripping legal thriller in his popular David Sloane series. The case? Defending the woman he loves against a charge of murder.
Suggested Reading: Legal Stars
Updated 6.19.11 - Infernal Angels: Amos Walker
Author: Estleman, Loren D.
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780765319555 Date: 2011
PW
Detroit private investigator Amos Walker is hired to recover HDTV converter boxes stolen from a retailer whose shop also does vintage resale business. Before long, the case turns old school: both a suspect and the man who lost the boxes are murdered, and Walker ends up working with both the local police and the feds.
Updated 5.15.11 - The Fatal Touch: Commissario Alec Blume
Author: Fitzgerald, Conor
$ 25 ISBN: 9781608193295 Date: 2011
LJ
Updated 4.15.11 - Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead
Author: Gran, Sara
$ 24 ISBN: 9780547428499 Date: 2011
PW LJ
PI Claire DeWitt has just arrived in post-Katrina New Orleans to investigate the disappearance of Vic Willing, a prosecutor known for winning convictions in a homicide-plagued city. Has an angry criminal enacted revenge on Vic? Or did he use the storm as a means to disappear?
Updated 5.15.11 - The Shirt of His Back: Benjamin January
Author: Hambly, Barbara
$ 29.95 ISBN: 9780727880109 Date: 2011
PW
The new Benjamin January novel from the best-selling author - Abishag Shaw is seeking vengeance for his brother's murder – and Benjamin January is seeking money after his bank crashes. Far beyond the frontier, in the depths of the Rocky Mountains, both are to be found at the great Rendezvous of the Mountain Men: a month-long orgy of cheap booze, shooting-matches, tall tales and cut-throat trading. But at the rendezvous, the discovery of a corpse opens the door to hints of a greater plot, of madness and wholesale murder . . .
Updated 5.15.11 - Good Neighbors
Author: Jahn, Ryan David
$ 15 ISBN: 9780143118961 Date: 2011
- Booklist
Inspired by the legendary real-life murder of Kitty Genovese, Good Neighbors calls to mind the Oscar-winning movie Crash, and its suspense and profound sense of urban menace rank it with Hitchcock's Rear Window and the gritty crime novels of Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, and James Ellroy.
Updated 5.15.11 - Hell Is Empty: Walt Longmire
Author: Johnson, Craig
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780670022779 Date: 2011
PW
Well-read and world-weary, Sheriff Walt Longmire has been maintaining order in Wyoming's Absaroka County for more than 30 years, but in this riveting seventh outing, he is pushed to his limits as he braves a frozen inferno to capture an escaped murderer.
Updated 5.15.11 - The Ridge
Author: Koryta, Michael
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316053662 Date: 2011
PW LJ
On an isolated ridge in the Kentucky woods stands a homemade lighthouse, hundreds of miles from any substantial body of water. Local reporter Roy Darmus has always found it an amusing oddity--until he is selected as the recipient of a suicide note from its builder. Roy soon has a storytelling assignment more daunting than anything he's seen before.
Updated 6.15.11 - Stagestruck: Peter Diamond
Author: Lovesey, Peter
$ 25 ISBN: 9781569479476 Date: 2011
PW
Detective Peter Diamond takes on the theater as he investigates a murder behind the scenes of a production in Bath.
Updated 4.18.11 - Tracers
Author: Magson, Adrian
$ 29.95 ISBN: 9780727880130 Date: 2011
Booklist
Second in the brand-new Harry Tate thriller series - In western Baghdad, a suicide bomber blows up a fortified house, killing everyone inside. In Norfolk, England, a runaway Libyan banker is assassinated. Different events, half a world apart - but closely linked. Former M15 agent Harry Tate has been hired by a government fixer to find two runaways, but then both are assassinated. Despite his misgivings, he is persuaded into a third assignment, but when he tracks down the supposed Israeli professor, things start to go very wrong . . .
Updated 5.15.11 - Post
Author: Masters, Hilary
$ 16.95 ISBN: 9781886157750 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 6.19.11 - East on Sunset: Will MacGowen
Author: Mercer, Ken
$ 25.99 ISBN: 9780312558376 Date: 2011
PW
In the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Slow Fire, hero cop Will MacGowen returns to battle the evils of his past after a killer is released from jail at the worst possible moment.
Updated 4.15.11 - The Inspector and Silence: Inspector Van Veeteren
Author: Nesser, Hakan
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9780375425233 Date: 2011
PW
A secretive and dubious religious sect comes under investigation when a young girl is found dead. Inspector Van Veeteren and the other detectives on the case are mystified and infuriated when the members of the Pure Life--led by a charismatic but unnervingly guarded messiah figure--choose to remain silent about the incident rather than defend themselves.
Updated 4.15.11 - The End of Brooklyn
Author: Randisi, Robert J.
$ 14.95 ISBN: 9781935797128 Date: 2011
Booklist
Updated 5.15.11 - The Wreckage
Author: Robotham, Michael
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316126403 Date: 2011
Booklist
Someone is bombing the banks of Baghdad. On the streets of London, former cop Vincent Ruiz is robbed of his briefcase. And Richard North, a top-tier VP at an international finance powerhouse, vanishes. North holds the key that connects these three seemingly unrelated events--or did, until he disappeared without a trace.
Suggested Reading: Thrillers
Updated 5.15.11 - You Belong to Me
Author: Rose, Karen
$ 7.99 ISBN: 97804512335878 Date: 2011
PW
Baltimore Homicide Detective J.D. Fitzpatrick has seen a lot of violence but nothing like the trail of tortured bodies that are turning up. Now he's starting to suspect that his medical examiner, Dr. Lucy Trask, may be shielding a dark secret that could connect her to these vicious killings.
Updated 4.18.11 - The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes
Author: Sakey, Marcus
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780525952114 Date: 2011
Booklist
Sakey (The Blade Itself, Good People) returns with his most ambitious novel, a captivating story of love and memory, where the only thing more frightening than the questions are the answers.
Updated 5.15.11 - Fallen
Author: Slaughter, Karin
$ 26 ISBN: 9780345528209 Date: 2011
Booklist
Will Trent and Sara Linton, the beloved characters from Slaughter's two acclaimed series (and the bestseller Broken), are back on the case in this electrifying thriller about how far a woman, a cop, and a daughter will go.
Updated 5.31.11 - White Shotgun: Ana Grey
Author: Smith, April
$ 25.95 ISBN:9780307270139 Date: 2011
Booklist
On leave from the FBI, Ana Grey witnesses a drive-by shooting in London and helps the injured and gives testimony to the police. Still, it comes as a shock when, soon after, the Bureau contacts her--not because they want her to investigate the shooting, but because they want her to investigate the half-sister she never knew she had.
Updated 5.15.11 - The Pack
Author: Starr, Jason
$ 25.95 ISBN: 9780441020089 Date: 2011
LJ
After losing his job, Simon Burns takes on the role of stay-at-home dad. Things take a turn when he meets a tight-knit trio of dads at the playground. They are different from other men Simon has met, stronger and more confident, more at ease with the darker side of life--and soon Simon is lured into their mix.
Suggested Reading: Genre Crossovers
Updated 5.15.11 - Fun and Games
Author: Swierczynski, Duane
$ 14.99 ISBN: 9780316133289 Date: 2011
PW
The first of three explosive pulp thrillers from cult crime fiction sensationand Marvel Comics scribe Swierczynski.
Updated 4.18.11 - Before I Go to Sleep
Author: Watson, S.J.
$25.99 ISBN: 9780062060556 Date: 2011
Kirkus Booklist PW LJ
In this gripping psychological thriller in the vein of Shutter Island and the film Memento, an amnesiac attempts to reconstruct her past by keeping a journal and discovers the dangerous inconsistencies in the stories of her husband and her secret doctor.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 5.15.11 - A Bad Night's Sleep
Author: Wiley, Michael
$ 24.99 ISBN: 9780312552244 Date: 2011
PW
Chicago P.I. Joe Kosmarski joins a burglary crew, working as an inside agent to weed out the corrupted cops involved.
Updated 4.15.11 - The Rock Hole: Red River Mystery
Author: Wortham, Reavis
$ 24.95 ISBN: 9781590588840 Date: 2011
Kirkus
In 1964, farmer and part-time Constable Ned Parker combine forces with John Washington, the almost mythical black deputy sheriff from nearby Paris, to track down a disturbed individual who is rapidly becoming a threat to the entire small Texas community of Center Springs. When Ned is summoned to a hot cornfield one morning to examine the remains of a tortured bird dog, he finds a dark presence in their quiet community. A farmer by trade, Ned is usually confident when it comes to handling moonshiners, drunks and domestic disputes. But the animal atrocities turn to murder, and the investigation spins beyond his abilities. After a dizzying series of twists, eccentric characters and dead-ends, Ned's friend, cranky Judge O.C. Rains, is forced to contact the FBI. Worse, sinister warnings that his family has been targeted by the killer lead Ned to the startling discovery that he knows the murderer very well. After the failed abduction of his precocious grandchildren Top and Pepper, the old lawman becomes judge and jury to end the murder spree in the Red River bottomlands. With a heart-pounding pace, country humor and a stunning climax speaks to the darkness in us all. In bald-headed pot-bellied Ned Parker, Wortham has created an authentic American hero who will put you in mind of the best heroes and antiheroes you've ever experienced. The year 1964 was the end of an era in Center Springs, and the climax may well shock your civilized sensibilities. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 7.1.11
Starred Review Lists
Books that received at least one starred review from Booklist, Kirkus, LJ, and PW.
2013 Crime Fiction: Jan-June | Fiction: Jan-June | Speculative Fiction
2012 Crime Fiction: July-Dec | Fiction: July-Dec | Speculative Fiction
Hotlists@ Google Docs
Crime Fiction... 2013 | 2012 | 2011
(lists of new and notable books - lists are sortable and can be downloaded)
more stars lists...
Overbooked
Sign up for updates via the Overbooked mailing list
