In Reference to Murder

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in December

Here's a representative listing of new titles coming November, which this month includes new novels by Steve Berry, Barbara D'Amato, Martin Edwards, Loren D. Estleman, Lee Goldberg, Ed Gorman, Sue Grafton, W.E.B. Grififn, Stephen Hunter, J.A. Jance, and Betty Webb. Check out the links at the bottom for more, as there are many more offerings, too numerous to list.

Barbara D'Amato, Jeanne M. Dams, and Mark Richard Zubro: Foolproof (December 22, 2009). Survivors of 9/11, Brenda Grant and Daniel Henderson found their own software security firm and then establish a clandestine division committed to covertly tracking down global terrorists. In a search involving Washington DC, Egypt, Italy and Turkey, they expose a plot to hijack a US presidential election, rig voting machines, and topple democracies worldwide.

Maggie Barbieri: Final Exam (December 8, 2009) St. Thomas, the small college north of New York City where Professor Alison Bergeron teaches, has had its share of scandals involving both its students and its staff, not to mention Alison herself, so when a resident director goes missing the administration wants to keep a lid on it. Bergeron doesn’t have to look further than the drugs the missing man had hidden in his bathroom to get her boyfriend, Detective Bobby Crawford, on the case. 

Ira Berkowitz: Sinners' Ball (December 29, 2009) Ex-NYPD homicide detective Jackson Steeg, with one lung and a weakness for the bottle, tries to locate the real culprit when a warehouse owned by his mob-connected brother goes up in flames and kills three squatters and two fire fighters and an additional six bodies, sexually mutilated and placed in packing crates, turn up in the basement. 

Steve Berry: The Paris Vendetta (December 1, 2009) A friend of former U.S. Justice Department operative Cotton Malone, the Danish billionaire Henrik Thorvaldsen, has become consumed with finding out who masterminded the slaughter outside a Mexico City courthouse two years earlier that killed seven people, including his young diplomat son. Thorvaldsen gets entangled in a conspiracy involving plans to destabilize the global economy and a legendary cache hidden by Napoleon. Malone soon finds himself in a struggle to save not only Thorvaldsen's life but the lives of countless innocents as well.

Miranda Bliss: Murder Has a Sweet Tooth (December 1, 2009) Annie Capshaw has found that the way to a man's heart is through his cooking class. But just as she and her best friend, Eve, are planning Annie's big day with Jim, her former cooking instructor turned boss, murder takes the cake. 

Robin Burcell: The Bone Chamber (December 1, 2009) Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick, forensic artist to the FBI, returns to Quantico to help identify a brutally murdered young woman. But when Sydney’s friend and colleague, the forensic anthropologist who assisted her, is killed in a hit-and-run, a covert government team takes over the investigation, and Sydney is suddenly removed from the case. Certain her friend’s murder is connected to the first case, Sydney's investigation takes her to the streets of Rome, and into the underground crypts and caverns in Naples, one step ahead of a ruthless killer.

Andrea Camilleri: The Wings of the Sphinx (December 29, 2009). Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano and it gets worse when a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off and only a tattoo of a sphinx moth giving any hint of her identity. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls--all victims of the underworld sex trade--who have been rescued from the Mafia nightclub circuit by a prominent Catholic charity. The problem is, Montalbano's inquiries elicit an outcry from the Church and the three other girls are all missing.

Anthony J. Cardieri: Luck of the Draw (December 8, 2009) When Detective Deke Durgess finds himself at the scene of a brutal murder in Lower Manhattan, he has no idea that it’s just the beginning of the most prolific murder spree in New York City history, one where entire families will be wiped out by a vicious killer dubbed The Daily Killer.

Laura Childs: Eggs Benedict Arnold (December 1, 2009) When Cackleberry Clubber Suzanne delivers a pie to funeral director Ozzie Driesden, she discovers him not working at the embalming table but lying on the embalming table. She barely has time to recognize his corpse before she's drugged with chloroform. With more suspects than breakfast specials, the Cackleberry Club scrambles to crack the case before one of their own ends up six feet under.

Barbara Colley: Dusted To Death (December 29, 2009) When a big Hollywood studio wants to use Bitsy Duke's Victorian home for a movie shoot, she agrees, but only if Charlotte LaRue agrees to take care of her place during the shoot. The cast includes one of Hollywood's hottest ingenues, Angel Martinique. But as Charlotte quickly discovers, Angel is no saint and her friend Gavin is soon found dead in the star's dressing room. 

Stephen Coonts: The Disciple (December 8, 2009) Iran is weeks away from acquiring nuclear weapons and has every intention of using them to strike first. Only CIA operative Tommy Carmellini and Jake Grafton, the new CIA head of Middle Eastern Operations, can stop a nuclear nightmare.

Hannah Dennison: Exposé! (December 1, 2009) When local celebrity Scarlett Flemming dies, Vicky learns of Scarlett's shaky finances and marriage. While canvassing an entire town of suspects and juggling three eligible suitors, she must stay one step ahead of a killer once she realizes she's no longer writing an obituary, but an exposé.

Joanne Dobson: Death Without Tenure (December 1, 2009) Professor Karen Pelletier is about to realize her dream; after six years in the English Department at New England’s exclusive Enfield College, she's up for tenure. Then Professor Joseph Lone Wolf, her rival for the one tenured spot in the department, is found dead from an overdose of Peyote buttons. First on the list of suspects, Karen is harassed by a homicide cop with a grudge against his colleague, the love of Karen’s life, Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski.

Margaret Duffy: Souvenirs of Murder (December 1, 2009) Ingrid Langley isn't pleased when her husband and working partner, Patrick Gillard, late of MI5 and now with the Serious Organized Crime Agency, is sent on assignment days after the birth of their new son. A local crime provides a welcome distraction, but before long, Ingrid has a bigger problem to deal with--Pangborne is murdered, and all clues point to Patrick as the killer.

Martin Edwards: Dancing for the Hangman (December 9, 2009) A fictionalized story of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen from 1910 which takes into full account all the evidence and might have provided the definitive answer to the perennial puzzle: was he guilty of murdering his wife, or wasn’t he?

Loren D. Estleman: Alone (December 8, 2009) Hollywood film detective Valentino wants to keep The Oracle, his beloved run-down movie palace, from being condemned before it even reopens, but murder keeps intruding into his otherwise quiet life.

Margaret Frazer: A Play of Treachery (December 1, 2009). In 15th-century England, at the behest of his powerful patron, theater player Joliffe journeys to France to act as a servant to the widowed duchess Jacquetta of Bedford, while actually training in spycraft. But when a member of the duchess's household is murdered, Joliffe learns just how dangerous secrets can be.

Julie Garwood: Sizzle (December 29, 2009) After film student Lyra Prescott unwittingly captures a shocking crime on camera, a rash of mysterious, treacherous incidents convince Lyra that she's trapped in a sinister scenario headed for a violent ending.

Lee Goldberg: Mr. Monk in Trouble (December 1, 2009) Ever since a 1962 unsolved train robbery made it famous, people have made their way to Trouble in California's gold country to search for the booty that robbers supposedly dumped in the botched heist. When the museum watchman is murdered, Monk and his assistant, Natalie, are sent to investigate.

Jonathan Gash. Faces in the Pool (December 8, 2009) Lovejoy is released from jail on condition he join the elegant Laura Moon’s speed-dating agency. A divorced millionairess, she proposes a temporary marriage of convenience to help her hunt down her  former husband. Can Lovejoy do what is expected of him without getting killed?

Ed Gorman: Ticket to Ride (December 15, 2009) For small-town Iowa lawyer Sam McCain, the year 1965 is not a sweet one. Seeking escape from his many personal problems, McCain tries to enjoy himself during the Labor Day weekend party the town sponsors every year, reuniting with several old friends. Now that they're all in their late twenties some of the old grudges and rivalries seem silly—until two of them are murdered for what seems to be a motive buried in the past.

Sue Grafton: U Is for Undertow (December 1, 2009). A young man, Michael Sutton, believes he's beginning to remember the murder of a girl 21 years ago when he was six and stumbled on the girl's burial site. He wants Kinsey Milhone's help in locating the child's remains and finding the men who killed her. It's a long shot but he's willing to pay cash up front, and Kinsey agrees to give him one day. As her investigation unfolds, she discovers Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. Is his current story true or simply one more in a long line of fabrications?

Sarah Graves: Crawlspace (December 29, 2009) Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree abandoned Wall Street to its bankruptcies and bailouts for a far more rewarding life fixing up an 1823 Federal-style house in Eastport, Maine. But Jake discovers that no matter what your address, the most terrifying crimes always hit closest to home.

W.E.B. Grififn: The Honor of Spies (December 29, 2009) In his brief career in the Office of Strategic Services, 24-year-old Cletus Frade has already been involved in a lot of unusual situations, but nothing like the one he's in now, standing with a German lieutenant colonel named Wilhelm Frogger in a Mississippi prisoner-of-war detention facility. Frade's job? To help Frogger escape. Frogger was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and if the OSS can use him to nudge that plot along, they may be able to end this war right now.

M.R. Hall: The Disappeared (December 1, 2009) Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the disappearance of two young Muslim students, who vanished without a trace seven years ago. The police had concluded that the boys had fled to Pakistan to traffic in the atrocities of Islamic fanaticism. Now, sufficient time has passed for the law to declare the boys legally dead. A final declaration is left up to Jenny, but as her inquest progresses, the stench of corruption is unmistakable.

David Handler: Click to Play  (December 1, 2009) A dying TV star reaches out to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with an explosive revelation: the truth behind an infamous Hollywood murder spree, which will destroy a US senator's bid for the presidency. For former star reporter Hunt Liebling, it's a chance to get his career back on track until he walks in on an all-new Hollywood massacre and becomes the prime suspect himself.

Cora Harrison: Writ in Stone (December 1, 2009) It's Christmas, 1509, and Mara, the investigating judge of the Burren, has accepted the offer of marriage made by King Turlough. But on the eve of the marriage festivities, a man kneeling in prayer in the abbey church is violently murdered. Who could have planned to kill the king? Cut off from the outside world by heavy snow, Mara must act quickly to catch the assassin before a second death occurs.

Tami Hoag: Deeper Than the Dead (December 29, 2009) In 1984 California, three children stumble upon a partially buried female body. Close behind the children is their teacher, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn't yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer's escalating activity. Detective Tony Mendez is charged with interpreting those now revealed secrets, pushing him ever deeper into the lives of the children and the young teacher whose interest in recent events becomes as intense as his own. 

Hazel Holt:  Mrs. Malory and Any Man's Death (December 1, 2009) The village of Mere Barton would be a different place without local busybody Annie Roberts. Standing only five feet tall, the tireless retired nurse organizes and oversees all local activity with military precision. When Sheila Malory gets roped into Annie's latest project, a compilation of the village's history, she has a feeling it will lead to trouble. But the project is cut short when Annie is found dead from a nasty case of mushroom poisoning, and Mrs. Malory seems to be the only one who finds the death suspicious. 

Charlotte Hughes: High Anxiety (December 29, 2009) Kate Holly needs a temporary secretary. Amanda Davis is a competent worker with a friendly personality and, after altering her hairstyle and fashion sense to identically match Kate's, more issues than a lifetime subscription to Psychology Today.

Stephen Hunter: I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel (December 29, 2009) Swagger faces off against one of his most ruthless adversaries yet to clear the name of a fellow soldier-in-arms.

Ryan David Jahn: Acts of Violence (December 2, 2009) Katrina Marino is about to become America's most infamous murder victim. This is Katrina's story, and the story of her killer. It is also the story of Katrina's neighbours, those who witnessed her murder and did nothing as well as others whose lives are touched by the crime including the amateur blackmailer who's about to find out just what sort of people he's been threatening and a corrupt cop who believes he is God's 'red right hand'.

J.A. Jance: Trial by Fire  (December 2009) Ex–TV journalist Ali Reynolds takes over a media-relations job at the county police department in her hometown of Sedona. Soon after being fitted for the mandatory Kevlar vest, Ali goes to the site of a subdivision fire that has left an unidentified woman in critical condition. All signs point to arson, but the fire's amnesia-ridden survivor is the only one who knows the truth. With the help of a hospital nurse who's also a nun, Ali goes undercover to piece together the victim's identity and her relationship to the fire.

Stan Jones: Village of the Ghost Bears (December 1, 2009) Alaska State Trooper Nathan Active must figure out what connects a dead hunter on a remote Arctic lake with a year-old fatal plane crash in the Brooks Range and a fire at the Chukchi Recreation Center that killed eight people, including the town’s basketball star. 

Peter May: Virtually Dead (December 31, 2009) Crime-scene photographer Michael Kapinsky is a man whose first life is in a mess. But his second life is about to get a whole lot messier. Staggering under the financial burden left by his recently deceased wife, Michael struggles to come to terms with her death until his psychologist persuades him to enter a virtual world called Second Life to participate in a new kind of group therapy. Once there, his persona, Chas Chesnokov, discovers that victims whose crime scenes Michael has attended in the wealthy Southern California resort of Newport Beach have had their avatars clinically executed in the virtual world. 

Colleen McCullough: Too Many Murders (December 1, 2009) The year is 1967 and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War goes relentlessly on. On a beautiful spring day in the little city of Holloman, Connecticut, home to prestigious Chubb University and armaments giant Cornucopia, chief of detectives Captain Carmine Delmonico has more pressing concerns than finding a name for his infant son: twelve murders have taken place in one day, and Delmonico is drawn into a gruesome web of secrets and lies.

Russel D. McLean: The Good Son (December 8, 2009) There is something rotten behind the apparent suicide of Daniel Robertson and it’s about to come bursting into the life of J. McNee, a Scottish private investigator with a near-crushing level of personal baggage. James Robertson, a local farmer, finds his estranged brother’s corpse hanging from a tree. The police claim suicide. But McNee is about to uncover the disturbing truth behind the death.

Kate Morgenroth: Through the Heart (December 29, 2009) Bullied Nora is stuck in a dead-end job in Kansas, caring for her cancer-stricken mother. Spoiled rich boy Timothy walks into the coffee shop where Nora works, and it's mad love at first sight. A more unlikable pair of lovers is hard to imagine, but they're united in their mutual distaste for their dreadful, if hopelessly stereotypical, families, who return their disdain. It all comes to a head when there's a murder the morning of their wedding.

Christopher Nicole: Angel of Darkness  (December 1, 2009) It's 1953 and  Anna Fehrbach, now happily married, is enjoying her Bahamian hideaway. Its been three years since the Russians' last attempted to arrest her for her attempt on the life of Joseph Stalin, and shes beginning to believe that her arch-enemy, Lavrenty Beria, has abandoned the chase. But when Anna is lured into one last job for the CIA, she is plunged back into the Russian orbit.

Brad Parsk: Faces of the Gone (December 8, 2009) Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That’s the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. 

Michael Pearce: A Dead Man in Naples  (December 1, 2009) Lionel Scampion, British consul in Naples, has been stabbed to death while bicycling through the piazza of the Porta Carmine. According to his sister, he had no enemies. The Neapolitan police suggest he was murdered by a bicycle-racing rival. In Naples, every mystery is attributed to the Camorra, a powerful criminal society; could its members be involved? 

Ann Purser: Tragedy at Two (December 1, 2009) Lois Meade's daughter was admittedly considering leaving her partner, Rob, but she never expected him to be found badly beaten and left for dead in a ditch by the side of the road. After he dies, Inspector Cowgill has a murder investigation on his hands, and once again he engages the assistance of the woman he respects above all others--Lois, who must follow a twisted path that leads to arson, local delinquents, secret assignations, and blackmail before she can discover who's been tinkering with the truth.

Jean Rowden: More Deaths Than One (December 31, 2009) Constable Thorny Deepbriar can't resist trying his hand at a little detective work...even if he is off-duty. Convalescing in the seaside resort where he was stationed during the war, Deepbriar starts looking into a case that the local police are treating as a joke. But when a body is discovered on the beach, Deepbriar must uncover the truth of events that took place over a decade ago. Most of the evidence is missing and most of the witnesses are dead or scattered but unless Deepbriar solves the mystery he could be facing a charge of murder.

Tom Schreck: Out Cold (December 2009) When a client of guidance counselor and ex-boxer Duffy Dombrowski, the 28-year-old paranoid schizophrenic Karl Greene, starts to predict terrorist attacks that actually happen, Duffy and Karl set out to stop evildoers intent on spoiling the Notre Dame football season opener as well as executing a Columbine-style massacre.

Deborah Shlian and Linda Reid: Dead Air (December 7, 2009). An outspoken, brash, native New Yorker, Sammy Greene isn't afraid to ruffle a few feathers at Ellsford University, her ultraconservative New England college. Host of "The Hot Line", a talk-radio show on campus station WELL, Sammy tackles the toughest, most controversial issues facing Ellsford's students. When Sammy discovers the body of Dr. Burton Conrad, one of Ellsford's most esteemed professors, her journalistic drive kicks in and she sets out to discover what happened.

Les Standiford: Deal with the Dead (December 1, 2009) Life looks good for John Deal. A new contract promises to put the family business in the black and restore its reputation, tarnished by the suicide of John's father. But the new contract is linked to old ties -- like the multi-million dollar pact John's father made with Miami mobster Lucky Rhodes decades ago. Now both men are gone, the money has vanished, and Lucky's son wants it back. John Deal is about to discover just how deep blood ties can cut.

Jennifer Stanley: Stirring Up Strife (December 29, 2009) Cooper Lee can repair a copy machine—but can she repair her life? That’s one of the many Big Questions that lead this newly single Richmond girl to Sunrise Bible Study at the Hope Street Church and a group of quirky friends. But the church member who invited Cooper to join this motley crew is something else altogether: she’s dead and her husband is suspected of murder. The Sunrise gang jumps into action, vowing to solve this unholy mess—with God’s guidance and Cooper’s snooping.

Charles Todd: A Matter of Justice (December 8, 2009). During the Boer War, Pvt. Harold Quarles takes advantage of a Boer attack on a British military train to enrich himself. When two decades later his battered corpse is found grotesquely displayed at his country residence in Somerset, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge must sift through the plethora of lies, omissions and motives surrounding Quarles, who had become a successful investment adviser in London. Because the victim was almost universally despised in Somerset, Rutledge has no shortage of suspects.

Betty Webb:  Desert Lost (December 1, 2009) While running surveillance in an industrial section of Scottsdale, P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to Second Zion, an infamous polygamy cult based in northern Arizona. Lena joins forces with Rosella, a former polygamist sister wife, to find the victim's killer, and soon discovers a shocking secret: in a society where one man can have ten wives, nine men will have none. Second Zion makes certain these possible rivals don't stick around.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in November

Here's a representative listing of titles coming in November, which this month includes new novels by Simon Brett, Ken Bruen, Lillian Stewart Carl, and J.D. Robb. Check out the links at the bottom for more, as there are many more offerings, too numerous to list.

• Simon Brett: The Poisoning in the Pub Fethering (November 18, 2009) Fethering residents, Jude and Carole, get more than they bargained for when a lunchtime meal in their local pub leaves everyone with food poisoning, and it looks like it could be the end of the road for the Crown and Anchor. The two  amateur lady detectives wonder if it might just be more than a run of bad luck, and when a young man with the mental age of a five year old is found in the kitchen of the pub with a knife through his heart, Carole and Jude swing into action.

• Emily Brightwell: Mrs. Jeffries and the Yuletide Weddings (November 3, 2009) Just as Inspector Witherspoon's staff prepares for the long-awaited wedding of Betsy and Smythe, a Yuletide murder falls in the Inspector's lap. A middle-aged spinster has been killed in what her murderer hoped would look like a random crime. But the Inspector's investigation reveals a web of lies, intrigue, and long-buried secrets.

• Ken Bruen: London Boulevard (November 24, 2009) When Mitchell is released from prison after serving three years for a vicious attack he doesn’t remember, Billy Norton is there to pick him up. But Norton works for Tommy Logan, a ruthless loan shark lowlife with plans Mitchell wants nothing to do with. Attempting to stay out of Logan’s way, he finds work at the Holland Park mansion of faded movie actress, Lillian Palmer. It isn’t long before Mitchell’s violent past catches up with him and people start getting hurt. When his disturbed sister Briony is threatened, Mitchell is forced to act.

• Don Bruns: Stuff to Spy For (November 2, 2009) (3rd novel featuring bumbling South Florida sleuths Skip Moore and James Lessor). When Sarah Crumbly, an old high school friend, approaches Skip about updating the security for Synco Systems, Skip accepts because he's promised a big bonus if he also pretends to be Sarah's boyfriend. Sarah, a high-rent call girl, happens to be the mistress of Synco's married CEO, Sandy Conroy, with whom she has plans to leave the country. Complications ensue after Synco's V-P turns up dead in his office. Skip, James and Skip's girlfriend, Emily, become bargain-basement James Bonds as they acquire an assortment of nifty spy stuff to use in their investigation.

• Jim Butcher: Death Masks Dresden Files (November 3, 2009). Harry Dresden is not having a good day. A vampire named Ortega wants to challenge him to a duel that will end the war between the vampires and the wizards. Harry, who has almost no hope of winning, is preoccupied by another problem: Father Vincent needs his help in finding the stolen Shroud of Turin, but he learns he isn't the only one after it. A group of terrifying demons wants the shroud, and its leader is interested in Harry's soul, too. Harry must call on all of his friends, including three brave knights, his police-officer friend, and even his half-vampire ex-girlfriend.

• Lillian Stewart Carl: The Charm Stone (November 18, 2009) Jean Fairbairn’s significant other, ex-Scottish cop Alasdair Cameron, might sometimes wish he could pass judgment on the dingbats Jean writes about. Especially when her current subjects, a set of batty conspiracy theorists, may be involved in the theft of a Williamsburg-crafted replica of the sixteenth-century Witch Box. Can Jean maintain her resolve to abandon the academic battlefield forever, or will she be tempted back into combat by an appealing former colleague, Matthew Frost? And what about Alasdair, who is supposedly retired from the rigors of law enforcement, but who is now confronted not only by a theft but two murder cases—and by Stephanie Venegas, the detective in charge.

• Cassandra Chan: A Spider on the Stairs (November 10, 2009) Phillip Bethancourt and Jack Gibbons are both in Yorkshire, Phillip to visit family for the holidays, Jack to find out if a serial killer is at work. A bookshop clerk has been strangled, and Jack has very little to go on.

• Mark Coggins: The Big Wake Up  (November 1, 2009) Soon after flirting with an attractive young woman in a laundromat, San Francisco PI August Riordan watches in horror as a deranged cable car operator guns her and an older woman down. Riordan pursues the killer and stops his bloody rampage. The Argentine family of the first victim, 23-year-old Araceli Rivero, hires him to investigate an unrelated matter, the location of Araceli's dead aunt, whose body was transferred from a Milan cemetery to somewhere in the Bay Area. After quickly getting a promising lead, Riordan learns that his clients have been less than straight with him and the missing corpse is actually that of Evita Peron.

• Cleo Coyle: Holiday Grind (November 3, 2009) Coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi has grown very fond of Alfred Glockner, part-time comic and charity Santa who's been using her Village Blend as a place to warm his mittens. When she finds him brutally gunned down in a nearby alley, clues convince her that Alfred's death was something more than the tragic result of a random mugging--the conclusion of the police. With Clare's boyfriend, NYPD Detective Mike Quinn, distracted by a cold case of his own, and ex-husband Matt investigating this year's holiday lingerie catalogs (an annual event), Clare charges ahead solo to solve her beloved Santa's slaying. Then someone tries to ice Clare, and she really gets steamed.

• Clive Cussler and Justin Scott: The Wrecker (November 17, 2009) It is 1907, and train wrecks, fires, and explosions sabotage the Southern Pacific Railroad. Desperate, the railroad hires the fabled Van Dorn Detective Agency. Van Dorn sends in his best man, and Isaac Bell quickly discovers that a mysterious saboteur haunts the hobo jungles of the West, a man known as the Wrecker, who recruits accomplices from the down-and-out to attack the railroad, and then kills them afterward. 

• Vicki Delany: Winter of Secrets (November 1, 2009) Siblings Wendy and Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth and their friends are in the peaceful mountain town of Trafalgar, B.C. enjoying a two-week vacation. Tragedy strikes the group of privileged students when two of them crash through the ice into the frozen river.

• Christopher Fowler: Bryant & May on the Loose (November 24, 2009) The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their embarrassed superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May have at last crossed the line and not even their eccentric genius or phenomenal success rate solving London’s most unusual crimes can save them. While Bryant takes to his bed, his bathrobe, and his esoteric books, the rest of the team take to the streets looking for new careers—leading one of them to stumble upon a gruesome murder. Still it takes the bizarre sightings of a great horned creature—half man, half stag—carrying off young women to convince Bryant that this is a case worth getting dressed and leaving the house to solve. The Home Office has reluctantly authorized the PCU to reunite for one last encore performance.

• J. M. Gregson: Darkness Visible (November 1, 2009) When small-time drug dealer Darren Chivers narrowly escapes a police arrest, he begins to develop a different sort of criminal activity. Blackmail proves lucrative, but ultimately lethal. As Chief Superintendent Lambert and DS Hook interview the dead man's contacts, secrets tumble out as the investigation progresses and the solution to the puzzle is as startling as it is shocking.

• H. Terrell Griffin: Wyatt's Revenge (November 16, 2009) On balance, retired trial lawyer turned-beach bum Matt Royal is a pretty laid-back fellow. But when Laurence Wyatt, one of Matt's best friends, is murdered, Matt trades in his easygoing ways for a hard-hitting quest for revenge. Matt knows the Longboat Key police will do their job in investigating. But for Matt, finding Wyatt's killer isn't a job; it's personal.

• C. S. Harris: What Remains of Heaven (November 3, 2009) Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to help in the investigation of two corpses found in an ancient crypt, their violent deaths separated by decades. One is the Bishop of London, the elderly Archbishop's favored but controversial successor. The identity of the other seems lost in time. Sebastian amasses a list of suspects that range from some of the Prince Regent's closest cronies to William Franklin, embittered son of famous American patriot Ben Franklin-and finds himself confronting the well-guarded secrets of his own family's history. 

• Ellen Hart: The Mirror and the Mask (November 10, 2009) Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is at crossroads. The rough economy has put her plans for a third restaurant on hold, and her long distance romance is on the rocks. Unsure of what to do next, she takes her good friend A. J. Nolan up on his standing offer to take her on as a private investigator. While still in training, her first job seems simple enough. All she had to do is find Annie Archer’s stepfather. Jane tracks down a likely match—a man who has made a small fortune in real estate. While she’s happy to close her first case, she finds it hard to reconcile the difference between PI work—finding what people pay you to find—and uncovering the truth, the whole truth, especially when clues in this seemingly simple case point to more threatening family secrets than where Annie’s father has been hiding out.

• Steven F. Havill: Red, Green, or Murder (November 1, 2009) Former Posadas County Sheriff Bill Gastner, now a New Mexico Livestock Inspector, is enjoying a day on Herb Torrances. But old habits die hard and when a ranch hand goes missing, Gastner helps with the search. When Reyes-Guzman thinks something is a bit suspicious about the death of George Payton, an “irascible old retired gun dealer,” Gastner is quick to lend a hand and an opinion.But Bill soon finds himself ferrying a broken cowpuncher in the back of his SUV, headed out to meet an ambulance.

• Sue Henry: The End of The Road (November 3, 2009)  Maxie McNabb and her miniature dachshund, Stretch, are just back from their latest adventure when a murder shatters the quiet in their hometown of Homer, Alaska. Now it’s up to Maxie to find the killer—a search that leads her to a place called “the end of the road.”

• Victoria Houston: Dead Renegade (November 2009)  Retired dentist, Doc Osborne, is helping his daughter, Erin, who has just opened her own legal practice, when Doc Osborne stumbles over a rug and human remains tumble onto the floor. While he is alerting Chief of Police Lew Ferris, he learns that his granddaughter, Mason, may be the victim of an assault. This brings back ugly memories exacerbated by the release of a man, a former Loon Lake resident, convicted twenty years earlier of attempted murder -- and who once stalked another of Osborne’s daughters.

• Graham Ison: Breach of Privilege (November 1, 2009) Brit cop duo Harry Brock and Dave Poole catch the case after politician Hugh Blakemore is gunned down by a helmeted motorcyclist at a bus stop in London. But there is a complication that, at first, misleads the detectives: months previously, Blakemore killed an inmate when visiting a prison. Although Blakemore was exonerated, Brock is convinced that underworld characters have exacted revenge.

• Martin Limón: G.I. Bones (November 1, 2009) Korean fortuneteller Aunti Mee insists The Wandering Ghost of Tech Sergeant Florencio R. Moretti will not leave her alone. The GI went missing two decades ago back in 1953. U.S. 8th Army Criminal Investigation Detachment investigators Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are assigned to investigate what everyone in CID including them assumes is a corpse, but soon run into the wrath of the Seven Dragons gang.

• Jeff Markowitz: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder (November 6, 2009)  At odds with her new boss, tabloid reporter Cassie O’Malley finds herself covering the shopping mall at Christmas. Cassie wants nothing to do with the assignment. Then Big Mack turns up dead in the men’s room, his throat slit. Sensing an opportunity for fifteen minutes of fame, mall security guard Oliver Berryhill spins a heroic tale of his confrontation in the men’s room with the loan shark. The police are skeptical, but Big Mack’s son, the even bigger Little Mack is determined to avenge his father’s murder. Barely a week later, a second body turns up in the employee break room and Cassie finds herself covering a double homicide. In a race against time, Cassie must solve the double murder before a third victim is killed.

• David Poyer: The Crisis (November 10, 2009) Dan Lenson (12th) Naval Commander Dan Lenson and his Tactical Analysis Group. are assigned to “transform” a patrol craft squadron in the Red Sea into a leaner, meaner Navy. Meanwhile, in northern Africa, drought and famine have brought a nation to the brink of civil war. When the U.S. decides on intervention to stabilize the region, Dan and his team become the point people for the humanitarian mission.

• J. D. Robb: Kindred in Death (November 3, 2009) When the newly promoted captain of the NYPSD and his wife return a day early from their vacation, they were looking forward to spending time with their bright and vivacious sixteen-year-old daughter who had stayed behind. Not even their worst nightmares could have prepared them for the crime scene that awaited them instead. Brutally murdered in her bedroom, Deena's body showed signs of trauma that horrified even the toughest of cops; including Lieutenant Eve Dallas, specifically requested by the captain to investigate. When the evidence starts to pile up, Dallas and her team think they are about to arrest their perpetrator; little do they know yet that someone has gone to great lengths to tease and taunt them by using a variety of identities. 

• Stella Whitelaw: Fold and Die (November 1, 2009) Jordan Lacey, Latching's zany but intrepid private eye, goes cruising to Norway as the undercover bodyguard of Joanna Carter, a woman who believes that her life is in danger. Then Joanna is murdered. Under suspicion for the crime, and hampered by storms, winds, and a cast of mysterious characters, can Jordan solve the mystery before it's too late?

• Dave Zeltserman: Bad Karma (November 6, 2009) In Boulder, two University of Colorado students are battered to death in the bedroom of the condo they share. When one of the victim's mothers sues condo owner Chris Jackson, former cop turned private investigator Bill Shannon is hired to investigate the homicides. At about the same time, in a separate case, a distraught mom Pauline Cousins of Portland Oregon also hires Shannon to learn if her daughter is okay since she joined the True Light cult.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Crime Fiction Releases in October 2009

The list of new crime fiction releases this month is so overwhelming, it's really too large a task to cover in detail in one blog posting, but I thought I'd post a few summarized highlights. For fans of series, there's certainly plenty to cheer about, including reader favorites Mark Billingham: Death Message (Tom Thorne in the series); Michael Connelly: Nine Dragons (Harry Bosch, 14th); Patricia Cornwell: The Scarpetta Factor (Kay Scarpetta, 17th); Joanne Fluke: Plum Pudding Murder (Hannah Swense, 13th); Charlaine Harris: Grave Secret (Harper Connelly 4th); Reginald Hill: Midnight Fugue (Dalziel and Pascoe 24th); Alex Kava: Black Friday (Maggie O'Dell 7th); Jonathan Kellerman: Evidence (Alex Delaware 24th); Ralph McInerny: Stained Glass(Father Dowling 29th); Marcia Muller: Locked In (Sharon McCone 26th); Robert B. Parker: The Professional (Spenser 38th), Ruth Rendell: The and Monster in the Box (Inspector Wexford 22nd).

Several non-series novels also coming to a bookstore near your include David Baldacci's True Blue, Barbara Taylor Bradford's Breaking the Rules, John Connolly's The Gates, Allan Folsom's The Hadrian Memorandum, and Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast.

If you're looking for some debut novels, look no further than The Lazarus Covenant by John Fenzel, a senior Army Special Forces officer, and Final Approach by Rachel Brady featuring a skydiving protagonist.

There are even some short-story anthologies: A Rumpole Christmas: Stories by the late John Mortimer, a collection of five holiday stories-never before published in book form; The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson, author of the Detective Inspector Alan Banks series; and A Touch of Dead: The Complete Stories, a collection of Sookie Stackhouse stories by Charlaine Harris.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Coming in September

Here's a partial representative listing, arranged alphabetically by author, which this month includes new titles by Tasha Alexander, Nevada Barr, M.C. Beaton, Chelsea Cain, Carola Dunn, James Ellroy, William Kent Krueger, Peter Lovesey, Sara Paretsky, Louise Penny and Robert J. Randisi among many other wonderful and deserving offerings. You can also check out the links at the bottom for more, as they're too numerous to list here.

• Tasha Alexander: Tears of Pearl Lady (September 1, 2009). Emily Ashton (4th). Looking forward to the joys of connubial bliss, newlyweds Lady Emily and Colin Hargreaves set out toward Turkey for an exotic honeymoon. But on their first night in the city, a harem girl is found murdered—strangled in the courtyard of the Sultan’s lavish Topkapi Palace.

• David Armstrong: Written Out (September 1, 2009). Frank Kavanagh (5th). Unpopular novelist Tom Oliver initially isn't much missed when he disappears at the end of a week tutoring at a writers center in rural Shropshire. It eventually falls to DI Frank Kavanagh and his colleague DC Jane Salt to ascertain whether one of his literary enemies, a former lover, or perhaps one of their humiliated husbands, has finally exacted their revenge.

• Suzanne Arruda: Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (September 1, 2009). Jade Del Cameron (5th). Photojournalist Jade del Cameron is about to embark on safari for a Hollywood film shoot, but when the film's financial backer is stabbed to death by a native man who then commits suicide, the trip is cast by a sinister pall. And as the expedition moves higher onto Kilimanjaro's rugged slopes, a series of dastardly hoaxes and a fatal native curse convince Jade that a killer is at work.

• Nevada Barr: 13 1/2  (September 29, 2009). Lonely Polly Deschamps meets the man of her dreams, architect Marshall Marchand. As Polly begins to settle into her new life, she becomes uneasy about her husband's increasing dark moods, fearing that his brother may be influencing Marshall in ways she cannot understand. And what of the ominous prediction by a New Orleans tarot card reader, who proclaims that Polly will murder her husband?

• M. C. Beaton: There Goes the Bride (September 29, 2009). Agatha Raisin (20th). Agatha is dreading the upcoming marriage of her ex-husband, James Lacey. Although she has set her sights on a handsome and beguiling new Frenchman, she can't quite stop obsessing about James. Her best intentions to move on with her life are put on hold when James' young bride is shot to death just minutes before saying "I do," and Agatha is named the prime suspect.

• James R. Benn: Evil for Evil (September 1, 2009). Billy Boyle, WWII (4th). Lt. Billy Boyle, a former Boston cop and a nephew by marriage to General Eisenhower, receives orders in late 1943 to look into a raid on a U.S. Army depot in Northern Ireland. A few miles from the depot, the body of a known IRA man was found shot in the back of the head with a pound note in his hand—the mark of an informer. Billy's military superiors suspect the Germans are supporting an IRA uprising. As an Irish-American whose family is sympathetic to the Republican cause, Billy struggles to remain impartial as he investigates the various factions on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide

• William Bernhardt: Capitol Offense (September 29, 2009). Ben Kincaid (17th). Professor Dennis Thomas arrives at the law office of Ben Kincaid with a bizarre request: Thomas wants to know if Kincaid can help him beat a murder charge–of a killing yet to happen. The professor’s intended victim: a Tulsa cop who had refused to authorize a search for Thomas’ missing wife.

• Chelsea Cain: Evil at Heart (September 1, 2009). Serial killer Gretchen Lowell is still on the loose, more of a cause célèbre than a feared killer, thanks to sensationalist news coverage that has made her a star. Archie Sheridan hunted her for a decade, and after his last ploy to catch her went spectacularly wrong, remains hospitalized months later. When they last spoke, they entered a détente of sorts---Archie agreed not to kill himself if she agreed not to kill anyone else. But when a new body is found accompanied by Gretchen’s trademark heart, all bets are off and Archie is forced back into action. Has the Beauty Killer returned to her gruesome ways, or has the cult surrounding her created a whole new evil?

• Margaret Coel: The Silent Spirit (September 1, 2009). Wind River (15th). In 1923, Arapahos from the Wind River Reservation were recruited to appear as extras a silent film. But Charlie Wallowingbull never returned home, leaving people to believe he abandoned his wife and unborn son. Kiki Wallowingbull, Charlie's great-grandson, went to Hollywood determined to uncover the truth behind his great-grandfather's disappearance. But Kiki has been murdered, his frozen body discovered by Father John, and his supposed killer confessing to Vicky that it was self-defense. Together, they must find the connection between two deaths separated by nearly a century.

• Susan Rogers Cooper: Rude Awakening (September 1, 2009). Milt Kovak (10th). Strange things are happening in Prophesy County. First, Deputy Dalton Pettigrew disappears on a mysterious date in Tulsa. His sister goes to rescue him, only to disappear herself. She'd left her middle child, Eli, in the care of Jean, the sheriff's wife, but now he's missing too. Who is the mysterious Dr. Emil Hawthorne, and why is he out to get Jean? Can Sheriff Milt Kovak find Eli before it's too late?

• Elizabeth Darrell: French Leave (September 1, 2009). Max Rydal (5th). During an intense heatwave, the West Wiltshire Regiment engage in a military exercise but at its conclusion, Private John Smith is missing. Smith's sergeant is adamant hes gone AWOL, but then the Special Investigation Branch receive a chilling anonymous phone call. Military detectives Max Rydal and Tom Black are called in to investigate and then Dan Farley, the new Platoon Commander, also disappears.

• Carola Dunn: Sheer Folly (September 15, 2009). Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher (18th). Daisy travels to Wiltshire to research a book, accompanied by best friend and freelance photographer Lucy Binscomb, leaving behind her husband, Scotland Yard's Detective Chief Inspector Alex Fletcher, to look after their twin children. On arrival at the country home Appsworth, Daisy and Lucy are plunged into a murder investigation after a grotto explosion claims a victim.

• James Ellroy: Blood's A Rover (September 22, 2009). Underworld USA (3rd). Ellroy concludes the scorching trilogy begun with 1995's American Tabloid. It's Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of History.

• Veronica Heley: Murder in House (September 1, 2009). Ellie Quicke (10th). Ellie, recently married to her minister, must try to solve a missing persons case. After Ursula Belton, a distraught university student, stages a sit-in vigil at Ellie's husband's church, Ellie's drawn into searching for Ursula's best friend, Mia Prior. As Ellie probes into Mia's background, she comes under the radar of a gang led by Anthony and Timothy Prior, Mia's stepbrothers. They stalk Ellie, Ursula's mother and even Ellie's daughter, Diana, hoping to find where battered Mia and Ursula are hiding.

• Arnaldur Indridason: Arctic Chill Reykjavik (September 15, 2009). Murder Mystery (7th). The Reykjavik police are called on an icy January day to a garden where a body has been found: a young boy is frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation and soon unearth tensions simmering beneath the surface of Ice land’s outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Meanwhile, the boy’s murder forces Erlendur to confront the tragedy in his own past. Soon, facts are emerging from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.

• Quintin Jardine: Fatal Last Words (September 1, 2009). Skinner (19th). As Skinner stands on the edge of a career-defining moment and his fiancée, Scotland's First Minister Aileen de Marco, faces a political crisis, a famous person is found dead. As the mystery deepens, Skinner finds himself crossing swords with an old enemy from the past, while his detectives are faced with the unwelcome complication of a duke’s junkie daughter. Meanwhile a second Scottish celebrity dies violently in Australia.Could the two be connected? As DCS Mario McGuire heads to Melbourne to investigate, back in Scotland his boss’s big moment is compromised in the most dramatic and unexpected manner, as a famous friendship is shattered for ever.

• William Kent Krueger: Heaven's Keep (September 1, 2009). Cork O'Connor (9th). In the Wyoming Rockies, a small charter plane carrying Jo, Cork's wife and mother of their three children, seemingly disappears into thin air. No sign of Jo's plane is found, leaving Cork and his family nothing to do but mourn her death. Six months later, the wife of the man who owned and flew the plane calls on Cork with credible evidence suggesting her husband didn't even fly the plane. But if he didn't, who did? And where did they take Jo?

• Peter Lovesey: Skeleton Hill (September 1, 2009). Peter Diamond (10th). On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to sideline Diamond, but matters don't pan out in accordance with her plans.

• Barry Maitland: Dark Mirror (September 29, 2009). Brock and Kolla (10th). Newly promoted to Detective Inspector, Kathy Kolla of the Serious Crimes Unit is called in by the forensic pathologist regarding the recent sudden death of a London student from what he’s determined to be arsenic poisoning. Marion Summers had no reason to be in contact with arsenic and, though once common, arsenic is now very hard to get hold of. The more Kolla investigates, the more she discovers that certain other things about Summers are also unusual.

• Archer Mayor: The Price of Malice (September 29, 2009). Joe Gunther (20th). Joe Gunther has learned that his girlfriend Lyn Silva’s fisherman father and brother, believed lost at sea off the coast of Maine, might have actually been murdered. Torn between his conscience and his heart, a murder investigation and a personal search for the truth, Gunther finds that betrayal and loyalty are often a matter of viewpoint.

• Beverle Graves Myers: Her Deadly Mischief (September 1, 2009). Tito Amato (5th). In Venice's Teatro San Marco opera house during a performance, singer Tito Amato sees a masked man struggling with a woman, later identified as Zulietta Giardino, a conniving courtesan. Pushed by her assailant, Zulietta falls to her death into the orchestra pit. Tito and his wife, Liya, who shares a similar background to Zulietta, take a personal interest in her case. Encouraged by Tito, Liya hesitantly returns to the Jewish ghetto of her childhood to investigate, and unexpectedly begins to reconcile with the family that once shunned her.

• Sara Paretsky: Hardball (September 22, 2009). V. I. Warshawski (14th). When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who's been missing for four decades, a search that she figured would be futile becomes lethal. Old skeletons from the city's racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets-her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her-rise up to brush her back from the plate with a vengeance. A young cousin whom she's never met arrives from Kansas City to work on a political campaign; a nun who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. dies without revealing crucial evidence; and on the city's South Side, people spit when she shows up. Afraid to learn that her adored father might have been a bent cop, V. I. still takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end.

• Louise Penny: The Brutal Telling (September 22, 2009). Armand Gamache (5th). When a stranger is found murdered in the Three Pines village bistro and antiques store, Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called in to strip back layers of lies, exposing both treasures and rancid secrets buried in the wilderness.

• Robert J. Randisi: You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Kills (September 15, 2009). You Rat Pack (4th).  Vegas pit boss Eddie Gianelli once again display his skill at discreetly getting his eminent friends out of embarrassing jams. In early 1962, Dean Martin asks Eddie to help a fragile Marilyn Monroe, who's worried she's being followed and is feeling guilty she contributed to the death of her ailing co-star, Clark Gable, by making him wait too long on the set. The Rat Pack, which also includes Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., plays second fiddle as Gianelli tries to protect Monroe from myriad problems real and imaginary. The Brooklyn-born Gianelli, a humble straight shooter who can call on friends in high and low places, needs both when one friend helping him disappears and another ends up in the hospital

• John Sandford: Rough Country (September 29, 2009). Virgil Flowers (3rd). While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers gets a call to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, which makes things all the more complicated for Virgil, and the more he digs, the more he discovers the arrows of suspicion that point in many directions, encompassing a multitude of motivations: jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger, fear.

• Clea Simon: Shades of Grey (September 1, 2009). Twenty-something Dulcie Schwartz is a doctoral student at Harvard, struggling to find a thesis topic, mourning her recently deceased cat Mr. Grey, and working a summer temp job. Then, one afternoon, she thinks she sees Mr. Grey and believes he warns her not to go home. When she enters her apartment, she finds her despised sub-letter dead with her knife in his chest. Mr. Grey, Dulcie's mother informs her, is her spirit guide; that's fortunate because Dulcie could certainly use extraterrestrial help, seeing as she finds herself suspected of both murder and hacking into her computer system at work.

• Jeri Westerson: Serpent in the Thorns (September 29, 2009). Crispin Guest, Medieval Noir (2nd). Convicted of treason, Crispin Guest was stripped of his title, his land, his money and his friends. Now with only his considerable wits to sustain him, Guest works the mean streets of 14th century London, building a small reputation for his skill. When a simple-minded tavern girl comes to his door after a body was found where she works, events quickly spin out of control and Guest now finds himself the prime suspect in the murder, one with terrible diplomatic implications. As the drumbeat of war between the two countries grow, Guest must unravel the conspiracy behind the murder to save not only his country, but himself as well.

• Sharon Wildwind: Missing, Presumed Wed (September 16, 2009). Elizabeth Pepperhawk / Avivah Rosen (4th).  Ex-Special Forces Sergeant Benny Kirkpatrick is one week away from marrying Lorraine Fulford and, as he puts it, "I've seen courts martial that required less preparation than this wedding." Then Benny's mother is abducted. When her abductor's body is discovered, Benny, Avivah and Pepper put their own romantic entanglements aside to help Benny find the killer. The price of justice may tear Benny's family apart forever.

• Stuart Woods: Hothouse Orchid (September 22, 2009). Holly Barker (5th). After Special Agent Holly Barker lets international terrorist Teddy Fay slip through her fingers for a second time, the CIA thinks she might want a long vacation, at least until Teddy is captured and the bad publicity has blown over. So Holly returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, where she had been police chief for many years. But a very unpleasant surprise awaits her. Many years earlier, Holly and another female army officer had brought charges against their commanding officer for sexual harassment. The officer was acquitted of all charges and now has a job as Orchid Beach's new police chief. Will Holly return to the CIA? Or will she challenge her old nemesis for control of the Orchid Beach Police Department?

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in August

Here's a representative listing of new crime fiction titles being released in August, including new titles by Harlan Coben, Faye Kellerman, Michael Koryta, Margaret Maron, Kathy Reichs, Markus Sakey, and Marcia Talley among many others. You can check out the links at the bottom for more!

Harlan Coben: The Final Detail (August 25, 2009). Win and Myron are looking into the murder of a client—a troubled New York Yankees baseball player apparently shot to death by Esperanza Diaz, who just happens to be Myron's best friend and partner in the sport's agency. Esperanza is hiding something, but Myron isn't sure if it has to do with her job or with her private life. His search for the truth takes him back to a shabby incident from his own past and to times he would rather forget

Colin Cotterill: The Merry Misogynist (August 1, 2009) Dr. Siri Paiboun (6th). On a trip to the hinterlands, Siri discovers that a beautiful female corpse bound to a tree has already risen to the status of a rural myth. This has happened many times before. He sets out to investigate this unprecedented phenomenon—a serial killer in peaceful 1978 Buddhist Laos—only to discover when he has identified the murderer that not only pretty maidens are at risk. Seventy-three-year-old coroners can be victims, too.

Ellen Crosby: The Riesling Retribution (August 4, 2009). Lucie Montgomery, Wine Country (4th) When Lucie Montgomery stumbles across a skull in her vineyard—just after the tornado that almost kills her—little does she suspect the skeletons in the family closet to which the discovery will lead.

Carole Nelson Douglas: Cat in a Topaz Tango (August 4, 2009).  Midnight Louie (20th)  Temple Barr, Las Vegas PR whiz, goes undercover at a charity dance contest featuring celebrities like Temple's radio star fiancé, Matt Devine, while tomcat sleuth Louie provides backup. The Barbie Doll stalker has been targeting local teen talent, and soon contestants in the dance competition start to suffer accidents.

Susan Dunlap: Civil Twilight (August 1, 2009) Darcy Lott (3rd). San Francisco stunt double Darcy Lott specializes in creating the illusion of serious danger. But when her lawyer brother calls and asks her to wine and dine a mysterious client, the danger is no illusion.

Joseph Finder: Vanished (August 18, 2009). Special Forces' Nick Heller, high-powered intelligence investigator, gets a call from his nephew after an attack in Georgetown leaves his mother in a coma and his step-dad, Roger, Nick's brother, vanished without a trace. Nick and Roger have been on the outs since the conviction of their father, the notorious "fugitive financier," Victor Heller. As Nick searches for his brother, he's on a collision course with one of the most powerful corporations in the world—and they will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.

Brent Ghelfi: The Venona Cable (August 18, 2009). Alexei "Volk" Volkovoy (3rd). The past erupts into the present when the police arrest Alexei Volkovoy at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and take him to a murder scene. At first, the dead man appears to be just one more victim of Moscow’s out-of-control violence. But Volk soon discovers that he is a famous Hollywood filmmaker whose reputation was destroyed in 1995 when the CIA released documents from the Venona cables—the top-secret crypto-analysis of Soviet messages that implicated the Rosenbergs.

J.G. Goodhind: Menu for Murder. (August 1, 2009)  Honey Driver (4th). A film crew has arrived in Bath and, to the satisfaction of hotel owner and police liaison officer Honey Driver, some of the visitors are staying in her hotel. Plus, there's the thrilling possibility that she and her daughter might be cast as extras. But then the film's impossibly demanding star is found dead by Honey herself and she's arrested. Sexy DI Steve Doherty races to the rescue, and the pair embark on a mission to uncover the truth.

Suzette A. Hill: Bone Idle (August 1, 2009) Francis Oughterard (3rd). Reverend Oughterard has managed to elude arrest (for now), but when another murder occurs, Oughterard panics. Embarrassing complications ensue, and, once again, world-weary cat Maurice and intrepid mongrel Bouncer must help the reverend escape trouble.

Faye Kellerman: Blindman's Bluff (August 11, 2009) Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus (18th). LAPD homicide detective Peter Decker and his wife, Rina Lazarus, find themselves blindsided by a brutal multiple murder.

Michael Koryta: The Silent Hour (August 4, 2009) Lincoln Perry (4th). What seems at first like the simplest of jobs proves to be an undertaking that will challenge both PI Lincoln Perry’s abilities as a detective and his commitment to that calling. With a new partner to train and a case that leads straight to the heart of the Cleveland organized crime scene, Perry finds himself glancing over his shoulder at every turn, pushing the bounds of safety even as he backs away.

Margaret Maron: Sand Sharks (August 13, 2009) Deborah Knott (15th). When Judge Deborah Knott travels to Wrightsville Beach for a summer conference, she stumbles upon the body of one of her colleagues. Meanwhile, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, is in Virginia with his son, tying up loose ends left by the death of his first wife. When another judge is found murdered at the conference, it soon becomes evident that Deborah may be the killer's next target.

Nick Oldham: The Nothing Job (August 1, 2009) Henry Christie (13th) Reluctantly agreeing to track down three dangerous criminals, DCI Henry Christie is asked to close down an investigation into a fatal police shooting, and he uncovers a number of worrying connections. Henry charges headlong into a terrifying conspiracy and finds himself much closer to the cutting edge than even he would have wanted.

Kathy Reichs: 206 Bones (August 25, 2009). The twelfth Temperance Brennan novel from Kathy Reichs opens with Tempe regaining consciousness and discovering that she is in some kind of very small, very dark, very cold enclosed space. She is bound, hands to feet. Is she buried alive? In some kind of cell? Who wants Tempe dead, or at least out of the way, and why? Tempe begins slowly to reconstruct.

David Rosenfelt: New Tricks (August 6, 2009)  In Rosenfelt's seventh legal thriller to feature defense attorney Andy Carpenter, Andy takes on another canine client—Waggy, a Bernese mountain puppy, who's somehow connected to the murder of Walter Timmerman, a semi-titan in the pharmaceutical industry.

Priscilla Royal: Chambers of Death (August 1, 2009) Prioress Eleanor (6th). When one of her company falls ill on a return journey to Tyndal, Prioress Eleanor accepts lodging at a nearby manor and finds herself in the middle of two murders. Will Eleanor discover the dark secrets that have led to this string of killings before the murderer strikes again?

Marcus Sakey: The Amateurs (August 6, 2009). What was supposed to be a victimless crime has become a bloody nightmare. People have been killed. A child is in danger. Ruthless men pursue four friends with relentless fury. And tensions they thought were long-buried threaten to destroy them. As their whole world begins to unravel, each will have to choose between their own life and the lives of others.

George D. Shuman: Second Sight (August 4, 2009) Sherry Moore (4th) Beautiful psychic Sherry Moore delves into the darkest corners of the pharmaceutical trade and risks her life to set right an injustice buried deep in the past.

Andy Straka: Kitty Hitter (August 31, 2009) Frank Pavlicek (4th). Separating felines from their rightful owners is the crime in shamus Frank Pavlicek's latest case, and Frank's not happy about it.  Still, the obligations of friendship are pressing, and Darla Barnes had been an NYPD cop alongside Frank before they both went private. More than that, she'd once saved his life. So in response to Darla's call, Frank offers to help in the curious case of the purloined kitten, testing Frank in ways he couldn't have imagined.

Marcia Talley: Without a Grave (August 1, 2009) Hannah Ives (8th). When controversy arises over the construction of a Bahamas luxury resort that could devastate the coral reef, Hannah dives in. Acts of vandalism, a deadly wildfire, a missing scientist - Hannah suspects a connection, but her investigation stalls when Hurricane Helen slams into the island. Before the skies clear, a dynasty is threatened by a venomous sibling rivalry, environmentalists face-off against progressive island fathers, and somebody else will die.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in July 2009

Here's a representative listing of new crime fiction titles being released in July, including books by Megan Abbott, Donna Andrews, Rhys Bowen, James Lee Burke, Lee Goldberg, Susanna Gregory, Steve Hockensmith, Declan Hughes, J.A. Konrath, Nora Roberts, Theresa Schwegel, Karin Slaughter, Eric Stone, and the very last book by Donald E. Westlake, who died late last year. You can also check out the links at the bottom of this page for many more offerings.

Megan Abbott:  Bury Me Deep (July 7, 2009). Marion Seeley is abandoned in Phoenix by her doctor husband. At the medical clinic where she finds a job, Marion becomes fast friends with Louise, a vivacious nurse, and her roommate, Ginny, a tubercular blonde. Before long, the demure Marion is swept up in the exuberant life of the girls, who supplement their scant income by entertaining the town's most powerful men with wild parties. At one of these events, Marion meets—and falls hard for—the charming Joe Lanigan, a local rogue and politician on the rise, whose ties to all three women bring events to a dangerous collision.

Donna Andrews: Swan for the Money (July 21, 2009). Meg Langslow #11. Meg Langslow’s eccentric parents have a new hobby: growing roses and entering them in highly competitive shows. Rose growers are so eccentric that they make Meg’s family seem almost normal, and so competitive that they will do nearly anything to take home the show’s grand prize—making them prime suspects when Meg discovers that someone is attempting to kill the wealthy woman on whose estate the competition is being held.

Anna Blundy: Breaking Faith (July 7, 2009).  Faith Zanetti #6.  Faith Zanetti starts receiving messages that appear to be from her father, Karel Zanetti, a celebrated U.K. journalist who was supposedly killed while covering the troubles in Northern Ireland years earlier.

Rhys Bowen: Royal Flush (July 7, 2009). Lady Georgiana #3. "Georgie," great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and 34th in line to the English throne, makes an ill-advised attempt to start her own business, before discovering, to her embarrassment, that her definition of a female escort is not the same as that of her clientele. Fearing scandal, the authorities send her off to the family castle in Scotland, where a shooting party that includes the prince of Wales is in residence, with a brief from the Home Office to keep her eyes peeled for threats to the Crown. A series of serious accidents suggests that someone is targeting members of the royal family. The violence soon escalates to murder.

Suzanne Brockmann: Hot Pursuit (July 28, 2009).  Troubleshooter # 15.  Alyssa Locke is no stranger to dealing with danger. As team leader of the nation’s number one personal security company, Troubleshooters Inc., this assignment was supposed to be an easy one: teach self-defense techniques to a newly elected assemblywoman and her chief of staff after a political controversy generates a blizzard of hate mail–including death threats–from hotheads and cranks. But as soon as she mobilizes her squad of moonlighting Navy SEALs in New York City, Alyssa begins butting heads with the hard-case cop who thinks that the Troubleshooters are chasing shadows. Until they discover a dead body. And then another.

James Lee Burke: Rain Gods (July 14, 2009). Hackberry Holland #2.  When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he'd hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of the good life with his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a church, soon makes it clear that he won't escape so easily.

Chris Collett: Stalked by Shadows (July 1, 2009). Tom Mariner #5.  Lucy Jarrett is terrified. She's convinced that somebody is watching her, following her home from work and lurking in shadows. But when she looks, there's nobody there. The phone calls are real enough, even if the caller never speaks, although they never seem to happen when her husband is at home. She's struggling to make anybody believe her, but with the recent murder of another young woman, DI Tom Mariner must take Lucy's fears seriously. However, that's not all that DI Mariner has to contend with. His team is stretched to the limits when Nina Silvero, the widow of a former police officer, is found brutally murdered in an attack that could hark back to her husband's past misdemeanors. Someone, it seems, is out for revenge.

P. C. Doherty: The Magician's Death (July 7, 2009). Hugh Corbett #14. Sir Hugh Corbett, the keeper of the king’s secret seal, returns in a medieval-style Da Vinci Code appropriately steeped in murder, mystery, and intrigue. Friar Roger Bacon’s unpublished masterpiece, Secretus Secretorum, serves as a tantalizing pawn in an intelligence war spawned by the bitter rivalry between England’s Edward I and France’s Philip IV.

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza: Alone in the Crowd (July 7, 2009). Inspector Espinosa #7.  An elderly lady approaches the front desk at the Twelfth Precinct in Copacabana and demands to speak with the chief. Tired after a long day, she leaves without further explanation, promising to return. Two hours later, Doña Laureta is dead, and witnesses’ accounts vary as to whether she was pushed or fell in front of the bus that killed her on one of the busiest avenues in the city.
Veteran police chief inspector Espinosa quickly pinpoints a suspect in Hugo Breno, an unassuming bank teller whose solitary existence takes on a sinister cast as he shadows the inspector’s movements across the city. Meanwhile Espinosa discovers an unsettling connection from the past between himself and Breno, and must turn his trademark psychological inquiry inward to determine how murky memories of a murder from long ago might play into Doña Laureta’s untimely passing

Lee Goldberg: Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop (July 7, 2009). Monk #8.  Leland Stottlemeyer is used to obsessive- compulsive genius Adrian Monk getting all the praise and attention. But the police captain is feeling a little hostile after taking a lot of ribbing about his reliance on his star consultant. Is it possible he’s used  the latest round of budget cuts as an excuse to cut Monk loose? But Monk is much too compulsive to stop investigating, even without pay. Soon he’s calling  in tips under assumed names to help solve cases. Then Stottlemeyer is framed for the murder of another cop—and only one detective in San Francisco can save him.

Kerry Greenwood: Murder on a Midsummer Night (July 1, 2009). Phryne Fisher #17.  It’s 1929, and Phryne Fisher, the Australian flapper and private investigator, has a couple of cases on her plate. A man’s suicide might not be as cut-and-dried as it appears, and there’s the matter of an illegitimate child who stands to inherit a vast sum of money, if Phryne can find her.

Susanna Gregory: A Vein of Deceit (July 1, 2009). Matthew Bartholomew #15. Despite a new influx of well-heeled students, Michaelhouse has suffered from an acute lack of funds that has made itself manifest in a lack of decent provisions. It is only when the Brother in charge of the account books dies unexpectedly that an explanation is revealed: large amounts of money had been paid for goods the college never received. Although shocked by this evidence of fraud, Matthew Bartholomew is more concerned with the disappearance of a quantity of pennyroyal from his herbarium. Pennyroyal is known to cause a woman to miscarry, and a pregnant visitor to his sister's household has died from an overdose of the substance. Had she meant to abort her child, or had someone else wanted to ensure that she was unable to provide an heir to her husband's wealthy estates? 

Carolyn Haines: Greedy Bones (July 7, 2009). Sarah Booth Delaney, Southern Belle #9.  Sarah Booth Delaney returns to Zinnia, Miss., and her ancestral home, Dahlia House, after the eruption there of a mysterious illness so scary agents from Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control must be called in. Tinkie Richmond, Sarah's best friend and PI partner, fears her husband, Oscar, is dying after a visit to the nearby cursed Carlisle cotton plantation infected with mutant boll weevils and a strange mold. Sounds like a horror movie, but it's no laughing matter as Sarah Booth sets aside her Hollywood honey, Graf Milieu, to help her former love interest, Sheriff Coleman Peters, solve a perplexing case that will eventually claim victims by such causes as shooting and hanging.

Steve Hockensmith: The Crack in the Lens (July 21, 2009). Holmes on the Range #4.  Otto Big Red Amlingmeyer and his older brother, Gustav (aka Old Red), journey to San Marcos, Texas. The laconic Old Red, whose life took an unexpected turn after his brother introduced him to the deductive methods of Sherlock Holmes, reveals that the love of his life, hooker Gertrude Eichelberger, was murdered in San Marcos five years earlier. The pair's efforts to investigate put them at odds with the local pimps as well as the law. The brothers discover that Gertrude was but the first victim of a serial killer, who modeled his crimes after Jack the Ripper.

Declan Hughes: All the Dead Voices (June 30, 2009). Ed Loy #4.  Anne Fogarty hires Dublin PI Ed Loy to re-examine the facts surrounding her father's unsolved murder in 1991—her mother's boyfriend was found guilty but later released on appeal for the fatal beating. Loy has a second murder to look into after Paul Delaney, a promising footballer on whom Loy was keeping unofficial tabs, is gunned down. The PI learns that Anne's father, a tax inspector, had prepared informal dossiers on three men he believed to be evading taxes and, not coincidentally, members of the IRA. One of the men is a Dublin gangster with ties to the IRA who may have been grooming Paul as a protégé.

Jen Jordan, editor: Uncage Me (July 24, 2009).  The follow-up to 2007's Expletive Deleted. New stories from Scott Phillips, Allan Guthrie, Christa Faust, Victor Gischler, J.A. Konrath, J.D. Rhoades, Declan Burke, Brian Azzarello, Steven Torres, Stewart Macbride, Simon Kernick, Patrick Bagley, Greg Bardsley, Stephen Blackmore, Tim Maleeny, Nick Stone, Martyn Waites, Talia Berliner, Maxim Jakubowski, Gregg Hurwitz, Blake Crouch, and more, with an introduction by best selling author John Connolly.

J.A. Konrath: Cherry Bomb (July 7, 2009). Jack Daniels #6.  The guilt-ridden Chicago cop, who's attending the funeral of a loved one, takes a call from Alexandra Kork, the sadistic psychopath who did in the loved one at the end of 2008's Fuzzy Navel. Barred from the official hunt for Kork because she's personally involved in the case, Daniels soon finds herself on the wrong side of the law with few of the usual resources to call on. Meanwhile, the wily Kork, who's stopped counting her victims (after 50 they blur), strews bodies over a wide area as part of a scheme to lead Daniels to a slow and painful death.

Chris Kuzneski: The Lost Throne (July 23, 2009). Jonathon Payne and David Jones #4.  Reaching from the wonders of ancient Greece to a harrowing quest in modern-day Europe, The Lost Throne features Jonathon Payne and D. J. Jones, former members of a top secret, very special unit of the armed forces. Now as private citizens they still get recruited from time to time for the most delicate —and dangerous—missions. Payne and Jones must race to recover the lost treasure that could rewrite history, before it is destroyed by a group of men who will stop at nothing to conceal the secret.

Deryn Lake: Death and the Black Pyramid (July 1, 2009). John Rawlings #13.  Apothecary John Rawlings has been summoned to Devon by his beautiful but unpredictable mistress. Leaving his daughter Rose in the good care of her grandfather, Rawlings sets off for Exeter. His fellow stagecoach passengers are a motley crew, and include a large and talkative German lady, a dance-master and a bare-knuckle fighter known as the Black Pyramid. Before the journeys end a man has been found brutally murdered, and Rawlings is once again drawn into a complex and dangerous intrigue.

Mike Lawson: House Secrets (July 8, 2009). Joe DeMarco #4.  Joe DeMarco works as a “fixer” for the Speaker of the House and consistently finds himself investigating cases that pose a threat to the government. This time a not-so-well-respected reporter dies, and while it appears to be an accident, the victim’s dad knows it’s murder. DeMarco learns that the reporter was working on an investigation into the life of Senator Paul Morelli, the man considered to be the front-runner for president. Morelli has more charisma than most politicians, along with a string of good fortune that has followed him from humble beginnings to senator. Will investigating Morelli put DeMarco on a death list, and will he end up disappearing or accused of something scandalous, like some of Morelli’s other political enemies

Steve Martini: Guardian of Lies (July 14, 2009). Paul Madriani #10. Southern California defense attorney Paul Madriani's chance encounter with 26-year-old Katia Solaz, a Costa Rican beauty, leads to a desperate race to avoid not only personal disaster but also a national one. Katia, who's living with creepy Emerson Pike in a dilapidated estate surrounded by an expensive security fence, decides to return home to Costa Rica. In her flight, she just misses running into the legendary assassin known as the Mexecutioner, who sneaks into Pike's house. 

Pat McIntosh: The Stolen Voice (July 1, 2009). Gil and Alys Cunningham #6. Husband-and-wife sleuthing team Gil and Alys Cunningham are as mystified as the local residents on the shores of Loch Voil when Davie Drummond, a young Cathedral singer who vanished more than thirty years ago, reappears, seemingly having aged but a few years. When they begin their investigations, it appears that a number of church song men in the area have recently gone missing, leading the Cunninghams to believe that the past and present disappearances may somehow be related. After a fatal fire, Gil and Alys must sort through Highland suspicion and superstition to piece together the pieces of a puzzle that reaches back decades into the past

Lynda La Plante: Deadly Intent (July 7, 2009). Anna Travis #4. Ruthless drug trafficker Alexander Fitzpatrick is one of the most wanted men in the Western Hemisphere. But for ten years, there's been no sign of him. Is he dead, or just trying to appear that way? When an ex-colleague from the murder squad is found shot in a dank drug den, Anna Travis is pulled into the case. She's grateful for the distraction after her breakup with DCI Langton and soon finds herself involved with someone new. But as the bodies pile up and the mystery deepens, Travis and Langton must put aside their personal history and work together to track down one of the canniest criminals they've ever encountered.

Nora Roberts: Black Hills (July 7, 2009). A summer at his grandparents’ South Dakota ranch is not eleven-year-old Cooper Sullivan’s idea of a good time. But things are a bit more bearable now that he’s discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Even horseback riding isn’t as awful as Coop thought it would be. Each year, with Coop’s annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker’s body. Twelve years later, fate has brought them back to the Black Hills when the people and things they hold most dear need them most, and they must work together to unearth a killer of twisted and unnatural instincts who has singled them out as prey.

James Rollins: The Doomsday Key (June 23, 2009). Sigma Force #6. Sigma Force director Painter Crowe gathers the usual crew—Cmdr. Grayson Pierce; Pierce's best friend, Monk Kokkalis; lumbering Joe Kowalski—to discover why an experimental agriculture site in Africa has been attacked and razed, killing everyone, including a U.S. senator's son. The future of mankind may depend, they learn, on the Doomsday key, a strange substance brought to England long ago by ancient Egyptians that holds the promise of a new and powerful medicine. A few of the book's many highlights include genetic manipulation, traitorous beautiful women, illuminated manuscripts, saints, prophecies, curses and miracles.

Pauline Rowson: Dead Man's Wharf (July 1, 2009) Andy Horton #4.  Detective Inspector Horton and Cantelli are called to a nursing home where an elderly resident claims shes been attacked by an intruder. Ready to dismiss it as senile ramblings, Horton then discovers that her room-mate has died, the dead woman's belongings are missing and her son, convicted for armed robbery, has been found dead in his cell. Soon Horton finds he is caught up in a complex investigation that has far-reaching international implications.

Theresa Schwegel: Last Known Address (July 7, 2009). Recently transferred from homicide to sex crimes, Chicago police detective Sloane Pearson is called in to interview the second in a series of victims who were beaten, raped and nearly strangled to death. Pearson knows the only way she'll have a case is if the traumatized woman will talk. But without a crime scene or detailed description of the attacker, Pearson's leads dry up fast. As she retraces the victims' steps, she uncovers a common thread that winds from the dilapidated blocks where the rapes occurred to one of the city's glitzy property development companies.

Daniel Silva: The Defector (July 21, 2009). Gabriel Allon #9.  Six months after the dramatic conclusion of Moscow Rules, Gabriel Allon has returned to the tan hills of Umbria to resume his honeymoon with his new wife, Chiara, and restore a seventeenth-century altarpiece for the Vatican. But his idyllic world is once again thrown into turmoil with shocking news from London. The defector and former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who saved Gabriel’s life in Moscow, has vanished without a trace. The events afterward will take Allon from a quiet mews in London, to the shores of Lake Como, to the glittering streets of Geneva and Zurich, and, finally, to a heart-stopping climax in the snowbound birch forests of Russia. Faced with the prospect of losing the one thing he holds most dear, Gabriel will be tested in ways he never imagined possible. And his life will never be the same.

Chris Simms: Hell's Fire (July 14, 2009). Jon Spicer #4.  The deliberate torching of a church creates outrages across Manchester, and when a charred corpse and satanic symbols are found in the smoking ruins, detective Jon Spicer and the city’s Major Incident Team are called in. Spicer quickly finds himself drawn into the depths of a horrifying religious underworld he didn’t know existed. Soon, fresh killings bring the realization that those responsible for the burnings are prepared to commit even more brutal crimes in their twisted homage to God. As emotions and paranoia flare throughout Manchester, Spicer fears for those closest to him as he struggles to halt the continuing atrocities.

Karin Slaughter: Undone (July 14, 2009). Grant County #7. Dr. Sara Linton, who lost her husband in 2007's Beyond Reach, has left rural Grant County for a new life in an underfunded Atlanta hospital. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents Faith Mitchell and Will Trent, last seen in 2008's Fractured, happen to be in the hospital's ER when a woman known only as Anna arrives. Anna was hit by a car after escaping from an unknown captor, whose underground torture chamber Will soon uncovers near the accident site, along with the body of a second woman he believes was held in the same bunker. When another woman is snatched, Faith and Will realize they're chasing a sadistic serial killer. As the GBI agents try to connect the victims, Sara becomes more involved in the investigation, even as it dredges up painful memories from her past.

Eric Stone: Shanghaied (July 7, 2009). Ray Sharp #4. A group of monks hire PI Ray Sharp to look into the operations of BC, a multinational bank headquartered in Shanghai to which their financial adviser has moved their account, because BC is rumored to engage in sweetheart loans and creative accounting. After starting a due diligence investigation to assess the safety of the monks' millions, Sharp learns that BC hasn't enough cash to honor clients' checks—and it's been laundering money for Chinese criminals. The trail leads him to Homer Bellevue, a wheelchair-bound veteran of the Grenada invasion, who has bodyguards straight out of a bad Bond film, twin sisters named Floss and Betty. Ray's Chinese-Mexican pal, Wen Lei Yue, lends support.

Donald E. Westlake: Get Real (July 17, 2009). John Dortmunder #15.  A reality-show company aptly titled Get Real recruits the delightfully understated John Dortmunder and his merry men for a heist in this very last Dortmunder novel, a worthy final word from Westlake (1933–2008). 

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels in June 2009

Here's a partial representative listing of upcoming book releases in June, arranged alphabetically by author, which this month includes new titles by C. J. Box, John Connolly, Clive Cussler, Jeffery Deaver, Janet Evanovich, Chris Grabenstein, and Declan Hughes, among many other wonderful and deserving offerings. You can also check out the links at the bottom for more, as they're too numerous to list here.

Sandra Balzo: Brewed, Crude and Tattooed (June 1, 2009). Maggy Thorsen, co-owner of the Brookhills coffee-house Uncommon Grounds, is trapped in a shopping mall by a snow storm which cuts the electricity and phone lines. She finds the body of Way Benson, a local developer and owner of the mall. Maggy's discovery unearths other refugees of the storm and it seems that more than one of these people has a motive for killing the arrogant Way. Then there is another murder.

C. J. Box: Below Zero (June 16, 2009). Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett's teenage daughter receives a text message with a staggering implication: that April, the foster daughter thought dead is still alive. If it really is April who’s texting, she’s in danger, and for Pickett, the only thing worse than losing her the first time would be losing her again.

John Connolly: The Lovers: A Thriller (June 2, 2009). Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker takes a job in a Portland bar. But he uses his enforced retirement to begin a different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead two unarmed teenagers. It's a search that will eventually lead Parker to question all that he believed about his beloved parents, and about himself.

Catherine Coulter: KnockOut (June 16, 2009). Two cases keep FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock busy trying to protect their family from a brutal psychopathic teenage criminal and a psychotic paranormal family trying to bring a sweet child into their fold so they can manipulate her psychic power for nefarious purposes.

Clive Cussler: Medusa (June 2, 2009). Kurt Austin must stop a deadly virus from decimating the world in the latest NUMA Files novel. Research using a newly discovered jellyfish shows promising results, but before the tests even start, scientists studying these Blue Medusas start dying.

Jeffery Deaver: Roadside Crosses (June 9, 2009). California Bureau of Investigation agent Kathryn Dance has to track down a killer who begins to leave roadside crosses beside local highways -- not in memoriam, but as announcements of his intention to kill. And to kill in particularly horrific and efficient ways: using the personal details about the victims that they've carelessly posted in blogs and on social networking websites.

Janet Evanovich: Finger Lickin' Fifteen (June 23, 2009). In the latest Stephanie Plum novel, celebrity chef Stanley Chipotle comes to Trenton to participate in a barbecue cook-off and loses his head -- literally. Bail bonds office worker Lula, a witness to the crime, recruits bounty hunter Stephanie Plum to help her find the killers and collect the reward money.

Margaret Fenton: Little Lamb Lost (June 1, 2009). Social worker Clare Conover honestly believed she could make a difference in the world until she gets the phone call she's dreaded her entire career. One of her young clients, Michael, has been found dead and his mother, Ashley, has been arrested for his murder. Claire vows to find the truth about what really happened to Michael and what Claire finds is no shortage of suspects.

Tom Gabbay: The Tehran Conviction (June 9, 2009). The third novel in the Jack Teller series jumps back and forth in time. In 1953, Teller assists the CIA in Iran as part of Operation Ajax, designed to stage an overthrow of the government. In 1979, Teller learns that someone he hasn’t seen since his days in Tehran has been imprisoned. Feeling a sense of responsibility, he heads back to Iran to rescue a man he once considered a friend.

Chris Grabenstein: Mind Scrambler (June 23, 2009). In the latest John Ceepak mystery, ultra-straight-arrow cop Ceepak and his laid-back partner, Danny Boyle, are on leave in Atlantic City. Soon after a former girlfriend of Boyle's, the nanny for a smarmy stage magician's children, approaches Boyle for advice, she winds up dead in a bizarre s&m ritual before she can explain the problem. The local police deputize the two Sea Haven, N.J., cops as more corpses pile up.

Declan Hughes: All the Dead Voices (June 30, 2009). Ed Loy has been hired by the daughter of a murder victim in a cold case file to investigate the suspects ignored by the first investigation: a rich property developer, an ex-IRA man and Loy's own nemesis, George Halligan. But Loy has to watch his back: in the murky world into which he has fallen, he can't tell which threats come from the IRA and which from the police.

Jim Kelly: Death Wore White (June 9, 2009). Rookie detective Peter Shaw, along with his chain-smoking veteran partner, the grizzled detective sergeant George Valentine, is confronted with a baffling crime that stretches him to the breaking point.

Tim Maleeny: Jump (June 5, 2009). When Ed Lowry, San Francisco’s most despised landlord, falls to his death from the roof of one of his buildings, it is not at all hard to find suspects. The police, however, want to call it a suicide because the mayor and the press are complaining about the dismal closure rate for murder cases. Retired cop Sam McGowan, still mourning the loss of his wife to cancer, knows that it was murder. As a tenant on the top floor of the building, he also knows that he is a suspect.

Phillip Margolin: Fugitive (June 2, 2009). Oregon attorney Amanda Jaffe takes on the case of a lifetime when she is tapped to defend Charlie Marsh, aka Guru Gabriel Sun.

Randall Peffe: Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears (June 16, 2009). Lawyer Michael Decastro jets off to Bangkok when he receives an e-mail from his missing client and love interest, Tuki, the mysterious transvestite and former singer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who fled the country just as Michael was about to get her cleared of murder and soon finds himself in a desperate race across Southeast Asia.

Maggie Sefton: Dropped Dead Stitch, A Knitting Mystery (June 2, 2009). Colorado CPA Kelly Flynn learns her friend Jennifer has been raped. It turns out that the rapist, Cal Everett, owns the ranch where a group of assault survivors, including Jennifer, have gathered for a weekend retreat. Not surprisingly, Cal ends the weekend dead. So are the logical suspects responsible?

Joanna Campbell Slan: Cut, Crop & Die: A Kiki Lowenstein Scrap-N-Craft Mystery  (June 1, 2009). Tainted icing triggers a rare allergy, and a hobbyist croaks at a scrapbooking crop sponsored by Time in a Bottle, the store where Kiki Lowenstein works. When it comes out that someone swiped the victim's emergency medication, the scrappers realize they have a murder on their hands, and the entire community jumps to point the finger at Kiki and her coworkers. Suddenly, the one anchor in Kiki's stormy life is on the verge of sinking beneath a ruined reputation.

Michael Stanley: The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu (June 2, 2009). When two guests turn up dead at tourist camp, Assistant Superintendent Kubu crosses Botswana to investigate. The case seems likely to link back to the Zimbabwe civil war, as fingerprint records show the dead man on the casualty lists of a 1980 farm raid.

Victoria Thompson: Murder on Waverly Place (June 2, 2009). Late-nineteenth-century New York midwife Sarah Brandt is not completely surprised when her very proper mother asks her to attend a séance. She knows that Mrs. Decker still carries great guilt over the death of her older daughter, Maggie. So Sarah accompanies her and the spiritualist does seem to contact Maggie—convincing Mrs. Decker to attend another séance. Only this time, one of the attendees doesn’t succeed in speaking to the dead—she joins them.

Brad Thor: The Apostle (June 30, 2009). Navy SEAL turned covert Homeland Security operative Scot Harvath must find the daughter of a politically connected family who has been kidnapped in the terrorist hinterlands of Afghanistan.

Lisa Unger: Die for You (June 2, 2009). Isabel Raine thought she had everything. A successful career, a supportive family, and a happy marriage to the man she loved. Then one ordinary morning, her husband, Marcus, picked up his briefcase, kissed her goodbye, and simply vanished.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in May 2009

Here's a partial representative listing of new crime fiction novels arriving in May, which this month includes new titles by Ken Bruen, Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Denise Dietz, Charlaine Harris, John Hart, Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, John Sandford, Alexandra Sokoloff, and Elaine Viets among many other wonderful and deserving offerings. You can also check out the links at the bottom for more, as they're too numerous to list here.

Simon Beckett: Whispers of the Dead (May 19, 2009).  Forensic anthropologist David Hunter is thrust into his first murder investigation on U.S. soil—and his most devastating case yet.

Ken Bruen: Sanctuary (May 12, 2009).  P.I. Jack Taylor receives a letter containing a list of victims. But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and stop them at any cost.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child: Cemetery Dance (May 12, 2009). William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, FBI special agent Aloysius Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth.

Lee Child: Gone Tomorrow (May 19, 2009). On a nearly empty Manhattan subway car, Jack Reacher notices a woman passenger he suspects is a suicide bomber. The deadly result of his confronting her puts him on a trail leading back to the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and forward to the war on terrorism.

Michael Connelly: The Scarecrow (May 26, 2009). Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paperto write the definitive murder story of his career.

Lindsey Davis: Alexandria (May 12, 2009). In first century A.D. Rome, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private “informer,” often for the emperor, ferreting out hidden truths and bringing villains to ground. But even informers take vacations with their wives, so in A.D. 77, Falco and his wife, Helena Justina, with others in tow, travel to Alexandria, Egypt. But they aren’t there long before Falco finds himself in the midst of nefarious doings—when the Librarian of the great library is found dead, under suspicious circumstances.

Denise Dietz: Strangle a Loaf of Italian Bread (May 15, 2009). Ellie Bernstein is hanging out with her boyfriend, Lt. Peter Miller of Colorado Springs Homicide, when he's called to a murder scene. Ignoring his obligatory warning, Ellie plans to find out who strangled Sara Lee, who looked and sounded just like Barbra Streisand, and tossed her body into the dumpster behind Uncle Vinnie's Gourmet Italian Restaurant.

Anne Emery: Cecilian Vespers (May 1, 2009). Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins attends the opening of the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta, a kind of choir school for grownups, who would be learning or relearning the traditional music of the Roman Catholic Church, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When a controversial participant, German theologian Fr. Reinhold Schellenberg, is found nearly decapitated on the altar of an old church just before evening vespers on St. Cecilia's day, Monty gets involved in the murder investigation.

J.M. Gregson: Wild Justice (May 1, 2009). When Tamsin Hayes decides to kill her husband, she sets in train a series of events she could never have predicted. For there is a seedy side to Tim Hayes, which the police are already investigating when he is violently murdered. Was he dispatched by the wife who had vowed to rid herself of him? Or one of the other suspects who emerge once DCI Percy Peach and DS Lucy Blake begin their investigation?

Beth Groundwater: To Hell in a Handbasket (May 15, 2009). All gift-basket designer Claire Hanover wants is some quality time with her family, especially daughter Judy, who's been away in Paris for her senior year of college. But a ski trip to Breckenridge takes a deadly turn when the sister of Judy's love interest is killed in a suspicious snowboarding accident.

Charlaine Harris: Dead and Gone (May 5, 2009). Except for Sookie Stackhouse, folks in Bon Temps, Louisiana, know little about vamps—and nothing about weres. Until now. The weres and shifters have finally decided to reveal their existence to the ordinary world. At first all goes well. Then the mutilated body of a were-panther is found near the bar where Sookie works—and she feels compelled to discover who, human or otherwise, did it.

John Hart: The Last Child (May 12, 2009).  Somebody has abducted Johnny Merrimon’s twin sister, Alyssa. Thirteen-year-old Johnny hasn’t been able to let her go, and even now, a year later, he is still scouring his North Carolina town, looking in every dark place, in the belief that his sister may still be alive and close by. Keeping an eye on Johnny, while fighting his own personal demons, is Clyde Hunt, the police detective who’s spent the last year working the case, even as his marriage and career have crumbled around him. When they discover the truth, they find that it’s something darker and more frightening than either of them could have imagined.

David Housewright: Jelly's Gold (May 12, 2009). Rushmore McKenzie, a retired St. Paul policeman and unexpected millionaire, often works as an unlicensed P.I., doing favors as it suits him. When graduate students Ivy Flynn and Josh Berglund show up with a story about $8 million in missing stolen gold from the ‘30s, McKenzie is intrigued. When Berglund is shot dead outside of Ivy’s apartment, the treasure hunt turns unexpectedly deadly.

Graham Ison: Hardcastle's Mandarin (May 1, 2009). Ernest Hardcastle, head of the Whitehall CID, is called to investigate the murder of Sir Nigel Strang, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Munitions, in his office. Given his work, Hardcastle wonders whether the Germans might be responsible. Then another murder leads Hardcastle to a worker at Woolwich Arsenal, who is suspected of passing information to the enemy. But is there a connection? Hardcastle must find out.

Michael Jecks: The King of Thieves (May 1, 2009. It's 1325, and Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, Keeper of the King's Peace and his friend Bailiff Simon Puttock are in France to join Prince Edward and Bishop Walter's entourage as they make their journey to the palace of the French king, Charles IV. The Prince must make a demeaning submission in order for the English to keep hold of their French territories. Meanwhile, Queen Isabella has been causing a scandal in the French courts with English traitor Roger Mortimer. The Prince's entourage are delivered into the Queen's custody, but it becomes clear that they have enemies within the palace walls. Simon and Baldwin soon discover a murderous plot that threatens England's future.

Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse (May 28, 2009). Sheriff Longmire investigates when his instincts tell him something isn’t right about a prisoner accused of killing her husband. Wade Barsad, a man with a dubious past, locked his wife’s horses in their barn and burned the animals alive. In return, Mary shot Wade in the head six times—or so the story goes. Walt doesn’t believe Mary’s confession, and he’s determined to dig deeper.

Chris Knopf: Hard Stop (May 1, 2009). Sam Acquillo, who left his job as head of the Technical Services and Support Division of Con Globe for the humdrum life of a skilled carpenter in the Hamptons, is a magnet for trouble. George Donovan, Con Globe's chairman of the board, tries a carrot and stick approach to get Acquillo to find his missing girlfriend, Iku Kinjo, a brilliant and compelling consultant. Half of that ploy works, and Acquillo is drawn back into the deadly machinations of corporate intrigue, where the payoff may be wealth or death.

Elmore Leonard: Road Dogs (May 12, 2009). Elmore Leonard returns with three of his favorite characters: Jack Foley from Out of Sight, Cundo Rey from LaBrava, and Dawn Navarro from Riding the Rap.

Craig McDonald: Rogue Males (May 19, 2009). McDonald has collected a no-holds-barred series of interviews with 16 authors who have shaped and defined narrative fiction and songwriting, including crime fiction legends Elmore Leonard and James Crumley (in one of his last interviews); premier stylists James Sallis and Daniel Woodrell; noir kingpins James Ellroy and Ken Bruen, and top thriller writers Lee Child and Randy Wayne White.

Christopher Nicole: Angel of Destruction (May 1, 2009. In the seventh Anna Fehrbach outing, the end of the war has not allowed beautiful but deadly Fehrbach to retire. Working for the SS her principal antagonist was the Soviet Union, and to Joseph Stalin and his henchman Lavrenty Beria she remains the most wanted of all war criminals. Although under the aegis of the CIA, the Russians remain on her trail and elaborate plans are being laid for her capture and execution.

Terri Persons: Blind Sight (May 26, 2009). A deer hunter tracking his wounded prey through the Minnesota woods gets much more than he bargained for when he makes the grisly discovery of a young girl’s body. The case becomes increasingly complex as psychic FBI agent Bernadette Saint Clare and Tony Garcia's personal relationship heats up, and the investigation is hampered by the many lies that lead them on a circuitous—and deadly—route to the truth.

George Pelecanos: The Way Home (May 12, 2009). Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a steady job in his father's company, he's seriously dating a woman he respects, and, aside from the distrust that lingers in his father's eyes, his mistakes are firmly in the past. When a temptation almost too big to resist comes along, Chris does the right thing, but old habits and instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability with sudden treachery and violence.

John Sandford: Wicked Prey (May 12, 2009). In the 19th "Prey" installment, Investigator Lucas Davenport has to deal with a crippled former thief with a grudge who sets his sights on Davenport's adopted daughter, while dealing with a young sniper who's theatening to disrupt the Republication Convention in St. Paul.

Kate Sedley: The Dance of Death (May 1, 2009). Roger the Chapman is far from pleased when the Spymaster General to the King commands him to accompany the beautiful but manipulative Eloise Gray on a special journey to Paris, pretending to be her husband. Roger guesses that the French king is making overtures to the Duke of Burgundy on behalf of the Dauphin a move which could wreck the relationship with Englands staunch ally and most important customer for her wool exports.

Tom Rob Smith: The Secret Speech (May 19, 2009). In the second thriller to feature Leo Demidov (after Child 44), Demidov is now working as a homicide detective, having repudiated his days as an MGB officer, but his former colleagues, fearful of reprisals from their victims, have begun taking their own lives. Leo himself becomes the target of Fraera, the wife of a priest he imprisoned. Now the leader of a violent criminal gang, Fraera kidnaps Leo's daughter, Zoya, and threatens to kill Zoya if Leo doesn't liberate her husband from his gulag prison.

Alexandra Sokoloff: The Unseen (May 26, 2009).  After experiencing a precognitive dream that ends her engagement and changes her life forever, a young psychology professor from California decides to get a fresh start by taking a job at Duke University. She soon becomes obsessed with the files from the world-famous Rhine parapsychology experiments, which attempted to prove ESP really exists, and teams up with a handsome professor. Unaware that the entire original team ended up insane or dead, the two professors and two gifted Duke students move into the abandoned mansion to replicate the investigation, with horrifying results.

Rebecca Tope: Slaughter in the Cotswolds (May 2009). Thea Osborne throws herself into house-sitting in Lower Slaughter following her beloved father's death - anything to keep her busy and away from some of her rather difficult relatives which does the trick for a short period of time. But when Thea's prickly elder sister turns up on her doorstep after witnessing a horrific murder, the tentative tranquillity in Lower Slaughter vanishes, replaced by the sinister connotations of the town's name.

Peter Turnbull: Informed Consent (May 1, 2009). A badly injured man is found lying in a street in the centre of York in the early hours of the morning. He subsequently succumbs to his injuries without regaining consciousness. Detectives Hennessey and Yellich are brought in to investigate. Their inquiries reveal that the man was looking into the death of his brother and they discover a vindictive divorce and her involvement with a deeply suspect finance company which has connections to other unsolved murders.

Elaine Viets: Killer Cuts (May 5, 2009). Helen Hawthorne’s latest dead-end job is in Miguel Angel’s Fort Lauderdale hair salon, where a trim can cost as much as a car payment and a blowout can wipe you out. But when one of the salon’s most famous clients, gossip blogger and cable-TV show host Kingman “King” Oden is murdered at his own wedding, things get a little hairy and King becomes the prime suspect. To save her boss—and her job— Helen is determined to find the murderer.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in April 2009

Here's a partial representative listing, arranged alphabetically by author, which this month includes new titles by Susan Wittig Albert, David Baldacci, Nevada Barr, Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, Jane Cleland, Donna Leon, Henning Mankell, Lisa Scottoline, Alexander McCall Smith, and Stuart Woods, among many other wonderful and deserving offerings. You can also check out the links at the bottom for more, as they're too numerous to list here.

• Susan Wittig Albert: Wormwood (April 7, 2009). In the 17th China Bayles outing, China’s friends and family are urging her to get some rest—and a Kentucky Shaker village seems the ideal place for it. But the restored modern version of the village, striving to become a popular tourist attraction, is plagued with misfortune and strife— some of it the likely result of sabotage.

• David Baldacci: First Family (April 21, 2009). This is the latest installment in the series featuring former Secret Service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. It began with what seemed like an ordinary children's birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games and gifts. This party, however, was far from ordinary. It was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat. And it ended with a daring kidnapping . . . which immediately turned into a national security nightmare.

• Nevada Barr: Borderline (April 7, 2009) This is the 15th novel with protagonist Anna Pigeon, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and on administrative leave. When she takes a vacation with her new husband Paul, they discover a murdered pregnant woman on a rafting trip and are soon sucked into a labyrinth of intrigue that leads from the Mexican desert to the steps of the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Texas.

• Carol Higgins Clark: Cursed (April 7, 2009). Regan Reilly returns for a 12th adventure, flying to L.A. to help a friend in trouble which will take her from the beaches of Malibu, to the mountains north of the city, to the renovated lofts of downtown L.A.

• Mary Higgins Clark: Just Take My Heart (April 7, 2009). In this standalone thriller, Natalie Raines, one of Broadway's brightest stars, accidentally discovers who killed her former roommate and sets in motion a series of shocking events that puts more than one life in extreme peril.

• Jane K. Cleland: Killer Keepsakes (April 14, 2009) The fourth Josie Prescott mystery finds the antiques dealer trying to help her assistant Gretchen, who is the prime suspect in the murder of a body found in her home.

• Diane Mott Davidson: Fatally Flaky (April 7, 2009) In the 15th outing of Goldy Schulz, Doc Finn, beloved local physician and the best friend of Goldy's godfather, Jack, is killed when his car tumbles into a ravine. At least that's what appears to have happened. But Jack thinks Doc was murdered because of the research he was doing at the Gold Gulch Spa—allegations that are confirmed when Jack himself is attacked.

• Garry Disher: Blood Moon (April 1, 2009)  In the 5th Inspector Hal Challis novel, Challis and his team investigate the brutal beating of the chaplain of a prestigious school and the murder of the woman in charge of punishing local land use violations. But will Hal Challis and Ellen Destry's new romantic relationship interfere with their work?

• Anthony Eglin: The Trail of the Wild Rose (April 14, 2009). Retired botany professor Lawrence Kingston is helping a friend restore his garden when he gets a call from his former colleague Clifford Attenborough, now curator of horticulture at Kew Gardens. It seems that a patient in critical condition at an Oxford hospital has been muttering strange things about a plant-hunting expedition in China. When the members of the expedition seem to be meeting untimely ends in unexplainable accidents, Kingston turns up evidence of theft and murder among the British aristocracy.

• Jane Haddam: Living Witness (April 14, 2009)  In the 24th outing of this series featuring former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, Ann-Victoria Hadley has often been the most hated person in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania, but after she sues the new school board who inserted “intelligent design” into the curriculum and the town becomes a national laughing stock, Annie-Vic is found clubbed into unconsciousness and not expected to survive. The local police chief, one of the school board members, can’t investigate it himself and doesn’t trust the state police. So he brings in Demarkian.

• Parnell Hall: Dead Man's Puzzle (April 14, 2009). In the 10th "Puzzle Lady" mystery, Cora Felton has to deal with a dead body, a mysterious puzzle that must be solved immediately, and the very real risk that, finally, her secret will be revealed: Cora, the well-known crossword-puzzle composer, is a fraud.

• Roderic Jeffries: Sun, Sea and Murder (April 1, 2009). In the 33rd book in this series featuring Inspector Alvarez, the bumbling, cognac-loving inspector Enrique Alvarez is back in another Mallorcan police caper. This one begins with a request from the English police to question Cyril Tyler, a part-time Mallorcan resident, to determine if he is the driver who ran down two young people on an English country lane. Within minutes of meeting Tyler, Alvarez senses he’s dealing with a guilty man. But barely has the investigation begun when Tyler is shot dead in suspicious circumstances.

• Laurie R. King: The Language of Bees (April 28, 2009). The 9th installment in this series featuring young theology scholar and American feminist Mary Russell, who is married to the great detective Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and Russell return to England in August 1924, after traveling around the world, to find that Holmes’ bees are inexplicably dying and that Holmes had a son by Irene Adler.

• Donna Leon: About Face (April 8, 2009) The 18th Commissario Guido Brunetti novel, Brunetti faces an environmental crisis in Italy which becomes even more significant in Brunetti’s work when an investigator from the Carabiniere, looking into the illegal hauling of garbage, asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. His father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. Brunetti soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he’s seen before.

• Peter Lovesey: Murder on the Short List (April 1, 2009). This is Crippen and Landru's third collection of Lovesey's short mysteries, 14 tales which range from the chuckle-producing tale of a violent mobster who wants to buy a harp for his musician son, through the case of two silly men who fall for a get-rich-quick scheme, to the hilarious tale of a gang of oldsters who hatch a plot to steal hearing aids.

• Henning Mankell: Italian Shoes (April 1, 2009). In this standalone, a man well past middle age lives on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room. Then an unexpected visitor alters his life completely.

• Leslie Meier: Mother's Day Murder (April 7, 2009). In the 15th outing for small-town newspaper reporter, Lucy Stone, Lucy and her family witness a very public altercation between Barbara Hume and Tina Nowak. When Tina is shot, and  a figure in white with blonde hair flees the scene, could it have been Barbara? It turns out that her gun was the murder weapon.

• Cynthia Riggs: Death and Honesty (April 28, 2009) In the 8th Victoria Trumbull Martha's Vineyard mystery, ninety-two-year-old poet/sleuth Victoria discovers a neighbor's body in the home of one of the three town assessors. The assessors have been skimming off tax money from wealthy landowners and stashing it in their own special retirement funds. Then the private pilot of the not-so-holy clergyman husband of one of these landowners is found dead, floating in his employers pond.

• Ann B. Ross: Miss Julia Delivers the Goods (April 16, 2009) In the 10th Julia Springer novel, Julia has just learned a secret—Hazel Marie is pregnant with twins and the prospective father has cleared out of town. Abbotsville finds itself the scene of a heist; and Miss Julia knows there’s only one man who can solve the crime. It’s J. D. Pickens, P.I., renowned investigator and Hazel Marie’s wayward love. When he’s summoned, one thing becomes clear: Miss Julia must help set things right between them or find herself the only one who can, quite literally, deliver the goods.

• Greg Rucka: Walking Dead (April 28, 2009) The 7th thriller featuring bodyguard-turned-international-fugitive Atticus Kodiak. While hiding in Kobuleti, neighbor Bakhar Lagidze and his family have been brutally murdered, and the thuggish local police chief has declared it a murder-suicide. Every seems satisfied with that, except for Atticus.

• Lisa Scottoline: Look Again (April 14, 2009). In this standalone thriller, reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a “Have You Seen This Child?” flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth.

• John Shannon: Palos Verdes Blue (April 7, 2009). In the 11th Jack Liffey installment, Jack is hired to find Blue, the missing teen-aged daughter of his ex-wife’s best friend. As he investigates, Jack discovers that there is a low-intensity war going on in the L.A’s posh Palos Verdes peninsula.

• Clea Simon: Probable Claws (April 10, 2009). In the fourth Theda Krakow outing, music critic Theda Krakow, in the running for a staff reporter job, is pressured into investigating the poisoning of several of the cats at a no-kill shelter, which is how she ends up in the back rooms of the city shelter covered in blood, with a scalpel in her hands, and standing next to the body of the shelter vet.

• Alexander McCall Smith: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (April 21, 2009), the latest in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

• Frank Smith: The Cold Hand of Malice (April 1, 2009) In the 7th Neil Paget novel, DCI Neil Paget and DS John Tregalles return to investigate the death of  Laura Holbrook, bludgeoned to death one night while her husband is away. At first, it looks like a burglary gone wrong, but as Paget and Tregalles investigate, they realize the case is more complex than they first thought.

• David Stone: The Venetian Judgment (April 16, 2009). In the 3rd Micah Dalton outing, it's winter in Venice and a killing frost has cut deep into CIA cleaner Micah Dalton’s heart as he heads out into the night to erase the last members of the Serbian gang who shot his lover, a hand-to-hand vendetta Dalton does not intend to survive. And he might not have, if a mysterious jade box containing a stainless steel glasscutter had not arrived at his villa, which triggers a global search for a possible mole within the upper echelons of the CIA itself.

• Louise Ure: Liars Anonymous (April 14, 2009). In this standalone, Jessica Dancing Gammage got away with murder but paid the price, with a move, a dropped surname, estrangement from her adoptive family, a history that follows her, and a dreadful change to her own psyche. Working for a roadside assistance service, Jessie takes a disturbing call that indicates foul play, and she’s forced back to her old home ground, where her past is remembered and resented.

• Kathryn R. Wall: Covenant Hall (April 28, 2009). In the 8th Bay Tanner installment, Private Investigator Tanner is hired by a young mother desperate to locate her estranged family. Joline Eastman’s daughter is dying of leukemia, and all other sources for a bone-marrow transplant have been exhausted. A yellowing photograph and a handful of wartime letters are the only clues she has to offer. But it’s what she’s not willing to share that may hold the ultimate solution to saving her daughter’s life.

• Stuart Woods: Loitering with Intent (April 21, 2009) In the 15th Stone Barrington novel, Stone is at his favorite New York hangout, Elaine’s, when Bill Eggers brings him Warren Keating, who’s hoping Stone can track down his 26-year-old son, Evan. As Stone continues his increasingly dangerous pursuit of Evan, he starts questioning Warren’s intentions. Sure enough, Evan believes his father is up to no good, and Stone agrees to help Evan, unaware that the decision will cost him dearly.   

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.

New Mystery & Crime Fiction Novels Coming in March

Here's a partial listing of new titles in March arranged alphabetically by author, which this month includes new titles by Rhys Bowen, Laura Childs, Harlan Coben, Clive Cussler, Barry Eisler, Carolyn Hart, Jonathan Kellerman, Laura Lippman, Lisa Lutz, Walter Moseley, Anne Perry, Bill Pronzini, and Barbara Vine among many other wonderful and deserving offerings. You can also check out the links at the bottom for more, as they're far too numerous to list here.

Sandi Ault: Wild Sorrow (March 3, 2009). Tracking a wounded mountain lion, BLM Jamaica Wild comes across an old Indian School, where children were “Americanized” after being taken from their homes. As a snowstorm sweeps the canyon, Jamaica must take refuge in the abandoned school where she discovers the desecrated body of an elderly Anglo woman, frozen on the floor.

Linda Berry: Death and the Crossed Wires (March 18, 2009). After a youth pastor is electrocuted by a microphone during a baptism, Police Chief Henry "Hen" Huckabee leads an investigation into what initially looks like a tragic accident. However, Officer Jerome Sharpe learns from his relative, an electrician that someone tampered with the device. The murder investigation makes no progress until Hen’s cousin Officer Trudy Roundtree suggests looking at the deaths of the teen’s parents and boyfriend.

Cara Black: Murder in the Latin Quarter (March 1, 2009).  A Haitian woman arrives at the office of Detective Aimée Leduc and announces that she is Aimée’s sister, her father’s illegitimate daughter. Aimée is thrilled since she's been a virtual orphan since her mother’s disappearance and her father’s death and has always wanted a sister. Her partner, René, is wary of this stranger, but Aimée embraces her and soon finds herself involved in murky Haitian politics leading to murder.

Marc Blatte:  Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed (March 1, 2009). On a manic ride from the mixing boards of hip-hop recording studios to mansions in the Hamptons and the projects of the urban ghetto, Detective Black Sallie Blue Eyes ventures behind the scenes of the record business in search of a street-side assassin.

Rhys Bowen: In a Gilded Cage (March 17, 2009) In this 8th Molly Murphy outing, Irish immigrant Murphy and her New York City P.I. business are in the midst of a sweeping influenza epidemic and a fight for women’s suffrage that lands her in jail. Her betrothed, Police Captain Daniel Sullivan, finds her, but he hardly has time to bail her out, with Chinese gangs battling for control of a thriving opium trade. The only consolation Molly can take from her vexing afternoon in the clink is that it made her some new friends among the Vassar suffragists and brought her a pair of new cases.

Don Bruns: Bahama Burnout (March 1, 2009). For rock and roll writer Mick Sever, another story, another deadly island paradise is all in a day's work. This time, Mick heads to Nassau, Bahamas, home of the legendary Highland Studio. Known for pumping out hits that burn up the charts, Highland is where the magic happens-or rather, where the magic happened until a devastating fire destroyed the entire studio. No one knows how the fire started, who started it-or whose body was found among the charred ruins.

Dorothy Cannell: She Shoots to Conquer (March 31, 2009). On a dark and foggy night, amateur sleuth Ellie Haskell, her husband Ben, and her plucky sidekick Mrs. Malloy find themselves stranded at a grand estate on the Yorkshire moors. Lord Belfrey of Mucklesfeld Manor has decided to save his crumbling establishment by offering himself as the prize on a TV reality show titled “Here Comes the Bride.” Thrilled at the prospect of marrying a lord, Mrs. Malloy eagerly joins the competition, until one of the potential brides is shot during an archery contest.

Laura Childs: Oolong Dead (March 3, 2009). In the 10th Theodosia Browning installment, Browning is riding her horse in a race through the South Carolina Lowcountry when she finds her arch nemesis, Abby Davis, dead. What’s more, the victim’s brother is Theodosia’s old flame. Who’d have guessed they’d be reunited through cold-blooded murder? Theodosia’s investigation takes her from the Lowcountry thicket to the backstage maze of a darkened theater where a maestro of murder waits for the next cue.

Harlan Coben: Long Lost (March 31, 2009). In this 9th Myron Bolitar outing, Bolitar hasn’t heard from Terese Collins since their torrid affair ended ten years ago, so her desperate phone call from Paris catches him completely off guard. In a shattering admission, Terese reveals the tragic story behind her disappearance—her struggles to get pregnant, the greatest moment of her life when her baby was born, and the fatal accident that robbed her of it all. Now a suspect in the murder of her ex-husband in Paris, Terese has nowhere else to turn for help.

Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul: Corsair (March 10, 2009). For five novels, Clive Cussler has brought readers into the world of the Oregon, a seemingly dilapidated ship packed with sophisticated equipment, and captained by the rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo. And now the Oregon and its crew face their biggest challenge yet after the U.S. secretary of state’s plane crashes while bringing her to a summit meeting in Libya.

Barry Eisler: Fault Line (March 10, 2009). Silicon Valley: the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. Istanbul: a cynical undercover operative receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he’ll be the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, California’s nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Jon L. Lellenberg (Editor), Daniel Stashower (Editor): Sherlock Holmes in America (March 26, 2009).  Sherlock Holmes makes his American debut in this collection of never-before-published crime and mystery stories by bestselling American writers. The world's greatest detective and his famous sidekick Watson are on their first trip across the Atlantic as they fight crime all over nineteenth-century North America. From the bustling neighborhoods of New York City and Washington, D.C., to sunny yet sinister cities like San Francisco on the West Coast, the world's best-loved British sleuth will face some of the most cunning criminals America has to offer, and meet some of America's most famous figures along the way.

Kerry Greenwood: Murder in the Dark (March 10, 2009) This is the 16th in the Phryne Fisher series, set at Christmas where Phryne has an invitation to the Last Best party of 1928, a four-day extravaganza being held at Werribee Manor house and grounds by the Golden Twins, Isabella and Gerald Templar. Phryne is in two minds about going. But when threats begin arriving in the mail, she promptly decides to accept the invitation.

Andrew Gross: Don't Look Twice (March 3, 2009). A drive-by shooting rocks the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, and an innocent bystander is left dead. Detective Ty Hauck plunges into what seems like a vicious case of retribution and follows the trail to a sinister gambling scheme at an upstate casino. Until Annie Fletcher, a young restaurateur in the midst of rebuilding her life, witnesses something she shouldn't have and immediately runs to him with what she knows. Suddenly, Hauck is pulled into a rising storm far greater than it first appeared,a storm wide enough to encompass corruption inside Greenwich's circle of wealthy and powerful citizens. And punishing enough to consume Hauck's own family, and tear brothers apart forever if it doesn't kill them first.

David Hagberg: The Expediter (March 17, 2009). In the 13th book of this series, an important Chinese intelligence general on his way to a secret meeting with Kim Jon-Il is assassinated in plain sight of a surveillance camera. Kirk McGarvey, just off a difficult assignment that took him to Mexico City, has returned to his visiting professorship at the University of South Florida. A colonel in North Korea's intelligence service shows up in person, asking McGarvey to prove that North Korea did not authorize the hit.

Carolyn Hart: Dare to Die (March 31, 2009).  Annie and Max Darling are completely unprepared when the arrival of a mysterious young woman shocks their sea island and stirs up more than just gossip, pitting neighbor against neighbor and leading to murder.

David Hewson: Dante's Numbers (March 24, 2009). At the premiere of a new film version of Dante’s Inferno, packed with celebrities and paparazzi the celebration turns to chaos when a man is found dead, the film’s star is missing, and a priceless relic has vanished. Detective Nic Costa, numb from the recent death of his wife, finds himself and his fellow detectives drawn into a strange and terrifying limbo—the first of Dante’s nine circles of Hell.

Charlotte Hughes: Nutcase (March 1, 2009). Psychologist Kate Holly is about to get evicted from her office, and her best option may be to share space with her jacuzzi-loving ex-boyfriend, Dr. Thad Glazer. That’s not going to help her patch things up with her firefighter ex-husband. With her oddball patients, meddling mother, and eccentric secretary thrown into the mix—not to mention a spree of suspicious fires—will Kate put her life back together or wind up in a padded cell?

Lisa Jackson: Malice (March 31, 2009). Opening his eyes in the hospital room where he’s recovering from an accident, New Orleans detective Rick Bentz sees his dead first wife standing in the doorway before she disappears. When a copy of Jennifer’s death certificate arrives in the mail, emblazoned with a red question mark, Bentz follows the postmark trail to Los Angeles, returning to the painful memories he’s tried so hard to forget, and straight into a killer’s web.

Jonathan Kellerman: True Detectives (March 24, 2009). Half-brothers Moses Reed, a no-frills LAPD detective, and Aaron Fox, ex-cop turned high-end private eye, return to uncover more than just a secret as they descend into the sinister, seamy side of the City of Angels after dark, populated by a Hollywood Babylon cast of the glamorous and the damned: a millionaire movie director turned hatemongering eccentric; a desperate Beverly Hills housewife looking for an exit from the fast lane; a heartthrob actor being eaten alive by personal demons; a hooker who’s probably seen it all and might just know too much.

Philip Kerr: A Quiet Flame (March 19, 2009). In the fifth Bernard Gunther installment set in 1950, Gunther is falsely fingered a war criminal and heads to Buenos Aires with promises of a new life and a clean passport from the Perón government. He is soon pressured by the local police into taking on a case in which a girl has turned up dead, gruesomely mutilated, and another—the daughter of a wealthy German banker—has gone missing.

Paul Levine:  Illegal (March 24, 2009).Haunted by a tragedy in his past and wanted by the cops for his latest malfeasance, trial lawyer Jimmy “Royal” Payne needs to skip town. That’s when he crosses paths with twelve-year-old Tino Perez, newly arrived from Mexico with no money and no papers who pleads for his help in finding his mother. Payne doesn’t go out of his way for anyone. But ex-wife Sharon, the L.A.P.D. detective he still loves, gives him a choice: help the boy or go to jail.

Laura Lippman: Life Sentences (March 10, 2009). Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page in books acclaimed for their brutal candor about friends, family, lovers, and herself. After failing at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction, but the dark secrets she uncovers forces her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious.

Lisa Lutz: Revenge of the Spellmans (March 10, 2009) In the third Isabel Spellman outing, Private investigator Isabel Spellman is back on the case and back on the couch -- in court-ordered therapy after getting a little too close to her previous subject. Izzy is on hiatus from Spellman Inc., but when her boss, Milo, simultaneously cuts her bartending hours and introduces her to a "friend" looking for a private eye, Izzy reluctantly finds herself with a new client.

Walter Mosley: The Long Fall (March 24, 2009). Ex-boxer, hard drinker and old-school P.I. Leonid McGill calls in old markers and greases NYPD palms to unearth some seemingly harmless information for a high-paying client and learns that even in the cleaned-up New York city, his commitment to the straight and narrow is going to be constantly tested.

Otto Penzler: Black Noir (March 3, 2009). A collection of the best mystery and crime fiction ever produced by African-American writers.

Anne Perry: Execution Dock (March 24, 2009). In Execution Dock, Perry’s first Monk novel in three years, Commander William Monk of the River Police swears that a notorious mastermind of the illegal sex trade will hang for the murder of a 13-year-old boy. But the miscreant is as wily as he is monstrous, and his wealthy clients seem far beyond the reach of the law. Monk’s attempt to bring about justice becomes the first electrifying episode in a nightmare that will test his courage and integrity.

Bill Pronzini: Schemers (March 31, 2009). In this amazingly prolific series, the 34th installment of Pronzini's Nameless Detective returns in a locked room mystery that goes from stolen books to stolen lives and the hunt for a phantom stalker with a penchant for pouring acid to make his point, giving Nameless and his partner Jake more than enough work to earn their fees—as long as neither turns his back at the wrong moment.

Olen Steinhauer: The Tourist (March 3, 2009). Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA—an undercover agent with no home, no identity—but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he’s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo’s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all.

Barbara Vine: The Birthday Present (March 10, 2009). Ivor Tesham is a handsome, single, young member of Parliament whose political star is on the rise. When he meets a woman in a chance encounter–-a beautiful married woman named Hebe-–the two become lovers obsessed with their trysts. When Ivor creates a surprise birthday present for his beloved that involves a curbside kidnapping,it’s all intended as mock-dangerous foreplay, but then things take a dark turn.

Randy Wayne White: Dead Silence (March 10, 2009). In this 16th Doc Ford novel, it's winter in New York City, and Ford is at the Explorers Club with his new friend, former (and maybe current) British agent Sir James Montbard, researching a jungle expedition, and awaiting the arrival of an attractive U.S. senator with whom Ford has become more than friendly. Her car pulls up and the unthinkable happens: an assassination attempt right before their eyes. Ford critically injures one of the attackers, but the senator vanishes—dead, authorities fear—until they receive her kidnapper’s ultimatum.   

Qiu Xiaolong: The Mao Case (March 3, 2009). In the sixth Chen Cao installment, Chief Inspector Cao of the Shanghai Police Department and head of the Special Case group has been charged to infiltrate the social circle of Jiao, the granddaughter of an actress who was likely one of Chairman Mao's mistresses, and discover if she has inherited an artifact related to Mao that will, when made public, prove embarrassing to the party.

For more of the new hardcover, trade paperback, and paperback releases (as well as reissues), check out the following sites from The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Books N Bytes, San Diego's Mystery Books, Powells Books, the Bloodstained Bookshelf, and Fantastic Fiction.