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.
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