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.

Comments

[Elizabeth Spann Craig]

I see several series on the list that I follow....thanks for sharing! I'm tweeting this one on Twitter.

Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder

[BV Lawson]

I just wish I had space and the time to discuss every single title coming out! Don't forget to check the links for all the rest; many more good stuff there, too.