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.