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.
