2020 is the only year I've ever wanted to fly by. Sometimes it felt as though time were moving glacially slow and at others, it was supersonic.
There have been many changes in all our lives this year, many of them unwelcome, but I know if we just buckle down and do what's right for us all, we'll make our way out of the tunnel and be back in the high life again. (Sorry, that song's an earworm this afternoon.)
The following list contains my picks of the best new crime fiction being released throughout the month of December. The books are grouped by release date, and the covers and synopses are courtesy of Amazon.
Let's see if any of my picks have made it to your own personal Must Read lists!
=== December 1 ===
Author: Jasmine Aimaq
Standalone thriller set in Afghanistan
384 pages
Synopsis: "Afghanistan, 1970s. Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war
hero, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity.
After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul at the helm of
a US foreign aid agency dedicated to eradicating the poppy fields that
feed the world’s opiate addiction.
But on the drive out of
Kabul for an anniversary trip with his wife, Daniel accidentally hits
and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. He is let off with a nominal
fine, in part because nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law,
but also because a mysterious witness named Taj Maleki intercedes on his
behalf. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to
unravel, running from his crumbling marriage and escalating threats from
Taj, who turns out to be a powerful opium khan willing to go to
extremes to save his poppies.
This groundbreaking literary
thriller reveals the invisible lines between criminal enterprises and
political regimes—and one man’s search for meaning at the heart of a
violent revolution."
Series: #2 in the First Edition Library cozy series set in Bath, England.
336 pages
Synopsis: "Hayley Burke, curator of Lady Fowling's collection of first edition
mysteries, is settling into her position at the First Edition Library in
Middlebank House. She's even made progress with Lady Fowling's former
secretary, the ornery Miss Woolgar. The women are busily preparing for
an exhibition that will showcase Lady Fowling's life and letters. Hayley
knows the exhibition is a huge undertaking and decides, against her
better judgement, to hire Oona Atherton, her former boss from the Jane
Austen Centre to help with the planning.
Oona is known
for being difficult, but all seems to be going swimmingly until she and
Hayley uncover a one-page letter that alludes to a priceless edition of
MURDER MUST ADVERTISE signed by several Golden Age of Mystery authors.
Oona feels this book could be the focal point of the exhibition and
becomes obsessed with finding it.
When they find clues
that appear to point to the book being somewhere in the First Edition
Library, Oona is certain she's unraveled the mystery and texts Hayley
the good news, but upon arriving back at Middlebank, Hayley finds her
old boss dead at the bottom of the stairs. Did her discovery of the rare
book get her killed or was it some angry shadow from her past? Hayley
must read between the lines to catch a malicious murderer."
Title:
Poppy Redfern and the Fatal FlyersSeries: #2 in the historical Woman of World War II series set in England.
320 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "It is the late autumn of 1942. Our indomitable heroine Poppy Redfern is
thoroughly immersed in her new job as a scriptwriter at the London Crown
Film Unit, which produces short films featuring British civilians who
perform acts of valor and heroism in wartime. After weeks of typing copy
and sharpening pencils, Poppy is thrilled to receive her first solo
script project: a fifteen-minute film about the Air Transport Auxiliary,
known as Attagirls, a group of female civilians who have been trained
to pilot planes from factories to military airfields all over Britain.
Poppy
could not be more excited to spend time with these amazing ladies, but
she never expects to see one of the best pilots die in what is being
labeled an accident. When another Attagirl meets a similar fate, Poppy
and her American fighter-pilot boyfriend, Griff, believe foul play may
be at work. They soon realize that a murderer with a desire for revenge
is dead set on grounding the Attagirls for good. . . ."
Edited by Nana-Ama Danquah
Short Story Anthology set in Ghana.
256 pages
Synopsis: "
Accra is one of the most well-known cities on the African
continent. It's the capital of Ghana, which in 1957 became the first
sub-Saharan (read: black) nation to gain its independence from
colonialism. But the city, in all its globalism, predates the nation.
Prior to becoming a sovereign land, the area now known as Ghana was the
Gold Coast colony. In 1877, when the British took possession of the
colony, Accra was installed as its capital. For nearly a century, in
addition to being a political and financial center, the city was a major
trade hub. People came from Europe and other African nations to trade
everything from gold and salt to guns and slaves...One
thing that people, too easily seduced by the city's charm and history
and beauty, forget about Accra is that it is a major metropolis. Accra
is New York; it is Los Angeles; it is Shanghai, Mexico City, Santiago,
Caracas, and Cape Town. It is an urban area, with poverty, desperation,
and the inevitable result of a marriage between the two: crime...
The
stories that you will read in this collection highlight all things
Accra, everything that the city was and is--the remaining vestiges of
colonialism, the pride of independence, the nexus of indigenous tribes
and other groups from all over the world, the tension between modernity
and traditionalism, the symbolism and storytelling both obvious and
coded, the moral high ground, the duplicity and deceit, the most basic
human failings laid bare alongside fear and love and pain and the
corrupting desire to have the very things you are not meant to have."
Title:
Premeditated MortarSeries: #8 in the Fixer-Upper cozy series set in California.
304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Shannon Hammer is about to embark on one of the biggest projects of her
career. Her best friend Jane Hennessey has purchased one wing of the
Gables, formerly the old state insane asylum, located on a bucolic
hillside two miles northeast of Lighthouse Cove. Jane plans to turn her
section into a small luxury hotel complete with twenty ocean-view rooms,
a spa, and a restaurant.
Shannon is raring to get started on the
enormous project and is shocked when a group of unruly protesters shows
up at the groundbreaking ceremony and wreaks havoc. She’s even more
freaked-out when someone pushes her into a pit of bricks in a closed-off
room of the asylum. Despite her close call, Shannon wants nothing more
than to get back to work . . . until she finds a body not far from where
she was pushed. Now Shannon is determined to get to the bottom of the
goings-on at the Gables even if it kills her. . . ."
=== December 3 ===
Title:
The Fatal Flying AffairSeries: #8 in the Lady Hardcastle historical series set at the turn of the twentieth century in England.
315 pages
Synopsis: "
August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and
her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer
until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery
for them to solve.A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane
factory has gone horribly wrong—with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to
his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than
meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is
leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.
In between
strolls to the Dog & Duck and planning for the annual village show,
the daring duo dust off the Crime Board and go undercover at Bristol
Aviation. With international powers investing heavily in aeronautics,
the stakes are high—sky high—and the suspects soon mount up.
Can Lady Hardcastle find the culprit before someone else falls down dead?"
=== December 8 ===
Author: Helene Tursten
Series: #3 in the Embla Nyström police procedural series set in Sweden.
384 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "One winter night, 28-year-old Detective Inspector Embla Nyström receives
a phone call that sends her reeling. It’s been fourteen years since her
best friend disappeared from a nightclub in Gothenburg, but Embla
recognizes her voice before the call abruptly disconnects. Embla is
thrilled to learn Lollo is still alive, but before she can dive into the
case, she gets another phone call—this time from a relative. A man has
been found shot dead in one of the guest houses he and his wife manage
in rural Sweden. Could she come take a look?
When Embla arrives
on the scene, she receives another shock. The dead man is Milo Stavic, a
well-known gang member and one of the last people seen with Lollo. And,
as Embla soon learns, the same night that Milo was shot in the guest
house, his brother Luca was also killed. Why, after all these years, is
someone targeting the Stavic brothers, and where is the third brother?
With help from a handsome local detective and his police dog in
training, Embla launches an investigation into the three Stavic
brothers, hoping it will bring her closer to finally finding Lollo and
putting an end to her terrible nightmares."
Title:
Cold WindSeries: #2 in the Alaska Wild amateur sleuth series set in Alaska.
304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Beth Rivers is still in Alaska. The unidentified man who kidnapped her
in her home of St. Louis hasn’t been found yet, so she’s not ready to go
back.
But as October comes to a close, Benedict is feeling more
and more like her new home. Beth has been working on herself: She’s
managed to get back to writing, and she’s enjoying these beautiful
months between summer and winter in Alaska.
Then, everything in
Benedict changes after a mudslide exposes a world that had been hidden
for years. Two mud-covered, silent girls appear, and a secret trapper’s
house is found in the woods. The biggest surprise, though, is a dead and
frozen woman’s body in the trapper’s shed. No one knows who she is, but
the man who runs the mercantile, Randy, seems to be in the middle of
all the mysteries.
Unable to escape her journalistic roots, Beth
is determined to answer the questions that keep arising: Are the
mysterious girls and the frozen body connected? Can Randy possibly be
involved? And―most importantly―can she solve this mystery before the
cold wind sweeping over the town and the townspeople descends for good?"
=== December 10 ===
Title:
Winterkill Series: #6 in the Ari Thor/Dark Iceland police procedural series set in Iceland.
276 pages
Synopsis: "When the body of a nineteen-year-old girl is found on the main street of
Siglufjörður, Police Inspector Ari Thór battles a violent Icelandic
storm in an increasingly dangerous hunt for her killer … The chilling,
claustrophobic finale to the international bestselling Dark Iceland
series.
Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently
falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland, as crowds of
tourists arrive to visit the majestic ski slopes.
Ari Thór
Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his
girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family
reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is
threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air.
Three
days before Easter, a nineteen-year-old local girl falls to her death
from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in
her diary suggests that this may not be an accident, and when an old man
in a local nursing home writes ‘She was murdered’ again and again on
the wall of his room, there is every suggestion that something more
sinister lies at the heart of her death…
As the extreme weather
closes in, cutting the power and access to Siglufjörður, Ari Thór must
piece together the puzzle to reveal a horrible truth … one that will
leave no one unscathed."
=== December 29 ===
Title:
Absence of Alice Series: #9 in the Sarah Winston Garage Sale cozy series set in Massachusetts.
288 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Sarah's latest client, Alice Krandle, is sure she has a fortune in
antiques on her hands. She's already gotten a generous offer for the
whole lot before her garage sale has even begun, but she thinks she can
earn more with Sarah's expert help. The problem is that while Sarah's
sorting through items from decades past, her landlady, Stella, faces a
clear and present danger.
Stella's kidnapper has contacted Sarah
with a set of instructions, and "Don't call the police" is at the top of
the list. But they didn't say anything about Sarah's friend
Harriet--who happens to be a former F.B.I. hostage negotiator..."
Title: A Wicked Yarn
Author: Emmie Caldwell
Series: #1 in Craft Fair Knitters cozy series.
304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "Mother's Day should be a cinch for the good folks of the Crandalsburg
Craft Fair, and knitting enthusiast Lia Geiger has a good feeling about
this year's yield. But things quickly get knotty when Lia's daughter
announces she's quit her job and Lia finds herself tangled up in the
murder of her best friend's ex-husband. While Belinda's alibi quickly
gets her off the hook, nasty rumors spread throughout Crandalsburg that
shroud the entire fair in suspicion.
Could the vendors be
responsible for the murder of a man hell-bent on unraveling the fair
just days before his death? Lia and her crafty group of Ninth Street
Knitters must put down their needles to gather clues and save the
crafting community they've grown to love."
This is a rather eclectic list of mysteries, isn't it? There should definitely be something for everyone on it, and I like the fact that it contains a nice mix of my favorite authors as well as brand-new ones.
Did any of the books tickle your fancy? Which ones? Inquiring minds would love to know!
First Line: "Miss Redfern? For heaven's sake, where is she?"
