I need to stop being a scaredy cat. Ever since ParaTransit left Denis and me waiting on a cold, dark street corner for two and a half hours after an author event at The Poisoned Pen, I've been reluctant to attend any evening events at my favorite bookstore. Granted, most of them are available through YouTube, but it's certainly not the same as attending them in person. Of course, I can tell myself that the street corner won't be cold at this time of year...
While I'm mulling that over, let me share my picks for the best new crime fiction in July. I've grouped them according to their release dates, and the synopses and covers are courtesy of Amazon.
Let's see if I can tempt you with any of my choices...
=== June 4 ===
Title: Over the Edge
Standalone thriller set in Sedona, Arizona.
304 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "After a disastrous mistake ended her career as a crime reporter,
Del Cooper returns to Sedona and takes a gig with a down-on-its-luck
tour company while she rebuilds her life. Her peaceful small-town escape
ends when, hiking in a remote red rock canyon, she finds the broken
body of a murdered man.
At first, she believes the murder is
connected to a proposed land trade that will pave the way for a luxury
development on the edge of town, but it seems money isn’t the killer’s
only motive. As she digs deeper, she uncovers the small town’s darkest
secrets, all leading her to Lee Ranch, a former filming location for
Western movies. Two women disappear after Del interviews them, and
rumors begin to spin faster than Sedona’s famed energy vortexes. But she
knows the truth: Someone is watching her from the shadows.
Desperate
for answers, Del ventures into the wilderness to lure the killer into
the open. But out here in the red rocks, bodies can be lost forever."
Title: Nothing Can Erase You
Standalone thriller set in the south of France.
463 pages
Synopsis: "
Maddi Libéri is a successful doctor living an idyllic life in
the South of France. On the morning of her son’s tenth birthday, they
walk to the beach together. The boy presses for a quick swim, but when
the surf is too rough, she sends him off to buy a baguette instead.He never returns.
Ten
years later, Maddi stands at the spot where she last saw her son. A
pilgrimage of sorts. And she can’t believe her eyes. There, standing at
the water’s edge, is a young boy―and he looks exactly like her son. Same face, same suit…even the same birthmark.
Rattled,
Maddi becomes obsessed with the boy. She upends her life to get closer
to him. And the more she learns about her son’s doppelgänger, the more
unhinged she becomes. Dangerous secrets brought to light put people’s
lives at risk, and plot twists reveal truths you’ll never see coming."
Title:
The Unwedding Standalone thriller set in California.
352 pages
Synopsis: "Ellery Wainwright is alone at the edge of the world.
She
and her husband, Luke, were supposed to spend their twentieth wedding
anniversary together at the luxurious Resort at Broken Point in Big Sur,
California. Where better to celebrate a marriage, a family, and a life
together than at one of the most stunning places on earth?
But now she’s traveling solo.
To add insult to injury, there’s a wedding at Broken Point scheduled
during her stay. Ellery remembers how it felt to be on the cusp of
everything new and wonderful, with a loved and certain future glimmering
just ahead. Now, she isn’t certain of anything except for her love for
her kids and her growing realization that this place, though beautiful,
is unsettling.
When Ellery discovers the body of the groom
floating in the pool in the rain, she realizes that she is not the only
one whose future is no longer guaranteed. Before the police can reach
Broken Point, a mudslide takes out the road to the resort, leaving the
guests trapped. When another guest dies, it’s clear something horrible
is brewing.
Everyone at Broken Point has a secret. And everyone has a shadow. Including Ellery."
Title: The Comfort of Ghosts
Series: #18 (and last) in the Maisie Dobbs historical mystery series set in 1945 London.
360 pages
Synopsis: "London, 1945: Four adolescent orphans with a dark wartime history
are squatting in a vacant Belgravia mansion—the owners having fled
London under heavy Luftwaffe bombing. Psychologist and Investigator
Maisie Dobbs visits the mansion on behalf of the owners and discovers
that a demobilized soldier, gravely ill and reeling from his experiences
overseas, has taken shelter with the group.
Maisie’s quest to
bring comfort to the youngsters and the ailing soldier brings to light a
decades-old mystery concerning Maisie’s first husband, James Compton,
who was killed while piloting an experimental fighter aircraft. As
Maisie unravels the threads of her dead husband’s life, she is forced to
examine her own painful past and question beliefs she has always
accepted as true.
The award-winning Maisie Dobbs series has
garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, readers drawn to a woman
who is of her time, yet familiar in ours—and who inspires with her
resilience and capacity for endurance. This final assignment of her own
choosing not only opens a new future for Maisie and her family, but
serves as a fascinating portrayal of the challenges facing the people
of Britain at the close of the Second World War."
Title: Holy City
Standalone thriller set in rural Virginia
352 pages
Synopsis: "After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his
mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southern
Virginia, taking a job as deputy sheriff in a landscape given way to
crime and defeat. Impoverished and abandoned, this remote land of
tobacco plantations, razed forests, and boarded-up homes seems stuck in
the past in a state that is trying to forget its complex history and
move on.
Will's efforts to go about his life are wrecked when a
mysterious, brutal homicide claims the life of an old friend, Tom
Janders, forcing Will to face the true impetus for his return: not to
honor his mother's memory, but to pay a debt to a Black friend who, in
an act of selfless courage years ago, protected Will and suffered
permanent disfigurement for it.
Meanwhile, a man Will knows to
be innocent is arrested for Tom's murder, and despite Will's pleas, his
boss seems all too content to wrap up the case and move on. Will must
weigh his personal guilt against his public duty when the local Black
community hires Bennico Watts, an unpredictable private detective from
Richmond, to help him find the real killer. It would seem an ideal
pairing—she has experience, along with plenty of sand, and Will is privy
to the details of the case—but it doesn't take long for either to
realize they much prefer to operate alone.
Bennico and Will
clash as they each defend their untraditional ways on a wild ride that
wends deep into the Snakefoot, an underworld wilderness that for
hundreds of years has functioned as a hideout for outcasts—the forgotten
and neglected and abused—leaving us enmeshed in the tangled history of a
region and its people that leaves no one innocent, no one free, nothing
sacred."
Title: Tell Me Who You Are
Standalone thriller set in New York City
352 pages
Synopsis: "Brooklyn psychiatrist Dr. Caroline Strange is certain she knows
what's best for her patients, her family, and pretty much everyone else,
but that all changes when a troubled young man arrives for his
appointment and makes a pair of alarming confessions: I am going to kill someone, and I know who you really are.
Dr.
Caroline is accustomed to hearing her patients’ deepest, darkest
secrets, but it seems Nelson Schack may be one step ahead when
detectives show up later that day, inquiring about a missing woman. It
looks like Nelson has made good on his threat―yet somehow it’s Dr.
Caroline who becomes the prime suspect.
Convinced the police are
incompetent, Dr. Caroline takes matters into her own hands, chasing down
the elusive Nelson and running headlong into a past she has spent her
entire life trying to forget. As she closes in on her target, all the
polished pieces of her manicured life splinter when people begin to
question who she really is.
Harrowing, unpredictable, and compulsively readable, the award-winning author Louisa Luna’s Tell Me Who You Are is an utterly gripping psychological thriller that begs the question: Can a person ever really outrun their past?"
=== June 18 ===
Title: Death in the Air
Author: Ram Murali
Standalone thriller set in the Indian Himalayas.
368 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "
Ro Krishna is the American son of Indian parents, educated at
the finest institutions, equally at home in London’s poshest clubs and
on the squash court, but unmoored after he is dramatically forced to
leave a high-profile job under mysterious circumstances. He decides it’s
time to check in for some much-needed R&R at Samsara, a world-class
spa for the global cosmopolitan elite nestled in the foothills of the
Indian Himalayas. A person could be spiritually reborn in a place like
this. Even a very rich person.But a person—or
several—could also die there. Samsara is the Sanskrit word for the
karmic cycle of death and rebirth, after all. And as it turns out, the
colorful cast of characters Ro meets—including a misanthropic
politician; an American movie star preparing for his Bollywood crossover
debut; a beautiful heiress to a family jewel fortune that barely
survived Partition; and a bumbling white yogi inexplicably there to
teach meditation—harbors a murderer among them. Maybe more than one.
As
the death toll rises, Ro, a lawyer by training and a sleuth by
circumstance, becomes embroiled in a vicious world under a gilded
surface, where nothing is quite what it seems . . . including Ro
himself. Death in the Air is a brilliant, teasing mystery from a remarkable new talent."
=== June 25 ===
Title:
All the Colors of the Dark Author: Chris Whitaker
Standalone thriller set in 1975 Missouri.
608 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books.
Synopsis: "1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending.
Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta
Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.
When the daughter of a
wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a
local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his
wake.
Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line
between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search
for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.
A
missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a
unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what
lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope."
Well... how did I do? Do any of these strike your fancy? Which ones? The second that I saw Chris Whitaker had a new book, I had high hopes for it because I loved his previous, We Begin at the End, so much.
