September is a month with many new books that crime fiction readers should enjoy. I have reviews due on some of them, so I'm not going to waste any more time-- I need to get back to reading!
I've grouped my choices for the best new books according to their release dates, and the covers and synopses are courtesy of Amazon.
Let's see if I can tempt you with any of my picks. September may turn out to be another book-budget-busting month!
=== September 3 ===
Title: Death at the Sign of the Rook
Author: Kate Atkinson
Series: #6 in the Jackson Brodie series set in England
320 pages
Synopsis: "Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed.
In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building."
In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building."
Title: Where They Last Saw Her
Author: Marcie R. Rendon
Standalone set in northern Minnesota
336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole
life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl
when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill
realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the
Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When
she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a
single beaded earring.
Things are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don’t know what it means to quit; her loving husband, Crow, and their two beautiful children challenge her to be better every day. So when she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it—starting with investigating the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.
As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible."
Things are different now for Quill than when she was a lonely girl. Her friends Punk and Gaylyn are two women who don’t know what it means to quit; her loving husband, Crow, and their two beautiful children challenge her to be better every day. So when she hears a second woman has been stolen, she is determined to do something about it—starting with investigating the group of men working the pipeline construction just north of their homes.
As Quill closes in on the truth about the missing women, someone else disappears. In her quest to find justice for all of the women of the reservation, she is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. When will she stop losing neighbors, friends, family? As Quill puts everything on the line to make a difference, the novel asks searing questions about bystander culture, the reverberations of even one act of crime, and the long-lasting trauma of being considered invisible."
Title: The Whitewashed Tombs
Author: Kwei Quartey
Series: #4 in the P.I. Emma Djan series set in Ghana
336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ+ activist, is
butchered one night after being lured on a dating app to a deserted
building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy
father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he
goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because
he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out.
PI Emma Djan is assigned the case but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim.
Working with Manu, whom she’s never gotten along with, Emma goes undercover in the International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined. Emma must race against time to unmask the killer, protect the vulnerable LGBTQ+ community, and bring justice to the victims, all while navigating the dangerous waters of politics, power, and personal secrets."
PI Emma Djan is assigned the case but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim.
Working with Manu, whom she’s never gotten along with, Emma goes undercover in the International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined. Emma must race against time to unmask the killer, protect the vulnerable LGBTQ+ community, and bring justice to the victims, all while navigating the dangerous waters of politics, power, and personal secrets."
Title: French Quarter Fright Night
Author: Ellen Byron
Series: #3 in the Vintage Cookbook cozy series set in New Orleans, Louisiana
256 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "It's Halloween in New Orleans, and the staff of Bon Vee Culinary
House Museum is setting up a fantastic haunted house tour for their
visitors. But when flashy movie star Blaine Taggart and his entourage
move into the mansion next door, gift shop proprietor Ricki James-Diaz
gets a fright of her own.
While Ricki is excited about the potential business the tours will bring to her vintage cookbook shop, she's less thrilled by former friend Blaine's arrival in town. Then Bon Vee's prop tomb becomes a real tomb for Blaine's nasty assistant, and suddenly everyone at Bon Vee is a murder suspect. There isn't a ghost of a chance one of them committed the crime, but with NOPD busy tackling the mischief and mayhem generated by the spooky holiday, it falls on Ricki and her friends to catch the killer.
As the Big Easy gears up for the Big Scary, it seems everyone has skeletons in their closets. Can Ricki reveal the shadowy killer before someone else becomes part of the Halloween horror show?"
While Ricki is excited about the potential business the tours will bring to her vintage cookbook shop, she's less thrilled by former friend Blaine's arrival in town. Then Bon Vee's prop tomb becomes a real tomb for Blaine's nasty assistant, and suddenly everyone at Bon Vee is a murder suspect. There isn't a ghost of a chance one of them committed the crime, but with NOPD busy tackling the mischief and mayhem generated by the spooky holiday, it falls on Ricki and her friends to catch the killer.
As the Big Easy gears up for the Big Scary, it seems everyone has skeletons in their closets. Can Ricki reveal the shadowy killer before someone else becomes part of the Halloween horror show?"
=== September 10 ===
Title: Death at the Sanatorium
Author: Ragnar Jónasson
Standalone thriller set in Iceland
320 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "1983
At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland, now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five suspects: the chief physician, two junior nurses, a young doctor, and the caretaker, who is arrested following false testimony from one of the nurses, but subsequently released.
Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician, is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir, rules his death as suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed.
2012
Almost thirty years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, has been studying criminology in the UK, but decides to return to Iceland when he is offered a job at the Reykjavik police department―the job which detective Hulda Hermannsdottir is about to retire from.
He is also a collector of golden age detective stories, and is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, and starts his new job, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn, as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before."
At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland, now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five suspects: the chief physician, two junior nurses, a young doctor, and the caretaker, who is arrested following false testimony from one of the nurses, but subsequently released.
Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician, is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir, rules his death as suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed.
2012
Almost thirty years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, has been studying criminology in the UK, but decides to return to Iceland when he is offered a job at the Reykjavik police department―the job which detective Hulda Hermannsdottir is about to retire from.
He is also a collector of golden age detective stories, and is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, and starts his new job, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn, as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before."
Title: The Examiner
Author: Janice Hallett
Standalone mystery set in England
480 pages
Synopsis: "University professor Gela Nathaniel must make her new master’s
program in multimedia art succeed. If it doesn’t, then Royal Hastings
University will cut her funding and she’ll be out of the job she loves.
The six students in this inaugural course will be key to that
success…but how well has she selected the team?
The students include a talented young sculptor who is determined to graduate with top grades, a former gallery owner with limited artistic skills, a single mother more interested in a paycheck than homework, a people pleaser who struggles with technology, a marketing executive suffering from burnout, and a successful artist who seems rather overqualified for the program.
At the end of the academic year, when the examiner arrives to grade the students’ final project, he finds himself asking what happened. Because if someone in that course isn’t in mortal danger, then they are already dead. But who, and why?
He wants us to read through the students’ coursework, texts, message boards, and final essays to see if we can find the answers. Only one thing is certain: nothing about this course has been left to chance, and each of these students has their own very different agenda."
The students include a talented young sculptor who is determined to graduate with top grades, a former gallery owner with limited artistic skills, a single mother more interested in a paycheck than homework, a people pleaser who struggles with technology, a marketing executive suffering from burnout, and a successful artist who seems rather overqualified for the program.
At the end of the academic year, when the examiner arrives to grade the students’ final project, he finds himself asking what happened. Because if someone in that course isn’t in mortal danger, then they are already dead. But who, and why?
He wants us to read through the students’ coursework, texts, message boards, and final essays to see if we can find the answers. Only one thing is certain: nothing about this course has been left to chance, and each of these students has their own very different agenda."
=== September 24 ===
Title: The Hitchcock Hotel
Author: Stephanie Wrobel
Standalone thriller set in the White Mountains of the East Coast
352 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittlng: Books
Synopsis: "Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the
founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling
Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of
Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film
screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary
with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body."
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body."
Title: Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
Author: Abbott Kahler
Standalone historical non-fiction set in the Galápagos Islands
352 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul
George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a
gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore
of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other
American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for
scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised
to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had
fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise.
One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth
extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed."
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed."
Title: A Grave in the Woods
Author: Martin Walker
Series: #17 in the Bruno Chief of Police series set in France
304 pages
Synopsis: "When Abby, an American archaeologist, arrives in St. Denis on the
heels of her divorce, she hopes to make a new life for herself as a
specialist guide for visiting tourists. So when a local British couple
discover a grave from World War II on their property, Abby is able to
put her training to good use. As it turns out, in the grave are the
remains of two German women and an Italian submarine officer who had a
big secret to hide. The women are suspected of having had links to the
German garrison in Bordeaux during the war. It’s up to Bruno, just
recovered from a gunshot wound earlier in the year, to unravel the
mystery—and its contemporary relevance. His task is made more difficult
by the horrible heat-dome summer, which is raising the temperature for
miles around, as unprecedented amounts of rain drench the Massif Central
and threaten increasingly dramatic floods
.
As Bruno drills to the heart of the case, matters get even more complicated when both Abby’s financially distressed ex-husband and a mysterious dashing Italian naval officer arrive, with very different ideas in mind. Once again, Bruno is left to serve the guilty their just rewards, and his friends, some sumptuous Perigordian cuisine."
.
As Bruno drills to the heart of the case, matters get even more complicated when both Abby’s financially distressed ex-husband and a mysterious dashing Italian naval officer arrive, with very different ideas in mind. Once again, Bruno is left to serve the guilty their just rewards, and his friends, some sumptuous Perigordian cuisine."
=== September 30 ===
Title: Opal
Author: Patricia Wolf
Series: #3 in the Lucas Walker police procedural series set in Australia
320 pages
Synopsis: "DS Lucas Walker is out bush with his little sister Grace from Boston. They're fetching his cousin Blair, who's been mining boulder opal in Kanpara. The town is tense with rumours of a big opal find, and Blair wants out.
But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and when the three try to leave the next day, they find themselves completely cut off. A deluge far north has flooded the rivers overnight, making the roads impassable. Then Blair receives a shocking phone call.
Two bodies have been found, brutally murdered.
Trapped, with a killer in their midst, Walker is in a race to uncover the murderer before the water recedes. And when Blair is arrested by local police, the stakes couldn't be higher. With all his focus on clearing his cousin's name, will Walker see how much danger his sister is in before it's too late?
The third thrilling installment in the gripping and bestselling DS Lucas Walker series is full of breathtaking twists and dark turns - for fans of Jane Harper, Cara Hunter and Chris Whitaker."
But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and when the three try to leave the next day, they find themselves completely cut off. A deluge far north has flooded the rivers overnight, making the roads impassable. Then Blair receives a shocking phone call.
Two bodies have been found, brutally murdered.
Trapped, with a killer in their midst, Walker is in a race to uncover the murderer before the water recedes. And when Blair is arrested by local police, the stakes couldn't be higher. With all his focus on clearing his cousin's name, will Walker see how much danger his sister is in before it's too late?
The third thrilling installment in the gripping and bestselling DS Lucas Walker series is full of breathtaking twists and dark turns - for fans of Jane Harper, Cara Hunter and Chris Whitaker."
Quite a selection, eh? Which books do you have your eyes on? Inquiring minds would love to know!
