I don't know about you, but I've had some phenomenal luck lately with my reading-- lots of "A" list books! I'm hoping the trend continues in November because I've managed to get my hands on some advance reading copies of a few of the books that are going to be released.
Denis is working a new shift at the airport which gives him three days off (hallelujah!), and it gives me four days to spend part of each afternoon reading in my comfy white wicker chair in the back garden. Of course I also spend part of that time watching the wildlife wander in and out-- mostly pairs of brilliant butterflies, the occasional jewel-like flash of dragonflies, and plenty of birds-- but they're all used to me sitting there with my nose in a book and think nothing of coming within two or three feet of my little outdoor haven.
As usual, I've grouped these new releases by their release dates, and I've given you all the information you'll need to find them at your favorite book spots.
(Synopses courtesy of Amazon.) Since it's November, who knows? Perhaps you'll give some of them as gifts... or suggest a title or two as gifts that you'd love to receive!
=== November 1 ===
Title: The Hunted Hare
Series: #1 in the Aidan mysteries set in Wales
ISBN: 9780857212047
Publisher: Monarch Books
Paperback, 288 pages
Synopsis: "Aidan
and Jenny, with their daughter Melangell, have come the remote pilgrimage
shrine of Pennant Melangell in the Welsh mountains. Jenny is dying of
cancer. But the peace and spiritual healing they seek is shattered by
a murder. Tensions flare among the small community at the House of the
Hare and the residents of this hitherto peaceful valley. Even Jenny is
not above suspicion. But soon it seems that she herself may be in danger. Aidan desperately tries to save his family."
Title: Angel Among Us
Series: #4 in the Dead Detective series set in Delaware
ISBN: 9780727882011
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Hardcover, 224 pages
Synopsis: "In the fourth compelling ‘Dead Detective’ mystery, Kevin Fahey uncovers disturbing secrets when a schoolteacher disappears. Following
his untimely death, former cop Kevin Fahey roams the streets of his
small Delaware town seeking redemption in other people’s lives. He knows
secrets the living do not know. When beautiful, pregnant pre-school
teacher Arcelia Gallagher disappears, Fahey knows that she is hiding a
violent past, and when the police investigation leads to Delmonte House,
Fahey realizes that evil and fear have stalked the house before.
Someone is lurking within its halls, their motives are unknown. Can
Arcelia be found in time?"
Title: Smoke Alarm
Series: #4 in the Martha Gunn series set in Shrewsbury, England
ISBN: 9780727881991
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Hardcover, 224 pages
Synopsis: "A deadly fire reunites coroner Martha Gunn with Detective Inspector
Alex Randall in the fourth book in this successful series. When
firemen are called to an intense blaze at the Grange in Melverley, they
find the bodies of Christie Barton, her daughter, Adelaide, and
father-in-law, William, along with evidence that suggests the fire was
started deliberately. Detective Inspector Alex Randall enlists the help
of coroner Martha Gunn, but the puzzle deepens with a second house fire –
the occupant, retired nurse Monica Deverill, is missing. Where is she,
and what links the two fires? The answers lie in a secret buried in the
past . . ."
=== November 6 ===
Title: The Wrong Hill to Die On
Series: #6 in the Alafair Tucker historical series set in 1916 Arizona
ISBN: 9781464200465
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Paperback, 250 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Nineteen-sixteen was not shaping up to be a good year for Alafair
Tucker, and finding Bernie Arruda dead in a ditch wasn't going to help
matters. She had not wanted to come to Arizona in the first place. But
her daughter Blanche was suffering from a stubborn ailment of the lungs,
and her best chance for a cure was dry desert air. So Alafair and her
husband Shaw had bundled their sick child onto the train and made the
nightmare trip from Oklahoma to Alafair's sister in Tempe, Arizona. Yet
as soon as they arrived on that bright March day, Blanche began to
improve. But Alafair and Shaw soon discover that all is not well in
sunny Arizona. Elizabeth's marriage is in tatters, tensions are high
between the Anglo and Latino communities following Pancho Villa's
murderous raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and Alafair suspects her sister
is involved in an illegal operation to smuggle war refugees out of
Mexico and into the U.S. And now here lies Bernie Arruda on his back in a
ditch, staring into eternity."
Title: Written in Stone
Series: #4 in the Books by the Bay series set in North Carolina
ISBN: 9780425251737
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
Synopsis: "When Munin Cooper, known as the Witch of Oyster Bay, warns Olivia Limoges that death is coming, neither of them realize that it is the older woman herself who will soon be found dead. And Olivia’s instincts tell her that something—or someone—more sinister than a mystical force is at play…
Olivia has a lot on her plate preparing for the Coastal Carolina Food Festival. When she hears the news of Munin’s untimely death, however, finding the murderer takes priority. The witch left behind a memory jug full of keepsakes that Olivia knows must point to the killer—but she’s got to figure out what they mean.
With handsome Police Chief Rawlings by her side, Olivia starts to identify some of the jug’s mysterious contents—and finds its secrets are much darker than she
suspected. Now Olivia must enlist the help of the Bayside Book Writers to solve the puzzle behind the piece of pottery and put an end to a vengeful killer before any more damage can be done…"
Title:
The Anatomist's Wife
Author:
Anna Lee Huber
Series: #1 in the Lady Darby historical series set in Scotland
ISBN: 9780425253281
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Paperback, 368 pages
Synopsis: "Scotland, 1830. Following the death of her husband, Lady Darby has taken
refuge at her sister's estate, finding solace in her passion for
painting. But when her hosts throw a house party for the cream of London
society, Kiera is unable to hide from the ire of those who believe her
to be as unnatural as her husband, an anatomist who used her artistic
talents to suit his own macabre purposes.
Kiera wants to put her
past aside, but when one of the house guests is murdered, her
brother-in-law asks her to utilize her knowledge of human anatomy to aid
the insufferable Sebastian Gage--a fellow guest with some experience as
an inquiry agent. While Gage is clearly more competent than she first
assumed, Kiera isn't about to let her guard down as accusations and
rumors swirl.
When Kiera and Gage's search leads them to even
more gruesome discoveries, a series of disturbing notes urges Lady Darby
to give up the inquiry. But Kiera is determined to both protect her
family and prove her innocence, even as she risks becoming the next
victim..."
=== November 13 ===
Title: Beneath the Abbey Wall
Author: A.D. Scott
Series: #3 in the Highland Gazette series set in 1950s Scotland
ISBN: 9781451665772
Publisher: Atria Books
Paperback, 352 pages
Synopsis: "On a dark, damp Sunday evening, a man taking a shortcut home sees a
hand reaching out in supplication from a bundle of sacks. In an instant
he knows something terrifying has happened.
In the Highlands in
the late 1950s, much of the local newspaper’s success was due to Mrs.
Smart, the no-nonsense office manager who kept everything and everyone
in line. Her murder leaves her colleagues in shock and the
Highland Gazette office
in chaos. Joanne Ross, a budding reporter and shamefully separated
mother, assumes Mrs. Smart’s duties, but an intriguing stranger provides
a distraction not only from the job and the investigation but from
everything Joanne believes in.
Beneath the Abbey Wall brilliantly
evokes a place still torn between the safety of the past and the
uncertainty of the future, when rock ’n’ roll and television invaded
homes, and a change in attitudes still came slowly for many. As the
staff of the
Highland Gazette probes the crime, they uncover
secrets deeply rooted in the past, and their friend’s murder becomes the
perfect fodder for strife and division in the town and between her
colleagues."
Title:
Hand for a Hand
Author:
Frank Muir
Series: #1 in the Detective Inspector Andy Gilchrist series set in St. Andrews, Scotland
ISBN: 9781616951818
Publisher: Soho Crime
Hardcover, 336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis:
"Murder. It's the only word in a note clutched by the dismembered hand
found on the lush green of a golf course in St. Andrews, Scotland. When
DCI Andy Gilchrist learns the note is addressed to him, he realizes the
thing he feared most has come to pass: a killer is deliberately
targeting him. Though Gilchrist is no new hand at solving murders, this
time he is overwhelmed by the flood of seemingly unconnected crises--
the note clutched in the hand, his son's missing girlfriend, his
ex-wife's failing health, and his boss's decision to pair Gilchrist up
with a scumbag detective from his past, who in turn is hiding evidence.
Worse, the hand turns out to be just the beginning, and soon he's faced
with a relentless parade of body parts."
Title:
Crashed
Author:
Timothy Hallinan
Series: #1 in the Junior bender series set in Los Angeles
ISBN: 9781616952761
Publisher: Soho Crime
Paperback
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Junior Bender is a Los Angeles burglar with a magic touch. Since he
first started breaking into houses when he was fourteen years old, he’s
never once been caught. But now, after twenty-two years of an exemplary
career, Junior has been blackmailed by Trey Annunziato, one of the most
powerful crime bosses in LA, into acting as a private investigator on
the set of Trey’s porn movie venture, which someone keeps sabotaging.
The star Trey has lined up to do all that’s unwholesome on camera is
Thistle Downing, America’s beloved child star, who now lives alone in a
drug-induced stupor, destitute and uninsurable. Her starring role will
be the scandalous fall-from-grace gossip of rubber-neckers across the
country. No wonder Trey needs help keeping the production on track.
Junior knows what that he should do—get Thistle out and find her
help—but doing the right thing will land him on the wrong side of LA’s
scariest mob boss. With the help of his precocious twelve-year-old
daughter, Rina, and his criminal sidekick, Louie the Lost (an ex-getaway
driver), Junior has to figure out a miracle solution."
=== November 26 ===
Title: The Black Box
Series: #18 in the Harry Bosch series set in Los Angeles
ISBN: 9780316069427
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover, 560 pages
Synopsis: "In a case that spans 20 years, Harry Bosch links the bullet from a
recent crime to a file from 1992, the killing of a young female
photographer during the L.A. riots. Harry originally investigated the
murder, but it was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and
never solved.
Now Bosch's ballistics match indicates that her
death was not random violence, but something more personal, and
connected to a deeper intrigue. Like an investigator combing through the
wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the 'black box,' the
one piece of evidence that will pull the case together.
Riveting and relentlessly paced, The Black Box leads Harry Bosch, 'one of the greats of crime fiction' (New York Daily News), into one of his most fraught and perilous cases."
=== November 27 ===
Title: Killer Librarian
Author: Mary Lou Kirwan
Series: #1 in a new series set in Minnesota and England
ISBN: 9781451684643
Publisher: Pocket Books
Mass Market Paperback, 320 pages
Synopsis: "Champion of the mystery section at a small-town Minnesota library,
Karen Nash is about to embark on a dream trip to London—a literary tour
inspired by every murderous intrigue, wily suspect, and ingenious crime
found in the pages of the British mysteries that she devours. But she’s
clueless why the love of her mid-life, Dave, would dump her hours before
takeoff—until she spies him at the airport with a young honey on his
arm! She decides the best revenge (for now) is to get on that plane
anyway . . . and entertain schemes for Dave’s untimely demise while
crossing the pond.
After touching ground in the hallowed
homeland of Christie, Sayers, and Peters, she checks into a cozy B &
B run by charming bibliophile Caldwell Perkins. Soon she’s spilling
tears in her pint at the corner pub, sharing her heartbreak saga with a
stranger. That night, a B & B guest drops out of
circulation—permanently. And when Dave and his cutie turn up in London,
Karen realizes they are an assassin’s target. With the meticulous
attention to detail that makes her a killer librarian, Karen sleuths her
way through her own real-life mystery—in which library science meets
the art of murder.
"
Some fabulous books coming out in November, eh?
Which titles tickle your fancy? Do tell!
