I don't know about you, but I can't believe it's almost Labor Day! My favorite season always flies by much too quickly.
I've been motoring through books from my to-be-read shelves, which is a great feeling. I've created quite a few spaces throughout that run of bookcases, and they'll quickly be filled with new acquisitions. You'd probably get a good laugh watching me work on those shelves. I sort through the books to be shelved and make smaller alphabetical stacks. Then I get in my wheeled office chair and roll back and forth in front of the bookcases, shelving the books. Sure wish I could've done this when I was a kid working in our village library!
September is another bumper crop of new crime fiction, and I had a difficult time keeping my list down to anything that remotely resembled a manageable level. My choices are all sorted by release date, and I've included all the information you'll need to find them at your favorite book procurement locations. All book synopses are courtesy of Amazon. Happy Reading!
=== September 3 ===
Title: Mykonos After Midnight
Series: #5 in the Andreas Kaldis police procedural series set in present-day Greece
ISBN: 9781464201837
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Paperback, 250 pages
Synopsis: "Mykonos holds tight to its past even as it transforms from an obscure,
impoverished Aegean island into a tourist mecca and summertime
playground for the world’s rich, a process making the Mykonian people
some of the wealthiest in Greece. Yes, the old guard is still a force to
be reckoned with despite the new money.
One of them, a legendary
nightclub owner, has been found savagely bludgeoned in his home. All
evidence points to obvious thugs. Yet the murder has put long hidden,
politically explosive secrets in play and drawn a dangerous foreign
investor to the island paradise. Andreas Kaldis, feared head of Greece’s
special crimes division, is certain there’s a far more complex solution
to the murder than robbery, and he vows to find it.
His quest for
answers cuts straight into the entrenched cultural contradictions that
give Mykonos so much of its magic and soon has him battling ruthless
opportunists preying on his country’s weakened financial condition.
Kaldis learns there is a high, unexpected price to pay for his curiosity
as he becomes locked in a war with a powerful, clandestine
international force willing to do whatever it takes to change and wrest
control of Mykonos, no matter the collateral damage. Such is global
crime. And the need for a wily hero to stand against it."
Title: Murder, Plain and Simple
Series: #2 in the Amish Quilt Shop series set in present-day fictional Rolling Brook, Ohio
ISBN: 9780451413635
Publisher: Signet
Mass Market Paperback, 368 pages
Synopsis: "When Angela Braddock inherits her late aunt’s beautiful Amish quilt
shop, she leaves behind her career and broken engagement for a fresh
start in Holmes County, Ohio.
With her snazzy cowboy
boots and her ornithophobic French bulldog, Angie doesn’t exactly fit in
with the predominantly Amish community in Rolling Brook, but her aunt’s
quilting circle tries to make her feel welcome as she prepares for the
reopening of Running Stitch.
On the big day, Angie gets a taste of success as the locals and Englisch
tourists browse the store’s wares while the quilters stitch away. But
when Angie finds the body of ornery Amish woodworker Joseph in her
storeroom the next morning, everything starts falling apart.
With evidence mounting against her, Angie is determined to find the
culprit before the local sheriff can arrest her. Rolling Brook always
appeared to be a simple place, but the closer Angie gets to the killer,
the more she realizes that nothing in the small Amish community is as
plain as it seems...."
Title: A Cruise to Die For
Series: #2 in the Alix London art consultant series based in present-day Seattle, Washington
ISBN: 9781477805077
Publisher: Thomas and Mercer
Paperback, 256 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "
This should be the cushiest job Alix London’s ever had. The
second Alix London mystery finds the art restorer in a world brimming
with idle luxury, spectacular locations, and deadly intrigue.
Surrounded
by art and wealth and the sun-drenched Greek isles, she’s aboard a
sumptuous mega-yacht with no responsibilities save the occasional
lecture to the guests of her temporary employer, Panos Papadakis, one of
the world's richest men. But there’s a catch: Papadakis has long been
suspected of being at the center of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme
and Alix is actually there as an undercover operative of FBI special
agent Ted Ellesworth, a member of the Bureau’s Art Crime Team. They hope
Alix can gather the inside information they need to finally put the
cagey Papadakis away.
Alix’s exposure to the enormous wealth of
high-end collectors and the shadier aspects of the art trade—the
avarice, naked greed, and ingenious scams—somehow brings her closer to
her charming, "reformed" rogue of a father, and helps crystalize in her
own mind just where she fits into the mix.
Moguls, murders, a
forged Manet, and the Albanian mafia all play a role and send this
pleasure cruise into brutally dangerous waters.
Set on the Aegean—Homer's fabled 'wine-dark sea'—with stops at enchanted islands where ancient legends still live, A Cruise to Die For
delivers a witty blend of suspense and mystery, as well as an insider’s
take on the contemporary art world and its eccentric characters. It’s
all served up with the style and sophistication with which Charlotte and
Aaron Elkins have rewarded mystery readers for the past 30 years."
Title:
North Sea Requiem
Author:
A.D. Scott
Series: #4 in the Highland Gazette series set in Inverness, Scotland in the 1950s
ISBN: 9781451665796
Publisher: Atria Books
Paperback, 336 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "
When a small-town Scottish woman discovers a severed leg in the boot of
one of the local hockey players’ uniforms, it’s a big scoop for the Highland Gazette.
But reporter Joanne Ross wants a front-page story of her own, and she
hopes to find it in Mae Bell, an American jazz singer whose husband
disappeared in an aircraft accident five years ago and who is searching
the Highlands for her husband’s colleagues.
Things take a very
sinister turn when Nurse Urquhart, who dis-covered the limb, suffers a
hideous and brutal attack. Even stranger, she was the recipient of
letters warning her to keep her nose out of someone’s business—letters
that Mae Bell and the staff of the Highland Gazette also received. What could it all mean?
Unfolding against a gorgeously rendered late 1950s Scottish countryside, North Sea Requiem
captures the mores and issues of another era, especially in Joanne
Ross—a woman wrestling with divorce, career, and a boss who wants to be
more than just her superior. The result is a poignant, often haunting
mix of violence, loss, and redemption in a narrative full of unnerving
plot twists and unforgettable characters."
Title:
Killing Custer
Author:
Margaret Coel
Series: #17 in the Wind River series set on the Arapahoe Reservation in present-day Wyoming
ISBN: 9780425264638
Publisher: Berkley
Hardcover, 320 pages
Synopsis: "
The whole town of Lander has turned out for the big parade celebrating
the start of the new rodeo season. The main spectacle this year is the
appearance of Colonel Edward Garrett—a spot-on impersonator of General
George Armstrong Custer—and a troop of men acting as the ill-fated
Seventh Cavalry.
The problem is they are being followed by a
group of Arapaho warriors from the Wind River Reservation, who proceed
to encircle Garrett and his men in a “dare ride” just to remind them
exactly who won the Battle of the Little Bighorn. But when the ride is
over, history seems to have repeated itself: Garrett is dead in the
street with a bullet hole in his chest.
No one is sure what
happened, but public sentiment quickly turns against the Arapaho—and the
prime suspect is Colin Morningside, a descendant of Crazy Horse. When a
local attorney connected to Morningside disappears, the accusations
only grow stronger.
Father John O’Malley knows in his heart
the Arapaho are not guilty. And Vicky Holden finds herself
professionally and personally compromised from getting involved. But
what begins as a murder soon reveals itself as a conspiracy that neither
Father John nor Vicky could have foreseen. And someone wants to ensure
that the truth they discover will die with them…."
Title:
Japantown
Author:
Barry Lancet
Series: #1 in the Jim Brodie series based in present-day San Francisco, California
ISBN: 9781451691696
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Hardcover, 416 pages
Synopsis: "
San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie recently inherited a stake in
his father’s Tokyo-based private investigation firm, which means the
single father of six-year-old Jenny is living a busy intercontinental
life, traveling to Japan to acquire art and artifacts for his store and
consulting on Brodie Security’s caseload at home and abroad.
One
night, an entire family is gunned down in San Francisco’s bustling
Japantown neighborhood, and Brodie is called on by the SFPD to decipher
the lone clue left at the crime scene: a unique Japanese character
printed on a slip of paper drenched in blood.
Brodie can’t read the clue. But he may have seen it before—at the scene of his wife’s death in a house fire four years ago.
With
his deep array of Asian connections and fluency in Japanese, Brodie
sets out to solve a seemingly perfect crime and at the same time learn
whether his wife’s tragic death was more than just an accident. And as
he unravels a web of intrigue stretching back centuries and connected
to the murders in San Francisco, the Japantown killer retaliates with a
new target: Brodie’s daughter."
=== September 4 ===
Title: The Missing Heiress
Series: #1 in the Detective Lavender series set in Regency England
ISBN: 9781908483706
Publisher: Knox Robinson Publishing
Hardcover, 376 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Northumberland, November 1809. A menacing figure stalks women through
Hareshaw Woods. When Helen Carnaby, a beautiful young heiress,
disappears from her locked bedchamber, everyone fears the worst. The
townsfolk cry 'witchcraft' and the local constabulary are baffled.
Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Woods now face their toughest
and most dangerous assignment. Lavender and Woods are alarmed to
discover a sinister, murderous world of madness, violence, and secrets
lurking behind the heavy oak door of the ancient pele tower at Linn
Hagh. Why did Helen Carnaby flee on that wintry October night? Hindered
by Helen's uncooperative siblings, distracted by gypsies, rebellious
farmers, highwaymen, and an attractive and feisty Spanish senora, Helen
Carnaby's disappearance is to prove one of the most perplexing mysteries
of Lavender's career. Set in the beautiful market town of Bellingham, The Missing Heiress is the first in a planned series of Regency whodunits featuring Detective Lavender and Constable Woods."
=== September 10 ===
Title: W Is for Wasted
Series: #23 in the Kinsey Milhone series set in Santa Teresa, California in the 1980s
ISBN: 9780399158988
Publisher: Putnam
Hardcover, 496 pages
Synopsis: "Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I
knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.
The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down
near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The
other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough.
Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s
name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come
to the morgue to see if she could ID him.
Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.
But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very
strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect
is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. 'And just
like that,' she says, 'the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take
me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but
for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.'
In
this multi-layered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings
are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud.
And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised."
Title: The Bones of Paris
Series: #2 in the Stuyvesant and Grey series set in 1920s Paris
ISBN: 9780345531766
Publisher: Bantam
Hardcover, 432 pages
Synopsis: "Paris, France: September 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, the assignment is a
private investigator’s dream—he’s getting paid to troll the cafés and
bars of Montparnasse, looking for a pretty young woman. The American
agent has a healthy appreciation for la vie de bohème, despite
having worked for years at the U.S. Bureau of Investigation. The missing
person in question is Philippa Crosby, a twenty-two year old from
Boston who has been living in Paris, modeling and acting. Her family
became alarmed when she stopped all communications, and Stuyvesant
agreed to track her down. He wholly expects to find her in the arms of
some up-and-coming artist, perhaps experimenting with the decadent
lifestyle that is suddenly available on every rue and boulevard.
As Stuyvesant follows Philippa’s trail through the expatriate community
of artists and writers, he finds that she is known to many of its
famous—and infamous—inhabitants, from Shakespeare and Company’s Sylvia
Beach to Ernest Hemingway to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray. But
when the evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in
Montmartre, his investigation takes a sharp, disturbing turn. At the
Grand-Guignol, murder, insanity, and sexual perversion are all staged to
shocking, brutal effect: depravity as art, savage human nature on
stage.
Soon it becomes clear that one missing girl is a drop
in the bucket. Here, amid the glittering lights of the cabarets, hides a
monster whose artistic coup de grâce is to be rendered in blood.
And Stuyvesant will have to descend into the darkest depths of
perversion to find a killer . . . sifting through The Bones of Paris."
Title: The Red Queen Dies
Series: #1 in the Hannah McCabe series set in the Albany, New York of the near future
ISBN: 9780312641757
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 304 pages
Synopsis: "
The year is 2019, and a drug used to treat soldiers for
post-traumatic stress disorder, nicknamed 'Lullaby,' has hit the
streets. Swallowing a little pill erases traumatic memories, but what
happens to a criminal trial when the star witness takes a pill and can't
remember the crime? When two women are murdered in quick succession,
biracial police detective Hannah McCabe is charged with solving the
case. In spite of the advanced technology, including a city-wide
surveillance program, a third woman is soon killed, and the police begin
to suspect that a serial killer is on the loose. But the third victim, a
Broadway actress known as 'The Red Queen,' doesn’t fit the pattern set
by the first two murders.
With the late September heat
sizzling, Detective Hannah McCabe and her colleagues on the police force
have to race to find the killer in a tangled web of clues that involve Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Fast-paced and original, this is a
one-of-a-kind mystery from an extremely talented crime writer."
=== September 17 ===
Title: Aunty Lee's Delights
Author: Ovidia Yu
Series: #1 in a possible series set in present-day Singapore
ISBN: 9780062227157
Publisher: William Morrow
Paperback, 288 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "
After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could have become one of
Singapore's 'tai tai,' an idle rich lady. Instead she is building a
culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy
Singaporean meals are graciously served to locals and tourists alike.
But when a body is found in one of Singapore's tourist havens and one of
her guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the
two events are likely connected.
The murder and disappearance
throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked stepson, Mark, his social-climbing
wife, Selina, a gay couple whose love is still illegal in Singapore,
and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose visit may mask a deeper
purpose. Investigating the murder are Police Commissioner Raja and
Senior Staff Sergeant Salim, who quickly discover that Aunty Lee's sharp
nose for intrigue can sniff out clues that elude law enforcers.
Wise, witty, and charming, Aunty Lee's Delights
is a spicy mystery about love, friendship, and food in Singapore, where
money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities coexist
peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes
with deadly consequences."
=== September 24 ===
Title: Treasure Hunt
Series: #16 in the Inspector Montalbano series set in present-day Sicily
ISBN: 9780143122623
Publisher: Penguin
Paperback, 288 pages
Synopsis: "In Treasure Hunt, Montalbano is hailed as a hero after news
cameras film him scaling a building—gun in hand—to capture a pair of
unlikely snipers. Shortly after, the inspector begins to receive cryptic
messages in verse from someone challenging him to go on a 'treasure
hunt.' Intrigued, he accepts, treating the messages as amusing
riddles—until they take a dangerous turn."
Title: Anything But Civil
Series: #2 in the Hattie Davish traveling secretary series set in the USA during the 1890s
ISBN: 9780758276360
Publisher: Kensington
Paperback, 320 pages
*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books
Synopsis: "Hattie Davish is delighted to be ably assisting her wealthy employer,
Sir Arthur Windom-Greene, an English scholar who is fluent in Civil War
history and hard at work putting together a definitive biography of
General Cornelius Starrett. Their research takes them to Galena,
Illinois, where they quickly learn that time has done little to heal old
battle wounds. Distrust and betrayal seem to linger in everyone's
minds, none more so than the General's pompous son Henry. And Hattie is
certain he has something to do with a string of bizarre incidents in
town-especially when he turns up dead....
Between her work for Sir
Arthur, preparing for Christmas, and unscheduled visitors from her past,
Hattie hardly has time to investigate a murder, but soon she is lost in
a labyrinth of secrets and deceit that leads to more questions than
answers. Henry had a knack for finding trouble and making enemies, and
there's no shortage of suspects-including Sir Arthur. Now, Hattie must
uncover the truth while maintaining her civility in a most uncivil
situation...."
Title: King's Mountain
Series: #10 in the Appalachian Ballad series
ISBN: 9781250011404
Publisher: Thomas Dunne
Hardcover, 336 pages
Synopsis: "John Sevier had not taken much interest in the American Revolution, he
was too busy fighting Indians in the Carolinas and taming the
wilderness. But when an arrogant British officer threatened his
settlement—promising to burn the farms and kill families—the war became
personal.
That arrogant officer is Patrick Ferguson of the
British Army—who is both charmingly antagonistic and surprisingly
endearing. Inventor of the Ferguson rifle, and the devoted lover to his
mistress, Virginia Sal, Patrick becomes a delightful anti-hero under
McCrumb’s watchful eye.
Through varying perspectives, King’s Mountain
is an elegant saga of the Carolina Overmountain Men—the militia
organized by Sevier (who would later become the first governor of
Tennessee) and their victory in 1780 against the Tories in a battle that
Thomas Jefferson later called, 'The turning point of the American
Revolution.'
Peppered with lore and the authentic heart of the
people in McCrumb’s classic Ballads, this is an epic book that will
build on the success of The Ballad of Tom Dooley and her recent return to the New York Times
bestseller list. Featuring the American Revolutionary War, this a huge
draw to readers old and new, and special to McCrumb who can trace her
lineage to the character John Sevier."
============
I know that the latest Sharyn McCrumb novel doesn't sound much like a mystery, but I love her Ballad series so much that it was impossible for me to leave it out.
September seems to have a little something for everyone, doesn't it? Which titles found their way to your own personal wish lists?
