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Mystery
New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews returns with another Meg Langslow mystery written "firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie's Christmas books" (Toronto Globe and Mail).
It's Christmastime in Caerphilly and Meg, full of holiday spirit, is helping out with the town's festivities. While directing a nativity pageant and herding the children participating in it, she finds a surprise in the manger: a live baby.
A note from the mother, attached to the baby girl's clothes, says that it's time for her father to take care of her--and implicates Meg's brother, Rob, as the father. And while a DNA test can reveal whether there's any truth to the accusation, Rob's afraid the mere suspicion could derail his plan to propose to the woman he loves. Meg quickly realizes it's up to her to find the baby's real identity.
She soon discovers that the baby--named Lark according to the fateful note--may be connected to something much bigger. Something that eventually puts a growing number of Meg's friends and family in danger. And before long, Meg realizes she can't fix things single-handedly. Meanwhile, a war is brewing between Caerphilly and its arch-rival Clay County--and it's not a snowball fight. Can Meg bring everyone together in time for the holidays?
As in her previous Christmas mysteries, Andrews continues to write "firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie's Christmas books" (Toronto Globe and Mail) with a book that will put cozy lovers everywhere in a holly jolly mood.
Sins of the Father
Jeffrey Archer
It is only days before Britain declares war on Germany. Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of a family scandal, and realizing he can never marry Emma Barrington, has joined the Merchant Navy. When a German U-boat sinks his ship, Harry and a handful of sailors are rescued by the SS Kansas Star, among them an American named Tom Bradshaw. That night, when Bradshaw dies, Harry seizes a chance to bury his past--by assuming the man's identity.
This edition of the book is the deluxe, tall rack mass market paperback.
A year after becoming sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, Quinn Colson is faced with a pardoned killer's return to Jericho. Jamey Dixon now preaches redemption and forgiveness, but the family of the woman he was convicted of killing isn't buying it. They warn Quinn that his sister's relationship with Dixon could be fatal. Others don't think the new preacher is a changed man, either--a couple of dangerous convicts who confided in Dixon about an armored car robbery believe he's after the money they hid. So they do the only thing they can: break out and head straight to Jericho, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. Colson and his deputy, Lillie, have their work cut out for them. But they don't count on one more unwelcome visitor: a tornado that causes havoc just as the manhunt heats up. Communications are down, the roads are impassable--and the rule of law is just about to snap.
Tampa Bay joins Miami in representing the (alleged) Sunshine State in the Noir Series arena.
"At last, the popular Akashic Noir series has adopted the Tampa Bay area...The notion of elevating place to the status of a character in a story, a frequent topic in writers workshops, works to maximum effect. The descriptive forays are full of observations that can only be gleaned by living here."
--Tampa Bay Times
"A new collection of noir fiction features all sorts of miscreants finding their way through this part of Florida."
--Ocala Star Banner
"[A] lively collection of superior short stories."
--South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"[Tampa Bay Noir] has a contributor list that includes a handful of bestselling crime novelists, but more importantly, the stories are pretty excellent, too."
--Mystery Scene Magazine
"For too long readers have connected Florida Noir with the admittedly fascinating locales of Miami-Dade County, thanks to a slew of talented and popular writers no doubt, but there's another major metropolitan area on the Gulf Coast that's every bit Miami's equal for bizarre noir. Tampa Bay gets a much-deserved turn in the spotlight with this new collection in the Akashic series, edited by Colette Bancroft and featuring some stellar contributions from writers out of the greater Tampa diaspora, including Michael Connelly, Tim Dorsey, Sarah Gerard, Ace Atkins, and Lori Roy."
--CrimeReads, One of the Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020
"Books can transport us to faraway, exotic places we've never seen, but they can also show us new angles of familiar places we thought we knew. Places closer to home like Hyde Park, Tierra Verde, Davis Islands, Palma Ceia, Clearwater Beach, Pass-a-Grille, Indian Rocks Beach, Westshore, St. Petersburg's 34th Street, Gibsonton, Lake Maggiore, Pinellas Park, Largo, Safety Harbor and Rattlesnake. Those are the local settings--yes, Rattlesnake is a real place!--for the 15 stories collected in Tampa Bay Noir, an anthology of new crime fiction due out in August."
--Creative Pinellas
"Anyone who lives in the Tampa Bay area knows there are stories of intrigue here, just waiting to be told."
--The Gabber
"Being a local, it's cool to read about locations and think, 'I've been there.' Tampa has enough sordid and colorful history to deserve another volume."
--Ink19
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographic area of the book.
Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Lori Roy, Ace Atkins, Karen Brown, Tim Dorsey, Lisa Unger, Sterling Watson, Luis Castillo, Sarah Gerard, Danny López, Ladee Hubbard, Gale Massey, Yuly Restrepo Garcés, Eliot Schrefer, and Colette Bancroft.
From the introduction by Colette Bancroft:
Ask most people what the Tampa Bay area is famous for, and they might mention sparkling beaches and sleek urban centers and contented retirees strolling the golf courses year-round. But it's always had a dark side. Just look at its signature event: a giant pirate parade.
Not only does Gasparilla honor the buccaneer traditions of theft, debauchery, and violence; its namesake pirate captain, José Gaspar, is a fake who probably never existed. And if there's any variety of crime baked into Florida's history, it's fraud. From the indigenous residents who supposedly conned Spanish explorers seeking the Fountain of Youth through the rolling cycles of real estate scams that have shaped the Sunshine State for the last century or so, the place is a grifter's native habitat.
When a gruesomely mutilated body is found on the squalid streets of Paris in 1759, the Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths is called to the scene. The body count soon begins to rise and the Inspector is brought even further into a web of deceit that stretches from criminals, secret orders, revolutionaries and aristocrats to very top of society.
In the murky world of the court of King Louis XV, finding out the truth will prove to be anything but straightforward.
"Barry's adrenaline-fueled adventure explores the Me Too movement, cancel culture, reproductive rights and white male extremism. Buckle up for a heart-stopping ride."--People Magazine
The riveting follow up to Jessica Barry's debut Freefall--a controversial, of-the-moment thriller about two women fighting for their right to live.
322 miles of road. 6 hours. 2 strangers. 1 killer. Too many secrets.
Midnight. Cait Monaghan and Rebecca McRae are on a desolate road that slices through the New Mexican desert. They've never met before tonight. Both have secrets to protect. Both of their lives are in danger.
When a truck pulls up fast behind them, they assume it's punk teenagers or run-of-the-mill road rage, but it soon becomes clear that whoever is driving the truck is hunting them for sport--and they are out to draw blood.
As the miles unspool and the dangers mount, the pasts they've worked so hard to keep buried have come back to haunt them. Someone wants one of them dead. But which one? And given the lives the two women have been leading, that someone could be almost anyone.
If Cait and Rebecca are going to survive, they'll have to learn to trust one another--and themselves. But trust is a costly business, and they've both paid the price before. . . .
Named one of the 10 Best Mystery Books and Thrillers of the Year by The Washington Post
Named one of the best books of the year by The Atlantic The award-winning psychological thriller about a young woman who finds her sister brutally murdered, and the shocking incident in their past that may hold the key to finding the killer, from the author of A Double Life and the forthcoming Northern Spy
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder. Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers. A riveting psychological thriller and a haunting exploration of the fierce love between two sisters, the distortions of grief, and the terrifying power of the past, Under the Harrow marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Nora says: My favorite book I read recently is an oldie, and an unusual choice for me, I never read suspense: Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry. Superb.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to deliver the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter's playgroup: Aimée's own mother, who was supposed to pick Chloe up, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloe, annoyed that her mother has let her down yet again. But as Aimée and Chloe are leaving the playground, Aimée witnesses the body of a homeless woman being wheeled away from the neighboring convent, where nuns run a soup kitchen. The last person anyone saw the dead woman talking to was Aimée's mother, who has vanished. Trying to figure out what happened to Sydney Leduc, Aimée tracks down the dead woman's possessions, which include a huge amount of cash. What did Sydney stumble into? Is she in trouble?
An O Magazine Best Book of the Year
"Stylish... a compelling take on the eternal question of how good people morph into criminals. Terrific."--People, Book of the Week
From the author of The Destroyers comes an intricately plotted and elegantly structured (Newsday) story of intrigue and deception, set in contemporary Venice and featuring a young American couple who have set their sights on a risky con.
When Nick Brink and his boyfriend Clay Guillory meet up on the Grand Canal in Venice, they have a plan in mind--and it doesn't involve a vacation. Nick and Clay are running away from their turbulent lives in New York City, each desperate for a happier, freer future someplace else. Their method of escape? Selling a collection of counterfeit antiques to a brash, unsuspecting American living out his retirement years in a grand palazzo. With Clay's smarts and Nick's charm, their scheme is sure to succeed.
As it turns out, tricking a millionaire out of money isn't as easy as it seems, especially when Clay and Nick let greed get the best of them. As Nick falls under the spell of the city's decrepit magic, Clay comes to terms with personal loss and the price of letting go of the past. Their future awaits, but it is built on disastrous deceits, and more than one life stands in the way of their dreams.
A Beautiful Crime is a twisty grifter novel with a thriller running through its veins. But it is also a meditation on love, class, race, sexuality, and the legacy of bohemian culture. Tacking between Venice's soaring aesthetic beauty and its imminent tourist-riddled collapse, Bollen delivers a brilliantly conceived international crime story (Good Morning America).
It is the summer of 1950-and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life." BONUS: This edition contains a The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie discussion guide and an excerpt from Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag.
Hoping for some good publicity, Hayley's boss signs her up to help judge the Key West Topped Chef contest. Stakes are high as the winner could be the next cooking-show superstar. Hayley shows up for the filming nervous but excited, until she sees who's on the judging panel with her: Sam Rizzoli, big shot businessman--and owner of the restaurant she just panned in her first negative review.
When Rizzoli turns up dead, the police assume his killer is one of his business rivals. But Hayley wonders whether someone is taking the contest a little too seriously. With the police following the wrong recipe, it's up to Hayley to find the killer before she's eliminated from the show...permanently.
A successful artist with a doting husband, Isabel Dryland knows she should be grateful for her happy life. It's a complete reversal from the one she led before, when normalcy seemed out of reach, after a violent assault she cannot remember left her shattered and scarred. Even though the memory was lost, the nagging feeling that she was damaged goods and the lingering effects of her injuries kept her questioning her sanity at times.
Tom, her husband, thinks a move will be the fresh start they need, and has even found the perfect house: a country estate that reminds him of one he admired in his youth. But all Isabel feels when she visits is an overwhelming sense of dread. Betrayed by her instincts so often before, she decides to trust Tom's, to accept the move and learn to love their new home over time.
Instead, she learns that beneath the pretty façade of their new home lurk dark secrets powerful enough to bring her own trauma back to the fore. There is an uncanny familiarity about the place, as if it were infected by the experiences she hoped to escape. And the recurring presence of a mysterious stranger further disturbs her, giving her the sensation of being a predator's stalked prey.
Isabel struggles to determine whether her fear is caused by memory alone, or by threats existing very much in the present. To find out, she'll have to finally close the book on what occurred so many years ago--but how do you heal from a past you cannot recall, when only the truth about your past can set you free?
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge A wave of refugees has arrived on the Sicilian coast, and Inspector Montalbano and his team have been stationed at port, alongside countless volunteers, to receive and assist the newcomers. Meanwhile, Livia has promised their presence at a friend's wedding, and the inspector, agreeing to get a new suit tailored, meets the charming master seamstress Elena Biasini. But while on duty at the dock one late night, tragedy strikes, and a woman is found gruesomely murdered. Between managing the growing crowds at the landing, Montalbano delves into the world of garments, in the company of an orphaned cat, where he works to weave together the loose threads of the unsolved crimes and close the case.
Instant #1 International Bestseller
"Cue greed, lust, secrets, and serious suspense. Count us in."--theSkimm
Written with the chilling, twisty suspense of The Wife Between Us and Something in the Water, a seductive debut thriller about greed, lust, secrets, and deadly lies involving identical twin sisters.
Twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beyond what the eye can see lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of Summer's seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband Adam.
Called to Thailand to help her sister sail the family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. When she makes it to land, Iris allows herself to be swept up by Adam, who assumes that she is Summer.
Iris recklessly goes along with his mistake. Not only does she finally have the golden life she's always envied, with her sister gone, she's one step closer to the hundred-million-dollar inheritance left by her manipulative father. All Iris has to do is be the first of his seven children to produce an heir.
Iris's "new" life lurches between glamorous dream and paranoid nightmare. On the edge of being exposed, how far will she go to ensure no one discovers the truth?
And just what did happen to Summer on that yacht?
Only Iris knows . . .
Ferociously entertaining. A novel like a triathlon: part evil-twin thriller, part howdunit (or did-she-do-it?), part juicy family drama. Drop Knives Out and Double Indemnity into the blender, shake some Dead Calm over the froth, power it on, and you've got a cocktail like The Girl in the Mirror--fresh, flavorful, and utterly intoxicating. --AJ Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
"[A] suspense-filled page-turner." --Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer
"A touching portrait of two families bound together by a split-second decision." --Attica Locke, Edgar-Award winning author of Bluebird, Bluebird
A Best Book of the Year
Wall Street Journal / Chicago Tribune / Buzzfeed / South Florida Sun-Sentinel / Book Riot / LitHub / BOLO Books
A powerful and taut novel about racial tensions in Los Angeles, following two families--one Korean-American, one African-American--grappling with the effects of a decades-old crime
In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it's been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. She's distraught that her sister hasn't spoken to their mother in two years, for reasons beyond Grace's understanding. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his quiet life in Palmdale.
But when another shocking crime hits LA, both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence.
THE MOST WIDELY READ MYSTERY OF ALL TIME--NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY KENNETH BRANAGH AND PRODUCED BY RIDLEY SCOTT!
"The murderer is with us--on the train now . . ."
Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Without a shred of doubt, one of his fellow passengers is the murderer.
Isolated by the storm, detective Hercule Poirot must find the killer among a dozen of the dead man's enemies, before the murderer decides to strike again.
"What more . . . can a mystery addict desire?" -- New York Times
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
From Ann Cleeves--New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows--comes the stunning new Vera Stanhope novel, The Darkest Evening.
Ann Cleeves is one of my favorite mystery writers.--Louise Penny
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
WINNER OF THE AGATHA AWARD FOR BEST CONTEMPORARY NOVEL
"One of the finest legal thrillers of the last decade" --Associated Press
On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can't post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.
Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles. All the while he needs to look over his shoulder--as an officer of the court he is an instant target, and he makes few friends when he reveals a corruption plot within the jail.
But the bigger plot is the one against him. Haller knows he's been framed, whether by a new enemy or an old one. As his trusted team, including his half-brother, Harry Bosch, investigates, Haller must use all his skills in the courtroom to counter the damning evidence against him.
Even if he can obtain a not-guilty verdict, Mickey understands that it won't be enough. In order to be truly exonerated, he must find out who really committed the murder and why. That is the law of innocence.
In his highest stakes case yet, the Lincoln Lawyer fights for his life and proves again why he is "a worthy colleague of Atticus Finch . . . in the front of the pack in the legal thriller game" (Los Angeles Times).
A CBS The Doctors Book Club Pick
A People Book of the Week Selection
A New York Times Notable Books of 2020
"I loved Blacktop Wasteland...[A] fast-paced, bareknuckle thriller." -Stephen King
One of the year's strongest novels. Cosby invests Blacktop Wasteland with emotion while delivering a solid thriller. -Sun Sentinel
A husband, a father, a son, a business owner...And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi. Beauregard "Bug" Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there's no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast. He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear. Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying. Like Ocean's Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.
A rural noir about a woman on a pulse-pounding expedition to deliver a fugitive--and forced to confront her own past on the journey
In a secessionist rural state that has cut itself off completely from urban centers, where living is hardscrabble and poor but "free," Brooke Holland runs a farm with her husband, Milo, and two daughters. Their life at the fringes of modern society is tenuous--they make barely enough from each harvest to keep going--yet Brooke cherishes the loving, peaceful life they have carved out for themselves. She has even begun to believe she is free from the violent history she has kept a secret from her family.
When escaped criminal Stephen Cawley attacks at the farm, Brooke's buried talents surface, and she manages to quickly and harshly subdue him. She is convinced that he has come in retribution for the blood feud she thought she escaped years ago. Brooke sets out to bring Cawley to justice, planning to use the bounty on his head to hide her family far from danger. Fearing that other members of Cawley's infamous family will soon descend, Brooke insists Milo and the girls flee with her, travelling miles on foot across an unforgiving landscape to reach the nearest marshal. Their journey, started at the onset of winter with little preparation, brings already strained family dynamics to the breaking point. As Brooke's ghosts--both real and imagined--close in, the ruthlessness that let her survive her past may become the biggest threat to her hopes for a different future. What follows is a harrowing exploration of family loyalty, trauma, and resilience.
As haunting and propulsive as it is powerfully written, The Captive is a thrilling debut novel about the impossible choices we make to survive and protect the ones we love.
As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire and deceit. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind who will have to deal with its unintended consequences--could there be a link between the young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? After various issues with her department, Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter gives her a connection to the unsolved Cambridge murder, Barbara begs Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime, knowing one mistake could mean the end of her career.
Full of shocks, intensity, and suspense from the first page to the last, A Banquet of Consequences reveals both Lynley and Havers under mounting pressure to solve a case both complicated and deeply disturbing.
"Delicately textured. . . achingly compassionate. . . gripping. . . . It's one of George's best, and that's saying something." --Seattle Times
The #1 New York Times bestselling author's chilling 13th novel in the Inspector Lynley series
Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley faces the greatest challenge of his career.
When an adolescent boy's nude body is found draped over a tomb in a graveyard, the police recognize the work of a serial killer who's been murdering boys in London. This is the killer's fourth victim but the first to be white.
Hoping to avoid charges of institutionalized prejudice in their failure to pursue the earlier crimes to their conclusion, New Scotland Yard takes the case and hands it over to Lynley and his colleagues Detective Constable Barbara Havers and Detective Sergeant Winston Nkata. The killer is a psychopath who does not intend to be stopped. But a devastating tragedy within their ranks causes the police to fumble in their pursuit, which may bring more fatal consequences.
From international bestselling author Harald Gilbers comes the heart-pounding story of Jewish detective Richard Oppenheimer as he hunts for a serial killer through war-torn Nazi Berlin in Germania.
Berlin 1944: a serial killer stalks the bombed-out capital of the Reich, preying on women and laying their mutilated bodies in front of war memorials. All of the victims are linked to the Nazi party. But according to one eyewitness account, the perpetrator is not an opponent of Hitler's regime, but rather a loyal Nazi. Jewish detective Richard Oppenheimer, once a successful investigator for the Berlin police, is reactivated by the Gestapo and forced onto the case. Oppenheimer is not just concerned with catching the killer and helping others survive, but also his own survival. Worst of all, solving this case is what will certainly put him in the most jeopardy. With no choice but to further his investigation, he feverishly searches for answers, and a way out of this dangerous game.