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Historical Mysteries

Mysteries that we feel are particularly noteworthy appear in red.

       New and Forthcoming in Historical Mysteries

December 2011/January 2012

 

New and Forthcoming in Historical Mysteries

Ash, Maureen. A Deadly Penance (Brk, 14.00) Nov. Templar Bascot de Marins is summoned to Lincoln Castle to discover who murdered a servant engaged in an illicit affair with a married woman and discovers that many more than the jealous husband had a motive for murder.

 

Ballard, Mignon F. Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause (STM, 24.99) Dec. Schoolteacher Miss Dimple Kilpatrick must turn sleuth when a skeleton is found in a field and the organizer of a War Bond rally disappears with the money in the second in this charming series set in Georgia during the Second World War.

 

Bilyeau, Nancy. The Crown (SS, 24.99) Jan. A novice nun flees her Dominican order to help save her family when Henry VIII orders the dissolution of the monasteries and the battle against Roman Catholics led by Cromwell forces her to hide in Dartford where she searches for the crown of King Athelstan, hidden in 937 CE.

 

Bradley, Alan. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Delacorte, 23.00) Nov. Flavia leaves her chemistry experiments, which include a super glue to trap Santa, when a London film crew arrives at her family’s country house and one of the actresses is found dead in the latest in this charming, cozy series.

 

Brett, Simon. Blotto, Twinks, and the Dead Dowager Duchess (F&M, 14.95) Jan. While at a week-end house party, Blotto and Twinks are shocked when a murder is announced, and when their family chauffeur is accused of the murder, they must find the real murderer in the second in this series set in the 1920s that combines Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse.

 

Brightwell, Emily. Mrs. Jeffries and the Mistletoe Mix-up (Brk, 23.95) Nov. When an art collector is found dead under a bundle of mistletoe, Inspector Witherspoon must turn to Mrs. Jeffries to help him find the killer.

 

Challis, Joanna. The Villa of Death (STM, 25.99) Dec. The young Daphne du Maurier travels to a country house to attend the wedding of a dear friend, but the bridegroom is found murdered just after the wedding, her friend is accused of murder in the latest in this series set in the 1920s.

 

Clark, Cassandra. A Parliament of Spies (STM, 25.99) Jan. In the third in this series set in 14th-century England, Abbess Hildegard is asked by King Richard II to play the role of a spy in the hastily-convened parliament in Westminster.

 

Cornwell, Bernard. Death of Kings (HC, 25.99) Jan. In the latest in the series set in ninth-century, Anglo-Saxon Britain, Alfred, aging and ill, tries to make peace with a pagan king in order to unify the country.

 

Dean, Anna. A Gentleman of Fortune (STM, 14.99) Jan. Miss Dido Kent, staying with her cousin in Surrey, begins to investigate when a neighbor dies suddenly in the second of this Regency series with a character like Miss Marple written by Jane Austen.

 

Dietrich, William. Blood of the Reich (HC, 9.99) Jan. A wonderful adventure set in Tibet during the Third Reich as American adventurers and an evil Nazi fight to find a mythical substance that promises immortality. I loved this both for the non-stop action and the interesting side lights on the strange Nazi interest in spiritualism.

 

Downie, Ruth. Caveat Emptor (STM, 14.95) Jan. Gaius Petreius Ruso and Tilla are tasked with discovering what has happened to the tax man, who disappeared with lots of money in the fourth in this excellent series set in Roman-occupied Britain.

 

Dunn, Carola. Gone West (STM, 24.99) Jan. Daisy Dalrymple agrees to help her friend who has been working as a confidential secretary—and sometimes ghostwriter—for a popular novelist who has died under suspicious circumstances.

 

Eccles, Marjorie. Broken Music (STM, 25.99) Dec. A former police sergeant newly returned from WWI is determined to discover the facts of his daughter’s drowning and becomes convinced, when a maid is found murdered, that there is a link between the cases.

 

Finnis, Jane. Danger in the Wind (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp. Dec. The death of a military officer in her inn in York related to a plot against a tax auditor sent from Rome forces Aurelia Marcela to investigate in the fifth of this series set in Roman Britain.

 

Frazer, Margaret. A Play of Heresy (Brk, 15.00) Dec. A wealthy merchant has gone missing in Coventry and Joliffe the Player must go undercover to investigate when members of his theatrical company are implicated in the crime.

 

Gregory, Susanna, Bernard Knight, et. al. Hill of Bones: A Historical Mystery by the Medieval Murderers. A collaborative effort by five of today’s top mystery writers begins in 1199 with the master of St. John’s Hospital found dead on Solsbury Hill.

 

Gregson, Jessica. The Angel Makers (Soho, 24.00) Dec. When the men from a remote Hungarian village return home from WWI, a woman who had enjoyed unexpected freedom, as had the other village women, finds that there are ways to make them leave for good.

 

_____. Mystery in the Minster (IPG, 26.95) Jan. When Matthew Bartholomew and other fellows of Michaelhouse go to York to mediate a dispute about a bequest from the city’s late archbishop witnesses begin dying off.

 

Hambly, Barbara. Ran Away (SH, 28.95) Jan. Benjamin January, living in New Orleans in 1837, agrees to help a wealthy Turk accused of hurling two dead bodies from an attic window.

 

Harris, Tessa. The Anatomist’s Apprentice (Ken, 15.00) Jan. When a dissolute aristocrat is found murdered, his sister is determined to find the killer and calls in a young American surgeon studying with a noted anatomist to help her in a debut set in eighteenth-century England.

 

Harrison, Cora. Deed of Murder (SH, 28.95) Dec. Sixteenth-century Irish judge Mara and her husband are traveling to a castle in western Ireland to celebrate the christening of their son when three guests are murdered.

 

James, P.D. Death Comes to Pemberley (RH, 25.95) Dec. Elizabeth and Darcy have created a satisfying life for themselves at Darcy’s great estate of Pemberley, when their peace is shattered by the arrival of an hysterical Lydia, claiming that her husband, the dubious Wickham, has been murdered in a tour-de-force by the best mystery writer of our time.

 

Kane, Ben. The Road to Rome (STM, 15.99) Jan. Having survived the disastrous campaign in Pythia, the Forgotten Legion has arrived in Alexandria in 48 BCE, just in time to be pressed into Caesar’s fight against the Egyptians, while Romulus and Tarquinius seek to be reunited with their long-lost sister.

 

Kingsbury, Kate. Herald of Death (Brk, 15.00) Nov. A killer known as the “Christmas Angel” is loose in Badger’s End, and despite her promise to stop her sleuthing, Cecily must find him before Christmas cheer at the Pennyfoot turns to gloom.

 

Lake, Deryn. Death at the Wedding Feast (SH, 28.95) Dec. In the latest in this eighteenth-century series John Rawlings journeys from London to Devon where a murder at a May-December wedding tests his deductive skills.

 

Linscott, Gillian writing as Caro Peacock. When the Devil Drives (SH, 28.95) Dec. Victorian enquiry agent Liberty Lane is hired to find a missing woman with the whole of London rife with rumors of the “devil’s chariot” abducting and murdering young women.

 

Murphy, J.J. You Might as well Die (NAL, 7.99) Dec. In the second in the Algonquin Round Table mystery series, Dorothy Parker asks her friend Harry Houdini for help when a second-rate illustrator’s  apparent death from a fall off the Brooklyn Bridge leads to a spike in the prices of his artwork.

 

Penrose, Andrea. The Cocoa Conspiracy (NAL, 7.99) Dec. In the second in this Regency series featuring a noblewoman with expertise in chocolate confections finds her and her husband hunting for a villain who has implicated a friend in a treasonous plot against the king.

 

Rabb, Jonathan. The Second Son (STM, 15.00) Jan. Chief Inspector Nokolai Hoffner has been forced out of the police force because of his Jewish ancestry, but the disappearance of his son in the Spanish Civil War causes him greater worry in this thriller set in the 1930s.

 

Robertson, Imogen. Instruments of Darkness (Png, 15.00) Jan. A debut mystery set in eighteenth-century England featuring a Sussex gentlewoman and a reclusive anatomist who join together to discover the deadly secrets of forbidding Thornleigh Hall to find a murderer.

 

Rubenfeld, Jed. The Death Instinct (Png, 16.00) Jan. A literary historical thriller based on the bombing of lower Manhattan in 1920, as a policeman, a physician, and a radio-chemist uncover a conspiracy that stretches from Washington to Paris and Prague.

 

Ryan, William. The Darkening Field (STM, 24.99) Jan. Soviet policeman Alexei Korolev is sent to Odessa to investigate the mysterious death of a young woman who had an intimate relationship with the party director only to uncover a treasonous plot in the second in the series set in 1937 USSR.

_____. The Holy Thief (STM, 14.99) Dec. Set in Moscow in 1936 at the beginning of Stalin’s Great Terror, this atmospheric historical thriller features a policeman assigned the murder case of a woman, but his investigation is shadowed by the NKVD at every turn.

 

Saylor, Steven. The Judgment of Caesar (STM, 14.99) Jan. Gordianus the Finder is plunged into the conflict between Caesar and Pompey in 48 BCE when his son is falsely accused of murder in this reissue of an early mystery in the series.

 

Smith, Tom Rob. Agent 6 (LB, 25.99) Jan. Leo Demidov spends years searching for answers after his family is killed in New York in 1965 during a “peace tour” for the Soviet government and his investigation spans decades and continents as he looks for justice.

 

Snodin, David Iago (HH, 30.00) Jan. A debut novel focused on Shakespeare’s greatest villain, whose charm, brutality, and manipulation are the source of fascination to a young Venetian who follows him on an epic chase across Italy.

 

Solomons, Natasha. The House at Tyneford (Png, 15.00) Jan. When a young Jewish woman realizes that it is too dangerous to remain in Vienna in 1938, she gets a job as a servant at an English country house, only to fall under its spell and that of its aristocratic owner.

 

Stachniak, Eva. The Winter Palace (BDD, 26.00) Jan. An historical thriller set in the treacherous world of the Russian court in the eighteenth century where a young German duchess—along with her maidservant--must navigate and survive to become Catherine the Great.

 

Todd, Charles. The Confession (Mor, 24.99) Jan. When a man comes in and confesses to the murder of his cousin, Rutledge travels to a strangely-unfriendly remote part of Essex to investigate after the man is found dead in the Thames. I loved this.

 

Urrea, Luis Alberto. Queen of America (Hach, 25.99) Dec. Teresita the beloved healer leaves her Sonoran home during the Mexican Revolution and journeys throughout turn-of-the-century America in the sequel to The Hummingbird’s Daughter.

 

Willig, Lauren. The Orchid Affair (Png, 15.00) Jan. When a veteran governess joins with the spy known as the Pink Carnation, she is sent to serve undercover as governess in the household of the right-hand man to Bonaparte’s minister of police.

 

 

 

 

 

 

October/November 2011

 

Alexander, Tasha. A Crimson Warning (STM, 24.99) Nov. Lady Emily and her new husband must investigate when a vandal splashes paint on elegant London townhouses presaging the revelations of scandalous secrets, destroying the lives of high society families.

 

_____. Dangerous to Know (STM, 14.99) Oct. Lady Emily is recovering from her rather violent honeymoon in the countryside of Normandy when she discovers the body of brutally murdered young woman and must bring the killer to justice.

 

Ballard, Mignon F. Miss Dimple Disappears (STM, 14.99) Oct. First in a new series set in Georgia during WWII featuring a young schoolteacher who seeks to solve the mysterious disappearance of a beloved, elderly schoolmistress just before Thanksgiving, 1942.

 

Bebris, Carrie. The Deception at Lyme (STM, 22.99) Oct. Elizabeth and Darcy discover the body of a murdered woman along the sea walk in Lyme and suspect that her death is related to the child she had whose existence threatens the inheritance of one of her lovers.

 

Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography (HC, 29.99) Nov. A new edition of the autobiography originally published in 1977 that includes a CD of the grande dame of mystery writers expounding on her life as a writer. The perfect holiday gift for the mystery lover.

 

Colquhoun, Kate. Murder in the First-Class Carriage (Png, 25.95) Nov. The first murder on the railway occurred in 1864 when two clerks discovered bloodstains in the first-class carriage to Hackney, leading to public outcry and a manhunt for the murderer before he could escape to America.

 

Corby, Gary. The Iona Sanction (STM, 24.99) Nov. Pericles hires the investigator Nicolaus to solve the murder of Athens’ proxenos to Ephesus, but Nicolaus uncovers a conspiracy to invade Athens in the second in the series set in the 5th century BCE.

 

_____. The Pericles Commission (STM, 14.99) The first in a series set in fifth-century BCE Athens featuring an ambitious son of a minor sculptor who is asked by Pericles to find the killer of a politician, whose death imperils the fledgling democracy.

Davis, Lindsey. Nemesis (STM, 14.99) Nov. Falco must brave the pestilential Pontine Marshes when the disappearance of a couple appears linked to a feud with a group of notorious freedmen living there.

 

_____. Shadows in Bronze (STM, 16.99) Oct. A reissue of the second in the Marcus Didius Falco series set in first century CE Rome.

 

Doherty, P.C. Templar Magician (STM, 25.99) Nov. When Raymond, Count of Tripoli is assassinated, Templars Robert de Payens and Edward Sendal investigate in a mystery set against the backdrop of the bloody Crusades.

 

Dueñas, María. The Time in Between (SS, 26.00) Nov. An epic novel set in Spain and North Africa about a poor seamstress from Madrid who rises to become a couture designer to the wives of Nazi officials allied with the Franco regime in Spain, and who becomes an undercover spy for the British. I loved this and spent two sleepless nights unable to put it down. Highly recommended.

 

Eco, Umberto. The Prague Cemetery (HMH, 28.00) Nov. The author of The Name of the Rose returns with another historical thriller set in nineteenth-century Europe taking as its focal point the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document used by anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists since the early twentieth century, with a main character who is a spy, a murderer, and a forger whose anti-Semiticsm drives him to cobble together the Protocols.

 

Finch, Charles. A Burial at Sea (STM, 24.99) Nov. Charles Lennox is asked to visit the newly-dug Suez Canal on a secret mission to help avert war when a series of English spies are found dead on French soil, but on the voyage out, he must solve the brutal murder of the ship’s second lieutenant.

 

Fortes, Susana. Waiting for Robert Capa (HC, 14.99) Oct. A fascinating look at Spain during the Civil War period and Paris in the 1930s featuring Polish activist Gerta Pohotylle and her real-life lover, the Hungarian Jewish émigré known as Robert Capa.

 

Freeman, Philip. Alexander the Great (SS, 17.00) Oct. A biography of one of the greatest of all military strategists whose real accomplishment was spreading Greek culture throughout the lands east of the Mediterranean.

 

Gregory, Philippa. The Lady of the Rivers (SS, 27.99) Oct. The story of the young Duchess of Bedford, a woman of mysterious powers who finds herself caught up in the treachery of the War of the Roses.

 

Hall, Patricia. Dead Beat (SH, 28.95) Oct. The first in a new series set in swinging London of the 1960s featuring an aspiring photographer searching for her missing brother, but the murder of a gay man causes her to join forces with the morally suspect DS Harry Barnard as they uncover a high stakes gangland power struggle.

 

Hamilton, Barbara. The Ninth Daughter (Brk, 7.99) Oct. The first in a series featuring Abigail Adams, set in pre-Revolutionary War Massachusetts, written by Barbara Hambly, finds Abigail hunting a murderer when her husband is accused of murder.

 

Horowitz, Anthony. The House of Silk (LB, 27.99) Nov. This is the first new Sherlock Holmes mystery ever authorized by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

Jecks, Michael. King’s Gold (IPG, 24.95) Nov. Edward II flees to the Cotswolds sheltered by Sir Baldwin and Simon in a case of treachery, international intrigue, and treasure set in early 14th-century England.

 

Jenkins, Rebecca. Death of a Radical (IPG, 12.95) Nov. Set in rural England in 1812 an ex-military man who works for the Duke of Penrith investigates the death of a guest at the local inn, which may be related to local unrest over the industrialization of the area.

 

King, Laurie R and Les Klinger, eds. A Study in Sherlock (BDD, 15.00) Nov. A collection of stories inspired by the famous sleuth of Baker Street by modern masters such as Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Jacqueline Winspear.

 

Kingsbury, Kate. Mistletoe and Mayhem (Brk, 7.99) Nov. It’s Christmas at the Pennyfoot Hotel, but the deaths of a maid and footman and the disappearance of a new baby turn the cheer to fear.

 

Lawton, John. A Lily of the Field (Grove, 14.95) Oct. The eighth in the Inspector Troy series moves from pre-WWII Vienna to Auschwitz to the New Mexico desert as it follows the lives of a musician and a physicist.

 

Liss, David. The Darkening Green (RH, 26.00) Oct. The first in a new series set in Regency England featuring an impoverished gentlewoman who discovers that she has magical powers.

 

MacLean, Anna. Louisa and the Country Bachelor (NAL, 14.00) Oct. A reissue of the second in the series featuring Louisa May Alcott investigating the murder of a young hiker while visiting her cousins in rural New Hampshire.

 

Meredith, D.E. The Devil’s Ribbon (STM, 25.99) Nov. Forensic pathologist Adolphus Hatton and his assistant have their hands full in London in 1858 with a cholera epidemic, Irish terrorists, and a serial murderer in the second in this Victorian series.

 

Moorehead, Caroline. A Train in Winter (HC, 27.99) Nov. The true story of 230 French women who were arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis for resistance activity and later transported to Auschwitz, united by love and friendship despite their hideous ordeal.

 

Morson, Ian. A Deadly Injustice (SH, 28.95) Nov. The second in the series set in thirteen-century Cathay features a Venetian investigator in the court of Kublai Khan who is sent to a remote town to investigate a poisoning case.

 

Parker, Ann. Mercury’s Rise (PP, 24.95) Nov. Traveling from Leadville to Manitou, saloon-owner Inez Stannert investigates when a fellow passenger dies after drinking a medicinal tonic in an engaging historical mystery with a strong female sleuth.

 

Penman, Sharon Kay. Lionheart (Put, 28.95) Oct. Set against the backdrop of the Holy Land during the Third Crusade, this epic historical novel follows the fortunes of the third son of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine as he fights against both his fellow Christians and the Infidels.

 

Perry, Anne. Anne Perry’s Christmas Vigil (BDD, 15.00) Oct. The two most recent Christmas novels in one volume.

 

_____. A Christmas Homecoming (BDD, 18.00) Oct.Thomas Pitt’s mother travels up the Yorkshire coast with her husband and an acting troupe and discovers that evil is something that one must invite inside in a heart-warming Christmas tale.

 

Rees, Matt. Mozart’s Last Aria (HC, 14.99) Nov. Mozart’s sister travels to Vienna to investigate her brother’s sudden and mysterious death and discovers that a web of deception, scandal, and fear revolving around the mysterious Freemasons points to a death by poison.

 

Robins, Madeleine. The Sleeping Partner (Plus One, 18.95) Oct. Sarah Tolerance, a freelance “agent of inquiry” in Regency London, is hired by a woman looking for her missing sister who has eloped, only to discover ties to her own family and a wider war-profiteering scandal.

 

Royal, Patricia. A Killing Season (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp) Oct. Brother Thomas and Prioress Eleanor of Tyndal witness the fatal fall of one of the Baron Herbert’s sons as they approach his castle, and when they offer to investigate, they find that many believe it is the work of satan in the latest in the series set in 13th-century England.

 

Todd, Jack. Rain Falls Like Mercy (SS, 25.00) Nov. Set in Wyoming in 1941, this historical crime novel opens with the murder of a young woman, but the sheriff cannot complete his investigation when he is sent overseas to fight in WWII, even though he is convinced that the murderer is the psychotic son of a wealthy rancher.

 

Tremayne, Peter. Chalice of Blood (STM, 25.99) Nov. Sister Fidelma investigates the murder of an eminent scholar at the Abbey of Lios Mor in a classic locked-room mystery.

 

_____. The Dove of Death (STM, 14.99) Oct. Fidelma and Brother Eadwulf escape the slaughter when pirates attack an Irish merchant ship, but Fidelma vows to find the attackers who killed her cousin.

 

Trow, M.J. Dark Entry (SH, 28.95) The first in a new series featuring Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe who investigates the suspicious death of a fellow student at King’s College, Cambridge and must seek the aid of Dr. John Dee, the queen’s enigmatic astrologer.

 

Westerson, Jeri. The Demon’s Parchment (STM, 14.99) Oct. Disgraced knight Crispin Guest is asked by a Jewish physician in London to help find stolen parchments that might contain information relating to the recent, gruesome murders of young boys in the latest in the series set in 14th-century London.

 

_____. Troubled Bones (STM, 25.99) Oct. The Archbishop of Canterbury asks disgraced knight Crispin Guest to investigate a threat against the bones of the martyr and saint, Thomas a Beckett, and while there he meets up with an old acquaintance, Geoffrey Chaucer.

 

Willig, Lauren. The Mischief of the Mistletoe (NAL, 15.00) Nov. A young woman takes a teaching position at a girls’ school in Bath where she meets the international spy known as the “Pink Carnation” and embarks on a Yuletide adventure in the latest in this charming series set in Regency England.

 

Wilson, Laura. The Lover (F&M, 14.95) Nov. Set during the London Blitz in 1940, where someone is murdering prostitutes just like Jack the Ripper, based on the true story of the “Blackout Ripper.”

 

 

 

 

August/September 2011

 

Albert, Susan Wittig. The Tale of Castle Cottage (Brk, 24.95) Sept. Beatrix Potter and her fiancé must postpone their wedding as the remodeling of their future home runs into troubling problems.

_____. The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (Brk, 7.99) Sept. Beatrix Potter investigates when a friend in Near Sawrey begins receiving anonymous letters that threaten her wedding plans.

Bailey, Elizabeth. The Gilded Shroud (Brk, 15.00) Sept. The first in a new Regency series, featuring the new companion to the Dowager Lady Polbrooke, who investigates when the marchioness is murdered in the family mansion.

Barron, Stephanie. Jane and the Canterbury Tale (BDD, 15.00) Sept. Jane Austen is visiting her brother, the first magistrate of the area, when the body of a man is found on the Pilgrim’s Way dating back to the time of Chaucer.

Baxter, Holly. Tears of the Dragon (PP, 14.95) Aug. In order to help out her family in Depression-era Chicago, a young woman agrees to work at a party given by a Chinese dealer in antiques and jade, but the party is disrupted when a dying man enters.

Bell, Albert A. The Corpus Conundrum (Ingalls, 15.95) Sept. Pliny the Younger investigates when a corpse is found on the grounds of his villa outside of Rome in a mystery set in the first century CE.

Benn, James R. A Mortal Terror (Soho, 25.00) Sept. Billy Boyle is sent to Italy to investigate the murders of two U.S. Army officers just before the invasion at Anzio begins.

_____.  Rag and Bone (Soho, 14.00) Sept. Billy Boyle is sent to London to investigate the murder of a Soviet embassy official and discovers that the murder mirrors the massacre of twenty thousand Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in a mystery set during WWII.

Bowen, Rhys. Naughty in Nice (Brk, 24.95) Sept. Lady Georgianna is sent to Nice by Her Majesty the Queen to recover a stolen snuffbox, but a stolen necklace and a murder make her stay less than nice.

_____. Royal Blood (Brk, 7.99) Sept. Lady Georgiana accepts an invitation from the Queen to represent the royal family at a wedding in Transylvania, but the murder of a wedding guest sends her sleuthing.

Clare, Alys. The Rose of the World (SH, 28.95) Aug. The residents of Hawkenlye Abbey discover the body of a murdered man while searching for the former abbess’s granddaughter in the nearby woods in the latest in this thirteenth-century series.

Cleverly, Barbara. Blood Royal (Soho, 25.00) Sept. Returning from India in 1922, Joe Sandilands is assigned to head up Scotland Yard’s Special Irish Branch, but when terrorist violence erupts he discovers that there are ties to the Romanov murders and the disappearance of the Russian Tsar’s fortune.

_____. Strange Images of Death (Soho, 14.00) Sept. Joe Sandilands agrees to deliver his niece to an artist’s retreat in Provence in 1926, but a mysterious crime committed just before his arrival persuades him to stay and investigate.

Collins, Max Allan. Bye Bye, Baby (STM, 24.99) Aug. PI Nate Heller is hired by Marilyn Monroe to tap her phone during nasty negotiations with her film studio and he discovers that the CIA, the FBI, and the mafia are all involved with America’s cultural icon, so after her death he vows to find her killer.

Creel, Ann Howard. The Magic of Ordinary Days (Png, 14.00) Sept. A young woman is caught up in the drama of WWII when she impulsively marries a man she hardly knows and moves to a remote Colorado outpost, where her friendship with two Japanese-American sisters in an internment camp leads to crime and betrayal.

Cussler, Clive and Justin Scott. The Race (Put, 27.95) Sept. Detective Isaac Bell must protect an aviatrix competing in a cross-country airplane race in 1909 from her deranged ex-husband in the fourth historical thriller.

Dams, Jeanne M. Murder in Burnt Orange (Pers, 15.95) Sept. In the eighth in the series set in early twentieth-century Indiana, Swedish immigrant Hilda Johansson, pregnant during a sweltering summer turns her hand to local crimes, including a spate of train wrecks in the Midwest.

Davis, Lindsey. The Silver Pigs (STM, 16.99) Sept. A reissue of the first Falco mystery set in Rome. About time!

Diener, Michelle. Illuminations (Pkt, 15.00) Aug. A courtier in the court of Henry VIII and a young artist who has received a royal commission uncover secrets that threaten the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty in a novel of intrigue, romance, and scandal.

Dunmore, Helen. The Betrayal (Grove, 14.95) Sept. The second in a series of novels focusing on a family struggling to survive in Stalinist Russia. Here the young doctor must treat the gravely ill son of a senior secret police official, realizing that the fate of the family is bound to the fate of the child.

Eccles, Marjorie. The Cuckoo’s Child (SH, 28.95) July. A young woman seeking to be independent of her wealthy family takes a job cataloguing books in the library of a Yorkshire manor house, but when a man’s body is found nearby, she turns to sleuthing in a standalone set in 1909.

 

Finch, Charles. A Stranger in Mayfair (STM, 14.99) July. Charles Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to look into the murder of a footman, which leads him to dark secrets that his colleague has kept hidden.

Fleming, Irene. The Brink of Fame (STM, 25.99) Aug. A young woman is offered the chance to direct a film in Hollywood in 1913, if she will first track down a missing star actor for a film tycoon.

 

Follett, Ken. Fall of Giants (NAL, 25.00) Sept. The first of a trilogy following five families whose fates are intertwined with each other and the history of the twentieth century.

 

Glenn, Alan. Amerikan Eagle (BDD, 7.99) Aug. A detective story set in New England in the 1940s where one man’s murder can change the course of history.

 

Grossman, Paul. The Sleepwalkers (STM, 14.99) Sept. A decorated WWI veteran must solve a series of bizarre murders in Berlin at the end of the Weimar Republic, a task that is made more difficult because he is Jewish. Highly recommended.

 

Harris, C.S. What Remains of Heaven (NAL, 7.99) Aug. A reissue of an earlier one in the series with St. Cyr investigating the murder of the controversial Bishop of London.

 

Hills, Kathleen. The Kingdom where Nobody Dies (PP, 14.95) Aug. In the fourth in this series set in 1950s Michigan, a young girl discovers her father dead beside his tractor with the Township Constable standing over him.

 

Izner, Claude. The Assassin in the Marais (STM, 24.99) Sept. Victor Legris goes in pursuit of a decorative goblet that brings death in its wake in the latest in this charming series set in Belle Époque Paris.

 

_____. The Montmartre Investigation (STM, 14.99) Sept. Legris must find out the identity of a young woman who is the victim of a grisly murder on the Boulevard Montmartre after a single red shoe is delivered to his shop following the discovery of the body.

 

Johnson, D. E. Motor City Shakedown (STM, 24.99) Sept.The second in the series set in Detroit in 1911 featuring Will Anderson who goes up against the crime bosses to find the murderer of his friend.

 

Jurjevics, Juris. Red Flags (HMH, 26.00) Sept. A military investigator is sent to a remote base to disrupt the funding of North Vietnamese troops through opium production, where he discovers high-level corruption in a thriller set during the Vietnam War.

 

Kent, Kathleen. The Traitor’s Wife (LB, 14.99) Sept. A historical thriller set in colonial Massachusetts about a strong-willed woman who must save the man she loves from his mysterious past.

 

King, Laurie R. Pirate King (BDD, 25.00) Sept. Mary Russell goes to Lisbon in 1924 to work undercover for a studio on a film about The Pirates of Penzance because the British government has suspicions that the studio has ties to a criminal organization.

 

McPherson, Catriona. Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains (STM, 23.99) Aug. The first U.S. appearance of an engaging series set in post-WWI Britain, featuring a young aristocrat who solves crimes, who goes undercover as a maid to help a woman who fears her husband is trying to kill her.  I really like this series.

 

Morton, Carson. Stealing Mona Lisa (STM, 24.99) Aug.  A caper novel set in Paris featuring an Argentine con-artist who puts together a group of thieves to steal the greatest prize of all—the Mona Lisa.

 

O’Brien, Geoffrey. The Fall of the House of Walworth (STM, 15.99) Aug. The true story of a scion of a prominent New York family during the Gilded Age whose murder of his father forces his family to reveal their dirty secrets to save him from execution.

 

Pajer, Bernadette. A Spark of Death (PP, 24.95 hc., 14.95 tp). July. Set in Seattle in 1901 this debut introduces an engineering professor who comes under suspicion when a rival professor is electrocuted.

 

Pérez-Reverte, Arturo. Pirates of the Levant (Png, 16.00) Aug. Captain Alatriste and his foster son accept a job as mercenaries aboard a Spanish galleon on a journey to North Africa.

 

Perry, Anne. Acceptable Loss (Ball, 26.00) Aug. When a dead man surfaces in the Thames, William Monk is plunged into a case involving child pornography and a dreadful conspiracy.

 

Phillips, Scott. The Adjustment (Counterpoint, 25.00) Aug. A gritty noir set in post WWII Wichita, Kansas with a protagonist who is as interesting as he is repellent as he tries to track down the person blackmailing him about his unscrupulous dealings as a corrupt quartermaster and pimp during the war. Highly recommended.

 

Rowe, Rosemay. The Vestal Vanishes (SH, 28.95) Aug. Freed slave Libertus is asked to track down a missing bride, a former vestal virgin whose veiled face nobody knows, before her wealthy bridegroom arrives in Britannia from Rome.

 

Rowland, Laura Joh. The Ronin’s Mistress (STM, 24.99) Sept. Sano Ichiro has just days to find out why 47 warriors waited two years to kill the man at the heart of the scandal that turned them from samurai into masterless ronin.

 

Saylor, Steven. Empire (STM, 15.99) Sept. A continuation of the family saga of the aristocratic Pinarius family witnessing the greatest empire in the ancient world in all its splendor and violence.

 

Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra: A Life (LB, 16.99) Sept. A beautifully written biography of one of the most fascinating and most maligned women in history. Excellent.

 

Scott, A.D. A Double Death on the Black Isle (SS, 15.00) Aug. When two deaths occur on the same day involving the same family on the same estate in a remote island in the Scottish Highlands, reporter Joanne Ross is offered the chance to report the murders, and discovers secrets that will change the area forever in the second in this series set in 1950s Scotland.

 

Sharber, Sarah. R. Louise’s War (SH, 27.95) Sept. The first in a new series set in Washington, D.C. in 1942 introduces a young widow working in the OSS office, who discovers that her college roommate and his husband are trying to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but her boss suffers a suspicious heart attack before he can help.

 

Spicer, Paul. The Temptress (STM, 14.99) Aug. The true story of the scandalous Alice de Janzé who left her aristocratic French husband and ran off to Kenya to become the lover of the notorious womanizer Joss Hay, Lord Errol, whose murder in 1041 was never solved. If you like a story of colonial Europeans behaving very badly, you’ll love this well-researched account.

 

Stanley, Kelli. City of Dragons (STM, 14.99) Sept. A noir debut set in San Francisco in 1940 where a PI stumbles upon the body of a murdered Japanese man during a festival in Chinatown to raise money for the Chinese war effort.

 

_____. City of Secrets (STM, 24.99) Sept. The second in the noir series set in 1940s San Francisco where the body of a young woman is found at the World’s Fair with an anti-Semitic slur marked on her body.

 

Thompson, Brian. The Widow’s Secret (IPG, 13.95) A debut Victorian historical mystery featuring a widowed writer who specializes in writing pot-boiler novels to support herself, and who becomes intrigued by the murder of a London prostitute.

 

Todd, Charles. A Bitter Truth (HC, 24.99) Sept. Home on leave, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford finds a woman huddled on her doorstep afraid to return to her Sussex home after having been badly beaten by her army officer husband, and when Bess accompanies her home, she discovers a house filled with menace and the body of a murdered soldier. An excellent WWI-era series.

 

____. An Impartial Witness (HC, 14.99) Sept. Bess Crawford is the last to see a woman who is later murdered in a well-plotted mystery set in England.

 

_____. A Test of Wills (HC, 14.99) Sept. A reissue of the first in the Ian Rutledge series set after WWI.

Wilson, Edward. The Darkling Spy (Dufour, 24.95) July. Set in Berlin in 1956 an intelligent spy thriller about an English agent who is after a deadly and elusive German spy who may be persuaded to defect.

 

Wright, Nancy Means. The Nightmare (Pers, 15.95) Sept. Mary Wollstonecraft agrees to help her friend artist Henry Fuseli when his painting The Nightmare is stolen in a case that leads to murder.

 

Zimler, Richard. The Warsaw Anagrams (Overlook, 25.95) Aug. The murder of a young boy in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto in 1940 is part of a series of child murders that may be the work of a Jewish killer in the latest historical thriller.

 

 

 

 

 

June/July 2011

 

Albert, Susan Wittig. The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (Brk, 7.99) July. The first of a new series set in 1930s Alabama where the Darling Dahlias gardening club must get to the root of a troubled bank, an escaped convict, and a meddlesome ghost.

 

_____. The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies (Brk, 25.95) July. The newest visitors to Depression-era Darling, Alabama are rumored to be the Naughty and Nice Sisters from the Ziegfield Frolic, specializing in dancing nearly naked, but the Dahlias dig to the root of the problem when the sisters deny the association.

 

Alison, Rosie. The Very Thought of You (SS, 15.00) June. An atmospheric and enjoyable debut set in Yorkshire in 1939, where a small child evacuated from London to escape the Blitz becomes involved with the enigmatic couple who own the estate. I loved this.

 

Black, Benjamin. A Death in Summer (HH, 25.00) July. Forensic pathologist Quirke is called in when a Dublin newspaper tycoon is found with his head blown off by a shotgun blast.

 

Breckton, Ian. Knight of Swords (PGW, 14.95) June. Having escaped being executed as a traitor in Italy in 1944, a British army captain is taken in by an aristocratic family, but it soon becomes clear that his hosts are hiding a number of potentially deadly secrets in this debut historical thriller.

 

Cantrell, Rebecca. A Game of Lies (STM, 24.99) July. Hannah Vogel returns to Berlin to report on the Swiss teams in the 1936 Olympics and to smuggle Nazi secrets back to Switzerland with the dubious help of SS officer Lars Lang in what I think is the most suspenseful entry in this excellent series. Highly recommended.

 

Clements, Rory. Martyr (BDD, 15.00) June. The first in a new series set in 16th-century England featuring John Shakespeare, brother to the playwright, as the chief intelligencer of the new queen, Elizabeth Tudor.

 

_____. Revenger (BDD, 25.00) July. John Shakespeare finds himself caught between the earl of Essex, who wants him to investigate the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists, and Sir Robert Cecil, who believes that Essex is scheming against Elizabeth I.

 

Crisp, Aiden. The Constantine Covenant (Brk, 9.99) July. A debut thriller set in 1944 with an American Special Agent ordered to infiltrate the crew of a Nazi U-boat carrying artifacts from Jerusalem to a secret location, artifacts with a mysterious history and powers.

 

Davis, Lindsey. The Iron Hand of Mars (STM, 15.99) June. A reissue of an early Marcus Didius Falco mystery that takes in Germania where Falco is sent by the Emperor Vaspasian to persuade a Druid priestess to cease her anti-Roman campaign.

 

Dezenhall, Eric. The Devil Himself (STM, 25.99) July. An adventure set in New York in 1942 with gangsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano helping the naval intelligence officers hunt for Nazi spies and American traitors.

 

Drake, Nick. Tutankhamun (HC, 14.99) June. Rahotep, chief detective of the Thebes division is called in when the new Pharaoh begins to receive mysterious threats, and he soon realizes that the threats are related to a series of grisly murders.

 

Furst, Alan. Spies of the Balkans (RH, 15.00) June. A senior police official  in Athens in 1940 works with secret operatives to set up an escape route from Berlin to neutral Turkey in a suspenseful novel.

 

Gómez-Jurado, Juan. The Traitor’s Emblem (SS, 24.99) July. A prize-winning, epic mystery set against the rise of Nazism that begins in 1919 in Munich when a young man discovers that his father had not died in the Great War, but rather was murdered.

 

Gooden, Philip. The Durham Deception (SH, 28.95) June. In the second of this series set in Victorian England the spiritualist mania that swept England leads to murder when a spirit medium is accused of fraud and commits suicide, someone begins killing those who attended his last séance.

 

Hansen, Ron. A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion (SS, 25.00) June. Based on a true story of a woman who convinced her lover to kill her husband, this novel set in 1920s Manhattan examines the affair, the murder, the investigation, and the final reckoning as the guilty lovers come to grips with their crime.

 

Harrison, Cora. Scales of Retribution (SH, 28.95) June. When a young woman who assisted at the birth of her son, dies of poisoning Irish Brehon Mara investigates in the latest in the series that combines meticulous period detail with a crafty puzzle.

 

Ifkovic, Ed. Escape Artist (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp) June. A prequel to the first book featuring Edna Ferber that begins in 1904 when Ferber worked as a reporter for the local paper in small-town Wisconsin, and investigates the murder of a pregnant high school girl.

 

Larson, Erik. In the Garden of the Beasts (RH, 26.00) May. This account of Ambassador William Dodd’s experiences in Berlin in 1933 is a fascinating look at the rise of Nazism and the increasing violence and brutality of a regime that many politicians, both in Europe and America, felt would soon collapse. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

 

Lawton, John. Black Out (AtMon, 14.00) July. A reissue of the first in the DI Frederick Troy series set in London in 1944 has Troy looking for the murderer of a refugee scientist from Nazi Germany with the American OSS involved in the case as well.

 

MacLean, Anna. Louisa and the Missing Heiress (NAL, 14.00) June. Boston writer Louisa May Alcott investigates when the body of a wealthy friend is found floating in the harbor and suspicion falls on her husband in the reissue of the first in a series set in the 1850s.

 

McIntosh, Pat. The Counterfeit Madam (Soho, 25.00) June. In the latest in the series set in medieval Glasgow, Gil Cunningham investigates the death of his patroness in a case tied with counterfeit coins and the owner of a bawdyhouse.

 

Noyes, Deborah. Captivity (PGW, 15.95) June. Set in 1848, this gothic tale tells the story of a reclusive woman whose unhappy love affair years before has left her vulnerable to the machinations of a woman who claims to have psychic powers.

 

Palma, Félix J. The Map of Time (SS, 26.00) July. H.G. Wells must go back in time to save innocent lives in a page-turning thriller that boasts a cast of real and imagined literary characters and cunningly intertwined plots. Think Thursday Next with a Spanish accent.

 

Rickman, Phil. The Bones of Avalon (STM, 25.99) June. Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, John Dee is sent to Glastonbury to hunt for King Arthur’s bones to prop up the monarchy in this Tudor mystery by the author of the wonderful Merrily Watkins series

 

Speller, Elizabeth. The Return of Captain John Emmett (HMH, 26.00) July. Set in post-WWI England this excellent debut introduces reluctant detective Laurence Bartram who investigates when a friend’s brother supposedly commits suicide in 1920 at a remote veteran’s hospital, but soon more veterans tied to the dead man begin to die in a case that takes him back to the horrors of the Western Front.

 

Thompson, Victoria. Murder on Lexington Avenue (Brk, 7.99) June. Midwife Sarah Brandt helps DS Frank Malloy investigate the murder of an influential man in the deaf community in the latest in this series set in gaslight-era New York.

 

_____. Murder on Sister’s Row (Brk, 24.95) June. With the help of a charitable wealthy woman midwife Sarah Brandt rescues a young woman and her infant from a brothel, but when the woman is murdered, Sarah discovers some very unpleasant truths about the woman and her charity in the latest in this series set in gaslight-era New York.

 

Waters, Paul. The Republic of Vengeance (Png, 16.00) July. In this adventure set in Republican Rome, a young man pursues his father’s murderer amid the rising political tensions caused by Philip of Macedon’s takeover of the Greek city-states.

 

Wortham, Reavis Z. The Rock Hole (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp) June. Set in 1964 in a small Texas town where a 10-year-old boy goes to live with his grandparents, his idyllic life is marred by a series of animal killings that soon become murders, including the killing of his grandfather’s cousin.

 

Wynn, Patricia. A Killing Frost (Pemberley, 29.95) July. When a frozen corpse found dressed in coronation suit is discovered during a frost fair erected on the frozen Thames in 1715, the Viscount St. Mars (AKA the notorious highwayman the Blue Satan) agrees to help find the murderer.

 

 

April/May 2011

 

Alfieri, Annamaria. City of Silver (F&M, 14.95) Apr. A first-rate mystery set in the Peruvian city of Potosí in the seventeenth century, featuring an abbess who is being scrutinized by the Grand Inquisitor of New Spain for burying the body of a supposed suicide in sacred ground.

 

Bayard, Louis. The School of Night (STM, 25.00) Apr. (HH, 25.00) Apr. An Elizabethan scholar is hired to find a missing seventeenth-century letter purportedly stolen by a man who has been murdered, but there are others on the trail of the letter that may be the clue to a missing treasure and proof of the existence of a shadowy group of Elizabethan thinkers mentioned by Shakespeare as “The School of Night.” Lots of fun.

 

Black, Benjamin. Elegy for April (STM, 15.00) Apr. When a scandalous junior doctor disappears in 1950s Dublin, his daughter asks medical examiner Quirke for help finding her in the third in this evocative series.

 

Brandreth, Gyles. Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders (SS, 14.00) May. When the Duchess of Abermarle is found murdered with two puncture marks on her throat during a glamorous society party, the Prince of Wales asks Wilde and Conan Doyle to investigate the crime.

 

Brightwell, Emily. Mrs. Jeffries Forges Ahead (Brk, 7.99) May. The new wife of a very eligible young man is poisoned, and Mrs. Jeffries must uncover a killer in the latest in this charming Victorian series.

 

Cantrell, Rebecca. A Night of Long Knives (STM, 14.99) Apr. Journalist Hannah Vogel is on a zeppelin journey to Switzerland with her adopted son, when the ship is diverted to Munich and she and her son are kidnapped by Nazi forces on the eve of the Night of the Long Knives, when SA leader Ernst Rohm and his followers were massacred. Highly recommended.

 

Clark, Cassandra. The Law of Angels (STM, 25.99) Apr. The second in the medieval series set in fourteenth-century York, where the Abbess Hildegard helps a young woman who needs protection after she witnesses a terrible crime.

 

Dean, Anna. A Gentleman of Fortune (STM, 24.99) Apr. In the second in this cozy Regency series, Miss Dido Kent investigates when one of her cousin’s neighbors dies suddenly. For those who like their Jane Austenesque characters without fangs or zombies.

 

Doherty, P.C. Nightshade (STM, 25.99) Apr. Hugh Corbett is sent to Mistleham when the lord of the manor executes fourteen members of a religious order, accusing them of heresy.

 

Downing, David. Potsdam Station (Soho, 25.00) Apr. Anglo-American journalist John Russell is frantically trying to return to Berlin in April, 1945 to discover the whereabouts of his son, stationed on the Eastern Front, and his girlfriend who has been helping Jewish fugitives escape Germany, in a suspenseful thriller set in the waning days of the Third Reich.

 

_____. Stettin Station (Soho, 14.00) Apr. In the fall of 1941, journalist John Russell is searching for a way to leave Germany with his girlfriend and son by working for both German and American Intelligence. Highly recommended.

 

Dunn, Carola. Anthem for Doomed Youth (STM, 24.99) Apr. Daisy is visiting their daughter at school when her husband is assigned the case of three men found in shallow graves near Epping Forest, all three of whom were in the same company during the Great War.

 

Franck, Julia. The Blindness of the Heart (Grove, 15.95) May. A brilliant look at a German woman whose childhood is destroyed when her father is sent to the eastern front during the First World War, and who finds the strength to survive in the period before and during the Second World War.

 

Goodwin, Jason. An Evil Eye (FSG, 26.00) Apr. Ottoman investigator Yashim must enter the closed world of the sultan’s seraglio when the members of the ladies’ orchestra begin dying inexplicably. A wonderfully exotic historical series.

 

Grahame-Smith, Seth. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (GC, 13.99) Apr. Lincoln’s valiant fight against the undead was almost lost to history, until this journal was found.

 

Grant, Teresa. Viennese Waltz (Kens, 15.00) Apr. A diplomatic wife at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 is horrified to find her husband at the side of the bloody corpse of a Russian princess, and further investigation untangles a dangerous mix of love affairs and espionage in a well-researched historical mystery.

 

Gregorio, Michael. A Visible Darkness (STM, 14.99) Apr. Prussian investigator Hanno Stiffeniis is asked by the Napoleonic French army commander to discover who is murdering young women in the latest in this intelligent historical series.

 

Gregory, Philippa. The Red Queen (SS, 16.00) Apr. The story of the ambitious and intelligent Margaret Beaufort, who deceives Richard III, while all the while laying secret plans for the battle between the houses of Lancaster and York, ensuring that her son Henry would become king.

 

Hays, Tony. The Beloved Dead (STM, 25.99) Apr. In the third in the series set in sixth-century Britain, Arthur decides that he must marry to consolidate his power and to bring the Christian religion to his people, but when his advisor Malgwyn is sent to fetch the new bride, he encounters a string of gruesome murders of young women, murders that suggest ritual sacrifice.

 

Kerr, Philip. Field Gray (Put, 25.95) Apr. Bernie Gunther, living in Cuba in 1954 is picked up by the U.S. Navy and sent to Guantánamo Bay where he is questioned about his part in WWII as a member of an SS police battalion on the Eastern Front. An excellent entry in an excellent series.

 

Knight, Bernard. According to the Evidence (SH, 28.95) May. The second in the series featuring forensic pathologist Richard Pryor who runs a consulting business in the Welsh countryside in the 1950s, who investigates three cases: the suspicious death of a farm worker killed by a tractor, the suspected poisoning of a cancer victim, and the accidental shooting of a British soldier in the Middle East.

 

Koryta, Michael. The Cypress House (Hach, 14.99) May. A wonderful blend of paranormal suspense and noir set in Florida in the 1920s where two men looking for work and a mysterious woman in an old boardinghouse come together to wait out a hurricane.

 

Lawrence, Paul. The Sweet Smell of Decay (IPG, 12.95) Apr. First in a new series set in seventeenth-century London, featuring a former clerk serving in the Tower of London who investigates the murder of his cousin.

 

Malcolm, M.L. Heart of Deception (HC, 13.99) Apr. Leo Hoffman goes to work for the Americans in Tangier to lay the groundwork for the Allied invasion of North Africa, but events conspire to keep him away from his beloved daughter in New York in the sequel to Heart of Lies (HC, 13.99).

 

McCleary, Carol. The Illusion of Murder (STM, 24.99) Apr. Intrepid American reporter Nellie Bly decides to make an around-the-world journey after Jules Verne’s famous novel, but in Port Said, she witnesses a mysterious death that leaves her the target of a killer as she sails to the Orient on a ship filled with the most famous magicians of the time.

 

Morgan, Fidelis. The Rival Queens (F&M, 14.95) May. The louche Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her maidservant Alpiew are looking into the murder of a popular leading lady who was murdered in Restoration London.

 

Newmark, Elle. The Sandalwood Tree (SS, 25.99) Apr. A fascinating and atmospheric novel about India that begins in 1947 when an American historian goes to a British hill station to do research, where his wife discovers a packet of letter dating from 1857 left by two young Englishwomen.

 

Parker, I.J. The Fires of the Gods (SH, 28.95) Apr. In the eighth in the series set in 11th century Japan, Sugawara Akitada is demoted from his position as senior secretary of the Ministry of Justice, and furthermore he comes under suspicion of murder after a slander campaign against him.

 

Parker, Robert B. Blue-Eyed Devil (Brk, 9.99) May. The fourth in the western series featuring gunslingers Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch who return to re-establish law in Appaloosa.

 

Parris, S.J. Prophecy (BDD, 25.95) May. Philosopher spy Giordano Bruno investigates when someone murders one of Elizabeth’s maids of honor and carves an astrological sign on her breast in a case that may be part of a plot to kill Elizabeth I.

 

Pastor, Ben. Lumen (Bitter Lemon, 14.95) May. In Nazi-occupied Poland, a German officer investigates the murder of an abbess found shot to death in her convent garden.

 

Penrose, Andrea. Sweet Revenge (NAL, 6.99) Apr. The first in a new series set in Regency England, featuring Lady Arianna Hadley who is working as a French chef in an aristocratic home in London in order to hunt for her father’s murderer, but when the Prince Regent falls ill after eating her special dessert, she must find an assassin to save herself.

 

Perry, Anne. Treason at Lisson Grove (Ball, 26.00) Apr. When a secret informant with information of potential anti-government activity is murdered, Thomas Pitt follows the suspected killer to France where he suspects that other political dissidents are hiding.

 

Peters, Elizabeth. A River in the Sky (HC, 9.99) May. The nineteenth in the Amelia Peabody series set in Egypt is a prequel.

 

Pick, Alison. Far to Go (HC, 14.99) Apr. A moving story of betrayal set in Czechoslovakia at the onset of WWII featuring an affluent Jewish family whose decision to help a governess seeking refuge with them changes their lives.

 

Pintoff, Stephanie. A Curtain Falls (STM, 14.99) May. When a chorus girl is found dead, dressed as the lead singer in a Broadway show, New York City policeman Dermot Mulvaney must call on his psychotherapist colleague Simon Ziele to help him find a fiendish killer in the first in this Edgar award-winning series set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century.

 

_____. Secret of the White Rose (STM, 24.99) May. The murder of a judge during the trial of an anarchist accused of setting off a bomb outside a society wedding sets off a witch hunt that only detective Simon Ziele and criminologist Alistair Sinclair can stop in the second in this excellent New York series.

 

Quinn, Peter. The Man who never Returned (Overlook, 15.00) May. The disappearance in 1930 of Judge Crater in 1930 provides the cold case that PI Fintan Dunne is asked to investigate in 1945 by a newspaper magnate interested in boosting sales.

 

Ross, Kate. A Broken Vessel (F&M, 14.95) Mar. Regency gentleman Julian Kestral investigates when his valet’s prostitute sister discovers a murder in a case that takes him from elegant drawing rooms to a home for “fallen women.”

 

Rowland, Laura Joh. Bedlam (Overlook, 15.00) May. On a visit to London, novelist Charlotte Brontë goes on a tour of the famous hospital for the mad, Bedlam, where she is horrified to recognize her long-missing lover, strapped to a stretcher.

 

Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Woman who Shot Mussolini (STM, 18.00) Apr. The woman who tried to assassinate the Italian dictator in 1926 has been virtually forgotten, but Saunders gives us the story of a woman who tried to forestall catastrophe in a narrative filled with mystery, conspiracy, and suspense.

 

Schlesak, Dieter. The Druggist of Auschwitz (FSG, 26.00) Apr. A haunting novel that makes use of factual data and testimony of survivors in presenting the story of Dr. Victor Capesius, who became a “sorter” of new arrivals at the camp deciding who would live or die, and who became tremendously wealthy during and after the war.

 

Sheene, Lynn. The Last Time I Saw Paris (Brk, 15.00) May. A Manhattan socialite goes to Paris in 1940 only to become involved in the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation in a well-researched, evocative debut historical thriller.

 

Tallis, Frank. Vienna Twilight (RH, 15.00) Apr. When a sexual predator begins murdering prostitutes in fin-de-siècle Vienna, psychoanalyst Max Liebermann helps the police hunt for a killer, but a patient’s recurring dreams point to a bigger and more sinister plot.

 

Turner, Frederick. The Go-Between (HMH, 14.95) Apr. A journalist discovers the diaries of Judith Campbell Exner, the one-time paramour of the most powerful men of the 1960s, including JFK, Frank Sinatra, and mob-boss Sam Giancana, in a searing psychological portrait of a woman defenseless in a dangerous world.

 

Winspear, Jacqueline. A Lesson in Secrets (HC, 25.99) Apr. Maisie Dobbs goes undercover at a private college in Cambridge to investigate possible ties to the rise of the Nazi Party, but the murder of the controversial, pacifist founder of the college forces her to confront new enemies and shameful secrets from the Great War.

 

_____. The Mapping of Love and Death (HC, 14.99) Apr. When the body of a young California cartographer is found in France in 1932, his parents hire Maisie to find the unnamed nurse whose letters were found among his belongings, but Maisie’s investigation leads her to the conclusion that the young soldier was murdered.

 

 

 

 

 

February/March 2011

 

Beaufort, Simon. A Dead Man’s Secret ( SH, 28.95) Mar. In the latest in this series set in twelfth-century England, Sir Geoffrey Mappestone is sent to Wales, ostensibly to deliver letters to local dignitaries, but actually to investigate the death of a Norman knight seven years before.

 

Blake, Sarah. The Postmistress (Brk, 15.00) Feb. A beautifully written novel set in 1940 that takes place in war-torn Europe and a small Massachusetts town that erroneously feels insulated from the violence.

 

Blum, Deborah. The Poisoner’s Handbook (Png, 16.00) Feb. A Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection in New York in 1918, where medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler became the pioneers of forensic chemistry.

 

Booth, Faye L. Trades of the Flesh (STM, 14.99) Mar. A darkly erotic tale of prostitution, murder, and medical science set in Victorian London, featuring a young prostitute and a surgeon who join forces to obtain corpses for medical experimentation—a very dangerous, even murderous undertaking.

 

Bowen, Rhys. Bless the Bride (STM, 24.99) Mar. On the eve of her own wedding, Molly agrees to help a Chinese immigrant whose bride has disappeared, teaching her enough about Chinese immigrant culture to wonder if the bride wants to be found.

 

_____. The Last Illusion (STM, 7.99) Mar. Irish sleuth Molly Murphy is hired to protect magician Harry Houdini after an assistant is killed on stage.

 

Bradley, Alan. A Red Herring without Mustard (BDD, 24.00) Feb. Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce investigates when an elderly Gypsy woman is attacked in her wagon outside of the family estate in a mystery that reveals more of the estate’s secrets as well as provides new information on the disappearance of Flavia’s mother. An excellent series set in post-war Britain.

 

_____. The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (BDD, 15.00) Feb. Flavia de Luce sets aside her chemistry studies to investigate the death of a puppeteer who is murdered after arriving in Bishop’s Lacey in the second in this charming series set in postwar England.

 

Caparrós, Martín. The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa (SS, 15.00) Mar. The actual theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 is the basis for this novel, narrated by an Argentine conman who transforms himself from a marginal criminal in Buenos Aires to a wealthy aristocrat of Belle Époque France in a tour de force of art and artiface.

 

Casey, Donis. Crying Blood (PP, 24.95) Feb. When her husband finds a skeleton with a bullet hole and later a young Native American boy murdered in a horse stall, Alafair Tucker must help solve a puzzle of two crimes linked by a half-forgotten history in early nineteenth-century Oklahoma.

 

Chiaverini, Jennifer. The Union Quilters (Dutton, 24.95) Feb. Chiaverini takes the Elm Creek Quilters back to the time of the Civil War as the women of the Elm Creek Valley support the Union troops in a heart-warming tale that balances the struggles of the woman at home with the men at the front.

 

Dean, Anna. Bellfield Hall (STM, 13.99) Feb. In 1805 Miss Dido Kent goes to comfort her niece whose fiancé has disappeared, but the discovery of the body of a young woman forces her to hunt for a connection between the two events, unearthing surprising secrets about the inhabitants of Bellfield Hall.

 

Dickinson, David. Death in a Scarlet Coat (Soho, 25.00 ) Mar. Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate when the Earl of Candlesby is found dead atop his horse during a fox hunt and two of the three people who see his body disappear, in a case of aristocrats behaving badly.

 

Dunn, Carola. Sheer Folly (STM, 14.99) Mar. Visiting a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country, Daisy Dalrymple and her friend find themselves involved in a murder when the grotto blows up, killing the vulgar and unpleasant owner.

 

Eastland, Tom. Eye of the Red Tsar (BDD, 15.00) Feb. Inspector Pekkala, a secret agent exiled to Siberia in 1927, is asked to investigate the murder of the Romanov family in 1917 to save his life and reputation in a debut mystery set in Russia.

 

_____. Shadow Play (BDD, 25.00) Feb. Inspector Pekkala is enlisted by Stalin himself to investigate the death of one of the Soviet Union’s top military engineers and finds himself navigating the treacherous waters of Soviet politics.

 

Franklin, Ariana. A Murderous Procession (Brk, 15.00) Mar. Adelia Aguilar, a twelfth-century pathologist working for Henry II accompanies Princess Joanna on her wedding procession to Palermo, but when people are murdered, she must investigate.

 

Gortner, C. W. The Tudor Secret (STM, 14.99) Feb. At court in London in 1553, a young boy is compelled by Princess Elizabeth’s protector William Cecil to work as a double agent to protect her interests after the disappearance of her gravely ill brother, Edward the VI, in a suspenseful novel of intrigue and danger.

 

Harris, C.S. Where Shadows Dance (NAL, 24.95) Mar. St. Cyr is investigating the murder of a foreign office diplomat when the appearance of a second body makes clear that his reluctant bride-to-be knows more about the crimes than she is telling him.

 

Harris, Robert. Conspirata (SS, 15.00) Feb. The second in the Roman trilogy centered on a republic torn by civil unrest, crime, and debauchery, made worse by the grisly discovery of a murdered boy on the eve of Marcus Cicero’s inauguration as consul of Rome.

 

Havill, Steven F. Comes a Time for Burning (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp) Feb. A physician attempts to stop the deadly spread of Asian cholera in the small town of Port McKinney, Washington in 1892.

 

Hays, Tony. The Divine Sacrifice (STM, 14.99) Mar. In the second in the series set in fifth-century Britain, Malgwyn and Arthur travel to Glastonbury to meet St. Patrick who is on a mission to root out the Pelagian heresy, but the murder of a monk sends Malgwyn on a quest to find a murderer.

 

Horan, Ellen. 31 Bond Street (HC, 14.99) Mar. A literary mystery based on a famous murder case in 1857 Manhattan where the housekeeper of a famous doctor is charged with murder when his nearly-decapitated body is found in the bedroom of his posh townhouse.

 

Kerr, Philip. If the Dead Rise Not (Png, 15.00) Mar. Bernie Gunther is in Havana in 1954 when he runs into not only an old lover but also a vicious killer from Berlin during the run-up to the 1936 Olympics. Kerr’s comparison of Latin American dictatorships and Nazi Germany is masterful.

 

Knight, Bernard. A Plague of Heretics (IPG, 8.99) Feb. Devon coroner John de Wolfe must solve several grisly murders during a time of plague and religious upheaval in late twelfth-century England.

 

Koryta, Michael. The Cypress House (LB, 24.99) Jan. A wonderfully creepy supernatural thriller set in Florida in the years following WWI with two workers who find themselves stranded in an isolated boarding house owned by an enigmatic, beautiful woman.

 

McCleary, Carol. The Alchemy of Murder (STM, 7.99) Mar. Intrepid reporter Nellie Bly is in Paris for the 1889 World’s Fair where a killer stalks the streets and a virulent plague is striking down thousands of Parisians, so she joins forces with Louis Pasteur when she realizes that the killings are tied to the epidemic.

 

McDonald, Craig. One True Sentence (STM, 24.99) Feb. The second in the series set in Paris in the 1920s featuring a crime novelist who investigates along with his best friend Ernest Hemingway when the body of the editor of a literary magazine is found in the Seine.

 

Mills, Mark. The Information Officer (BDD, 15.00) Mar. A detective story with an espionage element set on the Mediterranean island of Malta during the Second World War. Highly recommended.

 

Mosse, Kate. The Winter Ghosts (Put, 24.95) Feb. A ghost story that begins in the 1920s set in the French Pyrenees, where a young man who hasn’t gotten over his brother’s disappearance on the Western Front during WWI is taken in by a beautiful young woman after his car crashes and who tells him a story of persecution and death before disappearing.

 

Mullen, Thomas. The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (BDD, 15.00) Mar. Two bank robber brothers during the Great Depression become folk heroes, and when it appears that they have been killed in a rain of bullets, rumors surface that they are still alive in a timely historical adventure.

 

Perry, Anne. The Sheen on the Silk (Ball, 16.00) Feb. A stand-alone historical set in thirteenth-century Constantinople featuring a young woman who disguises herself as a eunuch to prove her brother innocent of a crime.

 

Peters, Elizabeth. The Golden One (HC, 9.99) Mar. All in the Amelia Peabody series are being reissued in the larger format.

 

Rabb, Jonathan. The Second Son (FSG, 26.00) Feb. In 1936 a Berlin police inspector forced out of the police because he is half-Jewish goes to Barcelona to save his son who has gone missing on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. For fans of Furst and Kanon.

 

Robertson, Imogene. Instruments of Darkness (Vik, 26.95) Feb. A debut historical set in West Sussex in 1780 featuring an anatomist and the chatelaine of Coverly Park investigating when a man is found stabbed, a death that may be related to the search for the long-lost heir to the neighboring estate.

 

Saylor, Steven. Last Seen in Massilia (STM, 14.99) Mar. Gordianus the Finder is in Massilia (modern-day Marseilles) to find his son rumored to be a traitor to Julius Caesar when he comes across a gruesomely murdered body.

 

Simmons, Dan. Black Hills (LB, 15.99) Mar. An historical thriller with a supernatural element featuring a young Sioux boy that begins with the Battle of the Little Bighorn and ends with the dedication of Mount Rushmore in 1936.

 

Smith, Tom Robb. A New World (GC, 25.99) Feb. In the third in the series featuring Soviet policeman Leo Demidov, he is sent to Afghanistan in the 1980s where he is forced to question everything he thought he knew about his family and his country when he discovers the truth about a trip to America made by his wife and daughter in 1965.

 

Stace, Wesley. Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer (STM, 15.00) Feb. A dazzling tale of murder and music set in England in 1923, as a music critic tells the macabre story of a gifted musician who, on the eve of his new opera kills his wife, her lover, and then commits suicide in a scenario that eerily echoes the plot of the opera.

 

Stanley, Kelli. The Curse-Maker (STM, 24.99) Feb. The second in an award-winning noir Roman series, featuring a physician in Britain who visits Bath with his wife, only to stumble across the body of  a well-known, successful curse-maker, whose curses actually come true.

 

Tolkien, Simon. The Inheritance (STM, 14.99) Mar. A historical thriller set in postwar England where the death of a famed Oxford historian appears to be the work of his recently disinherited son, but the five people with him in the manor house where he was killed all have dark secrets of their own, secrets related to the hunt the historian had undertaken to find a priceless piece of art hidden in northern France during WWII.

 

_____. The King of Diamonds (STM, 24.99) Mar. A police procedural set in Oxford featuring a police inspector who is not sure that the escaped convict being hunted for killing his girlfriend is guilty of the murder, and his suspicions lead him to the girl’s uncle and his brother-in-law with Nazi ties.

 

Wilson, Laura. An Empty Death (STM, 25.99) Mar. The second in the award-winning WWII series featuring DI Ted Stratton, who investigates a series of murders in a London hospital in 1944.

 

Wishnia, Kenneth. The Fifth Servant (HC, 14.99) Feb. When the body of a young Christian girl is found in front of a shop in the Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Prague on the eve of Passover, a rabbinical student has only three days to protect the shopkeeper from a blood libel charge.

 

December 2010/January 2011

 

Adair, Robin. The Angel of Death (Brk, 15.00) Dec. A debut historical thriller set in Australia in 1828, where a former London policeman is asked to investigate a series of gruesome and inventive murders in New South Wales.

 

Alleyn, Susanne. Palace of Justice (STM, 25.99) Dec. Police agent Aristide Ravel must stop a killer who is terrorizing pre-Revolutionary Paris by beheading his victims.

 

Ballard, Mignon F. Miss Dimple Disappears (STM, 24.99) Dec. In the first of a new series set in Georgia during WWII, a young schoolteacher and her best friend investigate when the elderly first-grade teacher disappears, leaving her class in the lurch.

 

Brett, Simon. Blotto, Twinks, and the Ex-King’s Daughter (F&M, 14.95) Jan. Set in the period between the two wars, this comic mystery begins when the daughter of the exiled king of Mitteleuropa disappears while on a visit to Tawcester Towers, sending the son and daughter of the Duke of Tawcester on a search through the countryside. Great fun.

 

Carr, Carol K. India Black (Brk, 14.00) Jan. A debut featuring the madam of a Victorian brothel who is caught between British and Russian agents when a War Office minister dies of a heart attack visiting one of her girls, leaving behind a stash of military secrets. A witty series with a heroine who really knows how to go undercover.

 

Clare, Alys. Music of the Distant Stars (SH, 28.95) Dec. Apprentice healer Lassair discovers a second body in the grave of her grandmother, that of a pregnant seamstress, and helps the local justiciar find the killer in the third in the medieval series set in the fen country where Norman law clashes with the barely-Christianized Saxon natives.

 

Davis, Lindsey. Venus in Copper (STM, 14.99) Jan. A reissue of an early Didius Falco mystery set in first-century Rome.

 

Doherty, P.C. The Waxman Murders (STM, 25.95) Dec. Hugh Corbett is sent by the king to negotiate for a collection of invaluable maps and sea charts that has appeared in a bizarre case of murder and treachery.

 

Downie, Ruth. Caveat Emptor (STM, 25.00) Jan. Ruso has returned to Britain and can only find work hunting down a missing tax man and some missing money, a case that embroiled in a conspiracy involving theft, forgery, buried treasure, and the legacy of Boudica, the Rebel Queen. A wonderfully funny and clever Roman series.

 

Frank, Thaisa. Heidegger’s Glasses (PGW, 25.00) Nov. A haunting mystery set in Germany at the end of the Third Reich where the regime’s strong reliance on the occult has led to the creation of an underground compound of translators whose job is to answer letters set to those eventually killed in the concentration camps, and the arrival of a letter written by the philosopher Martin Heidegger to his optometrist leads to a series of events that threatens the entire group.

 

Frazer, Margaret. A Play of Piety (Brk, 14.00) Dec. Joliffe the Player must find temporary work while the troupe leader recovers from an injury, so he takes a job at a hospital where the patients begin dying off from unnatural causes.

 

Greenwood, Kerry. Dead Man’s Chest (PP, 24.95hc, 14.95tp) Dec. Phryne Fisher and her friends arrive at a holiday house in a small Australian coastal town only to discover that the cook and the houseman have decamped abruptly without explanation.

 

Hockensmith, Steve. The Crack in the Lens (STM, 14.99) Jan. The Amlingmeyer brothers decide to discover the murderer of Old Red’s fiancée years ago in a case that would confound even the great Sherlock Holmes in the latest paper edition of this comic series.

 

_____. World’s Greatest Sleuth (STM, 24.99) Jan. Big Red is asked to compete in the “World’s Greatest Sleuth” contest at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, but the stakes get higher when the organizer of the contest is found face down in the Mammoth Canadian cheese. A funny, wild-west romp.

 

Jecks, Michael. The Oath (IPG, 24.95) Dec. Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin de Furnshill are called in by Edward II, whose queen and eldest son are in France, when a number of murders accompany the political turmoil leading to the execution of his lover.

 

Murphy, J.J. Murder Your Darlings (NAL, 6.99) Jan. The first in a witty, slightly wicked series featuring Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, who join forces to save a young southern writer named Faulkner from an accusation of murder when a body is found under the table.

 

Pattison, Eliot. Eye of the Raven (PGW, 15.95) Nov. Scotsman Duncan McCallum must rescue his friend the Native American shaman when he is accused of killing a Virginian army officer in the second in this series set in eighteenth-century America.

 

Redfern, Elizabeth. The Music of the Spheres (Brk, 15.00) Dec. The reissue of a suspense novel set in late eighteenth-century London, where a man who works in the Home Office tracking down French spies becomes obsessed by a series of murders of prostitutes.

 

Roberts, John Maddox. SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion (STM, 14.99) Jan. Caius Julius Caesar brings in astronomers and astrologers from Egypt and the Near East to help revise the Roman calendar, but the murder of two of the foreigners sets Decius to investigate an Indian fortuneteller very popular with patrician Roman matrons.

 

Rock, Judith. The Rhetoric of Death (Brk, 15.00) Oct. A debut series set in seventeenth-century France, featuring a young Jesuit who is sent to Paris to teach rhetoric and dance only to investigate a murder when a dancer is murdered.

 

Rubenfeld, Jeb. The Death Instinct (Png, 26.95) Jan. In a hunt for the perpetrators of the 1920 bombing of Wall Street that left over 400 people dead, Dr. Stratham Younger must use his Freudian training to move through all levels of New York and international society to find the terrorists responsible.

 

Sansom, C.J. Heartstone (Vik, 27.95) Jan. Tudor attorney Matthew Shardlake returns to investigate two complex crimes: one, the suicide of a man who had protested the wardship of a young man he had tutored, and the other, the case of a woman institutionalized in Bedlam after a brutal rape.

 

Simmons, Dan. Drood (GC, 9.99) Jan. A creepy, slightly supernatural mystery based on the life of Charles Dickens’s and the unfinished mystery he left when he died, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which is available in paperback). Highly recommended for those who enjoy Victorian mysteries.

 

Taylor, Andrew. The Anatomy of Ghosts (Hyp, 24.99) Jan. An eighteenth-century London bookseller is hired by a noblewoman to persuade her son who claims to have seen a ghost that he is suffering from a delusion in a novel that examines the ways people are haunted by the past. Highly recommended.

 

Taylor, Kate. A Man in Uniform (RH, 25.00) Jan. A mystery set in France after the 1894 treason trial that sent Captain Alfred Dreyfus to Devil’s Island with a cast of bourgeois Parisians and Agatha-Christie style plotting.

 

Thompson, Richard A. Big Wheat (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp). Jan. A stand-alone murder mystery set in the Great Plains in 1919, with a man who has joined a group of farmworkers traveling from farm to farm with threshing machines, only to discover that he is accused of killing the girlfriend who jilted him back home.

 

Todd, Charles. A Lonely Death (HC, 26.99) Jan. Ian Rutledge investigates when three WWI veterans are murdered in a Sussex village, found garroted with small ID discs placed in their mouths.

 

_____. The Red Door (HC, 15.99) Jan. Rutledge investigates the murder of a woman in a small village whose husband never returned from the Great War. Brilliantly plotted.

 

Tremayne, Peter. The Council of the Cursed (STM, 14.99) Dec. Sister Fidelma and her husband are sent to Burgundy to act as advisors to the Irish delegation to a church council hostile to the Celtic Church, and the murder of one of the delegates leads Fidelma to a web of sinister intrigue emanating from the abbey.

 

Walsh, Jill Paton. The Attenbury Emeralds (STM, 25.99) Jan. A new mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane set in 1951 when Lord Peter revisits his first case for the grandson of the peer whose gemstones he found back in 1921 launching his career as a detective. Walsh does a masterful job of recreating Sayers’ characters and plotting.

 

Willig, Lauren. The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (NAL, 15.00) Jan. Penelope Devereaux plunges into the court intrigues of the Nizam of Hyderabad where a dangerous spy leaves venomous cobras as his calling card in the latest in the Pink Carnation series. Pure fun.

 

 October/September 2010

 

Alexander, Tasha. Dangerous to Know (STM, 24.99) Nov. While in Normandy recuperating from the wounds she received while chasing a murderer in Constantinople, Lady Emily is drawn into another mystery when she discovers the body of a young woman who has been horribly mutilated.

_____. Tears of Pearl (STM, 13.99) Oct. Newlywed Lady Emily and her husband find that their exotic honeymoon in Turkey turns deadly when a murdered harem girl is identified as the daughter of an English diplomat.

Ash, Maureen. Shroud of Dishonor (Brk, 14.00) Oct. Templar knight Bascot de Marins is waiting to return to the Holy Land when he is asked to investigate the murder of a prostitute whose body is found in the Templar’s Chapel beside a purse containing thirty pence.

Barron, Stephanie. Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (BDD, 15.00) Oct. While Jane Austen and her brother Henry are in Brighton in 1813, they agree to help the poet Byron, who is under suspicion when the body of a teenaged girl is found dead in his bed.

Beaufort, Simon. The Bloodstained Throne (Severn, 28.95) Nov. Sir Geoffrey Mappestone, a former crusader knight, must solve two murders after surviving a shipwreck off England’s south coast in the latest in the series set in 12th-century England.

Bebris, Carrie. The Matters at Mansfield (STM, 12.99) Sept. Family commitments drag the Darcys to Mansfield Park where they become involved in star-crossed lovers, mistaken identity, and murder in the latest in the Regency-era series featuring Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Brightwell, Emily. Mrs. Jeffries and the Yuletide Weddings (Brk, 7.99) Nov. When a middle-aged spinster is killed the week before Christmas, it looks like Betsy’s long-awaited wedding may have to be postponed in the latest in this cozy Victorian series.

Challis, Joanna. Peril at Somner House (STM, 25.99) Nov. In the second in the series featuring Daphne du Maurier as the sleuth, she goes to visit an estate on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall where she is embroiled in a mystery as villainous as anything she could imagine when the lord of the manor is found murdered while his wife was in the arms of her lover.

Corby, Gary. The Pericles Commission (STM, 24.99) Oct. A debut mystery set in ancient Athens featuring a young man who investigates the assassination of a statesman at the behest of Pericles, an investigation made difficult by the fact that the witnesses are being killed.

Cussler, Clive with Justin Scott. The Wrecker (Brk, 9.99) Nov. Private detective Isaac Bell is hired to protect the Southern Pacific Railroad’s express line from a dangerous saboteur in a well-researched historical mystery/thriller.

Finch, Charles. A Stranger in Mayfair (STM, 24.99) Nov. Newly-married Charles Lenox is trying to focus on his career in Parliament when he is asked to investigate the murder of a footman bludgeoned to death with a brick, a death that implicates an old friend of Charles.

Gregorio, Michael. Unholy Awakening (STM, 14.99) Oct. Prussian investigator Hanno Stiffeniis is plunged into a murder investigation when the body of a woman is found in the countryside with two small, round punctures to the jugular vein and the villagers are hysterical in their fear of vampires.

Gregory, Susanna. The Killer of Pilgrims (IPG, 24.95) Nov. Physician Matthew Bartholomew must find the murderer of a Cambridge taverner after he finds a stab wound on the body in the latest in the 14th-century series.

Grossman, Paul. The Sleepwalkers (STM, 24.99) Oct. A debut historical novel set in 1932 in the waning days of Germany’s Weimar Republic, featuring a Jewish detective, a decorated WWI hero, who is assigned the case of a string of bizarre murders, murders that bring him in contact with high-ranking Nazi leaders.

Hamilton, Barbara. A Marked Man (Brk, 14.00) Oct. The second in the Revolutionary War-era series featuring Abigail Adams, who investigates when one of the Sons of Liberty is accused of the murder of a romantic rival.

Johns, Rebecca. The Countess (RH, 25.00) A creepily enticing novel set in Hungary in 1611 about the Countess Erzsébet Báthory who writes her memoirs as she is being walled into a castle tower as punishment for the murder of dozens of women and girls. This is a carefully-researched, subtle look at a madwoman and serial killer.

Kingsbury, Kate. Decked with Folly (Brk, 6.99) Nov. When a former employee of the Pennyfoot Hotel is found dead at Christmastime, Cecily must check her list of naughty suspects.

_____. Mistletoe and Mayhem (Brk, 14.00) Nov. The murder of a footman and the new maid are the first of two tragedies that rock the Pennyfoot Hotel at the beginning of the Christmas season, but when a guest’s baby disappears, Cecily knows that she must catch a killer.

Lawton, John. A Lily of the Field (ATL, 24.00) Oct. A brilliant novel that takes place between 1934 and 1948 and moves from Vienna to London to the deserts of New Mexico following the effects of the rise of Nazism on the lives of an Austrian musician and a Hungarian physicist. Lawton is great.

Mankell, Henning. Daniel (New Press, 26.95) Nov. A heartbreaking story set in the 1870s about a young African boy who is brought to Sweden by an entomologist, setting in motion the tragic death of a young mentally-retarded girl.

Meredith, Denise. Devoured (STM, 24.99) Nov. A debut historical mystery set in London in 1856, featuring a pathologist and his morgue assistant who are called in when a marchioness is found murdered in a room that housed her collection of tribal masks and fossils.

Nadel, Barbara. Sure and Certain Death (IPG, 8.99) Nov. Set in London in 1941, featuring undertaker Francis Hancock, who discovers the mutilated body of a woman in a bombed-out house in the East End in a case that looks back to the “white feather girls” who confronted able-bodied men seen out of uniform during WWI and gave them a white feather symbolizing cowardice.

Nickson, Chris. The Broken Token (Crème de la Crime, 15.95) Oct. A mystery debut set in Leeds in 1731 where a dissenting preacher is found dead in the arms of a serving girl, and before Constable Richard Nottingham can find the killer, two more couples are murdered.

Oldfield, Pamela. The Boat House (Severn, 27.95) Oct. An elegant historical mystery set in 1912 at a country house near Henley where the new governess discovers that the children have seen a ghost and that the dowager’s son and his American bride have mysteriously disappeared.

 

Parker, I.J. The Masuda Affair (Severn, 28.95) Nov. The first-rate latest in the series set in 11th-century Japan finds Sugawara Akitada investigating the case of a courtesan involved with the noble and powerful Masuda family whose drowning years before was ruled a suicide, but the personal crisis in Akitada’s life, the death of his young son, gives this mystery a richness and depth.

 

Patterson, James and Martin Dugard. The Murder of King Tut (Hach, 14.99) Oct. Using archaeological evidence from the discovery of the tomb of  the young Egyptian pharaoh by Howard Carter as well as x-rays and forensic clues, Patterson offers an explanation of the death of the Boy King in a tale of intrigue, passion, and betrayal.

 

Pearce, Michael. Dead Man in Malta (Soho, 25.00) Nov. In 1913 Seymour is sent from the Foreign Office in London to Malta to investigate a hot balloon crash and a string of sinister deaths in the latest in this series.

Porter, Linda. Katherine the Queen (STM, 27.99) Dec. The story of Henry VIII’s last wife, who not only survived him, but was an important force at court and with her stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth.

Raeburn, Deanna. Dark Road to Darjeeling (Mira, 14.00) Oct. Lady Julia Grey agrees to help her sister find the murderer of a former lover in India in 1889 in a case that examines the tensions created by colonialism, giving just about everyone a motive for murder.

Rowland, Laura Joh. The Cloud Pavilion (STM, 14.99) Nov. Samurai detective Sano Ichiro is asked by his uncle to find his missing daughter who may have been abducted in the latest in the series set in Japan during the Edo period.

Royal, Priscilla. Valley of Dry Bones (PP, 24.95 hc, 14.95 tp) Nov. When a priest who is part of a group of visiting courtiers is murdered at Tyndal Priory, Prioress Eleanor must find a killer amid the tensions simmering both from within the priory and among the guests.

Russell, Sheldon. The Insane Train (STM, 25.99) Nov. After a fire at a California insane asylum, railroad detective Hook Runyon is put in charge of transporting the survivors to a new destination, but things soon go awry in the second in this series set in the 1940s.

Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra (Hach, 29.99) Nov. A biography of the notorious Queen of Egypt, one of the most powerful women in history whose power struggle with her brother, affair with Julius Caesar, and love affair with Marc Antony have inspired writers ever since.

Teran, Boston. The Creed of Violence (Per, 14.95) Nov. A crime novel set  along the Mexican border in 1910 with a criminal who planned to drive a truckload of weapons to revolutionaries in Mexico until he is captured by an FBI agent who wants him to go undercover.

Tremayne, Peter. The Dove of Death (STM, 25.99) Nov. When one of her cousins is killed when a pirate vessel attacks an Irish merchant ship off the Breton peninsula, Fidelma of Cashel is determined to bring the killers to justice.

Westerson, Jeri. The Demon’s Parchment (STM, 25.99) Oct. Disgraced knight Crispin Guest is asked by the Jewish physician at the King’s court to find stolen parchments that may be related to the gruesome murders of young boys in the third installment of the series set in fourteenth-century London.

_____. The Serpent in the Thorns (STM, 13.99) Oct. Guest agrees to help a barmaid who is the main suspect in the murder of a courier for the French king who was killed in the tavern where she works, a case that quickly becomes one of not just murder, but also political chicanery.

Willig, Lauren. The Mischief of the Mistletoe (Dut, 24.95) Oct. In a Christmas version of the Pink Carnation series Turnip Fitzhugh and his sister are lured into a complex web of espionage and derring-do by a school mistress. This is a delightful series that combines romance, history and adventure and is just plain fun.

 

 

 

August/September 2010

 

Albert, Susan Wittig. The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (Brk, 7.99) Sept. After his haystack was torched, a farmer barricades the path through his orchard, but Beatrix Potter hears from both humans and animals alike that the guilty party was a ghost.

_____. The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (Brk, 23.95) Sept. Beatrix Potter agrees to help a friend who is receiving anonymous letters threatening her good name.

Alexander, Bruce. Murder in Grub Street (Brk, 15.00) Aug. The second in the series set in eighteenth-century London, featuring Sir John Fielding, the judge who founded the Bow Street Runners, as sleuth.

Arruda, Suzanne. The Crocodile’s Last Embrace (NAL, 15.00) Sept. Just as Jade has decided to stay in Africa and marry Sam Featherstone, she receives a letter from America in the writing of her long-dead fiancé, asking “Why did you let me die?” An excellent series for fans of Maisie Dobbs.

Ash, Maureen. The Alehouse Murders (Brk, 14.00) Sept. In the first of a new medieval series featuring a Templar knight who investigates the murder of four people in what first appears a drunken row.

Atkinson, Michael. Hemingway Cutthroat (STM, 24.99) Aug. Hemingway and John dos Passos in Spain in the 1930s at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War stumble across a mystery when a dead Fascist political official is found murdered and the government tries to cover up the crime.

Benn, James R. Evil for Evil (Soho, 14.00) Sept. Billy Boyle is torn when he’s sent to Northern Ireland by Eisenhower to recover fifty rifles stolen from a US base there—his Boston-Irish background and IRA sympathies are challenged by the exigencies of World War II.

_____. Rag and Bone (Soho, 25.00) Sept. Billy is sent to London to investigate the murder of a Soviet official that could be connected to the recent massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, but he must tread very carefully in order not to upset the uneasy relationship between the Russians and the other Allies.

Bennett, Robert Jackson. Mr. Shivers (GC, 7.99) Sept. A creepy debut set during the Great Depression where a man hunts for a mysterious scarred man who murdered his daughter, but his search leads him to others who have lost someone to this man, a man who may be other than human. Very scary.

Bowen, Rhys. Royal Blood (Brk, 24.95) Sept. Lady Georgiana Rannoch is sent to represent the royal family at a wedding in Transylvania, but a blood-drenched bride and a poisoned wedding guest give her pause and set her sleuthing.

_____. Royal Flush (Brk, 7.99) Sept. The third in the series set in London in the 1930s featuring Lady Georgiana, a minor royal who must keep the entirely unsuitable Mrs. Simpson from seducing the Prince of Wales as well as keep the Prince from being shot during a Scottish shooting party.

Cohen, Paula Marantz. What Alice Knew (Sourcebooks, 14.99) Sept. Psychologist William James, his novelist brother, and their sister Alice are asked by the police to help in the solution to the case of the notorious Jack the Ripper terrorizing Whitechapel.

Davis, Lindsey. Alexandria (STM, 14.99) Sept. Roman investigator Marcus Didius Falco and his family go to Alexandria for a vacation, but when the head librarian of the famous library is found murdered, Falco must go to work to solve the locked-room mystery.

_____. Nemesis (STM, 24.99) Sept. Marcus Didius Falco and his friend Petronius investigate when a mutilated corpse turns up in the Pontine Marshes, the home of a notorious group of criminal freedmen.

Downie, Ruth. Persona Non Grata (STM, 15.00) Aug. In the latest in the series featuring Roman physician Gaius Petreius Ruso and his companion Tilla, the two travel to visit Ruso’s relatives in Gaul, where the death of a family member and the precarious state of the family finances have everything in an uproar that only gets worse when the chief creditor is found dead. Highly recommended.

Eisdorfer, Erica. The Wet Nurse’s Tale (Brk, 15.00) Aug. A debut novel set in Victorian England featuring a professional wet nurse who’s an unlikely heroine—promiscuous and scheming—who uses her street smarts to rescue her baby when he is caught up in an upper-class scandal.

Finch, Charles. The Fleet Street Murders (STM, 13.99) Sept. Gentleman detective Charles Lenox must shuttle between London and Stirrington as he struggles to solve the mysterious murder of two journalists while running for Parliament in the third in this Victorian series.

Follett, Ken. World Without End (NAL, 9.99) Aug. Set in 14th-century England, this sequel to The Pillars of the Earth is a story of ambition, greed, and revenge.

Goodwin, Jason. An Evil Eye (FSG, 26.00) Aug. When Ottoman Investigator Yashim tries to discover why the admiral of the fleet defects to the Egyptians, he discovers that the trail leads to the sultan’s seraglio, a world of fear, ambition, and superstition populated by the ruler’s women, children, slaves, and eunuchs.

Harris, C. S. What Remains of Heaven (Brk, 14.00) Aug. In the latest in this series set in Regency London, St. Cyr investigates the bludgeoning death of the Bishop of London, a case that leads him to the corridors of Whitehall—and a secret in his own family’s past.

Hickman, Katie. The Pindar Diamond (STM, 16.00) Aug. A tale of lust, greed, and danger set in seventeenth-century Venice, featuring a mysterious woman, a merchant searching for his lost love, and a priceless blue diamond.

Izner, Claude. The Disappearance at Père-Lachaise (STM, 14.99) Sept. The second in a series set in fin-de-siècle Paris, featuring Victor Legris, who investigates the disappearance of a former lover after she goes to the tomb of her deceased husband to attend a séance.

_____. The Montmartre Investigation (STM, 24.99) Sept. Parisian bookseller and amateur sleuth Victor Legris investigates the death of a young woman whose body is found on the Boulevard Montmartre.

Johnson, D.E. The Detroit Electric Scheme (STM, 24.99) Sept. A debut historical mystery set in Detroit in 1910, in the factory of an electric automobile company, where the son of the owner finds the body of a colleague—and rival in love—and goes on the run to save himself and the woman he loves.

Keilson, Hans. The Death of the Adversary (FSG, 15.00) Aug. A classic of WWII written while the German author was in hiding in Amsterdam during the war, this is the story of a young man who is helplessly fascinated by the horror that is gathering in 1930s Germany.

Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall (STM, 16.00) Sept. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2009 is a spellbinding novel of life under Henry VIII, featuring Thomas Cromwell, the man who orchestrated the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, in so doing creating the Church of England.

Newton, William. The Mistress of Abha (STM, 16.00) Sept. A young British orientalist travels to Arabia in 1930 looking for his father, an army officer who fought alongside Captain Lawrence, and who disappeared ten years before.

Perez-Reverte, Arturo. The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet (Png, 15.00) Sept. Captain Alatriste and his protégé Iñigo become unwilling participants in a court conspiracy after Alatriste begins an affair with a beautiful actress in the fifth in the series set in seventeenth-century Madrid.

_____. Pirates of the Levant (Put, 25.95) Sept. Captain Diego Alatriste signs on as a mercenary on a slave galley in an adventure filled with action and swashbuckling galore.

Poole, Sara. Poison (STM, 14.99) Aug. A thriller set in Rome in 1492 where a young woman seeking vengeance for the killing of her alchemist father infiltrates the palazzo of the Borgias to find his killer, an investigation that takes her from the Jewish ghetto to the Vatican itself.

Quinn, Peter. The Man Who Never Returned (Png, 24.95) Aug. A satisfying solution to the real-life mystery of the disappearance of Judge Crater who vanished in 1930 just as an official inquiry into judicial corruption was getting underway is offered in this mystery set in 1955, featuring PI Fintan Dunne, who is hired by a newspaper magnate who wants a sensational exclusive.

Robbins, David L. Broken Jewel (Pkt, 7.99) Sept. A powerful story of love, daring, and betrayal set in the Japanese prison camp of Los Baños after the fall of Manila during WWII.

Rubenhold, Hallie. The Lady in Red (STM, 16.99) Aug. The true story of a scandalous eighteenth-century divorce set among the aristocracy that is told as a suspenseful mystery.

Ryan, William. The Holy Thief (STM, 24.99) Sept. A brilliant historical debut set in Moscow in 1936 at the beginning of Stalin’s Great Terror, featuring as young CID officer who is asked to investigate the death of a young American woman, in a case that could get him killed no matter how it turns out.

Saylor, Steven. Empire (STM, 25.99) Sept. Saylor continues the saga of the aristocratic Pinarius family from the reign of Augustus to the height of the Roman Empire.

Scott, A.D. A Small Death in the Great Glen (SS, 15.00) Aug.  A debut mystery set in the Scottish Highlands in `1956, featuring the death of a young boy investigated by the new editor of the local newspaper and his cub reporter.

Shepherd, Lynn. Murder at Mansfield Park (STM, 14.99) Aug. A debut mystery that offers a new twist on an Austen classic with meek Fanny Price having become a spoiled, condescending heiress whose murder comes as no surprise to Mary Crawford, who undertakes to solve the crime.

Sims, Alastair. The Unbelievers (STM, 23.99) Sept. The first in a new series set in the Scottish Highlands during the Victorian period, featuring Inspector Allardyce and Sergeant McGillivray, who investigate the murder of a wealthy nobleman.

Todd, Charles. Duty to the Dead (HC, 14.99) Sept. The first in a new series set in 1917 in war torn France, featuring British nurse Bess Crawford. Highly recommended.

_____. An Impartial Witness (HC, 24.99) Sept. Having accompanied a burn patient back to London, British nurse Bess Crawford witnesses the man’s wife with another man, and later reads that the woman has been stabbed to death. Highly recommended for a sensitive presentation of the war’s toll on those left at home as well as a great mystery plot. 

Todd, Marilyn. Still Waters (SH, 28.95) Aug. Set in fifth-century B.C.E. Greece, this well-plotted mystery features high priestess Iliona who investigates the death of a Spartan secret agent and an Olympic wrestling champion.

Whyte, Jack. Order in Chaos (Brk, 9.99) Aug. When Templar Knight Sir William St. Clair hears of King Philip IV of France’s order to arrest all Templars and confiscate their treasure, he flees to Scotland for sanctuary, where he must fight one last battle.