New post-Irene book releases available at the library on August 30, 2011 (now with book trailers when available!). Click on the cover images in the post below to check the catalog for availability.
The dazzling follow-up to Toby Ball’s acclaimed period thriller, The Vaults, takes us back to his dystopian City, fifteen years later…
Journalist Frank Frings rouses Lieutenant Piet Westermann in the middle of the night with an unusual request: move the body of a dead blonde from where she was found on the bank of a river near the utopian Uhuru Community, a Negro shantytown under threat from a deadly coalition of racists and anti-communists — and find out how the body actually got there. As the investigation deepens, complicated by a string of possibly related deaths and disappearances, and ever-more-heated racial, religious and political factors come to bear, Westermann’s rationalist worldview is challenged by the ecstatic religious experiences he encounters in the Community, led by the charismatic Father Wome. All the while, Frank Frings works to stay ahead of a more venal journalist competitor to salvage the Uhuru Community’s reputation before its enemies can achieve its final destruction.
Marie Brennan returns to the Onyx Court, a fairy city hidden below Queen Victoria’s London. Now the Onyx Court faces its greatest challenge.
Seven years ago, Eliza’s childhood sweetheart vanished from the streets of Whitechapel. No one believed her when she told them that he was stolen away by the faeries.
But she hasn’t given up the search. It will lead her across London and into the hidden palace that gives refuge to faeries in the mortal world. That refuge is now crumbling, broken by the iron of the underground railway, and the resulting chaos spills over to the streets above.
Three centuries of the Onyx Court are about to come to an end. Without the palace’s protection, the fae have little choice but to flee. Those who stay have one goal: to find safety in a city that does not welcome them. But what price will the mortals of London pay for that safety?
A determined young police constable goes it alone against an enigmatic killer and her bosses in a series debut for fans of Sophie Hannah and Tana French.The Burning Man. It’s the name the media has given a brutal murderer who has beaten four young women to death before setting their bodies ablaze in secluded areas of London’s parks. And now there’s a fifth. Maeve Kerrigan is an ambitious detective constable, keen to make her mark on the murder task force. Her male colleagues believe Maeve’s empathy makes her weak, but the more she learns about the latest victim, Rebecca Haworth, from her grieving friends and family, the more determined Maeve becomes to bring her murderer to justice. But how do you catch a killer no one has seen when so much of the evidence has gone up in smoke? Maeve’s frenetic hunt for a killer in Jane Casey’s gripping series debut will entrance even the most jaded suspense readers.
From PW:
Pelecanos’s excellent first in a new crime series introduces Spero Lucas, a 29-year-old Iraq War vet who does investigative work for a Washington, D.C., defense attorney. Anwan Hawkins, an imprisoned marijuana dealer who has taken notice of Lucas’s cool, efficient work, offers him a cut of the proceeds if he can recover several large stolen marijuana shipments. Though Lucas is in some ways an idealistic young man, he’s no innocent. He accepts Hawkins’s deal, a choice that nearly destroys him. As the body count mounts, Pelecanos (The Night Gardener) provides glimpses of Lucas’s multiracial family, from his adoptive parents to his three siblings, two of whom are African-American. In the end, the group of hardened criminals responsible for the theft, including a former D.C. cop, set their sights on Lucas and those close to him. Both vital and timely, this remarkable novel also connects D.C.’s past and present as only Pelecanos does. Readers will want to see a lot more of Lucas.
From PW:
In Rimington’s thought-provoking fifth thriller featuring MI5 agent Liz Carlyle (after Dead Line), Liz, MI5’s liaison with French intelligence, interviews 23-year-old Amir Khan, a British citizen from Birmingham, who was captured by a French naval vessel when he and other pirates tried to hijack an Athens-based freighter owned by United Charities’ Shipping Organization off the coast of Somalia. While Amir is mostly tight-lipped, Liz manages to squeeze out enough information to send the investigation to Birmingham and the New Springfield mosque, which has disturbing ties to Pakistan and terrorism. Meanwhile, UCSO in Athens, worried that its ships are being specifically targeted by pirates, wonders if there’s a leak in the organization. Luckily, the charity director has the ear of MI5 and MI6 as the widening picture grows grimmer by the day. Rich with authentic details from Rimington’s own life as director general of MI5, this is a must-read for fans of contemporary spy fiction
From PW:
At the outset of Todd’s outstanding third Bess Crawford mystery (after 2010’s An Impartial Witness), Bess returns to London in December 1917 on leave from her nursing work in France to find an attractive, well-bred woman of about 25 huddled in the doorway of her lodging house. The tearful woman, who reluctantly gives her name as Lydia, accepts Bess’s invitation to come inside. Lydia later reveals that she’s fled to London from Sussex after her husband struck her in the face. The tenderhearted Bess agrees to accompany Lydia back home so she can provide moral support. On arrival in Sussex, Bess finds herself in the midst of a family devastated by untimely death and hiding poisonous secrets. When a murder occurs, the local police suspect Bess is involved. The Todds (a mother-son writing team) plausibly insert their heroine yet again into a criminal investigation, besides providing their usual depth of characterization.
The third installment in Martin Walker’s delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno.
Attacks on Vietnamese market vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, subpar Chinese truffles smuggled into outgoing shipments-all of it threatening the Dordogne’s truffle trade, worth millions of dollars each year, and all of it spelling trouble for Beno t “Bruno” Courr ges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and, most important, beloved chief of police to the village of St. Denis. When one of his hunting partners is murdered, Bruno’s investigation into the murky events unfolding around St. Denis becomes infinitely more complicated: his friend wasn’t just a truffle expert, he was a former high-profile intelligence agent.
Filled with an abundance of food and wine (including, bien s r, many, many truffles), a soup on of romance, vivid descriptions of village life-the pleasures and rivalries of St. Denis’s weekly market and the intrigues surrounding the local Green Party-Black Diamond is a deliciously entertaining concoction.
