New Releases For The Week Of January 10th, 2021–Part 1

“The most delightfully, wickedly entertaining duo in crime fiction.”—The Plain Dealer

When a prominent politician is crushed by a fruit van making a delivery, the singular team of Arthur Bryant and John May overcome insurmountable odds to reunite the PCU and solve the case in this brainy new mystery from acclaimed author Christopher Fowler.

On a spring morning in London’s Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is nearly killed by a van unloading oranges and lemons for the annual St. Clement Danes celebration. It’s an absurd near-death experience, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker’s state of mind just prior to his accident.

The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit—the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Its chief, Raymond Land, is tending his daffodils on the Isle of Wight and senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are out of commission—May has just undergone surgery for a bullet wound and Bryant has been missing for a month. What’s more, their old office in King’s Cross is being turned into a vegetarian tapas bar.

Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled and once again what should be a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude—and a surprising secret. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover

It’s up to Gemma and Jayne to root out the killer in national bestselling author Vicki Delany’s sixth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery when the winner of a garden tour trophy is left pushing up daisies.

“I am not a Consulting Detective,” Gemma Doyle reluctantly tells 10-year-old Lauren Tierney, when the little girl comes to the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium to beg Gemma to find her missing cat, Snowball. Gemma might not be able to follow the clues to find the cat, but her dog Violet follows her nose to locate the missing kitten in a neighbor’s garden shed. Gemma and Violet proudly return Snowball to her grateful owner, and Gemma basks in praise for a job well done. But a few days later Lauren is back with ten dollars in hand, wanting to once again hire a consulting detective, and this time for a far bigger job: Her mother has been accused of murdering her garden club rival.
Sheila Tierney’s garden, which everyone said was the one to beat for the West London Garden Club trophy, had been vandalized the night before the club’s early summer tour. Sheila confronted her former friend and gardening partner Anna Wentworth in a towering rage, and the women nearly came to blows. Later that night, after having won the trophy for best garden, Anna is found murdered and Sheila Tierney is the police’s prime suspect.
Despite herself, and despite the disapproval of her police detective boyfriend Ryan Ashburton, the game is once again afoot, and Gemma finds herself and Jayne Wilson using their powers of deduction to ponder yet another curious incident. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover, Audiobook

For fans of C. S. Harris comes Laura Joh Rowland’s fifth Victorian mystery where Sarah must confront her own ghosts–and face her most elusive and deadly adversary yet.

Victorian London is a city gripped by belief in the supernatural–but a grisly murder becomes a matter of flesh and blood for intrepid photographer Sarah Bain.

London, October 1890. Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett–but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church. Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O’Reilly, take the case.

The dead man is Charles Firth, whose profession is “spirit photography”– photographing the ghosts of the deceased. When Sarah develops the photographs he took in the church, she discovers one with a pale, blurred figure attacking the victim. The city’s spiritualist community believes the church is haunted and the figure is a ghost. But Sarah is a skeptic, and she and her friends soon learn that the victim had plenty of enemies in the human world–including a scientist who studies supernatural phenomena, his psychic daughter, and an heiress on a campaign to debunk spiritualism and expose fraudulent mediums.

In the tunnels beneath a demolished jail, a ghost-hunting expedition ends with a new murder, and new suspects. While Sarah searches for the truth about both crimes, she travels a dark, twisted path into her own family’s sordid history. Her long lost father is the prime suspect in a cold-case murder, and her reunion with him proves that even the most determined skeptic can be haunted by ghosts from the past. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover, Audiobook

In the tradition of M. C. Beaton, Hope Taylor, pastor of a small-town California church, tries to find out who sent a church elder to Heaven.

Hope Taylor arrives in Apple Springs to start her new life as the first female pastor of Faith Chapel Episcopal Church. The northern California town’s quaint cottages, bungalows, and shops promise a fresh start for the 42-year-old widow and Bogie, her scruffy black Labrador. But where is Father Christopher? The kindly old rector who hired Pastor Hope was supposed to meet her upon her arrival, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Hope’s faith springs eternal, so she explores the little white church hoping to find Father Christopher. But when she enters the columbarium, she instead finds church elder Stanley King–his skull crushed by a fallen burial urn.

Hope had made Stanley’s acquaintance before, and had struggled to take a charitable view of his character. Stanley was as wicked as he was wealthy, as petty as he was pious. His soul may have been holy, but his behavior was wholly rotten. The last time Hope had seen him, he had shouted drunkenly that she would preach at Faith Chapel over his dead body.

Many of the townsfolk witnessed the altercation, so Hope finds herself as the prime suspect in Stanley’s murder. With Bogie’s four-footed assistance, Hope is determined to find the real killer and clear her name…even if it will require a bit of divine intervention. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover, Audiobook

In the follow-up to the acclaimed series debut The Missing American, PI Emma Djan investigates the death of a Ghanaian fashion icon and social media celebrity, Lady Araba.

Hard-hitting talk show host Augustus Seeza has become a household name in Ghana, though notorious for his lavish overspending, alcoholism, and womanizing. He’s dating the imposing, beautiful Lady Araba, who leads a selfmade fashion empire. Fearing Augustus is only after her money, Araba’s religious family intervenes to break them up. A few days later, just before a major runway show, Araba is found murdered in her bed. Her driver is arrested after a hasty investigation, but Araba’s favorite aunt, Dele, suspects Augustus Seeza was the real killer.
Almost a year later, Dele approaches Emma Djan, who has finally started to settle in as the only female PI at her agency. To solve Lady Araba’s murder, Emma must not only go on an undercover mission that dredges up trauma from her past, but navigate a long list of suspects with strong motives. Emma quickly discovers that they are all willing to lie for each other—and that one may still be willing to kill. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback

Walt doubts a confession of murder in this novel from the New York Times bestselling author 

Wade Barsad, a man with a dubious past and a gift for making enemies, burned his wife Mary’s horses in their barn; in retribution, she shot him in the head six times, or so the story goes. But Sheriff Walt Longmire doesn’t believe Mary’s confession and is determined to dig deeper. Unpinning his star to pose as an insurance investigator, Walt visits the Barsad ranch and discovers that everyone in town–including a beautiful Guetemalan bartender and a rancher with a taste for liquor–had a reason for wanting Wade dead. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Paperback

Never in my lifetime did I think I’d spend New Year’s Eve knee-deep in mischief, magic, and murder!

When my high-school nemesis, Prudence McAvoy, chooses The Melting Pot Café to host her New Year’s party, I know I’m courting trouble by accepting her booking. The trouble begins with Prudence turning up dead, face down in a pond, and the finger for her murder is pointed directly at my shape-shifting best friend, Jordi.

Determined to clear Jordi’s name and bring the real killer to justice, I pool resources with Harriet, Tyler, and my cheeky familiar, Miss Saffron, to find out what happened to Prudence. As the clock counts down to midnight, time is running out in more ways than one.

Can we find the killer before another body drops? Or will Jordi’s new year begin in the pokey?

If you like witty witches, talking cats, and magical murder mysteries, then you’ll love Polly Holmes’ light-hearted Melting Pot Café series. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Paperback

When Danny dies in intensive care, it looks like murder to Detective Wayne Nichols but the pathologist won’t list a cause of death, Nashville PD stalls, and the killer remains elusive.  (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Paperback

Pancake house owner Marley McKinney takes a break from the Flip Side for a romantic getaway. But soon, instead of mixing batter, she’s mixed up with murder . . .
 
Marley and her new husband Brett need some quality couple time before the holiday madness, so they drive up into the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula to charming Holly Lodge. Before long they’re enjoying snowshoe excursions, hot chocolates, and cuddling in front of a roaring fire. Despite some barely concealed marital tension between the owners of the lodge, they’re finally able to unwind . . .
 
Until one morning when they notice a glove sticking out of a snowbank outside of the lodge. Inside the glove is a hand connected to a frozen corpse buried beneath the snow—lodge owner Kevin Manning has been murdered. Presented with a stack of suspects and eventually stranded at the lodge by a blizzard, Marley has to catch the cold-hearted killer before someone else gets iced . . .
 
Includes pancake recipes right from the Flip Side menu! (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook

When the head of a hovercycle club inexplicably calls in news of his own murder, Detective Simon Grave and his team are drawn in to Crab Cove’s hovercycle underworld, a world of loyalty, betrayal, greed, and-yes-irony. As if murder weren’t enough, the bombing of an election debate stage has the mayor pressing for a quick resolution to both crimes. It becomes increasingly clear that the crimes are connected, and that the solution will require the unraveling of an elaborate criminal scheme-and more.

As with all Simon Grave mysteries, simdroids (androids who are built to resemble famous people) play a critical role in solving the crime. Expect humorous takes on the advance of technology, the effects of global warming, and nothing less than the meaning of life and death-and love.

The year is 2053. Time to hop on your hovercycle and take a fun ride! (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Paperback

When the patriarch of Moorecliff Manor drops dead at dinner, it’s up to Aunt Araminta and her Siamese cats Arun and Sasha to uncover the identity of the killer. It will be no easy task, as there is no shortage of suspects… including the butler.

But Araminta soon finds herself with more questions than answers. What was the mysterious phone call about? Who has been removing heirlooms and why? How did they manage to get poison into Archie’s dinner and not poison everyone at the table? Who was the mystery man that Daisy met in the garden? And why does Harold, the butler, never answer the door?

As Araminta and the cats follow the clues, it becomes clear that she will have a hard decision to make because the clues are pointing in one unmistakable direction – someone in the Moorecliff family is a cold-blooded killer. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle. Paperback

Evil doesn’t always have a bad smell.
In fact, sometimes it’s downright heavenly.
When a young homeless girl is found dead in the lavender field she was hired to harvest a friend of Laurent’s is arrested for her murder. In spite of her personal misgivings, Maggie promises her husband to work with the local authorities to either clear Rochelle or find the real killer.
When Maggie begins to look closer into the business of lavender production it soon becomes clear that much more sinister forces are at play than drawer sachets and soap.
Will Maggie listen to the facts or what her gut is telling her about the crime? And when a well-guarded secret threatens to bring down everything she and Laurent have built in France, will she make the right choice—even if it goes against everything she believes in?
This book is a clean read: no graphic violence, sex or strong language
Genre: light culinary cozy mystery, women amateur sleuth, cozy animal (dog)
Murder in Lavender: A riveting mystery thriller set in Provence (A Maggie Newberry Mystery Book 18) (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle

So far, Pepper Reign’s second trimester is smooth sailing. That is until the proverbial crap hits the fan. A rogue werewolf is on the loose and it has got its sights set on Pepper, wanting to make her its next meal.

But help is on the way. The werewolves of Clan Reign have recently lost their king. That means Axel is their new alpha–which makes Pepper their new queen. That’s a lot for a gal to deal with while expecting a baby. On top of that, it looks like love is in the air. Grandma Betty has her sights set on one of the werewolves in Clan Reign and she’s even changing her appearance to make him like her.

But even with all the good werewolves around, the dangerous one’s attacks on Pepper become more frequent and violent, and no one can seem to catch him. Can they catch the werewolf before it hurts Pepper or will she become its next meal? (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle

Rescue Alaska is a fast moving mystery series with a paranormal twist which takes place in a small town in northern Alaska where visitors come to hike and ski. Harmony Carson is a lifelong resident who volunteers as a member of the local search and rescue team. She has a unique gift which she often considers a curse. She is able to ‘see’ the individuals she is meant to help rescue, and more often than not she can feel their fear and their pain as well.

In book 5 – Harmony’s visions are becoming more frequent and they are becoming more intense. It seems they are starting to hurt her but no matter how hard she tries she can’t seem to escape them. She can’t sleep and often has headaches. There is one vision specifically that is haunting her nights so she sets out with Houston to find the answers she needs to hopefully stop the nightmares (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Paperback

Bessie is both excited and apprehensive about her new role in Andrew Cheatham’s cold case unit. When the first case involves a missing five-year-old who may well have been murdered by her own father, Bessie has even more second thoughts.


As if Andrew’s cold case weren’t enough to keep her busy, Sandra, the young woman who works at the shop near Bessie’s house, has just been accused of stealing from her employer. Sandra is desperate to clear her name, and adamant that Bessie not involve the police.


Can Bessie work with her friends and the two Scotland Yard detectives on the cold case unit to work out what really happened to little Rachel Adams? Can she help Sandra clear her name and find out who has really been stealing from the shop? Or is she in over her head, working with police detectives who don’t seem at all interested in her opinion? (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle

Murder. Adventure. Romance. All in one delicious read.

Everyone working at The Island Resort is pitching in to help make Harriet Monroe’s pilot program for young female orphans a smash success. The media gives the program rave reviews and companies are lining up to fund it.

When Harriet’s newest group of girls find a body stuffed inside the water slide, she teams up with the resort’s security director to find the murderer before word gets out and kills her program. But the search for the murderer only brings up unexpected questions. What did the dead man have to do with pirates, treasure maps, and buried treasure–and who else is involved? Can Harriet find the answers before one of her girls gets hurt?  (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle

Casey’s in trouble again. It’s bad when you have a bad tenant renting one side of a duplex and dying in a suspicious fire. When her twin sister shows up, and the police start investigating your motives, you’ve got double duplicity. (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle

Bestselling author Carolyn Ridder Aspenson is back—this time with a scrappy heroine whose bold detective work and well-timed one-liners will leave you riveted—and entertained—at every turn.

“Detective Rachel Ryder is smart, tough, and fearless—readers will gladly follow her through every twist of Aspenson’s knockout first installment in this riveting new series.” —LynDee Walker, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Fear No Truth

New to town and a little rough around the edges, Detective Rachel Ryder finds herself on the receiving end of a suspicious person’s call in Hamby, Georgia. When the call turns out to be a dead body, the medical examiner is quick to rule the death a suicide. But was it something more sinister?

Everyone in the small department believes the case is closed—except for Rachel. The sudden passing of a local politician during the mayor’s run for Congress strikes her as a little too coincidental, and Rachel is eager to follow her instincts. Her partner, Rob, a 30-year veteran, isn’t the type to disobey his boss or ruffle any feathers, but he can’t convince strong-willed Rachel to let it go.

Obsessed with finding out the truth, Rachel begins to examine the evidence and drags her reluctant partner along for the ride. But the clues are confusing. Nothing is adding up.

Puzzled and running out of time, Rachel and Rob rush to work every angle and bring the elusive killer to justice before someone else ends up dead.

_____________________

“…a fast-paced police procedural with a killer ending.” —Susan Hunter, author of Dangerous Habits

“…an awesome mystery…” —Kimberly Charleston, Books Uplift (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback, Audiobook

A vintage necklace. A long-hidden secret. A second chance for love.

From a USA Today bestselling author.

When costume designer Ariana Ricci leaves her groom at the altar, she seeks solace at the Palm Springs home of her great-aunt, a Texas-born Hollywood legend who began her career as an extra on the film Roman Holiday. While opening yellowed, 1950s letters postmarked Italy, Ariana discovers relics from her great-aunt’s hidden past, including an intriguing necklace that Audrey Hepburn gave her during the filming of the movie.

Aching for a fresh start and the chance to resolve an unfinished story, the two embark on a journey to the sun-dappled shores of Lake Como, Italy that will illuminate secrets of a bygone era and offer second chances to each of them—if they are bold enough to seize them.

From Jan Moran, a USA Today bestselling author of romantic women’s fiction, including The Chocolatier, comes a dual-timeline, multigenerational saga of love and second chances at any age. Also enjoy her contemporary Summer Beach series and the historical novels, The Winemakers and The Perfumer: Scent of Triumph. Hepburn’s Necklace is available in ebook, trade paperback, audiobook, hardcover, and large print editions. Get swept away with this mesmerizing family saga now.
REVIEWS

Second chances, twists of fate and a glittering Lake Como backdrop combine to create Jan Moran’s latest stunning read. Weaving back and forth through time, Moran creates an epic tale of love and loss that can’t help but make readers question what might have been. With lyrical prose and unforgettable characters, HEPBURN’S NECKLACE proves that Jan Moran is a writer at the top of her game and a storyteller to remember.  — Kristy Woodson Harvey, USA Today Bestselling author of Feels Like Falling (Amazon)

Editions Available: Kindle, Hardcover. Paperback, Audiobook