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Members' New Publications |
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| Candace Robb |
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Late spring 1370. Owen Archer, ex-soldier and spy prepares to depart
Wales after completing political duties for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. But his attempts to arrange safe passage home to York are thwarted when a stonemason in his employ is found hanged.
In York Lucie Wilton waits, disheartened by her husband's long absence and troubled by accusations against her apothecary. When Owen's erstwhile traveling companion Brother Michaelo arrives with bad news, she must journey without delay to her father's manor outside York. A concerned neighbour insists that his new steward, Harold Galfrey escort her, an act which proves invaluable when they face danger. Angered by Owen's prolonged absence, aware of rumours that the spy has abandoned his family, John Thoresby, Archbishop of York, dispatches a messenger to order Owen's return. But Owen is caught up in a country at war. His return to the land of his birth has engendered divided loyalties, and he feels a powerful tug from the rebel cause. Those who serve rebel leader Owain Lawgoch would have Owen sign up to fight and never return home.. |
| Gillian Roberts |
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Amanda and C.K. Mackenzie are both experimenting with new roles. C.K. has traded investigating homicides for exploring their causes: he's now a full-time Ph.D. candidate in criminology. He moonlights as a PI and Amanda helps out in the office after-school, mostly doing clerical work. But the day school begins, she receives her first solo assignment: to interview an elderly woman named Claire Fairchild who wants her future daughter-in-law-a woman with a muddled past that includes too many dead lovers-investigated.
Despite all the blockades the young woman seems to have erected, including what her actual name is, within twenty-four hours, Amanda and C.K. unearth information about her past -- but when they rush to deliver the news to their client, they're told she died the night before. With that, the case is officially closed -- but when Claire Fairchild's death turns out to be anything but natural, it's also anything but closed. Through all of this, Amanda is teaching, coping with the problems of an ostracized ninth grade girl, her ever-annoying headmaster, a parent who demands a new kind of censorship and most of all, the impending visit of both her parents and her future in-laws, a combination she's sure also spells trouble. "C.K. and Amanda could be the new Nick and Nora." Publishers Weekly "Amanda Pepper [is] young, sparky, funny, tough... And as her fans have already discovered, she's nobody to to mess with, either." Booklist "...a delightful book with plenty of twists and turns and interesting characters, and a believable protagonist." Mysterious Women "...Gillian Roberts invests Philadelphia prep-school teacher Amanda Pepper with a hip sensibility that makes Claire and Present Danger fresh and lively... Literature and life, seasoned with a little Louisiana witchcraft brought to the Main Line by Mackenzie's mother, twine together nicely here. Roberts has gentle fun with the institutional politics of marriage and private schools. It all adds up to fun for the reader, too." The Baltimore Sun |
| Les Roberts |
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As Cleveland private investigator Milan Jacovich points out, under bridges a singularly lousy place to choose to die. Yet that's where successful but homely dot.com executive Ellen Carnine is found dead, an apparent suicide. Her grieving college professor father hires Milan to discover the reason the young woman took her own life--or in street parlance, "did the Dutch." The quest leads the Slovenian-American PI from Cleveland's plushest downtown offices, restaurants and shops to its meanest and darkest streets to the often bewildering labyrinth of the Internet, and finally to the discovery of a crime monstrous in its sheer savagery and evil. |
| Lynda S. Robinson |
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Who killed the fabulously beautiful Queen Nefertiti, great royal wife of
the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten? Lord Meren, confidential inquirey agent to
the boy king Tutankhamun searches for the answer in the second of the
three-volume mystery surrounding the death of the queen. Every time Meren
identifies a potential witness he dies mysteriously. But when Meren himself
becomes the target of scandal and is accused of treason, he realizes just
how powerful his hidden enemy really is.
Raves for the Lord Meren series:
"An excellent series...Robinson again brings ancient Egypt alive...while offering a timeless tale of serial killings and the lust for power." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) |
| Rebecca Rothenberg |
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Alive and prickly, or dead and tumbling, Salsola kali, or Russian thistle, is a pain for growers and motorists alike. But could it hold the secret of a half-century-old-murder? Rebecca Rothenberg (1948-1998) was a writer, musician, epidemiologist, amateur botanist, president of the San Gabriel chapter of the California Native Plants Society, and the author of the Claire Sharples Botanical Mystery series. The first, The Bulrush Murders, was nominated for the Anthony and Agatha Awards, and was named as one of the Top Ten Mysteries of 1992 by the Los Angeles Times. After her untimely death in 1998, her friend and colleague, Taffy Cannon completed the manuscript of The Tumbleweed Murders. Original music by Rebecca Rothenberg is used in The Tumbleweed Murders and available on CD. See http://www.rebeccarothenberg.com for details. Passion, greed, deceit and murder surface when plant pathologist Claire Sharples discovers a skeleton buried beside the Kern River and finds herself drawn into events of a half-century earlier. This evocative botanical mystery moves between past and present in California's Central Valley, exploring the worlds of oil, cotton and country music. Claire tries to unravel the mystery of the singing Cherokee Rose's lost love with the help of enigmatic Ramon Covarrubias and his eccentric journalist cousin Yolanda, in a story dictated as much by the nature of the land as by the character of its inhabitants. These are secrets someone is willing to kill to protect, and Claire's quest puts her own life in danger. "Rebecca Rothenberg was a Renaissance woman, a musician and composer, an epidemiologist, an amateur botanist and a talented writer of intelligent and compelling mysteries. The Tumbleweed Murders is a seamless tale of danger, adventure and romance spanning five decades." - Los Angeles Times "A complex blend of romance, science and ingenious clues." - Kirkus Reviews "An absolutely beautiful book-beautifully written and beautifully plotted." - Bookbrowser "This is western writing at its best and mystery at its most satisfying." - Linda Grant, author of Vampire Bytes and Lethal Genes "Once again, Rebecca Rothenberg has taken the improbable mis-en-scene of southern Kern County and with realism and deft intelligence transformed it into classic detective country. All her fans are grateful to Taffy Cannon for completing the last and in many ways the best of the Claire Sharples botanical mysteries. A brilliant finale to a sadly shortened career! Yet, Rebecca Rothenberg remains with us, her many fans, in appreciation and memory. She has left both the mystery novel and California much better off than when she first found and fused them together in the alembic of first-rate detective fiction." - Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California "Taffy Cannon has completed Rebecca Rothenberg's last novel with such skill and love that the blend of their talents is seamless. Here is the superb writing, the wit, the extraordinary sense of environment, the suspense and familiar flavor of Rebecca's work, one more time. It's a tribute to her and a gift to her fans. I hope it introduces many new readers to the work of both of these fine writers." - Nancy Pickard, author of The Whole Truth |
| Robert Scott |
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Benjamin Pedro Gonzales was a cunning cross country serial killer who changed his looks like a chameleon. But his real savagery began when he was behind bars.
He became an incredible jail house Houdini, able to slip his bonds and attack other inmates and even his defense lawyer. He became in the words of one judge, "One of the most dangerous inmates in California history." During his trial he was chained to the floor and had to wear a spit guard like a bee keepers bonnet. A detective looking at him exclaimed, "My God, it looks like a scene right out of Silence of the Lambs." Gonzales now resides in the same cell block as Charles Manson.
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| Malcolm Shuman |
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Alan Graham is a contract archaeologist, and certainly not an expert on paranormal activity. Yet he's the one the Louisiana Corps of Engineers sends to investigate a smalltown librarian's claim that she saw a UFO fall into the river. But instead of some extraterrestrial traveler, Graham discovers a dead man in a car clutching an ancient silver coin and slain with a most unusual blade sunken into the muddy river bottom.
History is Alan Graham's greatest passion. So distancing himself from this case, with its intriguing connections to the past, is out of the question especially when the trail turns toward the legend of Jim Bowie, the knife-wielding local hero who died at the Alamo. But his own enthusiastic curiosity might be pulling Graham in over his head. Because entwined somewhere in tangled backwoods myths and crimes are the keys to a contemporary murderer's dark motive and bloody next move. "History and mystery, both deftly handled, with an engaging, thoroughly decent protagonist." -- Aaron Elkins
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| William M. Stephens |
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REDDY & ABEL is set in the Tennessee
mountains and features Lee Reddy, a young female attorney who
served overseas as a nurse in World War II. The book is an
action-packed mystery/romance, with flashbacks from WW II,
courtroom histrionics and a mysterious death that smacks of
the occult. First in a series of legal thrillers starring Lee Reddy and her partner Oakley, REDDY & ABEL will be published by Koenisha in August. Set in fictional Boone County, in the Tennessee mountains, the novel has romance, flashbacks from the War in the Pacific, courtroom histrionics and a mysterious death that smacks of the occult. This is the seventeenth book by Bill Stephens, a former trial lawyer, but his first mystery novel. |
| Camilla Trinchieri |
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Having taken a young Chinese woman under her wing, wife and mother Emma Perotti finds herself on trial for the young woman’s murder. Almost five years earlier, An-ling Huang walked into Emma’s ESL classroom and into her family’s life. Emma was drawn to the vulnerability she perceived in An-ling. An-ling, for her part, seemed to long for a surrogate mother and eagerly attached herself to Emma. Emma’s husband, Tom, resented An-ling’s intrusion and his wife’s affection for her. Their son, Josh, developed his own relationship with her. Dredging up painful memories and buried grief, An-ling’s presence threatened to tear the family apart. Then An-ling was found dead, suffocated. As Emma’s trial progresses, An-ling is revealed not to be who she claimed and we learn that the family members all have their own dark secrets.
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|New Books| Authors' last names begin with A-D
|New Books| Authors' last names begin with E-H
|New Books| Authors' last names begin with I-L
|New Books| Authors' last names begin with M-P
|New Books| Authors' last names begin with Q-T
|New Books| Authors' last names begin with U-Z
