Rhys Bowen kicks us off with her latest Royal Spyness mystery, Naughty in Nice. Her Majesty the Queen sends Lady Georgiana to Nice on a secret assignment to recover the Queen's stolen snuff box. She meets Coco Chanel who asks Georgie to model her latest fashion. Before the fashion show is over, she finds herself involved in murder.Robert B. Parker fans will have the chance to find out if Michael Brandman can successfully take over the Jesse Stone series with Killing the Blues. Police Chief Jesse Stone teams up with Sunny Randall to solve the case when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead in Paradise Beach.
Lethal by Sandra Brown finds Honor Gillette caught up in a nightmare situation when she rushes from the house to help a sick man, only to come face-to-face with a man accused of murdering seven people the night before.
James Lee Burke is a favorite in the mystery community. He brings back Sheriff Hackberry Holland in Feast Day of Fools. When the town drunk witnessed a man being tortured to death, he reluctantly told the sheriff. That's when Hack realized a serial killer had returned.Did you ever wonder about Jack Reacher's past? In The Affair, Lee Child finally reveals why Reacher started walking and became a revered vigilante hero.
I'm a fan of Margaret Coel's books. In her second novel to feature journalist Catherine McLeod, The Perfect Suspect, Catherine looks for the real killer of a candidate for governor. His estranged wife is arrested, but an anonymous caller claims she saw the real killer, but is afraid to go to the police.
My late husband loved Jackie Collins' Lucky Santangelo novels. Only in the last year of his life did I get him to read women authors, but he always read Collins. Goddess of Vengeance brings back Lucky, although a billionaire businessman is determined to take everything from her in a battle for power.
Detective Charlie Parker returns in John Connolly's The Burning Soul. He becomes involved in a web of deceit when a young girl goes missing, and people in town have secrets they're trying to keep.
Linda Howard's latest suspense novel is Prey, featuring a woman who has a camping/tour guide company. The adventure turns dangerous when she goes on a trip with a businessman and his client.
Arnaldur Indridason's Operation Napoleon sounds intriguing. In 1945, a plane carrying Germans and Americans crashed in Iceland, but one man left for help, carrying a briefcase secured to his wrist. Decades later, the U.S. is trying to cover up an operation to retrieve a plane from a glacier in Iceland. Their activities are threatened when one man disappears without a trace, leaving his sister with questions.
The Pirate King is the latest Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel by Laurie R. King. Mary Russell's employer sends her to investigate criminal activities surround Ffyette Films, currently filming a pirate movie in Lisbon and Morocco. The set is dangerous, possibly deadly for Mary, since the director has cast actual pirates in some of the roles.Jake Lassiter returns in Paul Levine's Lassiter. When Amy Larkin returns to the Everglades, she's looking for her sister who vanished twenty years earlier. She seeks help attorney Jake Lassiter, the last person to see Krista alive.
There's a tangled web of lies for Detective Inspector Alex Morrow to unravel in Denise Mina's The End of the Wasp Season. When a millionaire kills himself, few people care. But, the murder of a young woman leaves a community stunned. It's that second case that is assigned to the pregnant investigator.
Spencer Quinn brings back one of my favorite pair of detectives, Chet and Bernie, in The Dog Who Knew Too Much. It's Bernie who was invited to be the keynote speaker at a P.I. convention, but the man in charge actually has plans for Chet. Meanwhile, the duo has been hired to find a kid who is missing from a wilderness camp.Ruth Rendell's former Chief Inspector Wexford is called in to help in a grisly case after a man pulls back the cover of a manhole in his backyard, and discovers the skeletons of four people who had been entombed there for the last twelve years. It's The Vault.
Homicide cop Eve Dallas' latest case is New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb. Eve returns to the city she's named for, plunging back into nightmares from her childhood where a man has escaped from Rikers, determined to continue abducting young women, and planning to get revenge on Eve, the woman who stopped him ten years earlier.
In S.J. Rozan's Ghost Hero, P.I. Lydia chin has been asked to track down paintings supposedly painted by Chau Chun, known as the Ghost Hero. Despite the fact Chau has supposedly been dead for twenty years, someone else is looking for those same paintings.
Here's the debut novel I'm anticipating, Edward Lazellari's Awakenings. A New York City cop and a washed-up photographer have only one thing in common. They both suffer from amnesia. But now, their forgotten pasts are about to catch up with them as otherworldly magic collides with modern times.***
OK, brace yourself. The Christmas novels will start appearing in September this year. Here are four possibilities for holiday reading.
Heather Graham's An Angel for Christmas brings two strangers into the lives of the MacDougal family, a family who never has experienced a joyous Christmas
1225 Christmas Tree Lane is this year's holiday novel by Debbie Macomber. Life in Cedar Cove is full of surprises for Beth Morehouse. First, someone leaves a basket of puppies on her doorstep. Then, her daughters invite their dad, Beth's long-divorced husband, to their home for Christmas.A Lawman's Christmas is a McKettricks of Texas novel by Linda Lael Miller. When Blue River, Texas' town marshal dies, it leaves the town without protection, and Dara Rose Nolan without a husband and father for her daughters. They can't survive on her income, and they'll have to move out of the house so the new marshall, Clay McKettrick, can move in.
I'll admit I loved Sherryl Woods' Chesapeake Shores Christmas, so I'm looking forward to the return of the O'Briens in An O'Brien Family Christmas. Laila Riley had once been involved with Matthew O'Brien, but broke it off. She's be invited to join the family for a holiday in Dublin, but she's not sure she can risk her heart again.So, September will bring some hot titles, some favorite authors and characters, and a sleeper or two. Which books do you hope to pick up at your favorite bookstore or public library?
