Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most!
This week, we get another Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery from Jane K. Cleland! See what else this week brings in the way of books:
The Glow of the Death by Jane K. Cleland
As a warm ocean breeze ruffles the tall grass along Rocky Point’s sandy dunes, Josie Prescott visits the house of a wealthy local couple, Edwin and Ava Belcher. She’s been called in to appraise their Tiffany lamp, which everyone is delighted to find is genuine.
Josie’s good friend, Police Chief Ellis Hunter, is helping prepare for her annual Fourth of July barbeque when he gets a call that Ava has been murdered. Unable to reach Edwin, Ellis asks Josie to identify the body.
Josie is stunned to discover that the dead woman lying on the Belcher kitchen floor is not the woman she knew as Ava. Astonishment turns to shock when Josie discovers that everything she thought she knew about the Tiffany lamp and the Belchers has been built on lies.
In this cunning and twisty tale of envy, greed, and revenge, Josie uses her knowledge of antiques to learn the truth about the priceless Tiffany lamp―and to discover Ava’s killer.
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When All the Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz
When Charlotte Sawyer is unable to contact her stepsister, Jocelyn, to tell her that one of her closest friends was found dead, she discovers that Jocelyn has vanished.
Beautiful, brilliant—and reckless—Jocelyn has gone off the grid before, but never like this. In a desperate effort to find her, Charlotte joins forces with Max Cutler, a struggling PI who recently moved to Seattle after his previous career as a criminal profiler went down in flames—literally. Burned out, divorced and almost broke, Max needs the job.
After surviving a near-fatal attack, Charlotte and Max turn to Jocelyn’s closest friends, women in a Seattle-based online investment club, for answers. But what they find is chilling…
When her uneasy alliance with Max turns into a full-blown affair, Charlotte has no choice but to trust him with her life. For the shadows of Jocelyn’s past are threatening to consume her—and anyone else who gets in their way…
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Storm Rising by Douglas Schofield
It’s been a rough five years for Lucy Hendricks.
She hasn’t had an easy time of it since her husband, Jack—a devoted and upstanding Bayonne, New Jersey, cop—was murdered while on an investigation. There were suspicions that he’d been involved with the local Mafia, and the media wouldn’t let it go, making life unbearable, so Lucy moved to Florida to raise her son, Kevin, who was born without ever knowing his father.
The distance was healing, but now Lucy is back in New Jersey to pick up the pieces in the same house she and Jack once shared, trying to move on. But the past won’t loosen its grip on the young widow, and it seems to have taken hold of Kevin as well. At first his behavior becomes increasingly erratic; then he begins making statements wise beyond his years, offering specific details about Jack’s murder he couldn’t possibly know. Lucy decides to delve into the mystery surrounding her husband’s death, for her own sanity and for Kevin’s. She can’t trust the cops, it seems, and now the local Don has reached out to her, offering help in clearing Jack’s name. As Hurricane Sandy bears down on Bayonne, Lucy must trust her instincts to save herself and her son from much more than a deadly storm.
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Skydive by Susan O'Brien
Life is finally settling down for private investigator Nicki Valentine, her kids, and her boyfriend Dean. But when a jailed mom seeks help for her endangered biological daughter, who just “aged out” of foster care, Nicki can’t say no. With Dean by her side and her free-wheeling BFF eager to investigate too, Nicki braves back alleys, drug dens, and the strip-club scene, all while wondering if any risk is too great when it comes to finding a teen in trouble. As if navigating the mean streets of King County, Virginia, isn’t enough, Nicki also faces the realities of dating as a single mom, including “sleepover” requests she never anticipated. Ultimately—in both relationships and work—Nicki must decide, “How much am I willing to risk for love?”
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The Flame Bearer by Bernard Cornwell
From the day it was stolen from me I had dreamed of recapturing Bebbanburg. The great fort was built on a rock that was almost an island, it was massive, it could only be approached on land by a single narrow track—and it was mine.
Britain is in a state of uneasy peace. Northumbria’s Viking ruler, Sigtryggr, and Mercia’s Saxon Queen Aethelflaed have agreed a truce. And so England’s greatest warrior, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, at last has the chance to take back the home his traitorous uncle stole from him so many years ago—and which his scheming cousin still occupies.
But fate is inexorable and the enemies Uhtred has made and the oaths he has sworn combine to distract him from his dream of recapturing Bebbanburg. New enemies enter into the fight for England’s kingdoms: the redoubtable Constantin of Scotland seizes an opportunity for conquest and leads his armies south. Britain’s precarious peace threatens to turn into a war of annihilation.
But Uhtred is determined that nothing, neither the new enemies nor the old foes who combine against him, will keep him from his birth right. He is the Lord of Bebbanburg, but he will need all the skills he has learned in a lifetime of war to make his dream come true.