The Buzzard Table by Margaret Maron is the 18th novel in the Deborah Knott mystery series (available November 20, 2012). Judge Deborah Knott and Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Bryant are back home in Colleton County, North Carolina, with all their family and courthouse regulars. But there are a few new faces as well. Lt. Sigrid Herald…
Hot Stuff by Don Bruns is the sixth book in the Stuff series featuring private investigators James Lessor and Skip Moore (available November 16, 2012). An attractive sous chef at the famous restaurant L’Elfe is murdered and half the employees are suspect. The lack of police progress toward solving the murder leads Chef Jean Bouvier…
Make Believe by Ed Ifkovic is the third Edna Ferber historical mystery set in the glamor of Los Angeles in the 1950s (available November 6, 2012). It’s 1951 and Edna Ferber is in Hollywood to support Max Jeffries, a friend who was part of the film production of Show Boat—until he was blacklisted as a…
Return of the Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett is a traditional detective story anthology containing two unpublished novellas featuring private investigator Nick Charles and his wife Nora (available November 6, 2012). One would be justified in asking what these stories have to offer to the modern reader almost seven decades after they were conceived. The…
Death in the 12th House: Where Neptune Rules is the second in the Starlight Detective Agency mystery series by Mitchell Scott Lewis (available November 6, 2012). Someone is bumping off rock’s wrinkled royalty. After the death of the third aging rock star, lead singer Freddie Finger, astrologer-detective David Lowell takes on the case, scrutinizing suspects’…
Dead Girl Moon by Charlie Price is a young adult mystery novel (available October 30, 2012). As their hardscrabble lives intertwine in a small, corrupt Montana town, Grace, a scheming runaway; JJ, her spacey foster sister; and Mick, the hapless son of a petty thief, discover the body of a dead teenage prostitute. Afraid to…
Saga, Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples, collects the first six issues of the science fiction thriller series (available October 23, 2012). It all begins with the birth of a girl called, after a lot of arguing between the parents, Hazel. Hazel is the result of an unholy union, according to the…
Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson is the third historical mystery featuring Mrs. Harriet Westerman and anatomist Gabriel Crowther (available October 11, 2012). England, 1783. In Island of Bones, Crowther’s haunting past is at last revealed. For years he has pursued his forensic studies—and the occasional murder investigation—far from his family estate. But an ancient…
Becoming Holmes by Shane Peacock is the sixth book in the Boy Sherlock Holmes middle grade detective mystery series (available October 9, 2012). Our hero discovers that his rival, the criminal Malefactor, has used nefarious means to place one of his two henchmen in a powerful position in the government treasury offices. But the henchman…
Mixed Signals is the second novel in the Grace Street cozy mystery series (available October 2, 2012). Mixed Signals is a cozy novel that has a heavier focus on characters than on crime. Yes, there is some mystery, a murder, and a few robberies, but it’s the people that keep the story going—people who are…
