New Mystery Fiction

Rosemary Simpson delivers another Gilded Age Mystery with Death Brings a Shadow. Prudence MacKenzie and former Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter take a private yacht bound for The Sea Islands along the coast of Georgia. Prudence is the maid of honor for her beast friend Eleanor Dickson who is to wed a Southern gentleman Teddy Bennett. Just days before the wedding the bride is missing. The frantic search of Bradford Island turns up poor Eleanor’s corpse in an alligator-infested swamp. Prudence is beside herself but gathers her wits when she and Geoffrey find evidence that Eleanor was held under the water purposefully. The pair navigate a morass of voodoo spells and dark secrets left from the days of slavery. Can they bring a killer to justice before anyone else dies? 

The latest Meg Langslow mystery by Donna Andrews is called The Falcon Always Wings Twice. Meg’s grandmother Cordelia has decided to host a Renaissance Faire at her craft center and puts the whole family to work: Meg handles the blacksmithing, Michael and the boys perform, and everyone dresses in full regalia. Meg’s grandfather, however, is most excited to spend time with the fair’s falconer and his hunting birds—the peregrine falcon and a red-tailed hawk. He’s also concerned about the birds’ well-being with all of the hullabaloo surrounding the fair, so he appoints himself their protector. One of the actors performing at the fair is found dead and, because the man was suspected of mistreating one of the falcons, Grandfather is one of the main suspects. Meg and company will have to beat the bushes for clues to clear Grandfather’s name and catch the real killer. 

M.C. Beaton’s latest Agatha Raisin novel is called Hot to Trot. Private investigator Agatha learns that her friend and one-time lover Sir Charles Fraith is to be married to a horrible woman. She takes it upon herself to do a bit of digging to find out what she can about the socialite but comes up empty. Naturally, Agatha crashes the wedding—out of selfless concern for Charles, of course. The public altercation is embarrassing for everyone, but just when Agatha thinks things can’t get worse, she hears a scream for the stables on the property and rushes to check it out. What she discovers is a murder and she and Sir Charles are the prime suspects. Some shifty evidence surfaces that seems to seal Charles’s fate and Agatha jumps into action to keep her friend from losing his ancestral home, his entire estate, and his freedom. On top of everything else, Agatha’s ex-husband is back in Carsely and wanting back into her heart. What is a girl to do? 

The Right Sort of Man is a mystery by Allison Montclair. As London is slowly recovering from World War II, two very different women come together to launch the Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The quick-witted and impulsive Iris Sparks, and the practical widow with a young son Gwendolyn Bainbridge are determined to achieve some independence and do some good in the rapidly changing world. Their promising start is threatened, however, when their newest client—Tillie La Salle—is found murdered and the man arrested for crime is the prospective husband they matched her with. The police are convinced of the man’s guilt, but Miss Sparks and Mrs. Bainbridge are not. In order to clear his name and rescue their business’s reputation, the two decide to do some sleuthing of their own. They use all the skills and contacts they’ve each acquired through their lives as well as their individual adventures during the recent war to find a killer. What they don’t know is that they are putting themselves in grave danger. 

Next to Last Stand is Craig Johnson’s latest Walt Longmire mystery. One of the most viewed paintings in American History is Custer’s Last Fight. Anheuser-Busch copied and distributed the painting at a rate of more than a million copies a year, but the original was destroyed in a fire at the Seventh Calvary headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater apparently dies of a heart attack at the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming, Walt is called in to try and make sense of a partial painting and a shoebox containing one million dollars. Both were found in Stillwater’s footlocker. Walt is fond of the veterans who sit outside and wave at passing cars, and he felt a particular kinship to Charley which makes the puzzle more pressing in Walt’s mind. As he tracks down the providence of the painting and the source of the money, he encounters some dangerous characters along the way. Walt will have to make sure that this investigation doesn’t become his own last stand. 

New Fantasy Fiction

Hugo Award Winning author Matt Wallace brings you book one of his new trilogy with Savage Legion. The empire calls them Savages. They are brutal, efficient, and expendable. The greatest weapons ever developed. The empire culls them from the streets of their cities—making sure to take the ones that no one will miss. They are thrown by the thousands at the empire’s enemies. If they live, then they fight again. If they die...well, there are more to be culled. Evie is not a Savage. She is a warrior with a solitary mission: find the man she once loved, who holds the key to exposing the secret of the Savage Legion and ending the mass conscription of the empire’s poor and unfortunate. In order to locate her love, she must become one of the Savage—to be marked in blood, to fight in their wars, and to find her purpose. She is willing to die a Savage, but not before she exposes who she really is and what the Savage Legion can really do. 

Evan Winter continues his fantasy saga with The Fires of Vengeance. Tsiora is the rightful queen of the Omehi, but she was ousted by an insidious faction and her sister is being propped up as the “true” queen. In order to reclaim her throne, she must join forces with a young warrior named Tau. The threat from the indigenous people of Xidda is growing ever closer and the queen needs time to gather her forces and launch an attack on the capital city. Tau comes up with a risky plan that will give the queen the time she needs, but Tsiora needs to do more than reclaim the throne. She needs to unite her people so that the Omehi will have a chance to survive the onslaught to come. 

Elsewhere is the latest novel by Dean Koontz. Jeffy Coltrane has worked hard to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter Amity in Suavidad Beach. Seven years ago, his wife, Michelle, left them and their quiet life. One day, a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed turns up on their doorstep. He entrusts Jeffy with hiding a mysterious and dangerous object—what Ed calls “the key to everything”—and instructs Jeffy to never use the device. After a visit from a group of ominous looking men, Jeffy and Amity accidentally activate the key and discover a wondrous truth. The device allows the user to jump between parallel planes. These places are both familiar and bizarre, wonderful and terrifying. Could the device help them find Michelle? Jeffy and Amity don’t have much time to try, however. There is a sinister man who would use the device for profound evil. The father and daughter mush outwit the dark man or the place they call home will never be safe again. 

Black Sun is a novel by Rebecca Roanhorse. There is a legend that says that a god will return when the earth and sky converge under a black sun. In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for great celebrations and a chance for renewal. This year the solstice coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. A ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and is set to arrive on the solstice. The captain, Xiala, is a Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as well as warp a man’s mind. For this reason, she is an outcast. Her ship has only one passenger, Serapio—a young man, blind, scarred, and enshrouded in destiny. Though he is described as “harmless,” Xiala knows those are the ones who end up being villains. This epic adventure explores the allure of power and the struggle of those who live counter to society throughout history. 

The latest from Alice Hoffman in the Owens saga is called Magic Lessons. Where does the story of the Owens bloodline begin? Maria Owens is abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the tutelage of Hannah Owens, Maria learns about the “Nameless Art.” Hannah quickly realizes that Maria has a true gift, and she teaches the young girl all she knows. The most important lesson that Maria learns: Always love someone who will love you back. When she is betrayed by the man who once declared his love for her, Maria follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. It is here that she invokes the curse that will haunt her family for generations. It is here that she also learns the rules of magic and the most important lesson of life: Love is the only thing that matters. 

Susanna Clarke delivers a mind-bending alternate reality in her new book Piranesi. Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: the rooms are infinite, the corridors endless, and its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. There is also an ocean imprisoned in the labyrinth of halls and its waves thunder up staircases and floods rooms in an instant. Piranesi is not afraid because he has learned the patterns of the tides and the patterns of the labyrinth itself. It is he pleasure to explore the house. There is another person in the house, a man called The Other. He visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. As Piranesi explores, he sees more evidence of another person and a terrible truth begins to unfold and reveals the world beyond to him.