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| Loch of the Dead by Oscar de MurielWhat happens: In 1889, Detective McGray and Inspector Frey go to the Scottish Highlands to protect the 16-year-old heir to an estate whose life has been threatened. McGray also wants a cure for his mentally ill sister, which might be found in a local well's mysterious healing water.
Series alert: Released in the U.K. last year, this well-plotted, banter-filled 4th Frey and McGray novel is now out in the U.S.
Read this next: For other mysteries that often include the strange and supernatural, try Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May books or M.R.C. Kasasian's (more gruesome) Gower Street Detective novels. |
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| The Stone Circle by Elly GriffithsWhat happens: Forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson receive threatening letters and find the bones of a girl missing since 1981, while Harry's wife gives birth (but is it his child?).
Series alert: With the threats reminiscent of letters that first brought Harry and Ruth together, this compelling 11th Ruth Galloway mystery harkens back to the 1st in the series, The Crossing Places (which is where newcomers can start to see complex relationships develop).
Read this next: If you can't get enough of good detectives and their messy marital lives, try Julia Spencer-Fleming's Reverend Clare Fergusson mysteries, which are set in New York State. |
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The Scandal
by Mari Hannah
When an young man is found stabbed to death in a side street in Newcastle city centre in the run up to Christmas, it looks like a botched robbery to DCI David Stone. But when DS Frankie Oliver arrives at the crime scene, she gets more than she bargained for. She identifies the victim as Herald court reporter, thirty-two-year old Chris Adams, who she's known since they were kids. With no eyewitnesses, they are stumped. They discover that when Adams went out, never to return, he was working on a scoop that would make his name. But what was the story he was investigating? And who was trying to cover it up?
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| The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata MasseyStarring: independent-minded, Oxford-educated Perveen Mistry, who, in 1922, is Bombay's only female lawyer.
What happens: Perveen travels to the fictional principality of Satapur to help two royal widows agree on where the ten-year-old prince should be educated and finds herself dealing with palace power plays, ancient vendettas, attempted poisonings, and suspicious deaths.
Series alert: This is the atmospheric follow-up to last year's highly acclaimed The Widows of Malabar Hill. |
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The scholar
by Dervla McTiernan
When Dr. Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit-and-run outside Galway University early one morning, she calls her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID that will put this crime at the center of a scandal--her card identifies her as Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland's most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy--it has even funded Emma's own ground-breaking research. As the murder investigation twists in unexpected ways and Cormac's running of the case comes under scrutiny from the department and his colleagues, he is forced to question himself and the beliefs that he has long held as truths. Who really is Emma? And who is Carline Darcy? A gripping and atmospheric follow-up to The Ruin, an "expertly plotted, complex web of secrets that refuse to stay hidden" (Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King's Daughter), The Scholar is perfect for fans of Tana French and Flynn Berry
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| The Unquiet Heart by Kaite WelshEdinburgh, 1893: Aspiring physician Sarah Gilchrist finishes her first semester at medical school even as her mother matches her with a dull fiancé she doesn't want -- but when he's arrested for murder, Sarah feels compelled to investigate.
Series alert: This is the richly detailed 2nd book in the Sarah Gilchrist mysteries, which began with The Wages of Sin.
For fans of: historical mysteries featuring intelligent women, especially ones who work in medicine, such as Ariana Franklin's Adelia Aguilar series (the 1st is Mistress of the Art of Death) and E.S. Thomson's Jem Flockhart novels (which starts with Beloved Poison). |
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If You Like: Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie
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The Trespasser
by Tana French
Police Procedural. An ongoing campaign to intimidate her out of the Murder Squad complicates Detective Antoinette Conway's high-pressure investigation into the death of a highly polished and unsettlingly familiar woman whose demise reveals a growing number of secrets. By the Edgar Award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of In the Woods.
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| The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert GalbraithThe opening: PI Cormoran Strike, a 35-year-old Army vet who lost a leg in Afghanistan, has spent the night in his bare-bones London office after a relationship-ending fight with his girlfriend when Robin, the new temp secretary he can't afford, arrives.
What happens next: Robin proves herself quite useful as the two investigate the suspicious death of a famous model in this 1st mystery by Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling.
Why Kate Atkinson fans might like it: intricate plotting; dark humor; and a troubled PI who uses classic detective skills to solve crimes. |
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| Missing, Presumed: A Novel by Susie SteinerIntroducing: smart, single (but lonely and looking) DS Manon Bradshaw.
What it's about: Using multiple narrators, this intricate police procedural and 1st in a series follows the high-profile case of a missing Cambridge graduate student. Meanwhile, the appealing Manon also looks into the death of a black teen and tries to help his young brother.
Why Kate Atkinson fans might like it: the Cambridge setting, authentic characters, engaging story, and the interplay of the personal and professional. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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