When her husband's job requires that they relocate to a small village in Dorset, Anna becomes absorbed in researching local history for her second novel. Quaint little Abbots Newton turns out to have been home to a notorious murderess. In fact, the murderess lived in Anna's house. In fact there's no use borrowing trouble, is there? Not when trouble keeps turning up on Anna's doorstep, and her new research project is looking more and more like obsession.

In the Spider's House (A Felony & Mayhem Mystery)

Literature & Fiction

Diamond, Sarah

Genre Fiction

Felony & Mayhem

The British don’t belong in Africa. Their skins are too pale, their clothing too heavy and elaborate, their morality all wrong. And yet here they are in 1912 in the British Protectorate of East Africa, tangled in an uneasy peace with the Sultan of Zanzibar. Much of the tangle in this new mystery in Alfieri’s East Africa series concerns the slave trade. The British have outlawed it, but, well, it’s all a matter of who you know and who you owe, isn’t it? That slippery morality infuriates Vera Tolliver, a Scottish missionary’s daughter and the bride of a English police officer, whose job it is to enforce the law... after he figures out what it is. The murder of a runaway slave only increases the complications, especially because a longtime friend of Vera’s family is the likeliest suspect. Meanwhile both the British government and the Sultanate sail above it all, as though they had nothing to do with the problem. But both Vera and Tolliver could tell you that official fingers are knotted into the tangle’s every strand.

The Idol of Mombasa: Vera & Tolliver #2 (Vera and Tolliver)

Alfieri, Annamaria

United States

John Norman Harris' The Weird World of Wes Beattie, published in 1963, is often called the first Canadian mystery novel. That's probably stretching things: Let's just call it a wonderfully funny Canadian mystery novel, with Hair of the Dog its delightful successor. Both feature Sidney Grant, a magnificently cranky young lawyer with a loathing for social hypocrisies and a fondness for poking at them. Here, poking away alongside him is Sidney's new bride, a smart and smart-alecky character in her own right, who shares Sid's indignation when a local mobster gets blamed for the murder of a rich old lady. It's not that she liked the old lady. And she certainly doesn't like the mobster. But the facts of the case against the mobster simply don't add up. And no matter how many people would like them to keep their mouths shut, June and Sidney can't hang with the New Math. Wes Beattie has been called the love-child of Agatha Christie and PG Woodhouse, and Hair of the Dog is its chuckling little brother.

Hair of the Dog

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Harris, John Norman

Mystery

Justin Tolliver is on the brink of an enormous change. The younger son of an English peer―that is, the son with no money and no prospects―he had joined the police force in British East Africa, full of dreams of bringing His Majesty's justice to a dark and savage world. But it's 1913, and with his faith in the British government in tatters, Justin is opting instead for life as an African farmer and a newly minted family-man. It is his wife, Vera, who has helped him put aside images of darkness and come to see Africa, instead, as all but lit from within. Even as Justin is embracing Africa, Vera's faith in the land is being tested, as she is brought face to face with terrible brutalities and her own naiveté. There are murders, yes, and Justin and Vera will take a hand in solving them. But when the crimes are solved and the killers brought to justice, Justin and Vera and eventually their young son will have to reckon with levels of injustice far beyond anything they had understood.

The Blasphemers: Vera & Tolliver #3 (Vera and Tolliver)

Product Description Justin Tolliver is on the brink of an enormous change. The younger son of an English peer―that is, the son with no money and no prospects―he had joined the police force in British East Africa, full of dreams of bringing His Majesty's justice to a dark and savage world. But it's 1913, and with his faith in the British government in tatters, Justin is opting instead for life as an African farmer and a newly minted family-man. It is his wife, Vera, who has helped him put aside images of darkness and come to see Africa, instead, as all but lit from within. Even as Justin is embracing Africa, Vera's faith in the land is being tested, as she is brought face to face with terrible brutalities and her own naiveté. There are murders, yes, and Justin and Vera will take a hand in solving them. But when the crimes are solved and the killers brought to justice, Justin and Vera and eventually their young son will have to reckon with levels of injustice far beyond anything they had understood. About the Author Annamaria Alfieri, actually named Patricia King, began writing stories at the age of nine and, as she puts it, never stopped. After writing a number of well-received nonfiction books that landed her an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, she went on a trip to Bolivia that inspired her to write her first mystery novel. It wasn't until she began writing fiction that King took on the pseudonym Annamaria Alfieri, a combination of her mother and grandmother's names, so as not to be confused with four other Patricia King novelists. She lives in New York City.

The Blasphemers

Theater companies are notorious hotbeds of intrigue, and few are more intriguing than the company currently in residence at Oxford University. Center-stage is the beautiful, malicious Yseut, a mediocre actress with a stellar talent for destroying men. Rounding out the cast are more than a few of her past and present conquests, and the women who love them. And watching from the wings is Professor Gervase Fen?scholar, wit, and fop extraordinaire?who would rather solve crimes than expound on English literature. When Yseut is murdered, Fen finally gets his wish. Gilded Fly, originally published in 1944, was both Fen's first outing and the debut of the pseudonymous Crispin (in reality, composer Bruce Montgomery).

The Case of the Gilded Fly (The First Gervase Fen Mystery) (Volume 1)

CRISPIN, Edmund

Humor & Satire

Who would sever a tongue from a living mouth? Or kill a pathetic, homeless old man? Or frighten a young doctor into silence? The questions are piling up, and Doug McHarg can't stop asking them, even when he's warned off his inquiries by his boss in the local police force, by Scotland Yard, and by increasingly professional death-threats. The pattern that emerges is that of a shadowy, immensely powerful organization, with a reach that extends to the White House and the English throne. And all that stands against them is the implacable McHarg, one discontented copper with little left to lose.

Who Guards a Prince?

Hill,Reginald

Lena Padgett was a mild-mannered grad student in a quiet Kentucky town until her sister was brutally murdered, and everything changed. Over the seven years that the killer has been in prison, Lena has honed her anger to a razor's edge, working as a private eye for women too scared to help themselves. But with her sister's killer out of jail?and high on the twisted beliefs of the religious cult that raised him?Lena is suddenly her own most desperate client. And on this go-round, she'll need every weapon she can muster to avoid becoming another lamb to the slaughter.

Satan's Lambs (Lena Padget Mysteries)

Hightower, Lynn

*Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery"Susan Wolfe is at her best depicting--and spoofing--the glitzy law firm scene. A lawyer herself, she serves her damages with skill and obvious glee." -- The New York Times Book Review"A World of captivating corruption. ... With a delicate blend of malice, suspense and sharp psychology, Wolfewinds up her story with a scene that explodes a number of myths." -- San Francisco ChronicleTweedmore & Slyde is a hot firm making a bid to be a major national player when Leo Slyde--the company's chief rainmaker, its king of the "billable hour"--is found stabbed to death in his corner office. It falls to T&S's brightest, most unjustifiably insecure young associate Howard Rickover to conduct a risky "inside job" for homicide detective Sarah Nelson. But can Howard flush out a wily murderer among lawyers who do not make it their practice to be caught unprepared--and still keep up with an associate's impossible workload?

The Last Billable Hour

Wolfe, Susan

London in the 18th century is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, a status helped along by the lack of any organized police force. Peacekeeping falls on the shoulders of parish watchmen like George Man, who stumbles on the emaciated corpse of a notorious miser, tied to a chair and left to starve to death in a boarded-up building. Just 50 years earlier, the Great Plague had devastated London, and its victims were similarly sealed in their homes to die. The Plague has recently been rumored to have re-emerged in France: Was the miser's murder a frantic attempt to stave off another epidemic? Or is a particularly devious criminal mind at work?

Man's Illegal Life (George Man Mysteries)

Heller, Keith

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