In the summer of 1925, ambitious and beautiful New York jazz performer Lizzie Crane and her troupe land a plum job that could give them their big career break: a week-long engagement celebration for the daughter of a wealthy (and shady) industrialist to a Russian count. But Lizzie barely has time to enjoy her good luck--which includes the amorous attentions of the heir to her employer's vast fortune--before the group's saxophonist is stabbed to death. The local police suspect her and her musician friends and place them under house arrest, where they're at the mercy of the very people who have the most to lose if the murder is solved. As Lizzie delves into her slain colleague's mysterious past, she discovers secrets worth killing to protect and risks her own life in the process.

Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife: A Lizzie Crane Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

ALEXANDER, SKYE

Mystery

Historia

Product Description Shane Cleary is living a comfortable life. He has money. He has a girl. But a visit from a friend shakes up his status quo. Chess may be the metaphor, but the case is one that lifts the lid on problems nobody in Boston wants to talk about. Murder. Race. Class. It's all Hush Hush. Neither the crime nor the verdict is simple, and yet it is Black and White. Shane will need more than a suit of armor if he wants to play knight. Can Justice be found? And at what cost? Review "HUSH HUSHis filled with biting wisdom, savory dialogue, and the authentic flavor of 70's Boston."-Cheryl Head, author of the Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series. "Boston. Dodgy cops. Class. Race. Murder. It's all here, and there's enough grit on the pages to grind your teeth down. Loved it."-Tracy Clark, Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author of the highly acclaimed Chicago Mystery series. "HUSH HUSH is brutally honest, stunning and thoroughly engaging. When it comes to exciting and provocative mysteries, Valjan is the real deal!"-Stephen Mack Jones, Hammett Prize, Nero Award-winning author of the August Snow series "With compelling characters, sharp prose and wit, and a slew of historical facts, this clever and twisty mystery's topic is as poignant today as it was then."-Marco Carocari, author of Blackout "Crisply written and richly detailed, it's 70's Boston where race, class, and the dark secrets fuel the deadliest of deceptions. Despite the title, people will be talking about HUSH HUSH. Highly recommended."-James L'Etoile, author of Black Label, At What Cost, and Bury the Past. "With clear and unflinching prose, [HUSH HUSH] brings a voice to issues of race and class through compelling and honest characters."-Meredith Doench, author of the Luce Hansen Thriller series   "Precise and powerful...written in vivid, unforgettable prose."-Lori Robbins, author of the On Pointe Mystery series About the Author Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston's South End. He is the author of the Roma Series and Company Files (Winter Goose Publishing) and the Shane Cleary series (Level Best Books). His second Company File novel, The Naming Game, was a finalist for the Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery and the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original in 2020. Gabriel is a member of the Historical Novel Society, International Thriller Writer (ITW), and Sisters in Crime.

Hush Hush: A Shane Cleary Mystery

Valjan, Gabriel

Review\nThis is a well written holiday cozy mystery featuring a closed group of high school friends and their mentor and teacher. They plan to have a reunion after 10 years to see how they're all getting along in life. It turns out that despite their early promise, they're divorced, neurotic, angry, or even in prison. One by one they begin to die violently after a malevolent visit from Santa Claus.\nIt is a product of the time it was written, although there are some pithy observations about the unfair nature of business opportunities for women at the time and general attitudes about gender roles and rigid class differences between the "haves" and the "have nots" which will resonate with modern readers.\nThe manuscript has not been edited for modern audiences, so much of the dialogue seems somewhat stilted and retro. It fits very well with the story, but readers should remember that it's a vintage work approaching 70ish years of age.\nThe denouement and resolution were unexpected but not unsatisfying. --Annie Buchanan\nChristmas Calamities... 
A short vintage mystery peppered with well drawn, if quite rightly unlikeable, cast of characters populating a fast paced plot set Christmastime. An entertaining tale which will undoubtedly appeal to aficionados of the Golden Age of Crime. Another pleasing and wholly appreciated addition. 
--Ruth Giles\nThey call themselves the Big Five and a Half.\nIn the aftermath of World War II, six high school students-rich, ambitious, handsome-are groomed for ultimate success by their teacher, Mr. Northcliffe. At their farewell picnic in Mariposa, they plan to throw a splendid reunion in ten years' time on Christmas Day-to see who is the most successful of them all.\nThe day of the reunion finds the Big Five and a Half in disarray-one divorced, one in prison... and almost all of them unhappy. Life has not turned out how most of them had hoped. On Christmas morning, a mysterious man in a Santa Claus suit visits individuals in the group with a tempting treat. It turns out that the Big Five and a Half were groomed well...for ultimate death!

Slay Bells: A Vintage Mystery

Boyd, Eunice Mays

Aden, Elizabeth Reed

In post-WWII San Francisco, Dune House is an oddity-a sprawling, heavily-gated mansion with no telephone, no radio, and no electricity. The city is abuzz when it learns that Julia Paget, the rich, reclusive mistress of Dune House, is conducting a search for her long-lost heir.\nWhen newly-engaged Lark Williams visits Dune House to find the truth, Julia Paget forbids her from leaving. As Lark plans her treacherous escape, she uncovers several unnerving secrets. The tragic drowning of Julia Paget's sister decades earlier. An enigmatic cousin named Benson Drew. Opera music being sung outside underneath the moonlight. The mysterious photograph that could reveal the most shocking secret of all-But first, she must get out of Dune House alive!

Dune House: A Vintage Mystery

Product Description In 1962, Dot Morgan was told the best thing she could do besides being a nurse or teacher was to learn to type. While attending secretarial school, she decides to rub elbows with an elite ladies' club to help her father with a struggling campaign for city council. Instead of getting the help she sought, Dot is thrown into a world of adultery, deceit, and murder when one of the town's sons is found dead. Time to put that 45 on the record player and bring out your best dance moves in The Twist and Shout Murder. About the Author Teresa Trent writes historical mysteries, cozy mysteries, romance and short stories. She lives in South Texas with her husband and son with Down syndrome and splits her time between writing and caretaking.

The Twist and Shout Murder: A Swinging Sixties Mystery

Trent, Teresa

July 1936. Toronto is in the grip of a deadly heat wave. Horses are dropping in the street. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person private-investigation firm owned by T. Gilmore. 
Anti-Semitism and murder in "Toronto the Good" in the depths of the Great Depression provide the historical background for this satisfying mystery. The fabric of the City of Toronto is as fully realized in Heat Wave as it is in all the Detective Murdoch books. 
A hate-letter is delivered to Charlotte's boss, who leaves the matter in Charlotte's hands to investigate. On the same day, Hilliard Taylor, a First World War veteran who, together with three other former prisoners-of-war, operates the Paradise Café, seeks the firm's assistance in uncovering what he believes is the systematic embezzlement of the Café. These two events, seemingly unrelated, come together and bring to life characters as real to the reader as those of the Detective Murdoch series. 
The first book in the Paradise Café series, featuring Charlotte Frayne, Heat Wave promises fans of Maureen Jennings's mysteries the beginning of a long and enjoyable relationship.

Heat Wave: A Paradise Cafe Mystery

Jennings, Maureen

November Rain: A Paradise Cafe Mystery

The in-laws are aghast when Rose Westmoreland boards a train alone, bound for the far edge of the country in search of her missing husband. Unthinkable for a lady in 1911. Now she's in El Paso, a city holding its breath, anticipating a spectacle. A decisive battle of the Mexican Revolution is about to erupt right across the Rio Grande. Rose's husband, Leonard, sent there by his employer, Stoneman Petroleum, apparently first went native, then disappeared, leaving behind a fiery mistress and rumors he was sent to offer the rebels money in exchange for favorable drilling rights. Alone in this liminal place, Rose is befriended by two women, a retired thespian and a young Mexican expatriate, who suggest coping methods that would throw the folks back in Shaker Heights into a tizzy. A reporter recruits Rose, who is a talented amateur photographer, to immortalize the Mexican leaders: a sardonic, strawberry soda-sipping Pancho Villa and visionary Francisco Madero, who communes with the shades of Napoleon and Beníto Juárez. Rose is caught up in the intrigue of the Revolution, the unfamiliar culture of the borderlands, and the deadly competition between international oil companies. When the only person to offer real information about Leonard is killed by what is, perhaps, a stray bullet, she finds her own life in danger. Her determination to uncover the truth reveals hidden secrets and endangers both the memory of her husband and those around her.

Death in the Time of Pancho Villa: A Rose in Old El Paso Mystery

Literature & Fiction

Marshall, Sandra

Genre Fiction

What's the best way to purge an unfaithful husband? Become a spy for British Intelligence, of course.Desperate to get out of London, and determined to help the war effort and stop thinking about her philandering husband, Fiona Figg volunteers to go undercover.At Ravenswick Abbey a charming South African war correspondent has tongues wagging. His friends say he's a crack huntsman. The War Office is convinced he's a traitor. Fiona thinks he's a pompous prig. What sort of name is Fredrick Fredricks anyway? Too bad Fiona doesn't own a Wolseley pith helmet. At Ravenswick a murderer is on the prowl, and it's not just the big-game hunter who's ready to pounce.

Betrayal at Ravenswick: A Fiona Figg Mystery

Kelly, Oliver

Against his better judgment, Hollywood-hating private investigator Nate Ross takes on a Tinseltown case in the spring of 1938. It sounds like a milk run: find an alcoholic screenwriter whose absence is stalling production on Republic Pictures' latest Western. But when the missing rummy turns up dead, and Nate learns that somebody's going to lethal lengths to keep Stardust Trail from being made, his simple case becomes far more complex, and deadly. He finds himself traveling in unfamiliar territory: the world of B-movie cowboys, and the lines between the "reel" West and the real West begin to blur as Nate wrangles a twisted case of murder and sabotage pointing back nearly forty years to a bloody, real-life "Wild West" crime.

Stardust Trail: A Nate Ross Novel

Sanders, J. R.

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