Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Her ten children are mostly light, too. They constitute the only world she rules and controls. Her power over them is all she has in an otherwise cruel and uncaring universe.
Rozelle favors her light-skinned kids, but Tangy Mae, 13, her darkest-complected child, is the brightest. She desperately wants to continue with her education. Her mother, however, has other plans. Rozelle wants her daughter to work cleaning houses for whites, like she does, and accompany her to the “Farmhouse,” where Rozelle earns extra money bedding men. Tangy Mae, she’s decided, is of age.
This is the story from an era when life’s possibilities for an African-American were unimaginably different.
@20@Set in the same fictional London as his CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning Slough House spy series, Mick Herron now introduces Tom Bettany, a man with a violent past and only one thing to live for: Avenging his son@12@s death.@21@@16@@16@ Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn@12@t know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead@95@mdash;Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking pot.@16@@16@Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London@95@#160;to find out the truth about his son@12@s death. Maybe it@12@s the guilt he feels about losing touch with Liam that@12@s gnawing at him, or maybe he@12@s actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he@12@ll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might have thought he@12@d left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody ever really walks away.@16@@16@@16@@18@From the Hardcover edition.@19@
Oxford private investigator Zoë Boehm struggles with the aftereffects of her violent past as she hunts for a killer--or has she become the hunted?
Zoë Boehm has harbored a distinct aversion to death ever since she shot the man intent on killing her. So when Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline’s boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she’s never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he’s found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim, or prove to be her salvation from a paralyzing fear?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Oxford private detective Zoë Boehm turns up dead in Newcastle, launching her friend Sarah Tucker into an investigation with several leads--but no one she can trust.
When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing the jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s former sparring partner Gerard Inchon to the same broken-down hotel where she’s staying? Coincidence is an excuse that soon appears pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Introduction by Louise Penny
A woman's body has been found floating in a large reservoir just south of Bristol. In order to solve the mystery of the "Lady in the Lake," Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must locate two missing letters attributed to Jane Austen and defy his superiors on the force to save a woman unjustly accused of murder. This is the first of the Peter Diamond series; it won the 1992 Anthony Boucher Award for Best Mystery Novel.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
In his time investigating crimes for both the Boston cops and General Ike's European forces, Lieutenant Billy Boyle hasn't encountered a serial killer. But now it looks like he may--a serial killer with a particularly frightening agenda.
Two officers from the American troops stationed in Caserta, Italy, not far from Naples, have been found murdered. Lieutenant Norman Landry was found behind a supply tent with his neck snapped. Captain Max Galante, MD, was strangled on the same night, and his body left in a garden outside HQ. The MOs are completely different, and it seems like the officers had no connection to each other, but one frightening fact links the murders: each body was discovered with a single playing card: the Lieutenant, the ten of hearts; the Captain, the jack of hearts. The message seems to be clear--if the murderer isn't apprehended, the higher ranks will be next.
Billy is sent to Italy for the investigation, which grows increasingly sinister. But he has other things on his mind, too. His girlfriend, Diana, is on a very dangerous spy mission, and Billy doesn't know when--or if--he'll see her again. To make matters worse, Billy's just learned that his baby brother, Danny, is being sent over to Europe as an infantry replacement, an incredibly dangerous assignment. And all around him, he sees GIs suffering from combat fatigue preparing for another battle. As the invasion at Anzio begins, Billy needs to keep a cool head amidst fear and terror as the killer calculates his next moves.
Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help--even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.
Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.
Praise for Peter Lovesey:
“Lovesey’s restrained wit and charming cast ensure him a place in the winner’s circle.”--Entertainment Weekly
“A master of black humor and macabre plot twists.”--The New York Times Book Review
“One of Britain’s foremost mystery novelists.”--Houston Chronicle
“Lovesey is a master.”--The Washington Post Book World
“One of the delights of contemporary crime fi ction.”--The Wall Street Journal
Gemma loathes her sleazy boss; Jo is her confidante. On a double date with Rick and Jake, they discuss forming a mutual murder society, in jest of course. The next day, Jo, walking on Selsey Beach, discovers the corpse of a drowned woman, a stranger. But one of the men in the lineup at the police station is Gemma’s date Jake, who Jo rather fancies.
Then Gemma and Jo discover the corpse of Fiona, Gemma’s annoying colleague from work. And Gemma’s boss is missing. When an older woman whom Rick was involved with is drowned in her pool, the police begin to close in.
Can this outbreak of deaths by drowning be coincidental? Or has the joke gone too far?
Peter Lovesey has been awarded the Silver, Gold, and Diamond Daggers by the British Crime Writers’ Association. This is his third mystery featuring Inspector Hen Mallin.
From the Hardcover edition.
The fourth investigation in the nationaly bestselling Swedish detective series
Irene Huss is a former jujitsu champion, a mother of twin teenage girls, the wife of a successful chef, and a Detective Inspector in the Violent Crimes Unit in Göteborg, Sweden. And now she’s back in the gripping follow-up to Detective Inspector Huss. One nurse lies dead and another vanishes after a local hospital is hit by a blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her rounds, but Nurse Tekla died sixty years ago. Irene Huss has the challenge of disentangling wandering ghosts and complex human relationships to get to the bottom of this intriguing case.
The twelfth Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
Lost secrets of the Parisian Knights Templar, dangerous Chinatown sweatshops, dirty policemen, and botched affairs of the heart--the 12th Aimée Leduc mystery is the most exciting yet!
Aimée Leduc is happy her longtime business partner René has found a girlfriend. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never returns to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi’s photo in his wallet.
Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can’t figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi’s disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France’s secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they’re keeping tabs on Aimée. What has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself--and her friends--back out of it alive?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
“Townsend’s wickedly funny novels are another reason to be grateful for the right of free speech.”--San Francisco Chronicle
“Townsend is [a] comic genius.”--The Village Voice (a Top Shelf selection)
“The latest careening satire to emerge from Sue Townsend’s wickedly literary rocket launcher, combining love, politics and credit-card debacle into a not-to-be-missed novel.”--The Seattle Times
“Complex, funny and wrenching.”--Publishers Weekly
Adrian Mole, now age thirty-four and three quarters, needs proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction so he can get a refund from a travel agency of the deposit he paid on a trip to Cyprus. Naturally, he writes to Tony Blair for some evidence.
He’s engaged to Marigold, but obsessed with her voluptuous sister. And he is so deeply in debt to banks and credit card companies that it would take more than twice his monthly salary to ever repay them. He needs a guest speaker for his creative writing group’s dinner in Leicestershire and wonders if the prime minister’s wife is available.
In short, Adrian is back in true form, unable--like so many people we know, but of course, not us--to admit that the world does not revolve around him. But recognizing the universal core of Adrian’s dilemmas is what makes them so agonizingly funny.
From the Trae Paperback edition.
An anonymous Tokyo pickpocket finds his past catching up with him when his first partner reappears in his life and enlists him for a seemingly uncomplicated heist involving a prominent politician who is subsequently found dead.
The eighth Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery
Dr. Siri never really wanted to be Laos’s national coroner. And now that he is in his mid-70s, he longs to spend some time with his wife before the untimely death that is sure to befall him, according to the local transvestite fortune-teller. But retirement will have to wait (again) until he has completed one last job for the Lao government: supervising an excavation for the remains of a US fighter pilot who went down in the remote northern Lao jungle ten years earlier. And the stakes are high. The presence of American soldiers in Laos is controversial, and the search party includes high-level politicians and scientists. So when a member of the party is found dead, Dr. Siri suspects it may not have been an accident. Can Dr. Siri get to the bottom of the MIA pilot’s mysterious story before the body count rises and the fortune-teller’s prediction comes true?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
In the wake of the murders of three victims with shadowy links to an ancient City of London livery company, Lord Francis Powerscourt investigates strange markings on the bodies and discovers that each victim had been recently visited by the company's leader.
On a crowded train to Seoul from Pusan, a Korean woman is trapped in the bathroom and brutally raped in front of her children. Eyewitness account indicate the culprit was a white man, most likely a US serviceman. By the time Sergeant George Sueño of the US 8th Army is called in to investigate, the rapist has disappeared, and the Korean witnesses have had a chance to get very angry about the situation--and all it represents. Many Koreans are resentful of the continued American presence in Korea, and George has a delicate situation on his hands.
Of course, the US Army wants to do what they can to ensure they are not connected to the crime. If he wants to see justice done, George is going to have to carry out his investigation against the direct orders of his own office, who have assigned him and his partner, Ernie Bascom, a frivolous job of tagging along with an all-female American country band and investigating their missing supplies. But when a second Korean woman is attacked--and this time ends up dead--8th Army can't ignore the serial rapist anymore. With the help of the legendary Korean investigator known as Mr. Kill, George and Ernie embark on what may just be the most dangerous case of their careers.
Fifteen-year-old Lynn Marie Sugrue is doing her best to make it through a difficult summer. Her mother works long hours as a nurse, and Lynn suspects that her mother’s pill-popping boyfriend has enlisted her in his petty criminal enterprises. Lynn finds refuge in online flirtations, eventually meeting up with a troubled young soldier, Logan Loy, and inviting him home. When he’s forced to stay over in a storage space accessible through her closet, and the Army subsequently lists him as AWOL, she realizes that he’s the one thing in her life that she can control. Meanwhile, her mother’s boyfriend is on the receiving end of a series of increasingly violent threats, which places Lynn squarely in the cross-hairs.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Pop diva, Clarion Calhoun, has packed the house with a celebrity appearance in Bath's Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she's pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face.
When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage. As Diamond digs deeper, he uncovers rivalries among the cast and crew and is forced to confront his own mysterious and deep-seated theatre phobia to find the killer.
When an eccentric earl who loved to host parties and stage amateur plays dies under suspicious circumstances, an accidental investigation by Antonia and Payne reveals numerous possible suspects and a bizarre will.
The sixth Sergeant Cribb investigation set in the seedy underbelly of Victorian London
The spiritualist movement has captivated a segment of Victorian London: manifestations, the occult, and “sensitives” are in vogue. When séance sites become targets for theft, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray are on the case. But then someone murders the medium, and the two find themselves rubbing shoulders with some rather eccentric suspects.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
What’s a twenty-two-year-old Irish American cop who’s never been out of Massachusetts before doing at Beardsley Hall, an English country house, having lunch with King Haakon of Norway? Billy Boyle himself wonders. Back home in Southie, he’d barely made detective when war was declared. Unwilling to fight--and perhaps die--for England, he was relieved when his mother wangled a job for him on the staff of a general married to her distant cousin. But the general turns out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose headquarters are in London, which is undergoing the Blitz. And Uncle Ike wants Billy to be his personal investigator.
Billy is dispatched to the seat of the Norwegian government in exile. Operation Jupiter, the impending invasion of Norway, is being planned, but it is feared that there is a German spy amongst the Norwegians.
Billy doubts his own abilities, with good reason. A theft and two murders test his investigative powers, but Billy proves to be a better detective than he or anyone else expected.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
