FICTION
Released: June 26, 2012
"Unger knows how to write a taut thriller, but one improbable character keeps this book from being extraordinary."
Unger's latest offers a triumvirate of strong women pitted against a shared past and dangerous future.
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FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"A tepid case that heats up only when Matthews (Bet Your Bones, 2011, etc.) delves into Norse myths. "
FICTION
Released: June 12, 2012
"Nobody but Lovesey could thump out a gritty procedural yet instill Bath with so much charm and history that readers will have to put it on their bucket lists."
How many mistakes can Detective Superintendent Diamond make and still catch the Somerset Sniper?
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"The immediacy of Duns' writing grabs and suspends the reader in a beautifully realized heartbeat of recent history."
FICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"Not all the details of the complex investigation are equally compelling, but the quality of Kelly's prose and the ongoing upstairs-downstairs relationship between the two protagonists will propel readers past the dry spots. "
For CID coppers Shaw and Valentine (
Death Toll, 2011, etc.), an unsolved murder poisons the air 20 years later.
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FICTION
Released: June 15, 2012
"Gibson creates a mystery as laid-back and mellow as her heroine. "
FICTION
Released: June 12, 2012
"This great novel should put Billingham in the same league as Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, John Harvey and Denise Mina. "
FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"Complex but lumpy, perhaps because of the true-crime roots a closing note reveals. But there's no mistaking Gruley's fierce love for his frigid hamlet. "
The inexplicable murder of his mother's dearest friend sends Upper Michigan journalist Gus Carpenter, of the dying
Pine County Pilot, back for another bracing trip to his town's endlessly sordid past.
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FICTION
Released: June 19, 2012
"Exotic locale. Credible heroics. Vicarious thrills. Fans will want more, and soon."
If you have the right incentives, dollars in the billions can be made in Shanghai, where capitalism wrestles with communism. So says Pearson (
In Harm's Way, 2010, etc.) in this first in a new series of thrillers.
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FICTION
Released: June 12, 2012
"First-time novelist Cotto's shaggy, dreamlike saga begins with a curse and ends with a redemption of sorts. What's in between is a lot less clear. "
A highly unlikely detective pursues the even more unlikely trail of a missing man during Holy Week in Brooklyn.
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FICTION
Released: June 19, 2012
"By-the-numbers plotting, with a killer whose motivations make you wonder how he's lasted so long; a police hero who's bound to return in further installments; and some meals you'll remember long after the 10 fatalities have faded from memory."
Pseudonymous Jay's debut plops a killer-for-hire down in the placid Dordogne village of Taziac to produce a mashup of cloak-and-dagger and cozy replete with murder and fine dining.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"An alarming reminder of how sexist life was back in the '40s and how the Mafia took root in Sicily."
FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"A generally satisfying puzzler whose hero takes a little too long to connect the dots."
DI Andy Horton (
Blood on the Sand, 2010, etc.) misses the mark when he mistakes a murder for an accidental drowning.
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FICTION
Released: May 29, 2012
"If you enjoy multiplayer shooting games and know or want to learn more about weapons systems, this book is for you."
Capitalizing on the success of the memoir Wasdin wrote with Stephen Templin,
Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper (2011), the pair returns with a cartoonish novel.
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FICTION
Released: July 10, 2012
"A promising kickoff to a planned trilogy. For Winters (Bedbugs, 2011, etc.), the beauty is in the details rather than the plot's grim main thrust."
FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"Davidson's latest seems to be less interested in presenting new action than in laying groundwork for further volumes in her series (Undead and Undermined, 2011, etc.). The same mixture as before, but with more Game of Thrones references."
FICTION
Released: June 14, 2012
"Sure to unsettle readers who check their investments 10 times a day. "
Fascinating, if uneven, debut thriller that links Wall Street treachery to international terrorism.
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FICTION
Released: June 19, 2012
"A light thriller with romantic elements."
Amanda Gleason's infant son, Justin, is fighting for his life, and only his father can save him. But his father, Paul Everett, is dead. Or is he?
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FICTION
Released: June 12, 2012
"The novel recalls a time when black and white applied to both movies and moral choices. It's a tale with wide appeal."
A historical spy novel that takes the reader back to the 1930s, when Europe hurtled toward the abyss.
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FICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"Talton (Deadline Man, 2010, etc.) crafts a solid mystery while telling the engrossing, sometimes poignant story of a cop with a cane who refuses to be pigeonholed."
FICTION
Released: April 1, 2012
"A veteran cop herself, Dial (The Broken Blue Line, 2010, etc.) does authenticity to the max, and readers will like that. But it's tough, vulnerable, never-say-die Josie that they'll love. "
FICTION
Released: May 29, 2012
"First-timer Heaberlin combines equal parts gruesome (a mummified child's finger) and poignant (Tommie's niece's brain tumor) with perhaps a smidgen too many secrets for a single plot. "
FICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"Dog lovers will cheer this fast-paced tale that shows the worst and the best of man and beast."
FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"Not to worry: Megan's wedding goes off without a hitch; Kelly gets her man, or vice versa; and somewhere along the line the cops arrest Zoe's killer. Whew."
A Fort Connor bride's path to the hymeneal altar is impeded by several crises that befall her friends, her fellow knitters and her seamstress, including the latter's murder.
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FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"But when the goose bumps recede, there are several major plot holes."
FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"Dodging questions about why he's working a cold case when there's so much at stake in the volatile present, Raveneau connects the dots methodically and convincingly, though with little sense of urgency. "
The coldest of cold cases meets the hottest of hot-button crimes for San Francisco's Inspector Ben Raveneau (
A Killing in China Basin,
2011).
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"Munger's third Dead Detective case (Angel Interrupted, 2010, etc.) is a police procedural with a twist. Kevin's latest attempt at redemption is filled with anger and anguish right up to the exciting climax."
FICTION
Released: May 8, 2012
"This novel isn't better than average as a thriller, but it provides plenty of food for thought about religious artifacts and their role in people's lives."
Can the ancient bones discovered in a stone chest in Avignon, France, possibly be the remains of Jesus of Nazareth? Urgently summoned from the scene of a more mundane horrible killing in Tennessee to find out, forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton investigates with the Vatican and a religious zealot bearing down on him.
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FICTION
Released: Aug. 8, 2012
A financial consultant, back in Washington years after the suicide of her congressman husband, battles a hydra-headed extragovernmental agency whose existence she's only dimly aware of.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"Liberty's fifth case (When the Devil Drives, 2011, etc.) nicely balances the exotic history of the East India Company, whose private army rules India for British gain, with a mystery that offers a wide range of possible evildoers."
The sudden return of Liberty Lane's brother Tom from India embroils them both in a delicate and dangerous case.
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FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"A complex, heartfelt, rather grueling procedural, middling for the current bumper crop of Scandinavian imports, and first of a series of four seasonal cases for Malin."
Kallentoft's first English-language translation pits Detective Inspector Malin Fors against a killer who committed an unspeakably ritualistic murder.
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FICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"The fourth case for a sleuth who doesn't suffer fools gladly (Prey on Patmos, 2011, etc.) pairs a crisp style with a complex portrait of contemporary Greece to bolster another solid whodunit."
What worries Chief Inspector Kaldis more, his inability to solve an incendiary murder or his impending nuptials?
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FICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"Although nothing much seems to happen in the second installment of the Felix Breit saga (The Dower House, 2011), the times are exciting and the characters well-enough drawn to whet the appetite for more."
An exploration of the day-to-day world of a disparate group of people rebuilding their lives in postwar England.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"The killer is surprisingly lightweight for someone of Atkins' formidable ability to evoke evil. And Lillian isn't a patch on Jessica Fletcher, still less Miss Marple. First of a series."
Generally scarifying Atkins (
Mother's Milk,
2009, etc.) dials down the violence, though not the body count, in a demi-cozy that asks who's declared war on the antique dealers of Grenville, Conn.
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FICTION
Released: May 29, 2012
"Classic Cussler: testosterone-driven action, over-the-horizon technical wizardry, beautiful and talented women and exotic locations."
Cussler (
Devil's Gate, 2011, etc.), with co-author Brown, dips into the NUMA Files for another Kurt Austin action-on-the-sea escapade.
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