by Alexander McCall Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 2018
Readers familiar with this venerable series (The House of Unexpected Sisters, 2017, etc.) will know that the race will be...
Precious Ramotswe runs for public office.
It’s not as if there’s not already enough happening at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to claim Mma Ramotswe’s full attention. Dr. Marang, an old family friend from her native village of Mochudi, wants her help in identifying the hit-and-run driver who severely injured him and left him with a raft of medical bills to pay. Charlie, her half-time junior detective, gets his first chance to work as a solo operative when he travels to Mochudi in hopes of identifying the car that struck Dr. Marang. At the same time, Charlie, who spends the other half of his not very full professional life working as an apprentice under the benevolent eye of Mma Ramotswe’s husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is courting Queenie-Queenie, whose position as Senior Sales Consultant at This-Way Fashion House has kept him from noticing how impossibly wealthy her family is. And Mma Grace Makutsi, joint managing director of the Agency, has her first quarrel with her husband, Phuti Radiphuti, who owns the Double Comfort Furniture Store. But none of those complications cost Mma Ramotswe more sleepless nights than the promise that her old friend Mma Sylvia Potokwani, the matron at the orphan farm, has extracted from her to oppose her old nemesis Violet Sephotho in the election for the Gaborone city council, a race that will likely pivot on the plans to build the Big Fun Hotel, which promises to live up to its name, on a parcel of land adjoining the local cemetery.
Readers familiar with this venerable series (The House of Unexpected Sisters, 2017, etc.) will know that the race will be run in McCall Smith’s own patented tempo. But it bears all the quiet weight they’d expect before reaching a particularly appropriate ending.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4780-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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