by Jenn McKinlay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019
A fast-paced mystery that provides a chilling look at how difficult it is to get rid of a stalker.
A librarian and her friends must solve a murder to ensure that she’ll live long enough to get married.
Lindsey Norris and her fiance, Capt. Mike Sullivan, are planning a small wedding on one of the Thumb Islands near the town of Briar Creek, Connecticut, where Lindsey is the library director and Sully runs a charter boat business (Hitting the Books, 2018, etc.). All Lindsey’s plans are jeopardized by an innocuous middle-aged man who turns up at the library seeking information on roses. New to the area, Aaron Grady fears that his rose garden won’t survive the drought that’s searing the area. In response to Lindsey’s assistance, Grady sends her a thank-you note. Then he turns up with a bunch of roses, waiting two hours and quizzing the staff, who all agree that he seems unnaturally fixated on her. When Grady turns up at her house with more roses, she firmly tells him their relationship is limited to that of a librarian and a library patron. Apparently shocked, he leaves her, her friend Beth, and Beth’s husband, Aidan, whom she called before opening the door, to explain to an annoyed Sully what’s been going on. Grady continues to stalk Lindsey, even watching her try on wedding dresses. Sully and Robbie Vine, an actor who knows a thing or two about stalkers, teach the library staff some self-defense moves, and Robbie’s girlfriend, police chief Emma Plewicki, adds a few tips, but nobody can stop Grady from making Lindsey’s life hell. The stalking ends only when Grady turns up dead outside the library, leaving Lindsey and Sully prime suspects. Grady’s wife, Sylvia, accuses Lindsey of trying to steal her husband and Sully of murdering him. It will take all the research skills of Lindsey and her staff to uncover the real motive for the murder.
A fast-paced mystery that provides a chilling look at how difficult it is to get rid of a stalker.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10003-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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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