by Tracy Gardner ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 2021
A lively combination of mystery, romance, and gemology that will appeal to fans of Jane K. Cleland and Paige Shelton.
A fabulous gemstone is a magnet for murder.
In a rousing series debut, Gardner introduces 25-year-old Avery Ayers and her sister, Tilly, a high school senior, who are still recovering from the deaths of their parents in a car accident almost a year ago. While their Aunt Midge is sharing their suburban New York home, they also use her apartment in Manhattan, where Avery has taken her parents’ place at their art and antiques appraisal business. When a note in their father’s handwriting is slipped through their mail slot, they’re all deeply disturbed. The note says, "You must decline the contract. Your life is at stake." The note may refer to a job Avery is planning to start that day, authenticating a stone for the Museum of Antiquities. The stone, owned by a reclusive man who claims to have found it at a flea market in Munich, may be a priceless ruby or a much less expensive spinel—and it might even be a famously missing ruby from the museum's most important piece, the Emperor's Twins medallion. Avery discovers that her parents had worked on authenticating the remaining ruby eye in the Emperor’s Twins medallion just before their deaths and notices odd things such as the fact that the case of her parents’ deaths has not been closed by the police. Avery receives another mysterious note telling her to find someone named Art at the museum. Art Smith turns out to be a remarkably closemouthed police detective masquerading as one of the guards protecting the gem. After searching through the papers her parents stored at home, Avery is attacked and her aunt’s dog injured by a violent intruder. Now she can only trust her family and the attractive detective as they work to solve the puzzle of the ruby and discover who is willing to kill for it.
A lively combination of mystery, romance, and gemology that will appeal to fans of Jane K. Cleland and Paige Shelton.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64385-659-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Kathy Reichs
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by Kathy Reichs
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by Kathy Reichs
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New York Times Bestseller
by Janet Evanovich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2024
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
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New York Times Bestseller
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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