Thank you Amazon for the picture

“”My dear Peabody,” said Emerson, “pray correct me if I am mistaken; but I sense a diminution of that restless ardor for living that is so noted a characteristic of yours, particularly upon occasions such as this. Since that happy day that saw us united, never a cloud has dimmed the beaming orb of matrimonial bliss; and that remarkable circumstance derives, I am certain, from the perfect communion that marks our union. Confide, I implore, in the fortunate man whose designated role is to support and shelter you, and whose greatest happiness is to share your own.””

O.K. mystery fans this one is for you; mark December 9, 2008 on your calendar. Especially if you are an Amelia Peabody fan. Elizabeth Peters is releasing Lion in the Valley and I am extremely excited about this.

The 1895-96 season promises to be an exceptional one for Amelia Peabody, her dashing Egyptologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson, and their precocious (some might say rambunctious) eight-year-old son, Ramses. The long-denied permission to dig at the pyramids of Dahshoor has finally been granted, and the much-coveted burial chamber of the Black Pyramid is now theirs for the exploring.

Before the young family exchanges the relative comfort of Cairo for the more rudimentary quarters near the excavation site, they engage a young Englishman, Donald Fraser, as a tutor and companion for Ramses, and Amelia takes a wayward young woman, Enid Debenham, under her protective wing.

But there is danger and deception in the wind that blows across the hot Egyptian sands. A brazen kidnapping attempt, a gruesome murder, and an expedition subsequently cursed by misfortune and death—all serve to alert Amelia to the likely presence of her arch nemesis, the “Master Criminal,” notorious looter of the living and the dead. But it is far more than ill-gotten riches that motivate the man known as Sethos. The evil genius has a score to settle with the meddling lady archaeologist who has sworn to deliver him to justice . . . and he’s got her dead-on in his sights.

Peters has given us an exception plot time after time, her character Amelia Peabody is one to be followed. I am hoping that Peters doesn’t disappoint on this one. It’s time to run out and find more books.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“Only one thing is missing. The book comes to a neat conclusion, with all matters settled and all the characters safe. But you and I both know the story didn’t end. That it may never end.”

I went on a mystery, not any old mystery but an interactive mystery called Dracula’s Heir written by Sam Stall.

In 1897, Archibald Constable & Company published Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the most famous horror novel of all time. For reasons still widely debated by critics, the first chapter of Dracula was cut just weeks before publication. Here, it becomes the central clue in a spine-tingling interactive mystery.

Dracula’s Heir begins ten years after the horrific events described in the original novel. Jonathan and Mina Harker are happily married and enjoying life in Bixby, England. Meanwhile, their friend Dr. John Seward is tracking a string of crimes that seems eerily familiar: A 14-year-old girl sleepwalks out of her parents’ house and disappears into the night. Two “accident victims” are found drained of their blood, yet there is no crime-scene evidence to explain what happened.

As with The Crimes of Dr. Watson, Dracula’s Heir features an original novella plus several removable clues, including a private journal, a death certificate, a newspaper, and more. Once you’ve solved the mystery, you can open the final signature (sealed at the printer) to test your sleuthing skills.

All in all, this was a thrilling read for me, and it is reminiscent of Gothic mysteries in the style and manner in which it is written and presented. For all you mystery buffs this is one that you will want to try. I had a great time trying to figure out who did it. I know how good of a sleuth I am, so how good of a sleuth are you? There is only one way to find out. Get your copy and start sniffing out the truth.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

Oh! I can’t wait; November is a good month for new releases; such as November 11, 2008 we can expect to see Snake Dreams written by James D. Doss.

With his Southwestern series, bestselling author James D. Doss and his dryly humorous, no-nonsense Native American sleuth, Charlie Moon, have brought law and what’s going to have to pass for order to Charlie’s Columbine Ranch and the nearby Ute reservation.

Now the seven-foot rancher and part-time tribal investigator wants to carve out a little more space for himself alongside FBI Special Agent Lila Mae McTeague. That’s right: Charlie has it in his head that he’s going to get hitched. That is, unless Charlie’s irascible aunt, her sixteen-year-old niece, and their visions of a dead woman—her throat slit from ear to ear—have anything to say about it.

With a bit of romance and full measure of murder, Snake Dreams, the thirteenth in James D. Doss’s widely loved Charlie Moon series, is a haunting tale best told under a full moon and beside a crackling fire.

I have always enjoyed the Charlie Moon series, the plots are interesting, it’s not the typical the butler did it kind of mystery and the characters are believable as well. I know I will not be disappointed with this new release.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Ellery Queen website for the picture

Wow you will not believe what I found in a used book store. A vintage Ellery Queen book, The Egyptian Cross Mystery; however you need not worry there is going to be a reprint and it will be available May 1, 2009.

A schoolmaster in a tiny town in Virginia is found on Christmas morning beheaded and crucified to a signpost in such a way that his body seems to form the letter “T”. The letter “T” is scrawled in blood on the dead man’s door. Ellery Queen is on the scene and notes that the letter “T” is also the shape of a “tau cross”, or Egyptian cross; this seems to lead to a nearby bearded prophet whose invented religion mixes nudism and Egyptology. The prophet’s business manager is missing and suspected of the murder. Ellery cannot solve the crime with the little information he has, but six months later in Long Island, New York, a neighbor of one of his university professors is found headless and crucified to a totem pole in the same way, in the new neighborhood of the Egyptian prophet and his followers. This corpse is clutching a red piece from a game of checkers. The third victim is a millionaire yachtsman, similarly crucified.

Ellery Queen although not as widely known as Agatha Christie is in my opinion a better choice for all you mystery buffs. Unlike Christie’s cliché attempts Queen actually makes you think. Queen has had an amazing career that spans over 40 years. The Ellery Queen mysteries were actually written by two cousins from Brooklyn New York; Daniel (David) Nathan, and Manford (Emanuel) Lepofsky. If you haven’t tried an Ellery Queen novel go to your local used bookstore and see if you can find one. I’m sure you will not be disappointed.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

A new series is being released on October 21, 2008; how exciting is that? Ghost at Work is a brand new mystery series that is written by the talented Carolyn Hart.

Bailey Ruth Raeburn has always been great at solving mysteries. Why should a little thing like her death change anything? In fact, being dead gives her more of an opportunity to be on top of events. Bailey Ruth is delighted that her unique position as a ghost makes it possible for her to lend a helping hand, sometimes seen and sometimes not. And if anybody needs a little help, it’s Kathleen, the pastor’s wife. There’s a dead man on her porch, and once the body is discovered, the pastor is sure to become a suspect.

Uncharitable people might call it meddling, but Bailey Ruth knows Kathleen needs her help! As a member of Heaven’s Department of Good Intentions, Bailey Ruth goes back to earth to extricate Kathleen from a dire situation. If Bailey Ruth has to bend a few rules to help Kathleen save her family, Wiggins, her fussbudget supervisor, will make sure it all turns out right in the end.

Hart has won the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards for her other books, will Ghost at Work bring her a new award? Only time will tell on that one. So in the meantime go to your local bookstore or library and reserve your copy. Let me know what you think.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“St. Cristóbal’s Church in Spanish Harlem knelt quietly between a bodega and a pawnshop. It boasted a small gray steeple and was innocent of the graffiti that tagged its near-neighbors. Inside, it smelled of candles, flowers, and furniture polish. Like a nice, suburban home might smell.

At least it struck Lieutenant Eve Dallas that way as she strode down the aisle formed by rows of pews. In the front, a man in black shirt, black pants, and white collar sat with his head bowed and his hands folded.

She wasn’t sure if he was praying or just waiting, but he wasn’t her priority. She skirted around the glossy casket all but buried in red and white carnations. The dead guy inside wasn’t her priority either.”

I have started my list of what to read for November; and this one is at the top of my list. Salvation in Death written by J.D. Robb is released November 4, 2008.

As the priest at a Catholic funeral mass brings the chalice to his lips—and falls over dead. Detective Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contained potassium cyanide, she’s determined to solve the murder of Father Miguel Flores, despite her discomfort with her surroundings. It’s not the bodegas and pawnshops of East Harlem that bother her, though the neighborhood is a long way from the stone mansion she shares with her billionaire husband, Roarke. It’s all that holiness flying around at St. Christobal’s that makes her uneasy.

A search of the victim’s sparsely furnished room reveals little— except for a carefully hidden religious medal with a mysterious inscription, and a couple of underlined Bible passages. The autopsy reveals more: faint scars of knife wounds, a removed tattoo—and evidence of plastic surgery, suggesting that “Father Flores” may not have been the man his parishioners had thought. Now, as Eve pieces together clues that hint at gang connections and a deeply personal act of revenge, she believes she’s making progress on the case. Until a second murder—in front of an even larger crowd of worshippers—knocks the whole investigation sideways. And Eve is left to figure out who committed these unholy acts—and why.

Will this one be as good as the rest of Robb’s books? Only one way to find out; don’t forget to check out your local bookstore or public Library for this new read.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

I dug out an old favorite of mine the other day; The List of Seven written by Mark Frost.

Occult forces of evil gather in Victorian England to scheme for world dominion in this lively but unconvincing period thriller by Twin Peaks co-creator Frost. The novel opens in London of 1884, where protagonist Arthur Conan Doyle, a moderately successful young doctor, unpublished author and part-time student of the supernatural, attends a seance at the request of an anonymous lady in distress. When the evening erupts into gruesome violence and murder, Doyle finds himself on the run, engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a cadre of ruthless satanists bent on incarnating the spirit of evil. He finds an ally in the mysterious, resourceful and supremely capable Jack Sparks, on secret assignment to the Queen. Sparks’s own brother is the mastermind of the “Dark Brotherhood” they oppose, and his character will, much later, supply Doyle with the inspiration for his Sherlock Holmes. Despite the appreciable wit and inventive flourishes with which Frost invests his tale, there is too much in this fast-paced plot that simply does not make sense. Frost creates mystery through an unseemly vagueness of description, perhaps awaiting the special effects of the screen to flesh out elements of his narrative. In the novel, however, his characters never become more than clever conceits, and the prevailing attitude toward the spiritualism at its center is frustratingly wishy-washy. The much-ballyhooed shocker ending seems a tepid afterthought.

Have you ever read Arthur Conan Doyle? Well if you have you will find it parallels his novels of Sherlock Holmes. Now don’t worry if you haven’t you will still like this book. It’s a book that you will devour and wonder if there really was someone like Jack Sparks who inspired Doyle to create his world famous detective.  All I can tell you is find a copy and read it.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“The number of people behind the police barricade on the abutment had increased tenfold. On the other side of the canal there were several cars, four of which belonged to the police, and a white-painted ambulance with red crosses on the back doors.”

Murder, mystery, what a wonderful way to spend a weekend; O.K. maybe not doing those things but how about reading about them.  Try Roseanna written by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. This book is being rereleased on September 30, 2008.

The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck hunting for the murderer of a lonely traveler.

On a July afternoon, a young woman’s body is dredged from Sweden’s beautiful Lake Vattern. With no clues Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people on a cruise. As the melancholic Beck narrows the list of suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for casual sex, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive–indeed, terrifying–sense of propriety.

This is a wonderful book; the plot is consistent, however due to translation some things are a little awkward and may make you stop, other than that they have done an awesome job of creating Martin Beck and I look forward to reading more.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“This is my job, and you don’t go into it—or, if you do, you don’t last—without some natural affinity for its priorities and demands. What I am telling you, before you begin my story is this—two things: I crave truth. And I lie.”

As the weekend creeps in on us why not spend it with good company. May I suggest In the Woods written by Tana French.

Irish author French expertly walks the line between police procedural and psychological thriller in her debut. When Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl from Knocknaree, a Dublin suburb, is found murdered at a local archeological dig, Det. Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must probe deep into the victim’s troubled family history. There are chilling similarities between the Devlin murder and the disappearance 20 years before of two children from the same neighborhood who were Ryan’s best friends. Only Maddox knows Ryan was involved in the 1984 case.

French sure knows how to grab your attention what with politics; flawed heroes; murder and repressed traumas. This book has a lot to offer. This is a book worth looking into, so take a day all to yourself lock everything up curl up on the couch and read the weekend away.

Happy Reading

Sarah

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“At half past ten on that Saturday morning, Commander Adam Dalgliesh and Emma Lavenham had an appointment to meet her father. To meet a future father-in-law for the first time, especially with the purpose of informing him that one is shortly to marry his daughter, is seldom an enterprise undertaken without some misgivings.”

What makes a great mystery writer? Do you have to be paranoid? Maybe you see a potential murder everywhere you go. Well whatever the qualifications are I don’t have them. The biggest mystery that I will ever solve is; where did my car keys go? I think I will leave the big mystery solving to professionals like P.D. James who just so happens to be releasing her new book The Private Patient on November 18, 2008.

Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating.

Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.

To Commander Adam Dalgliesh, who with his team is called in to investigate the case, the mystery at first seems absolute. Few things about it make sense. Yet as the detectives begin probing the lives and backgrounds of those connected with the dead woman—the surgeon, members of the manor staff, close acquaintances—suspects multiply all too rapidly. New confusions arise, including strange historical overtones of madness and a lynching 350 years in the past. Then there is a second murder, and Dalgliesh finds himself confronted by issues even more challenging than innocence or guilt.

P. D. James has gained an enviable reputation for creating detective stories of uncommon depth and intricacy, combined with the sort of humanity and perceptiveness found only in the finest novelists. The Private Patient ranks among her very best.

If you want great reading don’t hesitate to pick up a novel by James, she has a great gift for this genre her plots are deep and full of twists and turns right up until the very end. Her characters are both charming and believable; it’s hard to put one of her books down once you have started.

Happy Reading

Sarah