December 30, 2017 | Patton
On the coattails of "Y is for Yesterday," we bid adieu to mystery writer Sue Grafton today. Known for her long running alphabet mystery series featuring the rough and tumble Kinsey Millhone, Grafton and her character carried the torch of female writer/protagonist predecessors as a mainstay in the genre for over three decades. Grafton also wrote and adapted several screenplays for TV and film. Celebrate her works and her life with the books we have in our print, audio, and digital collections.
Kinsey Millhone monitors the release from prison of a sociopath who is determined to exact revenge on a fellow perpetrator who went missing after they sexually assaulted a fourteen-year-old classmate.
December 5, 2017 | Brad B.
Looking for a spine-tingling story, or an action-filled adventure to keep you on the edge of your seat? Try one of these. Categories below include Mystery/Suspense, Supernatural/Horror, and Adventure.
After being hospitalized for insisting that her mother was murdered, not killed in an accidental fire, Grace goes to live with her grandfather for a fresh start, but when she sees her mother’s murderer again, her past comes back to haunt her.
December 1, 2017 | madame librarian
"As the holidays approach, all is merry and bright for Inspector Witherspoon, Mrs. Jeffries, and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens...but murder knows no season. MURDER UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR Christopher Gilhaney isn't a popular man, and he proves why once again when he insults every guest at Abigail Chase's Guy Fawkes Night dinner party. When Gilhaney is shot dead under the cover of the night's fireworks, his murder is deemed a robbery gone wrong. But when the case hasn't been solved six weeks later, Inspector Witherspoon is called upon to find the killer--and quickly! With Christmas almost here, Inspector Witherspoon and everyone in his household is upset at the possibility of having to cancel their holiday plans--all to solve a case that seems impossible. Only Luty Belle, Ruth, and Mrs. Goodge refuse to give up and let the crime become a cold case. In fact, the American heiress, the charming next-door neighbor, and the formidable cook use all of their persuasive powers to get the others on board, because these three wise women know justice doesn't take time off for Christmas"--.
The first book in a classic Golden Age mystery series perfect for fans of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot When Mordecai Tremaine arrives at the country retreat of one Benedict Grame on Christmas Eve, he discovers that the revelries are in full swing in the sleepy village of Sherbroome--but so too are tensions amongst the assortment of guests. When midnight strikes, the partygoers discover that presents aren't the only things nestled under the tree...there's a dead body too. A dead body that bears a striking resemblance to Father Christmas. With the snow falling and suspicions flying, it's up to Mordecai to sniff out the culprit--and prevent anyone else from getting murder for Christmas. Murder for Christmasis a festive mystery for the holiday season: mulled wine, mince pies... and murder.
November 2, 2017 | madame librarian
"A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it."--William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958
In 1902 New York, Alice Roosevelt, the bright, passionate, and wildly unconventional daughter of newly sworn-in President Theodore Roosevelt, is placed under the supervision of Secret Service Agent Joseph St. Clair, ex-cowboy and veteran of the Rough Riders. St. Clair quickly learns that half his job is helping Alice roll cigarettes and escorting her to bookies, but matters grow even more difficult when Alice takes it upon herself to investigate a recent political killing--the assassinationof former president William McKinley. Concerned for her father's safety, Alice seeks explanations for the many unanswered questions about the avowed anarchist responsible for McKinley's death. In her quest, Alice drags St. Clair from grim Bowery bars to the elegant parlors of New York's ruling class, from the haunts of the Chinese secret societies to the magnificent new University Club, all while embarking on a tentative romance with a family friend, the son of a prominent local household. And while Alice, forced to challenge those who would stop at nothing in their greed for money and power, considers her uncertain future, St. Clair must come to terms with his own past in Alice and the Assassin , the first in R. J. Koreto's riveting new historical mystery series.
Gin Sullivan is back in her small hometown of Trumbull, Pennsylvania on an extended leave from her job at the Chicago medical examiner's office and rekindling an old flame with her high school sweetheart, Jake. Gin is readjusting to life at home when Jake receives harrowing news early one morning. The new housing development his construction firm is building has caught fire and underneath one of the burnt homes is a dead body. When the body is identified as a man who may very well be the violent offender who terrified Gin's childhood town years ago, the pool of suspects broadens and it becomes a greater challenge to pinpoint his killer. Gin is determined to unearth old demons, hers included, but soon finds some people will kill to keep them buried. Small town secrets cast daunting shadows in All the Secret Places , Anna Carlisle's riveting second Gin Sullivan mystery.
November 1, 2017 | madame librarian
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend."--Paul Sweeney
"Two FBI agents go undercover in the bureau's first wire-wearing operation, and end up befriending the charismatic con man they're charged with bringing down"--.
A revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made The open range cattle era lasted barely a quarter-century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, and the dawn of the conservation movement. It inspired legends, such as that icon of rugged individualism, the cowboy. Yet this extraordinary time and its import have remained unexamined for decades. Cattle Kingdom reveals the truth of how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We venture from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakota Badlands to the Chicago stockyards. We meet a diverse array of players--from the expert cowboy Teddy Blue to the failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. Knowlton shows us how they and others like them could achieve so many outsized feats: killing millions of bison in a decade, building the first opera house on the open range, driving cattle by the thousand, and much more. Cattle Kingdom is a revelatory new view of the Old West.
October 18, 2017 | davisr
Looking for a good mystery to read? Enjoy cooking or reading about food? Try out one of these culinary mysteries today!
Goldy Bear ("Goldilock's Catering: Where Everything Is Just Right!") was not thrilled with the prospect of serving food and drink at the wake of her's son's former teacher, but a job is a job, particularly in the small town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, in October. It turns out to be Goldy's last job for a while when the police close down her business after her ex-father-in-law is served coffee liberally laced with rat poison. Concerned that she might miss the lucrative holiday season, Goldy turns to sleuthing, but she becomes unnerved when it appears that her own son might somehow be involved in both his teacher's death and his grandfather's poisoning.
Hannah Swensen's supplies are delivered daily by Ron LaSalle, whom she often passes on her way to work. On this fateful day, Ron's truck is soon parked behind the store, but he fails to reappear. When Hannah finds him seated in the truck, the window open, a bullet through his chest, she's inspired to work her way through the townspeople, looking for a motive for Ron's death, even as she manfully resists her widowed mothers attempts to find her a husband.
October 7, 2017 | madame librarian
“The benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.” –A. Bashivi, M. D. Slade, B. R. Levy. (Social Science & Medicine. Vol 164. Sept, 2016)
Jeremy Black offers a historian's interpretation from the perspective of the late 2010s, assessing James Bond in terms of the greatly changing world order of the Bond years--a lifetime that stretches from 1953, when the first novel appeared, to the present. Black argues that the Bond novels--the Fleming books as well as the often-neglected novels authored by others after Fleming died in 1964--and films drew on current fears in order to reduce the implausibility of the villains and their villainy. Class, place, gender, violence, sex, race--all are themes that Black scrutinizes through the ongoing shifts in characterization and plot. His well-informed and well-argued analysis provides a fascinating history of the enduring and evolving appeal of James Bond.
"In An Extraordinary Time, acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson recounts the global collapse of the postwar economy in the 1970s. While economists struggle to return us to the high economic growth rates of the past, Levinson counterintuitively argues that the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly; slow economic growth is the norm-no matter what economists and politicians may say. Yet these atypical years left the public with unreasonable expectations of what government can achieve. When the economy failed to revive, suspicion of government and liberal institutions rose sharply, laying the groundwork for the political and economic polarization that we're still grappling with today. A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time describes how the postwar economic boom dissipated, undermining faith in government, destabilizing the global financial system, and forcing us to come to terms with how tumultuous our economy really is"--.
