NEW FROM THE U.K.! and American Titles Coming This Month!

Please note: some British titles are signed, some are not. If a hypertext link is not present, please contact us directly with any inquiries. You may email orders@mystery-bookstore.com or telephone us on our toll-free number, (800) 821-9017.


NEW FROM THE UK!


Jane Adams, DANGEROUS TO KNOW. Allison & Busby, $43.00 (first edition).
Colin Granger asks his ex-wife Moira to investigate a case of Internet fraud that could be linked to a terrorist conspiracy; when she’s murdered, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect in the crime. Rather than confessing, he decides to go it alone and find the killer.


Louise Anderson, PERCEPTION OF DEATH. Hutchinson, $39.00 (signed first edition). When her sister’s old school friend is brutally murdered, Erin’s life begins to unravel, exposing a family secret that should have remained dead and buried. A debut by a thrilling new Scottish writer.


Trezza Azzopardi, REMEMBER ME. Picador, $45.00 (signed first edition). Spanning seven decades, REMEMBER ME is a story of pursuit: of stolen goods, missing years and one woman’s forgotten history. Lillian would rather not recall the past and, at 72, doesn't see much point in thinking too much about the future, but her closed existence is suddenly shattered by a random act of violence. A new mystery from the author of the Booker-short listed THE HIDING PLACE.


Simon Beaufort, THE COINERS' QUARREL. Severn House, $45.00 (signed first edition). It’s Westminster 1102, and Sir Geoffrey is about to depart for the Holy Land, and the King has summoned him back. When he arrives at Court he finds two accusing groups of Saxon moneyers, each saying the other is devaluing the King’s currency. There is more to it than just greed; the King commissions him to investigate whether this is part of a plot of treason.


Simon Beaufort, THE KING’S SPIES. Severn House, $45.00 (signed first edition). In March 1102, Robert De Belleme, the Black Earl, appears before the King on charges of treason. At the same time, Sir Geoffrey witnesses a man murdered by hanging from the window of the Crusader’s Arms Inn. The man is the Black Earl’s illegitimate nephew, and had apparently been meeting with two mysterious men. The Inn turns out to be a meeting place for the Earl’s spies, where they plan to obtain a terrible weapon to use against the king.


KEN BRUEN
We have just received six titles by the acclaimed author of THE GUARDS, whom Shelly considers to be one of the best writers to come out of Ireland, and one of Bobby’s favorite authors. He is the darkest, most “noir” writer in Britain today. Shelly says, “I can say only one thing: you must read him.”


TAMING THE ALIEN. Do Not Press, $25.00 (paperback first edition).
THE HACKMAN BLUES. Do Not Press, $25.00 (paperback first edition).
RILKE ON BLACK. Do Not Press, $25.00 (paperback first edition).
THE DRAMATIST. Brandon Press, $37.00 (paperback first edition).
A WHITE ARREST. Do Not Press, $25.00 (paperback first edition).
VIXEN, Do Not Press, $39.00 (hardcover first edition).


Chris Collett, THE WORM IN THE BUD. Piatkus, $44.00 (first edition).
The book introduces Detective Inspector Tom Mariner, who investigates a suspicious suicide. The only witness is the dead person’s son, who is autistic and cannot speak. While investigating what he now thinks is murder, Mariner tries to bond with the boy. A debut mystery.


Judith Cutler, SCAR TISSUE. Allison & Busby, $43.00 (signed first edition). Caffy's life has changed for the better despite her emotional and physical scars. Living a new life in Kent, she feels safe for the first time -- until she sees a body, and then the body disappears. The police are mysteriously unhelpful; Caffy needs to know whom she can trust.


THREE NEW DOHERTYS!
Paul Doherty, THE ASSASSINS OF ISIS. Headline, $44.00 (signed first edition). The location of Rahimere's tomb has long been a closely guarded secret. But now, the Sebaus - a sect that takes its name from demons - has plundered and pillaged the sepulcher for its most powerful secret. This time the wrath of the fiery Pharaoh Queen Hatusu will know no bounds. She must fight to protect the tombs of her kin and tighten her grip on the collar of Egypt, in the midst of its most sweltering season. But when Egypt's great military hero, General Suten, is bitten to death by a swarm of venomous vipers, it appears events have spiraled out of Hatusu’s control.


Paul Doherty, THE SONG OF THE GLADIATOR. Headline, $44.00 (signed first edition). In Rome’s sultry summer, 313 AD, Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, are trying to make sense of the new Christian religion. The Christians cannot agree among themselves, so Constantine invites delegates from both sides of the theological dispute to argue before him. The debate becomes more interesting when advocates for both sides are found brutally murdered.


Paul Doherty, THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS. Headline, $45.00 (signed first edition). In the late autumn of 1380, Brother Athelstan prepares the annual Christmas mystery play with the parish council when two brutal murders occur at a Southwark tavern. The two whores first killed are just the beginning of a series of murders, all of which seem to stem from the great robbery of the Lombard treasure twenty years before.


David Donachie, BY THE MAST DIVIDED. Allison & Busby, $45.00 (signed first edition). David Donachie becomes the main contender for Patrick O’Brien’s legacy with this series debut, which traces the heroic career of young John Pearce to Post Captain. In 1793 London, young John Pearce is press-ganged onto HMS Brilliant, a frigate on its way to war. Pearce discovers his naval aptitude almost immediately, and joins a few other sailors to form an exclusive gun crew, the Pelicans. The Pelicans join forces against their captain and the daily threat of bullying, flogging - even murder. The one light on the horizon is the captain's young, curvaceous wife, Emily.


Anthony Eglin, THE BLUE ROSE. Constable, $41.00. This debut gardening mystery introduces master gardener Lawrence Kingston; the publisher describes it as “a lighter mystery with a dark core.” Alex and Kate Sheppard’s dream house in Wiltshire countryside includes a two-acre walled garden. In that garden is a biological impossibility: a blue rose bush, whose rarity attracts attention from forces the Sheppards don’t understand. Gardening expert Lawrence Kingston is their only hope for unraveling the secret that will save them.


Janet Gleeson, THE THIEF TAKER. Bantam, $36.00 (signed first edition). The second book from the author of THE GRENADILLO BOX is another gripping historical mystery. Agnes Meadowes, cook to the famous Blanchard silversmith family, investigates the disappearance of the smith’s most prestigious commission, a giant silver wine cooler.


Susanna Gregory, THE HAND OF JUSTICE. Little Brown, $24.95. The tenth chronicle of Mathew Bartholomew finds the physician called to examine two corpses discovered at the mill outside Cambridge; it’s almost a welcome break from the university town, where the townspeople and academics are squabbling more than usual. Bartholomew soon realizes, however, that the corpses may be connected to the recent pardon of two well-born murderers who have come back to town.


Susanna Gregory, A KILLER IN WINTER. Little Brown, $24.95. The ninth chronicle of Mathew Bartholomew is set at Christmastime 1354, as Cambridge suffers the worst blizzards in living memory. Bartholomew is called to identify a man found dead, apparently from exposure, in a nearby church. The man turns out to be the servant of the nobleman who married Bartholomew’s lost love, Philippa – and then Philippa’s husband himself is found dead.


We have British paperback editions of all ten Matthew Bartholomew mysteries – call us for availability!


Georgie Hale, HEAR NO EVIL. Hodder, $45.00. (signed first edition). Fans of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters should definitely take a look at Georgie Hale. The Somerfords seem to be a perfect family: successful husband, beautiful wife, even a new baby. When Ian Somerford’s secretary is found dead, cracks emerge in the façade, revealing devastating secrets.


Anthony Horowitz, THE KILLING JOKE. Orion, $32.00. This debut mystery from a screenwriter for “The Midsomer Murders,” “Murder in Mind,” “Murder Most Horrid,” and “Poirot” is a darkly comic thriller in the tradition of Jasper Fforde and Ben Elton. When Guy Fletcher protests at a feeble joke he overhears in his grotty local pub, he finds himself head-butted and struck by an idea in quick succession. Is it possible to trace a joke all the way back to its original source? His quest takes him from a humorless Hungarian dentist in Muswell Hill to a hyperactive troupe of Boy Scouts in St Albans, from a group of giggling gravediggers in Saffron Walden to a pickpocket in Stoke-on-Trent. And some pretty odd things happen along the way. Shelly says, “This book is great fun; I could not put it down.”


Quintin Jardine, THE STAY OF EXECUTION. Headline, $24.95. (signed first edition). Jardine’s detective, DCC Bob Skinner, walks the same streets as Ian Rankin’s John Rebus, and it’s interesting to compare the two authors’ different takes on the city and the crime novel. As Edinburgh prepares for a triumphal visit from native son Pope John XXV, Skinner works to foil a plot that would kill thousands.


Michael Jecks, THE TOLLS OF DEATH. Headline, $24.95 (signed first edition). Sir Baldwin and Bailiff Simon, in their seventeenth adventure, return home unceremoniously from Galicia and Sicily – a shipmaster dumps them on the British coast, leaving them to make their own way home. Along the way, the castellan lord of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, who requires help to solve two murders, detains them.


Paul Johnston, THE GOLDEN SILENCE. Hodder, $45.00. Half-Greek, half-Scots PI Alex Mavros traces a missing teenaged girl, an emigrant from the former Soviet Union. The trail takes him into Athens’ underground crime network, eventually leading to an illegal market for smuggled antiquities, and a series of violent murders linked to Greece’s civil war. Paul Johnston is a terrific writer whose works don’t get the attention they deserve in the U. S.; discover him before everyone else does.


John Malcolm, MORTAL INSTRUMENTS. Allison & Busby, $24.95. Malcolm takes a break from his Tim Simpson art mysteries for this stand-alone set in the world of the coffee business. When Johnny Barber is hired to find a strange coffee machine, he learns that there’s big money in coffee – and that human lives don’t cost as much as coffee.


Philippa Morgan, CHAUCER AND THE HOUSE OF FAME. Constable, $44.00 (signed first edition). Geoffrey Chaucer is the central character of this debut historical mystery, set in 1370. Chaucer, court envoy, ambitious poet, and protégé of the king's powerful son John of Gaunt, makes a secret trip to the territory of the Comte de Guyac to persuade the French nobleman to stay loyal to the English cause. Within days of Chaucer’s arrival, however, Guyac's body is discovered with a crossbow bolt through the throat – and Chaucer himself is the prime suspect.


Henning Mankell, BEFORE THE FROST. Harvill, $45.00. BEFORE THE FROST launches a new series featuring Linda Wallander, daughter of Mankell’s Inspector Kurt Wallander. As Linda prepares to join the Ystad police force, her father investigates the discovery of a severed head and pair of hands, clasped in prayer, in the nearby countryside. This discovery, along with a series of attacks on domestic animals, may be linked to a mass suicide of cult members in Guyana, which left a single survivor.


Pat McIntosh, THE HARPER'S QUINE: A Medieval Murder Mystery. Constable, $44.00 (signed first edition). This debut mystery introduces notary-in-training Gilbert Cunningham, who finds a body at Glasgow Cathedral and realizes that he saw both the victim and her killer at the May Day dancing at Glasgow Cross. Naturally he investigates, to the dismay of his family, which expects him to go into the priesthood.


AMERICAN SIGNED BOOKS ON HAND (or coming in October):


NEW SIGNED BOOKS ON HAND

Robert B. Parker, MELANCHOLY BABY. Penguin, $24.95 (signed first edition). In her fourth outing, private detective Sunny Randall accepts an assignment from a 21-year-old heiress who believes that her parents aren’t really her parents. As Sunny investigates, she not only discovers a pile of secrets within her client’s family, but gets some much-needed insight into her own life issues – with the help of one Susan Silverman.

Bill Pronzini, THE ALIAS MAN. Walker & Co., $24.00 (signed first edition). Three women discover that the man who loved them and conned them was the same man, using a variety of names and passports – and join forces to track him down. Our copies are signed not only by Mr. Pronzini, but also by Marcia Muller, to whom the book is dedicated.


Lorenzo Carcaterra, PARADISE CITY. Ballantine, $24.95 (signed first edition). Giancarlo LoManto was born in New York City and lived there until the age of 14, when his family moved to a small town in Italy. He became a homicide detective in Naples, but returns to New York when his niece, Paula, disappears, and a Mob boss with ties to the Naples crime syndicate seems to be responsible.


Emma Donoghue, LIFE MASK. Harcourt, $26.00 (signed first edition). The author of Slammerkin combines three true stories of eighteenth-century London into this engrossing novel. Lord Derby, the wealthiest and ugliest man in the House of Lords, has a miserable marriage and a notoriously unconsummated romance with the actress Eliza Farren. Eliza craves wealth and respectability, but her status as an actress is precarious – and becomes even more so when rumors start about her “unnatural” relationship with the aristocratic widow Anne Damer.


Daniel Hayes, TEARJERKER. Greywolf Press, $15.00 (signed first edition, trade paperback). Perpetually-rejected author Evan Ulmer kidnaps Robert Partnow, a famous editor, and imprisons him in a basement. Over weeks of captivity, Evan and Bob share each other’s secrets and form an irrational bond as they watch the media circus unfold.


Jeff Lindsay, DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER. Doubleday, $22.95 (signed first edition). We pushed this book two months ago, but because of delivery delays, a lot of our readers missed it. It was Shelly’s July pick, and he’s still very high on it – he predicts it will be an Edgar nominee next year. The publisher has already gone to a second printing, so these books will be the last true first editions we can get. Dexter Morgan is a highly respected blood spatter expert for the Miami Dade Police Department by day, and a sociopathic serial killer by night – and, unlikely as it sounds, he’s the good guy in this story.


Sujata Massey, THE PEARL DIVER. HarperCollins, $23.95 (signed first edition). Antiques dealer Rei Shimura joins her fiancé in Washington, DC and agrees to decorate a fashionable Asian restaurant owned by her cousin Kendall. Kendall disappears during the restaurant’s opening, leaving her twin children and a mystery behind.


Ed McBain, HARK! Simon & Schuster, $24.95 (signed first edition). The 87th Precinct crew is back on the trail of The Deaf Man, a thief who’s harassing Steve Carella with cryptic messages. Meanwhile, Fat Ollie’s still trying to get his book published, Cotton Hawes is under attack, and Bert Kling’s girlfriend is cheating on him. This is vintage stuff from the master.


Gary Phillips, MONKOLOGY. Dennis McMillan, $50.00 (signed first edition). If you missed the big signing event two weeks ago, we still have a few copies of this deluxe edition, which comes with a CD of original music by the Monkology Band. These copies are signed by ten people, including the author, publisher Dennis McMillan, designer Michael Kellner, the cover’s photographer and model, writer Robert Ward and all the members of the Monkology Band. By the way, the music is great.


Sidney Sheldon, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? William Morrow, $25.95 (signed first edition). Sidney Sheldon practically invented this kind of glamorous thriller, and he remains the master. Four scientists tied to the Kingsley International Group, the world’s largest think tank, die in mysterious circumstances. Two of the widows, Kelly Harris and Diane Stevens, join the think tank’s head to look for answers – but find themselves in mortal danger.


Liza Ward, OUTSIDE VALENTINE. Henry Holt, $23.00 (signed first edition). This first novel tells the notorious story of 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate and her lover, Charles Starkweather, and their murderous trip through Nebraska, as seen through the eyes of two people whose lives were changed forever. Susan Hurst, a teenager in Lincoln at the time of the killings, and art collector Lowell Bowman, whose parents were Starkweather’s victims, meet thirty years later to try to figure out how and why these terrible crimes occurred.


And just in time for Halloween…


John Connolly, NOCTURNES. Hodder & Stoughton, price to be determined (signed first U.K. edition). This collection of short fiction includes a new Charlie Parker novella, “The Reflecting Eye,” and another longer piece called, “The Cancer Cowboy Rides.” Connolly’s novels carry a strong whiff of the supernatural, but these are out-and-out ghost stories, perfect for the long winter nights ahead. Our copies are not only signed, but – thanks to Mr. Connolly’s generosity – come with a specially-printed and signed “Coda” that includes stories that didn’t make it into the book. NOCTURNES will be published in the U.S. next spring only as a trade paperback, so if you want a hardcover copy, here’s your chance. Available in late October. Quantities will be limited; please order early to avoid disappointment.

Posted by linda on September 24, 2004