From the U.S.: CROMBIE, EVANOVICH, O'CONNELL, PARKER, CRUZ SMITH, WOODS; From the U.K.: CONNOLLY, CLEVERLY, RANKIN, WILSON -- and many more!

SIGNED BOOKS ON HAND (and coming in November)

Some of these titles are not yet available. Please contact The Mystery Bookstore directly to reserve copies or to verify availability. You may email orders@mystery-bookstore.com or telephone us on our toll-free number, (800) 821-9017.

Kate Atkinson, CASE HISTORIES
Little Brown, $23.95 (signed first edition)
Private detective Jackson Brodie takes on three long-unsolved cases – a three-year-old girl missing for decades, a 10-year-old murder, and a reunion between witnesses to a terrible crime. Booklist says, “Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum) here combines a compelling narrative drive with sophisticated psychological portraits and telling detail.”

Deborah Crombie, IN A DARK HOUSE
Morrow, $23.95
Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James hunt a serial arsonist and the abduction of a ten-year-old girl.

Emma Donoghue, LIFE MASK
Harcourt, $26.00 (signed first edition)
In late 18th century England, an actress’s friendship with a female sculptor threatens her reputation and her relationship with a wealthy nobleman.

Janet Evanovich, METRO GIRL
Harper, $26.95 (signed first edition)
This first book in a new series starring Alexandra Barnaby, insurance claims adjuster, is sure to be as much fun as Stephanie Plum – maybe even more. Order your signed copies now, or lose out!

Deborah Grabien, THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING MEN
St. Martins, $22.95 (signed first edition)
Theatrical producer Penny Wintercraft-Hawkes and her boyfriend, folklorist Ringan Laine, look for the story behind a ghost haunting an abandoned London theater. The title is also the name of an old English ballad, whose lyrics provide clues to the story.

Carol O’Connell, WINTER HOUSE
Putman, $24.95 (signed first edition)
This new Kathy Mallory is most eagerly awaited by all of us at the store, because we didn’t get an advance copy. The apparent self-defense killing of a burglar becomes much more complicated when the killer turns out to be a woman officially missing for almost 60 years.

Joyce Carol Oates, THE FALLS
Ecco, $26.95 (signed first edition)
Ariah Littrell accepts her bitter fate after her husband, a young minister, drowns himself in Niagara Falls on their wedding day. The appearance of Dirk Burnaby – young, handsome, wealthy – in her life seems too good to be true, and Ariah remains convinced that he will leave her even after they marry and have three children. Dirk is ultimately driven away – first to another woman, then to a crusade against the poisoners of Love Canal, and then to death.

Robert B. Parker, MELANCHOLY BABY
Putnam, $24.95 (signed first edition)
Private detective Sunny Randall agrees to look into her young client’s family history and winds up wrestling with her own major life issues, with the help of Susan Silverman.

Greg Rucka, A GENTLEMAN’S GAME
Bantam, $24.00 (signed first edition)
Rucka turns his wildly popular “Queen & Country” graphic novel series into a full-length novel, starring Special Intelligence Service agent (i.e., assassin) Tara Chace. Chace’s mission to kill a Saudi religious leader goes wrong when a Saudi prince is caught in the crossfire.

Martin Cruz Smith, WOLVES EAT DOGS
Simon & Schuster, $25.00 (signed first edition)
Arkady Renko finds himself exiled to the wasteland around Chernobyl after he refuses to accept the verdict of suicide in the death of a shady Russian business tycoon.

Stuart Woods, THE PRINCE OF BEVERLY HILLS
Putman, $25.95 (signed first edition)
This standalone, set in Hollywood in the late 1930s, introduces Rick Barron, an LAPD detective who becomes head of security at a Hollywood movie studio.

NEW FROM THE U.K.

Barbara Cleverly, THE PALACE TIGER
Constable, $40.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is staying with Governor Sir George Jardine in Simla when news calls him to the princely state of Ranipur. There, he joins a hunting party on the trail of a man-eating tiger.

Christopher Fowler, THE WATER ROOM
Bantam, $35.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
Inspectors John May and Arthur Bryant are London’s oddest detectives, old men who work for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. They’re called in to investigate the mysterious death of an old woman, who’s found dead in her own home with her lungs full of river water. Adding to the mystery, the house’s new tenant keeps finding damp patches and hearing rushing water.

Liam Hearn, BRILLIANCE OF THE MOON
Macmillan, $37.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
Warfare, sacrifice, violent death and natural disasters plague two young lovers in the ancient Far East.

Mick Herron, THE LAST VOICE YOU HEAR
Constable, $40.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
Private investigator Zoe Boehm is hired to find a man who doesn’t show up at the funeral of his girlfriend, who died under a train. Zoe suspects that he may have been involved in the woman’s death, but finds even more questions – and even more deaths – as she investigates.

Alexander McCall Smith, THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB
Pantheon, $45.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
The author of THE No. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY launches a new series, this one set in 19th century Edinburgh. Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who edits the Review of Applied Ethics and uses her training to solve unusual mysteries.

China Mieville, THE IRON COUNCIL
Macmillan, $42.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
Science fiction, fantasy and mystery cross in this fascinating novel. New Crobuzon faces threats from within and without: a war with the mysterious city-state of Tesh, riots on the streets at home. Amidst this turmoil a masked figure spurs rebellion, and a small group of rebels escape from the city to search for an undying legend.

Ian Rankin, FLESHMARKET CLOSE
Orion, $45.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
A new John Rebus novel, and what more do we need to say? All is right with our world, but not so for John Rebus. As Rebus investigates the murder of an illegal immigrant in the Edinburgh projects, he wrestles with superiors who want him to retire. Meanwhile, Siobhan tries to help the family of a missing teenager, and finds herself drawn into the web of a convicted rapist.

Andrew Taylor, CALL THE DYING
Hodder & Stoughton, $39.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
In 1955 Lydmouth, DCI Richard Thornhill investigates the murder of an eccentric retired doctor and the apparent disappearance of a television salesman. Meanwhile, an old flame of Thornhill’s has returned to town to edit a local newspaper, and has taken up with the murdered doctor’s successor.

Rebecca Tope, A COTSWOLD KILLING
Constable, $45.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
This first book in a new series set in the Cotswolds introduces housesitter Thea Osbourne, who’s expecting a quiet time until a body turns up in the field next door.

Robert Wilson, THE SILENT AND THE DAMNED
HarperCollins, $40.00 (signed first U.K. edition)
A new book by Robert Wilson is always cause for celebration. Javier Falcon, the detective introduced in THE BLIND MAN OF SEVILLE, returns for another case. As a forest fire rages outside Seville, the Russian mafiya is implicated in an apparent murder-suicide – a murder suicide that leads to more deaths and the discovery of a terrible web of crime and misery.

SIGNED BOOKS DUE IN DECEMBER

To help you plan your holiday shopping, this is a list of signed titles we expect to receive in December. We will keep you as up-to-date as possible on exactly when these books are coming in, and please double-check with us on arrival dates if you’re ordering for the holidays. Thanks!

Michael Chabon, THE FINAL SOLUTION
Fourth Estate, $16.99 (signed first edition)
This short novel, which won the 2004 Aga Khan Prize for fiction, imagines a very old, once-famous detective now living in retirement in the early 1940s. A mute nine-year-old boy has escaped from Nazi Germany with only a grey parrot that repeats strings of German numbers, and the detective rallies to solve one last mystery.

Max Allan Collins, ROAD TO PURGATORY
William Morrow, $24.95 (signed first edition)
Michael O’Sullivan, the young hero of Collins’ graphic novel THE ROAD TO PERDITION, is now 22 and a hardened veteran of Bataan. He returns to Chicago determined to wreak vengeance at last for his family’s death, joining forces with Eliot Ness. Meanwhile, flashbacks tell us the story of Michael’s father, and how he came to work for the crime boss John Looney.

Stuart Kaminsky, THE LAST DARK PLACE
Forge, $23.95 (signed first edition)
Chicago detective Abe Lieberman finally catches a mob enforcer who had held him at gunpoint thirty years earlier, but the enforcer is assassinated in the airport – while he’s handcuffed to Lieberman. While Lieberman hunts down the source of the hit, his partner, Bill Hanrahan, investigates the rape of a young police officer’s wife.

Steve Martini, DOUBLE TAP
Putman, $25.95 (signed first edition)
Paul Madriani takes on the defense of a soldier accused of murder – a murder that could only have been committed by a trained assassin, which Madriani’s client seems to be.

Claire Matturro, SKINNY-DIPPING
Morrow, $24.95 (signed first edition)
Lilly Rose Cleary, a lawyer who specializes in personal injury cases, finds herself the victim of a mugging. The doctor who comes to her assistance wants to consult her on a malpractice case, but he turns up dead the following night… and then someone starts shooting at Lilly.

Jess Walter, CITIZEN VINCE
Regan Books, $25.95 (signed first edition)
A standalone political thriller from the author of OVER TUMBLED GRAVES and LAND OF THE BLIND.

Donald Westlake (Richard Stark), NOBODY RUNS FOREVER
Mysterious Press, $23.95 (signed first edition)
On the verge of renouncing his life of crime because he just can’t deal with the idiots any more, Parker agrees to a badly misconceived bank job – and soon finds himself dodging a neurotic heiress, the local sheriff, a bounty hunter and the usual assortment of bad guys and misfits.

And just in time for the holidays… order your signed copy now, because we will run out!
Clive Cussler, BLACK WIND
Grosset & Dunlap, $27.95 (signed first edition)
Dirk Pitt and his children – Dirk Jr. and Summer, now grown and joining their father’s work – battle a Korean industrialist who’s plotting to fire an undersea biological warfare missile at Los Angeles.

Posted by linda on October 29, 2004