Cara Black, MURDER IN THE RUE DE PARADIS. Soho Crime, $24.00 (signed first edition). Ingrid and Linda both loved this book, the eighth to feature Parisian detective Aimee Leduc. In the summer of the St-Michel Metro bombings, Aimee is surprised by the reappearance of her ex-boyfriend, Yves Robert, who asks her to marry him. Leduc is shocked when the police ask her to identify Robert's body. She throws herself into the investigation, and uncovers a secret that links a militant Turkish group, an assassination plot, and the Kurdish Labor Party.






Tim Dorsey, ATOMIC LOBSTER. William Morrow, $24.95 (signed first edition). Beloved psychopath Serge A. Storms is back on the road with Coleman, his partner in crime. As usual, the plot hardly matters, as Serge and Coleman barrel across Florida and manage to foil the nefarious plans of a murderous ex-con along the way.






G.M. Ford, NAMELESS NIGHT. William Morrow, $23.95 (signed first edition). Clair's February favorite is Ford's first standalone. Paul Hardy is a man who's cheated death not once, but twice: once, when he was found nearly dead, with no name and no memory in a railroad car; and a second time seven years later, when a car accident restores some of his memory. What he remembers is a name – Wesley Allen Howard – and a vision of palm trees.






Rosemary Harris, PUSHING UP DAISIES. St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95 (signed first edition). The February Delicate but Deadly Club selection is a first mystery that introduces Paula Holliday, who gives up her urban life as a media executive to start a gardening business in the suburbs. She finds a mummified body while renovating the grounds of a local landmark – and then another body is found impaled on a garden tool, and one of Paula's friends is charged with the crime.






Laura Lippman, ANOTHER THING TO FALL. William Morrow, $24.95 (signed first edition). Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan, in her tenth adventure, agrees to serve as a bodyguard for a starlet shooting a miniseries on location.






Christopher Rice, BLIND FALL. Scribner, $26.00 (signed first edition).
The March Crime Club selection is a thriller about the death of a former Marine who turns out to have been hiding his partner and his life as a gay man. Ex-Marine John Houck discovers the mutilated body of his former comrade, Captain Mike Bowers, and must deal with his own homophobia, as well as lingering guilt over an earlier loss, before he can bring the killer to justice.






Lisa Scottoline, LADY KILLER. Harper, $25.95 (signed first edition). Philadelphia attorney Mary DiNunzio takes a case for her high school enemy, Trish Gambone; Trish is being abused by her boyfriend, another fellow classmate who's now a mobster. It doesn't take long for Mary to regret taking the case, but when Trish disappears, Mary has to figure out what happened.






Alexandra Sokoloff, THE PRICE. St. Martin's, $23.95 (signed first edition). Boston District Attorney Will Sullivan is a rising political star with a beautiful wife, Joanna, and a lovely daughter, Sydney. When Sydney is diagnosed with a malignant tumor, the Sullivans turn to Briarwood Medical Center for help – but at what cost?






Pari Noskin Taichert, THE SOCORRO BLAST. University of New Mexico Press, $24.95 (signed first edition). In her third adventure, PR consultant Sasha Solomon comes to the aid of her own niece, Gabi, who is injured when a pipe bomb goes off in her mailbox. By strange coincidence, Sasha's just taken on a client in the small town where her niece lives, a controversial land development project – but as she investigates, Sasha realizes that this may not be a coincidence, and that her niece is hiding many secrets.




NOT SIGNED, BUT NOTABLE


James O. Born, BURN ZONE. Putnam, $25.95 (unsigned first edition). ATF agent Alex Duarte, introduced in last year's FIELD OF FIRE, goes to New Orleans in pursuit of a Panamanian drugs and arms dealer. What he finds is an international conspiracy beyond his imagination.






Jeffrey Ford, THE SHADOW YEAR. William Morrow, $25.95 (unsigned first edition). In 1960s Long Island, a young boy and his brother, Jim, appoint themselves investigators after a local boy disappears, and the brothers notice a mysterious white car in the neighborhood. Meanwhile their sister, Mary, seems to be able to predict events in the town before they happen – or could she be causing them?






Andrew Lycett, THE MAN WHO CREATED SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Free Press, $30.00. This comprehensive look at the author explores his obsession with spiritualism, his complicated personal life, and his determination to test his experiences through science.