Gary Braver, SKIN DEEP. Forge, $25.95 (signed first edition). Homicide detective Lt. Steve Markarian hunts a serial killer who strangles women with a single black stocking – and may be targeting Markarian's estranged wife. Booklist called this "a gripping, twisty thriller that deserves a wide audience."






Eric Van Lustbader, FIRST DAUGHTER. Forge, $25.95 (signed first edition). ATF agent Jack McClure is reeling from the loss of his daughter, Emma, and the impending breakup of his marriage when he gets a phone call from his old friend Edward Carson, who's about to take office as President of the United States. Carson's daughter Alli, who was Emma's best friend, has been kidnapped. Jack must save Alli for Emma's sake, for Ed Carson's, and most of all for his own.






Eric Van Lustbader, ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE BOURNE SANCTION. Grand Central Publishing, $25.99 (signed first edition). David Webb – formerly known as Jason Bourne – tries to resume his normal life as a professor at Georgetown University. Before long, though, he's drawn into the investigation of a former student's murder at the hands of an obscure extremist Muslim sect.






Sally Wright, WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. Severn House, $28.95 (signed first edition). Kate Lindsay receives a terrifying package: her husband's eyeball, retrieved from the front lines where he was killed 20 years earlier. She visits one of her husband's comrades to find out what's going on, only to find the man has killed himself before her arrival. Part-time investigator and university archivist Ben Reese lends his expertise to help Kate figure out what's going on.






NOT SIGNED BUT NOTABLE




Colin Cotterill, CURSE OF THE POGO STICK. Soho Crime, $24.00 (unsigned first edition). Dr. Siri Paiboun returns in the sixth installment in one of our favorite series. Dr. Paiboun's morgue receives a booby-trapped corpse, intended to kill the coroner; Nurse Dtui's intervention saves the day, but where did the corpse come from? Meanwhile, Hmong villagers have kidnapped Dr. Paiboun so that he will exorcise one of their daughters, whose soul is possessed by a demon.






John Darnton, BLACK & WHITE AND DEAD ALL OVER. Knopf, $24.95 (unsigned first edition). One of the New York Globe's top editors is found with a spike in his chest, and NYPD Detective Priscilla Bollingsworth has to narrow down the list of suspects.






John Harvey, COLD IN HAND. Harcourt, $26.00 (unsigned first edition). Charlie Resnick returns, investigating a gangland killing that may be tied to the murder of an Eastern European prostitute.






SIGNED BEST-SELLERS




James Scott Bell, TRY DARKNESS. Center Street, $21.99 (signed first edition). Ty Buchanan, introduced in TRY DYING, returns in a very different setting: he's given up his high-powered career to offer legal services to the poor, working out of a coffee shop called The Freudian Sip. A woman with a young child asks him to help prevent her eviction, and it turns out that Ty knows her landlord well. Her landlord is Ty's former best friend, and his landlord's law firm is Ty's old firm – but that doesn't stop Ty, even when his client is murdered.






Raymond Benson, A HARD DAY'S DEATH. Leisure paperback original, $7.99 (signed first edition). The first book in a new series featuring private investigator Spike Berenger and his firm, Rockin' Security. Spike is called to investigate the death of legendary rock star Peter Flame, whom the police are calling a suicide.






Raymond Benson, METAL GEAR SOLID. Del Rey trade paperback, $12.95 (signed paperback first edition). A thrilling adventure based on the popular video game. Former FOXHOUND agent Solid Snake returns from retirement to stop a band of renegade former colleagues who have taken over a nuclear disposal facility in the Aleutian islands.






Tana French, THE LIKENESS. Viking, $25.95 (signed first edition). The August Discovery Club selection (and Clair's favorite) gives center stage to Cassie Maddox, the partner of the main character of French's Edgar winner IN THE WOODS. Cassie agrees to go undercover to investigate the murder of a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to her. Even stranger, the victim had stolen the identity of an undercover alias Cassie had used years before. The prime suspects are the victim's housemates, graduate students who have formed a tightly knit surrogate family; Cassie not only convinces them of her new identity, but begins to embrace it herself.






Brent Ghelfi, VOLK'S SHADOW. Henry Holt, $25.00 (signed first edition). Pam's July favorite is the second novel to feature Russian Army Colonel Alexei Volkovoy, who is both a covert government operative and a high-ranking figure in the Moscow underworld. In this gripping sequel to VOLK'S GAME, Volkovoy is lured into a trap by the terrorist Abreg, who once held him captive in a Chechen mud pit. Volk returns to Chechnya to deal with Abreg once and for all.






Lee Goldberg, MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY. NAL hardcover, $21.95 (signed first edition). The obsessive-compulsive detective follows his long-suffering therapist, Dr. Kroger, to Germany. Dr. Kroger's not happy to see Monk – but then, across a public square, Monk sees a six-fingered man who may be connected to his wife's death.






Tod Goldberg, BURN NOTICE: THE FIX. Signet paperback original, $6.99 (signed first edition). Former spy Michael Westen is under virtual house arrest in Miami, for reasons he still can't figure out. While he's trying, he's using his skills to help civilians who need them – such as Cricket O'Connor, whose husband has vanished and taken her fortune with him.






Chris Grabenstein, HELL HOLE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95), the fourth John Ceepak mystery, takes a much darker turn, as Ceepak and his partner/narrator, Danny Boyle, investigate the apparent suicide of an Iraq war veteran. We learn several surprising things about Ceepak, and the book ends with the promise of more troubling events to come. But Ceepak's rock-solid integrity remains a comfort to both Danny and us, and makes this series one of the most rewarding in crime fiction.






Deborah Grabien, ROCK & ROLL NEVER FORGETS. St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95 (signed first edition). The first in a new series from the author of the Haunted Ballad series. Hall of Fame rock-and-roll star J.P. Kinkaid, a British expatriate, is also a recovering heroin addict living with multiple sclerosis. Learning that a tabloid biographer is about to write a tell-all book about his band, Blacklight, is bad news – but not so bad that Kinkaid or his longtime girlfriend, Bree, would kill the writer.






Joe R. Lansdale, LEATHER MAIDEN. Knopf, $23.95 (signed first edition). Edgar winner Lansdale’s new standalone is the story of Cason Statler, a Gulf War veteran and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who returns to his hometown of Camp Rapture, TX. Burnt out and desperate, he takes a job at the local paper and becomes obsessed with the year-old unsolved murder of a college student. The crime seems connected to others, though, and Statler’s digging finds connections to his own brother, a local college professor.






Laura Levine, KILLING BRIDEZILLA. Kensington, $22.00 (signed first edition). In the latest adventure of Westwood-based professional writer Jaine Austen, KILLING BRIDEZILLA finds Jaine agreeing to write wedding vows for her worst enemy from high school – who asks for something like Romeo and Juliet, but with a happy ending! Jaine can't believe anyone would want to marry Patti, and when the bride-to-be winds up dead, the list of suspects is a long one.






George Pelecanos, THE TURNAROUND. Little, Brown, and Co., $24.99 (signed first edition). Liz's August favorite. In 1970s Washington, DC, three teenage white boys drive into a black neighborhood for a prank, where three black teenagers meet them. The event changes all the men's lives in different ways, and almost 40 years later, they find their lives colliding again.






Christopher Reich, RULES OF DECEPTION. Doubleday, $24.95 (signed first edition). Dr. Jonathan Ransom and his wife, Emma, are caught by a blizzard in the Alps that ends with Emma's tragic death. The next day, Jonathan gets an envelope addressed to Emma that contains two baggage claim checks for a remote railway station. When Jonathan goes to the station to pick up the packages, two Swiss police officers attack him – but this is only the beginning of the surprises and betrayals that await him.






John Saul, FACES OF FEAR. Ballantine, $26.00 (signed first edition). Plastic surgeon Peter Dunn has a new wife and a new stepdaughter, after his first wife tragically killed herself. Dr. Dunn starts to pressure his stepdaughter, Alison, to have some work done – Alison is wary, but her mother is delighted. Alison agrees to the first surgery, but then discovers a photograph of Dunn's first wife – a woman who looked alarmingly like Alison.






Daniel Silva, MOSCOW RULES. Putnam, $26.95 (signed first edition). It was Bobby's favorite for August, and the #1 bestselling book in the country last week. Israeli security operative and international art expert Gabriel Allon must go to Moscow, where a former KGB colonel-turned-tycoon is putting together an arms deal that will put Russia's most sophisticated weapons in the hands of al Qaeda.






Edward Wright, DAMNATION FALLS. St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95 (signed first U.S. edition). The August Crime Club (and Stephen and Pam's favorite) is Wright's first standalone. Disgraced journalist Randall Wilkes returns home to his boyhood home in the hills of Tennessee. The only project available to him is writing the biography of his good friend, the ex-governor of the state. But once Wilkes arrives, there's murder, dark secrets and history dating back to the Civil War to be uncovered. Wilkes has to use his rusty investigative skills to uncover the truth before anyone else dies.