For now, before I go wake up Jo, here are the books I bought in October. Mostly mysteries, but still a pretty nice mix. So as they say during the result show on Strictly Come Dancing, 'in no particular order', these are my monthly purchases.
"Nora hasn't seen Clare for ten years. Not since the day Nora walked out of her old life and never looked back.
Until, out of the blue, an invitation to Clare's hen party arrives. A weekend in a remote cottage - the perfect opportunity for Nora to reconnect with her best friend, to put the past behind her.
But something is wrong.
Very wrong.
And as secrets and lies unravel, out in the dark, dark wood the past will finally catch up with Nora."
"Philip Trent returns! The hero of E.C. Bentley's masterpiece, Trent's Last Case, returns when the murder of a generous but most unpleasant philanthropist brings several of Trent's friends under suspicion. Shocked by the confession and suicide attempt of Bryan Fairman, a research scientist in the victim's employ, Trent investigates. And the first clue he turns up points straight at himself!"
"A Birthday bash to die for! That's what Bennis Hannaford and ex-FBI special agent Gregor Demarkian are in for when they accept an invitation to the one hundredth birthday party of a Hollywood legend. The reclusive Tasheba Kent, femme fatale of the silent screen, is opening up her island off the coast of Maine for a sumptuous gala to celebrate a life filled with romance and scandal.
Nearly sixty years ago, Tasheba's off-screen rivalry with her equally famous sister, Lilith Brayne, led to a public battle for the love of Lilith's husband, handsome Cavender Marsh...and ended with Lilith's suspicious death. Now among Tasheba's guests is Cavender and Lilith's long-abandoned daughter, as well as a rabid memorabilia collector, a conscientious accountant, and a secretive reporter. All have come to toast the immortal star. But a killer stalks the island. And when death strikes, Gregor must stop the culprit...or none of them will celebrate their next birthday."
"The newly appointed member of the Oxford Examinations Syndicate was deaf, provincial and gifted. Now he is dead...
And his murder, in his North Oxford home, proves to be the start of a formidably labyrinthine case for Chief Inspector Morse, as he tries to track down the killer through the insular and bitchy world of the Oxford colleges..."
"Everyone in Timber Bay thought my old friend, Van Harder, was responsible for his boss's death. Now Van wanted me to clear his name. Travis McGee, salvage expert, saver of souls and dreams.
First I had to find the truth behind Hub Lawless's disappearance. Was he dead? Maybe. No body had yet turned up. And there were lots of rumours about his being very much alive - hiding out in Mexico.
I figured we'd have to run down the clues at Timber Bay. If we could stay alive, that is. For the crowd in Hub Lawless's hometown was very strange - and very lethal..."
"Robert B. Parker is back in Paradise, where Detective Jesse Stone is looking for two things: the killer of a teenage girl - and someone, anyone, who is willing to claim the body..."
"Someone had set up Jamie Phillips. When he walked in Mrs. Reitz's back door, the frightened widow cut loose with both barrels of her shotgun without so much as a hello. Even the police turned their heads when they saw the corpse.
But that was only the beginning. Jamie had been one of the jurors on the Kimberly Harris murder case three years ago. And whoever had choreographed his gruesome death wasn't going to stop - until all twelve jurors had been permanently removed..."
"By 1938, hundreds of Italian intellectuals, lawyers and journalists, university professors and scientists, had escaped Mussolini's fascist government and taken refuge in Paris. There, amid the struggles of émigré life, they founded an Italian resistance, with an underground press that smuggled news and encouragement back to Italy. Fighting fascism with typewriters, they produced 512 clandestine newspapers. The Foreign Correspondent is their story.
Paris, a wintry night in 1938: a murder / suicide at a discreet lovers' hotel. But this is no romantic tragedy - it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini's fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
Weisz is, at the moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Surete, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder."
"A crisp March morning in the Buttes - Chaumont park in Paris. Claire, waiting to meet her husband, Adrian, has more than a tourist's passing interest in the place. She has come to France to be with Adrian while he researches a book on French gardens, but Claire's real mission is to find out what happened to her mother, Dolly, during her last stay in Paris. A promising sculptor and ardent admirer of the philosopher Jean - Jacques Rousseau, Dolly suffered a mysterious decline following her return home. Now severe panic attacks are forcing Claire to abandon her own work as a photographer. Is she repeating her mother's pattern? The answer, Claire believes, lies in the past.
Claire retraces Dolly's footsteps in Paris and in the nearby country-side, where Rousseau's spirit is still discernible. Claire's quest in France is filled with more than one startling discovery as she, Adrian, and their friends, navigate the tricky terrain of marriage, parenthood, friendship and love."
10. "Raymond Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, introduces us to Philip Marlowe, a thirty-eight year old private detective moving through the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930's. The case involves a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder."
11. "Raymond Chandler's fourth novel takes Philip Marlowe out of his usual habitat of city streets into the mountains outside of Los Angeles in his strange search for a missing woman."
"In story after story in this brilliant new collection, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. here characters are flawed and fully human; their stories draw us in with their quiet depth and surprise us with unexpected turns. And while most are set in her signature territory around Lake Huron, some strike even closer to home: an astonishing suite of four autobiographical talks offers an unprecedented glimpse into Munro's own childhood."
"When a well-respected truck driver is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why her father's rig left the road on an easy uphill curve. Fellow truck driver Hunter Rayne, a former homicide detective with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the father of two girls, is compelled to help her find answers.
As he uncovers signs of illegal smuggling, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to go undercover, but while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles.
Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is the first in a mystery series featuring 'semi-' professional sleuth, Hunter Rayne. After over twenty years in the RCMP, Hunter resigned from the force and took to the road as a long haul trucker. his ex-wife is convinced he is running away. Hunter himself doesn't know why, he only knows he has to keep following the white lines."
"In this stunning debut novel, Catherine Bush confronts - with surreal lyricism and edgy, deadpan wit - the plight of the Nineties' "twenty-something" generation coming to grips with an era of dysfunctional nuclear families and the growing threat of environmental apocalypse.
Helen's world is the ultimate survival test, where toxic-food scares, contaminated water, sweeping chemical fires, and monumental earthquakes have become indistinguishable from the collapse of personal relationships and the distance within families. What can you do when your astronaut mother orbits the earth, your father finds saving people from earthquakes more important than keeping a family together, and the media persist in manipulating your private life?
"Released unofficially from the work camp to which he'd been sentenced, former inspector Shan Tao Yun has been living in the remote mountains of Tibet with a group of outlawed Buddhist monks. He has just begun to settle into his menial job as an inspector of irrigation and sewer ditches in a remote Tibetan township when he encounters a wrenching crime scene.
Strewn across the grounds of an old Buddhist temple undergoing restoration are the bodies of two unidentified men and a Tibetan nun. Shan quickly realises that the murders pose a riddle the Chinese police might in fact be trying to cover up. To find justice for the victims and to protect an American woman who witnessed the murders, Shan must navigate through the treacherous worlds of the internment camp, the local criminal gang, and the government's rabid pacification teams, while coping with his growing doubts about his own identity and role in Tibet."
So there you go, my October purchases. I hope some might interest you enough to give them a try. Have a great November.
No comments:
Post a Comment