From The Booking Desk:

This week’s batch of books to Be On The Look Out for are a mixed bag in terms of genre, but one thing they have in common is that each of them features memorable cover art.  I suspect you would be picking them up in the store, even without this mention.

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C. J. Daugherty – Night School  (Harper Teen, Hardcover, $17.99, 5/21/2013)

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

Night School, the first book in a series of darkly romantic YA thrillers set in a British boarding school, is generating excitement around the world.

When Allie Sheridan gets arrested—again—her parents have had enough. They send Allie to the Cimmeria Academy far away from her London friends. The school is beautiful, and filled with gorgeous, ultra-wealthy teens who travel by private jet, were raised by nannies, and only shop on 5th Avenue or Bond Street.

As the school begins to seem like a very dangerous place, she must decide who she can trust if she’s going to find out what’s really going on.

BOLO Books Comments:

A Young Adult novel that will have cross-generational appeal.  From the advanced reviews, it is not to be missed.

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 Jane Casey – The Last Girl (Minotaur, Hardcover, $24.99, 5/21/2013)

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

Vast wealth offers London defense attorney Philip Kennford a lot of things: a gorgeous house with a pool in the backyard, connections in the top echelons of society, a wardrobe worthy of Milan runways. But his money doesn’t provide a happy marriage, or good relationships with his twin daughters…and it does nothing to protect his family when someone brutally murders his wife and daughter in their own home.

When Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan arrives at the scene, the two survivors—Philip and his second favorite daughter, Lydia—both claim to have seen nothing, but it’s clear right away that this is an unhappy family accustomed to keeping secrets. Maeve soon finds herself entangled in a case with a thousand leads that all seem to point nowhere, and it doesn’t help that her boss, whom she trusts more than almost anyone, is starting to make decisions that Maeve finds questionable at best.

In The Last Girl, Jane Casey once again demonstrates her ability to write vivid, three-dimensional characters and spin a gripping, unpredictable mystery.

BOLO Books Comments:

This is the latest in the Maeve Kerrigan series.  Jane Casey is much more popular in the UK, but maybe this will be the book that breaks her out here in the States.

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Elizabeth Corley – Requiem Mass (Minotaur, Hardcover $25.99, 5/21/2013)

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

The first deaths are just a warm-up…

A Buried Past.

When Deborah Fearnside, a young wife and mother, goes missing, police interest is minimal.  She would hardly be the first woman to abandon a tired marriage.  Four weeks later it is DCI Andrew Fenwick, back from compassionate leave, who notices the set of coincidences that should have transformed a routine missing person’s case into a suspected abduction.  But by then it is too late for Debbie.

A Dark Secret.

Twenty years ago, a young woman fell tragically to her death. The only people with her were four schoolfriends. One—or maybe all of them—is responsible. Now there’s someone intent on letting them have their just deserts.

A Bloody Revenge.

Fenwick is soon caught in a desperate race against time to find the murderer before he completes his brutal vendetta. As the death toll mounts, Fenwick stares failure in the face—unless he can draw the predator out of the shadows and into an unconventional and highly dangerous trap with the ultimate bait in Requiem Mass, a chilling mystery from Elizabeth Corley.

BOLO Books Comments:

This one has echoes of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.  Elizabeth Corley is a new to me author who is definitely worth a shot.

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James Runcie – Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (Bloomsbury USA, Paperback, $16.00, 5/21/2013)

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

The loveable full time priest and part time detective Canon Sidney Chambers continues his sleuthing adventures in late 1950′s Cambridge. Accompanied by his faithful Labrador Dickens, and working in tandem with the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney is called on to investigate the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King’s College Chapel; a case of arson at a glamor photographer’s studio; and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester’s finest spin bowler, in the middle of a crucial game of cricket. As he pursues his quietly probing inquiries, Sidney also has to decide on the vexed question of marriage. Can he choose between the rich, glamorous socialite Amanda Kendall and Hildegard Staunton, a beguiling German widow three years his junior? To help him make up his mind Sidney takes a trip abroad, only to find himself trapped in a complex web of international espionage just as the Berlin Wall is going up.

Here are six interlocking adventures that combine mystery with morality, and criminality with charm.

BOLO Books Comments:

This is the second book in this series.  It sounds like a cross between a short story collection and a novel.  It will be a hit with historical mystery fans.