From The Booking Desk:

Many of us have been dealing with frigid temperatures, but this week there promises to be a bit of a warm up. These excellent books should help!  There is something for everyone on this week’s list of books to be on the look out for. Enjoy!

Sujata Massey – The Widows of Malabar Hill (Soho Press, Hardcover, $26.95, 01/09/2018)

BOLO Books Comments:

The return of Sujata Massey to the crime fiction genre is certainly something to be celebrated.  This award-winning author launches a new series with a new publisher and you are not doing to want to miss it.  Look for more details on this book later here on the blog, later today.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

1920s India: Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first female lawyer, is investigating a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah when the case takes a turn toward the murderous. The author of the Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Rei Shimura novels brings us an atmospheric new historical mystery with a captivating heroine.
 
Inspired in part by the woman who made history as India’s first female attorney, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth.

Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes women’s legal rights especially important to her.

Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X—meaning she probably couldn’t even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah—in strict seclusion, never leaving the women’s quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are
in further danger.

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Aimee Hix – What Doesn’t Kill You (Midnight Ink, Paperback, $15.99, 01/08/2018)

BOLO Books Comments:

Aimee Hix’s debut will captivate readers immediately. Wasting no time time on build-up, What Doesn’t Kill You jumps right into the action and rarely lets up across the course of its suspenseful tale. Willa Pennington is a character readers are going to relate to and root for, even as she frustrates with her rash decisions and realistic flaws. Like most of us, Willa has issues, but she refused to let any of that stand in the way of justice. This launch of a new series is a welcome addition to the private investigator sub-genre.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

A favor for a friend turns into a murder investigation, drawing apprentice PI Willa Pennington into a labyrinth of lies and deception in the shadows of Washington, D.C.

Willa Pennington thought that becoming a PI would be better than being a cop. She thought she’d never have to make another death notification or don a bulletproof vest again. She thought she could move past the pain of losing her best friend. She thought she’d be safe.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Now, agreeing to do a simple favor has brought her to a dead body, a missing person, and a battle of wits with an old friend who has dangerous secrets. If Willa can keep her focus, she could solve the murder, find the missing girl, and figure out if the person she’s trusted with her life is the one trying to end it.

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Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanan – The Wife Between Us (St. Martin’s Press, Hardcover, $26.99, 01/09/2018

BOLO Books Comments:

Last week, I ran the BOLO Books review of The Wife Between Us. If you were waiting for the book to be released before reading, now is your chance.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage – and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

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Christopher J. Yates – Grist Mill Road (Picador, Hardcover, $26.00, 01/09/2018)

BOLO Books Comments:

Many readers discovered Christopher J. Yates with the release of Black Chalk. Certainly those readers have been anxious to see what he had to offer next and they will not be disappointed. Structurally complex, this gritty read will bind readers to the pages until the very last secret is revealed.

Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):

Grist Mill Road is a dark, twisted, and expertly plotted Rashomon-style tale. The year is 1982; the setting, an Edenic hamlet some ninety miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends―Patrick, Matthew, and Hannah―are bound together by a terrible and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves never could have predicted, the three meet again―with even more devastating results.