From The Booking Desk:
Assuming that you survived your weekend of Game of Thrones and Endgame, you might be looking for something new to read, and I certainly have to some titles for you to check out.
Susanna Calkins – Murder Knocks Twice (Minotaur, Paperback, $17.99, 04/30/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
Calkins launches a new historical series with Murder Knocks Twice. Bringing to life the Chicago of yesteryear, this cozy-ish mystery features an inquisitive and head-strong heroine in Gina Ricci. This is an author who always strives to blend the crime elements authentically into her time-period and the 1920’s gives her much to work with. Expect to see Calkins, Gina, and the world of speakeasys for quite some time.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Gina Ricci takes on a job as a cigarette girl to earn money for her ailing father―and to prove to herself that she can hold her own at Chicago’s most notorious speakeasy, the Third Door. She’s enchanted by the harsh, glamorous world she discovers: the sleek socialites sipping bootlegged cocktails, the rowdy ex-servicemen playing poker in a curtained back room, the flirtatious jazz pianist and the brooding photographer―all overseen by the club’s imposing owner, Signora Castallazzo. But the staff buzzes with whispers about Gina’s predecessor, who died under mysterious circumstances, and the photographer, Marty, warns her to be careful.
When Marty is brutally murdered, with Gina as the only witness, she’s determined to track down his killer. What secrets did Marty capture on his camera―and who would do anything to destroy it? As Gina searches for answers, she’s pulled deeper into the shadowy truths hiding behind the Third Door.
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Hilary Davidson – One Small Sacrifice (Thomas & Mercer, Hardcover, $24.95, 05/01/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
Leave it to Hilary Davidson to find a way to bring the domestic suspense world in line with the thriller genre. One Small Sacrifice features the fast-paced excitement you would expect from most thrillers, but doesn’t skimp when adding psychological depth to every character. This is one of the best stand-alones of the year-to-date.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
An apparent suicide. A mysterious disappearance. Did one man get away with murder—twice?
NYPD detective Sheryn Sterling has had her eye on Alex Traynor ever since his friend Cori fell to her death under suspicious circumstances a year ago. Cori’s death was ruled a suicide, but Sheryn thinks Alex—a wartime photojournalist suffering from PTSD—got away with murder.
When Alex’s fiancée, Emily, a talented and beloved local doctor, suddenly goes missing, Sheryn suspects that Alex is again at the center of a sticky case. Sheryn dislikes loose ends, and Cori’s death had way too many of them.
But as Sheryn starts pulling at the threads in this web, her whole theory unravels. Everyone involved remembers the night Cori died differently—and the truth about her death could be the key to solving Emily’s disappearance.
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Sarah R. Shaber – Louise’s Crossing (Severn House, Hardcover, $28.99, 05/01/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
Readers have followed Louise Pearlie as she grows ever more confident through Sarah Shaber’s WWII historical series. With this seventh book in the series, Shaber presents a mystery with a closed circle of suspects that still manages to elicits the same dramatic potential and high stakes threats one expects from war-based writing, but finds a way to make it feel more intimate – and in some ways, ever more risky.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Government girl Louise Pearlie is thrilled to be posted to London, but her journey across the Atlantic proves to be anything but plain sailing… February, 1944. Washington D.C. With the war entering its most dangerous phase, Louise Pearlie is thrilled to be reassigned to the London office of the OSS. But in order to take up her new post, she must make a perilous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the SS Amelia Earhart. Accompanying her on the voyage to Liverpool are an eclectic group of passengers, including the aloof Blanche Bryant, whose husband, Eddie, died in mysterious circumstances on the ship’s voyage out to New York three months before. Most of the same crew and passengers are on the return voyage, and one question remains: was it really suicide? When the body of one of the passengers is found on deck, it’s clear that German bombs and raging storms aren’t the only threats to Louise’s safety. Can she expose a brutal killer before the ship docks in England?
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Melanie Golding – Little Darlings (Crooked Lane, Hardcover, $26.99, 04/30/2019)
BOLO Books Comments:
This strange and creepy novel is incredibly hard to classify. It’s part police procedural, part horrific fairy tale, and part psychological suspense. Soon to be a motion picture, this one really reminded me of a cross between Sophie Hannah’s Little Face and the modern horror classic, The Babadook.
Jacket Copy (Publisher’s Description):
Everyone says Lauren Tranter is exhausted, that she needs rest. And they’re right; with newborn twins, Morgan and Riley, she’s never been more tired in her life. But she knows what she saw: that night, in her hospital room, a woman tried to take her babies and replace them with her own…creatures. Yet when the police arrived, they saw no one. Everyone, from her doctor to her husband, thinks she’s imagining things.
A month passes. And one bright summer morning, the babies disappear from Lauren’s side in a park. But when they’re found, something is different about them. The infants look like Morgan and Riley―to everyone else. But to Lauren, something is off. As everyone around her celebrates their return, Lauren begins to scream, These are not my babies.
Determined to bring her true infant sons home, Lauren will risk the unthinkable. But if she’s wrong about what she saw…she’ll be making the biggest mistake of her life.
Compulsive, creepy, and inspired by some of our darkest fairy tales, Little Darlings will have you checking―and rechecking―your own little ones. Just to be sure. Just to be safe.
