December 2, 2022
New Fiction
Santa’s Little Yelpers by David Rosenfelt – Tis the season in Paterson, New Jersey: lawyer Andy Carpenter and his golden retriever, Tara, are surrounded by holiday cheer. It’s even spread to the Tara Foundation. The dog rescue organization, not used to having puppies, has its hands full with a recent litter. Eight puppies are a lot to handle, and Andy is relieved when his coworker Chris Myers agrees to foster them. Myers, a newer employee at the Tara Foundation, did time for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. When Myers discovers that a key witness against him lied on the stand, he goes to Andy to ask for representation in getting the conviction overturned. Myers thinks they can have this wrapped up by Christmas, no problem. But when the witness is murdered and Myers is arrested for the crime, things go from bad to worse. Suddenly it’s all elves on deck to make a list and check it twice, so they can prove Myers is innocent.
Desert Star by Michael Connelly – A year has passed since LAPD detective Renee Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. For years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him – the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Ballard makes Bosch an offer: come volunteer as an investigator in her new Open-Unsolved Unit, and he can pursue his “white whale” with the resources of the LAPD behind him. First priority for Ballard is to clear the unsolved murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. The decades old case is essential to the councilman who supported re-forming the unit and who could shutter it again – the victim was his sister. When Ballard gets a “cold hit” connecting the killing to a similar crime, proving that a serial predator has been at work in the city for years, the political pressure has never been higher. To keep momentum going, she has to pull Bosch off his own investigation, the case that is the consummation of his lifelong mission. The two must put aside old resentments and new tensions to run to ground not one but two dangerous killers who have operated with brash impunity.
A Quilt for Christmas by Melody Carlson – Christmas should be celebrated with family, but for Vera Swanson, that’s not an option this year. Widowed and recently relocated, she is lonely in her condo-for-one until little Fiona Albright knocks on her door needing help. With her mother seriously ill and her father out of town, Fiona enlists Vera’s aid, and when she finds out her new neighbour is a quilter, she has a special request – a Christmas quilt for Mama. Vera will have to get a ragtag group of women together to fulfill the request. Between free-spirited artist Tasha, chatty empty nester Beverly, retired therapist Eleanor, and herself, Vera has hopes that Christmas for the Albright family will be merry after all. And she may even find herself a new family of friends along the way.
New Non-Fiction
The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin – Following the events of Kristallnacht in 1938, Peter Fleischmann evaded the Gestapo’s roundups in Berlin by way of a perilous journey to England on a Kindertransport rescue, an effort sanctioned by the British to evacuate minors from Nazi-controlled areas. But he could not escape the British police, who came for him in the early hours and shipped him off to Hutchinson camp on the Isle of Man, under suspicion of being a spy for the very regime he had fled. Peter’s story was no isolated incident. During Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews escaped and found refuge in Britain. After the war broke out, faced with a nation gripped by paranoia, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that these innocent asylum seekers – so-called “enemy aliens” – be sentenced to an indefinite period of internment. When Peter arrived at Hutchinson camp, he found one of history’s most astounding prison populations: renowned professors, composers, journalists, and artists. Together, they created a thriving cultural community complete with art exhibitions, lectures, musical performances, and poetry readings. The artists welcomed Peter as their pupil and forever changed the course of his life. Meanwhile, suspicions grew that a real spy was hiding among them – one connected to a vivacious heiress from Peter’s past.