May 24, 2024
New Fiction
Every Time I go on Vacation Someone Dies by Catherine Mack – All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next novel in her Vacation Mysteries series – is that too much to ask? Clearly it is, because when an attempt is made to kill the real Connor – the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can’t get out of her life – Eleanor’s enlisted to help solve the case. Contending with literary competitors, rabid fans, a stalker – and even her ex, Oliver, who turns up unexpectedly – theories are bandied about, and rivalries, rifts, and broken hearts are revealed. But who’s really trying to get away with murder?
Reunion by Elise Juska – It’s June 2021, and three old college friends are heading to New England for the twenty-fifth reunion that was delayed the year before. Hope, a stay-at-home mom, is desperate for a return to her beloved campus, a reprieve from her tense marriage and the stresses of pandemic parenting. Adam is hesitant to leave his bucolic but secluded life with his wife and young sons. Single mother Polly hasn’t been back to campus in more than twenty years and has no interest in returning – but changes her mind when her teenage son suggests a road trip. But the reunion isn’t what any of them had envisioned. Hope, always upbeat, is no longer able to downplay the pressures of life at home or the cracks in her long-standing friendships. Adams finds himself energized by the memory of his carefree, reckless younger self – which only reminds him how much has changed. Polly cannot ignore the ghosts of her college years, including a closely guarded secret. When the weekend takes a startling turn, all three find themselves reckoning with the past – and how it will bear on the future.
The Library Thief by Kuchenga Shenje – 1896. After he brought her home from Jamaica as a baby, Florence’s father had her hair hot-combed to make her look like the other girls. But as a young woman, Florence is not so easy to tame – and when she brings scandal to his door, the bookbinder throws her onto the streets of Manchester. Intercepting her father’s latest commission, Florence talks her way into the forbidding Rose Hall to restore its rare books. Lord Francis Belfield’s library is old and full of secrets – but none so intriguing as the whispers about his late wife.
Mystery in the Title by Ian Ferguson & Will Ferguson – Miranda Abbott, actress extraordinaire, will once again be a star. After a very long dry spell that followed her network hit series Pastor Fran Investigates, Hollywood has come calling and wants Miranda back. This time she will be the female lead in an oddly expensive movie of the week being filmed in the small town of Happy Rock. Miranda signs on the dotted line for the MOW, but her trusty assistant, Andrew, a whiz with apps and clouds, thinks it all seems a bit fishy. Things go from bad to worse when Miranda’s co-star makes a grand entrance at a media-packed press conference by crashing through the atrium window at the Duchess Hotel and being very much dead. The out-of-town cast and crew are horrified, but the fine folks of Happy Town – including the police chief Ned Buckly, grumpy bookstore owner and soon-to-be ex-husband Edgar Abbott, Bea of Bea’s B&B, and the malodorous Melvin Jacobson of S.J. Fertilizer Supply – return to help solve the case in this second Miranda Abbott mystery.