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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #565 - Spotlight on Debut Mysteries
by muffy
Winner of the 2013 Colorado Gold Contest for unpublished writers and a runner-up in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc * by Jennifer Kincheloe.
1907 Los Angeles. Heiress to a banking fortune Anna Blanc bristles under her domineering father and watchful chaperon. Using an alias, she takes a job as a police matron with the LAPD. An eager reader of crime novels, she could match wits with Sherlock Holmes. So when the city is plagued by a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate, she takes on the investigation herself.
For fans of Rhys Bowen's Molly Murphy; Kerry Greenwood's Miss Phryne Fisher; and Ashley Weaver's Amory Ames series.
The White Shepherd by Annie Dalton. In this first of the Oxford Dogwalkers' series (and YA author Dalton's first adult thriller), a fragile young woman becomes an unlikely sleuth.
Anna Hopkins is walking Bonnie, her white German Shepherd, through Oxford's picturesque Port Meadow when they stumble upon the battered body of her friend, Naomi, a researcher. Before the police arrives, two women, Tansy and Isadora, appear on the scene and the women team up to support each other and take matters into their own hands when the Police concludes that Naomi was the latest victim of the Oxford Ripper.
Anna's distrust of the Police stems from a childhood trauma when she found her entire family brutally slaughtered, and the killer was never found. One of the first responder on the scene then is now the lead investigator of Naomi's murder.
"An inventive plot, charismatic characters, and even some black humor combine to make this a good choice for suspense junkies... its canine element will delight Susan Conant and Laurien Berenson fans."
* = starred review
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #562 - “I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.” ~ Nan Goldin
by muffy
A finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, The Trench Angel by Michael Keenan Gutierrez is a "vivid and engaging novel and it carries a doomed, bloody and wondrous vision of the World War I trenches and the American West in the years after World War I".
Colorado, 1919. Photographer Neal Stephens returns home to New Sligo after the war to take on a job with the Eagle, the local paper. As with much of everything in town, it belongs to Neal's uncle, Seamus Rahill, owner of Rahill Coal & Electric who takes a hard line against his workers organizing. When Sheriff Clyde O'Leary, who has been blackmailing Neal over his secret marriage to a black woman in France, is murdered, Jesse Stephens (Neal's father and Rahill's brother-in-law) comes under suspicion. Neal's investigation calls up memories of the trenches and his search for his dead wife, as he untangles the connections among the murder, the coalminers' strike, and his mysterious anarchist father.
"While Gutierrez draws Paris, the Belgian war-front, and the rough-hewn frontier town with a good eye..., the novel's unfiltered lens reveals war's cost to the human psyche, the amorality of concentrated wealth, the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred, and the nearly unresolvable conflict between familial loyalty and moral responsibility."
Moonshadows, Julie W. Weston's debut novel is set in early 1920s Idaho. Photographer Nellie Burns leaves the monotonous portrait work in her Chicago studio with sight set on photographing nocturnal snowscape in the remote Idaho backcountry. Unfamiliar with the terrain, she hires a drunken old miner, Rosy Kipling as guide.
Among the many images Nellie captures on film of the deserted Last Chance Ranch, is one of a dead man. Then the negative disappears along with the body. When she finally finds the body, it is the wrong one, only making herself more of a suspect, and putting her in danger.
"This debut mystery... authentically portrays the gritty mining towns and the wild beauty of Idaho while presenting a challenging puzzle."
Readers might also enjoy The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy, and The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak, both also notable debut novels.
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New by the author of The Art Forger: The Muralist
by eapearce
The Muralist is a brand-new book by Barbara Shapiro, author of the bestselling The Art Forger. As in her previous novel, in The Muralist, Shapiro’s interest in and deep understanding of art is again used to create the background for the compelling story. The book features two main characters, living in different time periods. Alizee Benoit is a talented abstract painter who works for the Works Progress Administration in late 1930s New York City. Her great-niece, Dani Abrams, is a present-day employee at an auction house who receives in the mail one day several squares of an abstract painting. Believing that these squares may have something to do with her great-aunt’s never-explained disappearance in 1940, Dani dives into researching where the squares of painting came from, against her boss's wishes. The Muralist is combination historical fiction and mystery, and “is sure to be a crowning touch in an already celebrated career” (BookPage).
Fans of The Goldfinch in particular should make sure to check The Muralist out.
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #558
by muffy
Topping the October 2105 Library Reads is yet another debut - City on Fire * * * by Garth Risk Hallberg, praised by early reviewers from being a "very-damn-good American novel"; "(an) epic tale - both a compelling mystery and a literary tour de force"; to "maniacally detailed, exhaustingly clever", and always "highly entertaining". Don't wait to reserve this one.
The titular city is, of course New York, in the "exquisitely grungy" mid-1970s, where musicians, writers, and power brokers connect, often in the most astonishing ways. The mystery is who shot fanzine writer and hanger-on in the Manhattan punk scene Sam(antha) Cicciaro in Central Park on New Year's Eve 1976, and why. Clinging to life, Sam (who is central to several of the plot threads) was found by Mercer Goodman, an intelligent young black man from Georgia, who was William Hamilton-Sweeney's lover, a musician and heroin addict and the estranged son of a banking titan.
Meanwhile, remnants of the band William once belonged to have holed up on Manhattan's Lower East Side and are plotting some kind of a revolution, possibly violent. Richard Kosgroth, a magazine journalist whose profile of Sam's father, the head of a fireworks firm, leads to suspicion that there's a bigger story to be told.
"Throughout, Hallberg expertly handles the multiple shifts in perspective, vibrantly portraying a specific time and place and creating memorable character...all wandering the vast, ongoing American dreamscape that is New York City."
"At times this (900-page) novel feels like a metafictional tribute to America's finest doorstop manufacturers, circa 1970 to the present: Price (street-wise cops), Wolfe (top-tier wealth), Franzen (busted families), Wallace (the seductions of drugs and pop culture), and DeLillo (the unseen forces behind everything)... an ambitious showpiece for just how much the novel can contain without busting apart." Will appeal to fans of the multiple award-winner A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Film rights sold to Scott Rudin.
* * * = 3 starred reviews
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Henning Mankell, Author of the Wallander Series, Dies at Age 67
by Sara W
Swedish author Henning Mankell died in Sweden this morning after a battle with cancer. Mankell was best known for his crime novels featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander, whose depression and unhealthy lifestyle made him a relatable, if dour, protagonist. The Wallander series begins with the award-winning Faceless Killers and ends with The Troubled Man, and Wallander's retirement from the police force and his slide into dementia.
Mankell was at the forefront of the Swedish crime popularity wave, combining his complicated and flawed detective with suspenseful puzzles and themes of social justice. Mankell used the murders Wallander investigated in small town Ystad to explore issues ranging from human trafficking or xenophobia. While best known for Wallander, Mankell wrote dozens of novels and plays, and was active as an artistic director in a theater in Mozambique, where he also had a home. He was extremely political, and often active in controversial causes.
Fans who miss Mankell's complex plots and thoughtful characters might explore the screen adaptations of his work. Kenneth Branagh leads an English language adaptation of the Wallander series for the BBC. There are also two Swedish adaptations, an original adaptation starring Rolf Lassgard and a later series of TV films starring Krister Henriksson.
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #557 - “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ~ Audre Lorde
by muffy
Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grove Swank, an originally self-published "(l)ight, fluffy, southern fun", has become an overnight-bestseller.
In this first of the Rose Gardner Mystery series, prone to visions, the 24 year-old clerk sees herself dead one afternoon while working at the Henryetta (AR) DMV. Always dutiful and compliant, she realizes she has wasted her life and makes a list on the back of a Wal-Mart receipt: twenty-eight things (getting a cell phone, cable TV), she wants to accomplish before it is too late. When she discovers her abusive mother murdered after their heated argument, Rose becomes the prime suspect.
Coming to her aid is her hot and mysterious new neighbor Joe, who has plenty of dangerous secrets of his own. Charlaine Harris and Janet Evanovich fans would be delighted with this new series.
The Gates of Evangeline * by Hester Young. This dark, gripping, and atmospheric gothic thriller is "a classic whodunnit stitched with otherworldly chills.” Readers will be glad to know that this debut novel is the first in a planned trilogy.
Manhattan journalist Charlotte "Charlie" Cates has lost her young son to a brain aneurysm. Now this bereaved single mother is experiencing vivid dreams about children in peril, or worse, dead. Though not quite understanding the significance of it, she is convinced of her role in their outcome.
With the offer to participate in a true-crime investigative project, Charlie finds herself entangled in a thirty-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana's prestigious Deveau family. Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family's sprawling estate, Charlie uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, implicating those she most wants to trust.
Readers of Gillian Flynn, Kate Atkinson, and Alice Sebold will find a new writer to watch and a promising series to follow.
* = starred review
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #550
by muffy
An international bestseller, first published in German in March 2012, Death in Brittany * * by Jean-Luc Bannalec (a pseudonym) introduces the first case of Commissaire Georges Dupin.
At the height of the tourist season, Commissaire Georges Dupin, the cantankerous Parisian transplant to the coastal town of Concarneau, is dragged from his morning croissant and coffee to the village of Pont-Aven, where the 91-year-old hotelier Pierre-Louis Pennec has been found murdered in his restaurant.
Dupin and his team identify five principal suspects, amony them a rising political star, a longtime friend of the victim, and a well-respected art historian. The case is further complicated when a second death occurs and a painting (perhaps a genuine second version of Gauguin's famous Vision After the Sermon) disappears from Pennec's hotel. As Dupin delves further into the lives of the victims and the suspects, he uncovers a web of secrecy and silence in this picture-perfect seaside village that once played host to Paul Gauguin and other post-Impressionist painters in the 19th century, members of the loosely connected Pont-Aven School.
"Dupin is fascinating to watch - he's both cranky and enthusiastic... The star of the mystery, though, is Brittany. Bannalec feeds the reader with intriguing bits of history (for example, Bretons are descended from the Celts, who fled Britain during the Anglo-Saxon invasions) and culture, along with bracing glimpses of centuries-old stone buildings, river banks, and the sea."
For mystery fans who enjoyed the Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg series by Fred Vargas; the Chief Magistrate Antoine Verlaque series by M.L. Longworth, set in charming and historic Aix-en-Provence; and Martin Walker's delightful Bruno Courreges series set in the fictional town of St Denis, in the picturesque Perigord region of rural France - featuring the consummate cook and locavore who happens to be the Chief of Police.
* * = 2 starred review
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New in the Cormoran Strike series: Career of Evil
by eapearce
The latest mystery from author Robert Galbraith (pseudonym for J. K. Rowling), featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, is now available! Titled Career of Evil, the book opens with a mysterious package delivered to Cormoran’s assistant. To their surprise and horror, the package contains a woman’s severed leg. Narrowing the suspects down to four twisted people from Cormoran’s past, he and his assistant take matters into their own hands to pursue the perpetrator. Galbraith’s previous mysteries have appealed to a wide audience not only for their gripping excitement and unexpected twists, but also for their character development, and Career of Evil is no different. It is the third installment in the Cormoran Strike novels, following The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm. Place your hold today!
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #549
by muffy
"A literary thriller", Dragonfish * * * by Whiting Award winner Vu Tran is the "nuanced and elegiac, noirish first novel" of an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago.
Robert Ruen, an Oakland (CA) cop with an anger management issue is forced at gunpoint to travel to Las Vegas in order to help find Suzy, his Vietnamese ex-wife who has disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese businessman, smuggler and gambler. As Robert pursues Suzy through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny's sadistic son, "Junior," he realizes how little he knows of her - from her perilous escape from war-torn Vietnam, to the dangers and hazards in a Malaysian refugee camp where she first met Sonny.
Parallel to Robert's investigation is a secondary narrative in the form of letters to a daughter Suzy abandoned decades ago, throwing light on a woman debilitated by sorrow and haunted by ghosts and guilt.
"Vu Tran takes a strikingly poetic and profoundly evocative approach to the conventions of crime fiction in this supple, sensitive, wrenching, and suspenseful tale of exile, loss, risk, violence, and the failure to love."
"A superb debut novel…that takes the noir basics and infuses them with the bitters of loss and isolation peculiar to the refugee and immigrant tale. " (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air). Also check out this week's The New York Times Book Review for Chris Abani's review (and podcast), whose The Secret History of Las Vegas would be an interesting readalike.
Vu Tran will be participating in the Suspenseful Reads panel at this year's Kerrytown Bookfest. September 13, at 2:45 at the Kerrytown Concert House.
* * * = 3 starred reviews
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NPR Books' Summer Of Love
by eapearce
The hottest month of the summer is almost upon us and in honor of their Summer of Love theme this year, NPR Books has just released a list of 100 swoon-worthy romances to keep you occupied during August and beyond. Readers and authors alike voted on their favorite romance novels, and then the votes were tallied and divided into categories to produce the final list, which you can check out here!
I love the diversity of the list: it includes historical, paranormal and LBGT romances, classics such as Pride and Prejudice, and entire series. There's even a YA category! Even readers who don't consider themselves readers of romance novels will be able to find something that catches their eye. Look for any of the books that interest you from the list in our catalog!