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Terrifically terrifying

by lucroe

Ready for a scary book for those cold winter nights? Get your hot chocolate and jammies on, you will need them since this book will NOT make you any warmer! International Horror award winner, the Terror by multiple award winning author, Dan Simmons, brings the reader up close to the trials of the 1840s Franklin Expedition to the Canadian Arctic. The expedition, while searching for the famed Northwest Passage, was besot by foul weather and eventually became lodged in the ice, never to be seen again. Simmons takes these true events and adds some horror and a touch of the supernatural. It is a very suspenseful book and extremely well-written. You won't have to go outside to get the feeling of the freezing Arctic temperatures, Simmons does it all for you!

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #127

by muffy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* is the hot Swedish thriller (with 5.5 million copies sold across Europe) that features "one of the most original heroines to come along in years" - a young, prickly tattooed computer hacker, who teams up with an embattled and discredited journalist facing a jail term, to investigate the disappearance of an heiress 40 years ago. Talk about a cold case!!!

Debut novelist Steig Larsson who died of a heart attack in 2004, was an investigative journalist. Girl, (originally published as Män som hatar kvinnor = Men Who Hate Women) is the first of a 3-part series. Highly recommended. Readers might also like to check out another FFF Nordic mystery Redbreast by Jo Nesbo.

* = Starred Reviews

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #122

by muffy

Set in St. Louis, MO., Assistant District Attorney Jack Hilliard appears to have it all: intelligence, good looks, a great job, and a solid marriage with his wife, Claire. While he subscribes to the ideal of TELL NO LIES*, when he finds himself simultaneously seduced by a dream job and a sexy colleague, his moral compass starts to falter and he soon learns that bad decisions have even worse consequences. . .

"Compton's debut is a taut, tense cautionary tale complete with courtroom drama and a surprise ending" ~Kirkus Reviews. For fans of legal thrillers and the likes of the 2 Johns - ( Grisham and Hart ).

St. Louis native Julie Compton earned degrees in law and English literature. She worked as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in Wilmington, Delaware. This is her first novel.

* = Starred Reviews.

Spoiler Alert!!! - If you don't like a cliffhanger of an ending - skip this one.

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August 13th - Happy Birthday Alfred Hitchcock!

by darla

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, London, England. One of the best-known and most popular filmmakers of all time, he pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. Here at the AADL our DVD department is stocked with lots of classic Hitchcock films and television shows for your viewing pleasure. Watching Psycho, probably his best known film, will always make your next experience in the shower one to remember. My personal favorite has always been The Birds (love that schoolyard scene!), but we also have lots of other faves like Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Rebecca, which won an Oscar for Best Picture in 1940, Spellbound and Vertigo. Fans of Hitchcock's old television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents will find season one and two on our library shelves and, for anyone not familiar with Alfred Hitchcock, check out the Dick Cavett Show where he was featured as a guest way back in 1972. Hitchcock died from renal failure in April 1980, just four months after he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the New Year's Honours.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #117

by muffy

In The Dirty Secrets Club*, the best clue San Francisco forensic psychiatrist, Jo Beckett finds at the 3rd high profile murder-suicides of the week is the word “dirty” scrolled on the thigh, in blood-red lipstick, of the latest victim – Callie Harding – the Assistant U.S. Attorney. Someone is picking off the members of the “Dirty Secrets Club”, A-list celebrities who trade secrets and thrills.

Meg Gardiner’s hardback U.S. debut boasts a taut, complex plot, break-neck pacing; a smart, tenacious and emotionally vulnerable protagonist with her own secrets to hide; and a realistic rendering of a city under siege.

Critics are comparing Gardiner to Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver and Tess Gerritsen. Gardiner practiced law in LA and taught at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her previous Evan Delaney (available only in paperback) novels are big hits in the UK where she now lives.

*=Starred Reviews

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #114

by muffy

Set in west Dorset, British filmmaker Poppy Adams' "eerie, accomplished debut", The Sister, is "an engrossing psychodrama" of four generations of the Stone family as they gather for a reunion of sorts at their crumbling Victorian manor.

Murder, illicit sex, long-buried secrets and painful memories have estranged them for decades and this reunion will surely bring matters to an explosive conclusion.

Dark, chilling and gothic. Perfect to start your summer reading.

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True Crimes of Ann Arbor

by Caser

As crime dramas broadcast their final episodes of the season and channel surfing after 9pm proves fruitless, look no further than the Ann Arbor Police Department Online History Exhibit for murder mysteries that carry the added thrill of being true.

You can find this exhibit in our database collection, which can be accessed via the Research tab on this website. More than just a list of Ann Arbor marshals from the 1800s, the site also contains a history of some of the most notorious criminal cases in Ann Arbor history, including the 'Student Riot of 1908', 'The Murder of Officer Clifford Stang', 'The Co-ed Murders', and many others. Much of the history is written by Sergeant Michael Logghe, who published a book on the subject in 2002. The Library owns his book and the videorecording of his lecture at the Library in 2006 on DVD.

The Downtown library is also home to the Ann Arbor News on microfilm, where one can research the original news reports of these cases, and perhaps even be the first to write a screenplay based on these local events. Find these and other items on true crime here at the AADL.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #110

by muffy

According to a New York Times article, it took a citywide fund-raising effort for The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to raise the $68 million needed to keep a Thomas Eakins masterpiece - The Gross Clinic in the city. "The painting is widely considered to be among the greatest convases in American art".

Though Eakins' fame is "almost entirely posthumous and he was little known and admired in his native city" during his life time, but in Lawrence Goldstone's debut The Anatomy of Deception, Eakins is front and center in this highly readable, intriguing and historically well-researched forensic thriller. Also depicted are the real-life characters such as William Osler (the Father of Modern Medicine), famed surgeon William Stewart Halsted and the vibrant social scene of Philadelphia 1889.

Historical mystery readers, especially those of Caleb Carr and Matthew Pearl will find much to like here.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #105

by muffy

Literature professor (Louisville, Kentucky) Will Lavender’s debut novel Obedience is one tautly strung thriller!

Students at Winchester University’s Logic and Reasoning 204 are greeted on the first day of class with one startling assignment – find a hypothetical missing girl name Polly before the end of term or she will be murdered.

As the clues set forth by the creepy prof. point more toward something real and sinister rather than a logic exercise, three of the students find disturbing personal connections with Polly. What looks like an academic exercise at first could turn deadly.

Obedience hooks you fast and hard. Ride it out and brace for the shock.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #104 (The Fourth Man)

by muffy

"An absorbing study of sexual enthrallment, dogged police work and a harrowing twist or two" marks The Fourth Man, the American debut of Oslo police inspector Frank Frolich.

Soon after Frolich rescues Elisabeth in a robbery-homicide, he is drawn into a risky and sorted tangled web of "art theft, blackmail, torrid sex and double crosses". With his career and his life on the line, all the likely suspects turning up dead and Elisabeth missing, the identity of a possible 4th man becomes ever more crucial. Recommended for fans of Karin Fossum and Kjell Eriksson.

K.O Dahl is an award-winning author in his native Norway. Another new name to watch for nordic mystery fans.