Goodbye, Ms. Chips
by Dorothy Cannell
Published 2008 by St. Martin's Minotaur

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780312343385

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

Charming amateur sleuth Ellie Haskell is forced to confront a dark secret from her past when she returns to her old boarding school to solve a case of robbery--and finds herself tracking a murderer, in this exciting new cozy.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/18/2008

At the start of Cannell's meandering 13th Ellie Haskell mystery (after 2007's Withering Heights), Ellie's dear friend Dorcas Critchley, the games mistress at St. Roberta's boarding school, asks the amateur sleuth to investigate the theft of the Loverly Cup, a trophy awarded annually by "Lady Loverly of the Hall at Upper Swan-Upping to the winner of the area schools' lacrosse championship match." A former "inmate" of St. Roberta's, Ellie returns to campus, where she's forced to rub shoulders with old classmates she would rather avoid. The suspicious death of Marilyn Chips, a retired coach whose skills enabled the school to retain the trophy for many years, makes the loss of the Loverly Cup, if not irrelevant, certainly less important. Ellie and her housekeeper, Mrs. Malloy, enchant as always, though the student characters, in particular Ellie's precocious detecting pal, 14-year-old Ariel Hopkins, may strike some readers as too adult. Witty dialogue helps offset the slow pacing of this alternately funny and stodgy cozy. (Apr.)

Winter Study
by Nevada Barr
Published 2008 by G. P. Putnam's Sons

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780399154584

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

The bestselling author of "Hard Truth" and "Bittersweet" brings back Ranger Anna Pigeon in the 14th installment of her acclaimed mystery series.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/25/2008

In bestseller Barr's chilling 14th mystery thriller to feature National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon (after 2005's Hard Truth), Anna joins the team of Winter Study, a research project intended to study the wolves and moose of Michigan's Isle Royale National Park, the setting for 1994's A Superior Death. Complicating the study is Bob Menechinn, an untrustworthy Homeland Security officer assigned to shadow the research. Crowded into inhospitable lodgings and persecuted by unrelenting cold, Anna is far from her comfort zone as nature turns awry with a series of bizarre events. The team stumbles upon the tracks-and the mutilated victim-of a preternaturally large, unidentified beast, and local packs of wolves descend on human-populated areas, a behavior out of step with their species. The campfire legends of youth metastasize into adult fears as Anna must piece together a connection between these anomalies while guarding herself from the strangers around her. Barr's visceral descriptions of the winter cold nicely complement the paranoia that follows the appearance of the mythic monsters at play. Author tour. (Apr.)

The Book of Dahlia
by Elisa Albert
Published 2008 by Free Press

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780743291293

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

From the author of the acclaimed story collection "How This Night Is Different" comes a fearless, arresting, outrageously funny exploration of one young woman's terminal illness.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 12/17/2007

When Dahlia Finger-a 29-year-old, pot-smoking, chronically underachieving Jewish-American princess-learns that she has brain cancer, the results are hilarious and heartbreaking in Albert's superb first novel (following the story collection How This Night Is Different). Opening in the Venice, Calif., cottage to which Dahlia has retreated, at her father's expense, after unsuccessfully trying to forge a life in New York, chapter one begins with the omniscient narrator's scathingly Edith Wharton-worthy catalogue of Dahlia's symptoms and ends with her first grand mal seizure. As Dahlia endures blistering radiation, sits numbly through her support group, smokes medical marijuana (with her crisis-reunited divorced parents) and carries a condescending book called It's Up to You: Your Cancer To-Do List, Albert masterfully interweaves Dahlia's battle with flashbacks, most tellingly involving her complexly overbearing Israeli mother, Margalit ("who unceremoniously imploded the family decades earlier"), and contemptuous older brother, against whom Dahlia has never learned to defend herself. Throughout, Albert delivers Dahlia's laissez-faire attitude toward other people (men especially) and lack of ambition with such exactness as to strip them of cliché and make them grimly vivid. Her brilliant style makes the novel's central question-should we mourn a wasted life?-shockingly poignant as Dahlia hurtles toward death. (Mar.)

Compulsion
by Jonathan Kellerman
Published 2008 by Ballantine Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780345465276

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

In Jonathan Kellerman's latest super-charged thriller, Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware square off against the most sadistic murderer they've ever encountered. Ballantine Books

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/25/2008

Bestseller Kellerman serves up all the elements his fans have come to love in the 22nd entry in his Alex Delaware series (Obsession, etc.), including an intriguing plot, likable regular characters supported by an interesting secondary cast, diabolical villains, witty dialogue and a sense of humanity and justice. Alex and his LAPD detective partner, Milo Sturgis, are investigating several murders that, at first, appear to have only one thing in common: the perpetrator's use of expensive black automobiles while committing his crimes. Kellerman sticks to his usual modus, the patient and sometimes painfully slow accumulation of detail, as Alex and Milo slowly build their case. A subplot involves a missing child last seen selling magazine subscriptions in a tony neighborhood 16 years earlier. On the domestic front, Alex is again living with his girlfriend, Robin, with whom he has broken up several times over the course of the series. In the end, a nice twist reminds Robin and Alex to be more careful in the future about drawing assumptions in their private life before all the facts have come to light. (Apr.)

Where Are You Now?
by Mary Higgins Clark
Published 2008 by Simon & Schuster

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781416566380

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

International bestselling suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark proves she knows how to tell a gripping story with this mystery of a family tragedy and one woman's dangerous quest for the truth.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/10/2008

Bestseller Clark (Where Are the Children?) spins yet another imaginative tale of murder and deceit. Every Mother's Day over the 10 years since Charles "Mack" MacKenzie Jr. disappeared from Columbia University just before his graduation, Mack has phoned his mother in Manhattan to let her know he's all right, but otherwise reveals nothing. In the meantime, Mack's lawyer father has perished in the 9/11 tragedy. Now Mack's younger sister, Carolyn, a graduate of Columbia and Duke Law School, where Mack was intending to go, tells him during his annual call that she's going to find him. When a note from Mack turns up in the collection plate at St. Francis church, asking Father Devon MacKenzie, his uncle, to tell Carolyn not to look for him, she becomes even more determined to do so. Based on a real story, as Clark notes in her acknowledgments, this novel of suspense will keep readers guessing to the nail-biting conclusion. (Apr.)

Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben
Published 2008 by Dutton Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780525950608

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

The "New York Times" bestselling author of "The Woods" asks the provocative and terrifying question: How much do parents really want to know about their kids and how far will they go to find out?

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/18/2008

Parents will find this compulsive page-turner from Edgar-winner Coben (The Woods) particularly unnerving. A sadistic killer is at play in suburban Glen Rock, N.J., outside New York City, but somehow he's less frightening than the more mundane problems that send ordinary lives into chaos. How do you weigh a child's privacy against a parent's right to know? How do you differentiate normal teenage rebelliousness from out-of-control behavior? When and how do you intervene if suicidal signs appear? Other issues include single parenting; career versus family; marital honesty; and how much information you should share with a child at what age. Coben plucks each of these strings like a virtuoso as Mike and Tia Baye try to deal with the increasing withdrawal of their 16-year-old son, Adam, after a friend's suicide. A pair of brutal, seemingly senseless killings, punctuate the unfolding domestic troubles that ratchet up the tension and engulf the Baye family, their friends and neighbors in a web of increasing tragedy. The "this could be me" factor lends poignancy to the thrills and chills. (Apr.)

The Betrayal Game
by David L. Robbins
Published 2008 by Bantam

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780553804423

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

Set during the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, this what-if thriller forces readers to question what "could have" happened--maybe even what "should have" happened--in the weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 11/19/2007

In this muddled follow-up to 2006's engaging The Assassins Game, Robbins attempts to create suspense by revisiting the multiple attempts made on Fidel Castro's life in the early 1960s. Professor Mikhal Lammeck-an expert on political murder-arrives in Cuba on the eve of the much-rumored U.S.-supported invasion at the Bay of Pigs, but soon finds himself transformed from detached academic into participant. Thrust into this murky world of double-crossings and shadowy government missions, Lammeck becomes privy to a conspiracy involving a former U.S. marine sharpshooter. Robbins has set himself a daunting task in maintaining tension and interest when the reader knows Castro will survive. Unfortunately, the author doesn't manage to overcome the challenges he sets for himself, and his efforts to weave together fictional characters and historical events are heavy-handed at best. (Feb.)

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
by Joshilyn Jackson
Published 2008 by Grand Central Publishing

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780446579650

Find this book in our catalog.

Jacket Notes:

Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty, whether she's helping her mother make sure the family skeleton stays in the closet or turning scraps of fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. While Laurel's life seems neatly on track, everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 10/29/2007

Jackson matches effortless Southern storytelling with a keen eye for character and heart-stopping circumstances. Laurel, a high-end quilt maker, sees the ghost of a little girl in her bedroom one night. When it leads her to the backyard and a dead girl in the swimming pool, the life Laurel had hoped to build in her gated Florida neighborhood with her video-game designer husband, David, and their tween daughter, Shelby, starts to fall apart. Though the police clear the drowning as accidental, it soon appears that Shelby and her friend Bet may have been involved. Bet, who lives in DeLop, Laurel's impoverished hometown, was staying over the night of the drowning and plays an increasingly important role as the truth behind the drowning comes to light. Meanwhile, Laurel's sister, Thalia, whose unconventional ways are anathema to Laurel's staid existence, comes to stay with the family and helps sort things out. Subplots abound: Laurel thinks David is having an affair, and Thalia reveals some ugly family secrets involving the death of their uncle. What makes this novel shine are its revelations about the dark side of Southern society and Thalia and Laurel's finely honed relationship, which shows just how much thicker blood is than water. (Mar.)