Beyond Confusion
A Latouche County Library Mystery
Sheila Simonson
ISBN 978-1-56474-519-4
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: April 7, 2012
The 2008 election is over, and librarian Meg McLean is thrilled that the library levy passed. In spite of an economy in free-fall, Meg’s personal and professional lives are thriving. Tribal Chief Madeline Thomas of the Klalos offers an inherited farmhouse for a branch library—but the farm was owned by a relative of Meg’s rival and vengeful enemy, library administrator Marybeth Jackman, who plans to contest the will. Disasters begin to strike—the farmhouse is vandalized; the chief’s home is firebombed; and when Marybeth falls to her death, Meg becomes a murder suspect. Echoing Marybeth’s malice, pro-censorship protestors violently attack the county’s bookmobile. Meg and her romantic interest, Undersheriff Rob Neill, must confront religious zealotry, bullying, and troubled mother-daughter relationships to penetrate the morass of bad karma and a maze of crimes.
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Her Brother's Keeper
A Joan Spencer Mystery
Sara Hoskinson Frommer
ISBN 978-1-56474-525-5
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: April 7, 2013
Joan Spencer, the viola-playing protagonist of Frommer’s small-town Indiana mysteries, doesn’t look for trouble but it keeps finding her. A few days before her daughter’s wedding, the last thing Joan needs is something else to worry about—but here it is, ready or not. Her ex-con brother Dave was the family black sheep, but years have passed since they’ve heard from him. Always the nonconformist, he’s arrived way too early. Meanwhile Joan has to keep up with work, in addition to all the planning, even for a simple wedding; the groom’s mother disapproves of everyone and everything; and Joan’s own mother-in-law, whose mind is failing fast, lands smack in the middle of a murder…
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Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding
An Antique Print Mystery
Lea Wait
ISBN 978-1-56474-531-6
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: April 7, 2013
October on Cape Cod is always beautiful, and antique print dealer Maggie Summer is happy to visit there to help with her best friend’s wedding preparations. Maggie doesn’t anticipate the murder of a neighbor, nor being called into service as a counselor and interpreter. Is she really essential to the investigation, or is she avoiding a critical discussion with the man she loves? Before she knows the answer, there’s another murder…and a hurricane…and then Maggie herself becomes a target.
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The Hanging
A Maggie MacGowen Mystery
Wendy Hornsby
ISBN 978-1-56474-526-2
254 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
When her television series is abruptly canceled, investigative filmmaker Maggie MacGowen accepts a short-term contract to teach film production at a local community college—an interesting diversion, she thinks, until the next TV gig comes along. But if Maggie expects her sojourn in the ivory tower to be peaceful, she is dead wrong. Instead, she finds herself in the middle of an explosive power struggle. In the current era of budget cuts and fee increases, community college president Park Holloway arouses faculty and student animosity with his expensive building program especially an admin building derisively nicknamed the Taj Ma’Holloway. When Maggie finds the college president hanging in the building’s stairwell, suspicion falls not on her, but on her young friend Sly Miller. A world-class artist, his sculpture was supposed to be hanging in place of the body. That’s only the beginning of a twisty plot dealing with the aesthetics and business of art, a billion-dollar art-for-arms deal; political corruption and cronyism; and issues of art forgery and journalistic ethics, all capped off by a stunning denouement.
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What You Wish For
A Novel of Suspense
Janet Dawson
ISBN 978-1-56474-518-7
292 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
History professor Lindsey Page has a quiet, well-ordered life, but it’s about to get complicated. Her daughter, with whom she has a troubled relationship, shows up on her doorstep. The immigrant woman Lindsey is interviewing for a book asks her for help in reclaiming the son taken from her during a massacre in her Salvadoran village. And her closest friends, the three women Lindsey has known since their college days in Berkeley where they witnessed the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, are hiding secrets that will forever change those friendships. Lindsey must grapple with questions of family identity, truth in wartime, the ethics of power for latter-day robber barons in the US and Central America, and the law of unforeseen consequences. Moving back and forth from the 1970s to the present, from the San Francisco Bay Area to El Salvador this sprawling saga follows Lindsey, her friends, and family through tumultuous political, social, and cultural changes and choices.
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Barnstorming
A Gail McCarthy Mystery
Laura Crum
ISBN 978-1-56474-508-8
192 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
Gail McCarthy has turned fifty, and is considering resuming her career as a horse veterinarian. Life interrupts her plans when she embarks on a solitary ride and finds a fellow equestrian shot dead. Gail’s friend, Detective Jeri Ward, heads up the investigation, and Gail is drawn into the escalating chain of events when a second rider is murdered. She must make sense of this threat to her beloved hills and trails... or she may be the sniper’s next victim.
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Mix-Up in Miniature
A Miniature Mystery
Margaret Grace
ISBN 978-1-56474-510-1
248 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Geraldine Porter is thrilled to meet bestselling author and miniatures enthusiast Varena Young. The celebrity seems to seek friendship with Gerry and her crafts group, and makes a generous offer of a house from her collection for a library fund-raiser. But Young is suddenly murdered, and Gerry is left to investigate the crime. She and her eleven-year-old granddaughter Maddie delve for information on Young’s mysterious past, and they find a clue to her murder in a secret room...of a dollhouse.
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The Nightmare
A Mystery with Mary Wollstonecraft
Nancy Means Wright
ISBN 978-1-56474-509-5
264 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: September 15, 2011
Dismissed from her governess post in Ireland, Mary Wollstonecraft lands on her feet in London. After the 1792 publication of her ground-breaking Vindication of the Rights of Woman she gains entrée to a circle of celebrated artists and intellectuals. But Mary falls into obsession and infatuation with painter Henry Fuseli after his hauntingly erotic masterpiece The Nightmare is stolen. When a young artist is wrongfully accused and imprisoned, and a bluestocking friend is strangled, Mary’s passionate nature does not allow her to stand aside. Her quest for the truth will lead her into personal notoriety, a trip to a madhouse, and confrontations with more than one possible murderer.
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Murder in Burnt Orange
A Hilda Johansson Book
Jeanne M. Dams
ISBN 978-1-56474-503-3
256 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Publication Date: September 15, 2011
Hilda Johansson, formerly a housemaid and now a lady, is pregnant and extremely uncomfortable in the heat of a 1905 Indiana June. She’s making everyone else miserable, as well, so her family encourage her to look into some serious crimes to take her mind off her own problems. No one actually thinks she will be able to solve matters of arson and murder and train-wrecking, especially since custom forbids her leaving the house in her condition, but they reckon without Hilda’s quick mind and stubborn determination to see the job through.
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Bit Player
A Jeri Howard Mystery
Janet Dawson
ISBN 978-1-56474-494-4
282 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
Young and pretty, Jerusha Layne (Jeri Howard's grandmother) spent five years in Tinseltown, working as an extra and bit player in the movies, hoping for stardom. But she found love instead, marrying Ted Howard in 1942, after Pearl Harbor changed everything. But was there another reason Jerusha left town, involving an actor's unsolved murder? And how does this decades-old crime connect with movie memorabilia and modern-day murders?
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Shadows of a Down East Summer
An Antique Print Mystery
Lea Wait
ISBN 978-1-56474-497-5
282 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
In the summer of 1891 two young Maine women posed for artist Winslow Homer. What happened that summer, the secrets the women kept, and the lies they told, changed their families forever. Now one of their descendants has been murdered, leaving Maggie Summer the family papers that may finally reveal the truth. Her vision of a romantic vacation in Maine visiting Aunt Nettie and antiquing with beau Will Brewer turns into a murder investigation. But she must discover which, if any, of the families' perceptions are realities, before she, or someone she cares about, becomes the next victim.
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Arsenic and Old Paint—The Art Lover's Mystery Series
Hailey Lind
ISBN 978-1-56474-490-6
248 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
Publication Date: September 9, 2010
Annie Kincaid, a former art forger in San Francisco, has been operating a legitimate decorative painting business for some time now, but memories are long in the art world. Now, with the blessings of the FBI Art Squad, Annie’s using her underworld connections to boost her new art investigations business, where she’s partnered with none other than the ex-art thief Michael X. Johnson. But when she stumbles across a body in an exclusive Nob Hill men’s club, and an insurance adjuster asks her to find a stolen (and forged) erotic painting, and then her uncle Anton is attacked, Kincaid’s on the trail of more than just art.…This time, she’s looking for justice.
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