A Variety of Mysteries – September Giveaway
From a suspenseful hunt for a killer to a more casual “whodunit,” mysteries encompass a diverse assortment of stories. You can be drawn into an emotional roller coaster or be entertained by a whimsical conundrum. Here are four recent and upcoming releases to enjoy that cover the breadth of the genre.
Sinister Graves by Marcie R. Rendon
Set in 1970s Minnesota on the White Earth Reservation, Pinckley Prize–winner Marcie R. Rendon’s gripping new mystery follows Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman, as she attempts to discover the truth about the disappearances of Native girls and their newborns.
A snowmelt has sent floodwaters down to the fields of the Red River Valley, dragging the body of an unidentified Native woman into the town of Ada. The only evidence the medical examiner recovers is a torn piece of paper inside her bra: a hymnal written in English and Ojibwe.
Cash Blackbear, a 19-year-old Ojibwe woman, sometimes helps Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, on his investigations. Now she knows her search for justice for this anonymous victim will take her to the White Earth Reservation, a place she once called home.
When Cash happens upon two small graves in the yard of a rural, “speak-in-tongues kinda church,” Cash is pulled into the lives of the malevolent pastor and his troubled wife while yet another Native woman dies in a mysterious manner.
Murder at the Porte de Versailles by Cara Black
November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of heightened fear, with constant bomb alerts and ethnic tension high. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime, his fingerprints on the bomb fragments.
Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove him not guilty, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s. As Aimée scours the streets of Teheran-sur-Seine trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe’s biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany. But could Aimée Leduc ever leave Paris?
Cara Black’s riveting 20th installment in her New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series entangles private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft, postcolonial Franco-African politics, and terrorist threats in Paris’s 15th arrondissement.
Death on a Winter Stroll by Francine Mathews
Nantucket Police Chief Meredith Folger is acutely conscious of the stress COVID-19 has placed on the community she loves. Although the island has proved a refuge for many during the pandemic, the cost to Nantucket has been high. Merry hopes that the Christmas Stroll, one of Nantucket’s favorite traditions, in which Main Street is transformed into a winter wonderland, will lift the island’s spirits. But the arrival of a large-scale TV production, and the Secretary of State and her family, complicates matters significantly.
The TV shoot is plagued with problems from within, as a shady, power-hungry producer clashes with strong-willed actors. Across Nantucket, the Secretary’s troubled stepson keeps shaking off his security detail to visit a dilapidated house near conservation land, where an intriguing recluse guards secrets of her own. With all parties overly conscious of spending too much time in the public eye and secrets swirling around both camps, it is difficult to parse what behavior is suspicious or not—until the bodies turn up.
Now, it’s up to Merry and Detective Howie Seitz to find a connection between two seemingly unconnected murders and catch the killer. But when everyone has a motive, and half of the suspects are politicians and actors, how can Merry and Howie tell fact from fiction?
Fifty-Four Pigs by Philipp Schott
For readers of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, comes a lighthearted mystery with an incredible sense of place.
A swine barn explodes near a lakeside Manitoba town, putting veterinarian Dr. Peter Bannerman on a collision course with murder and a startling conspiracy. Peter is an odd duck, obsessed with logic and measurable facts, an obsession he puts to good use in his veterinary practice. When a murder is connected to the swine barn explosion and his friend Tom becomes the prime suspect, Peter feels compelled to put his reasoning skills, and his dog Pippin’s remarkable nose, to use to help clear him.
The situation darkens with a second murder and a series of break-ins, including at Peter’s house and clinic, but Peter has a hard time knowing when he is out of his depth, despite warnings from his brother-in-law Kevin, an RCMP officer. It becomes increasingly clear that something extraordinary is behind all this, possibly international in scope. Ultimately Peter finds himself out in the middle of frozen Lake Winnipeg during a blizzard, fighting for his life and confronting a horrifying realization he had been blind to all along.
-Annotations from the publishers
–Post by Melissa Friedlund, Reference Specialist
Giveaway
Enter your name here for a chance to win ARCs of the books mentioned in this post. One entry per person. Drawing to be held approximately 7 days after this post.
ARCs are “advanced reading copies.” These are free copies of a new books given by a publisher to librarians and other reviewers before the book is printed for mass distribution.
#FDL is a weekly update on all things Fondulac District Library and East Peoria.
Fondulac District Library provides access to a large collection of eBooks and audiobooks through the Libby app. Several times during the year, Overdrive hosts a Big Library Read, an online book club for readers around the world. Featured books are chosen by librarians and announced shortly before the Big Library Read begins. Our library is provided with unlimited copies of the eBook or audiobook, and our patrons can read without wait time through the Libby app from November 2-16. A library card number and PIN are required to access the book. This fall, the Big Library Read has chosen A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger. Below is a little about the book from The Big Library Read’s website:
In honor of National Media Literacy Week, we are giving away a copy of Dr. Seema Yasmin’s book, What the Fact? Read more about this book below and tune in for an online interview of the author tomorrow at 7:00p.m.
